A Ukrainian company that manufacturers medieval armor for sport is now using its materials to produce “caltrops” — or “sharp, six-inch spikes that date back to ancient wars” — in service of the war effort against Russia, The Washington Post reports.
Art of Steel in western Ukraine used to make items like “silver chain mail, helmets, and other armor for reenactments and show,” but has instead in the past two weeks produced hundreds of caltrops, which are being chained together and “placed at checkpoints around Rivne, a city about 210 miles west of Kyiv,” writes the Post. The intent is for the devices, also called “hedgehogs,” to stop or slow Russian vehicles should they try to enter the city, since the metal can pierce tires.
“Ukrainians [are] united in this war,” an Art of Steel official told the Post. “Absolutely everyone is trying to help in the fighting places and in the rear. Therefore, any materials are somehow used.”
“With proper use,” the caltrops “will help stop [a] column of vehicles or at least delay them for a while,” the official added.
The Art of Steel hedgehogs are just one example of homegrown weaponry Ukrainians are using to defend themselves from Russian aggression. Some volunteers, for example, have begun packing bottles with the materials needed to make Molotov cocktails.
The spiky weapons are now at every checkpoint in Rivne, Art of Steel said, per the Post. The company is also making plates for body armor.
Russia’s bioweapon conspiracy theory finds support in US
David Klepper and Angelo Fichera – March 11, 2022
Russia’s baseless claims about secret American biological warfare labs in Ukraine are taking root in the U.S. too, uniting COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, QAnon adherents and some supporters of ex-President Donald Trump.
Despite rebuttals from independent scientists, Ukrainian leaders and officials at the White House and Pentagon, the online popularity of the claims suggests some Americans are willing to trust Kremlin propaganda over the U.S. media and government.
Like any effective conspiracy theory, the Russian claim relies on some truths: Ukraine does maintain a network of biological labs dedicated to research into pathogens, and those labs have received funding and research support from the U.S.
But the labs are owned and operated by Ukraine, and the work is not secret. It’s part of an initiative called the Biological Threat Reduction Program that aims to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or manmade. The U.S. efforts date back to work in the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s program for weapons of mass destruction.
“The labs are not secret,” said Filippa Lentzos, a senior lecturer in science and international security at King’s College London, in an email to the Associated Press. “They are not being used in relation to bioweapons. This is all disinformation.”
That hasn’t stopped the claim from being embraced by some on the far-right, by Fox News hosts, and by groups that push debunked claims that COVID-19 is a bioweapon created by the U.S.
The day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an early version appeared on Twitter — in a thread espousing the idea that Russia’s offensive was targeting “US biolabs in Ukraine” — and was soon amplified by the conspiracy theory website Infowars. It has spread across mainstream and lower-profile social platforms, including Telegram and Gab, that are popular with far-right Americans, COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and adherents of QAnon, the baseless hoax that Satan-worshipping pedophiles secretly shape world events.
Many of the accounts posting the claim are citing Russian propaganda outlets as sources. When Kremlin officials repeated the conspiracy theory on Thursday, saying the U.S. was developing bioweapons that target specific ethnicities, it took a few minutes for their quotes to show up on American social media.
Several Telegram users who cited the comments said they trusted Russian propaganda over independent American journalists, or their own democratically elected officials.
“Can’t believe anything our government says!” one poster wrote.
Others cited the claim while parroting Russia’s talking points about the invasion.
“It’s not a “war,” it’s a much needed cleansing,” wrote a member of a Telegram group called “Patriot Voices” that is popular with supporters of Trump. “Ukraine has a ton of US govt funded BioWeapons Labs that created deathly pathogens and viruses.”
Television pundits and high-profile political figures have helped spread the claim even further. Fox News host Tucker Carlson devoted segments on his shows on Wednesday and Thursday to promoting the conspiracy theory. On Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. said conspiracy theories around the labs were proven to be a “fact” in a tweet to his 7.3 million followers.
