The Future of Warfare: The U.S. Mission to Ukraine and its Implications for Counter-String Forces and Nuclear Forces

Petraeus: I believe we should recognize that, with a few exceptions, Ukraine is not the future of warfare. Cold war weapons systems would have been what we would have seen if it had gotten hot in the 1980s.

The US put those fears to rest quickly and has aided the Ukrainians in their fight against the Russians.

The S-300 missile systems are important for Ukraine but finding them can be difficult. More than 1,600 missiles and eight air missile defense systems have been delivered by the U.S. The U.S. has also supplied dozens of mobile rocket launchers called HIMARS, in addition to an array of other military vehicles and arms including Javelin anti-tank missiles, helicopters, howitzers and drones. But those supplies, too, are running low.

Putin’s “Women, life, freedom!” campaign in the early 2000s: The fall of Lysychansk, Ukraine

“It’s not just about the equipment that you have. It’s about how you employ that equipment, how you synchronize things together to create battlefield effects that then can create opportunities,” he said.

If the prospects for Iran’s ” Women, life, freedom!” uprising look dim, remember what happened to Ukrainians when one of the world’s mightiest military forces was supposed to seize their country.

After capturing Lyman over the weekend, the Ukrainian forces pushed eastward toward the city of Lysychansk, which was seized by the Russian army three months ago. Any loss of territory in the Donbas undermines Mr. Putin’s objectives for the war he launched in February, which has focused on seizing and incorporating the region.

Two days after the ceremony in which Russian President Vladimir V. Putin marked the annexation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia, the fiasco in the city of Lyman further strained the relationship between the Russian and Ukrainian governments.

The Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote an article on Sunday about desertion, poor planning, and the delayed arrival of reserves, which were reported in the last few days of their occupation.

The war in Ukranian was one way that Putin hoped to make Russia great again. Instead, Russia can now no longer pretend to be a great power as it is unable to defeat an enemy on its own borders.

While the fall of Lyman was not even mentioned until after more than an hour of laudatory coverage of Russia’s growth from 85 to 89 regions, it was included on Russia’s flagship Sunday political show.

The soldiers said on the Sunday broadcast that they had been forced to retreat because of the fighting with NATO soldiers.

The US-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War noted that Russian battlefield setbacks, coupled with the unease in Russian society over mobilization, “was fundamentally changing the Russian information space.” It has also included criticism from men of power including Kadyrov who have been critical of the policies of the Russian government.

Russia’s plan to summon as many as 300,000 people for war was broadcast to convince Russians that the West will be blamed for any hardship they deal with, no matter how bad it is.

The idea that Russia is fighting a broader campaign was repeated in an interview with Aleksandr Dugin, a far-right thinker whose daughter, also a prominent nationalist commentator, was killed by a car bomb in August.

Mr. Dugin, like Mr. Putin, has accused Western countries of damaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which ruptured after underwater explosions last month in what both European and Russian leaders have called an act of sabotage.

The West thinks that we blew up the gas line ourselves. We must understand the scale and extent of the war between us and the West. In other words, we must join this battle with a mortal enemy who does not hesitate to use any means, including exploding gas pipelines.”

At this point, it seems that the nonstop messaging campaign is working. Aleksandr Baunikov is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who is from Russia.

At home, Putin is also facing growing criticism from Russians on both the left and the right, who are taking considerable risks given the draconian penalties they can face for speaking out against his “special military operation” in Ukraine.

That does not bode well for Russia’s plans on the battlefield. Right now, Mr. Putin seems to have two immediate goals: to sustain control of as much of the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions as he can (with Russia’s desired boundaries not yet defined); and to freeze the front line, establishing a frontier Ukrainian forces cannot broach, possibly sealed by a cease-fire. That would enable a more sustainable defense, as well as allow the military to rotate troops and regenerate its forces. Both of these conditions are not acceptable to the Ukrainians and its supporters. And as the Ukrainians’ continued headway in the south suggests, it’s far from clear that Russia will be able to attain either aim.

Hundreds of thousands of Russian men fled to border states such as Kazakhstan and Georgia in an attempt to avoid the draft because of Putin’s order to mobilize 300,000 more troops in September.

Manifestation of courage in the protests against the death of a young woman in Iran, inspired by David v. Goliath

Editor’s Note: Editor’s note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a columnist for the Washington Post and a weekly opinion contributor to CNN. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. CNN has opinions on it.

On Sunday, almost by accident, two groups of demonstrators came together in London. One was waving Ukrainian flags; the other Iranian flags. When they met, they cheered each other, and chanted, “All together we will win.”

For decades autocrats have been gaining ground while democracies looked almost spent, in retreat. We did not expect a ferocious pushback against two of the most brazen tyrannies. In Iran and Ukraine the people decided to defy the odds for their dignity, freedom and self- determination.

Courageous support for places like Afghanistan is inspired by these David v. Goliath battles as they show courage that is almost unimaginable to other people.

The death of a young woman in Iran sparked the fires in the country. She passed away in the custody of morality police, who arrested her for breaking rules that required women to dress modestly.

In scenes of exhilarated defiance, Iranian women have danced around fires in the night, shedding the hijab – the headcover mandated by the regime – and tossing it into the flames.

It is what led women to start climbing on cars, waving their hijabs in the air and gathering a crowd of supporters in universities, where security forces were opening fire to try and silence them.

Why does the West want to make Syria an independent country? A case study in Russia and the Iran-Iran Interaction with the Syrian-Israeli Conflict

Russia is still a large military force in Syria and it helps keep the government in power. But the change could herald shifts in the balance of power in one of the world’s most complicated conflict zones, and may lead Israel — Syria’s enemy — to rethink its stance toward the Ukraine conflict.

Petraeus: In the long term, Putin still wants to deny Ukraine its sovereignty and make it part of the Russian Federation. The right to be an independent country was not granted in Putin’s version of history.

Over the course of six months, Russia has bombed hundreds of hospitals, schools, and convoys, as well as being responsible for mass graves filled with Ukrainians.

The regimes in Tehran and Moscow are ostracized by most of the world because they are repressive and supported by autocrats.

This isn’t the first time that Russia has accused the west of turning the conflict into a proxy war. Iran acknowledges providing military drones to Russia.

The regimes that are very different in their ideologies have in common certain aspects, such as their willingness to project power abroad and their tactics of oppression.

Niloofar Hamedi was the first journalist to report on the case of Mahsa Amini. In Russia as well, journalism is a deadly profession. So is saying bad things about Putin. After trying and failing to kill opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Putin’s people manufactured charges to keep him in a penal colony indefinitely.

There is more to interest people in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen than the probability that the Iranian regime could fall. It would make a big difference for their countries and their lives. After all, Iran’s constitution calls for spreading its Islamist revolution.

The Cost of Chaos: Putin’s Tragic Case: How the Soviet Union Becomes More Likely for the Siege of Afghanistan in November 1979

Freedman writes that Putin is “a tragic example of how the delusions and illusions of one individual can be allowed to shape events without any critical challenge. Autocrats who put their cronies into key positions, control the media to crowd out discordant voices … are able to command their subordinates to follow the most foolish orders.”

Not only did theUkrainians cause heavy losses to the advanced units, but they also cut off their supply and possible withdrawal routes.

“They dropped everything: personal care, helmets,” said the commander, who uses the code name Swat. “I think it was a special unit, but they were panicking. It was raining a lot and the road was bad, they dropped everything and moved.

The extent of Russian losses in these infantry advances is not known. The institute described the advances as “impaling” ill-prepared units on well dug-in defensive positions of Ukraine’s battle-hardened troops. The Ukrainian military has inflated their estimates of Russian deaths, but the increase in reported numbers suggests a toll that is much higher. On Friday, the Ukrainian military said more than 800 Russian soldiers had been wounded or killed over the previous 24 hours.

Peter Bergen is a national security analyst at CNN, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen’s book “The Cost of Chaos” is about the Trump Administration. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

With even his allies expressing concern, and hundreds of thousands of citizens fleeing partial mobilization, an increasingly isolated Putin has once again taken to making rambling speeches offering his distorted view of history.

His revisionist account explains his rationale for the war in Ukraine, which he states has always been part of Russia even though it was formerly part of the Soviet Union.

The Soviets planned to put in a puppet government in Afghanistan and then leave the country as soon as possible after invading in December 1979 according to a new book.

The US was reluctant to escalate its assistance to the Afghan resistance because of fear of a larger conflict with the Soviet Union. The anti-aircraft missiles the CIA gave the Afghans in 1986 ended the Soviets’ total air superiority, forcing them to withdraw from Afghanistan three years later.

Russia has warned on unspecific “consequences” if the US provided Ukraine with Patriot missiles, viewing the shipments as further US engagement in the war. The official was clear about the fact that Biden was steadfast in keeping the United States out of a conflict with Russia.

The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan two years prior to the fall of the Soviet Union is what Putin is aware of.

The Romanov monarchy was weakened when the Russians lost the war in 1905. Czar Nicholas II’s feckless leadership during the First World War then precipitated the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Bolshevik firing squad killed a lot of the Romanov family.

The author of the just- published book says in his book “Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine” how Putin plunged his countrymen into the Ukrainian morass.

If Russia is allowed to win, Putin’s war would mark the beginning of a new era of global instability, with less freedom, less peace and less prosperity for the world.

The question is when it will begin to shift blame from the military to Putin himself, since he seems ill-prepared to change the leadership at the top. The last change was the appointment of Sergei SURVIKIN, a former army general, to serve as the first person to serve in overall command of all Russian forces in the Ukraine front.

“First of all, we need to stop lying,” said Andrei Kartopolov, a former colonel-general in the Russian military and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. We had brought this up many times before. It seems that it is not getting through to individual senior figures.

Kartapolov complained that the Ministry of Defense was evading the truth about incidents such as Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russian regions neighboring Ukraine.

The assessment said that seeking a quick advance, the Russian Army was “wasting the fresh supply of mobilized personnel on marginal gains” by attacking before massing sufficient soldiers to ensure success. The attacks were directed at several towns and villages.

The Belgorod region contains Valuyki, near the border with Ukraine. When it comes to striking Russian targets, Kyiv has generally adopted a stance that is neither confirm nor deny.

“There is no need to somehow cast a shadow over the entire Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation because of some, I do not say traitors, but incompetent commanders, who did not bother, and were not accountable, for the processes and gaps that exist today,” Stremousov said. Many think that the Minister of Defense could have shot himself if he’d allowed this to happen. The word officer is unfamiliar to many.

But after Russia’s retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman, Kadyrov has been a lot less shy about naming names when it comes to blaming Russian commanders.

Writing on Telegram, Kadyrov personally blamed Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, for the debacle, accusing him of moving his headquarters away from his subordinates and failing to adequately provide for his troops.

“The Russian information space has significantly deviated from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) that things are generally under control,” ISW noted in its recent analysis.

One of the central features of Putinism is a fetish for World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. The Red Army used punishment battalions to send soldiers accused of desertion, cowardice or wavering against German positions as cannon fodder, and it was praised by those in Russia’s party of war.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader who has called for Russia to “take more drastic measures” including use of “low yield nuclear weapons” in Ukraine following recent setbacks, welcomed the appointment of Surovikin who saw service in Afghanistan in the 1980s. KadYrov is a key ally of Putin and he has been praised by Kadyrov.

Russian President Putin suggested that his country may abandon its “no first use” nuclear weapons doctrine and use them to defend its homeland, because of the growing threat of nuclear war. Putin’s comments came after drone strikes hit military infrastructure deep inside Russia. The military of Russia blamed Ukraine for the strikes.

Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and was the spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He contributes to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

Recent days have meanwhile shown that sites beyond the current theater of ground fighting are far from immune to attacks. The fact that a target so deep in Russian-held territory could be hit suggested a serious threat towards key Russian assets by the Ukrainians.

The large-scale Russian bombardment hit several cities across the country almost simultaneously, propelling the conflict into a new phase and coming as much of the country was starting to roar back to life.

The Russian conscripts housed in the Vocational School of Makiivka went on strike at midnight on New Year’s Day, according to pro-Russian and Ukrainian accounts.

