Category: Ukraine War

Daily Beast

This Is Putin’s Precious Key to Invading More Countries

Shannon Vavra – July 12, 2022

While Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to redraw the boundaries of Europe, a pair of lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., are trying to scrap his playbook before he can take it even further.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation, and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who serves on the same committee, are introducing legislation later Tuesday in an attempt to conjure up ways to further box Putin in.

The concerns rumbling through the halls of Congress center on whether the United States has done enough to prepare for and deter Russian aggression in the Black Sea region, so that Putin doesn’t end up feeling empowered to strike out further beyond Ukraine.

“As Putin continues his war in Ukraine, the United States must be prepared to address the challenges he’s created in the immediate and long term for European and U.S. security,” Shaheen told The Daily Beast. “That is precisely what our legislation seeks to do by looking at a critical geopolitical region: the Black Sea.”

Putin has long been interested in leveraging Russia’s access to the Black Sea to course through other sovereign nations and obliterate their borders. Russia invaded Georgia, which borders the sea, in 2008 and annexed Crimea in 2014. Russia has been attacking Ukraine since 2014, re-invading again this year. But Sens. Shaheen and Romney are banking on the idea that if the United States pays more attention to the Black Sea region and makes a concerted effort to shore up security concerns there, the United States might have a shot at stymying Putin’s progress on his imperialistic crusade through Europe.

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Focusing on the Black Sea region is necessary to cut Putin off at the source, Shaheen told The Daily Beast.

“Control over access to the Black Sea is fundamental to his delusional dream of building a Russian empire and the United States cannot allow that to happen,” she said.

The legislation from Shaheen and Romney, which is also backed by Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Roger Wicker (R-MS), would require the administration to develop an interagency strategy to increase military assistance with NATO and the European Union and increase security assistance to Black Sea countries.

The Biden administration must step up and pump out a strategy before it’s too late to prevent another Russian campaign, Romney told The Daily Beast.

“The Black Sea has become increasingly critical as Vladimir Putin continues to wage his unprovoked war in Ukraine, and it has become clear that the United States must have both a strategy and presence in the region,” Romney said. “Our legislation aims to accomplish this by requiring the Biden administration to develop a strategy to strengthen coordination between the U.S., NATO, and partners in the Black Sea in an effort to increase security, support economic prosperity, and promote democracy.”

Already, world leaders from around the globe have raised concerns that Putin isn’t interested in just going after Ukraine. Ukrainian President Zelensky warned just last month that Putin will not stop with his country.

Putin’s allies have hinted themselves at grander scenarios beyond Ukraine in which Putin takes on more far-flung battles to fulfill his imperialistic fantasies. Russia’s lower house speaker warned last week that the United States ought to remember that Russia gave the United States Alaska in the 1800s and that Moscow could seek to take it back. Others have suggested Putin could go head to head with Poland, the United States, or the U.K.

If the United States and allies had stepped up and developed a weightier strategy in the Black Sea region years ago, we might not be facing a Russian war in Ukraine now, according to Ian Brzezinski, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy.

”A more assertive policy is long overdue. The failure of the United States and NATO allies to having a more robust defense of its interests in the Black Sea has actually provoked Russia and prompted Putin to be more aggressive,” Brzezinski told The Daily Beast. “He sees that as a sign of weakness and opportunity to fulfill his revanchist territorial ambitions.”

“We learn from Ukraine alone that the failure of a robust response to aggression just invites further aggression by Putin,” Brzezinski added.

It’s not just about the prospect of future Russian attacks. Putin’s already leveraging the Black Sea to his advantage, holding hostage grain and wheat exports through Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which could cause famine in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and beyond, as the International Rescue Committee has warned.

The United States hasn’t had a comprehensive strategy towards the Black Sea region, and Russia’s aggression shows we need to step it up, Bill Taylor, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, told The Daily Beast.

“There’s a political strategy that all needs to be put together. We haven’t had that in a coherent form, and we need it,” Taylor said.

Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports shows just how impactful a better policy in the Black Sea region might be in helping to rein Putin in, Shaheen said.

