Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 129
August 16, 2023
Sputnik: Russia ‘Firm Supporter of Multipolar World’: Key Takeaways of Moscow Security Conference
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.comSputnik, 8/15/23
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu earlier touted the conference as “a much-needed venue” to publicly discuss the most pressing global and regional security issues.
The XI Moscow Conference on International Security opened in the town of Kubinka outside Moscow on Tuesday, with an array of senior Russian and foreign officials delivering online speeches at the event, titled “Realities of global security in a multipolar world.”
They included President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia, as well as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu.
Russian President Putin: Global Community Should Create ‘Contours of the Future’
In his video address to participants, President Putin stressed the importance of conducting global security-related discussions “in the context of the formation of a multipolar world.”
“Such open, honest, and unbiased discussions are extremely important today, because all of us – the entire international community – will have to create the contours of the future,” the Russian president said.
He stressed that Russia remains a “firm supporter of a multipolar world order based on the priority of the norms and principles of international law, as well as the sovereignty and equality of states, constructive cooperation and trust.”
The Russian head of state recalled that nowadays, both long-standing and new conflicts are being inflated in different regions of the world. The goal of those who fuel these conflicts is to “mercilessly” capitalize on the natural resources of the countries involved in the standoffs, Putin added.
In his vein, he touched upon the Ukraine conflict, pointing to “billions of dollars being pumped into [Kiev’s] neo-Nazi regime, which is also provided with military equipment and ammunition, as well as military advisers and mercenaries.” Putin emphasized that “everything is being done to further ignite this conflict and draw other states into it.”
Separately, the Russian president recalled that NATO countries continue to build up and modernize their offensive capabilities as the US is seeking “to reformat” the system of interstate interaction that has developed in the Asia-Pacific region for the sake of Washington’s interests.
He accused NATO members of trying to transfer military confrontation to outer and information space, and using military and non-military means of pressure. “What’s more, all this is happening against the backdrop of the destruction of the arms control system,” Putin underscored.
Russian Defense Minister Shoigu: Ukraine’s Military Resource ‘Almost Exhausted’
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, for his part, focused on issues related to Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, which “put an end to the West’s domination in military sphere.” According to him, Western countries can no longer impose their will on other nations.
The Russian defense minister stressed that “Preliminary results of hostilities indicate that Ukraine’s military resource is almost exhausted.”
He made it clear that Russia is ready to share assessments of ineffectiveness of Western technology with its partners, referring to Ukraine’s military equipment that it earlier received from the US and its allies.
“I would like to stress once again that there is nothing unique or indestructible for Russian weapons on the battlefield today. In many cases, even Soviet-made equipment is superior in its combat characteristics to Western models. We have objective monitoring data on the destruction of German tanks, US armored vehicles, UK missiles and other weapon systems,” Shoigu said.
He added that some of Ukraine’s Western-supplied weapons that have been seized by Russian forces are currently on display at the Patriot Park in Kubinka.
Shoigu also dwelt on the “alarming situation” around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, saying that “Kiev exposes it to regular shelling from heavy weapons.” According to the Russian defense minister, “the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces can provoke a nuclear catastrophe.”
He also said that as far as the special operation is concerned, Russia has so far refrained from using cluster munitions, but that Moscow may reconsider its decision.
“I would like to draw attention to the fact that we also have cluster munitions in service. Until now, we have refrained from using them for humanitarian reasons. However, this decision can be reconsidered,” Shoigu emphasized, adding that the US is committing a war crime by using cluster munitions in Ukraine.
Speaking of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, he said that Kiev used it as a cover-up for its weapons and ammunition depots to protect them from Russian missile strikes.
“The Kiev regime has shown particular cynicism in the implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. By using it as a cover from Russian missile strikes, Kiev has amassed weapons and ammunition in Odessa and other Black Sea ports, which were routinely delivered to the front line,” the Russian defense minister said.
He separately touched upon relations between Russia and China, which Shoigu said “exceeded the level of strategic partnership in all respects, becoming more than allied ones.”
Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu: Beijing Ready to Bolster Security Work Within SCO
The Russian defense minister was echoed by Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu, who told the Moscow conference that military relations between Beijing and Moscow are not directed against third countries.
Li also signaled his country’s readiness to step up security work within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and bolster defense cooperation with Iran and Belarus.
“China is willing, as before, to strengthen security work within the SCO, and actively deepen defense cooperation with new SCO country Iran and Belarus, which is joining the organization,” the Chinese defense minister underlined, adding that Beijing is ready to strengthen international cooperation on arms control.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: West Tries to Destroy Security Architecture in Asia-Pacific
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in turn, berated Washington, NATO and the EU for providing Ukraine with weapons, which he said might spark a direct military conflict between nuclear powers.
“The United States, NATO and the European Union are pumping Kiev with more modern weapons, fomenting the Ukraine conflict further and provoking the uncontrolled spread of weapons across the world. Their adventurous and irresponsible policy significantly increases the threat of a direct military clash between nuclear powers,” Lavrov pointed out.
He accused Western countries of trying to scrap the security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region and create military blocs there for promoting NATO infrastructure.
“Having proclaimed the indivisibility of the security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific region, NATO members crossed out all their previous mantra about the purely defensive nature of the alliance and officially declared that from now on, they will not only protect their territory, but will also promote their dominance in this region, the top Russian diplomat stressed.
Lavrov also said that Russia is concerned over the US’ apparent drive “to derail’ the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, “one of the cornerstone elements of the global security architecture.”
“In particular, we observe that such risks are being created as a result of the US’ clear attempts to withdraw from the procedure of this treaty the Anglo-Saxon nuclear project within the framework of the new military bloc AUKUS,” the Russian foreign minister said.
Belarusian President Lukashenko: International Situation ‘Severely Tense’
In his written address to participants of the Moscow conference, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, for his part, warned that the global political situation remains “severely tense” due to the aggravation of “practically all known challenges and threats.”
He said that “there are growing risks of using weapons of mass destruction, including provocations related to using nuclear and biological weapons.”
“Against this background, […] Minsk along with its partners and within the framework of the Union State of Belarus and Russia, makes every effort to strengthen cooperation in the fight against transnational challenges and threats of various nature “, Lukashenko stressed.
Russian Foreign Intel Service Chief: America Cracks Down on Any Alternative Stance
In his speech at the conference, Sergey Naryshkin, chief of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, in particular, spoke of the West’s biased approach to freedom of expression, referring to “Americans and Europeans cracking down on the spread of any alternative viewpoints that undermine their dominant narrative.”
“Not only the news agencies RT and Sputnik, which have a large audience, but even small media resources that oppose the deceitful Western officialdom are being shut down and sanctioned. In a number of the most rabid Russophobic countries, liability over viewing illegal content has already been introduced,” he emphasized.
Lt. Col. Daniel Davis: Russia’s ‘Ugly’ Strategic Leader Problem In Ukraine
By Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, 1945, 8/2/23
This is the final chapter of a four-part series providing a balanced analysis of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Russia’s military performance since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The last installment looked at “the bad” in the tactical record of the Russian armed forces. This final assessment considers “the ugly” performance of Russian’s senior leadership, which if not corrected could prove to be Russia’s undoing.