As of midday local time, the area around my office in Odesa remained eerily quiet in between air raid sirens, with reports that three missiles and five kamikaze drones were shot down. (Normally at this time of the day, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers, and chatter of plans for upcoming weddings and parties).

Several strikes hit apartment buildings in Zaporizhiyya hours before Monday’s attacks, a city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Several dozens were injured and 17 people were killed.

Russian missiles damaged a glass-bottomed footbridge in Kyiv that is a popular tourist site, tore into intersections at rush hour and crashed down near a children’s playground on Monday. It was a time when the terror inflicted on civilians during the invasion was still fresh, but in recent months it has been less of a problem.

The scenes of the early days of the war were very similar to the ones that played out in the city. Many people took cover on the platforms in one metro station while a small group sang Ukrainian songs.

Indeed, millions of people in cities across Ukraine will be spending most of the day in bomb shelters, at the urging of officials, while businesses have been asked to shift work online as much as possible.

Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.

Russia is struggling on the ground, and has failed to gain superiority in the air, but Monday’s attacks may have achieved one goal – signalling strength to Putin’s critics.

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with mega-projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. That same year, one of the first things Chinese President Xi Jinping did after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong was to connect the former Portuguese and British territories with the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. The $20 billion, 34-mile road bridge opened after about two years of delays.

Kremonsky’s response to the Russian attack on Ukraine: The role of Zelensky and the West in preventing further attacks from the Kremlin

The reaction among Ukrainians to the explosion was instantaneous: humorous memes lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree. The people sent text messages with their sense of jubilation.

Putin wasn’t able to sit still because he was consumed by pride and self-interest. He responded in the only way he knows how, by unleashing more death and destruction, with the force that probably comes natural to a former KGB operative.

It was also an act of selfish desperation: facing increasing criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on unusually thin ice.

In August, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, the Chief of the Main Intelligence Director at the Defense Ministry, told Roman Kravets that by the end of the year they will need to go to Crimea.

It’s crucial that Washington and other allies use phone diplomacy to persuade China and India not to use more deadly weapons, since there is still some leverage over Putin.

Victory will surely depend on the West maintaining a united front against Russia. Zelensky and his envoys abroad have done an enviable job of warning Western leaders that if they don’t support Ukraine in pushing Putin back completely, their own nations’ security could be caught in the crosshairs of Russian aggression.

Air and missile defense are Kyiv’s greatest needs at this stage in the conflict. The US plans to give Ukraine the advanced missile defense system called the Patriot are needed to keep the fight going.

The time has also come for the West to further isolate Russia with trade and travel restrictions – but for that to have sufficient impact, Turkey and Gulf states, which receive many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to come on board.

Zelenskyy had renewed those calls in recent weeks ahead of Wednesday’s visit to Washington, including in a phone call to Biden earlier this month. Last week, the Ukrainian leader had pressed the G7 for more assistance; in a statement afterward, the group announced it would set “an immediate focus on providing Ukraine with air defense systems and capabilities.”

Petraeus: In response to the Russian invasion the Biden administration provided enormous quantities of arms, ammunition, and other equipment, as well as economic assistance to the western world. And also guiding the effort to impose economic, financial and personal sanctions and export controls on Russia. I offer this, as I am very critical of the way the withdrawal was conducted in Afghanistan and I am not a member of a political party.

Asked Thursday about Russian warnings that the Patriot system would be “provocative,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said those comments would not influence US aid to Ukraine.

The UK’s Ben Wallace said the Challenger 2s should be provided to Ukranian this summer, and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said his Leopard 2s would arrive by the end of March. And on January 26, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said that deliveries of the Abrams tanks will take “months.”

Estimating Russian missile inventories is guesswork. In May, President Volodymr Zelensky said Russia had launched 2,154 missiles and had probably used up 60% of its precision-missile arsenal. That now looks like wishful thinking.

“Russia is preparing for maximum escalation. It is doing drills and training. When it comes to an offensive from different directions, as of now, I can say that we are not excluding any scenario in the next two to three weeks.”

All this adds up to a complex path ahead for the Zelensky administration, especially if liberating Crimea from Russia is part of the definition of victory envisioned by most Ukrainians. For the time being, and true to form, the tough guy from Kryvyi Rih shows no sign of backing down.

John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, suggested Washington was looking favorably on Ukraine’s requests and was in touch with the government in Kyiv almost every day. He said that they do the best they can in subsequent packages.

“It’s clear that he’s feeling the pressure both at home and overseas, and how he reacts to that only he can say,” Kirby told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on “Erin Burnett OutFront.”

Russia has not altered its nuclear posture despite the threats of nuclear weapons, but Putin’s rhetoric is reckless and dangerous, he said.

The rush-hour attacks of Monday in Ukraine are the hallmark of a pivot in the war on the Russian battlefield, but Putin does not intend to abandon the battlefield

The attacks snatched away the semblance of normality that city dwellers, who spent months earlier in the war in subways turned into air raid shelters, have managed to restore to their lives and raised fears of new strikes.

The targets on Monday had little military significance and were used to reflect the need for Putin to find new targets since his inability to destroy Ukrainian forces at the battlefield has made it difficult for him to find new targets.

The bombing of power installations, in particular, Monday appeared to be an unsubtle hint of the misery the President could cause as winter sets in, even as his forces retreat in the face of Ukrainian troops.

Kirby was not able to say whether Putin’s strategy was to abandon the battlefield and instead start a campaign to destroy civilian sentiment and damage Ukrainian infrastructure or if it was already happening.

It was something that they had been working on for a long time. Now that’s not to say that the explosion on the Crimea bridge might have accelerated some of their planning,” Kirby said.

But French President Emmanuel Macron underscored Western concerns that Monday’s rush-hour attacks in Ukraine could be the prelude to another pivot in the conflict.

“He was telegraphing about where he is going to go as we get into the winter. He is going to try to force the Ukrainian population to compromise, to give up territory, by going after this infrastructure,” Vindman said on CNN’s “New Day.”

The result of the attack is the same, regardless of whether Russia lost 400 men as Ukrainian says or 89 as Moscow says, and it marks Russia’s highest single-incident death toll since the war began.

“So imagine if we had modern equipment, we probably could raise the number of those drones and missiles downed and not kill innocent civilians or wound and injure Ukrainians,” Zhovkva said.

If a long campaign against civilians by Putin was to take place, it’s possible it would cause unrest in NATO allies who are supportingUkraine and cause refugees to flood into Western Europe.

Putin doesn’t appear to have learned that revenge is not an appropriate way to act on or off the battlefield, and it’s possible that Russia will be isolated and weakened irreversibly.

Ruling out a new round of Russian terror: the “terror” of Olena Gnes and the “flash” against Kyiv

Olena Gnes, a mother of three who is documenting the war on YouTube, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday that she was angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians from a new round of Russian “terror.”

“This is just another terror to provoke maybe panic, to scare you guys in other countries or to show to his own people that he is still a bloody tyrant, he is still powerful and look what fireworks we can arrange,” she said.

Russia massed lots of troops in Belarus before invading the country in February and used the territory for its initial attempt at invading the capital of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Moscow still has a lot of troops in Belarus, but the number is expected to increase in the future.

Mr. Lukashenko told military and security officials in the capital of his country that this wouldn’t be just a thousand troops.

In remarks reported by Belta, Mr. Lukashenko said that work had begun on forming a group of troops to counter possible aggression against the country by NATO and Ukraine.

According to the media there, Mr. Lukashenko told them that the need to take measures in case of a possible deployment of nuclear weapons in Poland.

Mr. Sannikov, who was the deputy foreign minister during Mr. Lukashenko’s early days in power, fled into exile after being sentenced to prison on trumped up charges.

Russia’s state media insisted that the country only hit military targets in Ukraine, leaving out the millions of people who have suffered.

On Monday, state television not only reported on the suffering, but also flaunted it. It showed plumes of smoke and carnage in central Kyiv, along with empty store shelves and a long-range forecast promising months of freezing temperatures there.

On Tuesday, the UK’s spy chief said that Russian commanders on the ground knew that their supplies were running out.

“We’ve seen, because of the declaration for mobilization, that it’s running short of troops. So I think the answer to that is pretty clear. Fleming said Russia and its commanders were worried about the state of their military machine.

Fleming’s comments came after Russia launched a wave of deadly strikes across Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities Monday, damaging critical infrastructure and killing at least 19 people.

Monday’s attacks, and further strikes throughout the week, were evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin lashing out after a series of setbacks in the war that have put him under pressure domestically.

“I think any talk of nuclear weapons is extremely dangerous, we need to be very careful about how we’re talking about that,” Fleming said.

I hope that we can see signs if they go down that path. But let’s be really clear about that, if they are considering that, that would be a catastrophe in the way that many people have talked about,” he added.

In a speech later Tuesday, Fleming will also say Russians are increasingly counting the cost of the invasion of Ukraine and are seeing “how badly” Putin “has misjudged the situation.”

“With little effective internal challenge, his decision-making has proved flawed. It’s a high stakes strategy that is leading to strategic errors in judgement. Their gains are being reversed,” Fleming will say in an address at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) annual security lecture in London.

“They know their access to modern technologies and external influences will be drastically restricted. He will tell them of the huge human cost of the war.

Until more arrive, there is the risk – all too familiar to the government and people of Ukraine – that the Russian mix of missiles will wreak much greater havoc among the civilian population, especially if the Russians persist with the tactic of using swarms of missiles, inundating air defenses.

Some of that inventory was dispatched this week. Western officials say Russia is using older and more precise KH-22 missiles, of which it still has large inventories. They are designed to take out aircraft carriers. Dozens of people were killed at a shopping mall in Kremenchuk in June.

Experts believe it remains unlikely that Russia’s aerial bombardment will form a recurrent pattern; while estimating the military reserves of either army is a murky endeavor, Western assessments suggest Moscow may not have the capacity to keep it up.

The Russians have been making the S-300 offensive weapon, which is usually an air defense missile. These have wrought devastation in Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv, among other places, and their speed makes them difficult to intercept. But they aren’t accurate.

He told CNN’s Richard Quest that this was the “first time from the beginning of the war” that Russia has “dramatically targeted” energy infrastructure.

The NATO Secretary General said on Tuesday that more systems are needed for Ukraine to stop missile attacks. He said that the air defense systems provided by NATO Allies are making a difference, because many incoming missiles were shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems. As long as they’re not all shot down, there’s a need for more.

Zelensky cited a video from Monday, where a soldier used a shoulder-held missile to bring down a Russian projectile, purportedly a cruise missile.

It is difficult to estimate the proportion of Shahed drones that will be eliminated. Zelensky said that “every 10 minutes I receive a message about the enemy’s use of Iranian Shaheds.” But he also said the bulk of them were being shot down.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Reznikov: “The New Era of Air Defense has begun” and “Barely Needed” Modern Systems”

Ukraine’s wish-list – circulated at Wednesday’s meeting – included missiles for their existing systems and a “transition to Western-origin layered air defense system” as well as “early warning capabilities.”

The cost to defend a small number of high value targets is the result of the advanced long-range air defense system. But it is neither a total solution to Ukraine’s air defense problem, nor a swift one, with one earliest possible in-service date in Ukraine estimated at February 2023.

Western systems are beginning to trickle down into other countries. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Tuesday that a “new era of air defense has begun” with the arrival of the first IRIS-T from Germany, and two units of the US National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAM) expected soon.

This is just the beginning. There is one item on the agenda that will strengthen the Ukrainian air defense, and that is what Reznikov stated before he met with the donors. Feeling optimistic.”

Ukraine “badly needed” modern systems such as the IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States , Bronk said.

The Russian War in Ukraine: Status, Prospects, and Prospects for the Next Three, Four, And A Half-A Million Years of the War

Ukraine’s senior military commander, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, tweeted Tuesday his thanks to Poland as “brothers in arms” for training an air defense battalion that had destroyed nine of 11 Shaheeds.

He said Poland had donated equipment to help destroy the drones. There were reports last month that the Polish government had purchased advanced Israeli equipment and was transferring it to Ukraine, despite the fact that Israel does not sell defensive technology to Kyiv.

The war is at risk of moving towards a new phase not for the first time. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.

The next several weeks of the war are crucial as each side seeks to strike another blow and the cold months bring a slow down in ground combat.

