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World

Defiant Alexey Navalny has opposed Putin’s war in Ukraine from prison. His team fear for his safety

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Editor’s Note: The award-winning CNN Film “Navalny” airs on CNN this Saturday at 9 p.m. ET. You can also watch now on CNNgo and HBO Max.



CNN
 — 

Surviving President Vladimir Putin’s poisoners was just a warm-up, not a warning, for Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny. But his defiance, according to his political team, has put him in a race against time with the Russian autocrat.

The question, according to Navalny’s chief investigator, Maria Pevchikh, is whether he can outlast Putin and his war in Ukraine – and on that the verdict is still out. “So far, touch wood, they haven’t gone ahead with trying to kill him again,” she told CNN.

On January 17, 2021, undaunted and freshly recovered from an attempt on his life five months earlier – a near lethal dose of the deadly nerve agent Novichok delivered by Putin’s henchmen – Navalny boldly boarded a flight taking him right back into the Kremlin’s hands.

By then, Navalny had become Putin’s nemesis. So strong is the Russian leader’s aversion to his challenger that even to this day he refuses to say his name.

As Navalny stepped off the flight from Berlin onto the frigid tarmac at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport that snowy evening, he knew exactly what he was getting into. Just weeks before leaving Germany, he told CNN: “I understand that Putin hates me, I understand that people in the Kremlin are ready to kill.”

Navalny’s path to understanding had come at a high cost. He knew in intimate and excruciating detail exactly how close he had come to death at the hands of Putin’s poisoners while on the political campaign trail in Siberia to support local candidates.

As he recovered in Berlin from the August 2020 assassination attempt, Navalny and his crack research team – acting on some creative sleuthing by investigative outfit Bellingcat and CNN – figured out who his would-be killers were and discovered they’d been tailing him on Putin’s orders for over three years.

So detailed was Navalny’s knowledge that, posing as an official with Russia’s National Security Council, he was able to call one of the would-be killers, who promptly confessed to lacing Navalny’s underwear with the banned nerve agent Novichok.

The security service agent, one of a large team from the feared FSB, the Soviet KGB’s modern replacement, even offered a critique of their failed murder bid. He told Navalny he’d survived only because the plane carrying him diverted for medical help when he became sick, and suggested that the assassination attempt might have succeeded on a longer flight.

When challenged face-to-face at the door of his Moscow apartment by CNN’s Clarissa Ward, who along with journalists from Der Spiegel and The Insider had also helped in the investigation, the agent swiftly shut himself inside. Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attempt on Navalny’s life.

When Putin was asked if he’d tried to have Navalny killed, he smirked, saying: “If there was such a desire, it would have been done.”

Despite his denials, Putin’s desire was transparent: Navalny’s magnetism was positioning him as the Russian leader’s biggest political threat.

Today he is the best-known anti-Putin politician in Russia and is putting his life on the line to break Putin’s stranglehold over Russians.

Navalny’s team, who are in self-imposed exile for their safety, believe their boss is in a race for survival against Putin.

Pevchikh, who heads Navalny’s investigative team and helped winkle out his would-be assassins, says the war in Ukraine – which Navalny has condemned from his prison cell behind bars – will bring Putin down. The question, she says, is whether Navalny can survive Putin. “It’s a bit of a race. You know, at this point, who lasts longer?”

Navalny’s almost immediate incarceration after landing from Germany and his subsequent detention in one of Russia’s most dangerous jails prisons – he was moved in June to a maximum-security prison facility in Melekhovo, in the Vladimir region – is no surprise.

What is remarkable is that despite every physical and mental blow Putin’s brutal penal regime has dealt him, Navalny still refuses to be silenced.

Even while behind bars, his Instagram and Twitter accounts keep up his attacks on Putin. “He passes hundreds of notes and we type them up,” Pevchikh says. She didn’t specify how the notes were relayed.

But it’s not without cost: With every trumped-up turn of Putin’s tortuous legal machinations, Navalny has had to fight for even basic rights like boots and medication. His health has suffered, he has lost weight.

His daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, currently studying at Stanford University in California, told CNN he is being systematically singled out for harsh treatment.

Prison authorities are repeatedly cycling him in and out of solitary confinement, she says. “They put him in for a week, then take him out for one day,” to try to break him, she said. “People are not allowed to communicate with him, and this kind of isolation is really purely psychological torture.”

His physical treatment, she said, is just as horrendous. “It’s a small cell, six (or) seven-by-eight feet… a cage for someone who is of his six-foot-three height,” she told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “He only has one iron stool, which is sewed to the floor. And out of personal possessions he is allowed to have: a mug, a toothbrush, and one book.”

In the past few days, Navalny’s lawyer has said he has a “temperature, fever and a cough.” He hasn’t seen a doctor yet and his team is struggling to get medicine to him in his isolation cell.

His wife Yulia, who says she received a letter from Navalny on Wednesday, has also raised concerns about his health. She says he has been sick for over a week, and that he is not getting treatment and is forced off his sick bed during the day.

At least 531 Russian doctors as of Wednesday had signed an open letter addressed to Putin to demand that Navalny should be provided with necessary medical assistance, according to the Facebook post where the letter was published.

