Bout will become a symbol of Moscow’s commitment to its own
After a quiet swap in the United Arab Emirates, Brittney Griner is out of a Russian prison while the Russian arms dealer and presumed intelligence asset Viktor Bout is out of a US one. A little glimmer of humanity amid Cold War 2.0, or a dangerous hostage exchange with Moscow getting the best of the deal? Sadly, this is more the latter.
Russia and Iran’s relationship has warmed to a fully fledged defence partnership, the US has said.
Russia is giving an unprecedented level of military support, said US national security council spokesman John Kirby.
The US has seen reports that the two countries are considering joint production of lethal drones, he added.
Australia has announced it is sanctioning three Iranians and one Iranian business for supplying Russia with drones to use against Ukraine.
On November 27th, Fox News reported that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration was
scrambling to track the nearly $20 billion in military aid that it has sent to Ukraine as Republicans warn of impending audits when they take control of the House [of Representatives] in January.
Incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as quoted by Fox News, said that an audit would be aimed at establishing to what extent “the U.S. aid is ending up in the wrong hands.”
The Pentagon has given a tacit endorsement of Ukraine’s long-range attacks on targets inside Russia after President Putin’s multiple missile strikes against Kyiv’s critical infrastructure.
Since daily assaults on civilians began in October, the Pentagon has revised its threat assessment of the war in Ukraine. Crucially, this includes new judgments about whether arms shipments to Kyiv might lead to a military confrontation between Russia and Nato.
The SU-25 is the Russian version of the Warthog
#Russia: A Russian Su-25 jet suffered damage or a malfunction and was forced to land without landing gear.
The full extent of damage is unclear, but unlikely to be flying again very soon. pic.twitter.com/YzcCFuzlte
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 10, 2022
NATO’s secretary general warned on Friday that Russia’s war in Ukraine could expand into a wider war with the Atlantic alliance.
The official, Jens Stoltenberg, repeatedly cautioned in media interviews this week against underestimating the situation in Ukraine and emphasized the wider threat President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could pose to Europe.
“If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” Mr. Stoltenberg said in an interview released on Friday with the Norwegian journalist Anne Lindmo, in which he added that there was “no doubt” a full-blown war against NATO was a “real possibility.”
#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 79th Air Assault Brigade hit a Russian tank with a Stugna-P ATGM in the vicinity of Maryinka, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/F8cJXXAWfs
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 9, 2022
IN THIS final article in the trilogy, I will examine some possible lessons from the war so far. To begin with the Russian military: it clearly has some major issues to address around its doctrine, training, logistics, the integration of all arms and the co-operation of ground forces with air – the Russian Air Force has been far from the overwhelmingly dominant force that might have been expected. Bombardment, as we have already noticed, has papered over the cracks to date, but that would not suffice in a major conflict in which the US Air Force owned the skies. Solving these issues must, therefore, be a major implication for the Russian armed forces. We must expect that they will already be carrying out a ‘lessons-learned’ process, the outcome of which we will not see for a while since lessons are learned only when they result in changes to doctrine, practice or equipment; until then they are merely identified.
#Ukraine: Late last month, the Ukrainian 6th Separate Rifle Battalion destroyed a Russian BMP IFV and a T72B-series tank in the vicinity of Novoselovka Vtoraya, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/hehBpc00Go
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 8, 2022
A new documentary shows why Russia is losing the war.
Afew years ago, I found myself in Amsterdam watching the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy debate Russian intellectual Aleksandr Dugin on the subject of American hegemony and the global order. Before an ambivalent audience at this public symposium, Lévy began with a rousing defense of the liberal creed. Dugin, whose philosophy supports Moscow’s aggressive foreign policy, submitted that liberalism was a species of “totalitarianism.”
The town has seen hundreds killed or wounded each day in bloody frontal attacks, yet holds little military significance
Peering through a telescope looking for enemy movement in no-man’s land, the Ukrainian soldier points out a warehouse held by Russian forces.
The adversaries are only 300 or 400 yards from their fighting position, uphill across a shattered landscape of blown out buildings and barren fields.
“They throw their meat at us,” says another soldier beside him, grimly referring to the human wave of assaults carried out by Russian mercenaries and poorly-equipped reservists.