“What seemed a distant prospect for anything that could be convincingly described as a Ukraine victory is now very much more plausible,” Giles said. Russia is likely to escalate their response.

Oleksii Hromov, a senior Ukrainian military official, said last week that Kyiv’s forces have recaptured some 120 settlements since late September as they advance in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson regions. On Wednesday, the Ukrainian government said that it had freed more settlements in Kherson.

Russia said it would help evacuate people from Kherson to other areas as the Ukrainian offensive continued. The announcement came a short time after the head of the Moscow-backed administration in Kherson appealed to the Kremlin for help moving residents out of harm’s way, indicating that Russian forces were struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances.

These counter-offensives have shifted the momentum of the war and disproved a suggestion, built up in the West and in Russia during the summer, that while Ukraine could stoutly defend territory, it lacked the ability to seize ground.

The Russians are trying to avoid collapsing their frontline before winter sets in, according to the senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

If Russians can get to Christmas with the frontline looking like it is, it will be a huge success.

Russia is massing replacement troops to launch an offensive to take parts of the provinces that they don’t control, while also establishing defensive positions in other areas that they control in the south.

Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.

Giles said there are many reasons why things need to be done quickly in Ukraine. “The winter energy crisis in Europe, and energy infrastructure and power being destroyed in Ukraine itself, is always going to be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.”

And there seems to be little suggestion that the West will be letting up on its support for Ukraine. Both the US and increasingly Europe, which recently committed to raising its funding by $2 billion in 2023, appear determined to see Ukraine through this winter and beyond.

Ukrainian national power company, Ukrenergo, says its power supply is stable after it was disrupted by Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. But Ukrainian Prime Minister has warned that “there is a lot of work to do” to fix damaged equipment, and asked Ukrainians to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.

The ICW said that Putin may not be able to disrupt the counter-offensives of the Ukrainian troops because he doesn’t have a large supply of precision weapons.

Western countries have donated military equipment for the purpose of Ukrainian use, even though it has left the European militaries’ stock cupboards looking rather bare according to defense officials and experts.

Petraeus: It could if Putin mobilized all of Russia successfully. Putin seems to fear the country might respond to total mobilization which has limited the amount ofmobilization so far. In fact, reportedly, more Russian men left the country than reported to the mobilization stations in response to the latest partial call-up of reserves.

“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. The new route would allow Russia a way into the territory which has been reclaimed by the Ukrainians, he said.

Zelensky would hope for more supplies in the short-term so that he can drive home the gains. The leader has sought to highlight Ukraine’s success in intercepting Russian missiles, saying more than half of the missiles and drones launched at Ukraine in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday were brought down.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

After Ukraine recently recaptured more territory than Russia’s army took in the last six months, Russia’s Ministry of Defense last Saturday named Sergey Surovikin as its new overall commander for operations in the war.

Notably, he previously played an instrumental role in Russia’s operations in Syria – during which Russian combat aircraft caused widespread devastation in rebel-held areas – as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

He said Surovikin was “very close to Putin’s regime” and “never had any political ambitions, so always executed a plan exactly as ​the government wanted.”

Russian President Putin had a meeting with Russian military service personnel who were involved in operations in Syria.

Irisov believes there are three reasons why he has been put in charge in Ukraine now: his closeness to the government and Putin; his interbranch experience with both the infantry and air force; and his experience since the summer commanding Russian forces in the southern Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea. These are areas that Putin is trying to control “at any cost,” said Irisov.

The invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 changed everything, as TASS received orders from the defense ministry and the security service that anyone not involved in the propaganda scheme would be prosecuted.

After being attacked by Putin, he knew the right thing to do, because it was just his gut feeling, according to Yevhen Hlibovytsky.

While serving at Latakia air base in Syria in 2019 and 2020, the 31-year-old says he worked on aviation safety and air traffic control, coordinating flights with Damascus’ civilian airlines. He spoke to high-ranking officers under him after he saw him several times.

The general was disliked by many people at headquarters because of the way he implemented his infantry experience into the air force.

A private military company with strong Kremlin-approved connections is the one that has operated in Syria.

In 2004, according to Russian media accounts and at least two think tanks, he berated a subordinate so severely that the subordinate took his own life.

And a book by the think tank the Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation says that during the unsuccessful coup attempt against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, soldiers under Surovikin’s command killed three protesters, leading to Surovikin spending at least six months in prison.

The Human Rights Watch report named him as someone who may bear command responsibility for the many air and ground attacks on civilian objects and infrastructure in violation of the laws of war. ​The attacks killed at least 1,600 ​civilians and forced the displacement of an estimated 1.4 million people, according to HRW​​, which cites UN figures.

Vladimir Putin, Alexander Dvornikov and the militaries of Ukraine: What has happened in Ukraine since Putin became the “butcher of Amman”?

Vladimir Putin (left) toasts with then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev next to Sergey Surovikin after a ceremony to bestow state awards on military personnel who fought in Syria, on December 28, 2017.

The European Union imposed sanctions on the head of the defense force in Ukraine, which was called the AerospaceFORCE, for his involvement in activities that undermined and threatened the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of the country as well as the stability or security of it.

But Clark, from the ISW, suggests the general’s promotion is “more of a framing thing to inject new blood into the Russian command system” and “put on this tough nationalist face.”

He was appointed by the Russian military, and also received praise from Yevgeny (Prigozhin) who is the founder of theWagner Group, Clark said.

When Alexander Dvornikov was appointed overall commander of the operations in Ukraine in April, he believes it was a reflection on what happened now.

Clark said he had a reputation like that of the “butcher of Amman” when he was a commander of one of the groups of Russian forces.

According to Clark, “there isn’t a good Kremlin option if Surovikin doesn’t perform or if Putin decides that he is also not up to the task. There aren’t many other senior Russian officers and it’s just going to lead to a further degradation of the Russian war effort.”

That does not mean that the forces will be of no use. If used in support roles, like drivers or refuelers, they might ease the burden on the remaining parts of Russia’s exhausted professional army. They could force the line of contact along with some areas and man checkpoint in the rear. They are, however, unlikely to become a capable fighting force. There are signs of discipline problems among soldiers who have been mobilized.

Why Vladimir Putin isn’t going to stop the punishment: Why we shouldn’t let him do so, even if he doesn’t

Even if President Zelenskyy found a way to stop the punishment, we should negotiate. The conviction of the Ukrainian people is why I don’t think he can do that anymore.

Petraeus spoke at an annual conference in Sea Island, Ga., run by The Cipher Brief, which brings together members of the national security community — current and former — to stand back and look at the big picture on global security.

The conflict needs to end with a Ukrainian victory in the battle, according to the chief of staff to President Zelenskyy.

Paul Kolbe is a Former CIA officer and runs the Intelligence Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School. In fact, he says, just the opposite. “Putin’s muscle memory when he runs into an obstacle is to escalate,” said Kolbe. “There’s a lot of tricks he can still pull out to try to undermine morale in Ukraine and in the West.”

Putin is also calling up 300,000 more troops, and he annexed a swathe of Ukrainian territory in the south and the east, claiming it’s now part of Russia forever.

“That is essentially a metaphorical burning of bridges,” said Alperovitch. This war is likely to persist for many months, possibly many years if he’s in power and he has the resources to continue fighting.

At theGeorgia conference, in a ballroom filled with experienced national security types, no one suggested the war was close to an end. “I don’t see any prospects of talks in the near term, since most wars end with some kind of negotiated solution, whether that comes out of stalemate or defeat,” said the former CIA official.

This war began with a Russian invasion in 2014, he noted, and is now as intense as it’s ever been. NPR National Security Correspondent Greg Myre. Follow him @gregmyre1.

Russian Embassy in Kiev after the First Battle of the First World War II: a Warning Message to Russians and a Counterattack on Republican Sen. Kevin McCarthy

Some regional officials — including the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin — appeared to be taking pains to offer reassurances. No measures are currently being implemented to change the normal rhythm of the city’s life according to Mr. Sobyanin.

The governors of the four regions granted new power by Mr. Putin said they wouldn’t impose entry or exit restrictions.

But many Russians are sure to see a warning message in the martial law imposed in Ukraine, the first time that Moscow has declared martial law since World War II, analysts say.

People are concerned that the borders will be closed, and the siloviki, the strong men in the Kremlin, will do what they want.

In a signal that the faltering invasion of Ukraine has eroded Moscow’s influence elsewhere, Russia has recently redeployed critical military hardware and troops from Syria, according to three senior officials based in the Middle East.

The 21-year-old budding social media influencer sitting on the park bench by the tram stop is having a conversation with two of her friends about the war. Makarova explains how much of their safety depends on U.S. support.

He says the top issues trending on his social media channels are the upcoming U.S. elections and billionaire Elon Musk’s controversial comments about negotiating an end to the war.

Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republican Party in the House, warned this week that if they win control of the lower chamber next year, they will not write a blank check to Ukraine.

“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” he told Punchbowl News in an interview published Tuesday.

California GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who served as House minority leader in the last session and is now pursuing the House speakership, said in October that Republicans might pull back funding for Ukraine in 2023 if they took the majority in the 2022 midterm elections. Still, after making those comments the GOP leader worked behind the scenes to reassure national security leaders in his conference that he wasn’t planning to abandon Ukraine aid and was just calling for greater oversight of any federal dollars.

Ukrainian politicians, activists and soldiers are traveling to Washington in order to lobby for more aid just as the polls are about to open.

Yevheniia Kravchuk is a member of parliament with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party. She’s traveled twice to Washington since the beginning of the war to meet with administration and congressional leaders, making sure to meet with both Democratic and Republican leaders.

But Kniazhytskyi worries about the influence of a vocal group of Republicans, many aligned with former President Donald Trump, as well as conservative TV personalities who have been speaking out against the billions of dollars going to Ukraine.

A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 32% of Republican and Republican-leaning independents believe the United States is providing too much support for Ukraine in the war. In March the increase was only 9%.

In the beginning of May, 45% of Americans said they were concerned about the defeat of Ukraine, but in September that percentage fell to 38%.

The politics surrounding aid to Ukraine is not an easy subject to talk about in Kyiv, where government officials say avoiding partisan politics in the U.S. is a key pillar of Ukrainian foreign policy. The lesson was learned during the Trump years, according to the senior fellow at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation who was in the Ukrainian government.

Zelenskyy came close to submission to Trump’s demand to announce a investigation into the family of Joe Biden, but he was sucked into Trump’s first impeachment.

A director of international studies says that many Ukrainians don’t understand politics in the U.S.

When there is someone in the house that speaks about why they are spending money on something and it’s not working out, people in the Ukraine hear this, like, “Oh my God.”

The balance of power in Washington means that a few Republicans can’t change the direction of U.S. support for the war, he believes. And he emphasizes that Ukraine has much bigger problems than U.S. politics.

Beyond that, I believe we will see Ukrainian forces that are much more capable than the Russians at achieving the kind of combined arms effects that I described earlier and that thus enable much more effective offensive operations and can unhinge some of the Russian defenses. We may not see a lot of it until the spring or summer because of the time required for the Ukrainian forces to train on the new western tanks.

CNN. Dean Obeidallah: The Story of the War Between Ukraine and the USA in the Light of the Kremlin and the U.S.

Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show” and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him, Dean Obeidallah. The opinions he gives in this commentary are his. View more opinion on CNN.

In Ohio, the GOP Senate candidate changed his mind and said that the Ukrainians would be successful. The Washington Post states that Ukrainian Americans who are lifelong Republicans and who have been loyal to the GOP for many years will support Tim Ryan in the senate race.

The Kremlin denounced the transaction and claimed that a US supply of missiles would prolong the suffering of the Ukrainian people.

“The notion that now Kevin McCarthy is going to make himself the leader of the pro-Putin wing of my party is just a stunning thing. It’s dangerous,” Cheney said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He knows better but the fact that he is willing to sacrifice so much for his political gain is a sign that he is.

Meanwhile, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — who recently declared that if Republicans win the House in next month’s elections that she expects McCarthy “to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway” — blamed Ukraine for the war shortly after Russia’s attack, saying that “Ukraine just kept poking the bear and poking the bear, which is Russia, and Russia invaded.”

