Category: Ukraine War

The Hill

As many as 40K Russian troops killed, wounded, held prisoner or missing: NATO

March 23, 2022

NATO estimates that up to 15,000 Russian troops have been killed since the Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine began last month, with as many as 40,000 dead, wounded, taken prisoner or missing.

The alliance arrived at those figures based on information from Ukrainian officials, Western intelligence and information gleaned from Russia through official channels or unintentionally, a senior military official from NATO told The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.

NATO estimates that roughly 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the attack started on Feb. 24, a major blow to Moscow, which sought to decapitate the Ukrainian government in a matter of days.

But the Russians were quickly mired by fierce Ukrainian opposition and issues with supplies, with the campaign now hitting four full weeks of fighting and NATO warning it is “rapidly approaching” a stalemate.

Ukraine also claims to have killed six Russian generals, while Moscow has only acknowledged one dead.

The new NATO figures mark the first time the alliance has publicly released Russian casualty estimates since the start of the war. U.S. officials have not provided public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, pointing to the questionable reliability of such information and a fast-moving and ever-changing conflict.

Russia has also closely guarded information on its casualties. The last time it acknowledged such information was on March 2, when it said almost 500 soldiers were killed and nearly 1,600 wounded.

On the Ukrainian side, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that thousands of his people had been killed, including at least 121 children.

Zelensky said on March 12 that about 1,300 Ukrainian troops had been killed in action.

The Russian troop death toll has already exceeded the U.S. militaries losses in the first 18 years of the Afghanistan war, when just over 7,000 troops died.

The Kremlin, despite sending more than 150,000 troops into Ukraine, has made limited progress with its ground forces in recent weeks.

The Russian troops have been slowed or stopped by Ukrainian units using hit-and-run tactics and Western-supplied weapons, forcing them to destroy cities from afar using bombs and heavy shelling.

Moscow has lost more than 10 percent of its combat force in Ukraine, with major issues with food, fuel and cold weather gear shortages, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Tuesday.

Ukrainians forces, meanwhile, have continued to defend several major cities including the capitol of Kyiv and have started to move to take back territory Russians had gained in recent days.

Related:

Yahoo! News

Russia has suffered up to 40,000 casualties on Ukraine battlefield, claims Nato

Jimmy Nsubuga – March 23, 2022

Russia may have suffered between 30,000 and 40,000 battlefield casualties in Ukraine, according to a senior Nato military officer.

The military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by Nato, added between 7,000 and 15,000 Russians had been killed since it invaded its neighbour on 24 February.

The estimate of those killed is based on information from the Ukrainian government, indications from Russia, and open-source data, Associated Press reported.

It is Nato’s first public estimate of Russian casualties since the beginning of the war.

The US government has largely declined to provide public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, saying available information is of questionable reliability.

The Nato military officer, in a briefing from the alliance’s military headquarters in Belgium on Wednesday, said the estimate of 30,000 to 40,000 Russian casualties is derived from what he called a standard calculation that in war an army suffers three wounded soldiers for every soldier killed.

The officer said the casualties include killed in action and wounded in action, and those taken prisoner or missing in action.

The exact toll on Putin’s forces is unknown.

Earlier this week, Western intelligence officials placed the tally of Russian deaths at a “reasonable estimate” of 10,000. If true, this would represent the heaviest number of Russian casualties since the Second World War.

This figure appeared to match a report in a pro-Kremlin Russian newspaper called Komsomolskaya Pravda on Tuesday, which cited Russian Defence ministry data confirming 9,861 troops had died.

However, the death tally was quickly deleted from the article with the newspaper later accusing hackers of planting fake news on its website.

Russia has not officially updated its casualty figures since stating on 2 March that 498 servicemen had been killed and 1,597 wounded.

Read more: Putin’s invasion has killed over 120 children, Ukraine says

What is clear, however, is that Russian forces have taken heavy losses in the four weeks since the invasion began. They have been frozen in place for at least a week on multiple fronts and face supply problems and fierce resistance.

As a consequence, Russia has turned to siege tactics and bombardment, causing massive destruction and many civilian deaths.

Despite its losses so far, Russia may still be hoping to make more gains on the battlefield, especially in the east, in territory including Mariupol, which Moscow demands Ukraine cede to Russian-backed separatists.

But in a daily intelligence update, the UK’s defence ministry said the entire battlefield across northern Ukraine – which includes huge armoured columns that once bore down on Kyiv – was now “static”, with the invaders apparently trying to reorganise.

A veteran aide of president Vladimir Putin has also resigned over the war and left Russia with no intention to return, two sources said on Wednesday, making him the first senior official to break with the Kremlin since Putin launched his invasion a month ago.

