Ukraine outrage and analysis.

[TSherbs]

I think there were fears that Baby Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other leading chickenhawks might be indicted.

Justly so. . .

Totally. The US simply wants carte blanche when it needs it ("for national interest").

[TSherbs]

I saw a headline earlier about Russian soldiers not getting paid. Not sure what's going on cuz I didn't have time to read. Will get back to it later.

[Chip]

They Left Town as Convicts. Will They Be Buried as Heroes?

As thousands of ex-prisoners fight and die in Ukraine, honoring their memory is becoming a patriotic imperative in Russia. But some committed crimes their old neighbors cannot forget.

Neil MacFarquhar
March 26, 2023

When the corpse of a Wagner mercenary fighter arrived in his small Russian village in late February after he was killed fighting in Ukraine, some residents wanted to give him a hero’s burial. Others could not forget that the former prisoner had stabbed his father to death.

The ruckus prompted a stream of acrimonious comments on social media, with those demanding military honors for the fighter, Ilshat Askarov, flinging words like “Shame!” or “Traitor!” at opponents. Detractors called it a travesty to treat convicts who went to war for money as if they were regular soldiers.

Disputes like this one are erupting across Russia as convicts killed in the war are returned to their hometowns — dividing villages and pitting neighbors against one another. The diverging viewpoints underscore the difficult moral calculations involved in releasing criminals to fight for their country. Some villages have vetoed the presence of a military honor guard at the burials, while others denied relatives the use of public spaces to accommodate mourners. One remote Siberian village balked at providing transportation to bring home the coffin of a man formerly imprisoned for beating his girlfriend.

In the southwestern Rostov region, Roman Lazaruk, 32, was buried in February in the local “Alley of Heroes” after dying in the battle for Bakhmut. But his violent criminal record — he was convicted of burning his mother and sister to death in 2014 — outraged some local residents. A former classmate of the sister was appalled that convicts were being buried in the area of the cemetery once reserved for soldiers from World War II. “What did this Lazaruk or other guys do?” she told a local online newspaper. “They killed, stole, stabbed, raped, went to jail and went out to continue killing. What kind of heroes are they?”

Russia wandered into this thicket by allowing the Wagner private military group to recruit tens of thousands of convicts from penal colonies to fight and die in Ukraine, many near the eastern city of Bakhmut. The move allowed the Kremlin to replenish its ranks and postpone a conscription of civilians until last September, but it also alienated some Russians.

With President Vladimir V. Putin deepening the militarization of Russian society, soldiers are being put on a pedestal. Both the Kremlin’s propaganda machine and Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner forces, have sought to portray all those killed as heroes defending the Motherland, no matter how sordid their backgrounds. In Russian schools, new patriotic education classes have been named “Heroes of Modern Russia,” and fresh plaques on some school walls honor former prisoners who died.

“Designing the image of a hero has always been a matter of state policy,” said Elena Istyagina-Eliseeva, a member of the Civic Chamber, a Kremlin organization that steers civil society, at a recent Moscow conference about heroes.

The tension between that jingoistic narrative of the war and the grim realities of coping with soldiers’ deaths is an especially acute phenomenon in small villages. Residents tend to remember the chilling details of the crimes committed by men who were subsequently recruited from prison to fight. “They know who is a criminal, who is a danger to the community, and they want to protect their everyday lives,” said Greg Yudin, a Russian professor of political philosophy currently doing research at Princeton University. “It is a kind of moral protection of their community.”

On the other side are regional officials who intercede in disputes over burials, pushing the Kremlin’s narrative, as well as relatives and friends of the deceased who want to remove the stigma of the crime. Soldiers who were outcasts in the community can become heroes, Professor Yudin said. “You can get some money out of them,” he said, referring to government payments to families of dead soldiers, “and their reputation is whitewashed. That is a good deal, so you can understand those people.”

In Akhunovo, population 2,500, near the border with Kazakhstan, an extended argument erupted on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, over Mr. Askarov’s burial. One resident, Gulnaz Gilmanova, wrote that she was ashamed of the village administration for decreeing that he be buried without military honors. She said she was grateful to Mr. Askarov for fighting “for the Motherland.” Others were more vociferous. One woman called the village administration “TRAITORS” for withholding honors, while another man noted that purged Red Army officers released from the gulag helped to defend the country during World War II.

Contacted online, Ms. Gilmanova said that no one should criticize Mr. Askarov, whom she described as a sympathetic, simple man who loved fishing and picking berries or mushrooms. She declined to discuss the events that landed him in prison, saying she did not want to extend his family’s pain. Others were just as adamant in their opposition. “They are not the same as soldiers, they are criminals,” wrote one man in the comments on VKontakte, while another noted that mercenary armies were technically illegal in Russia.

Mr. Askarov, 35, a native of the village, had worked at odd jobs like fixing motorcycles and harvesting hay. He killed his father, Ilyas, in July 2020 by stabbing him in the leg during a drunken brawl, severing an artery; he also tried to murder a witness. Father and son had often been at loggerheads, with the older Mr. Askarov accusing Ilshat of being a product of his late mother’s infidelity, and mocking him for an ear deformed by a long-term infection, according to court papers. Mr. Askarov was sentenced to 12 years in prison in March 2021, recent enough that village residents still remember the crime.

Amir Kharisov, head of the village administration, defended the way the funeral was handled. “Everyone who wanted to honored the memory of the warrior,” he wrote in a post that he deleted after The Times asked him about the situation.

Sometimes families ask Mr. Prigozhin himself to intervene in the funeral arrangements. In January, the mother of Ivan Savkin, 25, appealed to Mr. Prigozhin, according to local news reports, after the administration of her son’s village rejected her request to use the recreation center for his funeral; they turned her down because her son had been convicted of theft, the reports said. She buried him in her own village instead.

Mr. Prigozhin responded online later in the month. He vowed that he would “deal with the scum” who failed to honor the Wagner dead and pull the children of such officials “by their noses” to force them to fight in Ukraine.

In the remote Siberian village of Krasnoselkup, another couple complained to the Wagner leader because village officials refused to help transport the coffin of their son or to provide a military honor guard. Instead the family dragged the coffin over a long outback road in a trailer.

Mr. Prigozhin has personally entered the fray over burials repeatedly. He recently threatened to stack bodies in the mayor’s living room in the Black Sea resort of Goryachy Klyuch, near Wagner’s own cemetery, which is rapidly filling with hundreds of dead fighters. The mayor had asked that burials be halted because of the negative publicity, Mr. Prigozhin said.

In Zhireken, a defunct mining community of 4,200 in far eastern Russia, regional officials intervened in the dispute among residents over the burial of Nikita Kasatkin, 23. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison in December 2020 after stabbing another man nine times during a drunken scuffle, according to court documents. A fracas erupted after Alena Kogodeeva, the local administrator, said that the town recreation center, with large flowers and other artwork for children painted on the walls, was an inappropriate site for Mr. Kasatkin’s funeral.

“Half of the village says, ‘Are we going to make heroes out of killers now?’” Ms. Kogodeeva, the local administrator, was quoted as saying in an online newspaper. “Half say that he atoned for sins with his blood.” As the debate raged back and forth, two journalists held a discussion on a local YouTube broadcast laying out the arguments, with one of them arguing that all fighters should be treated equally in death.

But Georgy Bal, 68, a retired writer who listened to the debate, already had his mind made up. He said the dead man was a mercenary who fought for money, not a hero. “In the village there are graves of people much more worthy of being remembered,” he said when contacted online, repeating remarks that he had written on social media. “What good did he do, what good for the residents of the village, before he was convicted?”


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/w...e=articleShare

[TSherbs]

When jingoistic patriotism comes up against village memory. Gordion knot.

