Air Defense Systems as the First Weapons for the Defense of Ukraine: A Letter from the Pentagon to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense during the December 2014 War

It is located in the state of Missouri. After falling out with his partner at a limo company he decided to try and make a living selling rockets to the Ukrainian military.

The pair recently wrote a letter to the Ministry of Defense. They outlined a plan to sell American, Bulgarian and Bosnian arms to Ukraine.

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

Ukrainian air defense battalions have become innovative: One video from Monday, referenced by Zelensky, showed a soldier using a shoulder-held missile to bring down a Russian projectile, purportedly a cruise missile.

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

Is it true that Russian inventories are collapsing and they may have to rely on older, less accurate but equally powerful missiles?

The Pentagon’s view at the time was that of its weapons stocks, Russia was “running the lowest on cruise missiles, particularly air-launched cruise missiles,” but that Moscow still had more than 50% of its pre-war inventory.

The Russians have been making their air defense missile the S-300 into a weapon that can be used for offensive purposes. These have wrought devastation in Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv, among other places, and their speed makes them difficult to intercept. They are not accurate.

Almost immediately after last month’s blast that destroyed a section of the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to Crimea – the Ukrainian territory it annexed in 2014 – the Kremlin intensified attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, stepping up its bombing of apartment buildings, power grid and water systems.

He told CNN that the first time that Russia attacked energy infrastructure was at the beginning of the war.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks. “These air defense systems are making a difference because many of the incoming missiles (this week) were actually shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems provided by NATO Allies,” he said. “But of course, as long as not all of them are shot down, of course there is a need for more.”

Estimating the proportion of Iranian-made Shahed drones being eliminated is more difficult, because so many are being used. Zelensky said that “every 10 minutes I receive a message about the enemy’s use of Iranian Shaheds.” He said most of them were being shot down.

Ukraine’s allies understand this need. Ahead of a meeting in Brussels Wednesday of Ukraine’s supporters, General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “after Russia attacked the Ukrainian civilian population, we will be looking for air defense options that will help the Ukrainians.”

The Ukrainian wish-list included missiles for their existing systems and a transition to Western-origin layered air defense system.

Speaking after the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, he said such a system would not “control all the airspace over Ukraine, but they are designed to control priority targets that Ukraine needs to protect. There are short-range low- altitude systems and medium-range medium altitude systems and then long-range and high altitude systems.

Western systems are beginning to trickle in. The first IRIS-T from Germany will arrive in the Ukrainian Republic next week and two units of the USNational Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System are expected soon, the Defense Minister said on Tuesday.

These are not off-the-shelf items. The IRIS-T had to be manufactured for Ukraine. Western governments have limited inventories of such systems. And Ukraine is a very large country under missile attack from three directions.

World Affairs Report on Iran’s JCPOA War in Ukraine: Russia, the Middle East, and the Arab-Mexican War

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

He said Poland had given Ukraine “systems” to help destroy the drones. There were reports last month that the Polish government had bought advanced Israeli equipment and was going to transfer it to Ukraine, since Israel doesn’t sell advanced defensive technology to Kyiv.

A former CNN producer and correspondent, Fridaghitis is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. More opinions can be found on CNN.

According to a western country which is closely monitoring Iran’s weapons program, Iran is about to start sending even more powerful weaponry to Russia for the fight against Ukraine.

The 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and five world powers, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action orJCPOA, has been put under scrutiny by Iran’s rivals and foes, as well as the NATO members and nations that are still interested in restoring it.

The international impact of the war in Ukraine is about to begin a new chapter. Some of Putin’s former allies have turned against him, but not all. Some far-right politicians and prominent figures in Europe and the US echo Putin’s claims about the war. Their hope is that they can leverage discontent as heating prices go up.

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

At their summit in March last year, NATO leaders agreed to equip, arm and train Ukraine to NATO standards. It wouldn’t be a member, but the message to Moscow was unequivocal: In the coming years, Ukraine would look and fight like it was in NATO.

Much of what happens today far from the battlefields still has repercussions there. The US accused Saudi Arabia of helping Russia fund the war by boosting its oil revenues after Saudi Arabia decided to slash production. The Saudis deny the accusation.