Both Carlson and Trump misrepresented congressional testimony from a State Department official saying the U.S. was working with Ukraine to secure material in the biological labs, suggesting that indicated the labs were being used for illegitimate purposes.
It’s not surprising that a biological research center would contain potentially hazardous material, however. The World Health Organization said Thursday that it has asked Ukraine to destroy any samples that could pose a threat if released, either intentionally or accidentally.
While the disinformation poses a threat on its own, the White House warned this week that the Kremlin’s latest conspiracy theory could be a prelude to a chemical or biological attack that Russia would blame on the U.S. or Ukraine.
“Frankly, this influence campaign is completely consistent with longstanding Russian efforts to accuse the United States of sponsoring bioweapons work in the former Soviet Union,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Thursday during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “So this is a classic move by the Russians.”
The conspiracy theory has also been picked up by Chinese state media, and was further amplified this week by China’s Foreign Ministry, which repeated Russia’s claim and called for an investigation.
Milton Leitenberg, an arms control expert and senior research associate at the Center for International & Security Studies at the University of Maryland, noted that Russia has a long history of such disinformation. In the 1980s, Russian intelligence spread the conspiracy theory that the U.S. created HIV in a lab.
Leitenberg said numerous Russian scientists had visited a similar public health lab in the republic of Georgia, but that Russia continued to spread false claims about that facility.
“There’s nothing they don’t know about what’s taking place there, and they know that nothing of what they claim is true,” Leitenberg said. “The important thing is that they know that, unquestionably.”
While gaining traction in the U.S., the claims about bioweapons are likely intended for a domestic Russian audience, as a way to increase support for the invasion, according to Andy Carvin, senior fellow and managing editor at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which is tracking Russian disinformation.
Carvin noted the Kremlin has also spread hoaxes about Ukrainian efforts to obtain nuclear weaponry.
“It’s a rinse-and-repeat cycle to hammer home these narratives, particularly to domestic audiences,” Carvin said.
Klepper reported from Providence, R.I. Fichera reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press reporter Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report from Washington.
Zelensky says Ukraine has ‘reached a strategic turning point’ in its fight against Russia
Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – March 11, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday urged the people of his nation to be patient as they continue to defend their country against Russia’s military invasion, which has now entered its 16th day.
“I know that many people have started to feel tired. I understand. Impatient. I understand,” Zelensky said in a video posted online. “This is life. When we mobilize, when we see our victories and the loss of the enemy on the battlefield, we expect the struggle to end sooner. We expect the invaders to fall faster. But this is life, this is war. This is a struggle. Time is still needed. Patience is still needed.”
A defiant Zelensky insisted Ukraine will prevail despite reports of Russian forces striking near airports in the western part of Ukraine for the first time while its troops were attempting to encircle the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
“It is impossible to say for how many more days we must liberate our Ukrainian land. But it is possible to say we will do it,” Zelensky said, according to an English translation of his remarks by Ukraine’s U.N. mission. “Because we have already reached a strategic turning point. We are already moving toward our goal, toward our victory.”
Ukrainan President Volodymyr Zelensky during an address to the nation from Kyiv on Friday. (Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
“This is a patriotic war against an obstinate enemy which doesn’t pay attention to thousands of their own soldiers dead,” he added.
“This is a humanitarian catastrophe,” Zelensky said. “Humanitarian catastrophe — two words that have become fully synonymous with the other two words: the Russian Federation.”
The attack was widely condemned by world leaders, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who said the U.S. would work with its allies to investigate Russia for possible war crimes.
President Biden spoke with Zelensky on Friday morning before announcing new U.S. sanctions against Russia, including a ban imports of Russian alcohol, seafood and diamonds.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Friday that Russian forces invading Ukraine have killed more Ukrainian civilians than soldiers.
At least 549 Ukrainian civilians, including 41 children, have been killed, according to the United Nations. But the agency believes the actual death toll is likely much higher.
According to the U.N., more than 2.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24, when Russia’s invasion began.
Zelensky implored those who have stayed to “hold on.”