[Chip]

It shows that the Russian people are not utterly submissive to the diktats of their vicious rulers and oligarchs.

Some still have a moral sense, however localized.

[Chip]

Russian soldiers say commanders used ‘barrier troops’ to stop them retreating

Assault unit members claim in video that superiors ‘want to execute us’ after ‘huge’ losses in eastern Ukraine

Pjotr Sauer
27 Mar 2023

Members of a recently formed Russian assault unit say their commanders deployed troops to stop them from retreating and threatened them with death after they suffered “huge” losses in eastern Ukraine. In a video addressed to President Vladimir Putin, a group of about two dozen men in military uniform say they are the remnants of Storm, a unit under the defence ministry.

“We sat under open mortar fire and artillery for 14 days,” Alexander Gorin, a Russian soldier, is heard saying in the appeal, which first appeared on Friday on Russian Telegram channels. “We took huge losses. Thirty-four people were injured and 22 died, including our commander.” Another soldier said the unit initially comprised 161 men at the start of the operations.

Gorin said his men made the decision to head back to the Russian army headquarters but were denied evacuation by their superiors: “They placed barrier troops behind us and weren’t letting us leave our position … They are threatening to destroy us one by one and as a unit. They want to execute us as witnesses of a completely negligent criminal leadership.”

Barrier troops or anti-retreat forces are military units positioned behind frontline forces to maintain discipline and prevent soldiers from fleeing.

“Our commanders are a criminal organisation. There is no other way to put it,” said another Russian soldier, who identified himself as Sergei Moldanov.

The Guardian identified eight men in the video. When contacted, three of them confirmed they were members of the Storm unit and verified the account given in the clip. The men, who asked to remain anonymous, said they had since been evacuated from the frontlines.

The Storm unit was set up by the defence ministry in January to take part in Moscow’s grinding winter offensive in eastern Ukraine. At the time of its formation, the ministry said the unit was “specifically designed to break through the most complex and echeloned defence sectors of the armed forces of Ukraine”.

According to reports in Russian media, as well as photographs published on the social media accounts of several of the fighters, the unit is made up largely of Russian veterans who took part in Russia’s first offensive in Ukraine in 2014. The Storm soldiers in the video alleged they were being forced to give money to their commanders and those who refused were sent to the frontline. Their appeal is the latest in a steady stream of similar videos that have surfaced since January, in which Russian soldiers have complained about their poor treatment.

It coincides with Moscow’s winter offensive in eastern Ukraine and indicates Russia’s troops continue to be plagued by low morale and mismanagement. The clips also serve as a testament to Moscow’s willingness to send its soldiers to positions where they face certain death in an effort to break through Ukrainian defences. Last November, the British defence ministry said Russian forces had probably started deploying barrier troops or “blocking units”. “The tactic of shooting deserters likely attests to the low quality, low morale and indiscipline of Russian forces,” the ministry said in a statement.

The Kremlin has largely dismissed reports that the Russian army had suffered desertions in Ukraine fuelled by poor conditions and low morale. “Are there guys who deserted their combat posts? Yes, it happened … less and less now,” Putin said at the end of last year. “I repeat once again that no cases of such nature [desertions] have a mass character. The Russian president has also claimed Ukraine was using its own barrier troops, “shooting their own soldiers in the back”.

The Russian army, aided by the paramilitary Wagner group, has been throwing tens of thousands of soldiers into battle for more than two months in its attempt to gain ground in the Donbas region. But Moscow’s offensive across a 160-mile arc in eastern Ukraine has brought minimal gains at staggering costs. Western officials estimate up to 200,000 have been killed or injured on the Russian side.

In a further sign that Moscow was unhappy with the state of the fighting, Russian media on Sunday reported the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, had sacked the commander of its eastern military district, Lt Gen Rustam Muradov. His dismissal represents the latest reshuffle of top brass amid a string of battlefield setbacks. Pro-war bloggers close to the Kremlin linked Muradov’s dismissal with his unsuccessful attempts to capture the town of Vuhledar in Donetsk. Under Muradov’s command, Russia is believed to have lost more than 100 tanks and armoured personnel carriers in a three-week battle in Vuhledar last month.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...e_iOSApp_Other

[TSherbs]

Well then, that's another shuffle/firing/purging from leadership among the Russian brass. When I mentioned this before, Karmachanic denied it was happening. Weird. Where's karmac gone?

[Chip]

Well then, that's another shuffle/firing/purging from leadership among the Russian brass. When I mentioned this before, Karmachanic denied it was happening. Weird. Where's karmac gone?

[welch]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/w...ut-russia.html

Ukrainians in a Hidden Command Post See Bakhmut Going Their Way



Ukrainian commanders said that Russia exhausted all its reserves on the eastern city, though soldiers said the cost in lives had been steep.



A man seated in front of a bank of large computer monitors.
The military operations of a major Ukrainian battle group defending the city of Bakhmut from an unnamed location in eastern Ukraine.Credit...Carlotta Gall/The New York Times

Carlotta Gall
By Carlotta Gall
Carlotta Gall reported from the outskirts of Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces have been fighting Ukraine for over eight months.

March 30, 2023
Updated 2:26 p.m. ET


Hidden in the bowels of an unmarked building, set well back from the fighting, a command center directing operations in the city of Bakhmut was high-tech and humming. Soldiers monitored video screens with live feeds of destroyed buildings and a cratered battlefield.

Six weeks after coming to help defend Bakhmut, the men of the Adam Tactical Group, one of Ukraine’s most effective battle units, were quietly confident they had turned the tide against Russian troops trying to encircle and capture it.

“The enemy exhausted all its reserves,” the commander, Col. Yevhen Mezhevikin, 40, said on Tuesday, straddling a chair as artillery, air defense and intelligence-gathering teams worked around him.

Through wave after wave of Russian assault and tenacious Ukrainian defense, Bakhmut has, over eight months, become a central battlefield of Russia’s invasion despite limited strategic significance.

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Russia has lost extraordinary numbers of troops in the battle, and Ukraine large numbers, too, and as casualties have mounted, so has the political symbolism of the city. Kremlin officials have described it as a necessary prize in the campaign to seize Ukraine’s Donbas region. To Ukraine, it has become an important line to hold, both to whittle down Russia’s forces and to deprive them of a victory.

But now, Colonel Mezhevikin said, the Russian assaults have slowed and the imminent threat of encirclement has been thwarted. “The density of assaults dropped by several times,” he said. “Before, they could assault in all directions simultaneously and in groups of not less than 20, 30 or 40 people, but gradually it is dying down.”

Image
A dark image of a man in a room.
Col. Yevhen Mezhevikin, the commander of a tactical group, at a base near Bakhmut in March. He said that he was confident that Ukrainian forces could keep holding the city and push Russian troops back farther. Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

The commander’s description aligned with those of Ukraine’s most senior military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhnyi, and his commander of ground forces in the east, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky. Both have said in recent days that the situation of Bakhmut was stabilizing, even with heavy fighting for some Ukrainian units.

On Thursday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military acknowledged on Facebook that Russia was “having partial success” in its attempts to take the city, without further detail. But it added that Ukraine’s forces continued to hold the city and “repel numerous enemy attacks.”

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Colonel Mezhevikin said that he was confident that Ukrainian forces could keep holding the city and push Russian troops back farther. If the Ukrainians hold their recent gains, the battles of the last month at Bakhmut could prove a turning point in Ukraine’s defense against Russia, not only stalling the latest Russian offensive but also in setting themselves up to deliver a knockout blow, he said.


Fresh Ukrainian attack brigades were completing training, he said. “We are holding the enemy here for a bit more, and let them knock them back,” he said, referring to the new troops.