His family haven’t seen him since May last year and his daughter fears what may come next. “This is one of the most dangerous and famous high security prisons in Russia known for torturing and murdering the inmates,” she said.

In his last moments of freedom as police grabbed him at Sheremetyevo airport on his return to Russia nearly two years ago, Navalny kissed his wife Yulia goodbye.

Outside, riot police beat back the crowds who’d come to welcome them home. It was the beginning of a new chapter in Navalny’s struggle, one he is aware he may not survive.

Before leaving Germany, he’d recorded a message about what to do if the worst happened: “My message for the situation when I am killed is very simple: not give up… The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.”

When Navalny appeared in a Moscow court after his arrest at the airport, the huge scale of his problems was just beginning to become apparent. He was defiant; cut off from the world inside a cage in the crowded court, he signaled his love to his wife just yards away in the tiny room.

The trial itself was a farce. He was handed a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence for allegedly breaking the terms of his probation in an old, politically motivated case.

The courtroom theater was a typically Putinesque twist of Russia’s easily manipulated judicial process. Navalny’s alleged probation violation came as he lay incapacitated in the Berlin hospital recovering from the Novichok poisoning he and Western officials blame on the Kremlin.

If the court process in Putin’s Russia was a surreal circus, jail was to be its brutal twin where the Russian leader hoped to break Navalny’s will.

But far from defeated, and a lawyer by training, Navalny fought for his basic prison rights through legal challenges.

After his sentencing, Navalny went on a hunger strike, complaining he was being deprived of sleep by prison guards who kept waking him up. He began suffering health issues and demanded proper medical attention.

Against a backdrop of international outrage, Navalny was moved to a prison hospital; meanwhile Moscow’s courts moved to have him declared a terrorist or extremist and Putin shut down his political operations across the country.

In January 2022 Navalny appealed this designation, but after another six months of judicial theater he lost.

And there were more charges. In March that year, he was convicted of yet more trumped-up charges – contempt of court and embezzlement – and he was transferred to Melekhovo’s maximum security penal colony IK-6, hundreds of miles from Moscow.

At every turn, Navalny fought back, threatening in November 2022 to sue prison authorities for withholding winter boots, and, most recently, mounting a legal challenge to know what prison medics have been injecting him with.

Putin’s efforts to break him have no bounds, Navalny has said, describing his months in a punitive punishment cell as an attempt to “shut me up.” Often, he has been made to share the tiny space with a convict who has serious hygiene issues, he said on Twitter.

Navalny says he saw it for what it was: Putin’s callous use of people. “What especially infuriates me is the instrumentalization of a living person, turning him into a pressure tool,” he said.

But his suffering is paying off, according to Pevechikh. “We have had a very successful year in terms of our organization,” she said. “We are now one of the most loud, anti-war, anti-war media that there is available.”

It’s the fact Navalny returned to Russia that persuades people he is genuine, she said. “The level of risk that he takes on himself personally… is very impressive,” she said. “And I would imagine that our audience recognises that.”

Perhaps because of this, but certainly despite the more than 700 days in jail, where he remains subject to Putin’s vindictive whims, Navalny’s spirit seems strong.

At New Year he made light of his inhumane treatment, saying on Instagram that he had put up Christmas decorations he’d been sent in a letter from his family. When the guards took them down, he said, “the mood remained.”

His team posted a poignant photoshopped picture of him with his family – a way of keeping alive their New Year tradition of being together – and quoted Navalny as saying: “I can feel the threads and wires going to my wife, children, parents, brother, all the people closest to me.”

His New Year message to his many supporters is both stark and sincere: “Thank you all so much for your support this year. It hasn’t stopped for a minute, not even for a second, and I’ve felt it.”

For what dark horrors Putin may yet choose to visit on him, even the resilient Navalny will need all the support he can get.

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US

Taylor Dudley: US Navy veteran released from Russian custody

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CNN
 — 

An American Navy veteran who has been detained in Russia for nearly a year was released from Russian custody on Thursday, his family’s spokesperson told CNN, after months of negotiations spearheaded by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

Taylor Dudley, 35, of Lansing, Michigan, was detained by Russian border patrol police in April 2022 after crossing from Poland into Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave which is territory governed by Moscow between Poland and Lithuania. He was in Poland attending a music festival, and it is not clear why he crossed the border.

Dudley’s detention – which the US government had not deemed as “wrongful,” or based on arbitrary and discriminatory motivations – had not been widely publicized before Thursday because his family wanted the negotiations for his release to remain private.

The Richardson Center for Global Engagement, a non-profit founded by Richardson, spearheaded the negotiations, family spokesperson Jonathan Franks told CNN. The former governor and diplomat has long worked to free Americans detained abroad, and his center played a role in securing the release of Trevor Reed, a US citizen and former Marine who had been wrongfully detained in Russia, last summer.

No exchange was made on the US side for Dudley, said Mickey Bergman, the center’s vice president and executive president.

The Steve Menzies Global Foundation and the US Embassy also helped to secure Dudley’s release, Franks said.