“Be sure to fight. Be sure to give your all strength,” he said. “It will not be easy with such a neighbor. But with us, it will not be easy too.”
The future of warfare could be a lot more grisly than Ukraine
Steven Zeitchik, The Washington Post – March 11, 2022
A man walks with a bicycle in a street damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Thursday, March 10, 2022. Some experts worry that if autonomous weapons take hold, future conflict will be even more violent than the Russian invasion in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) (AP)
Amid the stately beiges of Geneva’s Palais de Nations this week, United Nations diplomats from Ukraine and Russia were launching strikes.
“What we could see in this hall in the course of the two last days is nothing else than the blackmailing of all of us by the Russian representative,” the Ukrainian diplomat said Tuesday.
The Russian delegate fired back a moment later: “There is discrimination suffered by my country because of restrictive measures against us.”
Ukraine was chastising Russia not over the country’s ongoing invasion but a more abstract topic: autonomous weapons.
The comments were a part of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, a U.N. gathering at which global delegates are supposed to be working toward a treaty on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, the charged realm that both military experts and peace activists say is the future of war.
But citing visa restrictions that limited his team’s attendance, the Russian delegate asked that the meeting be disbanded, prompting denunciations from Ukraine and many others. The skirmish was playing out in a kind of parallel with the war in Ukraine – more genteel surroundings, equally high stakes.
Autonomous weapons – the catchall description for algorithms that help decide where and when a weapon should fire – are among the most fraught areas of modern warfare, making the human-commandeered drone strike of recent decades look as quaint as a bayonet.
Proponents argue that they are nothing less than a godsend, improving precision and removing human mistakes and even the fog of war itself.
The weapons’ critics – and there are many – see disaster. They note a dehumanization that opens up battles to all sorts of machine-led errors, which a ruthless digital efficiency then makes more apocalyptic. While there are no signs such “slaughterbots” have been deployed in Ukraine, critics say the activities playing out there hint at grimmer battlefields ahead.
“Recent events are bringing this to the fore – they’re making us realize the tech we’re developing can be deployed and exposed to people with devastating consequences,” said Jonathan Kewley, co-head of the Tech Group at high-powered London law firm Clifford Chance, emphasizing this was a global and not a Russia-centric issue.
While they differ in their specifics, all fully autonomous weapons share one idea: that artificial intelligence can dictate firing decisions better than people. By being trained on thousands of battles and then having its parameters adjusted to a specific conflict, the AI can be onboarded to a traditional weapon, then seek out enemy combatants and surgically drop bombs, fire guns or otherwise decimate enemies without a shred of human input.
The 39-year-old CCW convenes every five years to update its agreement on new threats, like land mines. But AI weapons have proved its Waterloo. Delegates have been flummoxed by the unknowable dimensions of intelligent fighting machines and hobbled by the slow-plays of military powers, like Russia, eager to bleed the clock while the technology races ahead. In December, the quinquennial meeting did not result in “consensus” (the CCW requires it for any updates), forcing the group back to the drawing board at an another meeting this month.
“We are not holding this meeting on the back of a resounding success,” the Irish delegate dryly noted this week.
Activists fear all these delays will come at a cost. The tech is now so evolved, they say, that some militaries around the world could deploy it in their next conflict.
“I believe it’s just a matter of policy at this point, not technology,” Daan Kayser, who lead the autonomous weapons project for the Dutch group Pax for Peace, told The Post from Geneva. “Any one of a number of countries could have computers killing without a single human anywhere near it. And that should frighten everyone.”
Russia’s machine-gun manufacturer Kalashnikov Group announced in 2017 that it was working on a gun with a neural network. The country is also believed to have the potential to deploy the Lancet and the Kub – two “loitering drones” that can stay near a target for hours and activate only when needed – with various autonomous capabilities.
Advocates worry that as Russia shows it is apparently willing to use other controversial weapons in Ukraine like cluster bombs, fully autonomous weapons won’t be far behind. (Russia – and for that matter the United States and Ukraine – did not sign on to the 2008 cluster-bomb treaty that more than 100 other countries agreed to.)