On the city’s northern and southern flanks, where Russian troops had tried to encircle Bakhmut in a pincers movement, the Russians were coming up against Ukraine’s most motivated units and no longer had momentum, he said.

“When they try to reinforce their units, to rotate, they are being destroyed at the very start,” he added.


The center of Bakhmut, however, remained a hot spot where Russian troops were still attacking with significant force, the commander said: “All that’s left for them is to try to advance through the city, because the buildings protect them from fire.”


An aerial view of Bakhmut on Sunday. “This battle is a kind of shooting range with a parallel raining of artillery on us,” one Ukrainian soldier wrote on the Telegram app.Credit...Libkos/Associated Press

Accounts from Ukrainian soldiers fighting inside the city indicated that Russian troops had concentrated their efforts on advancing through the city center by using heavy artillery and aerial bombardment, demolishing resistance block by block. Some Ukrainian units have taken heavy losses and have had to be rotated out or reinforced by other units.

“This battle is a kind of shooting range with a parallel raining of artillery on us,” one Ukrainian soldier wrote on the Telegram app. “They are dismantling the city. It seems that there was a new wave of assaults on them today from all sides in the north, in the south, in short, while all our positions are holding, it has become extremely difficult here.”

Serhii Filimonov, the commander of an assault company on the northern flank of the city, also described heavy fighting and questioned the value of defending Bakhmut at the cost of some of his best special-operations forces.

Dropping back from the front line to a restaurant in a nearby town, the commander recalled fighting alongside a famous Ukrainian fighter, Dmytro Kotsiubailo, commander of the Da Vinci Wolves Battalion, when he was killed this month in a Russian artillery strike.

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Mr. Filimonov, whose company is part of that battalion, and Mr. Kotsiubailo were volunteers who gained renown and built serious fighting units that have now been integrated into the Ukrainian army, specializing in assault.

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A man in military fatigues near a tank with Russian writing on it that has collapsed into a pool of water in a field.
Serhii Filimonov, the commander of an assault company on the northern flank of Bakhmut, near an abandoned Russian tank in Vuzlovyi last year.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

In early March, Mr. Kotsiubailo, better known by his call sign, Da Vinci, and Mr. Filimonov, his friend, were called on to fend off a Russian advance on the northern flank of Bakhmut that threatened the only asphalt road into the city.

They successfully beat back the Russian troops, clearing three tree lines. When Mr. Filimonov’s unit became pinned down by Russian fire, he said, Da Vinci stormed another tree line and saved them.

The Russians retaliated with withering artillery fire, and three days later, Da Vinci was mortally wounded in the neck and chest by shrapnel from a shell strike. His body was taken to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, where he was buried with full military honors, but Mr. Filimonov was embroiled in holding off more Russian attacks and could not attend.

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The Russian artillery was so severe that he suffered a contusion and lost the hearing in one ear, he said, but his unit has held its positions.

“It’s a big loss for our battalion, for Ukraine, for the Armed Forces,” he said of Da Vinci’s death. “It’s hard to overcome the losses. And there are brigades with horrible losses.” Several of those have been rotated out, he said, but the Da Vinci Wolves was still standing.

The Russians had meanwhile stalled, he said, concurring with the commander of the Adam Tactical Group.

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Men in formal military dress carrying a coffin in a city square as onlookers kneel.
The farewell ceremony for a famous Ukrainian fighter, Dmytro Kotsiubailo, commander of the Da Vinci Wolves Battalion, in Kyiv in March.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

“Now they stopped,” Mr. Filimonov said. “We have a strong line. But we need a strong counterattack.”

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As some other commanders have noted, there are weaknesses and gaps in the Russian defenses. “The same way they can encircle us, they can also be encircled by us if we pierce their defense at any place,” Mr. Filimonov said.

The Russians realize the danger themselves, he said, and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner private military company, which is doing much of the fighting at Bakhmut, publicly warned of the danger in a video post as he called for more military support for his own forces.

“If Wagner PMC rolls back, then the following situation will happen in history,” he said in early March. “It is clear that the front will crumble. The front will crumble to the Russian borders, or maybe further.”

Colonel Mezhevikin said there were still strong Russian divisions guarding the critical points of defense but that regular Russian army units lacked morale and were easier to break. “It’s easier to fight them. They are running away,” he said.

But Wagner units, which include convicts, were threatened with physical punishment if they retreated, which made them tougher opponents, he said. “They are scared to give up and to leave positions,” he explained. “They prefer to die here.”

Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting.

[welch]

Latest analysis from Foreign Affairs magazine.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukrai...k%20-%20112017

Agile Ukraine, Lumbering Russia

During more than 13 months of war against one of the world’s largest armies, Ukraine’s military has continually stood out for one quality in particular: its ability to adapt. Over and over, Ukraine has nimbly responded to changing battlefield dynamics and exploited emerging technologies to capitalize on Russia’s mistakes. Despite their limited experience with advanced weapons technology, Ukrainian soldiers quickly graduated from point-and-shoot Javelin and Stinger missile systems to the more sophisticated High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which they have used to pummel Russian command centers, logistical assets, and ammunition depots. They have deployed military and commercial drones in increasingly creative ways. And although this is not the first war to play out on social media, the Ukrainians have been giving the world a master class in effective information operations in the digital age. Such is their record of technical and tactical versatility that Ukrainian forces continue to enjoy a sense of momentum, despite the fact that the frontlines have been largely frozen for months.

By contrast, Russian forces have shown limited openness to new tactics or new technologies. Hobbled by bad leadership and terrible morale, the Russian military was slow to recover from its disastrous attempt to seize Kyiv in February 2022 and has struggled to adjust its strategy or learn from its mistakes. This is despite having demonstrated considerable dexterity in its deployments in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and in Syria starting in 2015. In the current war, although Russian military leaders have made some adjustments to alleviate logistical problems and improve coordination on the ground, the Kremlin’s core strategy continues to rely largely on throwing more manpower and firepower at the enemy—a lumbering, high-cost approach that has hardly inspired confidence. Observing this performance, some Western experts have raised the possibility of exceedingly dire scenarios, including a doomed Russian spring offensive, a large-scale mutiny of troops, or even the collapse of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime.

In short, the extent to which each side has been able to adapt has become a key factor shaping the course of the war. For Western analysts, Ukraine’s nimble tactics offer crucial insights into the conflict, including how they may spur future shifts in the war. But as the frontlines have become increasingly hardened, it is also important to take into account the limits of adaptation. For Ukraine’s allies, it will be crucial to understand the particular ways that this process has contributed to Ukraine’s remarkable success but also to temper expectations about what it can achieve in the months to come.


KYIV’S QUICK-CHANGE ARTISTS
Ukraine’s capacity for adaptation has been especially impressive in light of its recent history. Underfunded, poorly trained, and crippled by corruption, the Ukrainian military failed to repel the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas in 2014 and could not regain lost ground. Since then, however, the Ukrainian military has undergone major, albeit incomplete, reforms to professionalize its forces and modernize its military equipment. Those efforts paid off in 2022. Although Ukraine’s leadership was initially skeptical of intelligence from the United States and other international partners indicating that Russia was planning an assault on Kyiv, the Ukrainian military put contingency plans into place in the months leading up to the invasion, and despite being caught off guard by the scale of the offensive, Ukrainian forces quickly recovered from Russia’s attempted “shock and awe” campaign. Then, in April 2022, when Russia shifted the war to the Donbas, where the open terrain and shorter resupply lines seemed more favorable to Moscow, Ukrainian forces were able to evolve, shifting away from the asymmetric, insurgency-style tactics that helped them defend Kyiv and toward those suited for fighting a large-scale conventional war. By late summer, Ukraine was rapidly regaining lost territory.