“Earlier today, Russian authorities released American Citizen Taylor Dudley, a 35-year-old Navy veteran, across the Polish border to Gov. Bill Richardson, his team, and a representative from the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, a release the Richardson Center worked on diligently and quietly for more than 6 months with significant assistance from the Steve Menzies Global Foundation, from Hostage U.S., and from the James Foley Foundation. The family will be forever grateful for the work of all three.”

“The past 9 months have been difficult ones for the family and they ask the media to respect their privacy and give them the space to welcome Taylor home,” he added.

In a separate statement to CNN, Richardson said Dudley had been released at the Russia-Poland Bagrationovsk-Bezledy border crossing on Thursday, after nearly a year of negotiations. He also acknowledged the involvement of the State Department and the US Embassies in Moscow and Warsaw in helping to secure Dudley’s release.

“After six months of intensive work, it’s great to see this release of Taylor Dudley happen,” Richardson told CNN by phone on Thursday. “We worked it hard in Moscow and Kaliningrad and first raised it during our meetings with Russian officials on Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed.”

US citizens Griner and Reed have since been released, but Whelan is still in Russian custody. Richardson said he and his team are still “pressing forward” in negotiations with Russia to secure Whelan’s release.

“There are many low-profile Americans that deserve freedoms, too,” Richardson said. “In other words, there are many around the world that don’t have fame but that still deserve America’s backing.”

US-Russia relations are at an all-time low amid Moscow’s war in Ukraine and US sanctions on the Kremlin.

Several US citizens remain detained in Russia, including Whelan, a former US Marine who is designated as wrongfully detained. He was arrested in Russia in December 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Last year, the US proposed trading Whelan and Griner, an American basketball star, in a prisoner swap for arms dealer Viktor Bout, but Russia only agreed to release Griner.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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World

Russian artillery fire down by nearly 75%, US officials say, in latest sign of struggles for Moscow

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Washington
CNN
 — 

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its 11th month, US and Ukrainian officials tell CNN that Russia’s artillery fire is down dramatically from its wartime high, in some places by as much as 75%.

US and Ukrainian officials don’t yet have a clear or singular explanation. Russia may be rationing artillery rounds due to low supplies, or it could be part of a broader reassessment of tactics in the face of successful Ukrainian offenses.

Either way, the striking decline in artillery fire is further evidence of Russia’s increasingly weak position on the battlefield nearly a year into its invasion, US and Ukrainian officials told CNN. It also comes as Ukraine is enjoying increased military support from its western allies, with the US and Germany announcing last week that they will be providing Ukrainian forces for the first time with armored fighting vehicles, as well as another Patriot Defense missile battery that will help protect its skies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, is apparently clambering to shore up domestic political support, US intelligence officials believe, for a war he initially would only describe as a limited “special military operation.”

US officials believe the 36-hour ceasefire Putin ordered in Ukraine last week to allow for the observance of Orthodox Christmas was an attempt to pander to Russia’s extensive Christian population, two people familiar with the intelligence told CNN, as well as an opportunity for Putin to blame Ukrainians for breaking it and paint them as heretical heathens.

Much of the domestic opposition Putin and his generals have faced over the handling of the war has come from one of the Russian leader’s closest allies: Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary organization Wagner Group. Prigozhin has complained that the Russian Ministry of Defense has botched the war effort, and that Wagner Group should be given more equipment, authority and autonomy to carry out operations in Ukraine.

But Wagner Group has lost thousands of fighters in Ukraine the last two months alone, a senior US official said.

Russia suffered another setback earlier this month when Ukrainian forces hit a weapons depot in Makiivka in eastern Ukraine, destroying more Russian supplies and killing scores of Russian troops housed nearby. The strike also raised questions among prominent Russian military bloggers about the basic competence of the Russian military brass, which had apparently decided to house hundreds of Russian troops next to an obvious Ukrainian target.

“Maybe this one strike is a drop in the bucket, but the bucket is getting smaller,” a US defense official said, referring to the Russians’ dwindling stockpiles.

To date, questions about Russia’s stockpile of weapons have mostly focused on their precision-guided munitions, such as cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. But US officials said their dramatically reduced rate of artillery fire may indicate that the prolonged and brutal battle has had a significant effect on Russia’s supply of conventional weapons as well.

Last month, a senior US military official said that Russia has had to resort to 40-year-old artillery shells as their supply of new ammo dwindled. To the US, the use of degraded ammunition, as well as the Kremlin’s outreach to countries like North Korea and Iran, was a sign of Russia’s diminished stocks of weaponry.

The rationing of ammunition and lower rate of fire appears to be a departure from Russian military doctrine, which traditionally calls for the heavy bombardment of a target area with massive artillery fire and rocket fire. That strategy played out in cities like Mariupol and Melitopol as Russian forces used the punishing strikes to drive slow, brutal advances in Ukraine.

Officials said the strategy shift could be the doing of the recently installed Russian theater commander, General Sergey Surovikin, who the US believes is more competent than his predecessors.

Ukraine has had little choice but to ration its ammunition since the beginning of the war. Ukrainian troops rapidly burned through their own supply of Soviet-era 152 mm ammunition when the conflict erupted, and while the US and its allies have provided hundreds of thousands of rounds of Western 155 mm ammunition, even this supply has had its limits.

As a result, Ukraine has averaged firing around 4,000-7,000 artillery rounds per day – far fewer than Russia.