Conservative Fox News stars, including Laura Ingraham and especially Tucker Carlson, have been laying the groundwork with members of the Republican base, readying them for the possibility of an end to US assistance for Ukraine.

Carlson — who declared on his show in 2019 when there was a potential conflict between the neighboring countries that he was “root(ing) for Russia” — did his best in the months before Putin’s attack to paint Ukraine in a negative light. Carlson called Zelensky a puppet of the Biden administration, and claimed that Ukraine was not a democracy.

And just last week, Ingraham derided former Vice President Mike Pence for referring to the United States as the “arsenal of democracy” and suggested our massive military is too depleted to help other countries such as Ukraine. During that same episode, Ingraham welcomed GOP Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, who echoed McCarthy’s comments about aid for Ukraine, saying, “We can’t put America first by giving blank checks to those around the world to solve their problems.”

Some Republicans may or may not get it, as Biden suggested. There is one person who fully comprehends what it is: Vladmir Putin. If the Republicans win back control of the House, it will be a cause for celebration.

War and Manifold Dynamics in the EU: The Case for the President of the United States, Peter Petraeus, and Andrew Roberts

Over the course of decades, Petraeus has been studying warfare. He was the commander of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and later the director of the CIA. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton with a dissertation on the Vietnam War and the lessons the American military took from it. The co-author of the upcoming book is Petraeus, as well as British historian Andrew Roberts.

He seeks to distract his nation from the fact that he is losing badly on the battlefield and is failing to achieve even the scaled back objectives of his invasion.

It depends on many variables, including the availability of critical and affordable energy supplies for the coming winter, to popular will across a broad range of nations with often conflicting priorities.

The EU agreed in the early hours of Friday on a plan to control energy prices that have jumped after the embargoes on Russian imports and the Kremlin cutting natural gas supplies.

These include an emergency cap on the benchmark European gas trading hub – the Dutch Title Transfer Facility – and permission for EU gas companies to create a cartel to buy gas on the international market.

While he was ecstatic that European unity had been maintained after the summit, he said only a “clear mandate” for the European Commission to work on a gas cap mechanism.

Still, divisions remain, with Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, skeptical of any price caps. Now energy ministers must work out details with a Germany concerned such caps would encourage higher consumption – a further burden on restricted supplies.

These divisions are all part of Putin’s fondest dream. Manifold forces in Europe could prove central to achieving success from the Kremlin’s viewpoint, which amounts to the continent failing to agree on essentials.

Germany and France are not on good terms when it comes to these issues. A conference call will be held on Wednesday, after which the two leaders will try to reach some sort of compromise.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/putin-prolonge-war-ukraine-winter-andelman/index.html

Italy’s new prime minister is coming armed with peace: Trump, Putin, the EU and the Kremlin — the onset of a war in Italy

A new government took power in Italy. Giorgia Meloni was sworn in Saturday as Italy’s first woman prime minister and has attempted to brush aside the post-fascist aura of her party. One of her far-right coalition partners meanwhile, has expressed deep appreciation for Putin.

Berlusconi, in a secretly recorded audio tape, said he’d returned Putin’s gesture with bottles of Lambrusco wine, adding that “I knew him as a peaceful and sensible person,” in the LaPresse audio clip.

Matteo Salvini, who was named deputy prime minister Saturday, said during the campaign that he didn’t want sanctions on Russia to harm people who impose them more than people hit by them.

At the same time, Poland and Hungary, longtime ultra-right-wing soulmates united against liberal policies of the EU that seemed calculated to reduce their influence, have now disagreed over Ukraine. Hungary’s Orban is pro-Putin and Poland is not happy about it.

Meanwhile on Monday, the influential 30-member Congressional progressive caucus called on Biden to open talks with Russia on ending the conflict while its troops are still occupying vast stretches of the country and its missiles and drones are striking deep into the interior.

Hours later, caucus chair Mia Jacob, facing a firestorm of criticism, emailed reporters with a statement “clarifying” their remarks in support of Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also called his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba to renew America’s support.

In short, there is every incentive for Putin to prolong the conflict as long as possible to allow many of these forces in the West to kick in. A long, cold winter in Europe, persistent inflation and higher interest rates leading to a recession on both sides of the Atlantic could mean irresistible pressure on already skeptical leaders to dial back on financial and military support.

The recent Russian airstrike barrages and ongoing assault on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure have turned up pressure on the U.S. and its allies to do more.

The lack of necessary semi-conductors led to the cessation of Russian production of hypersonic missiles. Plants manufacturing anti-aircraft systems have shut down and the country has reverted to Soviet-era defense stocks. The Soviet era ended more than 30 years ago.

On the day before this report, the US announced that it was seizing property of a top Russian procurement agent and his agencies responsible for procuring US-origin technologies for Russian end- users.

The Justice Department said it would prosecute companies and individuals who tried to bring high-tech equipment into Russia in violation of sanctions.

Geopolitical Effects of the Russian War on the World: The Case for the Middle East, NATO, and the Security and Security Problems

The Russian puppet leader of Donetsk, Pavel Gubarev, said he intended to convince Ukrainians that he was going to kill them. But if you don’t want to believe in us, we will kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.”

Iran’s rivals in the Middle East, of NATO members, and of nations that are still interested in restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran have all been affected by the strengthening relationship between Moscow and Tehran.

The direction of human history is at stake, because if Russia were to win, the world would begin a new cycle of wars of aggression, something that had been avoided by most nations since the Second World War.

Much of what happens today far from the battlefields still has repercussions there. When oil-producing nations, led by Saudi Arabia, decided last month to slash production, the US accused the Saudis of helping Russia fund the war by boosting its oil revenues. The Saudis deny the accusation.

Weapons supplies to Ukraine have caused a point of tension with Israel which has developed effective defense systems against incoming missiles. Ukraine has asked Israel to provide those systems, including the Iron Dome and David’s Sling, but Israel refuses, citing its own strategic concerns.

Russia temporarily suspended an agreement on reopening the maritime corridors after Russian ships were bombed in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Following the announcement of Putin, the wheat price went up on global commodity markets. Those prices partly determine how much people pay for bread in Africa and across the planet.

Everyone is affected by the war in Ukraine. Fuel prices have gone up as a result of the conflict.

Higher prices not only affect family budgets and individual lives. They pack a political punch when they have a lot of power. The inflation that worsened by the war has put incumbent political leaders on the defensive in many countries.

Exploring the Ukrain’s Northern hemisphere through aerial artillery and minesblitz attacks, as seen by CNN

About 20 videos geolocated by CNN show basic tactical blunders in an area that’s open and flat, where Ukrainian spotters on higher ground can direct artillery strikes and where minefields are worsening Russian casualties.

Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander of the Ukrainian military, said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday that Russian forces had tripled the intensity of attacks along some parts of the front. He didn’t say what the time frame was or where the attacks were coming from.

An assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based analytical group, also said that the increase in infantry in the Donbas region in the east had not resulted in Russia’s gaining new ground.

Russian forces would have had more success if they had waited until enough personnel had arrived to build a large force, the institute said in a statement on Thursday.

In the south, where Ukrainian troops are advancing toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, the Ukrainian military said Friday morning that its artillery battalions had fired more than 160 times at Russian positions over the past 24 hours, but it also reported Russian return fire into Ukrainian positions.

With Russian and Ukrainian forces apparently preparing for battle in Kherson, and conflicting signals over what may be coming, the remaining residents of the city have been stocking up on food and fuel to survive combat.

Ukraine will be keeping a close eye on America’s election results this week, after some Republicans warned that the party could limit funding if they win control of the House of Representatives.

Turkish President Erdogan is going to host the Prime Minister of Sweden. Before it can join NATO, Sweden has to meet certain conditions.

The State of Ukraine: Past Events and Perspectives in the U.S.-Russian War on Crime and Foreign Embedded Intelligence

The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday is scheduled to discuss an International Atomic Energy Agency report, in which Ukraine is expected to be on the agenda.

Russia rejoined an agreement to safely export agricultural goods from Ukraine on Nov. 2. Moscow had suspended its portion of the deal after saying that Ukraine had attacked its ships in the Black Sea.

The nearly $3 billion package is among the largest packages of military equipment sent from the Pentagon to Ukraine since the war began. It comes as Ukraine prepares for intensive fighting in the spring as the weather warms.

Here you can read past recaps. More in-depth stories and context can be found here. The State of Ukraine is available on NPR’s State ofUkrainePodcast.

Poland is facing repercussions from these attacks, as well as the other bordering countries. The Russian rockets knocked out power in neighboring Moldova, which is not a NATO member, and so attracted less attention than the Polish incident.

One thing is clear, even if the exact circumstances of the missile are not clear. Jens Stoltenberg said that Russia bears ultimate responsibility for its illegal war against Ukraine.

But beyond these most recent missile attacks lies a laundry list of horrors Putin has launched that only seems to have driven his nation further from the pack of civilized powers that he once sought so desperately to join.

That said, a growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled at what they have been asked to do and refused to fight. Amid plummeting morale, the UK’s Defense Ministry believes Russian troops may be prepared to shoot retreating or deserting soldiers.

The hotline and Telegram channel, which was created as a Ukrainian military intelligence project called “I want to live”, has taken off, booking some 3,500 calls in its first two months of activity.

Above all, many of the best and brightest in virtually every field have now fled Russia. This includes writers, artists and journalists as well as some of the most creative technologists, scientists and engineers.

When I spoke with a leading Russian journalist last week, he told me that while he hoped it wouldn’t happen, he was prepared to accept reality and that he will never be able to return to his homeland.

The US-Ukraine future of the FAIR project: progress, prospects, and constraints on a non-relativistic weapons program

Rumbling in the background is the West’s attempt to diversify away from Russian oil and natural gas in an effort to deprive the country of material resources to pursue this war. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission told the G20 on Tuesday that they realized that it was an unsustainable dependency.

Moreover, Putin’s dream that this conflict, along with the enormous burden it has proven to be on Western countries, would only drive further wedges into the Western alliance are proving unfulfilled. On Monday, word began circulating in aerospace circles that the long-stalled joint French-German project for a next-generation jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System – Europe’s largest weapons program – was beginning to move forward.

Neither the US nor Ukraine are signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use, production, and stockpiling of such cluster bombs because of the potential risk to noncombatants. In 2016 the US stopped using them because they left unexploded explosives across the battlefield and posed a danger to civilians.

CNN has learned that senior Biden administration officials have been handling the request for months and had not rejected it completely.

Cluster munitions are imprecise by design, and scatter “bomblets” across large areas that can fail to explode on impact and can pose a long-term risk to anyone who encounters them, similar to landmines. They also create “nasty, bloody fragmentation” to anyone hit by them because of the dozens of submunitions that detonate at once across a large area, Mark Hiznay, a weapons expert and the associate arms director for Human Rights Watch, previously told CNN.

The Biden administration does not rule out the option of using it if stockpiles start to run low. The proposal has not received significant consideration since Congress has put restrictions on US ability to transfer cluster munitions, according to sources.

The danger to the civilians from unexploded ordnances is high, and that’s why the restrictions are in place. The administration has indicated to the Ukrainians that they are unlikely to be able to overcome that restriction in the near term.

“The ability of Ukraine to make gains in current and upcoming phases of conflict is in no way dependent on or linked to their procuring said munitions,” a congressional aide told CNN.

The Defense Ministry told CNN it does not comment on reports regarding requests for particular weapons systems or ammunition, choosing to wait until any agreement with a supplier is reached before many any public announcement.

The US used the M30A1 alternate warhead instead of the dual-purpose improved conventional munitions. The M30A1 contains 180,000 small tungsten steel fragments that scatter on impact and do not leave unexploded munitions on the ground. The Ukrainian military would benefit more than the M30A1 if the US had the DPICMs in storage, according to Ukrainian officials.

Vladimir Putin’s “special force operation” in Ukraine has succeeded in capturing territory, but it has not consolidated the threat of a nuclear strike

Russian President Putin said on Wednesday that his “special military operation” in Ukrainian is taking longer than he anticipated, but that it has succeeded in seizing new territory.

