Russia hasn’t destroyed any of the devastating HIMARS artillery given Ukraine, US says, contradicting Russia’s claims
Mia Jankowicz – July 22, 2022
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Gen. Mark Milley on Wednesday said Russia hadn’t “eliminated” US-donated HIMARS.
This stands in stark contrast to Russian claims of having destroyed four of the weapons.
HIMARS are a prized piece of Ukraine’s attempt to hold Russia back in the east of the country.
Gen. Mark Milley says Russia hasn’t destroyed any of the HIMARS artillery the US has given to Ukraine.
Speaking at a Wednesday Pentagon press conference, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said: “To date, those systems have not been eliminated by the Russians.”
Milley acknowledged that the systems were at risk, adding: “I knock on wood every time I say something like that.”
His statement contradicted several claims by Russian officials and media outlets that Russia has destroyed some of the prized weapons, which Ukraine lobbied hard for and says give it a much-needed way to blunt Russia’s invasion.
The truck-like mounted units can fire precision-targeted heavy artillery about 50 miles, depending on the rounds used.
The US has given Ukraine 12 units so far, with another four on the way, Milley said.
His remarks followed several Russian claims to have destroyed as many as four of them.
In a briefing reported by the state-operated media outlet Zvezda, a Russian defense ministry representative said Russian forces had destroyed four HIMARS launchers from July 5 to Wednesday.
A July 6 Russian MOD Telegram post said two of these were taken out in Malotaranovka in the Donbas along with two ammunition depots for the weapon.
Milley didn’t specifically address the Russian claims in his briefing, instead saying in broad terms that the HIMARS hadn’t been destroyed.
When Insider approached the Pentagon for comment, a representative pointed to a July 8 briefing during which an unnamed senior defense official said the Russian claims were “not correct.” Insider requested an updated response to the most recent Russian claims.
The Russian Ministry of Defense didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
As well as supplying the units themselves, the Pentagon is sending hundreds of rounds for them and providing training in how to use them.
Milley said the HIMARS had been used “against Russian command-and-control nodes, their logistical networks, their field artillery near defense sites, and many other targets,” adding that strikes made by HIMARS were “steadily degrading” Russia’s efforts.
U.S. agrees to send Ukraine more HIMARS launchers, weaponry that is taking a toll on Russian forces
Michael Weiss, Sr. Correspondent – July 21, 2022
To hear Ukrainian military officials tell it in recent days, the indispensable weapon in month five of their defensive war against Russian invaders is the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, an armored-vehicle-mounted long-range artillery launcher.
“HIMARS have already made a HUUUGE difference on the battlefield,” tweeted Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on July 9. “More of them as well as [U.S.] ammo & equipment will increase our strength and help to demilitarize the terrorist state,” he wrote, referring to Russia.
So it no doubt came as gratifying news in Kyiv that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed Wednesday that Washington would send another four HIMARS platforms, which, he added, Ukraine has been “using so effectively and which have made such a difference on the battlefield.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday. (Alex Brandon/AP)
HIMARS strikes have indeed been devastating, and the Russian military simply has no counter for their range, accuracy and mobility; the M31 series rockets that have been supplied with the HIMARS have the ability to hit a target within a 16-foot radius at a range of 52 miles. Because it’s on wheels, the launcher can be on the move seconds after firing, making it incredibly well protected against Russian counterbatteries.
Since the U.S. began supplying HIMARS in late June, the Ukrainians have managed three things simultaneously. First, according to Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of the Ukraine Armed Forces, their use has been an “important contributing factor” in “stabiliz[ing]” the front in the Donbas region, where Russia had been making slow but unmistakable gains, including capturing the sister cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. The situation there, Zaluzhny said, is “complex, tense, but completely controllable.” (Contrast that sanguine tone with the catastrophic losses in manpower that Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, were citing just weeks ago, when 100 to 200 Ukrainian soldiers were being killedper day.)
A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, at a Marine Corps base camp in Jacksonville, N.C. (Lcpl. Jennifer Reyes/U.S. Marines/Planet Pix via ZUMA Press Wire)
Scores of Russian ammunition depots deep inside occupied parts of the Donbas have now gone up in smoke on a near daily basis in the last few weeks, prompting a host of new memes on Twitter and war watchers to routinely refer to the arrival of “HIMARS o’clock.” These strikes have been so punishing to the Russians’ efforts to resupply their own artillery systems, which far outnumber the Ukrainians’, that Moscow announced an operational “pause” in its campaign in the Donbas on July 7.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered generals to prioritize destroying the HIMARS and other long-range artillery during a visit to the front in Ukraine on July 18, a tacit acknowledgment of how significant their impact has been.