Syria’s airspace, bordering Israel, is controlled by Russian forces, which have allowed Israel to strike Iranian weapon flows to Hezbollah, a militia sworn to Israel’s destruction. The military communications systems that could be given to Ukraine by the company will not have missile shields.

A UN and Turkey-brokered agreement allowed Ukraine’s maritime corridors to reopen, but this week Moscow temporarily suspended that agreement after Russian Navy ships were struck at the Crimean port of Sevastopol. The wheat prices on global commodity markets went up after Putin’s announcement. Those prices partly determine how much people pay for bread in Africa and across the planet.

Higher prices not only affect family budgets and individual lives. When they have powerful popularity, they create a political uproar. Inflation, worsened by the war, has put incumbent political leaders on the defensive in countless countries.

The Battle of Kherson: From the Front to the Battlefield: On the Surprise of the Kremlin, the White House, and the War on Ukraine

It is not all on the fringes. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader who may become Speaker of the House, suggested that the GOP might reduce aid to Ukraine. Progressive Democrats released and withdrew a letter calling for negotiations. Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official during the Obama administration, said they’re all bringing “a big smile to Putin’s face.”

The number of Russian losses in these infantry advances is not known. The institute described the advances as “impaling” ill-prepared units on well dug-in defensive positions of Ukraine’s battle-hardened troops. The estimates of Russian casualties are seen as being inflated by the Ukrainian military, and a rising toll suggests this is the case. On Friday, the Ukrainian military said more than 800 Russian soldiers had been wounded or killed over the previous 24 hours.

Russian forces are staging up to 80 assaults per day, General Zaluzhnyi said in the statement, which described a telephone conversation with an American general, Christopher G. Cavoli, the supreme allied commander in Europe.

General Zaluzhnyi said they discussed the situation at the front. Ukrainian forces, he said he had told his U.S. colleague, were beating back the attacks, “thanks to the courage and skills of our warriors.”

According to an assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based analytical group, the infantry increase in the east had not resulted in Russia gaining new ground.

The institute said that Russian forces would have had more success if they had waited until there were enough personnel in place to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses.

There have been gains in the two counteroffensives by the Ukrainian military in the northeast and south.

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

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

However, the Kremlin denounced the transaction and said the US supplying Ukraine with Patriot missile systems will prolong the Ukrainian people’s “suffering.”

The U.S. Mission to Ukraine – Status of the Request for Special Relativistic Cluster-Militon Systems and Implications for Arms Systems

CNN has learned that senior Biden administration officials have been fielding the request for months and have not actually rejected it.

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

The Biden administration has not taken the option off the table as a last resort, if stockpiles begin to run dangerously low. But sources say the proposal has not yet received significant consideration in large part due to the statutory restrictions that Congress has put on the US’ ability to transfer cluster munitions.

Those restrictions apply to munitions with a greater than one percent unexploded ordnance rate, which raises the prospect that they will pose a risk to civilians. President Joe Biden could override that restriction, but the administration has indicated to the Ukrainians that that is unlikely in the near term.

“We see that, in fact, the United States and other countries are following the path of constantly expanding the range and raising the technical level of the weapons that they supply to Ukraine,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said during a conference call. This does not help the situation at all.

CNN spoke with the Defense Ministry, which said it doesn’t comment on reports about requests for specific weapons systems or their suppliers until an agreement is reached with the supplier.

The US replaced the dual-purpose improved conventional missiles with the M30A1 alternate warhead. 180,000 small Tungsten steel fragments are scatter on impact of the M 30A1 and do not leave unexploded bombs on the ground. Ukrainian officials, however, say that the DPICMs the US now has in storage could help the Ukrainian military enormously on the battlefield – more so than the M30A1.

But news, first reported by CNN, that the US is finalizing plans to send the system to Ukraine triggered a cryptic warning from Russia’s US embassy Wednesday of “unpredictable consequences.”

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

The US Army’s ‘Patriot’ is thought to be one of the most capable long-range air defense systems on the market.

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

“I find it ironic and very telling that officials from a country that brutally attacked its neighbor in an illegal and unprovoked invasion … that they would choose to use words like provocative to describe defensive systems that are meant to save lives and protect civilians,” Ryder told reporters.