Ukraine’s rapid ability to integrate new technology into its operations has also been striking. As dozens of countries began sending high-tech Western weapons and equipment to Ukraine, some reports from the frontlines indicated that Ukrainian fighters lacked the training and experience to use them and that the Ukrainian military in general was struggling with the logistics and maintenance demands of so many different systems. Yet despite these challenges, Ukrainian soldiers have quickly adapted to sophisticated foreign weapons, ammunition, and materiel. In late August and throughout September, Ukraine’s effective use of HIMARS—the advanced mobile rocket launchers that Washington began delivering in June 2022—helped push the Russians out of Kharkiv and parts of Kherson. Ukrainian forces have also become adept at using deception to protect HIMARS from Russian artillery and air force attacks—for example, building wooden replicas of the system as decoys and keeping HIMARS operators’ roles and locations highly secret. U.S. military trainers have acknowledged how quickly Ukrainian soldiers learned to operate advanced Western systems, including the Patriot missile systems that the United States has announced it will deploy to Ukraine.


Ukraine has used AI to help capture Russian communications.
Ukrainian forces have also showcased their innovative and experimental thinking in their use of drones. As the war has increasingly been dominated by artillery and missile exchanges in recent months, Ukrainian units have integrated drone operating teams with their artillery to improve the accuracy of nonprecision strikes as well as to help with targeting in real time and collecting targets for future attacks. Ukrainian forces have equipped large Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones with laser-guided missiles to supplement their reconnaissance capabilities. They have also deployed small reconnaissance drones, such as the Chinese-made Mavics, and even jury-rigged some of them to be able to drop small antipersonnel grenades.

Although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has relentlessly appealed to Western governments to provide military aid, the Ukrainian leadership has also recognized the value of direct assistance from international manufacturers of advanced technology. Immediately after the Russian invasion, through a direct appeal to Elon Musk on Twitter, the Ukrainian government was able to secure access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet system and terminals, which have kept the military’s communications networks intact even as Russia has repeatedly targeted the country’s communications infrastructure. Many other companies, including Microsoft, Palantir, Planet, Capella Space, and Maxar Technologies, have also worked through Western intermediaries or directly with Kyiv to provide data, equipment, and various technological resources for the war effort. In April 2022, Wired reported that Primer, a U.S. company specializing in providing artificial intelligence (AI) to intelligence analysts, had shared machine-learning technology with Ukraine. According to the company, its AI algorithms were being used by Ukrainian forces to automatically capture, transcribe, translate, and analyze Russian military communications that were transmitted on unsecure channels and intercepted.

Of course, official Ukrainian reports describing the country’s use of new technologies must be scrutinized carefully. Kyiv has a clear incentive to emphasize the effect of advanced Western systems on its war effort in order to encourage the United States and its European partners to continue such support. From open-source reporting, it can also be difficult to assess whether Ukraine has deployed these innovative technologies widely or only on a few occasions. Nonetheless, it is clear that, unlike its enemy, Ukraine has been able to learn from and respond to unexpected and shifting battlefield conditions.

MOSCOW’S LOST INNOVATIONS
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year was not the first time that Moscow has vastly underestimated the capabilities and resolve of an adversary. In both its first war in Chechnya in the 1990s and its war with Georgia in 2008, Russia was plagued by significant structural and organizational failures, including in preparation, planning, and information sharing. Over the past decade, however, the Russian government has pursued an extensive and expensive military modernization effort. And during more recent deployments to Syria and eastern Ukraine the Russian military appeared far more adept at integrating emerging technologies and new concepts into its operations.

Indeed, Russia’s brutal intervention to support the Assad regime in Syria has been described as a “proving ground” for Russia’s military reforms. According to Russian government sources, Russia tested some 600 new weapons and other kinds of military equipment during its intervention in Syria, including 200 that officials have described as “next generation.” For instance, although Russia had a relatively limited fleet of reconnaissance drones at the beginning of its Syrian campaign, it ramped up production and deployment after 2015, and by 2018, it was able to deploy some 60–70 drones a day in a variety of battlefield situations. Some of the drones were used to create a theater-wide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance network that could relay targeting information and direct airstrikes.

Russia’s intervention in Syria also allowed its military to experiment with integrating human and machine warfare, including the use of robots and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) alongside regular forces. Russia tested a variety of such technologies, such as the small Scarab UGV, which can be used for clearing mines and gaining access into underground facilities, and the Uran-6, a larger remote-controlled vehicle that also has mine-clearing capabilities. These experiments did not always go smoothly: in its first test in an urban combat mission, a larger UGV, the Uran-9, had serious problems with communications, navigation, and hitting moving targets. But these forays provided valuable real-world insight into how autonomous and AI-enabled systems could assist soldiers on the battlefield, and they have often been cited by Russian military analysts as showing the promise of AI.


Russia experimented with unmanned robots in the Syrian War.
In both Syria and eastern Ukraine, the Russian military was also able to use its modernized electronic warfare capabilities to disrupt enemy communications. So frequent was Russian interference with cellular, radio communications, drone, and GPS signals in Syria that the head of U.S. Special Operations Command described the war as “the most aggressive electronic warfare environment on the planet.” And during the war in the Donbas in 2015, General Ben Hodges, then the commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, described how Russian electronic warfare “completely shut down” Ukrainian communications and effectively grounded their drones. U.S. military analysts have also noted that in at least one incident during the fighting in the Donbas, Russian forces were able to use intercepted cellphone signals to target Ukrainian soldiers with artillery strikes.

Yet very little of this innovation has been apparent in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Over the past year, Moscow has largely given up on the battlefield experimentation and learning that defined its campaigns in Syria and eastern Ukraine. Despite having a broad range of robotic and autonomous technologies in different stages of development, the Russian military has seemed unwilling or unable to field such systems in the current war. On occasion, open-source analysts have identified new high-tech weapons being deployed by Russia, including the KUB-BLA loitering munition, which is designed to use AI to identify targets. But there is little evidence of their use, and some observers have expressed doubts about such reports. Russian forces have also shown little success with electronic warfare and cyber-operations, areas in which they were believed to hold an advantage.

As the war has unfolded, Russia has made some adjustments. Early on, it shifted its resources to eastern Ukraine after being rebuffed at Kyiv and focused on the more limited objective of “liberating” the Donbas. Having taken a beating from Ukraine’s HIMARS for months, Russian forces finally began dispersing their command-and-control nodes and moving logistics and weapons depots out of the weapons’ 80-mile range. Faced with severe shortages of manpower and ammunition, Russia has also looked to foreign partners for assistance—buying Iranian and Chinese drones and, according to U.S. intelligence reports, even preparing to buy rockets and artillery shells from North Korea. Overall, however, Russian forces appear to have entirely lost the insights they gained in Syria about the value of flexibility.

MARGINS OF RETURN
For over a year now, Kyiv’s extraordinary capacity for adaptation has kept its military in the fight. Equally important, the country has inspired confidence among its Western allies that its forces can continue using new weapons and technologies to take advantage of Russia’s mistakes, regain territory, and maintain high levels of motivation and capability. Moscow’s military performance, meanwhile, has inspired no one. Confronted with major losses of both equipment and troops, the Russian military has been under enormous pressure to retain whatever combat effectiveness it can and has had little spare capacity for experimenting with new technologies. But how significant are these contrasting performances to the ultimate direction of the conflict itself?

The dynamics of the war in the coming months will likely hinge on Russia’s unfolding spring offensive. Experts will debate whether the Russian leadership is aiming for a large-scale assault to take new territory or a more modest attempt to consolidate gains, and there will doubtless be continued scrutiny of the low morale and poor quality of the Russian forces. At this point, however, with both sides increasingly dug in along fairly stable frontlines, larger shifts in the war are unlikely to play out in a 24-hour news cycle. Moreover, the Russian military can continue fighting poorly for a long time—in fact, it has a long history of doing just that. Further still, the Kremlin, for some months now, has focused on reorienting the Russian economy and society toward a long war and preparing to outlast Western financial and material support for Ukraine. And although Western analysts and observers may be tempted to conclude that Ukrainian forces’ knack for adaptation will give them an edge in the long term, it is important to recognize that they are facing a far larger army led by a regime that has demonstrated a continued willingness to sustain enormous losses.