Second, HIMARS helped Ukraine recapture the strategically vital Snake Island, in the Black Sea, scene of the famous retort to a Russian battleship from a besieged Ukrainian soldier, “Russian warship, go f*** yourself.” Even though not directly used against Russian positions on the island, the very presence of HIMARS weapons on the battlefield, in conjunction with Western-supplied anti-ship missiles such as Harpoons, has weighed heavily in Russia’s strategic calculation that holding the island would prove impossible in the long term.
A high-ranking Ukrainian military intelligence official told Yahoo News that Russia’s withdrawal from Snake Island, which the Kremlin tried to spin as a “goodwill gesture,” demonstrated a “real fear of our new long-range artillery capability.”
A satellite image shows smoke rising from Snake Island, off the coast of Ukraine, on June 29. (Planet Labs PBC/Handout via Reuters)
“We’ve hugely expanded our range of operational control over the Black Sea coast, and we’ve stopped the Russians from conducting amphibious operations in this area,” the official, who requested anonymity, said.
The official added that Russia’s hasty pullback has yielded a bonanza of actionable intelligence and matériel for Ukrainians. “Our team was able to find ammunition, different types of weapons, combat and personnel documents and even packed-up-and-ready-to-use aerial reconnaissance systems that the Russians absolutely need,” the official said.
Third, HIMARS has allowed Kyiv to prepare for an upcoming counteroffensive in the southern region of Kherson, the first major population center to fall to Vladimir Putin’s forces since the Russian invasion was launched on Feb. 24.
On July 11, HIMARS destroyed a Russian command center at the serially pummeled Chornobaivka Airport, killing 12 senior Russian officers, including Maj. Gen. Artem Nasbulin, chief of staff of the 22nd Army Corps, according to Serhiy Bratchuk, a Ukrainian official in the Odesa regional military administration.
This is an impressive troika of accomplishments for any weapons platform in just under a month of operations, especially given how few HIMARS launchers there are in Ukraine.
The United States supplied an initial four systems on June 23. In what is now a familiar “proof of concept” pattern of American security assistance, more were approved once the Ukrainians demonstrated their effectiveness on the battlefield.
A Ukrainian military commander with the rockets on a HIMARS vehicle in eastern Ukraine. (Anastasia Vlasova for the Washington Post via Getty Images)
As of July 20, a total of 16 U.S.-supplied HIMARS systems are either in the country or on their way, in addition to European equivalents: The Ukrainians have been purposefully ambiguous on how many systems are active for reasons of operational security. The U.K. has pledged six of the M270B1, an even more powerful version of the HIMARS, of which three have already arrived, and the Germans have committed three MARS II MLRS, another HIMARS cousin, that are due to arrive at the end of July. In total, Ukraine will soon take possession of 25 long-range Western artillery systems.
Reznikov, the Ukrainian defense minister, said at a July 19 event hosted by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Atlantic Council that Ukraine needs double that number to deter Russia, and quadruple it to wage any successful counteroffensive.
For Ukrainian troops who have long complained about Russian artillery supremacy in the Donbas, the arrival of HIMARS and its European equivalents would prove a much-needed shot in the arm, Ukrainian military officials say. For Ukrainian civilians, the weaponry delivered to date has meant a respite from unremitting carnage. The United Nations assesses that 4,731 civilians have been killed and 5,900 have been injured.
Originally designed to monitor forest fires, NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) satellite network has beenused throughout the war by professionals and amateurs alike to chart the blazes that have resulted from artillery fire.All the recent FIRMS data points to a large reduction in Russia’s activity along the line of contact as its heavy gunsand multiple rocket launchers well beyond that line are destroyed in nightly HIMARS attacks by Ukrainian forces.
One of the key features of the HIMARS system is its modular nature, giving it the ability to fire a range of different rockets. In addition to being capable of firing M31 rockets, the system can fire one of the larger and more destructive Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) ballistic missiles.
An Army Tactical Missile System in action. (U.S. Army via Wikicommons)
With a range of up to 186 miles and the same pinpoint accuracy of M31, the United States had held off supplying ATACMS to the Ukrainians for fear they would be used to strike targets within Russia itself and set offan escalatory spiral that could drag NATO countries and Russia into a direct conflict.
President Biden appeared to rule out sending ATACMS to Ukraine in a May 31 New York Timesop-ed in which he emphasized the limits to American military support.
“We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders,” he wrote.
Of late, however, fears that Ukraine would use long-range artillery to attack targets inside Russia seem to have subsided. Kyiv has stuck to its agreement with Washington not to use HIMARS to hit inside Russia. And Reznikov recently told the Financial Times that he was confident Ukraine would eventually receive the ATACMS tactical ballistic missile.
If the U.S. does decide to send ATACMS, that too could fundamentally change the course of the war, putting the Kerch Bridge — Russia’s only direct connection to the occupied Crimean Peninsula — and the Sevastopol Naval Base, home to what remains of its Black Sea Fleet, well within striking distance.