But they also say it would be a mistake to lay all the threats at Russia’s door. The U.S. military has been engaged in its own race toward autonomy, contracting with the likes of Microsoft and Amazon for AI services. It has created an AI-focused training program for the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg – soldiers designing systems so the machines can fight the wars – and built a hub of forward-looking tech at the Army Futures Command, in Austin.
The Air Force Research Laboratory, for its part, has spent years developing something called the Agile Condor, a highly efficient computer with deep AI capabilities that can be attached to traditional weapons; in the fall, it was tested aboard a remotely piloted aircraft known as the MQ-9 Reaper. The United States also has a stockpile of its own loitering munitions, like the Mini Harpy, that it can equip with autonomous capabilities.
China has been pushing, too. A Brookings Institution report in 2020 said that the country’s defense industry has been “pursuing significant investments in robotics, swarming, and other applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
A study by Pax found that between 2005 and 2015, the United States had 26% of all new AI patents granted in the military domain, and China, 25%. In the years since, China has eclipsed America. China is believed to have made particular strides in military-grade facial recognition, pouring billions of dollars into the effort; under such a technology, a machine identifies an enemy, often from miles away, without any confirmation by a human.
The hazards of AI weapons were brought home last year when a U.N. Security Council report said a Turkish drone, the Kargu-2, appeared to have fired fully autonomously in the long-running Libyan civil war – potentially marking the first time on this planet a human being died entirely because a machine thought they should.
All of this has made some nongovernmental organizations very nervous. “Are we really ready to allow machines to decide to kill people?” asked Isabelle Jones, campaign outreach manager for an AI-critical umbrella group named Stop Killer Robots. “Are we ready for what that means?”
Formed in 2012, Stop Killer Robots has a playful name but a hellbent mission. The group encompasses some 180 NGOs and combines a spiritual argument for a human-centered world (“Less autonomy. More humanity”) with a brass-tacks argument about reducing casualties.
Jones cited a popular advocate goal: “meaningful human control.” (Whether this should mean a full-on ban is partly what’s flummoxing the U.N. group.)
Military insiders say such aims are misguided.
“Any effort to ban these things is futile – they convey too much of an advantage for states to agree to that,” said C. Anthony Pfaff, a retired Army colonel and former military adviser to the State Department and now a professor at U.S. Army War College.
Instead, he said, the right rules around AI weapons would ease concerns while paying dividends.
“There’s a powerful reason to explore these technologies,” he added. “The potential is there; nothing is necessarily evil about them. We just have to make sure we use them in a way that gets the best outcome.”
Like other supporters, Pfaff notes that it’s an abundance of human rage and vengefulness that has led to war crimes. Machines lack all such emotion.
But critics say it is exactly emotion that governments should seek to protect. Even when peering through the fog of war, they say, eyes are attached to human beings, with all their ability to react flexibly.
Military strategists describe a battle scenario in which a U.S. autonomous weapon knocks down a door in a far-off urban war to identify a compact, charged group of males coming at it with knives. Processing an obvious threat, it takes aim.
It does not know that the war is in Indonesia, where males of all ages wear knives around their necks; that these are not short men but 10-year-old boys; that their emotion is not anger but laughter and playing. An AI cannot, no matter how fast its microprocessor, infer intent.
There may also be a more macro effect.
“Just cause in going to war is important, and that happens because of consequences to individuals,” said Nancy Sherman, a Georgetown professor who has written numerous books on ethics and the military. “When you reduce the consequences to individuals you make the decision to enter a war too easy.”
This could lead to more wars – and, given that the other side wouldn’t have the AI weapons, highly asymmetric ones.
If by chance both sides had autonomous weapons, it could result in the science-fiction scenario of two robot sides destroying each other. Whether this will keep conflict away from civilians or push it closer, no one can say.