As detailed in the previous article, Russia built a Potemkin military in the decade prior to the invasion, and the strategy it chose to conduct the invasion was deeply flawed. The two men responsible for building that fragile army and designing the invasion plans were Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Both men rose to power in 2012.
When the army Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he had built over the past decade was exposed as a hollow shell, and after the strategy for the invasion imploded, one might have expected Putin to fire these two men. Yet they never faced discipline or demotion. Both remain firmly in place – and since February 2022, they have remained at the center of controversy.
Failure to Prepare for Ukraine’s 2022 Fall Offensives
After the initial invasion plan fell apart, and it became clear that an insufficient number of inadequately prepared troops could not accomplish the Kremlin’s objectives, Russian leaders ordered the withdrawal of tens of thousands of Russian mechanized troops north of Kyiv and Kharkiv. These troops redeployed toward the Kremlin’s main effort, the Donbas region. Given the situation, this was the best move in a basket of bad options.
The Russian army did recover from its disastrous opening round, and through the early summer of 2022 it successfully captured the key cities of Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk. But by early July, the Russian army ran out of steam and effectively stopped its westward drives. The Ukrainian command, meanwhile, sacrificed thousands of its troops and conscripts to slow and then stop the Russian drive westward while building up two offensive formations. Russia knew about one of these, in Kherson Oblast, but the formation in the Kharkiv region escaped Gerasimov’s notice.
While Russian troops were licking their wounds and resting from the summer offensive in the Donbas, they were busy preparing in Kherson for Ukraine’s widely publicized offensive. Initially, Russia’s preparation proved effective, as the Ukrainian Armed Forces made little headway and suffered enormous casualties.
But while Russia myopically focused on Kherson, Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi pulled off the biggest surprise of the war. Zaluzhnyi covertly assembled a large attack force in the Kherson region and unleashed an offensive for which Russian forces in the north were completely unprepared.
That lack of preparedness was yet another failure of Russia’s top commanders. When Russian forces redeployed the bulk of their forces from the northern part of the country in April and May, they left what amounted to a token force to cover tens of thousands of square kilometers. Russian troops there were outnumbered eight to one, but even that doesn’t explain the true discrepancy.
A New York Times investigation into the battle revealed that to defend the vast expanse in Northern Ukraine, Russia’s high command had “relied on bedraggled backup forces, many of them separatist fighters from Ukraine’s long conflict in its divided east, to hold territory as the regular Russian army fought hundreds of miles away.”
The Russian commanding generals should never have left so much territory to so few and untrained men. Even then, they should have ordered them to build hasty defensive positions and given them the resources to do the job. Otherwise, they should have reduced their holdings and held on to only as much territory as they had men and resources to control.
The Russian command did neither. It lost thousands of troops and thousands of square kilometers in the process. Thus, by the beginning of December 2022, Putin had learned that his top two military leaders had crafted a poorly designed, inadequately resourced, and badly executed invasion. He had seen their subsequent offensive operations throughout the summer founder, and by the fall, he had seen yet another major operational error committed by Gerasimov and Shoigu.
Putin took no action to discipline or remove either man.
Russia’s most senior military leaders still were not done making major mistakes. Perhaps as cover for Shoigu and Gerasimov’s errors, someone had to take the blame for the loss of Kherson. That fell on the commander of Russia’s so-called special military operation, Gen. Sergey Surovikin. Putin not only refused to challenge his top general, but in January, he demoted Surovikin and elevated Gerasimov to commander of all Russian combat forces in the war.
Failure to Prevent Open Rebellion
Just days before the change of commanders, another problem arose, as the violent and emotional leader of the Wagner Group private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, went public with harsh and foul-mouthed criticism of Gerasimov. Prigozhin claimed that the Ministry of Defense was intentionally withholding critical ammunition stocks for Wagner’s fight in Bakhmut, causing his troops to suffer greater casualties.
The feud continued into 2023. In February, Prigozhin accused the Russian generals of treason for failing to provide the necessary ammunition. On May 5, Prigozhin threatened to pull his troops out of the fight for Bakhmut if Moscow didn’t provide more artillery ammunition. He delivered an expletive-filled tirade against Shoigu and Gerasimov, accusing them of failing to provide the promised ammunition.
At no point did Gerasimov or Shoigu discipline Prigozhin. At no point did Putin take any public action, either against his top two generals or Prigozhin. The matter was allowed to fester, and on June 24, Prigozhin’s feud with Gerasimov and Shoigu exploded into an armed revolt. Prigozhin drove tanks into Rostov-on-Don, where Gerasimov’s headquarters was located, and occupied the headquarters building. He then ordered other armed columns to start driving to Moscow, to “seek justice” for his men’s losses.
Only when a potential coup was underway did Putin get involved. Prigozhin’s audacious move failed. The Wagner Group was effectively dismantled in Ukraine. Its tanks and other equipment were folded into the regular army, and Prigozhin’s men were sent to Belarus, Syria, or Africa. Gerasimov and Shoigu, however, yet again remained in place. But still, the dysfunction at the top was not over.
Dysfunction between Gerasimov/Shoigu and Top Commanding Generals
Some of Russia’s most experienced and successful generals had similar complaints against the Ministry of Defense and the commander of the armed forces. Instead of heeding the warnings of his combat generals, Putin stood passively by as Shoigu fired the commanding generals of the 58th Army, the 106th Airborne Division, and 7th Airborne Division. In total, eight generals have been fired by Gerasimov and Shoigu in recent days.
Meanwhile, back on the front, the Russian army, after spending between six and nine months building an elaborate and professionally designed system of defensive belts, has been performing admirably. Since June 5, the UAF has been throwing everything it has at the Russians — including hundreds of Western tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery systems — and thus far the Kremlin’s forces have held the line. If Gerasimov and Shoigu deserve blame for the chaos at the top, they also deserve credit for the things that have gone well.
But defense has always been the strongest form of war. Russia’s recent success in blunting Ukraine’s offensive owes as much to enduring fundamentals — and to egregious missteps by Ukrainian leaders that we will discuss in a future analysis — as it does to the plans made by the Kremlin’s leaders. It is what happens next that may determine the war’s outcome.
Russian tactical and operational troops and leaders (platoon through brigade) have accumulated considerable experience since the war began. Some of them have shown commendable capacity in adapting to the conditions of modern war, both offensively and defensively. The longer the war goes, the better many of the mid- to lower-level Russian fighters become. The same has thus far not been true of the highest Russian leaders, and that more than anything may determine the outcome of the war’s next phase.
Ramifications
The Ukrainian offensive currently underway will culminate soon, regardless of any territory Zelensky’s troops recover. The defensive doctrine the Russians have been using since January of this year is straight out of decades-old Soviet manuals. The intent of a Soviet-style defensive is to weaken an opponent’s offensive strength by conducting a mobile, flexible defense. Once the attackers reach a critical level of weakness, the Russians will doctrinally move to launch a major counteroffensive.
That will be the true test of Russia’s senior leaders, and of Putin himself. If Russia is unable to mount an offensive force that captures major cities or at least completes the seizure of all of the Donbas, it will place Putin in an alarming spot. He’s already seen his government suffer a failed rebellion because of problems with senior leaders that Putin put in place and has kept in place. If the plans Gerasimov and Shoigu craft, and Putin authorizes, fail to win the war, and the conflict degenerates into a protracted stalemate with little prospect for victory, Putin may suffer a loss of confidence in the eyes of his most effective field commanders, as well as rank-and-file soldiers. In that case, even Putin’s long-term security might not be assured.