Kaimo Kuusk, the Estonian ambassador to Ukraine, told Yahoo News that the Russians have already grown skittish over Ukraine’s long-range fire capability, as evidenced by the relocation of a “significant number” of ships in the Black Sea Fleet from its home port of Sevastopol in Crimea to Novorossiysk in southern Russia. “As the Ukrainians advance, Sevastopol will be within reach, and Moscow cannot afford another humiliation like the sinking of the Moskva,” Kuusk said, referring to Ukraine’s sinking of the flagship Russian cruiser on April 14 with domestically manufactured anti-ship missiles.
The South Korean military launches an Army Tactical Missile System during a military exercise. (Defense Ministry via Zuma Press Wire)
Maj. Gen. Volodymyr Havrylov, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, told Yahoo News that the relocation could well be Moscow’s way of hedging its bets against heavier-duty artillery being sent to Ukraine. Asked if the Black Sea Fleet was quitting Crimean ports in anticipation of ATACMS, Havrylov responded, “I think so.”
According to Thomas Theiner, a former artillery specialist in the Italian army, ATACMS would dramatically worsen Russia’s growing strategic nightmare. “These missiles are 100% accurate up to a range of 186 miles,” he said, adding that the two most recent ATACMS versions, the M48 and M57 with the WAU-23/B warhead, carry 216 pounds of high explosives, “making them ideal to take out things like bridges.” The Russians, moreover, can’t intercept these rockets, which travel at more than three times the speed of sound, because their guidance software varies their flight patterns to confuse enemy air defenses.
ATACMS can eliminate even Russia’s best air-defense platform — the S-400 — and apart from destroying ammunition depots and command centers, they could also wipe out stocks of Kalibr cruise missiles stored in Crimea, which the Russians have fired on Ukrainian cities, often in retaliation for military losses.
“Even if the U.S. forbids the Ukrainians from targeting the Kerch Bridge,” Theiner said, noting that it could be interpreted as an attack on infrastructure that extends into Russian territory, “a few kilometers from it is a rail tunnel, which ATACMS can easily destroy by hitting it from either end. It would spell the end of all Russian logistics in the peninsula.”
The Ukrainians appear to be preparing the battlefield for a counteroffensive just north of Crimea. They struck the Antonovskiy Bridge in Kherson Oblast twice, on July 20 and 21, the second time forcing the Russians to close the bridge for repairs. The bridge is the main road link across the Dnieper River and a key artery for the logistics and reinforcements flowing to Russian occupiers in Kherson.
Ukrainian artillerymen checking equipment before advancing to the frontline in Kherson, Ukraine. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
These preliminary strikes are believed to be largely symbolic, and the Antonovskiy Bridge was not heavily damaged. A former Western intelligence official told Yahoo News that hitting it twice was “an attempt to put psychological pressure on the Russians, to make them afraid that at a certain point they won’t be able to evacuate their troops from the west bank of the [Dnieper].”
“If we take for granted that in the event the Russians leave Kherson, they’ll destroy the two bridges crossing the river anyway,” the ex-official said, and added, “The Ukrainians may think it’s better not to give them a chance of a more or less controlled withdrawal.”
Pro-Russian military commentators on social media have grudgingly admitted that Ukrainian artillery strikes run the risk of making the bridge unusable for heavy military traffic, assuming it isn’t collapsed completely. The highly trafficked “Starshe Eddy” channel on Telegram was downright envious of Ukraine’s new capability and determination.
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine are doing what we should have done a long time ago, namely, they are destroying the bridge across the Dnieper in Kherson. The goal is obvious, to interrupt military logistics between the left bank and our foothold on the right bank,” a recent message read. “It is difficult to physically destroy the bridge itself, but to make its work impossible or extremely difficult is quite a feasible task. To do this, they will strike every day, preventing repair teams from restoring what was destroyed. Why we don’t do the same with the Ukrainian bridges across the Dnieper, I don’t understand.”
For the Ukrainians, the upcoming push in the south, which Reznikov has claimed will be made up of “a million-strong army,” has been given new impetus by Russian designs, according to U.S. intelligence, to hold sham “referendums” and then annex occupied Donbas territories à la Crimea. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to confirm those plans in an interview with Russian state media on July 20. “Now the geography is different,” he said. “And it is not only [Russian-occupied areas in Donbas] but also the Kherson region, the Zaporizhzhia region, and a number of other territories, and the process continues, and it continues consequently and persistently.”
Tellingly, Lavrov specified that “if the West delivers long-range weapons to Kyiv, the geographic goals of the special operation in Ukraine will expand even more,” in a further indication of just how seriously Moscow views these weapons systems.
With additional reporting by James Rushton in Kyiv
Russia taking hundreds of casualties daily in Ukraine war -U.S. official
Idrees Ali – July 22, 2022
Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in the Kharkiv
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States believes Russia’s military is suffering hundreds of casualties a day in its war in Ukraine, and with the loss so far of thousands of lieutenants and captains, its chain of command is struggling, a senior U.S. defense official said on Friday.