It is head-spinners like this that seem to be holding up negotiators. Last year, the CCW got bogged down when a group of 10 countries, many of them South American, wanted the treaty to be updated to include a full AI ban, while others wanted a more dynamic approach. Delegates debated how much human awareness was enough human awareness, and at what point in the decision chain it should be applied.
And three military giants shunned the debate entirely: The United States, Russia and India all wanted no AI update to the agreement at all, arguing that existing humanitarian law was sufficient.
This week in Geneva didn’t yield much more progress. After several days of infighting brought on by the Russia protest tactics, the chair moved the substantive proceedings to “informal” mode, putting hope of a treaty even further out of reach.
Some attempts at regulation have been made at the level of individual nations. The U.S. Defense Department has issued a list of AI guidelines, while the European Union recently passed a comprehensive new AI Act.
But Kewley, the attorney, pointed out that the act offers a carve-out for military uses.
“We worry about the impact of AI in so many services and areas of our lives but where it can have the most extreme impact – in the context of war – we’re leaving it up to the military,” he said.
He added: “If we don’t design laws the whole world will follow – if we design a robot that can kill people and doesn’t have a sense of right and wrong built in – it will be a very, very high-risk journey we’re following.”
Putin says Russia to use Middle East volunteer fighters against Ukraine
Guy Faulconbridge – March 11, 2022
FILE PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with government members via a video link in Moscow
LONDON (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the green light on Friday for up to 16,000 volunteers from the Middle East to be deployed alongside Russian-backed rebels to fight in Ukraine, doubling down an invasion that the West says has been losing momentum.
The move, just over two weeks since Putin ordered the invasion, allows Russia to deploy battle-hardened mercenaries from conflicts such as Syria without risking additional Russian military casualties.
At a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said there were 16,000 volunteers in the Middle East who were ready to come to fight alongside Russian-backed forces in the breakaway Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
“If you see that there are these people who want of their own accord, not for money, to come to help the people living in Donbass, then we need to give them what they want and help them get to the conflict zone,” Putin said from the Kremlin.
Shoigu also proposed that Western-made Javelin and Stinger missiles that were captured by the Russian army in Ukraine should be handed over to Donbass forces, along other weaponry such as man-portable air-defense systems, known as MANPADS, and anti-tank rocket complexes.
“As to the delivery of arms, especially Western-made ones which have fallen into the hands of the Russian army – of course I support the possibility of giving these to the military units of the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics,” Putin said.
“Please do this,” he told Shoigu. The exchange was shown on Russian state television.
Putin says the “special military operation” in Ukraine is essential to ensure Russia’s security after the United States expanded NATO up to its borders and supported pro-Western leaders in Kyiv.
Ukraine says it is fighting for its existence while the United States, and its European and Asian allies have condemned the Russian invasion. China has called for calm.
Shoigu said the operation was all going to plan before requesting Putin’s approal for the use of fighters from the Middle East.
U.S. intelligence chiefs told lawmakers on Thursday that Russia had been surprised by the strength of Ukrainian resistance, which had deprived the Kremlin of a quick victory it thought would have prevented the United States and NATO from providing meaningful military aid.
That was causing concern in Beijing, Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns said.
“I do believe that the Chinese leadership, President Xi (Jinping) in particular, is unsettled,” Burns said. “By what he’s seen, partly because his own intelligence doesn’t appear to have told him what was going to happen.”
Shoigu said Western arms were flowing into Ukraine in an “absolutely uncontrolled” way and that the Russian military planned to strengthen its Western border after what he said was a build up of Western military units on Russia’s border.
“The general staff is working on, and has almost finished, a plan to strengthen our Western borders, including, naturally, with new modern complexes,” Shoigu said.
Putin said the question of how to react to moves by NATO countries need a separate discussion.
Don’t take Russia back to 1917, Russian metals king Potanin warns
Guy Faulconbridge – March 11, 2022
LONDON (Reuters) -Confiscating the assets of companies that have fled Russia since the invasion of Ukraine would shatter investor confidence for decades and take Russia back to the calamitous days of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, metals magnate Vladimir Potanin has said.