Conclusion
Those who dislike Russia will see the evidence of “bad” and “ugly” in this and the previous publication and conclude that Russia cannot win and Ukraine will ultimately prevail. That is certainly the view of many in Kyiv. But it is too early to reach such conclusions, because mixed in with manifestations of the very ugly — open rebellion is almost as bad as it can get within a country — Russia has also demonstrated a modest amount of “good.”
The defense the Russians have built at the operational level, and have thus far been executing at the tactical level, has been exceptional by any historical military standard. What very much remains to be seen is whether Russia’s strategic leaders have learned enough lessons to translate that success into offensive effectiveness at the operational level. The skills needed to conduct wars on defense and on offense are different.
Yet it is probably not accurate to say that Russia will lose the war if its next offensive does not work. If Putin is able to maintain effective control of the political apparatus in Moscow and manage dissatisfaction among his generals and throughout the ranks, Russia is still likely to prevail in the long run. They have a vastly larger country, millions of military aged males, and an industry that is cranking up to higher and higher levels of production. It is unlikely that Ukraine will ever be able to match Russia’s natural and human resources over time — even with continued NATO contributions, which are not guaranteed.
Ultimately, war remains a chaotic, brutal, and unpredictable affair that is almost always determined by which side has the best leadership, the most resources, and the firmest political staying power. The pressures on each side come from their enemy as much as from their own domestic populations. Only time will tell how this conflict ends, but a cold, balanced assessment doesn’t bode well for Kyiv.
August 15, 2023
Stephen Breyer: Ground softening for big Russian offensive
By Stephen Breyer, Asia Times, 8/14/23
Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute.
It is still too early to say whether the direction of the Ukraine war has changed, but there is increasing evidence that Ukraine’s inability to penetrate Russian defenses along the southern line, and challenges in the directions of Kupyansk, Lyman and Bakhmut suggests the entire war could be reaching a decisive conclusion.
It is, for that reason, that the Biden administration is asking Congress for $20 billion for Ukraine. The idea seems to be to provide psychological support to both President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian army.
This time, however, Congress may not rubber stamp this outlandish money request. It is not clear why US$20 billion is needed, and sentiment in the US and Europe is starting to shift toward finding a solution to this costly and difficult war.
Concerns range from depleting US strategic reserves to prolonging a conflict that increasingly looks like it will end up badly in a Ukrainian defeat. While opposition is well short of a majority, further battlefield setbacks could lead Congress to change its mind on financial requests that break the bank.
One thing is certain: It is unlikely that any Washington politician can mobilize public support for the war.
Information about Russian operations, particularly in the Kupyansk direction, is hard to find. The Russians are not calling their operations an offensive, although unconfirmed reports say that Russia has mustered 100,000 or more troops for their operation in this area, and have moved in a lot of heavy equipment.
Most revealing was a convoy of BM-21 multiple rocket launchers, seen heading to the area. There also have been reports of Ukrainian units refusing to fight, and while information on such mutinies has been suppressed, it seems to have happened in the past few days.
Zelensky is hoping to retake Bakhmut, his key objective before he lost the city to Wagner forces. At the moment Bakhmut city is not threatened. Instead, the Ukrainians have been trying to take back settlements to the north and south of the city.
The latest information is that early Ukrainian advances in both directions have been repulsed, and that any hope Zelensky may have of creating a victory on the ashes of Bakhmut seems to have failed to materialize.
The Bakhmut venture, once it is finally sorted out, could create a huge internal problem for Zelensky. He is about to fire his defense minister, the man who fronted for him in getting arms from Europe and the United States. Anticipated replacement candidates are, for the most part, inexperienced and unconnected to the war.
Oleksiy Reznikov, the sitting defense minister, may be tipped to be sent to the UK as the Ukrainian ambassador. No one can say for sure whether Ukraine’s military still supports Zelensky, but as more and more cracks appear in Kiev, it is a good bet that they may take matters into their own hands. Should that happen, Zelensky will likely be deposed.
Ukraine has brought up reserve units, many NATO-trained, to try and head off any big Russian advance.
But committing these reserves leaves Ukraine with less trained brigades for the future, since Russia’s primary strategy has been to let them come in fairly close and then pound them with artillery, air strikes and aerial mines. It is now reported that Ukraine has ordered a mass evacuation, while at the same time mining bridges and roads to slow a Russian advance.
The Russians have been fairly clever in managing their war front. Few attacks have been made on Kiev, except one more than a month ago on Ukraine’s intelligence center in the city.
Little is said in the Russian press about the top Ukrainian commanders, Valerii Zaluzhny and Oleksandr Syrskyi, other than to note that the Ukrainian army operates professionally. This may suggest the Russian door is open to dialogue with Ukraine’s military.
Meanwhile, reports indicate that the Wagner troops in Belarus are starting to return to Russia. The immediate cause is that Belarus has refused to pay them, leaving them without salaries for their troops or money to purchase equipment.
It is possible that some of them will be shipped off to Africa. While Russia has not supported the coup in Niger, that disclaimer does not necessarily apply to Wagner. The recent decision of ECOWAS to agree to putting together a military operation to “restore democracy in Niger,” offers Russia and Wagner a significant opportunity.
ECOWAS troops are nearly as bad as Niger’s. They lack transport, communications and supplies. Any war there, without an outside stabilizing force, is likely to become a war of atrocities. No one knows whether Putin will tip his hat to Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and fly them into Niamey.
Niger, of course, is a sideshow and Ukraine is the main event, with significant geopolitical implications. The Russians have been holding out instead of starting a big push to finish the war, trying to wear down the Ukrainians and split support for the war in Kiev.
But war planners in Moscow know how to count, and it could be they now see opportunities for a big offensive. If it materializes, keep an eye on Kupyansk.
Newsweek: U.S. Troops Should be Sent to Ukraine, Third of Americans Say
Photo by Specna Arms on Pexels.comVery disturbing that the most gung-ho are Millenials and Gen Zer’s. These are presumably the demographics more inclined to look at alternative media, yet they seem to have imbibed the establishment narrative on Ukraine the most. On the other hand, boomers appear to be the most opposed while Generation X (my generation – apparently the invisible generation) is not mentioned at all. – Natylie
By Ellie Cook, Newsweek, 8/2/23
Almost a third of Americans support U.S. troops being sent to war-torn Ukraine, according to a new poll.
A total of 31 percent of eligible voters in the U.S. support or strongly support American military forces heading to the battlefields of Ukraine, polling conducted exclusively for Newsweek by Redfield & Wilton Strategies has revealed.
A quarter of respondents neither supported nor opposed the idea of sending U.S. soldiers to Ukraine, with 34 percent against the suggestion. Just under one in ten respondents did not know.
The Pentagon said it had no comment to make when contacted by Newsweek about the results of the poll.
The U.S. is by far Ukraine’s biggest backer in terms of military aid. Since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, Washington has pledged more than $43 billion in security assistance to Kyiv. But the Biden administration has said since the early days of the conflict that U.S. soldiers will not be heading to the front lines in Ukraine.
A total of 1,500 people participated in the online poll, carried out between July 25 and July 26.