The Kremlin confirmed that the aide, Anatoly Chubais, had resigned of his own accord.

Read more: Russian supplies will last ‘no more than three days’, Ukraine military claims

In a further sign of growing Ukrainian confidence, on Wednesday a Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said he expected the active phase of the Russian invasion to be over by the end of April as the Russian advance had already stalled in many areas.

Speaking on local television, Arestovych said Russia had already lost 40% of its attacking forces and played down the prospect of Russia waging nuclear war.

Nato will likely decide on Thursday to ramp up military forces on its eastern flank, the head of the alliance said, while also warning Russia against using nuclear weapons.

“I expect leaders will agree to strengthen NATO’s posture in all domains, with major increases in the eastern part of the alliance. On land, in the air and at sea,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference ahead of the summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Related:

Air Force Times

NATO: 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops dead in Ukraine

Nebi Qena, Cara Anna, The Associated Press – March 23, 2022

KYIV, Ukraine — NATO estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine, where ferocious fighting by the country’s fast-moving defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought.

By way of comparison, Moscow lost about 15,000 soldiers in Afghanistan over 10 years.

A senior NATO military official said the alliance’s estimate was based on information from Ukrainian officials, what Russia has released — intentionally or not — and intelligence gathered from open sources. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO.

When Russia unleashed its invasion Feb. 24 in Europe’s biggest offensive since World War II, a swift toppling of Ukraine’s democratically elected government seemed likely.

But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Russia is bogged down in a grinding military campaign.

Russian invasion in Ukraine could spell major shifts in the Pacific

With its ground forces repeatedly slowed or stopped by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops are bombarding targets from afar, falling back on the tactics they used in reducing cities to ruins in Syria and Chechnya.

As U.S. President Joe Biden left for Europe on Wednesday to meet with key allies about possible new sanctions against Moscow and more military aid to Ukraine, he warned there is a “real threat” Russia could use chemical weapons.

Addressing Japan’s parliament on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said four weeks of war have killed thousands of his people, including at least 121 children.

“Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbors. They have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads,” he said.

Still, major Russian objectives remain unfulfilled. The capital, Kyiv, has been shelled repeatedly hit but is not even encircled.

Near-constant shelling and gunfire shook the city Wednesday, with plumes of black smoke rising from the western outskirts, where the two sides battled for control of multiple suburbs. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 264 civilians have been killed in the capital since war broke out.

Families of troops deployed to NATO’s flank sound off in town hall with Army’s top NCO

In the south, the port city of Mariupol has seen the worst devastation of the war, under weeks of siege and bombardment. But Ukrainian forces have prevented its fall, thwarting an apparent bid by Moscow to fully secure a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Zelenskyy said 100,000 civilians remain in a city that had 430,000 people. Efforts to get desperately needed food and other supplies to those trapped have often failed.

Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of seizing a humanitarian convoy. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Russians were holding captive 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers along with their vehicles.

It is not clear how much of Mariupol is still under Ukrainian control. Fleeing residents say fighting continues street by street. In their last update, over a week ago, Mariupol officials said at least 2,300 people had died, but the true toll is probably much higher. Airstrikes in the past week destroyed a theater and an art school where civilians were sheltering.

In the besieged northern city of Chernihiv, Russian forces bombed and destroyed a bridge that was used for aid deliveries and civilian evacuations, regional governor Viacheslav Chaus said.

Kateryna Mytkevich, who arrived in Poland after fleeing Chernihiv, wiped away tears as she spoke about what she had seen. The city is without gas, electricity or running water, said Mytkevich, 39, and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed.

“I don’t understand why we have such a curse,” she said.

Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted the military operation is going “strictly in accordance” with plans.

The most recent figure for Ukraine’s military losses came from Zelenskyy on March 12, when he said that about 1,300 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed in action.

The NATO official said 30,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded.

Russia has released very little information on its casualties, saying March 2 that nearly 500 soldiers had been killed and almost 1,600 wounded.

Ukraine also claims to have killed six Russian generals. Russia acknowledges just one dead general.

The figures from NATO represent the alliance’s first public estimate of Russian casualties since the war began. The U.S. government has largely declined to provide public estimates of Russian or Ukrainian casualties, saying available information is of questionable reliability.

With casualties mounting and quick victory no longer in sight, Russia is having to work to suppress dissent and shore up morale.

It has arrested thousands of antiwar protesters and cracked down on the media. Also, under a law passed Wednesday, troops in Ukraine will get the same benefits as veterans of previous wars, including tax breaks, discounts on utilities and preferential access to medical treatment.