#Ukraine: Another, improved "BM-8" light MRLS made by Ukrainian forces. A 12 tube launcher is mounted on a Ford F150 Raptor truck, using 80mm S-8KO rockets- which are typically fired from aircraft. https://t.co/eJl8MxcFfh pic.twitter.com/oNYsc7IkLd
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) December 8, 2022
YESTERDAY I outlined the view of Western governments and media that Russia is on the back foot and that this is evident from the retreat at Kherson. In this second article I suggest that there is an alternative which could define what winning and losing might look like. The Russians, as I have already noted, are calling up their large pool of trained manpower. While they do this, they are making a calculated exchange of space in return for the time needed to do this. Why? Because once the wet weather of autumn and early winter is replaced any time now by a hard freeze, a winter offensive is entirely possible once the Ukrainians have lost momentum and used up their resources. The Russian Army is quite capable of this.
Farmers across Britain are giving their ageing trucks a new lease of life – on the front lines against Russia
For decades, it has been one of Britain’s favourite all-terrain chariots: built for lugging heavy loads across fields, but nippy enough to navigate the car park in Tesco’s. Sturdy, reliable and cheaper than a Land Rover, the humble Mitsubishi L200 pick-up is the workhorse of everyday country folk.
Unsurprisingly, after a lifetime of tough service on a farm, and with 100,000 miles on the clock, an L200 doesn’t normally attract much attention on the second-hand market. But now, farmers across Britain are seeing a surge in demand for their ageing jalopies – for use as mobile rocket launchers in Ukraine.
PERHAPS the first thing to say is that few people in the West at the beginning of the year really expected that Putin would actually invade – I certainly did not, and I put my hand up to having totally ‘misappreciated’ the situation.
The Ukrainians, however, did expect it. They planned and acted for the worst case – a very sensible military precept. They quietly mobilised their reserves in the weeks leading up to the invasion and prepared defences. They also took on board substantial training and weapon supplies from the US and Britain. People out there are quite clear that had it not been for these preparations and this assistance, it would all have been over in three or four days. As it was, the Ukrainians outnumbered the invaders on ground and in weather suitable for the defence; and fought a classic asymmetric campaign – in the sense that all warfare is asymmetrical as each side seeks to pit its strengths against their opponents’ weaknesses.
Shed your sense of powerlessness, take to the street!” a man calls from a megaphone, his cry echoed by hundreds of demonstrators walking alongside him who repeat the chant. “Germany’s going to the dogs, wake up from your sleep!”
Carrying banners and posters, some with strings of Christmas lights draped around their necks, banging drums, others holding blank pieces of paper out of sympathy with Chinese protesters banned from objecting to coronavirus lockdowns, the participants make their fears and anger known during a one-hour procession through the snow-sprinkled streets of the eastern German city of Halle.
Their main concerns are soaring energy costs – they urge the government to repair and reopen the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Russia – inflation, which is at its highest level for 70 years, and the war in Ukraine, to which they believe Germany should not be contributing weapons.
The battle for Bakhmut in Ukraine’s war-torn east has become one of the most brutal chapters of Russia’s disastrous invasion of its neighbor, as Ukrainian defenders burrowed into lines of fortified positions and mud-swamped trenches fight off waves of Russian assault units picking their way across the shell-scarred landscape.
The grinding assault on the city and its surrounding area is a rallying point for Russia’s military bloggers and propagandists, and a showcase of the capabilities of the Wagner Group and leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, one oligarch ally of President Vladimir Putin whose profile has increased dramatically since February 24.
Members of the Wagner PMC near Bakhmut. pic.twitter.com/hL6e9lIBIL
— Paul Jawin (@PaulJawin) December 6, 2022
For many officials, it’s a topic they won’t touch. When pressed, politicians give memorized, terse and robotic answers.
The verboten subject? Ukraine’s potential NATO membership.
It’s an issue so potentially combustible that many NATO allies try to avoid even talking about it. When Ukraine in September requested an accelerated process to join the military alliance, NATO publicly reiterated its open-door policy but didn’t give a concrete response. And last week, when NATO foreign ministers met, their final statement simply pointed to a vague 2008 pledge that Ukraine would someday join the club.
Moscow’s looting and destruction of artifacts is ‘a fight against our identity,’ says Ukrainian culture minister.
KYIV — In late April, Tetiana Buliy, head of the Arkhip Kuindzhi art gallery in Mariupol, was living near Kyiv when her phone rang.
It was the gallery’s caretaker, who had remained in Mariupol, asking where the keys were.
Buliy had locked the building on February 25, the second day of Russia’s massive bombardment of the southern Ukrainian city. By late April, Mariupol was almost entirely under Russian control.