Potanin, president and biggest shareholder of Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of palladium and refined nickel, said Russia should respond with pragmatism to its exclusion from swathes of the global economy.
“We should not try to ‘slam the door’ but endeavour to preserve Russia’s economic position in those markets which we spent so long cultivating,” Potanin, 61, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Potanin, one of the most prominent Russian billionaires who is not sanctioned by the West, said confiscating assets from companies that had left would put Russia out in the cold for decades, as far as investors were concerned:
“It would take us back 100 years to 1917. And the consequences – a global lack of confidence in Russia from investors – we would feel for many decades.”
Russia’s economy is facing the gravest crisis since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union after the West imposed sweeping sanctions across Russia’s financial and corporate sectors following Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Thursday that the government proposed putting companies that had left Russia into external administration.
The exact mechanisms of that are unclear, though there is a fierce debate within the Russian elite about how severe Moscow’s reaction to Western sanctions should be, officials and businessmen said.
Putin said Russia would remain open for business and did not intend to close itself off from those who still wanted to do business.
But many do not – at least for now.
BP said last month it was abandoning its stake in Russian oil producer Rosneft while companies ranging from McDonald’s and Coca-Cola Co to Toyota and IKEA have shuttered their businesses in Russia.
‘WE MUST BE WISER’
Potanin’s upbringing as the son of a high-ranking Soviet trade official and an education at Moscow’s elite diplomatic academy have always set him slightly apart from other oligarchs who rose from rags to riches in the chaos of the 1990s.
The privatisation deals under President Boris Yeltsin gave Potanin and other oligarchs control over some of the best assets of a former superpower, though their clout was eroded under Putin as a new group of former spies put some of Russia’s biggest oil production units under state control.
Besides being the world’s largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel, MMC Norilsk Nickel is a major producer of platinum and copper. It also produces cobalt, rhodium, silver, gold, iridium, ruthenium, selenium, tellurium and sulphur.
Potanin said some countries used sanctions as a way to edge out competition, urging Moscow to consider its moves carefully.
He also urged Moscow to remove restrictions on servicing Russia’s foreign currency debt, which he said totalled $480 billion. He said a technical default on interest payments could trigger demands for the full principal to be paid.
“This fully applies to major public companies,” Potanin said. Russia said on Sunday that sovereign bond payments will depend on sanctions.
“We see that the West’s own economies have suffered by imposing sanctions against Russia. So we must be wiser and avoid a scenario under which our sanctions hit us,” Potanin said.
Putin says the “special military operation” in Ukraine is essential to ensure Russian security after NATO admitted members up to Russia’s borders and Western countries supported pro-Western leaders in Kyiv.
Ukraine says it is fighting for its existence and the United States and its European and Asian allies have condemned the Russian invasion. China has called for calm.
The war effort has seen civilians take up arms against Russian troops, while the country has also been supplied with a significant amount of weapons from the West.
One of the most important aspects of this has been the thousands of anti-tank weapons that have poured into the country, but what are they and have they made a difference?
Which anti-tank weapons are being used?
Numerous allies – including the UK, Germany, France, US and Denmark – have supplied Ukraine with anti-tank weapons since the start of the conflict.
Each missile costs around £130,000, but that is nowhere near as expensive as the tanks they are fired at.
Numerous different types of anti-tank weapons have been handed to Kyiv, including Javelins and Next Generation Light Antitank Weapons (NLAWs).
A Ukrainian service member fires a NLAW supplied by Britain during drills in January. (Reuters)
Generally, the Americans have been supplying Javelins, while the Europeans have been providing NLAWs.
They are significantly more advanced than the basic RPGs the Ukrainians were equipped with in 2014.
How do anti-tank weapons work?
The basic premise of a modern anti-tank weapon is a small guided missile held by a single-use launcher.
The launcher has an advanced targeting computer attached to it and targets specific weak spots on tanks.