“We are already seeing the fallout from Putin’s action toward that end by suffocating key ports in Ukraine that have spurred a global food crisis,” Shaheen told The Daily Beast. “His belligerence toward Ukraine today is reaping global consequences, which is why strategic action is crucial to thwart those efforts. “

The proposed legislation would touch on more than just military action. It would require the administration to develop a report on democracy, security, and economic initiatives in the region and new policy options for a more assertive engagement there.

The strategy would include plans to increase NATO capabilities in the region, including land and air forces, and military assistance specifically to Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Georgia. The strategy would also include schemes to improve coordination with NATO forces, better intelligence operations and systems to track Russian ops in the region, and help defending against hybrid warfare—including plans to support more independent media to counter Russian influence operations.

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The National Security Council and other departments would be tasked with providing a plan for speeding up transitions away from legacy Russian military equipment, according to the draft bill text. The legislation would also kick off an assessment of establishing a multinational three-star headquarters on the Black Sea to coordinate all military activities.

It would also require a breakdown of plans on reducing the region’s dependence on energy from Russia, an issue that’s been left unresolved for years and which has been a key flashpoint in the diplomacy surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in recent months.

The Pentagon is already picking up what Shaheen and Romney are putting down. Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in April the steps the Pentagon is taking in the region now must be focused on two main objectives: “to assure allies and deter any adversary—specifically Russia.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin noted while testifying on Capitol Hill in April that Putin’s decision to wage war in Ukraine has forever altered the geopolitics of the region.

“This unlawful and unprovoked aggression by Putin has had the effect of changing the security architecture in the region for some time to come,” Austin said.

Daily Beast

Putin’s Big Turning Point in the War Could Finally Be Here

Shannon Vavra – July 6, 2022

Russian forces took a key region in eastern Ukraine over the weekend, thanks in part to Moscow stepping up its coordination and war planning, according to a British intelligence assessment released on Tuesday.

This change in Russian forces’ approach to fighting in Eastern Ukraine could be the early signs of a brand new—and worrying—phase in Russia’s devastating war in Ukraine.

While Ukrainian officials first denied that they had lost Lysychansk, one of the last strongholds in Eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk, Ukrainian forces confirmed Sunday they withdrew from the area. Russian forces took over Sunday and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory on Monday.

Russia’s success in Luhansk wasn’t an accident. While Russian forces have been bogged down by previous missteps in the war for months, Russian forces are getting better at executing their war plans and operating across teams. Putin has likely achieved effective coordination between two major fighting groups in the Donbas, according to the intelligence assessment.

“Unlike in previous phases of the war, Russia has probably achieved reasonably effective coordination between at least two Groupings of Forces, the Central Grouping likely commanded by General-Colonel Alexandr Lapin and the Southern Grouping probably under the recently appointed General Sergei Surovikin,” the assessment states.

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That’s a world of difference from the previous four months of war, during which Russian forces haven’t coordinated well, have faltered in their logistics and planning, and have been actively trying to sabotage their own attack plans rather than fight like a well-oiled machine.

It’s a particularly alarming development given that Russia likely won’t stop in Luhansk. The current U.S. assessment is that Russia still maintains plans to take all of Ukraine, not just eastern Ukrainian territories, a U.S. ambassador told The Daily Beast.

And in the coming days, Russian forces could be turning their attention to other territories in the east of Ukraine, including in neighboring Donetsk.

Putin urged Russian forces to continue through the region “as has happened in Luhansk” and said they “must carry out their tasks according to previously approved plans.”

Watch: Russia fires rockets at Ukraine mall with over 1,000 inside

Russia fires rockets at Ukraine mall with over 1,000 inside

On Monday, Russia fired a series of rockets at a crowded shopping center in Kremenchuk, Ukraine. The assault raised concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin is stepping up its attacks on civilian structures regardless of the loss of life.

Already, Russian forces are focusing on Siversk, Fedorivka, and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, according to the Ukrainian General Staff. In just the last several days Russian forces have also been focused on attacking multiple cities and regions shelling the Donetsk region, as well as Dnipropetrovsk and the regions of Mykolaiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Chernihiv, and Khmelnytskyi, according to the regional military administrations.

“In the Bakhmut direction, the enemy shelled our troops with mortars, barrel and rocket artillery in the areas of Kodema, Pokrovske, Zaytseve, Zalizne and Novoselivka settlements,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Tuesday.