The conflict has killed and wounded tens of thousands, caused millions of dollars in damage and displaced millions from their homes. Despite its length, he showed no signs of letting up, vowing to “consistently fight for our interests” and to “protect ourselves using all means available.” He reiterated his claim that he had no choice but to send in troops, saying that for years, the West responded to Russia’s security demands with “only spit in the face.”

Speaking in a televised meeting in Russia with members of his Human Rights Council, Putin described the land gains as “a significant result for Russia,” noting that the Sea of Azov “has become Russia’s internal sea.” He said that “Peter the Great fought to get access” in reference to the Russian leader that he admires.

Russia’s illegal annexation of four territories of Ukraine following unrecognized referendums in September has only underscored Moscow’s problems: it hasn’t been able to establish full control over the lands it now claims as its own.

Russia’s most effective tool of deterrence remains nuclear threats. Russia has stopped havingloose talk about using nuclear weapons, but over a decade of driving home the message that if Russia is humiliated or cornered it will use nuclear weapons has resulted in a nuclear response.

“If it doesn’t use it first under any circumstances, it means that it won’t be the second to use it, either, because the possibility of using it in case of a nuclear strike on our territory will be sharply limited,” he said.

We haven’t gotten upset, we haven’t. We are fully aware of what nuclear weapons are,” Putin said. He added, without elaborating: “We have them, and they are more advanced and state-of-the-art than what any other nuclear power has.”

In his televised remarks, the Russian leader didn’t address Russia’s battlefield setbacks or its attempts to cement control over the seized regions but acknowledged problems with supplies, treatment of wounded soldiers and limited desertions.

The photos of the new concrete anti-tank barriers were posted on the governor’s website. On Tuesday the Governor said a fire broke out at an airport in the region after a drone strike. Belgorod has workers expanding anti-tank barriers and officials organizing self-defense units. The governor reported Wednesday that Russia’s air defenses have shot down incoming rockets after seeing numerous fires and explosions in Belgorod.

Moscow responded with strikes by artillery, multiple rocket launchers, missiles, tanks and mortars at residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, worsening damage to the power grid. Private Ukrainian power utility Ukrenergo said temperatures in eastern areas where it was making repairs had dropped to as low as minus 17 degrees Celsius (near zero Fahrenheit).

The U.S. will send a Patriot surface-to-air missile system to Ukraine to bolster its air defense capabilities, a move that represents one of the most advanced defense systems that the Americans have so far provided to support Ukraine since Russia invaded last winter.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III could approve a directive as early as this week to transfer one Patriot battery already overseas to Ukraine, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Final approval would then rest with President Biden.

White House, Pentagon and State Department officials declined to comment on details of the transfer of a Patriot battery, which, if approved, would amount to one of the most sophisticated weapons the U.S. has provided Ukraine.

Many questions remain about the potential transfer, which was reported earlier by CNN, including how long it would take to train Ukrainian soldiers on the system, presumably in Germany, and where the Patriots would be deployed inside Ukraine.

Russian Embattlement and Defense in a Cold War: The Role of the Nuclear Arms in the Security and Security of Ukraine

In a speech to the Group of 7 nations on Monday, Mr. Zelensky requested funding for weapons before thanking the countries for their continued support.

She said, “Ukrainians will be protected from Russia’s missile and drone attacks, as Russia tries to destroy their infrastructure and kill their people.” Russia should stop sending missiles into Ukraine if they don’t want them shot down.

“Earlier, many experts, including those overseas, questioned the rationality of such a step which would lead to an escalation of the conflict and increase the risk of directly dragging the US army into combat,” Zakharova said at a briefing in Moscow.

Patriot arrays are used around the world by the U.S. Army and about a dozen U.S. allies. It was originally designed as an anti-aircraft system, and newer variants are used primarily to engage ballistic missiles.

It’s ironic that officials from a country that brutally attacked its neighbor in an illegal and unprovoked invasion would choose to use words like provocative to describe defensive systems that are meant to save lives and protect civilians.

Appearing this week on Russian state TV, Commander Alexander Khodakovsky of the Russian militia in the Donetsk region suggested Russia could not defeat the NATO alliance in a conventional war.

Ukrainians will be trained by US troops in a third country to use the system. The training would happen at a US Army base in Germany, CNN has previously reported.

The question of manpower was probably the biggest obstacle. About 90 positions are used to operate one missile battery. And the training needed is substantial; course lengths range from 13 weeks for a launching station operator to 53 weeks for a maintenance role, according to Army recruitment materials.

Zelensky: The Best Public Relations Coupling in the War-Torn Kyiv Era. An Interview with Will Ripley

Zelensky was quoted in an interview with The Economist as saying he doesn’t agree with the idea that the US wants to give up the territories it has control of in order to get back land seized by Russia.

NATO still has two main objectives, one of which is to aid the Ukrainian people, and the other of which is to make sure that NATO doesn’t escalate the war, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

There was a time when old bullets were used. The US military official reported to CNN that the Russian forces were forced to use 40-year-old cannonballs due to their lack of new weapons.

The official, speaking to reporters, said that you load the bullets and try to hope that it will fire or explode.

In the trenches. CNN’s Will Ripley filed a video report from trenches and fortifications being built along Ukraine’s border with Belarus, where there is growing concern about Russia once again assembling troops. The sewing machine repairman is a tank driver.

Zelensky will be the best public relations coup of the year because of his clever use of the history and patriotic mythology of Western nations in a series of video addresses to lawmakers from war-torn Kyiv. He was grateful for the help, but he tried to shame the US and other countries into doing more and creating a deeper understanding among voters for the trials facing Ukraine.

I saw Zelensky pull up to the lysée Palace in a modest car, while Putin pulled in with an armored limo. (The host, French President Emmanuel Macron, hugged Putin but chose only to shake hands with Zelensky).

Fast forward to 2022 and Zelensky is the instantly recognizable wartime president in trademark olive green; as adept at rallying his citizens and stirring the imaginations of folks worldwide, as naming and shaming allies dragging their feet in arming his military.

Zelensky was described as an ordinary man with extraordinary circumstances in a new book by the editor of the Economist.

This, after all, is the leader who when offered evacuation by the US as Russia launched its full-scale invasion, quipped: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

The Voice of Zelensky in the Confluence of the World During World War II: A State-of-the-Art Photogrammetry of a U.S. Senator

Amid the fog of war, it all seems a long, long way since the heady campaign celebration in a repurposed Kyiv nightclub where a fresh-faced Zelensky thanked his supporters for a landslide victory. He looked in disbelief as he stood on the stage with the confetti, not knowing what had happened.

The war seems to have turned his ratings around. Just days after the invasion, Zelensky’s ratings approval surged to 90%, and remain high to this day. Even Americans early in the war rated Zelensky highly for his handling of international affairs – ahead of US President Joe Biden.

There are people from his previous professional life in his bubble. Even in the midst of the war, a press conference on the platform of a metro station in April featured perfect lighting and camera angles to emphasize a wartime setting.

During the time he was comforter in chief, his nightly televised addresses brought solace in the midst of air raid sirens and explosions.

Zelensky’s wearing of hoodies and t-shirts in Silicon Valley is a way of projecting confidence and competence to a younger, global audience that recognizes it as such.

“He is probably more comfortable than Putin on camera, too, both as an actor and as a digital native,” she added. “I believe both of them want to come across as relatable, not aloof or untouchable, although Zelensky is definitely doing a better job balancing authority with accessibility.”

Zelenska has shown herself to be an effective communicator in international fora because she has shown herself to be empathy, style and smart. She met with King Charles at the refugee assistance center in London when she visited the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family. Zelenska wasn’t included on the cover of Time magazine, but there was a reference to her in the supporting text.

There are subtle signals that Zelensky’s international influence could be waning. The G7 imposed a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian crude despite pleas from Zelensky that it shouldn’t have been set at that price.

Zelensky said in a recent nightly video address that when the world is truly united, the world not the aggressor will determine how events develop.

The UK Prime Minister’s Cold War Before the Commons Liaison Committee meets in Moscow, Ukraine, and other global forums to discuss nuclear energy, security, and safety issues

The European Union is expected to announce a cap on natural gas prices, the latest measure to tackle an energy crisis spurred by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The UK’s prime minister is going before the Commons Liaison Committee, where the war in Syria and other global issues are discussed. On Monday, Sunak met with members of the U.K.-led European military force.

According to Russian news reports, the presidents of Russia and China will be talking through the internet later this month.

The Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations for Russians and Ukranians will be their first since the invasion of Ukraine in late February.

The international atomic energy agency said it had agreed with the Ukrainian government to provide security and safety experts to the country’s nuclear power plants.

An American was freed from Russian-controlled territory as part of a 65-person prisoner exchange. Suedi Murekezi told ABC News he spent weeks in a basement, where he was tortured, and months in a prison in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.

EU lawmakers approved about $19 billion in financing for Ukraine, Dec. 14, and more sanctions on Russia. After a week of pledges from dozens of countries and global institutions, the aid package was put together to help the country with winter relief funds.

Zelensky’s High-Energy Visit to the U.S. Capitol and the Status of Ukrainian Residuals in Ukraine

After 300 days of being invaded in his homeland, the Ukrainian president will be going to Washington, DC, on Wednesday to rally his top international partner behind him.

The Ukrainian leader is expected to be in Washington for about an hour and a half, but it will be a remarkable moment because of the war in Ukraine.

The US set to work on executing the parameters determined by Zelensky, who was very keen to visit the US. The trip was finally confirmed on Sunday.

When Zelensky arrives in Washington, he might well experience the same revelation that Churchill did over the capital’s blazing lights at Christmas after months in the dark of air raid blackouts back home.

The visit is being unfolded by extraordinary security. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, wouldn’t confirm the early reports that she would allow Zelensky to join her in the capitol. We just don’t know.”

Russian missiles are being used against critical civilian infrastructure in order to end Ukrainian resistance, and it is protecting the civilian population.

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, Wesley Clark said that Zelensky’s trip reflects a critical moment when the destiny of a war that Ukraine cannot win without upgraded US support could be decided before Russia can regroup.

With Republicans expected to take over the majority in the new year, it will be an important debate on Capitol Hill over the aid to Ukraine. Some pro-Donald Trump members, who have significant leverage in the thin GOP majority, have warned that the billions of dollars of US cash sent to Ukraine should be used to shore up the US southern border with a surge of migrant workers expected within days.

The Russian War on Everybody: What is It That It Means for You? Remarks on Zelensky, President Franklin Roosevelt and the First Three Years of World War II

Zelensky evoked Mount Rushmore and Martin Luther King Jr. in a virtual address to Congress in March. Two days of infamy in modern history were when Americans directly experienced the fear of aerial bombardment.

“Remember Pearl Harbor, terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you. Zelensky said just remember it. “Remember September 11, a terrible day in 2001 when evil tried to turn your cities, independent territories, into battlefields. When people were attacked from the air, it was impossible for you to stop them. The same thing happens to our country every day.

The wartime British leader sailed to the United States aboard HMS Duke of York, dodging U-boats in the wintery Atlantic and took a plane from the coast of Virginia to Washington, where he was met on December 22, 1941, by President Franklin Roosevelt before their joint press conference the next day.

Over days of brainstorming and meetings – fueled by Churchill’s regime of sherry with breakfast, Scotch and sodas for lunch, champagne in the evening and a tipple of 90-year-old brandy before bed – the two leaders plotted the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and laid the foundation of the Western alliance that Biden has reinvigorated in his support for Ukraine.

Churchill, who had pined for US involvement in World War II for months and knew it was the key to defeating Adolf Hitler, said during his visit, “I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, and yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.”

The Ukrainian leader is likely to appreciate the historical parallels. He spoke to British members of parliament in March, and used one of the most famous speeches from the war.

Keir Giles is a research associate with Chatham House, a think tank in the UK. He is the author of “Russia’s War on Everybody: What is it that it means for you? The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Opinion on CNN can be found here.

Russia is going to be very effective in shaping US and Western behavior if the narrative that any one of a wide range of events is disliked is repeated.

In doing so, the West has played along with the Kremlin’s pretense that it is not at war, only waging a “special military operation.” In effect, it has protected Russia from the consequences of its own aggression.