In the poll, those identified as “Millennial,” between 27 and 42 years old, were most likely to “strongly support” committing U.S. troops to Ukraine. However, more respondents born between 1997 and 2012 said they would support the measure overall, 47 percent saying they supported or strongly supported sending U.S. troops.
Nearly a third of respondents aged over 59 said they opposed pledging U.S. troops to Ukraine, with a further 25 percent “strongly” opposing the suggestion.
Just four percent of “Gen Z” respondents, aged between 18 and 26, said they felt strongly against sending U.S. troops.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden said U.S. military forces “are not and will not be engaged in a conflict with Russia in Ukraine.”
Biden said U.S. forces would be transferred to Europe, but they were not heading to the continent “to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the east.”
“As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with a full force of American power,” Biden said at the time.
However, Ukraine is not part of the alliance, despite loud calls from Kyiv to be allowed to join and promises from NATO that Kyiv could become a member state further down the line.
Under Article 5, NATO members are obligated to treat an attack on one state as an attack on all, and this is one of the reasons for the hesitancy about allowing Ukraine to become part of NATO while it is still at war with Russia.
In the polling for Newsweek, 47 percent of respondents said they either supported or strongly supported Ukraine being admitted into NATO, with just 15 percent saying they opposed Kyiv’s membership. A further 29 percent expressed neither support nor opposition, and 10 percent did not know.
Just over a quarter said NATO should admit Ukraine immediately, whereas 37 percent believed Ukraine should become a NATO state after the war with Russia has finished.
On July 13, Biden said he had authorized an additional 3,000 reserve troops to be sent to Europe.
“This reaffirms the unwavering support and commitment to the defense of NATO’s eastern flank in wake of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked war on Ukraine,” U.S. Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims told a Pentagon media briefing.
These soldiers “are not additional forces” but will “augment what we already have there,” he said, adding their activities will be decided by the U.S. European Command.
In mid-April, ABC News reported that a “small U.S. military special operations team” had been operating from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv since the early days of the war, but that they did not approach the front lines, citing a former and a current U.S. official.
On November 1, 2022, Pentagon Press Secretary, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told media that U.S. forces were at the embassy, but Washington had “been very clear there are no combat forces in Ukraine, no U.S. forces conducting combat operations in Ukraine.”
“We have U.S. Marines at the embassy doing normal U.S. Marine-type guard duties,” Ryder said. “These are not combat squads that are going out.”
August 14, 2023
Connor Echols: Leading medical journals call for abolition of nuclear weapons
By Connor Echols, Responsible Statecraft, 8/2/23
In an unprecedented move, more than 100 leading medical journals from around the world called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons in an op-ed published Tuesday.
“The prevention of any use of nuclear weapons is […] an urgent public health priority and fundamental steps must also be taken to address the root cause of the problem — by abolishing nuclear weapons,” the editorial argues, adding that current non-proliferation efforts are “inadequate to protect the world’s population against the threat of nuclear war.”
“As editors of health and medical journals worldwide, we call on health professionals to alert the public and our leaders to this major danger to public health and the essential life support systems of the planet — and urge action to prevent it,” they write. The co-authors include the editors-in-chief of the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.
The piece, which was sponsored by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, notes that the risk of nuclear war has gone up in recent years due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The authors slammed nuclear states for failing to pursue total denuclearization in good faith, a key provision of the Cold War-era Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement that limits which states have access to nuclear weapons.
The article’s release is set to coincide with the 78th anniversary of the American nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those strikes killed as many as 200,000 Japanese civilians, not including those who may have died from cancer and other radiation-related illnesses in later years.
As the editorial notes, the impact of nuclear war today would likely be far worse. Researchers have found that a war involving roughly two percent of the world’s nukes could kill 120 million people directly. And a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia could lead to “nuclear winter,” in which the vast majority of humans would perish and civilization as we know it would cease to exist.
The call also comes as millions of people are flocking to theaters to watch ‘Oppenheimer,’ the new Christopher Nolan film about the scientist who led the program that created the atomic bomb. Notably, the movie has faced criticism for not portraying the aftermath of American attacks on Japan and the long-term health consequences of nuclear testing.
The editorial is unlikely to get a warm reception from U.S. officials, who have long argued that security considerations make denuclearization impossible in the near term. And some experts argue that full denuclearization would actually raise the risk of cataclysmic war between the world’s military powers, which have assiduously avoided direct clashes since acquiring the ultimate weapon.
“Nuclear weapons took great power war off the agenda of international politics,” Michael Desch of Notre Dame University told RS earlier this year. And, as Desch noted, the total number of nuclear weapons has dropped dramatically from its high of 65,000 warheads in the mid-1980s.
The Biden administration has so far paid little attention to nuclear negotiations of any sort, though it recently offered to restart nuclear talks with Russia and China “without preconditions.”
The op-ed, for its part, offers three concrete steps that could reduce nuclear risks short of full abolition. One suggestion is for states to adopt a “no first use” policy, meaning that they would only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack on their territory. Another is to take nukes off “hair-trigger alert,” which would lengthen decision-making windows in case of an apparent attack. Finally, the physicians call on states at war to “pledge publicly and unequivocally that they will not use nuclear weapons in these conflicts.”
But, as the authors note, none of these steps would eliminate the risk of nuclear apocalypse.
“The danger is great and growing,” the medical experts argue. “The nuclear armed states must eliminate their nuclear arsenals before they eliminate us.”
August 13, 2023
Melvin Goodman: The CIA Director Should Not be Part of the Policy Process
By Melvin Goodman, Counterpunch, 7/28/23
Presidents typically announce controversial personnel and policy decisions on a Friday to ensure that the Saturday papers, which are not widely read, are charged with informing the general public. This was the case this past Friday, when President Joe Biden appointed CIA director William Burns to the Cabinet. President Harry S. Truman, who created the CIA in 1947, favored the depoliticization of the agency and its directors, which is why he initially chose professional military officers to be the director of central intelligence. No CIA director was appointed to the cabinet until the Reagan administration several decades later.
It is ironic that Biden chose Burns for the cabinet because I believe Burns was appointed to CIA in part to depoliticize the role of the director in the wake of the failed stewardship of CIA directors Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel in the Trump administration. Too many CIA directors in the past were particularly bad choices because they were too close to partisan politics. Such directors as George H.W. Bush (the Ford administration); William Casey (the Reagan administration); and Mike Pompeo (the Trump administration) were bad choices because of their partisan views. As president, George H.W. Bush appointed Robert Gates to lead the CIA because Gates’ loyalty to the president (and the entire Bush family) could be assumed. Barack Obama’s appointment of John Brennan was similarly flawed, and Brennan—like Gates—was more concerned with serving the White House than telling truth to power.
When George H.W. Bush was named director of the CIA in 1976, he asked President Gerald Ford to place him in the cabinet. Ford rejected that request and, upon reflection, Bush agreed that it would have been an inappropriate move. When Bush became president in 1989, he refused to give cabinet status to either William Webster or Bob Gates.
A strong and independent CIA director is essential to deal with White House pressures to ensure that intelligence assessments support policy. The Carter administration scrutinized CIA director Stansfield Turner’s testimony on arms control because it wanted to make sure that Turner would tell the Congress that CIA’s monitoring of any strategic arms control agreement would be foolproof. Vice President Dick Cheney made numerous trips to the CIA in the run-up to the Iraq War to make sure that CIA intelligence supported White House claims regarding Iraqi weapons of mass production. Donald Trump relied on CIA director Pompeo to put pressure on the intelligence directorate to justify withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord.