This doesn’t mean Russia is going to coast toward victory, though, according to Michael Kofman, the Russia Studies Program research program director at CNA, a national security research organization.

“This is a critical time for the Ukrainian military because these are the few months during which they’re very low on artillery ammo, they’re trying to transition to Western systems. They don’t have many of them yet, or they don’t have them fully deployed and they’re still training up on them,” Kofman told The Daily Beast. “This current phase is mostly one for Ukraine of survival and trying to take back what territory they can on the battlefield. What people have not really seen what Ukraine might be able to do with a somewhat recapitalized military and the benefit of Western weapons.”

And although Russia could be on the verge of taking even more of the Donbas, the win in Luhansk could serve a purpose all by itself that has nothing to do with taking more territory: Putin now has a message he can blast out domestically about successes in the so-called “special military operation,” which he claimed Russia was undertaking to help eastern Ukraine, including Luhansk.

“Russia’s relatively rapid capture of Lysychansk extends its control across virtually all of the territory of Luhansk Oblast, allowing it to claim substantive progress against the policy objective it presented as the immediate purpose of the war, namely ‘liberating’ the Donbas,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Tuesday.

Already, Putin met with military leadership to celebrate a “major victory,” and awarded Major General Esedulla Abachev and Colonel General Alexander Lapin with “Hero of Russia” awards for taking Luhansk.

For Russia and Ukraine, the battle for Luhansk is not the end, Kofman said.

“The battle for Severodonetsk and Lysychansk may be over but we are currently in what is essentially the buildup to what will eventually be the battle for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and the big question is whether or not the Russian military can take those cities,” Kofman said.

Putin has ordered an operational pause for Russian forces in the region, according to the Institute for the Study of War, and Ukrainian officials said they doubted the Luhansk win meant Russia was on track to win the war.

“It hurts a lot, but it’s not losing the war,” Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Hayday said, according to Reuters.

Daily Beast

Wagner Group Is Sending Russian Inmates to Fight in Ukraine, Report Says

Allison Quinn – July 5, 2022

More than 130 days into Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” against Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry is apparently counting on prison inmates and shipyard workers to serve as fresh cannon fodder.

The desperate new recruiting drive has been reported in St. Petersburg, where the families of inmates at two prisons say the Wagner Group—a private Russian military force that has been tied to the Kremlin—is offering prisoners money and a get-out-of-jail-free card to go “search for Nazis” in Ukraine, according to the independent Russian news outlet iStories.

“They told my relative, ‘It’s very hard to find the Nazis there, and they are very well-prepared. You will be at the forefront in helping to detect Nazis, so not everyone will return.’ At first they said about 20 percent would come back. Then that ‘almost nobody will return.’ Those who survive are promised 200,000 rubles and amnesty. And if someone dies, they promise to pay their family 5 million rubles. This is all only in words, nothing is fixed on paper,” an unnamed relative of one of the inmates told the outlet.

At least 40 inmates signed up to join the war at that prison, the relative said. The inmates, after being urged to “defend the motherland,” were reportedly told it would look like they were being transferred but they’d be dropped off at the border with Ukraine.

“Wagner is recruiting people. No one is hiding that, the [prison foremen] are saying that directly,” the inmate’s relative said.

Family members of another inmate who agreed to join the war told iStories he’d done so because he genuinely believed he’d have his conviction expunged and be free upon his return. But it seems the recruiters aren’t really expecting any of the inmates to make it back alive: Relatives of an inmate at a separate prison said the men were told they’d be sent into the war without any identification documents.

Workers at two St. Petersburg shipyards managed by the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation and sanctioned oligarch Alisher Usmanov’s Metalloinvest have also reportedly been targeted as part of a recruiting drive by Russia’s Defense Ministry.

The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported Tuesday that workers at the Admiralty and the Baltic shipyards were offered contracts with monthly salaries of 300,000 rubles ($5,300) to go fight in Ukraine.

“They offered it to those with good experience, age has nothing to do with it. For example, they gave a call-up notice to one older employee who went through the Second Chechen War,” one of the employees told the Times.

Workers at Lebedinsky mining and processing works in Belgorod, owned by Usmanov’s Metalloinvest, described similar efforts, though the company has denied that.