In an apparent reflection of growing divisions in Russia’s top echelons, top official Anatoly Chubais has resigned, Peskov told the Interfax news agency. Chubais, the architect of Russia’s post-Soviet privatization campaign, had served at a variety of top official jobs over three decades. His latest role was as Putin’s envoy to international organizations.

Peskov would not say if Chubais had left the country.

Western officials say Putin’s forces are facing serious shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, with soldiers suffering frostbite, while Ukraine’s defenders have been going more on the offensive.

Still, Russia’s far stronger, bigger military has many Western military experts warning against overconfidence in Ukraine’s long-term odds. The Kremlin’s practice in past wars has been to grind down resistance with strikes that flattened cities, killing countless civilians and sending millions fleeing.

Talks to end the fighting have continued by video. Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia are going “step by step, but they are going forward.”

With no peace, those not yet fighting prepared to do so.

“Everything’s a best-seller these days,” said Zakhar Sluzhalyy, who owns a gun shop in the western city of Lviv.

“We’re defending our land,” he said. “We’re fighting for our freedom and that of the rest of Europe.”

Anna reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Robert Burns in Washington, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, and other AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.

Reuters

West unites behind Ukraine at Brussels summit

March 24, 2022

STORY: Western leaders piled on military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine on Thursday with U.S. President Joe Biden calling Russian leader Vladimir Putin a “brute” and Britain denouncing Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor as “barbarism.”

At an unprecedented triple summit in Brussels, NATO, G7 and European Union leaders addressed the continent’s worst conflict since the 1990s Balkans wars.

Biden stressed the importance of the Western alliances.

Biden: “This single most important thing is for us to stay unified and the world continue to focus on what a brute this guy is and all the innocent people’s lives that are being lost and ruined.”

NATO announced new battle groups for four nations in East Europe, while Washington and London increased aid and expanded sanctions to new targets.

Ahead of the summit Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was grateful for the support Ukraine had received from individual NATO member states, but that NATO had yet to show what the alliance can do to save people.

“And I have been repeating the same thing for a month now. To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military assistance without any restrictions.”

The European Union was set to unveil steps to wean itself off Russian energy — likely to drive up fuel costs even further around the continent.

But the measures stopped short of Zelenskiy’s calls for a full boycott of Russian energy and a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

The invasion unleashed by Russian leader Vladimir Putin has killed thousands of people, sent more than 3 million people abroad, destroyed cities, and driven more than half of Ukraine’s children from their homes, according to the United Nations. Russia calls the invasion a “special military operation.”

In the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, nearly flattened by the Russian bombardment, hundreds of thousands of people have been hiding in basements without running water, food, medicine or power.

But Moscow has failed to capture any major city. Russian troops have taken heavy casualties and are low on supplies. Ukrainian officials say they are now shifting onto the offensive and have pushed back Russian forces, including north of Kyiv.

Moscow Thursday said the West had itself to blame for the war by arming the “Kyiv regime.”

The Hill

15,000 civilians illegally deported from Mariupol to Moscow, officials say

March 24, 2022

Ukrainian officials on Thursday charged Russia with deporting about 15,000 civilians illegally from the city of Mariupol to Russia’s capital of Moscow, Reuters reported.

“Residents of the Left Bank district are beginning to be deported en masse to Russia. In total, about 15,000 Mariupol residents have been subjected to illegal deportation,” the Mariupol city council said in a statement.

Officials also said that civilians who remained trapped in the city of Mariupol, which has been heavily bombarded by Russia, are struggling to live without access to food, water, power, or heating, according to Reuters.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said at a video briefing that authorities are still working on securing an agreement with their Russian counterparts in the hope of opening a safe corridor to and from Mariupol for remaining residents.

Authorities also said that thousands of residents were taken by Russian forces to undisclosed areas across the border, with Russian news outlets reporting that buses had carried several hundred refugees from Mariupol to Russia in the past few days, Reuters reported.

This comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the city of Mariupol has been “reduced to ashes” by Russian airstrikes.

Russian officials have denied targeting civilians, while the Biden administration on Wednesday formally accused Russia of committing war crimes.

Related:

Reuters

Mariupol says 15,000 deported from besieged city to Russia

March 24, 2022

LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukrainian authorities in besieged Mariupol said on Thursday about 15,000 civilians had been illegally deported to Russia since Russian forces seized parts of the southern port city.

Ukrainian officials say civilians trapped in Mariupol, which is normally home to about 400,000 people, face a desperate plight without access to food, water, power or heat.