Nearly five months since President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Russia’s neighbor, its forces are grinding through the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and occupy around a fifth of the country.
The United States estimates that Russian casualties in Ukraine have reached around 15,000 killed and perhaps 45,000 wounded, CIA Director William Burns said on Wednesday, adding that Ukraine has also endured significant casualties.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that in addition to the lieutenants and captains killed, hundreds of colonels and “many” Russian generals had been killed as well.
“The chain of command is still struggling,” the official said.
Russia classifies military deaths as state secrets even in times of peace and has not updated its official casualty figures frequently during the war. On March 25 it said 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed.
The Kyiv government said in June that 100 to 200 Ukrainian troops were being killed per day.
The United States also believes that Ukraine had destroyed more than 100 “high-value” Russian targets inside Ukraine, including command posts, ammunition depots and air-defense sites, the U.S. official said.
The United States has provided $8.2 billion in security assistance since the war began.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it would provide Ukraine with four additional high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) in the latest weapons package.
On Friday, the White House said that package would be worth $270 million in military aid for Ukraine, including about $100 million for Phoenix “ghost” drones. The drones were designed mainly for striking targets, but little else is known about them, including their range and precise capabilities.
Russia says it is waging a “special operation” to demilitarize its neighbor and rid it of dangerous nationalists.
Kyiv and the West say Russia is mounting an imperialist campaign to reconquer a pro-Western neighbor that broke free of Moscow’s rule when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Steve Holland; editing by John Stonestreet, Nick Macfie and Leslie Adler)
Russia taking hundreds of casualties daily in Ukraine war -U.S. official
Idrees Ali – July 22, 2022
Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in the Kharkiv
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States believes Russia’s military is suffering hundreds of casualties a day in its war in Ukraine, and with the loss so far of thousands of lieutenants and captains, its chain of command is struggling, a senior U.S. defense official said on Friday.
Nearly five months since President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Russia’s neighbor, its forces are grinding through the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and occupy around a fifth of the country.
The United States estimates that Russian casualties in Ukraine have reached around 15,000 killed and perhaps 45,000 wounded, CIA Director William Burns said on Wednesday, adding that Ukraine has also endured significant casualties.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that in addition to the lieutenants and captains killed, hundreds of colonels and “many” Russian generals had been killed as well.
“The chain of command is still struggling,” the official said.
Russia classifies military deaths as state secrets even in times of peace and has not updated its official casualty figures frequently during the war. On March 25 it said 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed.
The Kyiv government said in June that 100 to 200 Ukrainian troops were being killed per day.
The United States also believes that Ukraine had destroyed more than 100 “high-value” Russian targets inside Ukraine, including command posts, ammunition depots and air-defense sites, the U.S. official said.
The United States has provided $8.2 billion in security assistance since the war began.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it would provide Ukraine with four additional high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) in the latest weapons package.
On Friday, the White House said that package would be worth $270 million in military aid for Ukraine, including about $100 million for Phoenix “ghost” drones. The drones were designed mainly for striking targets, but little else is known about them, including their range and precise capabilities.
Russia says it is waging a “special operation” to demilitarize its neighbor and rid it of dangerous nationalists.
Kyiv and the West say Russia is mounting an imperialist campaign to reconquer a pro-Western neighbor that broke free of Moscow’s rule when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Steve Holland; editing by John Stonestreet, Nick Macfie and Leslie Adler)
Only a quarter of Americans have confidence in the SCOTUS, according to a June 2022 Gallup Poll.
US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan ruminated on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court at a conference full of lawyers and judges, warning that a disconnected court and political appointments could be “a dangerous thing for the democratic system.”
“By design, the court does things sometimes that the majority of the country doesn’t like,” Kagan said. “Overall, the way the court retains its legitimacy and fosters public confidence is by acting like a court, is by doing the kind of things that do not seem to people political or partisan, by not behaving as though we are just people with individual political or policy or social preferences.”
The core of the challenge to abortion rights that had been codified for 50 years was a Mississippi law that aimed to ban abortion after 15 weeks – which is stricter than the 24-week standard set by Roe v. Wade.
Within two weeks, the court also expanded gun rights and imposed limits on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to implement greenhouse gas regulations.
She added that the court generally being on the opposite side of public opinion could have grave consequences for democracy.
“I’m not talking about any particular decision or any particular series of decisions. But if, over time, the court loses all connection with the public and the public sentiment, that’s a dangerous thing for democracy,” Kagan told the conference.
In the days before the Roe V. Wade decision, a Gallup poll showed that confidence in the Supreme Court had tanked — with only 25% of Americans saying that they had faith in the institution.