The Ukrainian military’s skill at integrating advanced weapons and new technologies has continually surprised not only its adversary, but also Ukraine’s own partners and allies in the West. Yet new technology and weapons, no matter how sophisticated, are unlikely to prove decisive. In fact, it is difficult to say whether there can be a decisive end to a war like this—a prospect that seems unlikely for the near future.

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MARGARITA KONAEV is Deputy Director of Analysis at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
OWEN J. DANIELS is Andrew W. Marshall Fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

[TSherbs]

Thanks, welch. I thought that this part was key:

... Moreover, the Russian military can continue fighting poorly for a long time—in fact, it has a long history of doing just that. Further still, the Kremlin, for some months now, has focused on reorienting the Russian economy and society toward a long war and preparing to outlast Western financial and material support for Ukraine. And although Western analysts and observers may be tempted to conclude that Ukrainian forces’ knack for adaptation will give them an edge in the long term, it is important to recognize that they are facing a far larger army led by a regime that has demonstrated a continued willingness to sustain enormous losses....

[TSherbs]

Bomb assassination?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/02/world...ntl/index.html

[Chip]

Just before the explosion, he was presented with a statuette of himself.

If that was the bomb, it's a grand (and fatal) bit of irony.

[TSherbs]

Just before the explosion, he was presented with a statuette of himself.

If that was the bomb, it's a grand (and fatal) bit of irony.

Beware Greeks bearing gifts.

[welch]

Putin's invasion of Ukraine has added Finland, and, probably Sweden to NATO, and has re-committed NATO member states to block any Russian invasion at a country's borders. After the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO intended to delay the Russians while gathering troops and weapons -- likely from the US -- to take back any territory that Russia has conquered. That would have left front-line states partially occupied. Russian atrocities in Ukraine have convinced NATO members to fight for every inch. NATO is increasing military spending and is putting more troops and more tanks into states that might be invaded.

Russian Invasion of Ukraine Revolutionizes NATO Military StrategyShocked by Russian atrocities, NATO is becoming the war-fighting alliance it was during the Cold War, committed to defending “every inch” of its territory from Day 1.



By Steven Erlanger
April 17, 2023
Updated 12:33 p.m. ET


BRUSSELS — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the costliest conflict in Europe since World War II, has propelled the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into a full-throttled effort to make itself again into the capable, war-fighting alliance it had been during the Cold War.

The shift is transformative for an alliance characterized for decades by hibernation and self-doubt. After the recent embrace of long-neutral Finland by the alliance, it also amounts to another significant unintended consequence for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, of his war.

NATO is rapidly moving from what the military calls deterrence by retaliation to deterrence by denial. In the past, the theory was that if the Russians invaded, member states would try to hold on until allied forces, mainly American and based at home, could come to their aid and retaliate against the Russians to try to push them back.

But after the Russian atrocities in areas it occupied in Ukraine, from Bucha and Irpin to Mariupol and Kherson, frontier states like Poland and the Baltic countries no longer want to risk any period of Russian occupation. They note that in the first days of the Ukrainian invasion, Russian troops took land larger than some Baltic nations.

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To prevent that, to deter by denial, means a revolution in practical terms: more troops based permanently along the Russian border, more integration of American and allied war plans, more military spending and more detailed requirements for allies to have specific kinds of forces and equipment to fight, if necessary, in pre-assigned places.

Mr. Putin has long complained about NATO encirclement and encroachment. But his invasion of Ukraine provoked the alliance to shed remaining inhibitions about increased numbers of Western troops all along NATO’s border with Russia.

The intention is to make NATO’s forces not only more robust and more capable but also more visible to Russia, a key element of deterrence.

“The debate is no longer about how much is too much,” for fear of upsetting Moscow, “but how much is enough,” said Camille Grand, until recently NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment, and now with the European Council on Foreign Relations.


The countries of Central and Eastern Europe insist that it is “no longer enough to say we’re ready to deter by promising to reconquer, but that we need to defend every inch of NATO territory from day one,” said Mr. Grand. “It’s not okay to be under Russian control for a few months until the cavalry arrives.”

NATO now has deployed a battalion of multinational troops to eight countries along the eastern border with Russia. It is detailing how to enlarge those forces to brigade strength in those frontline states to enhance deterrence and be able to push back invading forces from the start. And it is also tasking thousands more forces, in case of war, to move quickly in support, with newly detailed plans for mobility and logistics and stiffer requirements for readiness.

“NATO is an organization that took a holiday from history,” said Ivo H. Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO. Mr. Putin, he said, “reminded us that we have to think about defense and think about it collectively.”

The alliance will put more troops under the direct control of NATO’s top military officer, the supreme allied commander Europe, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, who also commands American forces in Europe.

Under a new rubric of “deter and defend,” General Cavoli is for the first time since the Cold War integrating American and allied war-fighting plans, a senior NATO official said, speaking anonymously because of the topic’s sensitivity. Americans are back at the heart of Europe’s defense, he said, deciding with NATO precisely how America will defend Europe.

For the first time since the Cold War, the official said, East European countries will know exactly what NATO intends to do to defend them — what each country should be able to do for itself and how other countries will be tasked to help. And Western countries in the alliance will know where their forces need to go, with what and how to get there.

NATO is also aligning its longer-term demands from allies with its current operational needs. If in the past NATO countries might be asked to send some lightly armed expeditionary forces with helicopters to Afghanistan, for instance, now they will be tasked to defend particular parts of NATO territory itself.

For Britain, just one example, that will mean that it provide more heavy armor to defend NATO’s eastern flank, even if the British government would prefer to continue to field a lighter, more expeditionary army, requiring less money, fewer people and less expensive heavy equipment.

The planning in NATO is already intrusive but will become more demanding and specific. Countries answer questionnaires about their capacities and equipment; NATO planners tell them what’s missing or could be cut or thinned.

In one case, said Robert G. Bell, defense adviser to the American mission at NATO until 2017, Denmark was told to stop wasting money building submarines. Canada was told it must provide air-refueling planes.

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Countries can push back — for years some nations with frigates refused to put air-defense missiles on them for fear of seeming escalatory — but they must defend their plans before all NATO members. If the other allies all agree that a country’s plan is inadequate, they can vote to force adaptation in what is known as “consensus minus one.” Such a demand is rare, but happened with Canada, Mr. Bell said.

Now the demands will be tougher and more rigorous to bring the alliance back to a war-fighting capacity in Europe and make deterrence credible — to ensure that NATO can fight a high-intensity war against a rival, Russia, from the first day of conflict.

The change at NATO began slowly in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea, igniting insurrection in the eastern Donbas. At their summit that year in Wales, NATO allies agreed on a goal for military spending of 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2024. At the moment, only eight of 31 countries, including new member Finland, met that goal, but military spending has increased significantly, up $350 billion since 2014.

At the next NATO summit this July, a new spending plan will be agreed upon, with 2 percent of G.D.P. regarded as a minimum. Given Russia’s difficulties in Ukraine, if major countries spend between 2.5 percent and 3 percent of G.D.P. on the military over the next decade, that should be sufficient, the senior NATO official said.

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After 2014, NATO also agreed to put four small battalion-sized forces in the Baltic States and Poland. The idea was to engage invaders and hope to get reinforcements in place a week or two after an invasion.