Russia’s efforts at deterrence continue to bring success in the form of arguments for a ceasefire as a preferable outcome to a Ukrainian victory – based on fear of the consequences of Russia suffering a defeat.

That sets a disastrous example for other aggressive powers around the world. It says possession of nuclear weapons allows you to wage genocidal wars of destruction against your neighbors, because other nations won’t intervene.

The first deliverables are the Patriot missile systems. Complex, accurate, and expensive, they have been described as the US’s “gold standard” of air defense. NATO protects them and they require personnel who operate them to be properly trained.

More precision weapons are vital: they ensure Ukraine hits its targets, and not any civilians remaining nearby. Ukraine is not going to go through many hundreds or thousands of shells as Russia is bombarding it.

But Moscow is struggling to equip and rally its conventional forces, and, with the exception of its nuclear forces, appears to be running out of new cards to play. China and India have joined the West in open statements against the use of nuclear force, which has made that option even less likely.

Western analysts have noted Russia has grumbled consistently about these deliveries, but been relatively muted in its practical response to the crossing of what, as recently as January, might have been considered “red lines.”

The Pentagon isn’t Going to Give a Blank Cheque to the U.S. Army, But It Is Trying to Protect Kyiv

This is trickier. The House of Representatives won’t give the Biden administration a “blank cheque”, warned Kevin McCarthy, the new Speaker.

The remnants of the Trumpist “America First” elements of that party have echoed doubts about how much aid the US should really be sending to the edges of eastern Europe.

The bill for the slow defeat of Russia is relatively light for Washington, given its trillion dollar annual defense budget.

“You put all sorts of systems out of whack when you mess with the central nervous system,” says a director of the Defense Priorities think tank who recently returned from a trip to the Ukrainian capital. “It’s not only an inconvenience but an enormous economic cost. It is an effort to make the population feel bad, to show that the government cannot adequately protect them.

“That will do a good job of defending maybe a single city, like Kyiv, against some threats. The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ senior adviser, Mark Cancian, said that it was not putting a bubble over Ukraine.

After months of resisting the Ukrainian government’s repeated requests, the US and Germany have agreed to send tanks to the country. Germany also said other countries, like Poland, can give Ukraine their German-made Leopard 2 tanks.

The US-UKraine Patriot Missile System is a Worst Case of Nuclear Disassembly. Why Ukrainians are concerned about their air defense capabilities?

The training requirements make the system unlikely to operate until late winter or early spring, even on a compressed schedule.

Cancian warned that if the push to get the system up and running as fast as possible was not good,Ukrainians might not be able to prevent Russians from destroying it. He said that damage to the political will could lead to future assistance being sent to Ukraine.

“If the Ukrainians had a year or two to assimilate the system, that wouldn’t be any problem. They can’t have a year or two. Cancian said that they want to do it in a couple weeks.

The new aid package includes tens of thousands of GRAD rockets as well as additional HIMARS, mortars, and Artillery rounds.

Kelly Greico, an analyst at the Stimson Center said that the announcement was a sign that there was a lot of concern about Ukraine’s air defense capability.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/21/1144662505/us-ukraine-patriot-missile-system

Zelensky’s fight against the Soviet Empire: A tale of two lives, one death, two lives and one death – the story of a heroic American hero

At $4 million apiece, the PAC-3 missiles that accompany the Patriot are much more expensive than Stingers or the missiles launched by HIMARS. They are costly enough that Ukrainians must be judicious in how they are used, analysts said. Cancian said “you can’t just let them fly.”

Before October, Ukrainian air defenses had focused on protecting frontline troops in the east and south, along with key government buildings and military sites in Kyiv and a handful of regional hubs.

Greico said that it was a terrible option to face between the urge to protect your civilians from these brutal attacks and the desire to continue resisting the Russian war effort.

Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time, called Ukrainian President Zelensky’s address to Congressextraordinary because it showed that the country was a good investment for the United States.

The speech brought the struggle of Ukrainian people to the attention of the world and reminded us to be warm in our homes to celebrate Christmas and to remember all the families on the front lines.

Clinton, who previously met Russian President Vladimir Putin as US secretary of state, said the leader was “probably impossible to actually predict,” as the war turns in Ukraine’s favor and his popularity fades at home.

Clinton said that she thinks the bodies of Russian conscripts will be thrown into the fight in Ukranian.

This story was adapted from the December 22 edition of CNN’s Meanwhile in America, the daily email about US politics for global readers. Click here to read past editions and subscribe.

The comic actor-turned-wartime hero effectively placed the fate of millions of Ukrainians in the hands of American lawmakers, taxpayers and families at a time when there is increasing skepticism about the cost of US involvement.

Zelensky gave Pelosi and Harris the Ukrainian flag he retrieved from the hottest battlefront at Bakhmut on Tuesday as he spoke in the House chamber.

“Our heroes … asked me to bring this flag to you, to the US Congress, to members of the House of Representatives and senators whose decisions can save millions of people,” he said.

His message was that the fight was about more than just a flare-up over a past issue of the Soviet empire. It was that his fight is America’s and everyone’s – to hold back tyranny and save global democracy.

Zelensky had a special thanks for Americans for their support of weapons and aid. Implicitly, he argued they couldn’t abandon this gritty, independence hero without also suppressing something of their own patriotic national identify.

— To the incoming House Republican majority, some of whose members want to halt aid, the Ukrainian leader’s hero’s welcome in the chamber suggested they would be shamed if they choose to forsake him.

Zelensky’s Visit to the White House: Why Should We Give Ukraine Everything There is to Give? When Putin and Is America Ready to Get Together

— To Europeans, enduring their own grim winter of high electricity and heating prices after cutting off from Russian energy, and who may be minded to push for an end to the conflict on Putin’s terms, Zelensky showed that the West is united and that Biden means it when he said Wednesday the US is in “for as long as it takes.”

We will celebrate Christmas, perhaps with candles. “Not because it’s more romantic, but because there won’t be electricity.” “We’ll celebrate Christmas and even if there is no electricity, the light of our faith, in ourselves, will not be put out.”

He said that Zelenskyy’s visit proves that the US is fighting a proxy war with Russia, and that there had been no calls for peace.

Zelensky repeatedly pointed out that despite the largesse of US artillery support and the imminent arrival of high-tech weapons like a Patriot missile battery that Biden unveiled Wednesday, his nation was still outmanned and outgunned.

The president has limited the strength of the weapons he sends into the battle in order to balance the need to defend a European democracy with the desire not to cause a massive confrontation with Russia and to avoid crossing often invisible red lines.

“Now you say, why don’t we just give Ukraine everything there is to give?” Biden said at the White House, explaining that pushing overwhelming force into Ukraine would risk fracturing the transatlantic consensus needed to support the war.

However, given partisan fury that will erupt in a divided Washington next year, there is no guarantee that America’s lawmakers will even be able to fund their own government – let alone one fighting for its survival thousands of miles away.

The War in Ukraine: Volodymyr Zelensky, the Kremlin, and the U.S.: What Do They Need?

Kyiv and its Western allies are “set for a long confrontation with Russia” following President Volodymyr Zelensky’s momentous visit to Washington, Moscow said as the war in Ukraine approaches 10 months.

Russia’s foreign ministry condemned what it called the “monstrous crimes” of the “regime in Kyiv,” after US President Joe Biden promised more military support to Ukraine during Zelensky’s summit at the White House on Wednesday.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that no matter how much military support the West provides to the Ukrainian government, “they will achieve nothing.”

“As the leadership of our country has stated, the tasks set within the framework of the special military operation will be fulfilled, taking into account the situation on the ground and the actual realities,” Zakharova added, referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Peskov claimed there were no calls for peace. Zelensky said that “we need peace” during his address to the US Congress on Wednesday.

Peskov told journalists, however, that Wednesday’s meeting showed the US is waging a proxy war of “indirect fighting” against Russia down “to the last Ukrainian.”

The Kremlin has also been selling that line to the Russian public, who is largely buying it, says Sergey Radchenko, a Russian history professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Zelenskyy and Ukraine have made clear that they want “just peace” and the United States has not helped the country defend itself against Russian aggression.

Menon pointed out that all of his comments could be compared to Russia’s cyberattacks on the country’s internet five years earlier, when the NotPetya worm was released. “They’re different in the technicalities, but the goal is the same,” he says. “Demoralizing and punishing civilians.”

Authorities have been cautioning for days that Russia was preparing to launch an all-out assault on the power grid to close out 2022, plummeting the country into darkness as Ukrainians attempt to ring in the New Year and celebrate the Christmas holidays, which for the country’s Orthodox Christians falls on January 7.

Halyna Hladka decided to make her family a breakfast after hearing the sirens and stocked up on water as soon as possible. They heard the sounds of explosions for more than two hours. She told CNN it seemed like they were close to our area but that’s not the case. “Not a single attack will cancel the fact that we will celebrate the new year with the family.”

Hryn said life in the capital went back to normal after the sirens went off and he met his neighbors who were in hurry to get to the cinema for the new movie. Parents took their children to school, while others continued with holiday plans in defiance.

Ukrainian attacks on the city of Kyiv in the wake of the Afghanistan-Russian air raids: Putin’s warning on the prospects for a resolution of the crisis

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that Moscow would not negotiate with Kiev on the basis of the proposed 10-point peace formula, which includes Russia’s withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory.

Petraeus: I think the war will end in a negotiated resolution when Putin recognizes the unsustainable nature of the war in Afghanistan and the impact on the Russian economy.

Forty percent of Kyiv residents were without power, mayor Vitali Klitschko said, adding that this was due to security measures taken by power engineers during the air raid alarm and that they were now working to resume services. “The city is supplying heat and water in normal mode,” Klitschko said on the messaging app Telegram.

At least two people were pulled from the damaged home and three people were injured, including a 14-year-old. Homes, an industrial facility and a playground in the capital were damaged in attacks on Kyiv, according to the city military administration.

It was thought of assenseless barbarism. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said those were the only words that came to mind watching Moscow launch a fresh wave of attacks on Ukrainian cities ahead of the New Year, adding there could be “no neutrality” in the face of such aggression.

Putin claimed his troops would be embarking on a special military operation and that it would last about a few weeks.

War against Ukraine Has Left Russia Isolated and Strouggling with More Tumult ahedroscope: The Case of Russia

Yet the war has also fundamentally upended Russian life — rupturing a post-Soviet period in which the country pursued, if not always democratic reforms, then at least financial integration and dialogue with the West.

Draconian laws passed since February have outlawed criticism of the military or leadership. Nearly 20,000 people have been detained for demonstrating against the war — 45% of them women — according to a leading independent monitoring group.

Long prison sentences have been imposed on opposition voices for questioning the conduct of the Russian army.

Even Russia’s most revered human rights group, 2022’s Nobel Prize co-recipient Memorial, was forced to stop its activities over alleged violations of the foreign agents law.

The state has also vastly expanded Russia’s already restrictive anti-LGBT laws, arguing the war in Ukraine reflects a wider attack on “traditional values.”

For now, repressions remain targeted. Some of the laws are not enforced. The measures are designed to crush dissent should the time come.

Leading independent media outlets and a handful of vibrant, online investigative startups were forced to shut down or relocate abroad when confronted with new “fake news” laws that criminalized contradicting the official government line.

There are restrictions on internet users as well. American social media giants were banned in March. More than 100,000 websites have been blocked by the Kremlin’s internet regulator since the beginning of the conflict.

Russian customers still have access to independent sources of information with technical solutions such as Telegram. The older Russians like to watch TV talk shows and read state media propaganda.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1145981036/war-against-ukraine-has-left-russia-isolated-and-struggling-with-more-tumult-ahe

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left a bitter taste: consequences for the region and the United States, for the security and security concerns of the Cold War

Thousands of perceived government opponents left in the war’s early days due to concerns of persecution.

Even as Russians remain a sensitive topic for former Soviet republics, some countries that have taken in the Russians predict their economies will grow.

Helped by Russian price controls, the ruble regained value. McDonald’s and several other brands ultimately relaunched under new names and Russian ownership. By year’s end, the government reported the economy had declined by 2.5%, far less than most economists predicted.

Europe will blink first when it comes to sanctions because it will be angry about rising energy costs at home, according to President Putin. He announced a five-month ban on oil exports to countries that abide by price caps, a move that will cause more pain in Europe.