“We have a court that does important things, and if that connection is lost, that’s a dangerous thing for the democratic system as a whole,” Kagan reiterated.
Russia about to ‘run out of steam’ in Ukraine, British spy chief says
Phil Stewart – July 21, 2022
Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Chernihiv region
ASPEN, Colorado (Reuters) – Russia’s military is likely to start an operational pause of some kind in Ukraine in the coming weeks, giving Kyiv a key opportunity to strike back, Britain’s spy chief said on Thursday.
Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) known as MI6, also estimated that about 15,000 Russian troops had been killed so far in its war in Ukraine, adding that was “probably a conservative estimate.”
“I think they’re about to run out of steam,” Moore said, addressing the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, adding that the Russian military would increasingly find it difficult to supply manpower and materiel over the next few weeks.
“They will have to pause in some way, and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back.”
Nearly five months since Russia invaded Ukraine, Kyiv hopes that Western weapons, especially longer-range missiles such as U.S. HIMARS which Kyiv has deployed in recent weeks, will allow it to launch a counterattack in coming weeks and recapture Russian-occupied territory.
Moore underscored the need for Ukraine to show the war was winnable — both to preserve high Ukrainian morale but also to stiffen the resolve of the West as concerns mount about European energy shortages during the coming winter.
“It’s important, I think, to the Ukrainians themselves that they demonstrate their ability to strike back. And I think that will be very important for their continuing high morale,” Moore said.
“I also think, to be honest, it will be an important reminder to the rest of Europe that this is a winnable campaign by the Ukrainians. Because we are about to go into a pretty tough winter and … I don’t want it to sound like a character from ‘Game of Thrones.’ But winter is coming.
“And clearly in that atmosphere with the sort of pressure on gas supplies and all the rest, we’re in for a tough time,” Moore said.
The prospect of a Russian disruption of European energy supplies is one of the biggest global economic and political risks arising from the war. European countries fear they could face shortages next winter, if Russia cuts back deliveries during warm months when they typically replenish storage tanks.
Moore said the toll from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine was mainly being felt in poorer, rural communities, and that Putin was not yet recruiting forces for the conflict from middle-class areas of St. Petersburg or Moscow.
“These are poor kids from rural parts of Russia. They’re from blue-collar towns in Siberia. They are disproportionately from ethnic minorities. And these are his cannon fodder,” Moore said.
Asked if he knew about Putin’s health, Moore said: “There’s no evidence that Putin is suffering from serious ill-health.”
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Liz Cheney says Trump is ‘preying’ on his supporters by pushing 2020 election lie
Jon Ward, Chief National Correspondent – July 21, 2022
The patriotism of many Americans was turned into a “weapon” during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, by a former president who continues to prey on his supporters, Rep. Liz Cheney said Thursday night.
Cheney, the vice chair of the Jan. 6 House select committee investigating the attack, delivered a forceful and sober final statement at the conclusion of a nearly three-hour hearing on Capitol Hill.
The Republican congresswoman from Wyoming addressed her comments to those who are skeptical of the committee’s work, which includes many voters in her own home state.
“The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies. It is, instead, a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family,” Cheney said.
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., delivers a closing statement during the House select committee hearing on Thursday. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Cheney made a distinction between Trump and his supporters, noting that many who voted for the former president would eagerly defend the country with their own lives. “Donald Trump knows that millions of Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation were it threatened. They would put their lives and their freedom at stake to protect her,” she said.
But, she said, on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump “turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution.”
Trump is even now “preying on their patriotism” by continuing to insist he somehow won the 2020 election, despite no evidence to support his baseless claims, Cheney said.
The nine hearings so far, she said, have shown that “Donald Trump’s plan to falsely claim victory in 2020, no matter what the facts actually were, was premeditated.”
A video of former President Donald Trump plays during Thursday night’s hearing of the Jan. 6 committee. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The hearing Thursday showed evidence that Trump did nothing to stop the violence on Jan. 6, that Vice President Mike Pence called in police and military units to shut down the riot and that Trump rejected calls from his family and aides to call off the mob until he knew the attack would be repelled by law enforcement.
Cheney closed her comments by asking Americans to consider the gravity of allowing Trump back into power again.
“Every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of Jan. 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?” she said.
Cheney is facing the possibility of losing her seat in Congress if she loses the Aug. 16 primary in Wyoming to a Republican challenger who has parroted Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. But her words Thursday demonstrated a resolve on her part to continue waging a battle for the soul of the Republican Party.
Cheney shakes hands with Sandra Garza, the partner of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died from injuries he sustained in the insurrection. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
When Cheney was stripped of her leadership position in the House Republican Conference last year, she vowed then to stop Trump from being reelected. “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” she said.
If Cheney loses her congressional seat, and even if she wins, she’s likely to run for president in 2024 in order to keep making the case that Trump is unfit to lead the GOP, much less the nation, according to conversations with Republicans close to the matter.