After Russia’s invasion last year, NATO added four more forward-based battalions, to make eight such forces along NATO’s eastern edge, now including Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. But the total troop number for all eight battle groups is only 10,232, NATO says.

NATO now is planning how to scale up to brigade-sized forces, meaning putting about 4,000 to 5,000 troops in each country to make NATO’s enhanced deterrence “a more robust tripwire,” Mr. Bell said.

That will also mean improving NATO’s air defenses — a major shortcoming from the shrinking militaries of the last 30 years, when few imagined Russian missiles raining down on Europe — and more numerous and elaborate troop exercises, visible to Moscow.

Previously, the annual exercises of NATO’s nuclear forces, known as Steadfast Noon, were kept quiet. But last year, after Russia’s invasion, the exercise went ahead openly. It was important, a NATO official said, to show Moscow that the alliance wasn’t deterred by nuclear threats.

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NATO’s military headquarters, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, is also being strengthened.

The thousands of allied soldiers working there are being transformed into a major strategic and war-fighting command, charged with drawing up the alliance’s plans to integrate and deploy allied troops — including cyber, space and maritime forces — in various contingencies. Those can range from planning a hybrid war to a regional war that spirals out of control to an all-out conflict involving nuclear weapons.

The NATO command needs to figure out how to incorporate Finland and likely Sweden, and decide where their forces must commit to collective defense. For instance, should Finland be part of the headquarters that covers the Baltics or the one that covers the Arctic routes and the High North, or both?

In principle, NATO’s leadership can call on 13 corps of 40,000 to 50,000 troops each to fight if necessary. But NATO’s actual, deployable strength is nowhere near that, senior NATO officials concede. So General Cavoli and his team must figure out how best and where to deploy what is really available in a crisis, while trying to ensure that countries continue to improve their readiness.


One of the least glamorous challenges is, simply speaking, mobility and logistics: getting troops and tanks and guns where they need to be as quickly as they need to be there, and sustaining them.

Right now there are major post-Cold War roadblocks that include lack of storage, lack of suitable rail cars, lack of emergency rights of way to cross borders and use of roadways, issues that involve decisions by civilian authorities.

But even supplying Ukraine from a peaceful Poland is proving a major logistical headache, said another NATO official, who also spoke on the topic under condition of anonymity. Trucks are backed up with supplies, there’s a shortage of railway cars that can carry heavy equipment like tanks, and permissions must be obtained at every European border. Doing it in a shooting war, he said, with missiles flying, bombs dropping, the internet crashing and refugees racing in the other direction, is another challenge entirely.

“NATO didn’t think seriously about defending its own territory and now it must,” said Mr. Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. It did that for 40 years, and even if the muscles have atrophied, the muscle memory is there, he said. “The key is to have people and governments who never lived through this, learning how to do it.”

Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, based in Brussels. He previously reported from London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Moscow and Bangkok.

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[Chip]

Seems like Putin has brought about the very zero-sum situation with NATO that he sought to circumvent with his rash invasion.

[welch]

Seems like Putin has brought about the very zero-sum situation with NATO that he sought to circumvent with his rash invasion.

Or that Putin wanted to capture and annex Ukraine much more than he wanted to stop NATO.

[welch]

From Foreign Affairs

[QUOTE]The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine

A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table

By Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan
April 13, 2023
After just over a year, the war in Ukraine has turned out far better for Ukraine than most predicted. Russia’s effort to subjugate its neighbor has failed. Ukraine remains an independent, sovereign, functioning democracy, holding on to roughly 85 percent of the territory it controlled before Russia’s 2014 invasion. At the same time, it is difficult to feel sanguine about where the war is headed. The human and economic costs, already enormous, are poised to climb as both Moscow and Kyiv ready their next moves on the battlefield. The Russian military’s numerical superiority likely gives it the ability to counter Ukraine’s greater operational skill and morale, as well as its access to Western support. Accordingly, the most likely outcome of the conflict is not a complete Ukrainian victory but a bloody stalemate.

Against this backdrop, calls for a diplomatic end to the conflict are understandably growing. But with Moscow and Kyiv both vowing to keep up the fight, conditions are not yet ripe for a negotiated settlement. Russia seems determined to occupy a larger chunk of the Donbas. Ukraine appears to be preparing an assault to break the land bridge between the Donbas and Crimea, clearing the way, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky often asserts, for Ukraine to fully expel Russian forces and restore its territorial integrity.

The West needs an approach that recognizes these realities without sacrificing its principles. The best path forward is a sequenced two-pronged strategy aimed at first bolstering Ukraine’s military capability and then, when the fighting season winds down late this year, ushering Moscow and Kyiv from the battlefield to the negotiating table. The West should start by immediately expediting the flow of weapons to Ukraine and increasing their quantity and quality. The goal should be to bolster Ukraine’s defenses while making its coming offensive as successful as possible, imposing heavy losses on Russia, foreclosing Moscow’s military options, and increasing its willingness to contemplate a diplomatic settlement. By the time Ukraine’s anticipated offensive is over, Kyiv may also warm up to the idea of a negotiated settlement, having given its best shot on the battlefield and facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.

The second prong of the West’s strategy should be to roll out later this year a plan for brokering a cease-fire and a follow-on peace process aimed at permanently ending the conflict. This diplomatic gambit may well fail. Even if Russia and Ukraine continue to take significant losses, one or both of them may prefer to keep fighting. But as the war’s costs mount and the prospect of a military stalemate looms, it is worth pressing for a durable truce, one that could prevent renewed conflict and, even better, set the stage for a lasting peace.

THE WAR THAT WILL NOT END
For now, a diplomatic resolution to the conflict is out of reach. Russian President Vladimir Putin likely worries that if he stops fighting now, Russians will fault him for launching a costly, futile war. After all, Russian forces do not completely control any of the four oblasts that Moscow unilaterally annexed last September, NATO has grown bigger and stronger, and Ukraine is more alienated than ever from Russia. Putin seems to believe that time is on his side, calculating that he can ride out economic sanctions, which have failed to strangle the Russian economy, and maintain popular support for the war, an operation that, according to polls from the Levada Center, more than 70 percent of Russians still back. Putin doubts the staying power of Ukraine and its Western supporters, expecting that their resolve will wane. And he surely calculates that as his new conscripts enter the fight, Russia should be able to expand its territorial gains, allowing him to declare that he has substantially expanded Russia’s borders when the fighting stops.

Ukraine is also in no mood to settle. The country’s leadership and public alike understandably seek to regain control of all the territory Russia has occupied since 2014, including Crimea. Ukrainians also want to hold Moscow accountable for Russian forces’ war crimes and make it pay for the immense costs of reconstruction. Besides, Kyiv has good reason to doubt whether Putin can be trusted to abide by any peace deal. Rather than looking to the West for diplomatic intervention, then, Ukrainian leaders are asking for more military and economic help. The United States and Europe have provided considerable intelligence, training, and hardware, but they have held off providing military systems of even greater capability, such as long-range missiles and advanced aircraft, for fear that doing so would provoke Russia to escalate, whether by using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine or deliberately attacking the troops or territory of a NATO member.

Although Washington is right to keep a watchful eye on the risk of escalation, its concerns are overblown. Western policy is caught between the goals of preventing catastrophic failure (in which an under-armed Ukraine is swallowed by Russia) and catastrophic success (in which an over-armed Ukraine leads a cornered Putin to escalate). But it is difficult to see what Russia would gain from escalation. Expanding the war by attacking a NATO member would not be in Russia’s interests, since the country is having a hard enough time fighting Ukraine alone, and its forces are severely depleted after a year of war. Nor would using nuclear weapons serve it well. A nuclear attack would likely prompt NATO to enter the war directly and decimate Russian positions throughout Ukraine. It could also alienate China and India, both of which have warned Russia against the use of nuclear weapons.