Local authorities said on Sunday that thousands of residents had been taken by force across the border but did not provide a more precise figure. Russian news agencies said at the time that buses had carried several hundred people Moscow calls refugees from Mariupol to Russia in recent days.

“Residents of the Left Bank district are beginning to be deported en masse to Russia. In total, about 15,000 Mariupol residents have been subjected to illegal deportation,” Mariupol city council said in a statement issued on Thursday.

Russia denies targeting civilians in what President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine. Ukraine and the West say Putin launched an unprovoked war of aggression.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told a video briefing that Ukrainian authorities were continuing efforts to secure agreement from Russia to open a safe corridor to and from Mariupol.

Each side has blamed the other for the repeated failure to agree on arrangements to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, control of which would help Russia secure a land corridor to the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address to Italy’s parliament on Tuesday that there was “nothing left” in Mariupol after weeks of Russian bombardment.

A Reuters team that reached a Russian-controlled part of Mariupol on Sunday described a wasteland of charred apartment blocks and bodies wrapped in blankets lying by a road.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing by Nick Macfie)

Yahoo! News

Putin has right to start nuclear war if provoked by NATO, top Russian diplomat warns

Kate Buck – March 24, 2022

Russia has the right to use nuclear weapons if it is threatened by Nato, a senior diplomat has claimed.

Vladimir Putin has been locked in a war with Ukraine for a month, but has been hit with strict sanctions from the West in response to his aggression.

Fears of nuclear war have been exacerbated during the conflict. Shortly after the outbreak of war in February, Putin placed Moscow’s nuclear forces on “high alert” and began drills of its nuclear submarine fleet.

On Tuesday his spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons if they were faced with an “existential threat”.

And today, Russia upped the rhetoric again, with Dmitry Polyanskiy, the Russian deputy ambassador to the UN, warning Moscow reserved the right to deploy nuclear weapons if “provoked”.

Asked if Putin was right to hold the prospect of nuclear war over the rest of the world, Polyanskiy told Sky News: “If Russia is provoked by Nato, if Russia is attacked by Nato, why not, we are a nuclear power.

“I don’t think it’s the right thing to be saying. But it’s not the right thing to threaten Russia, and to try to interfere.

“So when you’re dealing with a nuclear power, of course, you have to calculate all the possible outcomes of your behaviour.”

Polyanskiy did not detail what provocation from other countries would look like.

Of the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons, Russia is believed to have the most.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS), which compiles the list of the world’s nuclear weapons, says Russia has a total inventory of 5,977 nuclear warheads. This includes stockpiled and retired warheads.

Of that figure, 1,588 are deployed strategic warheads on ballistic missiles and at bomber bases.

Another 2,889 of Russia’s warheads are non-deployed or reserve weapons. Added together, this gives a military stockpile total of 4,477 nuclear warheads.

Russia has conducted more than 25 test launches of its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which can be loaded with nuclear warheads, in the past five years. It plans a further 10 test launches this year, a “significant increase in test frequency”, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports.

Polyanskiy’s warning comes as the leaders of Nato member countries gathered in Brussels for an emergency summit to discuss the latest situation a month on from the start of the Russian invasion.

The Nato meeting, which was addressed remotely by Mr Zelenskyy, signed off on the formation of four new battlegroups in eastern Europe.

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said the battlegroups – each numbering between 1,000 and 1,500 troops – would be deployed in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.

The alliance already has 40,000 troops in Europe under its direct command, nearly 10 times the number it had a few months ago.

Nato has so far refused to get directly involved in military engagement with Russia, denying Ukraine’s request to enforce a no-fly zone above its airspace.

Russia began its invasion of Ukraine a month ago, and despite Western intelligence claiming Putin had expected to take over in a matter of days, they have yet to take over key cities.

On Tuesday Putin’s spokesman denied the Kremlin ever thought it would need “a couple of days” to take Ukraine and insisted the Russian offensive is going to plan.

Dmitry Peskov also denied claims Putin was “angry” at Ukrainians, saying that sentiment only applied to Ukrainians who wished to join Nato – believed to account for 80% of the country.

Speaking to CNN, Peskov admitted the invasion of Ukraine had “not achieved” anything yet.

Peskov said: “Of course, no one would think from the very beginning about a couple of days. It’s a serious operation with serious purposes.”

He added that the “special military operation” was “going on strictly in accordance with the plans and the purposes that were established beforehand”

Daily Beast

There Is No Such Thing as a ‘Small’ Nuclear Strike. If Putin Uses a Tactical Nuke, It’s World War III.

Eleanor Clift – March 23, 2022

For 77 years, the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) has kept the use of nuclear weapons at bay.