The computer does 95% of the work for the soldier, meaning all they have to do is pull the trigger and then get into cover.
Watch: Ukraine war: Drone footage shows Russian tank column retreat after artillery ambush
The weak spot is usually the turret or the area between the turret and the main body of the tank.
The armour-piercing missile usually completely disables a tank with a single shot.
Javelin missiles fire straight up into the air before arcing back down to hit the top of the tank and have a much longer range than NLAWs (4.5km compare to 1km).
They weigh around 12kg, which is carriable for a single soldier, but once the missile has been fired, the huge launcher is then useless.
The weapons reportedly do not take a long time to learn how to use. (Reuters)
NLAW’s are also designed to be able to be taught how to use weapon to learn to use, reportedly taking around an hour.
With the fact they can be operated by one or two soldiers they have significantly advanced ground combat, making tanks’ previous dominance much reduced.
Have they made a difference in Ukraine?
Although hard facts are difficult to confirm in such a fluid situation, it appears the supply of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine has caused significant damage to the Russian advance.
Numerous videos of the targeted missiles being shot at Russian armour have appeared on social media.
Even more pictures of destroyed tanks have circulated around the internet.
Russia has the largest number of tanks in the world, although many of these are fairly old Soviet models.
Ukraine claims to have destroyed 465 heavy vehicles (tanks, armoured fighting vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles, armoured personnel carriers) since the start of fighting.
A Russian tank destroyed by the Ukrainian forces on the side of a road in Lugansk. (Getty)
Has Russia tried to counter this?
Although the Russians are losing lots of armour, videos in recent days appear to show them employing weapons to counter anti-tank missiles.
Several Russian tanks have been pictured with wire and steel “cope cages” attached to their turrets.
The purpose of these is to force the missile to explode just before impacting the actual turret itself, hopefully mitigating the damage.
The effectiveness of these cages is not yet known.
Video shows Ukraine ambushing Russian tank convoy featuring a thermobaric weapon, forcing a retreat
Mia Jankowicz – March 11, 2022
Footage released by Ukraine on March 10, 2022 showing a strike at the head of a column of Russian tanks in in Skybyn.Ukraine Defense Intelligence Agency
Ukraine released drone footage of an ambush on a Russian armored convoy near Kyiv Thursday.
At least 21 Russian military vehicles, including a thermobaric weapon, were caught in the attack.
The ambush forced a humiliating retreat, according to a Sky News analysis of the footage.
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency released a video on Thursday showing the destruction and retreat of a Russian column of tanks near Kyiv, in footage verified by several news agencies.
Ukraine claimed that the Russian regiment’s commander, Colonel Andrei Zakharov, was killed in the operation, though this has not been independently confirmed.
The 45-second edited montage of footage was filmed by drone and, according to the DIA, shows Russian tank movements in the suburb of Skybyn, around 20 miles from central Kyiv.
In the footage, two tanks — of indeterminate nationality — are seen approaching Skybyn, according to a Sky News analysis. The investigative collective Bellingcat also confirmed the location.
Video: New footage shows mass grave in Ukraine after Russian attacks
Scroll back up to restore default view.
Further shots show Russian tanks on the side of the road, per Sky News. They are later seen on fire.
This is intercut with footage of a long column of tanks heading south into the village. Among them is a vehicle Sky identified as a TOS-1A thermobaric rocket launcher.
Footage released by Ukrainian authorities on March 10, 2022 showing a seemingly destroyed Russian tanks on a road in Skybyn, near Kyiv.Ukraine Defense Intelligence Agency
In another shot, at least 21 Russian military vehicles, including tanks, armored personnel carriers and the TOS-1A, are seen in the village. Tread marks on the road indicate they have changed direction.
Footage released by Ukrainian authorities on March 10, 2022, showing chaos among Russian military vehicles in Skybyn, near Kyiv.Ukraine Defense Intelligence Agency
Two plumes of smoke and fire then mark Ukrainian strikes at either end of the column:
The TOS-1A then appears to fire at a target out of frame.