Associated Press

High cost of Russian gains in Ukraine may limit new advance

The Associated Press – July 5, 2022

After more than four months of ferocious fighting, Russia claimed a key victory: full control over one of the two provinces in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.

But Moscow’s seizure of the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk province came at a steep price. The critical question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength for a new offensive to complete its capture of the Donbas and make gains elsewhere in Ukraine.

“Yes, the Russians have seized the Luhansk region, but at what price?” asked Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst in Ukraine, noting that some Russian units involved in the battle lost up to a half their soldiers.

Even President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops involved in action in Luhansk need to “take some rest and beef up their combat capability.”

That raises doubts about whether Moscow’s forces and their separatist allies are ready to quickly thrust deeper into Donetsk, the other province that makes up the Donbas. Observers estimated in recent weeks that Russia controlled about half of Donetsk, and battle lines have changed little since then.

What happens in the Donbas could determine the course of the war. If Russia succeeds there, it could free up its forces to grab even more land and dictate the terms of any peace agreement. If Ukraine, on the other hand, manages to pin the Russians down for a protracted period, it could build up the resources for a counteroffensive.

Exhausting the Russians has long been part of the plan for the Ukrainians, who began the conflict outgunned — but hoped Western weapons could eventually tip the scales in their favor.

They are already effectively using heavy howitzers and advanced rocket systems sent by the U.S. and other Western allies, and more is on the way. But Ukrainian forces have said they remain badly outmatched.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said recently that Russian forces were firing 10 times more ammunition than the Ukrainian military.

After a failed attempt at a lightning advance on the capital of Kyiv in the opening weeks of the war, Russian forces withdrew from many parts of northern and central Ukraine and turned their attention to the Donbas, a region of mines and factories where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainians since 2014.

Since then, Russia has adopted a slow-and-steady approach that allowed it to seize several remaining Ukrainian strongholds in Luhansk over the course of recent weeks.

While Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that their troops have withdrawn from the city of Lysychansk, the last bulwark of their resistance in Luhansk, the presidential office said Tuesday the military was still defending small areas in the province.

Zhdanov, the analyst, predicted that the Russians would likely rely on their edge in firepower to “apply the same scorched earth tactics and blast entire cities away” in Donetsk. The same day that Russia claimed it had taken Lysychansk, new artillery attacks were reported in Donetsk.

But Russia’s approach is not without drawbacks. Moscow has not given a casualty count since it said some 1,300 troops were killed in the first month of fighting, but Western officials have said that was just a fraction of real losses. Since then, Western observers have noted that the number of Russian troops involved in combat in Ukraine has dwindled, reflecting both heavy attrition and the Kremlin’s failure to fill up the ranks.

The limited manpower has forced Russian commanders to avoid ambitious attempts to encircle large areas in the Donbas, opting for smaller maneuvers and relying on heavy artillery barrages to slowly force the Ukrainians to retreat.

The military has also relied heavily on separatists, who have conducted several rounds of mobilization, and Western officials and analysts have said Moscow has increasingly engaged private military contractors. It has also tried to encourage Russian men who have done their tour of duty to sign up again, though it’s is unclear how successful that has been.

While Putin so far has refrained from declaring a broad mobilization that might foment social discontent, recently proposed legislation suggested that Moscow was looking for other ways to replenish the ranks. The bill would have allowed young conscripts, who are drafted into the army for a year and barred from fighting, to immediately switch their status and sign contracts to become full professional soldiers. The draft was shelved amid strong criticism.

Some Western officials and analysts have argued that attrition is so heavy that it could force Moscow to suspend its offensive at some point later in the summer, but the Pentagon has cautioned that even though Russia has been churning through troops and supplies at rapid rates it still has abundant resources.

U.S. director of national intelligence Avril Haines said Putin appeared to accept the slow pace of the advance in the Donbas and now hoped to win by crushing Ukraine’s most battle-hardened forces.

“We believe that Russia thinks that if they are able to crush really one of the most capable and well-equipped forces in the east of Ukraine … that will lead to a slump basically in the Ukrainian resistance and that that may give them greater opportunities,” Haines said.