But an increasingly desperate Russia, bogged down in a disastrous war of choice in Ukraine, threatens that status quo. As Russian President Vladimir Putin grows ever more desperate for a battlefield fix, his press secretary this week refused to rule out Russia using a nuclear weapon if the country faces an existential threat.

Among the many terrible possibilities of what could come next is the use of “tactical nuclear weapons.”

“TACS” is the common shorthand for smaller and “smarter” tactical nuclear weapons. Some are even equipped with a “Dial-A-Yield” function, that can regulate the size of the bomb’s destruction. For some military analysts, this makes the unthinkable prospect of nuclear war almost thinkable.

One might surmise from the euphemistic verbiage: “Tactical nukes—that couldn’t be that bad. Maybe it’s just the future of war we’d have to adjust to.” Well, think again.

Once you see the mushroom cloud, “no one will know whether it was a 20-kilaton weapon or a 1 megaton (1000 times stronger),” said Joshua Pollack, editor of the Nonproliferation Review, published by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

“They’re more similar than you might expect in terms of their destructiveness,” Pollack told The Daily Beast. “Even this small nuke is extremely destructive depending on where you drop it. It would be a very large explosion that would generate an electro-magnetic pulse, and it would probably start fires.”

Maybe it’s just rhetoric, nuclear blackmail, but if Putin does the unthinkable, asked Pollack, “How do we respond in a way that avoids Armageddon?”

Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, said, “The reason these weapons are called tactical, they’re more likely to be used on the battlefield.”

“The Russians started it,” Korb continued, referring to Russia’s “escalate to de-escalate” doctrine, “and the argument was if we had them, they would counter-balance the Russians.” Nuclear weapons are meant to keep the enemy guessing, said Korb, and “if [Putin] goes nuclear, he doesn’t know how we will respond.” Would Biden—or the world—accept tit for tat nuclear strikes on civilian population centers?

The answer is almost certainly: No. Whatever it’s called in the moment, history will remember it as “World War III.”

“The TACs are new, they weren’t there during the Cold War,” Korb added. “We just had the big ones. In theory, the U.S. would not respond with a big one, but you don’t know that. If Putin launches one with a smaller yield, he doesn’t know if we will respond using a strategic weapon. That’s deterrence. He doesn’t know that, and we want to keep him not knowing that.”

Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired U.S. Army colonel and chief of staff to the late Colin Powell, said the U.S. military—prodded by a lucrative niche nuclear industry—“almost simultaneously” moved toward modernizing TACs just as the Russians did.

“Each side blamed the other,” he said. The Russians in 2013-2014 conducted military exercises to practice using small yield nukes to blunt an attack from NATO, escalating the likelihood that these weapons would eventually be used.

Wilkerson ridiculed the notion that there’s any real difference with a smaller yield TAC. “You see the plume, you don’t know whether it’s tactical or strategic,” he said, and a commander is going to hit back hard rather than wait for an after-attack assessment.

“We’re back in a time I thought we’d left behind, that we’d learned our lessons,” Wilkerson continued. “I’ve watched [Putin] for a long time. He’s a pragmatic, practical man. I don’t care what kind of a beast you think he is…he hasn’t gone from master chess player to being mad, which is what you’d have to be to do this [use nuclear weapons]. But I can’t rule it out, especially as a false flag. It shouldn’t come to this.”

Wilkerson maintains that nuclear war must be avoided at all costs, crediting President Biden with resisting the political pressure to impose a no-fly-zone over the skies of Ukraine. “If 45 million Ukrainians have to be sacrificed on the altar of no nuclear war, I’m for it. It’s not worth saving any state if it means blowing up 7 billion people” he said.

Joseph Mazur, professor emeritus at Marlboro College, wonders how much the average American knows about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For a piece on “The Madness of Nuclear Threats,” published in Psychology Today’s online blog, Mazur conducted an informal (but telling) survey.

Mazur questioned 12 adults and four teenagers, none of them experts, on what happened to Hiroshima after the U.S. dropped “the bomb.” They knew what happened in broad terms, but had little inkling of the extent of human suffering and destruction. The adults guessed that the “Little Boy” bomb dropped over Hiroshima killed between 1,000 and 25,000 people. The teens guessed 5,000. In reality, the atom bomb destroyed five square miles of the city and killed between 130,000 and 225,000 people.

“Today, the tiniest tactical nuclear weapon is capable of destruction far worse than what happened in Hiroshima,” Mazur wrote. “Even if just one ‘small’ nuclear weapon were to be launched in the current conflict, there would not be enough therapists in the world to deal with the mental health trauma that would come from watching the aftermath in real-time.”