He said the US is not at war with Russia and they do not seek conflict. Providing security assistance to the country of Ukraine is our focus.

In what may be a no less subtle message than calling the Patriot deployments provocative, Russia’s defense ministry shared video of the installation of a “Yars” intercontinental ballistic missile into a silo launcher in the Kaluga region for what Alexei Sokolov, commander of the Kozelsky missile formation, called “combat duty as planned.”

Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and deputy chairman of its national security council, has said Russia would never allow itself to be defeated and would use nuclear weapons if threatened.

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

Vladimir Zelensky: No Russian attack on Russia during the recent Makiivka attack – or how the NATO tries to stop it

Unlike smaller air defense systems, Patriot missile batteries need much larger crews, requiring dozens of personnel to properly operate them. The training for Patriot missile batteries normally takes multiple months, a process the United States will now carry out under the pressure of near-daily aerial attacks from Russia.

In an interview with The Economist published Thursday, Zelensky also rejected the idea recently suggested by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Ukraine seek to reclaim only land seized by Russia since February 2022 and not areas like Donbas and Crimea, which have been under Russian control since 2014.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the French news outlet France 24 this week, before the Patriot missile development, that the alliance still has two main objectives: provide aid to Ukraine and also make sure that NATO forces don’t become directly involved and escalate the war.

Compounding the problem, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said after the recent Makiivka strikes that “the Russian military has a record of unsafe ammunition storage from well before the current war, but this incident highlights how unprofessional practices contribute to Russia’s high casualty rate.”

While speaking to reporters the official said, “You cross your fingers and hope it’s gonna fire or when it lands that its gonna explode.”

Russia has continued to accumulate huge quantities of weapons and weapons related equipment close to the troops they will supply and beyond the range of enemy weaponry. Standard military practice dictates that large depots be broken up and scattered and that they be located far behind enemy lines — even within Russian territory that western powers have declared off-limits to Ukrainian strikes.

Striking the city of Donetsk. Russian-installed mayor of the area that was controlled by Russian-backed separatists said that Ukrainians had launched an attack in the region.

Sanctions have not been enough to shake Russia’s determination to restore its empire at the cost of peaceful neighboring states. The US and other Western nations should change the terms of the conflict in order to stop Russia from hitting them. Russia has naked aggression and savagery that it is pursuing while the international community ignores it. More direct intervention is long overdue.

The repetition of the narrative that any one of a wide range of events that Russia dislikes would ensure an escalation to the Third World War has been highly effective in shaping US and Western behavior.

After two years, the transatlantic dynamic following the fall of Berlin, and especially post-Putin invasion of Ukraine is one of the most pressing political questions vexing the Kremlin.

And yet, Russia’s UN Security Council veto and the fear it has instilled through nuclear propaganda have given it a free pass to behave as it wishes, without fear of interference from a global community looking on in either ambivalence or helpless paralysis.

That sets a disastrous example for other aggressive powers around the world. Nuclear weapons allow you to wage genocidal wars against your neighbors because other nations won’t intervene.

If the US and the West want other states to receive that message, they should use more direct and assertive means of defaming Moscow.

There are two key headline deliverables: first, the Patriot missile systems. They have been described as the US’s “gold standard” of air defense. NATO preciously guards them, and they require the personnel who operate them – almost 100 in a battalion for each weapon – to be properly trained.

The second are precision-guided munitions for Ukrainian jets. Ukraine, and Russia, largely are equipped with munitions that are “dumb” – fired roughly towards a target. Ukraine has been provided with more and more Western standard precision artillery and missiles, like Howitzers and HIMARS respectively.

The new deal will likely include the supply of guidance kits, or Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), which Ukraine can use to bolt on to their unguided missiles or bombs. This will increase their accuracy and the rate in which Kyiv’s forces burn through ammunition. A lot of the money is expected to be spent on stock and munitions replacements.

The Cold War Between NATO and Russia: Why the West is Running Out of Options? The Case for the Cold War between the US and Europe, and the Case for Ukraine

Although Moscow is attempting to equip and rally the conventional forces, it is also running out of new cards to play. China and India have joined the West in open statements against the use of nuclear force, which has made that option even less likely.