But the implausibility of nuclear use isn’t the only reason the West should discount Russia’s posturing; giving in to nuclear blackmail would also signal to other countries that such threats work, setting back the nonproliferation agenda and weakening deterrence. China, for instance, might conclude that nuclear threats can deter the United States from coming to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack.

It is thus time for the West to stop deterring itself and start giving Ukraine the tanks, long-range missiles, and other weapons it needs to wrest back control of more of its territory in the coming months. European countries have begun to deliver Leopard tanks, and the United States has pledged 31 Abrams tanks, which are scheduled to arrive in the fall. But both sides of the Atlantic should increase the size and the tempo of deliveries. More tanks would enhance Ukrainian forces’ ability to punch through Russia’s defensive lines in Ukraine’s south. Long-range missiles—namely, the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which the United States has so far refused to provide—would allow Ukraine to hit Russian positions, command posts, and ammunition depots deep in Russian-held territory, preparing the way for a more successful Ukrainian offensive. The U.S. military should also begin training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s. Training would take time, but starting it now would allow the United States to deliver advanced aircraft when the pilots are ready, sending a signal to Russia that Ukraine’s ability to wage war is on an upward trajectory.

Yet for all the good that greater Western military help would do, it is unlikely to change the fundamental reality that this war is headed for stalemate. It is of course possible that Ukraine’s coming offensive proves stunningly successful and allows the country to reclaim all occupied territory, including Crimea, resulting in a complete Russian defeat. But such an outcome is improbable. Even if the West steps up its military assistance, Ukraine is poised to fall well short of vanquishing Russian forces. It is running out of soldiers and ammunition, and its economy continues to deteriorate. Russian troops are dug in, and fresh recruits are heading to the front.

Moreover, if Moscow’s military position were to become precarious, it is quite possible that China would provide arms to Russia, whether directly or through third countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made a big, long-term wager on Putin and will not stand idly by as Russia suffers a decisive loss. Xi’s visit to Moscow in March strongly suggests that he is doubling down on his partnership with Putin, not backing away from it. Xi might also calculate that the risks of providing military assistance to Russia are modest. After all, his country is already decoupling from the West, and U.S. policy toward China seems destined to get tougher regardless of how much Beijing supports Moscow.

Ramping up the provision of military assistance to Ukraine, while it will help Ukrainian forces make progress on the battlefield, thus holds little promise of enabling Kyiv to restore full territorial integrity. Later this year, a stalemate is likely to emerge along a new line of contact. When that happens, an obvious question will arise: What next?

AFTER STALEMATE
More of the same makes little sense. Even from Ukraine’s perspective, it would be unwise to keep doggedly pursuing a full military victory that could prove Pyrrhic. Ukrainian forces have already suffered over 100,000 casualties and lost many of their best troops. The Ukrainian economy has shrunk by some 30 percent, the poverty rate is spiking, and Russia continues to bombard the country’s critical infrastructure. Around eight million Ukrainians have fled the country, with millions more internally displaced. Ukraine should not risk destroying itself in pursuit of goals that are likely out of reach.

Come the end of this fighting season, the United States and Europe will also have good reason to abandon their stated policy of supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” as U.S. President Joe Biden has put it. Maintaining Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign and secure democracy is a priority, but achieving that goal does not require the country to recover full control of Crimea and the Donbas in the near term. Nor should the West worry that pushing for a cease-fire before Kyiv reclaims all its territory will cause the rules-based international order to crumble. Ukrainian fortitude and Western resolve have already rebuffed Russia’s effort to subjugate Ukraine, dealt Moscow a decisive strategic defeat, and demonstrated to other would-be revisionists that pursuing territorial conquest can be a costly and vexing enterprise. Yes, it is critical to minimize Russian gains and demonstrate that aggression doesn’t pay, but this goal must be weighed against other priorities.

The reality is that continued large-scale support of Kyiv carries broader strategic risks. The war is eroding the West’s military readiness and depleting its weapons stockpiles; the defense industrial base cannot keep up with Ukraine’s expenditure of equipment and ammunition. NATO countries cannot discount the possibility of direct hostilities with Russia, and the United States must prepare for potential military action in Asia (to deter or respond to any Chinese move against Taiwan) and in the Middle East (against Iran or terrorist networks).

The war is imposing high costs on the global economy, as well. It has disrupted supply chains, contributing to high inflation and energy and food shortages. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that the war will reduce global economic output by $2.8 trillion in 2023. From France to Egypt to Peru, economic duress is triggering political unrest. The war is also polarizing the international system. As geopolitical rivalry between the Western democracies and a Chinese-Russian coalition augurs the return of a two-bloc world, most of the rest of the globe is sitting on the sidelines, preferring nonalignment to ensnarement in a new era of East-West rivalry. Disorder is radiating outward from the war in Ukraine.

Against this backdrop, neither Ukraine nor its NATO supporters can take Western unity for granted. American resolve is crucial for European staying power, but Washington faces mounting political pressure to reduce spending, rebuild U.S. readiness, and bulk up its capabilities in Asia. Now that Republicans control the House of Representatives, it will be harder for the Biden administration to secure sizable aid packages for Ukraine. And policy toward Ukraine could change significantly should Republicans win the White House in the 2024 election. It is time to ready a Plan B.

[welch]

And the rest of the article:

GETTING TO YES
Given the likely trajectory of the war, the United States and its partners need to begin formulating a diplomatic endgame now. Even as NATO members ramp up military assistance in support of Ukraine’s coming offensive, Washington should start consultations with its European allies and with Kyiv on a diplomatic initiative to be launched later in the year.

Under this approach, Ukraine’s Western supporters would propose a cease-fire as Ukraine’s coming offensive reaches its limits. Ideally, both Ukraine and Russia would pull back their troops and heavy weapons from the new line of contact, effectively creating a demilitarized zone. A neutral organization—either the UN or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—would send in observers to monitor and enforce the cease-fire and pullback. The West should approach other influential countries, including China and India, to support the cease-fire proposal. Doing so would complicate diplomacy, but getting buy-in from Beijing and New Delhi would increase the pressure on the Kremlin. In the event that China refused to support the cease-fire, Xi’s ongoing calls for a diplomatic offensive would be exposed as an empty gesture.

Assuming a cease-fire holds, peace talks should follow. Such talks should occur along two parallel tracks. On one track would be direct talks between Ukraine and Russia, facilitated by international mediators, on the terms of peace. On the second track, NATO allies would start a strategic dialogue with Russia on arms control and the broader European security architecture. Putin’s effort to undo the post–Cold War security order has backfired and ended up strengthening NATO. But that reality only increases the need for NATO and Russia to begin a constructive dialogue to prevent a new arms race, rebuild military-to-military contacts, and address other issues of common concern, including nuclear proliferation. The “2 plus 4” talks that helped end the Cold War provide a good precedent for this approach. East and West Germany negotiated their unification directly, while the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union negotiated the broader post–Cold War security architecture.

Provided that Ukraine makes battlefield gains this summer, it is at least plausible that Putin would view a cease-fire and peace plan as a face-saving off-ramp. To make this approach even more enticing, the West could also offer some limited relief from sanctions in return for Russia’s willingness to abide by a cease-fire, agree to a demilitarized zone, and participate meaningfully in peace talks. It is of course conceivable that Putin would reject a cease-fire—or accept it only for the purpose of rebuilding his military and making a later run at conquering Ukraine. But little would be lost by testing Moscow’s readiness for compromise. Regardless of Russia’s response, the West would continue to provide the arms Ukraine needs to defend itself over the long term and make sure that any pause in the fighting did not work to Russia’s advantage. And if Russia rejected a cease-fire (or accepted one and then violated it), its intransigence would deepen its diplomatic isolation, shore up the sanctions regime, and strengthen support for Ukraine in the United States and Europe.