Putin announced last month he was putting Russian nuclear forces into “special combat readiness,” which set off an understandable frenzy about what Putin might do next to save himself from humiliating military losses. “As far as we can tell, they haven’t moved any systems,” said Pollack. “There are more people on duty, but more people in command centers shouldn’t be that alarming.”

Pressed on Putin’s intentions, Pollack answered, “I don’t think he’s inclined to [use TACs] while he’s busy mauling Ukraine’s cities with heavy weapons. Proponents of TACS say we have to be prepared in order to deter nuclear war, and I would say, what do we do if deterrence fails?”

“The Trump administration in 2018 wanted an extra option if the Russians used a small one against us and we would not respond because we only have the big one. I don’t buy this,” added Pollack. “Nobody will care about actual kilotons but everyone in the world would know if a nuclear weapon was used.”

Biden, as a presidential candidate in 2019, was asked about new low-yield warheads. He responded, “Bad idea,” adding that having these would make presidents “more inclined to use them.” That was the right answer for these times.

There is still hope to preserve an uneasy deterrence, and to keep Putin wondering about Biden—at least as much as Biden wonders about him.

Business Insider

Russian ruble loses key lifeline as US sanctions target Putin’s $140 billion gold stockpile

Carla Mozée – March 24, 2022

• The US Treasury Department has prohibited gold transactions with Russia under executive orders from President Joe Biden.
• Any sales of Russia’s $140 billion gold stockpile could help bolster the beleaguered ruble.
• The ruble dropped below a penny vs. the US dollar after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Gold transactions between Americans and Russia are prohibited, according to a US Treasury Department notice that cited executive orders signed by President Joe Biden.

The notice marks a setback for Russia’s currency, which could be bolstered by sales of the country’s massive gold stash. The beleaguered ruble has tumbled as the US and Western allies issue economic and financial bans on Russia for launching a war against Ukraine last month.

“U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in any transaction — including gold-related transactions — involving the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the National Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation, or the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation,” the Treasury Department said Thursday in its Frequently Asked Questions section about financial sanctions on its website.

Russia holds the world’s fifth-largest gold stockpile. Its holding of roughly 2,300 tons of the precious metal was recently valued at nearly $140 billion. The country has been building its gold stockpile with the aim of it acting as an economic insurance policy for the country.

Gold demand within Russia has been strong as residents seek to protect their wealth from the sliding ruble. The Russian currency dropped below 1 cent against the US dollar after Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin ordered the attack after months of amassing troops on Ukraine’s border.

The ruble has dropped about 26% this year against the greenback, while gold prices have risen more than 7% during 2022.

Associated Press

EXPLAINER: How the US and allies can freeze Russian gold

Fatima Hussein – March 24, 2022

• British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, left, and Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan attend a bilateral meeting during a NATO summit on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels. (Henry Nicholls/Pool, AP)
• From left, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Joe Biden arrive for a G7 leaders’ group photo during a NATO summit in Brussels, (Henry Nicholls/Pool via AP)

• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, center, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, right, during an extraordinary NATO summit at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. and its allies said Thursday they’re moving to block financial transactions with Russia’s Central Bank that involve gold, aiming to further restrict the country’s ability to use its international reserves because of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin has been building his gold stockpile since 2014.

Here’s how these sanctions would work:

HOW MUCH GOLD DOES RUSSIA HAVE?

Russian gold purchases increased in 2014, after the U.S. issued sanctions on Russia for Putin’s invasion of Crimea. Now the country holds $100 billion to 140 billion in gold reserves, which is roughly 20 percent of the holdings in the Russian Central Bank, according to U.S. officials. Additionally, the Bank of Russia announced Feb. 28, shortly after several Russian banks were removed from the SWIFT bank messaging system, that it would resume the purchase of gold on the domestic precious metals market.

HOW COULD RUSSIA USE GOLD TO EVADE SANCTIONS?

The U.S. says that Russia can and has used gold to support its currency as a way to circumvent the impact of sanctions. One way to do that is by swapping the gold for a more liquid foreign exchange that is not subject to current sanctions. Another way would be to sell the bullion through gold markets and dealers. The gold could also be used to directly purchase goods and services from willing sellers.

HOW WOULD THE SANCTIONS APPLY?

The U.S. announcement to block gold transactions was done alongside Group of Seven and European Union allies that will also impose the gold reserve ban. New guidance from the U.S. Treasury Department states that American individuals, including gold dealers, distributors, wholesalers, buyers, and financial institutions are generally banned from buying, selling or facilitating gold-related transactions involving Russia and the various parties that have been sanctioned.

WHAT KIND OF IMPACT COULD THIS HAVE ON RUSSIA?