These are important considerations regarding the policy role of CIA directors, which is why it was disconcerting to observe the mishandling and misunderstanding of the issue by the mainstream media, particularly by the New York Times. On Saturday, Michael Shear’s article in the Times was headlined ”Biden Makes CIA Director Member of the Cabinet Again,” which incorrectly assumed that the CIA director was traditionally a member of the cabinet. But the CIA is not a policy making institution, and presidents initially did not appoint intelligence directors to their cabinets.
President Ronald Reagan broke this important tradition in 1981, when he made CIA director William Casey a cabinet member. Casey believed that cabinet status gave him a platform for shaping national security policy. He took advantage of this appointment to shape or politicize the intelligence of the CIA and to manage the Iran-Contra operation. In his important memoir, Secretary of State George Shultz stressed that he was aware that Casey and his deputy, Bob Gates, were shaping intelligence on the Soviet Union, so he discounted it.
President Donald Trump placed CIA directors Pompeo and Haspel in his cabinet, and Pompeo reliably tried to politicize intelligence on such sensitive policy issues as Iran. In view of Haspel’s role in the sadistic CIA program of torture and abuse, it was particularly inexorable to place her in such an important institution.
William Burns is far and away the best CIA director in recent memory, perhaps in the 75 years of its history, and clearly the national security heavyweight in the Biden administration. Burns repeatedly denies that he is engaged in the diplomacy of the Biden administration, but he has taken on a substantive and significant policy role. His numerous trips to key capitals belie his denials regarding diplomatic activism. It is difficult to believe that he has not taken part in policy discussions, particularly in view of the limited experience and knowledge of the Biden national security team (Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is traveling to Tonga this week to open the U.S. embassy there).
In view of Burns’ extensive experience in sensitive diplomatic matters, it is reasonable to assume that he will be asked to contribute to discussions on sensitive policy issues. Burns repeatedly states that he is not engaged in diplomacy, but he traveled to Kyiv and Moscow with warnings of last year’s Russian invasion. And Burns, who conducted secret diplomacy with Iran on behalf of the Obama administration, traveled to Beijing for Biden to open lines of communication. It is up to Burns to ensure that he isn’t tempted to somehow shape intelligence analysis to a particular policy.
This should have been one of the major lessons of the CIA’s intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq War, when the British intelligence chief wrote a secret memorandum for the British Prime Minister, charging that the White House and CIA director George Tenet were shaping U.S. intelligence to U.S. policy regarding weapons of mass destruction. When the Soviet Union was heading toward dissolution in the 1980s, CIA director Casey and his deputy, Gates, “shaped” U.S. intelligence to paint a picture of a threatening Soviet Union in order to justify increased defense spending. Gates, who was a weather vane for all of Casey’s hard-line views, finally acknowledged in his memoir that he watched Casey “on issue after issue, sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued.”
Burns has a well-deserved reputation for integrity, but he could be tested by the Biden administration, particularly in an election year.
Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.
August 12, 2023
Daniel J. Mahoney: The Ukrainian Tragedy
Photo by Nati on Pexels.comBy Daniel J. Mahoney, The American Mind, 6/22/23
Those of us who are attentive to the lessons of the past will remember that the architects of the second Gulf War, the two-part crusade to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s nefarious despotism and bring the blessings of democracy to the Arab Islamic Middle East, only belatedly discovered the fact that the divide between Sunnis and Shiites and the persistence of deep tribal cleavages were the fundamental realities we inherited in a newly “liberated” Iraq. Armchair theorists had spoken of an Iraqi middle class yearning for civic freedom, and of a reformed Islam waiting to find expression in “Islamic democracy,” something spiritually akin to the Christian Democratic parties that were so influential in Western Europe in the two-and-a-half decades after World War II. One read article after article of this type in Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard. Even Stanley Kurtz, who was very cognizant of the tribal character of Iraqi society, did not think it would prove to be an insurmountable obstacle. But these visionary hopes, marked by ignorance of the facts on the ground and the democratic triumphalism—the “End of History”—that dominated Western thought after the collapse of Communism, proved to be catastrophic illusions.
Turning to the Russo-Ukrainian War that has raged since February 23, 2022, the same mix of historical ignorance and utopian expectations has clouded the Western response to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. But this time, there has yet to be an acknowledgement of the most relevant fact on the ground, namely the deep divide in Ukraine between the Galician Party, rooted in the west of the country and now dominant in Kiev, which is committed to expunging any Russian cultural and spiritual presence in Ukraine, and the Muscovite Party, which sees Russia and Ukraine not as enemies but as spiritual, if not exactly political, brothers.
Since the Maidan Revolution of 2014, secretly encouraged and strongly supported by the United States, the Galician Party has been triumphant, encouraging the comprehensive de-Russification of Ukraine, even if Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians and the majority of them speak Russian at home. Fourteen thousand Russophone Ukrainians were killed in “anti-terrorist” campaigns in the east of the country after the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014 (which had been arbitrarily zoned to Ukraine by then-Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 at a time when intra-Soviet Union “borders” did not really matter). There was brutality on the “separatist” side, too. Compounding matters, the new Ukrainian government made no serious effort to implement the Minsk II agreements of 2015. These would have given language rights and some cultural autonomy to the Donbas (and other Russian-oriented regions in the east of the country) and might have helped defuse the situation.
The mainstream narrative passes over all of this in silence, or near silence, when its purveyors talk about the sources of the present conflict. The truth, however, is much more complicated. As Nicolai Petro lays out with impressive equanimity in his recent book The Tragedy of Ukraine, the Galician Party has its roots in the nationalist ideology of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). This underground organization formed the basis of Stepan Bandera’s anti-Soviet resistance movement during and after World War II. One is obliged to have some sympathy for the Banderites, who were caught between the conflicting evils of Nazi and Communist totalitarianism. However, as Petro demonstrates, that movement advocated what its chief ideologue called “Ukrainian spiritual totalitarianism.” It hated Russia far more passionately than it opposed Communism. The Russian government’s constant claim about Ukraine being a nation of Nazis is crude and hyperbolic. But important currents of Ukrainian nationalism then and now continue to have unsavory political views and connections. Groups such as the Svoboda Party and the Azov Battalion (major actors behind the 2014 Maidan rebellion) are hardly fighting for “liberal,” “democratic,” and “European” values as our political and media elites endlessly repeat. While a liberal, or at least a moderate, current is present among Ukrainian nationalists, it is far from dominant. To say that “Ukraine is fighting for democracy” is far from the truth on the ground.
As for Russia, to draw on a famous remark by Talleyrand, its invasion of Ukraine was “worse than a crime, it’s a mistake.” This point has been made brilliantly in a series of essays by the foreign policy analyst Srdja Trifkovic in Chronicles Magazine. Trifkovic is not insensitive to Moscow’s legitimate grievances, including reckless efforts to expand NATO to include Ukraine, which run counter to the deep historical and cultural connections between Russia and Ukraine, not to mention Russia’a legitimate security interests in that part of the world. But as Trifkovic points out, if Russia’s goal remains the “demilitarization” of Ukraine, the invasion has hardly served that purpose. Quite the contrary. Indeed, as Christopher Caldwell has pointed out in the pages of the Claremont Review of Books, Ukraine, with massive NATO support, is the most militarized society on earth. That process had already begun after the Maidan Revolution and the Russian seizure of Crimea. The United States was the principal architect of this policy of massive militarization in response to the allegedly global threat of Russian “imperialism.” Here was what could call a “self-fulfilling analysis.”