The Russians’ declining rate of fire is not linear, one US defense official noted, and there are days when Russians still fire far more artillery rounds – particularly around the eastern Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Kreminna, as well as some near Kherson in the south.

US and Ukrainian officials have offered widely different estimates of Russian fire, with US officials saying the rate has dropped from 20,000 rounds per day to around 5,000 per day on average. Ukraine estimates that the rate has dropped from 60,000 to 20,000 per day.

But both estimates point to a similar downward trend.

While Russia still has more artillery ammunition available than Ukraine does, early US assessments vastly overestimated the amount that Russia had its disposal, a US military official said, and underestimated how well the Ukrainians would do at hitting Russian logistics sites.

It appears now that Russia is focused more on bolstering its defense fortifications, particularly in central Zaporizhzhia, the UK Ministry of Defense reported in its regular intelligence update on Sunday. The movements suggest that Moscow is concerned about a potential Ukrainian offensive either there or in Luhansk, the ministry said.

“A major Ukrainian breakthrough in Zaporizhzhia would seriously challenge the viability of Russia’s ‘land-bridge’ linking Russia’s Rostov region and Crimea,” the ministry said, while Ukrainian success in Luhansk would “undermine Russia’s professed war aim of ‘liberating’ the Donbas.”

Ukraine’s counter-offensives last fall targeting Kherson in the south and Kharkiv in the north resulted in humiliating defeats for Russia – and were aided enormously by sophisticated western weaponry like HIMARS rocket launchers, Howitzer artillery systems and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that the US had previously been reluctant to provide.

“The fact of the matter is we have been self-deterring ourselves for over a year now,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of US Army Europe and NATO Allied Land Command and currently a senior advisor for Human Rights First.

“There’s been so much anxiety about the possibility of Russia’s escalation – I mean ten months ago, there was concern about giving Stingers…obviously that’s ridiculous, and it looks ridiculous now.”

Tensions between Kremlin defense officials and Wagner Group leaders have also been rising amid public complaints by the mercenaries that they are running low on equipment and reports that their leader, Prigozhin, wants to take control of the lucrative salt mines near Bakhmut.

In a video that ran on Russian state media, Wagner Group fighters complain that they are running low on combat vehicles, artillery shells and ammunition, which is limiting their ability to conquer Bakhmut – shortages Prigozhin then blames on “internal bureaucracy and corruption.”

“This year we will win! But first we will conquer our internal bureaucracy and corruption,” he says in the clip. “Once we conquer our internal bureaucracy and corruption, then we will conquer the Ukrainians and NATO, and then the whole world. The problem now is that the bureaucrats and those engaging in corruption won’t listen to us now because for New Year’s they are all drinking champagne.”

Prigozhin’s ambitions are not limited to greater political power, however, the US believes. There are also indications that he wants to take control over the lucrative salt and gypsum from mines near Bakhmut, a senior administration official tells CNN.

“This is consistent with Wagner’s modus operandi in Africa, where the group’s military activities often function hand in hand with control of mining assets,” the official said, adding that the US believes these monetary incentives are driving Prigozhin and Russia’s “obsession” with taking Bakhmut.

The official also said that Wagner Group has suffered heavy casualties in its operations near Bakhmut since late November.

“Out of its force of nearly 50,000 mercenaries (including 40,000 convicts), the company has sustained over 4,100 killed and 10,000 wounded, including over 1,000 killed between late November and early December near Bakhmut,” the official said, adding that about 90% of those killed were convicts.

The official said that Russia “cannot sustain these kinds of losses.”

“If Russia does eventually seize Bakhmut, Russia will surely characterize this, misleadingly, as a ‘major victory,” the official added. “But we know that is not the case. If the cost for each 36 square miles of Ukraine [the approximate size of Bakhmut] is thousands of Russians over seven months, this is the definition of Pyrrhic victory.”

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US

Ukrainians to start training on Patriot missiles in US as soon as next week, officials say

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CNN
 — 

Ukrainian troops are set to begin training on the Patriot missile system in the United States as soon as next week.

CNN first reported the news, which was confirmed later on Tuesday afternoon by the Pentagon.

The training program will take place at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where the US conducts its own training on operating and maintaining the advanced air defense system. Fort Sill is one of the Army’s four basic training locations and home to the service’s field artillery school, which has been training service members for more than a century.

On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters that 90 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers would be arriving in Oklahoma for the Patriot training as soon as next week. He was unable to give an exact time frame for how long the training would take – typically it takes up to a year for US soldiers to be trained on it – saying only that it would last “several months.”

“Once fielded, the Patriot… will contribute to Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, and provide another capability to the Ukrainian people to defend themselves against Russia’s ongoing aerial assaults,” Ryder said at Tuesday’s press briefing.

Last week, he said the US was looking at a variety of options where to conduct the Patriot missile training “to include potential training here in the US, overseas, or a combination of both.” Politico reported in December that any US-based training would likely occur at Fort Sill.

The US announced it was sending Ukraine the Patriot missile system in late December when the country’s President Volodomyr Zelensky visited Washington, DC, and met with President Joe Biden.