Cheney ended the hearing Thursday by making clear that the committee’s work is not done, and that there will be more hearings after Labor Day.
“Ronald Reagan’s great ally Margaret Thatcher said this: ‘Let it never be said that the dedication of those who love freedom is less than the determination of those who would destroy it,’” she said. “Let me assure every one of you this: Our committee understands the gravity of this moment, the consequences for our nation. We have much work yet to do, and will see you all in September.”
‘It’s the accumulation’: The Jan. 6 hearings are wounding Trump, after all
David Siders – July 20, 2022
Shawn Thew/AP Photo
The conventional wisdom about the Jan. 6 committee hearings was that no single revelation was going to change Republican minds about Donald Trump.
What happened instead, a slow drip of negative coverage, may be just as damaging to the former president. Six weeks into the committee’s public hearing schedule, an emerging consensus is forming in Republican Party circles — including in Trump’s orbit — that a significant portion of the rank-and-file may be tiring of the non-stop series of revelations about Trump.
The fatigue is evident in public polling and in focus groups that suggest growing Republican openness to an alternative presidential nominee in 2024. The cumulative effect of the hearings, according to interviews with more than 20 Republican strategists, party officials and pollsters in recent days, has been to at least marginally weaken his support.
“It is definitely kind of this wet drip of, do you really want to debate the 2020 election again? Do you really want to debate what happened on Jan. 6?” said Bob Vander Plaats, the evangelical leader in Iowa who is influential in primary politics in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. “Frankly, I think what I sense a little bit, even among some deep, deep Trump supporters … there’s a certain exhaustion to it.”
But for many Republicans, the ongoing, backward-looking call-and-response between the committee and Trump may nevertheless be getting old.
“I think what everybody thought was that the first prime-time hearing was such a non-event that that would continue,” said Randy Evans, a Georgia lawyer who served as Trump’s ambassador to Luxembourg. “But over the course of the hearings, the steadiness, the repetitiveness, has had a corrosive effect. You’d have to be oblivious to the way media works, the way reputations work, the way politics works, to not understand that it’s never the one thing. It’s the accumulation.”
Evans said, “This is all undoubtedly starting to take a toll — how much, I don’t know. But the bigger question is whether it starts to eat through the Teflon. There are some signs that maybe it has. But it’s too early to say right now.”
For more than a year after Trump lost the presidential election, his political durability was not even in question. But the committee hearings appear to have had an effect on Trump’s enormous fundraising operation, which has slowed in recent months. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who may run in 2024, has been gaining on Trump in some polls, including in New Hampshire, the first primary state, where one recent survey had DeSantis statistically tied with Trump among Republican primary voters. Republicans are still poring over a New York Times/Siena College poll last week that showed nearly half of Republican primary voters would rather vote for a Republican other than Trump in 2024.
In a series of focus groups with 2020 Trump supporters from across the country since the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2001, Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who became a vocal supporter of Joe Biden in 2020, for more than a year found about half of participants consistently said they wanted Trump to run again. But that number has fallen off since the hearings began, she said.
“We’ve had now three focus groups where zero people have wanted him to run again, and a couple other groups where it’s been like two people,” Longwell said. “Totally different.”
The Trump supporters in her focus groups are still dismissive of the hearings, Longwell said, “and I don’t think people are sitting down and being persuaded” by them.
However, she said, the hearings have “turned the volume up on the Trump baggage.”
“The other thing,” she said, “is I cannot tell you how much these Republican voters want to move on from the conversation of January 6th.”
‘Political Theater’
That’s a far cry from the Republican view of the hearings when they started: Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) derided what he called a “prime-time dud.” Jim Justice, the Republican governor of West Virginia, dismissed them as “political theater.” And Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri called them a “complete waste of time.”
One reason that the hearings are resonating now is that even if Republicans don’t agree with the committee’s findings, they read polls. The percentage of Republicans who say Trump misled people about the 2020 election has ticked up since last month, while a majority of Americans say Trump committed a crime. Perhaps most problematic for Trump, 16 percent of Republicans in the Siena College survey said they would vote for someone else in the general election or aren’t sure what they will do in 2024 if Trump is the nominee.
That’s a relatively small segment of the Republican electorate, but a critical one in competitive states that will decide which party controls the White House.
“I think you’re starting to see the impact of the hearings, and just overall his behavior since he lost the election,” said Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado Republican Party chair and longtime party strategist.
“He’s got a hard-core base, and there’s no doubt about that,” said Wadhams. “I voted for him twice, I loved his accomplishments. But I do think he’s compromised himself into a situation where it would be very difficult for him to win another election for president.”
Electability concerns may loom especially large this year for Republicans, who view Biden as a beatable incumbent. His cratering public approval ratings, now hovering below 39 percent, are worse than Trump’s at this point in his presidency. One senior House Republican aide described the resonance of the Jan. 6 committee hearings as in part a product of the contrast they are drawing between “a golden opportunity to win back the White House in 2024 and the only person who might not be able to do it.”