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

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

Whatever the truth of the matter is Biden wants Putin to hear something but headline figures in the billions so they can push European partners to help more and makeUkraine’s resources seem endless.

This isn’t easy. Kevin McCarthy, likely the new Speaker of Congress, warned the Biden administration not to expect a “blank cheque” from the new House of Representatives.

Some elements of the party that was part of the “America First” movement have expressed doubts about how much aid the US should give to eastern Europe.

Realistically, the bill for the slow defeat of Russia in this dark and lengthy conflict is relatively light for Washington, given its near trillion-dollar annual defense budget.

Zelensky wants Republicans to be aware of how important the fight for Kyiv is to the US and how Moscow could use a defeat to push the US into a war with NATO.

He is an inspiring rhetorician, and – as a former reality TV star turned unexpected president – the embodiment of how Putin’s war of choice has turned ordinary Ukrainians into wartime heroes.

The Patriot Radar System: Is It Necessary to Wanna Win World Warfare, or Can It Be Used to Shoot Down a Small Ballistic Missile?

“This is not a system that will go after drones or smaller ballistic missiles,” he said. “Can it do that? Absolutely. When you are talking about taking down a $20,000 drone, or $100,000 missile that Russia buys, it doesn’t give you much of a return on your investment. What it can do it free up the low and medium systems to go after those kind of targets.”

The Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) states thePatriot’s radar system providessurveillance, tracking and engagement in one unit, which makes it stand out among other air defense systems. The system has few need for a final decision from humans operating it as its engagements with aerial threats are nearly autonomously.

The systems don’t pick up and move around the battlefield. “You put them in place somewhere that defends your most strategic target, like a city, like Kyiv. If anyone thinks this is going to be a system that is spread across a 500-mile border between Ukraine and Russia, they just don’t know how the system operates.”

Not to mention the significance of the logistical needs; just one battery has 90 soldiers and only one computer, an engagement control system, phased array radar, power generating equipment, and up to eight launchers according to the Army.

The report from CSIS that said $4 million for the missile rounds was recently released. Shetling said that rounds that cost a lot won’t be used to shoot down missiles.

And in Ukraine’s case, Hertling says offensive operations are far more important than the Patriot system. CNN first reported last months that the US was about to double the amount of training for Ukrainian forces at a US base in Germany. The Pentagon said in this month that combined arms training of battalion-sized elements, which will include infantry maneuvers and live fire exercises, would begin in January.

The emphasis is on defensive in the system, Hertling said. It is not possible to win wars with defensive capabilities. You win wars with offensive capabilities.”

Zelensky and the Crimes of the “Regime in Kyiv”: How the USA fought the Ukraine and what it didn’t: A New Year’s Resolution

The Foreign Ministry of Russia denounced what it called themonstrous crimes of the “regime in Kyiv” after the US promised more military support toUkraine during Zelensky’s summit.

Maria Zakharova said that no matter the amount of military support the West gives to the Ukrainian government, they will not achieve anything.

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

Zelensky’s historic speech from the US Capitol expressed gratitude for American aid in fighting Russian aggression, and asked for more.

Peskov added that “there were no real calls for peace.” But during his address to the US Congress on Wednesday, Zelensky did stress that “we need peace,” reiterating the 10-point plan devised by Ukraine.

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

Shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, a Ukrainian strike on the occupied city of Makiivka killed dozens of troops, with Russia’s Ministry of Defense claiming its soldiers’ cell phone use exposed their location.

Ukrainian and pro-Russian accounts of the strike claim that it took place just after midnight Sunday, New Years’ Day, on a school for Russian conscripts.

Russian officials said that four rocket attacks hit the school where the forces were housed next to an arms depot. The Russians shot down two HIMARS rockets.

The Russian defense ministry on Monday acknowledged the attack and claimed that 63 Russian servicemen died, which would make it one of the deadliest single episodes of the war for Moscow’s forces.

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

The destroyed Makiivka building in the Donbas occupied military facility: a critical review of the experience of war, according to Boris Rozhin

Video from the scene of the attack appeared on Telegram, including on an official Ukrainian military channel. A pile of rubble shows almost no part of the building standing.