The move should further impact the country’s ability to launder money and will in effect apply secondary sanctions on people who trade in gold with Russia, experts say. “It is another way to close sanctions loopholes, and increase economic pressure on Russian entities,” said Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. The ban on gold transactions is also an attempt to prevent innovative financial transactions through other countries that continue to do business with Russia.

WHAT OTHER SANCTIONS HAVE BEEN IMPOSED?

The U.S. also took additional sanctions actions on Thursday. It sanctioned dozens of Russian defense companies, 328 members of the Russian State Duma — or state assembly — and the head of Russia’s largest financial institution. Those actions are on top of export controls and financial penalties issued in the past month on Putin, his inner circle, some of the country’s top financial institutions, along with several banking institutions’ removal from the SWIFT bank messaging system.

The Hill

Russian defense chief resurfaces

March 24, 2022

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu resurfaced on Russian state media on Thursday after nearly two weeks out of the public eye, Reuters reported.

Shoigu was seen in a snippet of footage showing him attending a virtual meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and others on the country’s Security Council.

Russian news agency RIA broadcast the footage after some Russian news outlets noted his prolonged absence from public view.

“The defense minister has a lot on his mind right now. A special military operation is underway. Now is not really the time for media activity,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Thursday, according to Reuters.

The development comes four weeks after Russia began its invasion into Ukraine, dubbed a “special military operation” by Moscow.

A senior military official from NATO told several news outlets that, based on numbers provided by Ukrainian officials, up to 40,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, taken prisoner, are missing or are injured. As many as 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in the fighting, along with six generals.

Russia is likely to challenge those figures, however, and has not provided casualty estimates in recent weeks.

Before Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, many Western officials projected Ukraine could fall within a matter of days. However, a month into the fighting, Moscow has seized only a handful of smaller cities and Russian advances have faced fierce pushback on the ground and in the sky.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin offered a bleak assessment last week of how Russian forces were progressing in Ukraine, saying that Moscow had “struggled with logistics” and made “missteps.”

“I don’t see, you know, evidence of good employment of tactical intelligence. I don’t see integration of air capability with a ground maneuver,” Austin told CNN’s Don Lemon.

“And so there are a number of things that we would expect to have seen that we just haven’t seen, and the Russians really have had some … problems. So, many of their assumptions have not proven to be true as they entered this fight.”

Reuters

U.S. and allies aiming to provide anti-ship missiles to Kyiv, official says

March 24, 2022

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States and its allies are working on supporting Ukraine with anti-ship missiles, a senior U.S. administration official said on Thursday.

“We have started consulting with allies on providing anti-ship missiles to Ukraine,” the official said on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels. “There may be some technical challenges with making that happen but that is something that we are consulting with allies and starting to work on.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy joined NATO leaders via videolink but did not repeat requests for NATO membership or the establishment of a no-fly zone, according to the official.

“The mood overall has been sober, it’s been resolute and it’s been incredibly united,” the official said of the atmosphere at the summit meeting.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Sabine Siebold, editing by Marine Strauss)

ABC News

Biden’s risk-averse approach to Russia could create greater threat, experts say

Shannon Crawford – March 23, 2022

President Joe Biden’s high-stakes summit with other NATO leaders on Thursday will be one of the most scrutinized meetings on the world stage in decades, and could have enormous implications for both the war in Ukraine and the global balance of power.

Despite calls from Ukraine to do more to help stave off Russia’s ruthless invasion, Biden has taken a cautious approach — wary of escalating the conflict by drawing in U.S. forces as part of a more direct NATO response. But after nearly a month of fighting, some foreign policy and national security experts ABC News spoke to say it may be time for the alliance to take on a more direct role.

Preparing for ‘the worst case’

Since before the fighting broke out, Biden has insisted that American troops would not fight Russian forces inside Ukraine, warning that going head-to-head would lead to “a third world war.”

But Barry Pavel, a former National Security Council senior official during the Bush and Obama administration and the senior vice president and director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, says that’s far from inevitable.

“There have been other cases where U.S. and Russian forces have unfortunately come into friction and World War III didn’t start,” Pavel said, characterizing the strategy as simplistic. “There are hundreds of options that could be done between what NATO is doing now and risking World War III.”

MORE: Prominent Putin critic Alexey Navalny sentenced to additional 9 years

The greater threat, warns Pavel, might be in leaving Putin unchecked.

“If he is emboldened by success in Ukraine, then he will be more aggressive in his efforts to nibble and to move into areas of perceived weakness in NATO members,” he said. “If he achieves his goal, you’ll have Russian forces on the borders of seven NATO members, including nuclear forces in Belarus, and so he’ll use that new posture to really heighten European insecurity to a great degree.”