There is no change in the government’s tone when it comes to the military campaign. Russia’s Defense Ministry provides daily briefings describing successes on the ground. Putin, too, repeatedly assures that everything is “going according to plan.”

Yet the sheer length of the war — with no immediate Russian victory in sight — suggests Russia vastly underestimated Ukrainians’ willingness to resist.

The number of Russian losses is officially just under 6,000 men, which is very taboo at home. Western estimates place the figures much higher.

Indeed, Russia’s invasion has — thus far — backfired in its primary aims: NATO looks set to expand towards Russia’s borders, with the addition of long-neutral states Finland and Sweden.

Longtime allies in Central Asia have criticized Russia’s actions out of concern for their own sovereignty, an affront that would have been unthinkable in Soviet times. India and China have been buying discounted Russian oil but have not fully supported Russia’s military campaign.

The Crime against Russia During the Cuban Missile Crisis: State of the Nation and the Kremlin at a Moscow High School

A state of the nation address was scheduled for April but has been delayed and won’t happen until next year. Putin’s annual “direct line” — a media event in which Putin fields questions from ordinary Russians — was canceled outright.

An annual December “big press conference” – a semi-staged affair that allows the Russian leader to handle fawning questions from mostly pro-Kremlin media – was similarly tabled until 2023.

Russian leaders wanted action sooner after the US military estimated that it would take until May for the Russian military to get enough power for an offensive. The US now sees it as likely that Russian forces are moving before they are ready due to political pressure from the Kremlin, the senior US military official told CNN.

America has done this before. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most dangerous nuclear confrontation so far, the Soviet Union’s position shifted in a matter of days, ultimately accepting an outcome that favored the West. Had “red lines” thinking been in vogue, America might well have accepted an inferior compromise that weakened its security and credibility.

A large number of Russian troops seem to have been killed by an apparent Ukrainian strike in eastern Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian military, pro-Russian military experts and former officials.

The attack has led to vocal criticism of Moscow’s military from pro-Russian military bloggers, who claimed that the troops lacked protection and were reportedly being quartered next to a large cache of ammunition, which is said to have exploded when Ukrainian HIMARS rockets hit the school.

The Russian defense ministry acknowledged the attack, and said that 63 Russian men died, making it one of the most disastrous episodes of the war for Moscow.

Russian senator Grigory Karasin said that those responsible for the killing of Russian servicemen in Makiivka must be found, Russian state news agency TASS reported Monday.

Russian Generals and the Victims of the Decay of Flight 17: A Tribute to the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic

The video from the scene of the attack was spread widely on Telegram and the official Ukrainian military channel. Almost all of the building seems to be missing in a pile of smoking rubble.

The Strategic Communications directorate of the Chief Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of Ukraine said on Telegram greetings to the people who were crammed into the building of a Vocational school. “Santa packed around 400 corpses of [Russian soldiers] in bags.”

The high command is still unaware of the weapon’s capabilities according to a former official from Russia who spoke on Telegram.

Those who made a decision to use this facility will be reprimanded. There are places in Donbas with sturdy buildings where personnel can be quartered.

The building was almost destroyed by the detonation of ammunition stores, according to a Russian propagandist who writes on Telegram.

“Nearly all the military equipment, which stood close to the building without the slightest sign of camouflage, was also destroyed,” Girkin said. “There are still no final figures on the number of casualties, as many people are still missing.”

Russian generals, who he alleges direct the war effort far from the frontline, have been decried as “unlearned in principle” and unwilling to listen to warnings about putting equipment and personnel so close together. He was sentenced to death in the Netherlands for his role in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, when he was minister of defense of the self-proclaimed Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.

“As you can see, despite several months of war, some conclusions are not made, hence the unnecessary losses, which, if the elementary precautions relating to the dispersal and concealment of personnel were taken, might have not happened.”

The Russian Army has not responded to the Bakhmut attack: Chancellor Scholz asked Putin to give us a truce after the Ukrainian attack last week

pro-Moscow rebels have held on to the eastern part of Ukranian, one of four Ukrainian regions that have sought to be annexed by Moscow.

Russian forces lost 760 people when they attempted to take action on Bakhmut, according to the general staff of the military.

Russian units have suffered heavy losses when they have been hit with attacks in rural territory by the Ukrainian military, who have been pressing an offensive towards Bakhmut.

Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine over the weekend as fresh rounds of Russian missile strikes hit several regions. The attacks killed at least six people in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions, while a man was injured early Monday.

Biden affirmed the new commitment in a telephone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday. Germany will provide new fighting vehicles and a missile battery to protect against Russian air attacks.

The Bradley fighting vehicle is used to transport troops into battle, and it can hold around 10 troops. The US and Germany would training the Ukrainian forces on how to use the vehicles provided to them.

Zelensky wanted those systems because they would allow him to target Russian missiles flying at a higher altitude than before.

If the Russian account is accurate, it was the cell phones that the novice troops were using in violation of regulations that allowed Ukrainian forces to target them most accurately. Ukraine has not said how the attack was executed. Implications are broader and deeper for how Russia is conducting its war now.

It is clear that President Putin wanted a short truce after the deadliest known attack on Russian servicemen. The move was a cynical attempt by the Russians to get some breathing space after a bad start to the year.

Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow for the Defense Program and co-head of the Gaming Lab at the Center for New American Security in Washington, has told me that Russia’s failure to break up or move large arms depots is largely a function of the reality that their forces cannot communicate adequately.

It’s a view shared by other experts. “Bad communications security seems to be standard practice in the Russian Army,” James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told me in an e-mail exchange.

The troops killed in Makiivka seem to have been recent conscripts, part of a larger picture of Russian soldiers being shipped to the front lines with little training and deeply sub-standard equipment and weapons.

A number of inmates from Russian prisons who have been freed and brought to the Ukrainian front are the most recent arrivals. It would appeal to the prisoners who have years of isolation with little or no contact with the outside world that they use cell phones.

Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the alias WarGonzo and was personally awarded the Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin two weeks ago, attacked the Ministry of Defense for its “blatant attempt to smear blame” in suggesting it was the troops’ own use of cell phones that led to the precision of the attack.

He questioned how the Ministry of Defense could be “so sure” that the location of soldiers lodging in a school building could not have been determined using drone surveillance or a local informant.

The deputy defense minister for overseeing logistics replaced a four-star general as the defense ministry undergoes a shakeup. The arms depot was close to the recruits and it would have been an oversight on Mizintsevs part.

Still, Putin-favorite Sergei Shoigu remains defense minister — as recently as Saturday, before the Makiivka attack, telling his forces in a celebratory video: “Our victory, like the New Year, is inevitable.”

On Friday, the Biden administration said it would downsize military assistance to Ukraine by 40%, but there are concerns about how the new GOP in Washington could affect future aid.

There would be $907 million of foreign military financing provided by the administration and Congress.

McCarthy is trying to become the speaker, but his bid has resulted in more than a dozen unsuccessful votes this week, and that could make it hard for the country to get aid.

Several Republican members who switched their votes to support McCarthy on Friday said they are encouraged by a framework of an agreement, but provided no specifics about the deal and said talks are ongoing.

Trump’s win for Ukraine: The latest drawdown of subsea revenues as an insurance policy against Republican resistance in a congressional session

That number was even higher than President Joe Biden requested, as Democrats are concerned that additional funding will not be as forthcoming in a GOP-led House. In some ways, that number was an insurance policy against Republican resistance and the view inside the White House was that that figure would sustain US support for several months.

Certain conservative Republicans have pledged to oppose any new funding for Ukraine if rules changes are made to the budgetary process.

Foreign diplomats are concerned about the implications of the House speaker negotiations on US support for Ukraine.

“This is a harbinger for a protracted legislative paralysis,” the diplomat said, adding that “the Freedom Caucus – which is not particularly pro-Ukrainian – has just demonstrated its clout.”

McCarthy will have to do a lot of things to get the role, but this could include cuts to aid.

A diplomat told CNN they worry about the policy concessions McCarthy has to make and if they will affect the US role in the world.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday welcomed the latest drawdown, saying it was an “awesome Christmas present for Ukraine!” And lawmakers in Ukraine told CNN they are not concerned that the future of assistance is at risk, noting the strong past bipartisan and public support for aiding their country.

Russia wanted to increase global sales and increase its economic leverage over Europe and its power-hungry heavy industries, because of the investments it had made in the undersea line. Germany, a leading consumer, was on board from the get-go. Washington wasn’t.

The United States didn’t want the new high-capacity subsea supply to replace old overland lines that provided vital revenue for the Westward leaning leadership in Kyiv.

Putin’s “Trumpicity” and the EU’s Stability in Adversarial Crime: Chancellor Scholz Revisited

Europe’s response to the political fissures and uncertainty of another Trumpian-style presidency has been slow. Decades of a reasonably unshakable reliance, if not complete trust, in the US, has been replaced by stubborn European pragmatism – and Germany leads the way.

Europe’s moral compass was once held by the Chancellor of Germany. Scholz has found unexpected metal in his ponderous, often stop/go/wait traffic-light governing coalition and won thunderous applause in Germany’s Bundestag on Wednesday as he flashed a rare moment of steely leadership.

“Trust us,” he said, “we won’t put you in danger.” He explained how the government handled Russia’s aggression and how it did not take into account the freezing winter and economic collapse of the country. “The government dealt with the crisis,” he said, adding: “We are in a much better position.”

The applause at each step of his carefully crafted speech spoke as loudly as his words. In short, Scholz got it right for Germany, bringing with him a population typically averse to war and projecting their own power, and deeply divided over how much they should aid Ukraine in killing Russians and potentially angering the Kremlin.

But if in Europe Scholz seems to have wrestled some vestige of influence over America in the Ukraine war, in Moscow they don’t believe his new vigor changes much.

Russia would not allow itself to be defeated and would use nuclear weapons if attacked, says former president and deputy chairman of the national security council.

Russia cannot be deterred from its goal of reaching its goals because of the decision by Biden and Scholz, said Putin’s spokesman.

CNN talked with people in Russia who said that the message was mixed after announcements by Biden and Scholz. Some 888-269-5556 888-269-5556s said Russia would win, and lumped the US and Germany with them, but a lot of 888-269-5556s were worried about the war, dismayed at the heavy death toll, and frustrated that Putin ignored their concerns.

From being late to recognize Russia’s threat, reorient Germany, reinvigorate its military, and ramp up weapon supplies to Ukraine, the pragmatist Scholz has now signaled Germany is very much in play – and, indeed, wants hands on the controls. He said Germany would “coordinate” supplies of the Leopard 2 from allies to Ukraine, a power invested in him by German legislation preventing any purchaser of the country’s war-fighting hardware to pass it on to a third state.

Longer debates about the next military moves for Ukraine could signal to Zelensky that weapons supplies will be on more of a leash, and less led by Washington.

Changing the power dynamic could affect the shape of a final deal and even change the way the war is waged, but it won’t change how the war is fought.

The International Monetary Fund releases its latest World Economic Outlook (Tuesday morning in Singapore, Monday night ET). The IMF has stressed that the Russia-Ukraine war is a big factor causing economic slowdown and recession in some countries.

Russian troops in Ukraine during the first day of the Russian offensive on the Donetsk region – a critical test for the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict

A group of European Commission leaders is expected to visit Ukraine on Thursday and European Union leaders plan to hold a summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the following day.

The Russian takeover of Soledar has been acknowledged by the Ukrainian military. Russian forces continued their offensive around Bakhmut and other parts of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

At a time when the two governments were at odds over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, new U.S. Ambassador to Russia was arriving in Moscow. On Monday, Tracy was reportedly heckled by protesters as she entered the Russian Foreign Ministry to present her credentials.

Estonia and Latvia told Russia’s ambassadors to leave after the Kremlin said it expelled the Estonian ambassador and downgrading relations with the Baltic NATO member state over what it called “Russophobia.”

A top Ukrainian national security official said that Russia is ready for a “maximum escalation” of the war in eastern Ukranian in the next few weeks.

The National Security and Defense Council secretary told Sky News that these months will be the defining months of the war.

Natalia Humeniuk said on television that there was no limit to how far she could go in the air and sea.