CNN first reported that the advanced air defense system would be provided, after months of denying the request due to the steep logistical and training challenges deploying it. However, a senior administration official told CNN last month that the “reality of what is going on” in Ukraine ultimately pushed them to provide the system.

The US is providing one Patriot battery, which includes power generating equipment, computers, an engagement control system and up to eight launchers. The battery is operated by roughly 90 soldiers and takes months to train up on.

Though the Patriot is broadly seen as one of the most advanced and effective air defense systems, experts cautioned that it is “not a game-changer” because of its limited range and the amount of time it will take for Ukrainians to be able to utilize it.

“These systems don’t pick up and move around the battlefield,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, former commander of US Army Europe, previously told CNN. “You put them in place somewhere that defends your most strategic target, like a city, like Kyiv. If anyone thinks this is going to be a system that is spread across a 500-mile border between Ukraine and Russia, they just don’t know how the system operates.”

Nevertheless, in the wake of the news that Ukraine would soon be operating its own system, Russian officials warned of “unpredictable consequences” in yet another threat of escalation.

“Earlier, many experts, including those overseas, questioned the rationality of such a step which would lead to an escalation of the conflict and increase the risk of directly dragging the US Army into combat,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in December.

The US is not alone in providing the advanced system to the Ukrainians; Germany recently announced that it was sending Ukraine a second Patriot missile system from its own inventory. On Tuesday, Ryder did not have any details about how Germany intended to handle training on the Patriot system it committed to sending Ukraine and whether Berlin would wait for training to complete on the US system before sending its own.

He also confirmed that the previously announced combined arms training program for Ukrainian battalions in Europe will also begin as early as next week and “will not require a significant or any increase in terms of US trainers” deploying to Europe.

Last week, the US announced its largest aid package to Ukraine since the war began – $2.85 billion worth of US equipment, including 50 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 500 TOW anti-tank missiles and tens of thousands of rounds of 25mm ammunition.

The new equipment heading to Ukraine is a “substantive” change in what the US had previously provided, two senior US officials told CNN, mirroring the evolving changes of Ukraine’s military as the war nears its one-year mark.

Ryder told reporters on Friday that the “international response” in providing equipment and training will “afford Ukraine an opportunity to change the equation on the battlefield and gain momentum, and defend not only their own territory, but hopefully take back territory.”

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World

Taiwan: War game simulation suggests Chinese invasion of Taiwan would fail at a huge cost to US, Chinese and Taiwanese militaries

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CNN
 — 

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026 would result in thousands of casualties among Chinese, United States, Taiwanese and Japanese forces, and it would be unlikely to result in a victory for Beijing, according to a prominent independent Washington think tank, which conducted war game simulations of a possible conflict that is preoccupying military and political leaders in Asia and Washington.

A war over Taiwan could leave a victorious US military in as crippled a state as the Chinese forces it defeated.

At the end of the conflict, at least two US aircraft carriers would lie at the bottom of the Pacific and China’s modern navy, which is the largest in the world, would be in “shambles.”

Those are among the conclusions the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), made after running what it claims is one of the most extensive war-game simulations ever conducted on a possible conflict over Taiwan, the democratically ruled island of 24 million that the Chinese Communist Party claims as part of its sovereign territory despite never having controlled it.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has refused to rule out the use of military force to bring the island under Beijing’s control.

CNN reviewed an advance copy of the report – titled “The First Battle of the Next War” – on the two dozen war scenarios run by CSIS, which said the project was necessary because previous government and private war simulations have been too narrow or too opaque to give the public and policymakers a true look at how conflict across the Taiwan Strait might play out.

“There’s no unclassified war game out there looking at the US-China conflict,” said Mark Cancian, one of the three project leaders and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Of the games that are unclassified, they’re usually only done once or twice.”

CSIS ran this war game 24 times to answer two fundamental questions: would the invasion succeed and at what cost?

The likely answers to those two questions are no and enormous, the CSIS report said.

“The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of service members. Such losses would damage the US global position for many years,” the report said. In most scenarios, the US Navy lost two aircraft carriers and 10 to 20 large surface combatants. Approximately 3,200 US troops would be killed in three weeks of combat, nearly half of what the US lost in two decades of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“China also suffers heavily. Its navy is in shambles, the core of its amphibious forces is broken, and tens of thousands of soldiers are prisoners of war,” it said. The report estimated China would suffer about 10,000 troops killed and lose 155 combat aircraft and 138 major ships.

– Source:
CNN
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Japan expands defense of its southern front line to counter China (April 2022)

The scenarios paint a bleak future for Taiwan, even if a Chinese invasion doesn’t succeed.

“While Taiwan’s military is unbroken, it is severely degraded and left to defend a damaged economy on an island without electricity and basic services,” the report. The island’s army would suffer about 3,500 casualties, and all 26 destroyers and frigates in its navy will be sunk, the report said.

Japan is likely to lose more than 100 combat aircraft and 26 warships while US military bases on its home territory come under Chinese attack, the report found.

But CSIS said it did not want its report to imply a war over Taiwan “is inevitable or even probable.”

“The Chinese leadership might adopt a strategy of diplomatic isolation, gray zone pressure, or economic coercion against Taiwan,” it said.

Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), sees an outright Chinese invasion of Taiwan as extremely unlikely. Such a military operation would immediately disrupt the imports and exports upon which the Chinese economy relies for its very survival, Grazier told CNN, and interrupting this trade risks the collapse of the Chinese economy in short order. China relies on imports of food and fuel to drive their economic engine, Grazier said, and they have little room to maneuver.

“The Chinese are going to do everything they can in my estimation to avoid a military conflict with anybody,” Grazier said. To challenge the United States for global dominance, they’ll use industrial and economic power instead of military force.

But Pentagon leaders have labeled China as America’s “pacing threat,” and last year’s China Military Power report mandated by Congress said “the PLA increased provocative and destabilizing actions in and around the Taiwan Strait, to include increased flights into Taiwan’s claimed air defense identification zone and conducting exercises focused on the potential seizure of one of Taiwan’s outlying islands.”

In August, the visit of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island prompted a wide-ranging display of PLA military might, which included sending missiles over the island as well as into the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Since then, Beijing has stepped up aggressive military pressure tactics on the island, sending fighter jets across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, the body of water separating Taiwan and China and into the island’s air defense identification zone – a buffer of airspace commonly referred to as an ADIZ.

And speaking about Taiwan at the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress in October, Chinese leader Xi Jinping won large applause when he said China would “strive for peaceful reunification” — but then gave a grim warning, saying “we will never promise to renounce the use of force and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”

The Biden administration has been steadfast in its support for the island as provided by the Taiwan Relations Act, which said Washington will provide the island with the means to defend itself without committing US troops to that defense.

The recently signed National Defense Authorization Act commits the US to a program to modernize Taiwan’s military and provides for $10 billion of security assistance over five years, a strong sign of long-term bipartisan support for the island.

Biden, however, has said more than once that US military personnel would defend Taiwan if the Chinese military were to launch an invasion, even as the Pentagon has insisted there is no change in Washington’s “One China” policy.

Under the “One China” policy, the US acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the self-governing island.

“Wars happen even when objective analysis might indicate that the attacker might not be successful,” said Cancian.

The CSIS report said for US troops to prevent China from ultimately taking control of Taiwan, there were four constants that emerged among the 24 war game iterations it ran:

Taiwan’s ground forces must be able to contain Chinese beachheads; the US must be able to use its bases in Japan for combat operations; the US must have long-range anti-ship missiles to hit the PLA Navy from afar and “en masse”; and the US needs to fully arm Taiwan before shooting starts and jump into any conflict with its own forces immediately.

“There is no ‘Ukraine model’ for Taiwan,” the report said, referring to how US and Western aid slowly trickled in to Ukraine well after Russia’s invasion of its neighbor started and no US or NATO troops are actively fighting against Russia.

“Once the war begins, it’s impossible to get any troops or supplies onto Taiwan, so it’s a very different situation from Ukraine where the United States and its allies have been able to send supplies continuously to Ukraine,” said Cancian. “Whatever the Taiwanese are going to fight the war with, they have to have that when the war begins.”

Washington will need to begin acting soon if it’s to meet some of the CSIS recommendations for success in a Taiwan conflict, the think tank said.

Those include, fortifying US bases in Japan and Guam against Chinese missile attacks; moving its naval forces to smaller and more survivable ships; prioritizing submarines; prioritizing sustainable bomber forces over fighter forces; but producing more cheaper fighters; and pushing Taiwan toward a similar strategy, arming itself with more simple weapons platforms rather than expensive ships that are unlikely to survive a Chinese first strike.

Those policies would make winning less costly for the US military, but the toll would still be high, the CSIS report said.

“The United States might win a pyrrhic victory, suffering more in the long run than the ‘defeated’ Chinese.”

“Victory is not everything,” the report said.

– Source:
CNN
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Breakdown in US-China relations a ‘manufactured crisis,’ US ambassador says (August 2022)

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World

Putin avoids Russia blame game — for now — after Ukraine attack

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CNN
 — 

It was New Year’s Eve, one of the most cherished holidays in Russia. The recruits in President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine – hundreds of them mobilized just months ago – were billeted in makeshift barracks, a vocational school in the occupied city of Makiivka, in the Donetsk region. Next door was a large ammunition depot.

The soldiers missed their wives, their families, so they turned on their cellphones and called home. Suddenly, HIMARS rockets, satellite-guided precision weapons that the United States has supplied to Ukraine, hit the school, almost completely destroying it, and igniting the cache of ammunition.

That, at least officially, is how the Russian military is explaining the deadliest known attack on Russian forces in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022. The Defense Ministry blamed the troops themselves, claiming the “main cause” of the attack was the use of cellphones “contrary to the ban.” Russian troops are banned from using personal cell phones in the field, since their signals have been geolocated to hone in on and kill other Russian forces.

But that explanation, and details of the attack that have surfaced, have ignited an extraordinarily public national blame game among Russians.

It started with the death toll. The Russian Defense Ministry initially said 63 soldiers were killed, then increased that number to 89. Ukraine claimed it was approximately 400. But even Russian pro-war bloggers, an increasingly influential element in how Russian civilians get their information about what really is happening in Ukraine, dismissed the official count, estimating that hundreds of troops had died. The true number is not yet known.