“Greetings and congratulations” to the separatists and conscripts who “were brought to the occupied Makiivka and crammed into the building of vocational school,” the Strategic Communications Directorate of the Chief Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram. “Santa packed around 400 corpses of [Russian soldiers] in bags.”

Daniil Bezsonov, a former official in the Russia-backed Donetsk administration, said on Telegram that “apparently, the high command is still unaware of the capabilities of this weapon.”

Bezsonov hopes that those responsible for using this facility will be reprimanded. There are many old abandoned facilities and well-equipped basements and buildings in Donbas.

The building was almost completely destroyed by the secondary detonation of ammunition stores, as claimed by a Russian propovian who posts about the war effort on Telegram.

Most of the military equipment, which stood close to the building without a sign of camouflage, was destroyed. There are still many people who are not accounted for.

Russian generals have been described by Girkin as unlearned in principle and unwilling to listen to warnings about putting equipment and personnel so close together. Girkin was previously minister of defense of the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, and was found guilty by a Dutch court of mass murder for his involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Incompetence and an inability to grasp the experience of war are serious problems according to Boris Rozhin, who is also known as Colonelcassad.

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

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/europe/ukraine-makiivka-strike-intl/index.html

Ukrainian security assistance in the light of the Bakhmut air raids: A tweet from David Andelman, CNN correspondent in Europe and Asia

Russian forces “lost 760 people killed just yesterday, (and) continue to attempt offensive actions on Bakhmut,” the military’s general staff said Sunday.

Russian missile strikes hit several regions last weekend as air raid sirens sounded across the country. The attacks killed people in the region, while a man was injured.

The United States will supply Ukraine with Bradley fighting vehicles as part of a new security assistance package to the country as it nears the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

On their phone call, Biden and Scholz “expressed their common determination to continue to provide the necessary financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine for as long as needed,” a joint statement read.

Zelensky wants those systems because they will allow the military to target Russian missiles flying at a higher altitude than they have been able to before.

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He was a correspondent for CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

The Russian Army is Warped with Cell Phones, and Crime as a Probe of Moscow’s High-Measurement Security Communications

Cell phones were used in violation of the regulations that allowed the Ukrainian forces to target them most accurately, if the Russian account is correct. The attack was carried out by someone, but Ukraine doesn’t specify how it was done. The implications of how Russia is conducting its war are not only broader, but deeper.

It is true that days after the deadliest attack on Russian servicemen, President Vladimir Putin called for a temporary ceasefire. The move was dismissed as a cynical attempt to seek breathing space in the midst of a bad year for Russian forces.

The satellite-guided HIMARS — short for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — currently have a range of 80 kilometers. A longer-range 300-kilometer HIMARS has not yet been authorized, despite repeated Ukrainian pleas. The long-range system could lead to an increase in hostilities, according to the Biden administration.

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

Other experts share the same view. James Lewis, the director of the Center forStrategic and International Studies’ Strategic Technologies Program, told me in an e-mail that bad security communications are standard practice in the Russian Army.

He is not the only war writer questioning his assumptions. A post on the Telegram channel known as “Grey Zone,” linked to the leader of the Wagner Group of mercenaries said that the soldiers themselves were to blame for what happened in Makiivka. It is a lie and an attempt to throw off the blame.

Many of the arrivals to the war are inmates from Russian prisons who were immediately freed and moved to the Ukrainian front. Imagine how appealing cell phone use would be to prisoners who have spent years in isolation with little or no outside contact.

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

He wondered how the Ministry of Defense could not have determined the location of soldiers in a school building using a locally-sourced source.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/opinions/russia-makiivka-deaths-cell-phones-andelman/index.html

The Future of the Defense Minister: Vladimir Putin’s Battle of the Makiivka Throat in the High-Cadence Regime

The question is when the military will start blaming Putin itself since he seems to have no interest in changing the leadership at the top. The last change was to put an army general once in charge of the brutal Russian bombardment of Syria in charge of overall command of the Russian forces on theUkrainian side.

The deputy defense minister for overseeing logistics was named Col. Gen. M.Mizintsev, who was also known as “the butcher of Mariupol.” The location of the arms depot, adjacent to the Makiivka recruits, would likely have been on Mizintsev’s watch.