Footage released by Ukrainian authorities on March 10, 2022 showing a strike at the foot of a column of Russian tanks in in Skybyn, near Kyiv.Ukraine Defense Intelligence Agency
Footage released by Ukraine on March 10, 2022 showing a strike at the head of a column of Russian tanks in in Skybyn.Ukraine Defense Intelligence Agency
The video then shows everal other Russian vehicles being hit. Whilst still under fire the convoy is seen moving back north.
The footage is overlaid with audio said to be of a Russian officer reporting the attack, The Guardian reported.
Footage released by Ukrainian authorities on March 10, 2022 showing a Russian TOS-1A apparently firing in Skybyn, near Kyiv.Ukraine Defense Intelligence Agency
“Sixth regiment lost,” the officer says, per The Guardian. “I cannot report about the 6th regiment. I’m collecting data. Lots of losses. They waited for us. Head of the convoy got into the ambush. Regiment commander killed in action.”
Military experts speaking to the paper described the video as credible.
Ukraine has published a series of such videos as part of a public relations effort to keep international and local attention on apparent military successes against Russia.
The overall military picture remains bleak for Ukraine, however.
In briefings on Tuesday and Wednesday, a Pentagon official said that about 90 to 95% of Russian combat power remains intact, despite the widely-viewed examples of Ukrainian defense.
Authorities released similar aerial footage of strikes on military vehicles dated March 8, which was confirmed by Insider as being shot outside of the village of Borodyanka, on a key road to Kyiv.
A US official estimated Wednesday that Russian forces have sustained 5-6,000 losses since the war began, per CBS News.
Putin’s Paranoid, Isolated, and Trying to Bluff His Way Through
The Daily Beast – March 11, 2022
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
In a jam-packed new episode of The New Abormal, co-host Molly Jong-Fast rips into the “contingent of very stupid Republican congresspeople” who don’t want the U.S. aiding Ukraine before building a border wall here, which makes sense since “the country of Mexico is shelling Texas and they’re using cluster bombs and stud missiles—Oh wait… There is no war at our southern border, but no one has told Rep. Doug Collins.”
“This is part of a larger picture where the right is a little confused by the state of the world as it actually is, as opposed to how they had been describing it for the past six years or whatever, where Putin was a good guy and the kind of guy we should look up to. Now, they’re doing their best carnival contortionists to act to try and pretend like they never said all of that,” says co-host Andy Levy. While some Republicans have come around, Levy says, “others are not anti Putin, they’re anti–anti-Putin. They’ll do a lot of blaming America for this war…
“They keep saying, ‘This didn’t happen under President Trump. Well, no, because Trump was openly talking about pulling out of NATO and stuff like that. And if you’re Vladimir Putin, you don’t want to do anything to upset that. So you sit back and let Trump destroy NATO by himself and make things even easier for Putin,” says Levy. “But instead you get, ‘Well, this didn’t happen when he was president.’”
Plus, Melissa Moss of the 65 Project explains how that was “set up to protect democracy, by holding accountable lawyers who bring bogus lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results” to account, and breaks down the three sorts of lawyers her group is going after.
And The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols considers Putin:
“This guy is not a good strategist. He blunders into things… and bluffs his way out, or tries to murder his way out. I don’t know how this ends, if he were the strategist that everybody thinks he is, he would find an off-ramp.”
But since Putin is not the strategist people think he is, says Nichols, “I’m very worried about the reports that he’s gonna try and up the ante by using chemical weapons, because now he has a problem at home” with “thousands of people in jail” and millions of Russians looking at each other and saying (of him), ‘What the hell were you doing?’ while the Russian military apparently is having some serious morale trouble because they don’t want to kill their brothers and sisters. So in that circumstance, maybe he would try to create a false-flag chemical attack to say, ‘You see, now, now I’m fighting for the soul of Russia.’ I mean, he’s improvising. And when you have a paranoid, isolated, not very bright guy, improvising bad things can happen.”
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