A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Trump has regularly criticized the committee’s work as a partisan exercise. And because most other Republicans view it that way, too, it’s unlikely that many of Trump’s opponents will leverage the committee’s revelations explicitly in the run-up to 2024.
Proxy wars
Still, the Republicans who may run against Trump in 2024 are increasingly breaking with him as the midterm year drags on.
As much has anything, those midterm primaries – coinciding with the Jan. 6 committee hearings – have laid bare the willingness of Republicans in at least some cases to disassociate their adoration for Trump with support for him politically. Trump’s endorsement has pulled Republicans across the line in competitive primaries in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, but his chosen candidates have flopped in other races, including in Georgia and Nebraska.
“The effect of the hearings will be negligible on Trump’s favorable ratings among Republicans,” said Whit Ayres, the longtime Republican pollster. “The ‘Always Trumpers’ and the ‘Maybe Trumpers’ are resolute in their insistence that they are paying no attention whatsoever to the hearings. It’s almost an article of faith among Republicans to say, ‘I am not paying attention to these hearings’.”
However, Ayres said, “The way it translates is that they believe that other candidates will carry less baggage … and that gets reinforced by what seeps into the political water from these hearings.
And as the Jan. 6 committee prepares for another hearing on Thursday, the ongoing focus on Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6 is now in the political waters.
John Thomas, a Republican strategist who works on House campaigns across the country, said that in recent conversations with state party chairs and Republican activists in numerous states, “almost to the T, and I don’t really care what state it’s in, they all say, ‘Love Trump, love his policies, wish he would just be a kingmaker.’ And that’s really a shift, because six months ago, a year ago, it was, ‘Trump’s got to run again, he’s the only one who can fight the swamp, drive the policy agenda.’”
“It’s not Trump hatred,” Thomas added. “It’s Trump fatigue. I think [the Jan. 6 committee hearings] reminds people to the degree that they’re tuning in that, eh, is this that important of an issue? No. But damn … And then Trump goes on his rants and it’s like, ‘We’re tired of it.’”
U.S. swelters in latest heat wave, with Texas and Oklahoma hitting 115°F
David Knowles, Senior Editor – July 20, 2022
The latest extreme heat wave to hit the United States is showing no mercy, leaving more than 105 million Americans in 28 states under heat advisories and excessive heat warnings from the National Weather Service.
Temperatures of 115 degrees Fahrenheit have been recorded in Texas and Oklahoma this week, and more than 211 million people across the country will experience heat of 90 degrees or higher on Wednesday.
In a year when record-breaking heat waves have become commonplace, scientific research has shown that climate change is behind the uptick in their frequency and duration.
“While each heat wave itself is different, and has individual dynamics behind it, the probability of these events is a direct consequence of the warming planet,” Jason Smerdon, a climate scientist for the Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, told ABC News.
Residents of Texas, a state that has been subjected to daily triple-digit temperatures and is in the midst of a mega-drought affecting much of the West, have for weeks been asked to conserve water and electricity.
As in much of Europe, where local officials have urged residents to avoid unnecessary travel as a heat wave there has buckled roadways, airport runways and rail lines, people in several U.S. states have retreated inside air-conditioned spaces.
“When it’s 110 outside, you’re a prisoner in your home,” Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, told the Washington Post. “Is this the kind of life you want to live?”
Like Texas, Oklahoma has been particularly hard hit by the heat, with every one of the state’s 120 weather monitoring stations recording temperatures of 102°F or higher on Tuesday.
Coupled with high humidity, the high temperatures pose a serious risk to human health. The human body sweats in order to cool off, but when humidity is high and there is too much moisture in the atmosphere, that sweat cannot evaporate and results in even higher internal temperatures.
Over the last several days in Spain and Portugal, where temperatures have reached near 110°F, more than 1,700 people have died due to heat-related causes.
Officials in Phoenix are worried that the city will once again break heat-death records this year, especially among the vulnerable homeless population.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we are in worse shape from a heat-associated-death standpoint than we were last year because there are so many more unsheltered folks that are at 200 to 300 times the risk of heat-associated death,” David Hondula, director of the city’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, told Yahoo News.
While climate change skeptics often argue that excessive heat is simply a normal seasonal consequence, scientists have established that the burning of fossil fuels since the start of the Industrial Revolution is responsible for rising temperatures.
Of course, that would be exactly what you would expect if, as has been proved, global temperatures are rising. In states sweltering in triple-digit heat, meanwhile, the reality of climate change is playing out in real time.
“It looks like we’re going to stay in the range of highs of 100 to 105 degrees for the next week and a half,” Erin Maxwell, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Norman, told the Oklahoman. “But in terms of real relief from the heat, that doesn’t look to be on the horizon any time soon.”