Richard Pipes, the famed historian of Russia, was hardly reticent about his disdain for Russian political culture, which he associated quite one-sidedly with antisemitism and “patrimonial despotism.” But in a conversation with me at a conference on the Cold War at Hillsdale College in the fall of 2009, he proclaimed his vehement opposition to NATO expansion to include Ukraine and Georgia. Even the most liberal-minded and pro-Western Russians, he suggested, would find such a move threatening and destabilizing, an “existential threat” to the Russian nation, just as Americans would be alarmed by Russian troops in Canada or Mexico. But in the 14 years since Pipes made those remarks, the ability of the Western political class to look at things even provisionally from the Russian perspective—a sine qua non of geostrategic thinking—has nearly disappeared.
In fact, our response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by little or no soul-searching about our own significant role in the unfolding of the tragedy. Instead, we are subjected to endless moralistic effusions about Russian perfidy and the purity of the Ukrainian cause. In his fine recent book, The Road to Ukraine: How the West Lost Its Way (please note the subtitle), the eminent sociologist Frank Furedi suggests that Western elites were so committed to “endism” (the “End of History,” facile humanitarianism, the end of war especially for the European avant-garde of humanity) that they could only see this essentially regional conflict, borne of conflicting interests and borders, as a massive assault on the post-political ethos of Western elites. Add to this dogmatic identification of Russia with the Soviet Union in many establishment conservative circles, and the Left’s disdain for the social conservatism of the Russian people, and the ground is set for angry moralism as a substitute for principled but realistic judgment in approaching relations with post-Communist Russia.
There are consequences for these precipitous moralistic judgments. The indefinite continuation of the conflict in Ukraine risks leaving that country as a charnel house, a victim of Western moralism as much as Russian aggression. In Russia itself, the regime has hardened with draconian (and ultimately counterproductive) punishments for open opposition to the war, and a growing fixation with “Nazi” efforts to surround and subvert historic Russia. The rhetoric of Russia’s ruling political class has grown more brutal and crass.
Contrary to legend, Putin has never been particularly nostalgic for Bolshevism. He strongly supported the teaching of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Russian high schools. But in February, a leader of Putin’s United Russia Party in the Duma called for eliminating “garbage” such as The Gulag Archipelago from the school curriculum, surely an ominous sign. Thankfully, other members of the ruling party strongly responded to this crude assault on Russian national memory and the greatest anti-totalitarian masterpiece of our time. For the time being, Solzhenitsyn remains in the school curriculum. But there is no doubt that Russia is moving in the wrong direction, in part because of Western imprudence and also because of the ossification of a political order that lacks sufficient civic openness and vitality.
In truth, Solzhenitsyn represents a fundamental example for the future of a decent Russia: an unwavering defense of conscience and human dignity, an adamant refusal to conflate the best of historic Russia with crude authoritarianism or soul-destroying totalitarianism, a humane, moderate, and self-limiting nationalism or patriotism, and a desire for equitable dealings between Russia and Ukraine. Extreme Ukrainian nationalists hated him and all things Russian. But he never reciprocated such hatred.
In the third volume of The Gulag Archipelago, the great Russian writer lambasted his fellow Russians for turning a blind eye to legitimate Ukrainian grievances over the centuries. He believed Ukraine should be free to go its own way but not with unjust “Leninist” borders left over from the Soviet period. In Rebuilding Russia, Solzhenitsyn eloquently reminded his Ukrainian interlocutors that both the Ukrainian and Russian peoples were victims of an inhuman ideology built on the twin foundation of violence and mendacity. Famine, terror, and collectivization afflicted both great peoples, even if Ukrainians suffered particularly cruelly in 1932 and 1933. Shared opposition to totalitarianism ought to shape and deepen common bonds built in suffering and a shared defense of human dignity. Like most Russians, Solzhenitsyn opposed indefinite NATO expansion (he died in 2008). But half-Russian and half-Ukrainian himself, he once wrote that “If, God forbid, there is war between Russia and Ukraine, I will have nothing to do with it, nor will I permit my sons to join.” Solzhenitsyn is a living reproach to the extreme nationalists on both sides: his repeated calls for “repentance and self-limitation” can perhaps challenge and modify the thinking of frenzied partisans.
We in the United States (and the West more broadly) must not associate legitimate opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine with enduring animosity to all things Russian or support for the exclusion of Russia from the community of nations. That is neither just nor in our national interest. Moreover, serious investigation and reflection upon our own culpability in the tragedy is necessary if we are not to give rise to a dangerous and eventually tragic escalation of enmity and conflict between East and West. That is a much-needed first step in avoiding a fatal fall into the abyss.
Daniel J. Mahoney is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus at Assumption University. He has written widely on French politics and political thought and has also written extensively on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the moral grounds of opposition to totalitarianism. His latest books are The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation and Recovering Politics, Civilization, and the Soul: Essays on Pierre Manent and Roger Scruton.
August 11, 2023
Eva Bartlett: US cluster munitions will bring more pain and death to Donbass civilians, and Washington doesn’t care
By Eva Bartlett, August 1, 2023, RT.com
The recent US decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine is immoral, unethical, and criminal. We’ve already seen the horrific results of the use of such weapons – civilians mutilated and murdered (often decades later) in Iraq and Southeast Asia, for example, and in Lebanon.
In addition to the ethical reasons not to send these weapons to Ukraine, there are pragmatic reasons why, from a military perspective. They are pointless for Ukraine, in spite of Western promises that they will “do more damage across a larger area than standard unitary artillery shells by releasing bomblets, or submunitions.”
In reality, while covering a wider area than a conventional high explosive munition, the cluster bomblets do not inflict more powerful damage, certainly not against Russian fortified positions. Their use is mainly for targeting troops in the open and lightly armoured vehicles. Not a game changer for Kiev.
According to former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter, “these are the worst weapon in the world for trench warfare. With trench warfare, you need a high explosive round that collapses bunkers, that collapses trenches.”
If the US knows that cluster munitions won’t change facts on the ground for Ukraine, why is it sending them? Because, as President Joe Biden himself has said, Ukraine is “running out of ammunition and we’re low on it.” So, the US might as well offload its old stock of cluster munitions. They will not, as Biden claimed, “stop those tanks from rolling.” Nor will they – as the Biden administration claims – “save civilian lives.” They will almost certainly be used to kill, maim, and terrorize more Donbass civilians immediately and for years to come.
US Colonel Douglas Macgregor has emphasized that the cluster munitions have a high dud rate. According to Ritter, close to 40% of them fail to explode. Macgregor also highlighted how children are “attracted to these bright shiny objects that look like baseballs,” so insidious is their design.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan assures us that Kiev will not misuse the clusters. He claims that “Ukraine is committed to post-conflict de-mining efforts to mitigate any potential harm to civilians,” and that “Ukraine has provided written assurances that it is going to use these in a very careful way that is aimed at minimizing any risk to civilians.”