If Russia wins in the Donbas, it could build on its seizure of the southern Kherson region and part of neighboring Zaporizhzhia to try to eventually cut Ukraine off from its Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border. If that succeeded, it would deal a crushing blow to the Ukrainian economy and also create a corridor to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.

But that is far from assured. Mykola Sunhurovsky, of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, predicted that growing supplies of heavy Western weapons, including HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, will help Ukraine turn the tide of the war.

“The supplies of weapons will allow Ukraine to start a counteroffensive in the south and fight for Kherson and other cities,” Sunhurovsky said.

But Ukraine has also faced massive personnel losses: up to 200 soldiers a day in recent weeks of ferocious fighting in the east, according to officials.

“Overall, local military balance in Donbas favors Russia, but long term trends still favor Ukraine,” wrote Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military and program director at the Virginia-based CNA think tank. “However, that estimate is conditional on sustained Western military assistance, and is not necessarily predictive of outcomes. This is likely to be a protracted war.”

Associated Press journalists Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Ukrayinska Pravda

Ukrainian Air Defence eliminates nine Russian cruise missiles over past 24 hours, while strike aircraft destroys two Russian ammunition depots

Valentyna Romanenko – July 5, 2022

On 5 July, Ukrainian Air Force Air Defence eliminated nine cruise missiles, while strike aircraft destroyed two Russian ammunition depots, two of their platoon strongholds and 20 pieces of military equipment.

Source: Air Force of Armed Forces of Ukraine, Press Service on Facebook

Quote: “Air Force strike aircraft continue to attack the enemy on several strategic fronts, exterminating the aggressors’ positions with fire from the air.”

“On 5 July, bombers and attack aircraft of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed two field ammunition depots, two platoon strongholds of the Russian invaders, up to twenty pieces of military equipment and killed enemy troops.”

Details: The Air Force Press Service reports that Russian forces launched sea-based Kalibr cruise missiles targeting Ukraine from the Black Sea on Tuesday, 5 July.

At 4:00, six out of seven such missiles were destroyed by anti-aircraft missile units belonging to Skhid [East] Air Command in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Anti-aircraft missile units and aviation shot down three Russian cruise missiles on the western front at about 20:00. They were destroyed by operational crews from an anti-aircraft missile unit and portable surface-to-air missile system. Another cruise missile was destroyed by the pilot of a Ukrainian fighter jet.

AFP

What next for Putin in Ukraine fight?

July 5, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin must now decide his next steps in the five-month invasion he started in February.

After Russian troops captured the strategic Ukrainian city of Lysychansk on Sunday, here are five different options raised by security experts who spoke with AFP:

– Grinding advance –

Russian forces appear on course to take full control of the Donbas region that was already partly held by pro-Kremlin separatists before the February 24 invasion.

With Lysychansk and its twin city Severodonetsk captured in the past weeks, Putin’s troops “can hope to take Sloviansk and Kramatorsk and the surrounding regions,” said Pierre Grasser, a researcher at Paris’ Sorbonne university.

Sloviansk in particular is home to “a relatively welcoming population — at least those who have remained there” rather than fleeing the fighting, he added.

But there may be limits to how far the Russians can press into their neighbour’s territory.

“Their steamroller works well near their own borders, their own logistical centres and their airbases. The further away they get, the harder it is,” said Pierre Razoux, academic director of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies (FMES).

– Control the Black Sea –

Southern Ukrainian city Kherson was one of the first to fall to Russian forces in the opening days of the war.

But Russia’s grip on the country’s Black Sea coast is not secure.

“Counter-attacks by Ukraine in the south… place Russian forces in a dilemma. Do they sustain their eastern offensive, or do they significantly reinforce the south?” said Mick Ryan, a former general in the Australian army.

The question is all the more pressing as “the war in the south is a front of greater strategic importance” than the Donbas, he added.

Claiming territory along the coast could allow Moscow to create a land bridge to the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, while both sides want to control Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

– Crack Kharkiv –

Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv is close to the northeastern border with Russia — and located in a pocket still controlled by Kyiv that could yet be cut off by Russian forces.

“If the Ukrainians collapse and Kharkiv is completely isolated, the Russians could force them to choose between committing to defend the city or taking the pressure off in the south towards Kherson,” said Pierre Razoux.