And it isn’t Biden’s — or NATO’s — choice alone. Moscow could also escalate the conflict by striking a NATO member, either intentionally or accidentally, triggering a sweeping response.

“Article 5 — in the most basic sense — is NATO’s ‘Three Musketeers’ provision, which is to say, ‘all for one and one for all’ — an attack against any member is an attack against every member of NATO,” said Sean Monaghan, a former civil servant in the U.K. Ministry of Defence and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, calling it “the most important red line in international politics.”

“This is a contingency that NATO forces are already preparing for,” said Monaghan. “That’s what the military does — prepare for the worst case.”

MORE: Russia-Ukraine live updates: Moscow responds to Biden on biological, chemical weapons

While the response to a Russian strike wouldn’t necessarily need to be eye for an eye, Monaghan says in theory, the alliance would be obligated to provide “an overwhelming response” if any member state was hit.

“The practice, some would say that NATO being collective of 30 nations, that have to reach consensus for any actions to be to be taken, that might hinder a response. But I think in this conflict, NATO has shown itself to be quite a lot more resolute and speedier of action than many people would have predicted,” he added.

The next phase for NATO

While the Biden administration has underscored the power of NATO’s overwhelming unity in the face of Russian aggression, when it comes to charting a path forward to counter the Kremlin, cracks within the alliance are beginning to emerge. While the summit will be an opportunity for the powers to get on the same page, it may also cast a spotlight on areas of disagreement.

For instance, Poland plans to propose a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine — a move the U.S. has effectively ruled out. Article 5 lays plain that an attack on a member merits a response, but will the alliance retaliate if Russia resorts to chemical weapons in Ukraine? And while NATO may not be willing to establish a no-fly zone over the country, Pavel says that doesn’t mean there isn’t a debate to be had about what more can be done to help the country defend its own airspace.

MORE: After Pentagon demurs, Biden confirms Russia fired hypersonic missile: Ukraine Day 26

“In terms of the weapons pipeline, we should be doing much more. We can’t let the Ukrainians fly aircraft in their own defense? Forget these ridiculous restrictions on what equipment we can provide a sovereign country who asks for it to defend themselves against an invading force” he said, referencing the U.S. and other allies’ hesitancy to hand over fighter jets to Ukraine for fear of Russian retaliation.

Pavel added that additional anti-aircraft and anti-ship weaponry, as well as enhanced intelligence support and humanitarian aid on the ground, could go a long way in resistance efforts.

Thomas Graham, a former NSC senior director for Russia and a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says that beyond discussing support for Ukraine, NATO leaders should use the upcoming summit to make sharpen their signaling to the Kremlin.

“NATO leaders want to make sure that they’ve done everything that they can in order to deter the Russians,” he said. “Have we augmented the forces in Eastern Europe to the appropriate levels? And have we convinced the Russians that in fact we are determined to honor the Article Five guarantee and protect every inch of NATO territory?”

Monahan predicts this week’s gathering will result in a reversal to a mindset not seen since the days of the Soviet Union.

“We can foresee it as the beginning of a step change, almost a return to NATO’s Cold War posture of, if not territorial defense, then a much increased forward presence designed to deter a Russian regime that is clearly willing to resort to war” he said.

Battle lines of the future

Beyond addressing the immediate crisis, experts say NATO must ensure it is ready to respond to a more aggressive Russia and prepare for the new geopolitical frontier it is forging.

“The war in Ukraine will end at some point will end, but Russia will remain,” said Graham. “And what the conflict has demonstrated is that the hopes we had had for integrating Russia into the Euro-Atlantic community are dead.”

Pavel says plotting out a strategy not only for ending the conflict — but for managing exactly how the conflict ends — will be critical.

“When wars have ended in the past, the new boundaries have been drawn where the force set, through the middle of Germany, through the middle of Berlin,” Pavel said. “When the dust settles, where do we want Russian forces to be and where do we want Ukrainian and potentially NATO forces to be?”

Another repercussion may be an onslaught of arms races. Russia’s alleged deployment of hypersonic missiles—a technology the U.S. has not yet mastered—is an area of competition, but Pavel says it’s not the only one.

“Putin has spent 10, 15 years modernizing the Russian nuclear forces — a lot of new types of exotic Russian nuclear weapons, pretty significant,” he said. “Certainly, the U.S. and some NATO members have nuclear capabilities, but they are aging. They have not been modernized at the pace that we should be doing.”

“All of this means that we’ll have we’ll have a lot more to do, unfortunately, on the security agenda going forward,” Pavel added.