The US never signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions – which prohibits all use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions – but didn’t mind virtue signalling its abhorrence of them when it lobbed accusations against Russia (also not a signatory of the convention) on February 28, 2022, with Biden’s then press secretary, Jen Psaki, calling the use of cluster munitions a potential “war crime.”
As usual, it’s a heinous war crime when a US enemy supposedly does it, but not when an ally – or the US itself – actually does. As for Ukraine’s feeble promises to not use the cluster munitions against civilians, it has already been doing so since 2014.
Ukraine’s history of cluster-bombing civilians
By way of a personally witnessed example, in late March 2022, I visited the site of a Ukrainian missile attack that earlier that month had killed 22 civilians and injured 33 more. Because the Ukrainian-fired Tochka-U missile was intercepted, not all of its 50 cassettes of cluster munitions inside exploded in the city streets. Otherwise, the bloodbath would have been much worse. Then, in April 2022, Ukrainian forces targeted a railway station in Kramatorsk, likewise firing a Tochka-U with a cluster munition, killing a reported 50 people. Western media predictably accused Russia of the war crime, although investigations showed the missile emanated from Ukrainian-held territory to the southwest.
But like most of Kiev’s war crimes against Donbass civilians, its use of cluster munitions didn’t start in 2022. Back in 2014, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Ukrainian government forces’ use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city. An October 2 attack on the centre of Donetsk that included the use of cluster munition rockets killed an employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The New York Times likewise reported that on several occasions in October 2014, “the Ukrainian Army appears to have fired cluster munitions into the heart of Donetsk, unleashing a weapon banned in much of the world into a rebel-held city with a peacetime population of more than one million.” Citing physical evidence and interviews with witnesses and victims, the newspaper wrote there were “clear signs that cluster munitions had been fired from the direction of army-held territory.”
Ukrainian ‘petal mines’ continue to maimBut these aren’t the only clusters Ukraine has fired on Donbass civilians. In fact, over the course of last year, I documented the aftermath of Ukraine firing rockets containing cassettes of internationally-banned PFM-1 “petal” mines, over 300 of the mines per rocket.
Due to their design, they generally glide to the ground without exploding, until someone or something steps on or otherwise disturbs them.
According to authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Ukraine began firing these tiny, indiscriminate mines on March 6, 2022, during the battles for Mariupol, and then from May 18, 2022, into DPR and Kharkov Region settlements.
Since first documenting the aftermath of Ukraine’s use of the mines in central Donetsk in late July, 2022, I’ve interviewed victims, and reported on the painstaking work of Russian sappers to locate and destroy the mines. As of July 25 this year, 124 civilians have been injured by the mines, including ten children. Three civilians died as a result of their injuries.
Ukraine ratified the Ottawa Convention (the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention) on December 27, 2005, and it entered into force on June 1, 2006. Accordingly, Ukraine was obliged to never use anti-personnel mines, nor to stockpile or transfer them, and should have—but hasn’t—destroyed its stock. Of its 6 million stock of the PFM-1 mines, reportedly Ukraine still has over 3.3 million.
And while Human Rights Watch did finally address Ukraine’s use of the mines against civilians in one location – the city of Izium, north of Donetsk – the highly partial Western-funded NGO failed to investigate, much less highlight, Ukraine’s widespread use of the mines on Donbass civilian areas. HRW, as I wrote in March, then advised Ukraine to investigate itself for its use of the prohibited mines.
Western weapons used to kill Donbass civiliansIt should be mentioned that over the course of its now nine-year war against Donbass, Ukraine has been using conventional NATO munitions to slaughter and maim civilians. The high explosive shells Ukraine fires throughout Donbass cities and towns, but also countless times in the very heart of Donetsk, tear people apart, leaving mangled bodies and remains on streets and sidewalks, and in marketplaces.
On July 22, Ukrainian forces allegedly shelled Russian journalists in Zaporozhye Region with cluster munitions, killing one and injuring three others.
These deliberate attacks on the media, on civilians’ homes, hospitals, infrastructure, and on civilians themselves should be condemned as loudly as Ukraine’s firing of petal mines and of cluster munitions in general. But the US announcement that it would send cluster munitions to Ukraine resulted in some mild tutting from other Western nations, but no seriously strong condemnation. Canada is one of the nations voicing at least some objection to sending cluster bombs, the leadership in Ottawa probably feeling it ought to mildly protest, given Canada’s convention.
The Canadian government recently stated that it is fully against the use of cluster munitions and is “committed to putting an end to the effects cluster munitions have on civilians – particularly children.” Yet aside from polite grumblings regarding the US clusters, I’ve seen no Canadian condemnation of Ukraine’s repeated use of cluster munitions on the civilians of Donbass.
But the real criminals here are the US government, which knows sending its cluster munitions won’t actually help Ukraine fight the Russian military in any tangible way, but that it is highly likely Ukraine will instead use them against Donbass civilians. Apparently, that’s just fine with the crocodile-tear-crying US hypocrites.
Update:
RT: “Cluster Munitions Hit Passenger Bus in Makeevka-Yasinovataya (Donetsk People’s Republic) – the vehicle came under fire from Kiev’s forces – local authorities”
Related Links:
–UN agency chief ‘deplores’ killing of Russian journalist
–The West is silent as Ukraine targets civilians in Donetsk using banned ‘Petal’ mines
August 10, 2023
Prof. Alexander Hill: There are civilian casualties on both sides of the front lines in the war in Ukraine
By Prof. Alexander Hill, The Conversation, 7/20/23
Western news sources regularly report on civilian deaths on the Ukrainian side of the front lines of the war in Ukraine. But what about civilian deaths on the Russian side?
In May 2023, the United Nations reported 8,791 civilians have died and 14,815 have been injured in Ukraine since February 2022. Of those, 1,971 have been killed and 2,636 injured on territory occupied by the Russian Federation.
Western news outlets have tended to only provide details on a regular basis of those casualties suffered on the Ukrainian side of the front line. Exceptions to this — when the western media has widely reported on casualties behind Russian lines — have largely been when Russian forces have been accused of atrocities.
As Ukraine began an offensive against Russian forces in the fall of 2022, instances of civilian deaths resulting from Ukrainian missiles, rockets, drones, artillery and small arms fire on Russian-held territory inevitably increased.
Just as western news sources regularly report on deaths from missile, drone and artillery attacks on Ukrainian-held territory, Russian news outlets frequently report deaths and injuries on Russian-held territory.
A recent example is when the Russian news agency TASS and other Russian outlets reported one death and tens of injuries after Ukrainian forces shelled what Russians call Makeevka — Makiivka in Ukrainian — in the Donetsk region in July 2023. Some western news outlets didn’t report on the attack at all.
Civilian casualties prior to 2022The war in Ukraine precedes February 2022, so statistics amassed since then aren’t telling the whole story of the conflict.
In the West, the war is largely perceived to have begun in February 2022 when Vladimir Putin’s government launched what it described as a “special military operation” and invaded Ukraine. But for all intents and purposes, the war has been going on since 2014.
Early that year, the pro-Russian democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a far from bloodless coup. That event has been described as a revolution by the current Ukrainian government.
In response, regions in eastern Ukraine — where pro-Russian sentiment is the strongest — saw separatists seize control with scant Russian assistance. These separatists were soon fighting against Ukrainian forces as Russian support began to increase.