One of those bloggers, Semyon Pegov, who uses the online handle “War Gonzo” and was recently awarded a medal by Vladimir Putin, also rejected the military’s claim about cell phones, calling it a “blatant attempt to smear blame.”

“Grey Zone,” another blogger, called the cell phone explanation a “99% lie,” an attempt to evade responsibility. He said it was more likely an intelligence failure.

Russian lawmakers chimed in, demanding an investigation into just who had ordered so many troops to be temporarily quartered in one, unprotected building. Sergey Mironov, a prominent politician and party leader, said there should be “personal criminal liability” for any officers or other military personnel who made that decision. And, implying the military had a lax approach to the war, he warned, “It’s time to realize it won’t be the same as it used to be.”

“This is a battle for the future of Russia,” Mironov said. “We must win it!”

Mironov’s comments touched a nerve. Hardliners like him think Putin’s September “partial mobilization” of reservists, calling up 300,000 men, failed to go far enough. They want a full mobilization that would put the entire country on a war footing. And they want revenge on Ukraine.

No one so far, however – at least publicly – is blaming Vladimir Putin for the deaths. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state-run international network RT and a regular on domestic Russian TV talk shows, said she hoped “the responsible officials will be held accountable” and their names released. But she also hinted the attack could fuel public discontent: “It is high time to understand that impunity does not lead to social harmony. Impunity leads to more crimes and, as a consequence, public dissent.”

Many of the soldiers who perished at Makiivka came from Samara, a city on the Volga River in southwestern Russia, and the families of those killed are mourning their loved ones, bringing red carnations to a rare public memorial service, as priests led people in prayer and a choir sang the liturgy for the young men who had recently been sent to the front.

The Defence Ministry’s admission that significant number of mobilized troops had died in the attack, as well as the open debate among military bloggers, are signs the Kremlin is taking the attack in Makiivka very seriously. After all, the Putin government has the means to shut down reporting on events it does not want the public to know.

Even in this “open” discussion, several commentators have raised the possibility that “informants” may have tipped off the enemy, a go-to conspiracy theory that Russia’s state-run propaganda outlets often promote. Then there is the usual complaint after almost any tragedy in Russia, blaming it on “khalatnost:” negligence.

But the finger of blame, so far, is pointed only at military leaders, no higher. President Putin has made no public comment about the Makiivka attack, a strong indication that he intends to remain as far away as possible from an obvious debacle.

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World

Ukraine: Kyiv dismisses Putin’s call for ceasefire as ‘hypocrisy’

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CNN
 — 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his defense minister to implement a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine for 36 hours this week to allow Orthodox Christians to attend Christmas services, according to a Kremlin statement Thursday. But the proposal was swiftly dismissed as “hypocrisy” by Ukrainian officials.

Putin’s order came after the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, called for a ceasefire between January 6 and January 7, when many Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas.

But Ukrainian officials voiced skepticism about the temporary ceasefire, saying Moscow just wanted a pause to gather reserves, equipment and ammunition.

During his nightly address on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia aims to use Orthodox Christmas “as a cover” to resupply and stop Ukrainian advances in the eastern Donbas region.

“What will this accomplish? Only another increase in the casualty count,” he added.

Serhiy Haidai, head of the Luhansk regional military administration, told Ukrainian television: “Regarding this truce – they just want to get some kind of a pause for a day or two, to pull even more reserves, bring some more ammo.”

“Russia cannot be trusted. Not a single word they say,” Haidai added.

Now in its 11th month, the battle that many experts thought would be over within days or weeks has become a grueling war.

Both sides have taken blows in recent weeks: Ukraine’s economy shrank by more than 30% last year, with Russian missile strikes pummeling civilian infrastructure, leaving many without heat in the height of winter. Meanwhile, Ukrainian attacks on Russian barracks have killed a significant number of Russian troops and sparked controversy within Russia.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak responded to Putin’s move on Twitter by saying that Russia must leave “occupied territories” in Ukraine before any “temporary truce.”

“First. Ukraine doesn’t attack foreign territory and doesn’t kill civilians. As RF [Russian Federation] does … Second. RF must leave the occupied territories – only then will it have a ‘temporary truce’. Keep hypocrisy to yourself,” Podolyak said.

The proposal for a temporary truce also raised eyebrows among the international community.

US President Joe Biden expressed skepticism on Thursday, telling reporters that he was “reluctant to respond anything Putin says. I found it interesting. He was ready to bomb hospitals and nurseries and churches on the 25th and New Year’s.”

He continued, “I mean, I think he’s trying to find some oxygen.”

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price described it as “cynical” and that the US had “little faith in the intentions behind” Russia’s proposed ceasefire.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Thursday also warned that the promise of a ceasefire would not bring “either freedom or security” to the people living under Moscow’s brutal war.

“If Putin wanted peace, he would take his soldiers home, and the war would be over. But apparently, he wants to continue the war after a short break,” she said in a tweet.

Putin’s order comes after he spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who has attempted to position himself as a broker between the Russian president and the West – where Putin said he was open to “serious dialogue” regarding Ukraine, but Kyiv must accept the “new territorial realities,” according to a Kremlin statement.