Another plausible outcome is that Russia would agree to a cease-fire in order to pocket its remaining territorial gains but in fact has no intention of negotiating in good faith to secure a lasting peace settlement. Presumably, Ukraine would enter such negotiations by demanding its top priorities: the restoration of its 1991 borders, substantial reparations, and accountability for war crimes. But because Putin would surely reject these demands out of hand, a prolonged diplomatic stalemate would then emerge, effectively producing a new frozen conflict. Ideally, the cease-fire would hold, leading to a status quo like the one that prevails on the Korean Peninsula, which has remained largely stable without a formal peace pact for 70 years. Cyprus has similarly been divided but stable for decades. This is not an ideal outcome, but it is preferable to a high-intensity war that continues for years.

CONVINCING KYIV
Persuading Kyiv to go along with a cease-fire and uncertain diplomatic effort could be no less challenging than getting Moscow to do so. Many Ukrainians would see this proposal as a sellout and fear that the cease-fire lines would merely become new de facto borders. Zelensky would need to dramatically scale back his war aims after having promised victory since the early months of the war—no easy task for even the most talented of politicians.

But Kyiv may ultimately find much to like in the plan. Even though the end of fighting would freeze in place a new line of contact between Russia and Ukraine, Kyiv would not be asked or pressured to give up the goal of taking back all of its land, including Crimea and the Donbas. Rather, the plan would be to defer settling the status of the land and people still under Russian occupation. Kyiv would forgo an attempt to retake these territories by force now, a gambit that would surely be costly but is likely to fail, instead accepting that the recovery of territorial integrity must await a diplomatic breakthrough. A breakthrough, in turn, may be possible only after Putin is no longer in power. In the meantime, Western governments could promise to fully lift sanctions against Russia and normalize relations with it only if Moscow signed a peace agreement that was acceptable to Kyiv.

This formula thus blends strategic pragmatism with political principle. Peace in Ukraine cannot be held hostage to war aims that, however morally justified, are likely unattainable. At the same time, the West should not reward Russian aggression by compelling Ukraine to permanently accept the loss of territory by force. Ending the war while deferring the ultimate disposition of land still under Russian occupation is the solution.

Under the best of circumstances, Ukrainians have tough days ahead of them.
Even if a cease-fire held and a diplomatic process got underway, NATO countries should continue to arm Ukraine, removing any doubts in Kyiv that its compliance with a diplomatic roadmap would mean the end of military support. Moreover, the United States could make clear to Kyiv that if Putin violated the cease-fire while Ukraine honored it, Washington would further step up the flow of arms and waive restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to target military positions inside Russia from which attacks are being launched. Should Putin spurn a clear opportunity to end the war, Western governments would win renewed public favor for providing such additional support to Ukraine.

As another incentive to Ukraine, the West should offer it a formalized security pact. Although NATO is unlikely to offer membership to Ukraine—a consensus within the alliance appears out of reach for now—a subset of NATO members, including the United States, could conclude a security agreement with Ukraine that pledges it adequate means of self-defense. This security pact, although it would fall short of an ironclad security guarantee, might resemble Israel’s defense relationship with the United States or the relationship that Finland and Sweden enjoyed with NATO before they decided to join the alliance. The pact might also include a provision similar to Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which calls for consultations when any party judges its territorial integrity, political independence, or security to be threatened.

Alongside this security pact, the EU should craft a long-term economic support pact and propose a timetable for admission to the EU, guaranteeing Ukraine that it is on the path toward full integration into the union. Under the best of circumstances, Ukrainians have tough days ahead of them; EU membership would offer them the light at the end of the tunnel that they so deserve to see.

Even with these inducements, Ukraine might still refuse the call for a cease-fire. If so, it would hardly be the first time in history that a partner dependent on U.S. support balked at being pressured to scale back its objectives. But if Kyiv did balk, the political reality is that support for Ukraine could not be sustained in the United States and Europe, especially if Russia were to accept the cease-fire. Ukraine would have little choice but to accede to a policy that gave it the economic and military support needed to secure the territory under its control—the vast majority of the country—while taking off the table the liberation by force of those territories still under Russian occupation. Moreover, the West would continue to use sanctions and diplomatic leverage to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity—but at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield.

A WAY OUT
For over a year, the West has allowed Ukraine to define success and set the war aims of the West. This policy, regardless of whether it made sense at the outset of the war, has now run its course. It is unwise, because Ukraine’s goals are coming into conflict with other Western interests. And it is unsustainable, because the war’s costs are mounting, and Western publics and their governments are growing weary of providing ongoing support. As a global power, the United States must acknowledge that a maximal definition of the interests at stake in the war has produced a policy that increasingly conflicts with other U.S. priorities.

The good news is that there is a feasible path out of this impasse. The West should do more now to help Ukraine defend itself and advance on the battlefield, putting it in the best position possible at the negotiating table later this year. In the meantime, Washington should set a diplomatic course that ensures the security and viability of Ukraine within its de facto borders—while working to restore the country’s territorial integrity over the long term. This approach may be too much for some and not enough for others. But unlike the alternatives, it has the advantage of blending what is desirable with what is doable.


RICHARD HAASS is President of the Council on Foreign Relations.
CHARLES KUPCHAN is Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukrai...k%20-%20112017[/QUOTE]

[dneal]

The situation is definitely under the Clausewitzian "fog of war"; but there's increased tension from Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin and Putin. Prigozhin is claiming Putin shelled Wagner group locations. Putin denies it. Prighozhin released a video claiming corruption among Russian generals and whatnot, and reportedly said he is going to send 25,000 men for a coup. Putin has deployed troops for security.

Bearing in mind the "fog of war" is real, sides intentionally obfuscate and wage information operations (propaganda), and the maxim "the first report from the scouts is always wrong"... Here's the latest:



- Reports the Federal Security Service (FSB) has allowed Wagner to enter Russian city of Rostov without any resistance. This JUST came in and could mean the FSB is part of the coup, OR they are trying to save face after Wagner was able to enter without resistance.

- Prigozhin JUST CLAIMED the Russian "Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov gave the command to open fire from aircraft on Wagner columns mixed with civilian vehicles. The pilots refused to follow the order"

- Roadblocks have been established by the FSB & SOBR on the Moscow-Voronezh-Rostov-on-Don highway.

- Wagner has accused any Russian military personnel who don't assist them in their "cleansing campaign" of collaborating with the Ukrainians and stated that they will be dealt with accordingly.

- Multiple Russian military generals have made videos urging Wagner not to proceed with this attack.

- The OMON and SOBR units of the Russian Guard are on high alert, and security in Moscow has been significantly intensified.

- Allegedly, a clash has occurred between Wagner and units of the Rosgvardia on the Rostov-Moscow highway, near Kozachi Laheri.

- It is estimated that only 25% of Russians currently have access to the internet.

- Armed vehicles have filled the streets of Rostov, and dozens of aircraft filled with Russian special forces are flying to the region.

- According to Russia's defense ministry, Ukraine has "taken advantage of Prigozhin's provocation to destabilize the situation" and is attacking Russia's forces along the flanks.

- Russia's Ministry Of Defense has REPEATEDLY asked Wagner to stand down.

- Russian media has reported that "there is panic in the Kremlin; no one can reach Putin" and that the current mood among St. Petersburg elites is "When choosing between Putin and Prigozhin, Prigozhin is now the preferred choice. They support him."

- Prigozhin says he and his men are ready to go "all the way" and that "he and his men will destroy anyone who stands in their way."

- Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov: Putin receives reports 24/7 about the measures taken related to the attempt of an armed rebellion