According to the Russian government’s Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, more than 2,600 civilians died and at least 5,500 were wounded in fighting in the separatist regions of Ukraine as of February 2022. Many of them were killed or wounded by Ukrainian forces seeking to crush the separatists.
These figures are supported by data from the West. In January 2022, the United Nations recorded 3,106 conflict-related civilian deaths and as many as 7,000 wounded in fighting in Ukraine up to that point. During that period, most of the fighting was over separatist-controlled territory.
Growing threats to civiliansAs Ukraine is increasingly provided with long-range weapons by the West, the potential for civilian casualties as a result of Ukrainian missile and long-range artillery attacks has increased.
While many of these weapons have good accuracy, they nonetheless are too often fired by both sides on the basis of inaccurate or flawed intelligence.
Even after the fighting has moved on from a particular area, the war leaves behind a legacy of unexploded munitions. These can range from unexploded bombs and artillery shells to mines.
In October 2022, for example, the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic reported that combat engineers had destroyed more than 20,000 “Lepestok” or “butterfly” mines on its territory. Western sources have suggested that both Ukraine and Russia have been using anti-personnel mines.
Cluster munitions are another particular threat to civilians long after the fighting has moved on from a given area. There have been reports of both the Russians and Ukrainians using cluster bombs to date. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions banning their use.
Cluster bomb use likely to increaseThe United States — also not a signatory to the convention — has recently decided to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions from its own stocks. That decision can only increase their use by both Ukraine and Russia, meaning that civilians on both sides of the front line will inevitably fall victim to unexploded munitions over time.
The U.S. claims the munitions it plans to provide Ukraine will leave behind no more than three per cent of the munitions unexploded. Even if this is accurate — which is unlikely — the immediate effect of this decision “will be to knock away much of the moral ground Washington sits on in this war,” according to one BBC report. The longer-term impact will be more civilian deaths and maiming.
Since 2014 in Ukraine, at least 12,000 civilians have been killed and 22,000 wounded. Those figures continue to increase on both sides of the front line.
Claiming the moral high ground in any war isn’t just about justifying a war effort — it’s also about how a war is fought.
Civilian casualties in war are unavoidable but can be mitigated. Both Ukraine and Russia, sadly but inevitably, have plenty of civilian blood on their hands.
August 9, 2023
Ted Snider: America’s Cruel War Policy in Ukraine
Photo by Nati on Pexels.comThe points made in this article remind me of my discussions with Prof. Geoffrey Roberts who said that while Putin chose to start the war of February 2022, it is the west that has chosen to unnecessarily prolong the war to Ukraine’s utter destruction. – Natylie
By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, 7/31/23
In the early days, the war in Ukraine had not escalated into the dangerous NATO-Russia nightmare that it is today.
The massive amounts of death and destruction was not yet imagined. Though “the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians,” according to a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency in March 2022, “there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so.” The analyst said that “almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.” A retired Air Force officer, working with a “large military contractor advising the Pentagon” added that “the Russian military has actually been showing restraint in its long-range attacks.” These sources told Newsweek that Russia was not bombing indiscriminately and that the US dropped more missiles on the first day in Iraq in 2003 than Russia dropped in the first 24 days in Ukraine. Observing the US bombing of Iraq, including the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorous, “British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties.” Instead, “The vast majority of [Russian] airstrikes are over the battlefield, with Russian aircraft providing “close air support” to ground forces. The remainder – less than 20 percent, according to U.S. experts – has been aimed at military airfields, barracks and supporting depots.” The DIA analyst concluded that “that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians.”
It was while the war was still at this stage that it could have been stopped. On February 27, just three days into the war, Russia and Ukraine announced that they were ready to hold talks in Belarus. In those and subsequent talks over the next several weeks, including the most promising talks of all in Istanbul, Ukraine and Russia were ready to stop the war on terms that met both of their goals.
But the US stopped the war from ending before the devastation began because the talks did not meet their goals. Putin “should . . . not be negotiated with,” the US and UK told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, “the West was not.” The US “blocked” the negotiated end to the war because they “want[ed] the war to continue,” since meeting Ukraine’s goals was insufficient. “This is a war,” the US State Department explained, “that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.”
The three day war became a year and a half long war that escalated into the dangerous and devastating war it is today because the US forbade Ukraine from ending it on terms that satisfied them and pressured them into fighting on against Russia in pursuit of American goals. From this point on, all the probably hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian deaths, the destruction of infrastructure and the loss of land became the joint responsibility of the US.
But neither American nor Ukrainian goals have been met. The war is going very badly for Ukraine and no amount of US help seems to be altering the battlefield. Barring an unlikely change in fortune, Ukraine is fighting on only to arrive at an inevitable negotiated end that will be tragically worse than the one they negotiated in Belarus and Istanbul.
That change of fortune hangs upon the so far suicidal counteroffensive. Since June 5, Ukraine has thrown its NATO trained troops and its NATO supplied tanks against the Russian defensive lines. And, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in that nearly two month period, Ukraine has suffered more than 26,000 deaths. They also lost at least a “startling” 20% of their NATO supplied tanks and armored vehicles in the first weeks of the counteroffensive.
What’s worse is that the US encouraged Ukraine to launch the counteroffensive and publicly broadcast their “very good chance for success” when, privately, they knew Ukraine was ill prepared. According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, “When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons – from shells to warplanes – that it needed to dislodge Russian forces.” Incredibly, military officials were prepared to count on “Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness.”
But all the “courage and resourcefulness” is still being outweighed by the lack of training, weapons and troops. The New York Times reported on July 26 that Ukraine has started the “main thrust” of its counteroffensive, “pouring” thousands of reinforcements into the battle, “many of them trained and equipped by the West.”
Though it is hard to keep track of which attack is which, there have been reports of massive Ukrainian losses in recent days. The Times places the “main thrust” south of Orikhiv and farther south at Robotyne. An attempted Ukrainian advance from Novosanylivka south toward Robotyne and Tokmak turned into what one analyst called “possibly the worst calamity for Ukraine since the beginning of the offensive.” Another, referring to an offensive attempt in the “Rabotino-Orekhov direction,” that included Leopard tanks and Bradley armored vehicles, says that Russian forces “repulsed” the attempt with “horrific” losses to the Ukrainian armed forces. There are reports of several Leopards and Bradleys being destroyed. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that fifteen German Leopard tanks and twenty US Bradley armored vehicles were destroyed in one day. He also said that more than 200 more Ukrainian soldiers were “lost.”
On July 27, as the “main thrust” continued, Putin claimed that, in the past 24 hours, Ukraine “used a large amount of heavy hardware, around 50 pieces. Some 39 of them, namely 26 tanks and 13 armored vehicles were destroyed.”
The US pressed Ukraine, before the war had escalated into the devastation it now is, to continue fighting in pursuit of US goals when Ukrainian goals had been satisfied and the war could have ended. That has led to the loss of lives, the loss of land and the destruction of infrastructure. The US then encouraged a Ukrainian counteroffensive when they knew the Ukrainian armed forces “didn’t have all the training or weapons . . . that it needed to dislodge Russian forces.” That has led to horrific loss of additional life. The US has pursued a self-interested policy in pursuit if its own goals that has been callous and cruel to the people of Ukraine.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.