It will be up to President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian commanders “to deploy their units so as to prevent a big summer breakthrough” that could encircle Kharkiv, he added.

Home to 1.4 million people in peacetime, a siege of Kharkiv could be a bloody affair lasting up to a year, Razoux said.

– Divide the West –

While the West has so far kept up a mostly united front of sanctions and support for Ukraine, continued Russian advances could drive the allies’ judgements of their interests apart.

“The goal for Russia is to continue to grind down Ukrainian forces on the battlefield, while waiting for the political will to support Ukraine to fade among Western countries,” said Colin Clarke, research director at the Soufan Center think-tank in New York.

Deliveries of Western military aid have been too slow and too small to turn the battle decisively in Kiev’s favour.

Meanwhile, the war’s inflationary impact on basics like food and energy may gradually turn public opinion away from the strong initial support for Ukraine.

“The Americans could tell the Ukrainians ‘you can’t go on’,” said Alexander Grinberg, an analyst at the Jerusalem Institute for Security and Strategy.

– Open talks –

Russia itself is suffering heavy costs from Western sanctions, battlefield casualties and losses of military materiel.

“Putin will be forced to negotiate at some point, he’s bitten off more than he can chew,” said Colin Clarke.

In late June, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov already raised the option of talks — on condition of “applying all the conditions set by Russia”, which remain unacceptable to Kiev.

But his control over domestic information means the Russian leader has a free hand to tell the public that his objectives have been achieved and justify a pause in the fighting.

A bigger challenge might be divisions on the Ukrainian side.

Hardliners and military leaders would “refuse any compromise with Russia” even if Zelensky were willing to strike a deal, said Pierre Razoux.

“They could tolerate a frozen conflict, but not a defeat.”

The Tennessean

After attacking Ukraine, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has made NATO great again | Opinion

John Knubel – July 5, 2022

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 following the death of 250 million people in two world wars the first 50 years of the 20th century.

It’s been the most effective alliance in history, having preserved a rule based comparative peace enabling 70 years of worldwide human progress: Entire diseases have been eradicated, the world’s population has tripled and humanity today enjoys more individual freedom and national self-determination than ever before in history.

NATO’s initial mission was to “Keep the Americans and British in, the Germans down, and Russians out.”

It was supported by an array of international institutions and alliances like the United Nations, World Bank, Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and a Middle East alliance (CENTO), created to contain a perceived international Communist threat. It led to today’s European union.

How Putin emerged

A dedicated Russian Nationalist and former KGB agent, Putin was stationed in East Germany when the USSR collapsed. He emigrated back to Moscow finding Russia in chaos, faced down the oligarchs, a small group of businessmen who today control the economy and achieved absolute power.

Simultaneously, NATO expanded into the former Soviet empire countries and under the reassurance of NATO, Ukraine, the ‘bread basket’ of Europe, abandoned its nuclear weapons but did not join NATO.

America gradually drew down our European troop presence while President Obama announced a ‘pivot towards Asia’ and President Trump frequently referred to NATO as ‘outmoded.’

Putin claims Russia requested NATO membership and its expansion threatens Russia, propaganda which only makes sense if his aim is to attack the defensively structured alliance which of course it is. He was emboldened by his Crimean annexation and simultaneous use of chemical weapons in Syria which President Obama failed to respond to after pledging, he would.

The new world disorder and the lessons of Nazi Germany

The effectiveness of the Ukrainian army’s response on the ground has been expectedly effective due to their defending their families and homeland from foreign invaders. NATO’s recognition of the seriousness of continued Russian expansionism is encouraging. There’s widespread agreement with the apt comparison with Hitler’s restoring order to a chaotic Germany in the early 1930s and subsequent aggression leading to WWII.

It’s now crystal-clear Putin’s an unprincipled murderous dictator trying wanting to restore the former USSR. Ukraine has become a ‘buffer state’ where a hot sequel to the former cold war is joined. President Biden’s resurrection of the WWII Lend Lease program is evidence of how serious America and NATO take the invasion.

Putin’s fall-back invasion strategy is to connect previously annexed north eastern Ukraine with Crimea and the sea ports of Mariupol and Odessa to the south. Putin now hopes to strangle Ukraine which needs ports to export the wheat which supplies 80% of Egypt’s needs and much of Africa.