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

Russia had invested heavily in the 750-mile undersea pipeline linking it to Germany and wanted to increase global sales and ramp up economic leverage over Europe and its power-hungry heavy industries. Germany, a leading consumer, was on board from the get-go. Washington wasn’t.

The United States didn’t want the new, high-capacity subsea supply to replace old overland lines that transited Ukraine and gave vital revenue to the Westward-leaning leadership.

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

Europe has been slow to respond to the deep fissures in US politics and the uncertainty a Trumpian style presidency could wreak on its allies. Decades of a reasonably unshakable reliance, if not complete trust, in the US, has been replaced by stubborn European pragmatism – and Germany leads the way.

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

Putin, Putin, and the Cold War: How to Stimulate the Dynamics of Cold War and How to Identify Russia’s Implications

“Trust us,” he said, “we won’t put you in danger.” He spelled out how his government had already handled Russia’s aggression and how fears of a freezing winter and economic collapse were not realized. “The government dealt with the crisis,” he said, adding: “We are in a much better position.”

The applause at each step of his speech was as loud as his words. It was correct for Germany, bringing a population that typically avoids war and projecting their own power, and deeply divided over how much to aid Ukraine in killing Russians and possibly angering the Kremlin.

The mixed messaging has some Muscovites CNN spoke with after the announcements by Biden and Scholz on tanks confused. Some people thought that Russia would win regardless, but a significant number were worried about the war, dismayed at the death toll, and frustrated that Putin ignored their concerns.

How much Scholz is aware of Putin’s softening popularity or whether he believes it relevant at this moment is unclear, but his actions now, sending tanks, may help ease Putin’s iron grip on power.

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

This shift in the power dynamic may not change the way the war is fought but could impact the contours of a final deal and shape a lasting peace when it comes.

Ukrainian troops will begin training in the United Kingdom to use the country’s Challenger 2, following the British government’s pledge to send a squadron of the tanks to Ukraine.

Recaps from the Ukraine War: How Oryx Spewed the Ukraine’s Tank Controversy During the February 24 Ukrainian Invasion

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

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

Ukraine’s military acknowledged the Russian takeover of Soledar, retreating from the eastern town after a tough battle. Russian forces continued their offensive around Bakhmut and other parts of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

New U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy arrived in Moscow, at a time of strong tensions between the two governments over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On Monday, Tracy was reportedly heckled by protesters as she entered the Russian Foreign Ministry to present her credentials.

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

Here you can read recaps from the past. There are more in-depth stories that can be found here. Also, listen and subscribe to NPR’s State of Ukraine podcast for updates throughout the day.

The tank fight skewed the way in which Ukraine is governed by Oryx. Oryx claims that Ukraine has captured more than 500 tanks from Russia in addition to the 423 it has lost.

Oryx, an open source intelligence website, has been collecting visual evidence of military equipment losses in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, 2022.

That toll does not include losses Oryx has not been able to visually confirm, said Jakub Janovsky, a military analyst who contributes to the Oryx blog. He thought that the toll could be close to 2,000 tanks.

The Ukrainian Arms’ Implications for NATO: After a World War II, Security Issues in the Developing 21st Century

The Ukrainians had repeatedly requested battle tanks from their Western allies that could be used to take the fight to the enemy.

Just a few months into the war, analysts noticed a design flaw in Russian tanks that meant a single incoming anti-tank round could explode their ammunition stores. The turrets on the Russian tanks are often destroyed in what’s known as a “jack in the box” effect.

Before the war Russian armor was poorly maintained, and some tanks in storage may have been used to make parts for the front lines.

“Due to sanctions they might have to replace sensors and electronics with inferior alternatives – and the amount they can produce in the near term is a fraction of what they are losing. Those material losses … are not sustainable,” he said in September.

Western countries have handed over more sophisticated military equipment for use by the Ukrainian soldiers in the wake of the invasion of the country by Russia, which left European militaries’ stock cupboards looking rather bare.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that the defense industries of NATO were under pressure from the higher rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure.

Policy makers have kept their stock low because of the budget cuts and the assumption that there wouldn’t be a land war similar to World War I or II.

Nick Witney said that a conspiracy of dressing the shop window while letting the stock room empty out was the result of the financial pressures on European governments over the past couple of decades.

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