Russia’s mass kidnappings of Ukrainians are a page out of a wartime playbook – and evidence of genocide
Alexander Hinton, Distinguished Prof. of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University – Newark
July 20, 2022
A woman runs from a house on fire after shelling in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in June 2022. AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov
Following months of speculation, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed on July 13, 2022, that Russia had forcibly relocated between 900,000 to 1.6 million Ukrainians into Russia.
Blinken cited various sources, including eyewitness accounts and the Russian government, to confirm that Russia is removing Ukrainians from their country and making them pass through filtration camps, where some are detained and even disappear.
Approximately 260,000 of these Ukrainian deportees are children, including orphans and others separated from their parents.
Blinken, in addition to major human rights organizations, says the Russian deportations may be a war crime.
Russia acknowledges that it has moved Ukrainian adults and children out of the war-torn country, but has said the moves are “voluntary” and done for “humanitarian” reasons.
But Russia has a history of forcibly moving large numbers of civilians as a war and political tactic.
Other aggressors of war have also forced civilians to move for various reasons – like eliminating a perceived security threat, or the potential to grab the wealth, possessions and property the deportees are forced to leave behind.
In the process of achieving these two aims, perpetrators often commit atrocity crimes, a broad international legal term that encompasses war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Distinct but overlapping, these atrocity crimes can all involve mass deportation. The United Nations’ definition of genocide includes the forced transfer of children.
Russia’s mass deportation of Ukrainians implicates it in all three of these crimes.
Ukrainian soldiers stand in front of a damaged residential building in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on July 19, 2022. Nariman El-Mofty/Associated Press
Deporting for economic gain
In international law, mass deportation refers to coerced, large-scale population movements across a country’s borders. Forced transfer involves moving groups of people within a country.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830, for example, authorized the mass deportation of as many as 80,000 Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River to the Indian Territory, much of which is now part of Oklahoma. This forced migration resulted in enormous suffering and death.
The U.S. later deported or forcibly transferred other groups, including more than 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II. The U.S. also moved millions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico in the 1930s and ‘40s and again in 1954. These deportations were justified by the false claim that Mexicans were stealing American jobs.
But there are many other historical examples, such as the Ottoman Empire’s World War I deportation of Armenians and other Christian groups.
The Nazis also undertook mass deportations and population transfers during the Holocaust, most infamously through train transports of Jews to death camps in Poland. They also carried out death marches at the end of the war.
I have conducted research on the Khmer Rouge Communist regime in Cambodia, in power from 1975 through 1979.
Immediately after the Khmer Rouge seized power, they forced over 2 million urban dwellers to relocate into the countryside, in part due to falsified security concerns.
Nazis notoriously carried out a large-scale forced deportation of Jews and others to concentration camps. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Russia’s mass deportations and filtration camps
Now, as Blinken and others have noted, Russia has established at least 18 filtration camps, where they take Ukrainian deportees’ biometric data, which are unique, physical characteristics, like fingerprints.
These camps serve to filter out people Russia deems dangerous, including members of the Ukrainian military, government and media. Those identified as suspect are often harassed, abused and even tortured.
Ukrainians have reportedly disappeared following their entry to the camps.
Eyewitnesses say that those deported from Russia also face harsh conditions and have little choice about where they go.
Still, it is difficult for outsiders to talk with the victims and get detailed accounts, since many deportees have been sent to remote areas of Russia without their phones or Ukrainian passports.
Russia’s playbook
Mass deportation and forced transfers of civilians are considered crimes against humanity under international law when undertaken in a “widespread or systematic” manner during peace or war. Such deportations and population transfers are also considered war crimes if committed during armed conflict.
In addition, one part of genocide is “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Russia’s deportation of orphans and children separated from parents would constitute such a crime if there is genocidal intent.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments that he wants to “denazify” Ukraine suggest such intent is present.
Russia’s mass deportations should not be surprising.
In the past, Russia has repeatedly committed genocide and other international crimes while forcibly moving people for economic gain and to deal with perceived threats. These aims connect to Russia’s long-standing imperialist ambitions.
In the mid-1800s, for example, the Russian Empire deported hundreds of thousands of Circassians, a North Caucasus group, into the Ottoman Empire. Russia also forcibly relocated numerous other groups, including Ukrainians, during the period of the Soviet Union.
In Ukraine, then, Russia is taking a page out of a well-worn wartime playbook. There are indications that this time Russia may be held to account.
Russia’s crimes are being investigated by the International Criminal Court. And, almost immediately after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine began gathering evidence of Russian atrocity crimes. Ukraine has documented more than 23,000 war crimes cases against Russia, and 14 European countries have launched investigations.
Russia’s mass deportations, and especially its forced transfer of children, are central to the case that Russia has also committed genocide in Ukraine.