The Way Forward

NATO has been unified and will benefit from the membership of Finland and Sweden.

Finland adds substantial military capability having held off Russian invasions historically and both protect NATO’s northern flank and the vulnerable Baltic States. For an empowered Ukraine and revitalized NATO, the goal must now be to preserve Odessa or another channel for exporting Ukrainian grain.

NATO’s demonstrated remarkable unity in creating economic sanctions. But sanctions will take time impact Russian expansionism.

The final outcome of this chapter two of the post WWII cold war, now hot, will be determined by the combination of the sanction’s long-term effectiveness and most importantly the ability to the Russian people to throw off the yoke tyranny that Vladimir Putin has become.

John A. Knubel is a resident of Franklin, Tennessee.

The New Voice of Ukraine

Putin in revenge mode, while his generals make money. What’s next for Russia’s ‘special operation?’

July 3, 2022

Read also: Russia is mobilizing more recruits and hiring, firing generals – ISW

However, Putin also says this: There should be “the creation of conditions that would provide security guarantees for Russia” – but at the same time he downplays this argument in his rhetoric. Such a thesis creates further uncertainty.

Obviously, producing more uncertainty is a regular tactic for Putin, he never says anything just for the sake of saying it. He always has a reason for saying it.

The uncertainty circles around what it means for Putin to be able to reach certain goals that would “provide security guarantees” for his country.

Read also: Russians lost almost $1 billion dollars worth of equipment during occupation of Snake Island — Forbes Ukraine

Of course, by saying this, Putin wants to preserve himself as much space for further actions as he thinks is needed. If necessary, he may always go back to his original plan for the “special operation.”

If necessary, he can reschedule and replan those territorial gains that he’s thinking about right now. Even for the Russian army, the goals of Putin’s “special operation” remain quite unclear. They’re volatile, they’re being changed all the time according to the progress, or lack of it, on the battlefields.

To add more uncertainty to Putin’s rhetoric, Russia made a “goodwill” statement after retreating from Snake Island in the Black Sea.

This is the second such declaration of “goodwill” during this war. Remember the end of March, when Russia was withdrawing its troops from Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts in northern Ukraine? Back then, we heard talk of “goodwill” too.

This is a sign of how Russia understands “goodwill,” and what particular actions it might take after expressing it.

Now let’s move on to analyzing all those versions voiced in the past several days to explain the most recent wave of Russian escalation – missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and their civil infrastructure. Obviously, this has nothing to do with achieving any particular military goals – it is rather revenged against Ukraine for all the success that it has had during the war.

You can’t judge Ukraine’s success by the number of its local advances, as it’s a strategic success of a much greater scale. Look at Snake Island – it’s a very painful assault on both Russia’s military positions and Russia’s public image. Moreover, it’s an assault on Putin as a strong leader.

There’s another way to explain the Snake Island developments: corruption among the Russian generals who report much bigger usage of munitions for targeting “military goals” in Ukraine, then they have a number of munitions that are not mentioned in the reserve arsenal anymore – this allows the generals to sell them and earn some money.

Russia has some sort of control procedures over the use of munitions, but it’s very likely the numbers on paper and the numbers in the storages don’t really match.

Recently I read an interesting article, the conclusions of which resonate with my previous writings. According to official information from Russian Ministry of Defense, their army destroyed several times more Ukrainian tanks, artillery and all kinds of vehicles than the Ukrainian army has ever had.

What we see is that Russians are producing fake information even within own military planning.

Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised to see fake numbers on how many missiles Russian army is launching on Ukrainian territory. With fuel, it’s even more obvious: it gets stolen all the time.

Talking about cruise missiles, Russians can’t really sell those anywhere – even delivering them from a weapon-trading commercial entity in Russia abroad is a huge problem.

Very few countries would be able to buy Russian cruise missiles – maybe North Korea, or Iran. But these would be highly risky steps, even with a high degree of adventurism that is now prevailing in the Russian Federation.

By the end of the day, it’s Russia’s large-scale corruption and a total ignoring of international law that is becoming a decisive factor. This is why you can’t really tell what Russia will be doing next with its weapons.