The ministry said military representatives from the two countries will practice planning the use of troops based on their previous experience of armed conflicts.

Chaotic battles between Russian tanks, infantry and fighter jets in the Ukrainian frontier: The heroic Vuhledar attack and the Russian-backed DPR

In recent weeks Western allies, including Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom, have promised to ship tanks to Ukraine to help its forces fight back against a Russian offensive that is expected to begin when weather conditions improve in the spring.

On January 30, US President Joe Biden reiterated that Washington would not send its F16 fighter jets to Ukraine, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also said that he does not envisage providing warplanes to Kyiv.

The scenes are chaotic: Russian tanks veering wildly before exploding or driving straight into minefields, men running in every direction, some on fire, the bodies of soldiers caught in tank tracks.

At least two dozen Russian tanks and infantry vehicles have been disabled or destroyed in a matter of days, according to the videos, which were released by the Ukrainian military and analyzed by CNN and military experts. Satellite images show intensive patterns of impacts along tree lines where Russian tanks tried to advance.

The 155th Marine brigade is involved in an assault on Vuhledar, which the Russian Defense Ministry insists is on schedule. The Russian President said in his remarks that the infantry is working as it should. Right now. The fighting was heroic.

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-declared, Russian-backed DPR, admitted Friday that the area was hot, and said that the enemy continues to transfer reserves in large quantities.

Vuhledar was built for the nearby coal mine (the name translates as “gift of coal”) and sits above surrounding plains. Its high-rise buildings help the Ukrainians. Mechanized – a significant advantage, as well as hardened underground cover.

The setbacks around Vuhledar don’t bode well for a broader Russian offensive. I think that they have weakened the Russian ultranationalist community’s belief in their ability to launch a decisive offensive operation.

A lot of good T72B3/T80BXV tanks and the best parachutes and marines were put down, according to Strelkov.

In another post on Telegram, Strelkov wrote: “Only morons attack head-on in the same place, heavily fortified and extremely inconvenient for the attackers for many months in a row.”

Moscow Calling asserted that older T-72 tanks deployed in Vuhledar lack upgrades that would improve the driver’s breadth of vision. It’s possible that’s why Russian tanks seem to getentangled or reverse blindly.

“How are blind, deaf tanks, armored personnel carriers, with equally blind, deaf infantry supposed to fight without columns? How to coordinate actions if communication and situational awareness are not present? he wrote.

Rustam Muradov’s actions against the Ukrainian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, as condemned by some in Russia and elsewhere on Saturday

Several Russian commentators have called for the dismissal of Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, the commander of the Eastern Grouping of Forces. Muradov was in charge in November when men of the 155th protested that his tactics had caused disastrous losses.

Another Russian blog with more than 500,000 followers said of Muradov’s team: “These people killed a significant number of personnel and equipment In November, did not bear any responsibility. They began to storm Ugledar after which, they were the same as before. Vahledar. Impunity always leads to permissiveness.

But the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that poor leadership is only part of the problem: the “highly dysfunctional tactics are far more indicative of the fact that the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade is likely comprised of poorly trained mobilized personnel than of poor command.”

There is a random mix of Russian troops in the area, according to Ukrainian military officials, who said that the militia of DPR is close to the Russian defense ministry.

“The key to success on the battlefield is effective fire damage, which requires an appropriate amount of weapons and ammunition,” said the commander of Ukrainian forces Valeriy Zaluzhnyi on Saturday.

Russian forces have a huge advantage in weaponry. On Saturday they launched a barrage of thermobaric missiles at Vuhledar, a reminder that they are more capable of inflicting destruction than taking territory.

The NATO Strategic Arms Crisis: A Brief Report on Ukrainian Operations in the War on the Baluchowsky Stratonovich (Ukraine)

The war in Ukraine got less attention in the State of the Union speech compared to previous years, but the Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova attended it again.

It is hard to know exactly what weapons each nation has in its arsenal due to the sensitivity of the information. But multiple European defense and security sources have told CNN that there are serious concerns at just how much of Europe’s ammunition has been used on the battlefield and not replaced. CNN reported late last year that the US, the largest supplier of weapons to Ukraine, is having difficulty keeping up with demand.

On Monday night, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters ahead of a meeting of alliance officials that “the current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production – this puts our defense industries under strain.”

Nick Witney, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that the financial pressures on European governments had caused a conspiracy of dressing the shop window while letting the stockroom empty out.

The looming ammunition crisis has, however, revealed that policymaking is often based on convenient assumptions of the best-case scenario. After all, taking no action, in the short-term at least, is often cheaper than taking action.

Col. Serhiy Cherevaty told Ukrainian television that soldiers need to keep building defensive lines. He said the reason for the order forbidding civilians from entering the city was to keep military operations secret.

As a prize, Bakhmut offers little in the way of strategic value for either Moscow or Kyiv. The significance is due to the amount of blood spilled.

“Even if Bakhmut were to fall, it would not have a strategic impact on the overall war,” said the National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby. I would say it will not have a strategic effect on the fighting in that part of the country.

The Story of the First Open-source War in Ukraine: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Explains Washington’s Comments on the Battle of the Dnipro River

In Brussels, Western officials deflected questions about whether Ukraine would win its campaign to secure still more powerful weapons to use against its Russian enemy.

Asked in Brussels on Tuesday whether fighter jets had been discussed, Mr. Austin, the American defense secretary, said, “I don’t have any announcement to make today.”

“It’s unlikely Russian forces will be particularly better organized and so unlikely they’ll be particularly more successful, though they do seem willing to send more troops into the meat grinder,” a senior British official told CNN.

“They amassed enough manpower to take one or two small cities in Donbas, but that’s it,” a senior Ukrainian diplomat told CNN. They were trying to build in Ukraine and it was overwhelming.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday in Brussels that the US is not seeing Russia “massing its aircraft” ahead of an aerial operation against Ukraine.

Is it the first truly open-source war? Zelensky is using social media to fight the war in Ukraine, as well as Russian mercenaries in theWagner Group, who are posting what they are doing on social media.

Petraeus had a different opinion on the withdrawal of Afghanistan than the Biden administration. He says the President’s team has done a very impressive job of leading NATO and the West to counter the Russian invasion, though there have been times he would have liked to have seen decisions to provide certain weapons systems (such as western tanks and longer-range precision munitions) made sooner than they were.

Petraeus: It’s not Russia. Russia had lost the Battles of Ukrainian cities and didn’t take the rest of the coast.

It lost what it gained in Kharkiv province. And it has had to withdraw its only forces west of the Dnipro River in Kherson province because the Ukrainians made the vital bridge connections to those forces impassable, took out the headquarters and logistics sites supporting those forces, and isolated them from the rest of the Russian elements east of the river.

So, the situation is essentially a stalemate at present, albeit with Russia making costly attacks in several areas, and with both sides building up forces for offensive operations expected in the late winter (likely the Russians) and spring/summer (the Ukrainians).

We are, however, seeing some glimpses and hints of what the future of warfare might look like. The Ukrainian use of drones for aerial observers is only modest and will double in range when the US gives precision bombs to the Ukrainians.

Perhaps most notably, of course, we see a war taking place, for the first time, in a context that includes the widespread presence of smart phones, internet connectivity, and social media and other internet sites.

The Future is Now: How to Operate and How to Defend the Powers of the High-Energy Continuum Cold War

And there would incomparably greater numbers of vastly more capable unmanned systems (some remotely piloted, others operating according to algorithms) in every domain – not just in the air, but also at sea, sub-sea, on the ground, in outer space, and in cyberspace, and operating in swarms, not just individually!

I recall an adage back in the Cold War days that stated, “If it can be seen, it can be hit; if it can be hit, it can be killed.” In truth, we didn’t have the surveillance assets, precision munitions and other capabilities needed to truly “operationalize” that adage in those days. In the future, every platform, base and headquarters will be vulnerable to being hit and destroyed unless there are strong defenses and harden the assets.

Imagining all this underscores, of course, that we must take innumerable actions to transform our forces and systems. We must make sure that we don’t have questions about our ability or willingness to use them, as well as doing everything we can to ensure that competition with great powers doesn’t turn into conflict.

The NATO description of brain death due to Putin has turned out to be a bit premature after all.

Petraeus: All of the above and more. The list is long, including poor campaign design; wholly inadequate training (what were they doing for all those months they were deployed on the northern, eastern, and southern borders of Ukraine?); poor command, control, and communications; inadequate discipline (and a culture that condones war crimes and abuse of local populations); poor equipment (exemplified by turrets blowing off of tanks when fires ignite in them); insufficient logistic capabilities; inability to achieve combined arms effects (to employ all ground and air capabilities effectively together); inadequate organizational architecture; lack of a professional noncommissioned officer corps; a top-down command system that does not promote initiative at lower levels and pervasive corruption that undermines every aspect of their military – and the supporting military-industrial complex.

It’s not at all. Russia has enormous military capacity and is a nuclear superpower as well as a country that has huge energy, mineral and agricultural blessings. Germany and Turkey have a population of less than 80 million and 75 million, respectively.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

How Do Russian Soldiers Understand the Crimes of Ukraine? A View from the White House Situation Room on the Status of the War and the Ukrain Crisis

And it is still led by a kleptocratic dictator who embraces innumerable grievances and extreme revanchist views that severely undermine his decision-making.

Stalin used to say, “Quantity has a quality all its own.” Will a bigger population in Russia make a difference to the war in Ukraine?

As many as 300,000 recruits and mobilized reservists will be sent to the frontlines, with up to 100,000 more on the way. That is not trivial, because quantity does matter.

Thus, Ukrainians know what they are fighting for, while it is not clear that the same is true of many of the Russian soldiers, a disproportionate number of whom are from ethnic and sectarian minorities in the Russian Federation.

All of those technologies have proven very important and the Ukrainians have demonstrated huge talent in adapting various technologies to enable intelligence gathering, targeting and other military tasks.

However, having sat around the Situation Room table in the West Wing of the White House, I know that it is far easier to second-guess from the outside than it is to make tough calls in office. But there are some additional capabilities (advanced drones, even longer-range precision munitions, fighter aircraft, and additional air defense and counter-drone capabilities) that I would like to see us provide sooner rather than later.

The transition from the eastern bloc to the western one is going to be more difficult for Ukraine. There just aren’t any more MiGs to provide to them, and they reportedly have more pilots than aircraft at this point.

It will take a number of months to train pilots and maintenance personnel and we might as well start the process of transition. I think that the Administration has done an excellent job in this circumstance, and have shown that they are the most indispensable nation in these circumstances for other situations around the world.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

The Wagner Group: Is It Okay to Use Convicts as a Tactics? How Do the Ukrainians End Their War?

Bergen: The quasi-private Wagner Group is the force that Putin sends into the meat grinder of the toughest battles. Is it okay to use mercenaries, many of which are convicts, as a tactic?

Russia’s use of mercenaries is innovative and inhumane, as they are thrown into battles as cannon fodder, and with little, if any, concern for their survival.

What are the lessons of Ukraine to the Chinese if they were to stage an invasion of Taiwan that would not be over a land border but over a body of water? Does the sinking of the Moskva affect how the Chinese think about this question?

It is even more essential that the target of such an operation has a population willing to fight for its survival and be supported by major powers.

And it is critical that the leaders of the US and other western nations – and of China and India, as well – convey clearly and repeatedly to Putin that the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons for Russia would, indeed, be “catastrophic,” to quote US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Petraeus: Yes, I believe it is. This is the first war in which smartphones and social media have been so widely available and also so widely employed. The result is unprecedented transparency and a large amount of information that is available through open sources.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

The End of the Iraq War and the Search for a New Security Mechanism in the Near-Inflationary Universe: Towards a More Generic Solution

Given the limitations of the professional capabilities of the Russian forces and the inability to generatecombined arms effect, there is not really a new plan to this point.

At the beginning of the Iraq War, you asked a rhetorical question: ” tell me how this ends?” How does the war in Ukraine end?

Also when Ukraine reaches the limits of its ability to withstand missile and drone strikes, getting a Marshall-like plan (developed by the US and G7) to help rebuild the country, and gaining an ironclad security guarantee (either NATO membership or, if that is not possible, a US-led coalition guarantee).