The full statement from the Kremlin on Thursday read: “Taking into account the appeal of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, I instruct the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation to introduce from 12:00 January 6, 2023 until 24:00 January 7, 2023, a ceasefire along the entire line of contact between the parties in Ukraine.

“Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a ceasefire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ.”

Kirill has been a vocal supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and gave a sermon in September in which he said that “military duty washes away all sins.”

The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has also been locked in a feud with Pope Francis, who has described the invasion of Ukraine as Russian “expansionism and imperialism.”

And in May, the Pope urged Patriarch Kirill not to “become Putin’s altar boy.”

In November, a branch of Ukraine’s Orthodox church announced that it would allow its churches to celebrate Christmas on December 25, rather than January 7, as is traditional in Orthodox congregations.

The announcement by the Kyiv-headquartered Orthodox Church of Ukraine widened the rift between the Russian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox believers.

In recent years a large part of the Orthodox community in Ukraine has moved away from Moscow, a movement accelerated by the conflict Russia stoked in eastern Ukraine beginning in 2014.

Ukrainians, who have suffered nearly a year of conflict, expressed distrust of Putin’s announcement.

In the southern region of Kherson, Pavlo Skotarenko doesn’t expect much to change. “They shell us every day, people die in Kherson every day. And this temporary measure won’t change anything,” he said.

From the frontlines in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, a Ukrainian soldier told CNN that the temporary ceasefire announcement looked like an effort to clean up Russia’s image.

“I do not think that this is done for some military tactical purpose, one day will not solve much,” the Ukrainian soldier, who goes by the call sign Archer, told CNN by phone.

“Perhaps this is done to make the image of the whole of Russia a little more human, because so many atrocities are constantly emerging, and this could earn them few points of support from the people,” the soldier said.

And in the capital Kyiv, where Russian attacks during New Year soured even the most modest celebrations, Halyna Hladka said she saw the temporary ceasefire as an attempt by Russians to win time.

“Russia has already shown active use of faith in numerous kinds of manipulations. And besides, in almost a year of war, Russia has not behaved itself as a country capable of adhering to promises,” she said.

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World

CNN Exclusive: A single Iranian attack drone found to contain parts from more than a dozen US companies

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Washington
CNN
 — 

Parts made by more than a dozen US and Western companies were found inside a single Iranian drone downed in Ukraine last fall, according to a Ukrainian intelligence assessment obtained exclusively by CNN.

The assessment, which was shared with US government officials late last year, illustrates the extent of the problem facing the Biden administration, which has vowed to shut down Iran’s production of drones that Russia is launching by the hundreds into Ukraine.

CNN reported last month that the White House has created an administration-wide task force to investigate how US and Western-made technology – ranging from smaller equipment like semiconductors and GPS modules to larger parts like engines – has ended up in Iranian drones.

Of the 52 components Ukrainians removed from the Iranian Shahed-136 drone, 40 appear to have been manufactured by 13 different American companies, according to the assessment.

The remaining 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and China, according to the assessment.

The options for combating the issue are limited. The US has for years imposed tough export control restrictions and sanctions to prevent Iran from obtaining high-end materials. Now US officials are looking at enhanced enforcement of those sanctions, encouraging companies to better monitor their own supply chains and, perhaps most importantly, trying to identify the third-party distributors taking these products and re-selling them to bad actors.

NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson told CNN in a statement that “We are looking at ways to target Iranian UAV production through sanctions, export controls, and talking to private companies whose parts have been used in the production. We are assessing further steps we can take in terms of export controls to restrict Iran’s access to technologies used in drones.”

There is no evidence suggesting that any of those companies are running afoul of US sanctions laws and knowingly exporting their technology to be used in the drones. Even with many companies promising increased monitoring, controlling where these highly ubiquitous parts end up in the global market is often very difficult for manufacturers, experts told CNN. Companies may also not know what they are looking for if the US government has not caught up with and sanctioned the actors buying and selling the products for illicit purposes.

And the Ukrainian intelligence assessment is further proof that despite sanctions, Iran is still finding an abundance of commercially available technology. For example, the company that built the downed drone, Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industries Corporation (HESA), has been under US sanctions since 2008.

One major issue is that it is far easier for Russian and Iranian officials to set up shell companies to use to purchase the equipment and evade sanctions than it is for Western governments to uncover those front companies, which can sometimes take years, experts said.

“This is a game of Whack-a-Mole. And the United States government needs to get incredibly good at Whack-a- Mole, period,” said former Pentagon official Gregory Allen, who now serves as Director of the Artificial Intelligence Governance Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This is a core competency of the US national security establishment – or it had better become one.”

Allen, who recently co-authored an investigation into the efficacy of US export controls, said ultimately, “there is no substitute for robust, in-house capabilities in the US government.”

He cautioned that it is not an easy job. The microelectronics industry relies heavily on third party distributors and resellers that are difficult to track, and the microchips and other small devices ending up in so many of the Iranian and Russian drones are not only inexpensive and widely available, they are also easily hidden.

“Why do smugglers like diamonds?” Allen said. “Because they’re small, lightweight, and worth a ton of money. And unfortunately, computer chips have similar properties.” Success won’t necessarily be measured in stopping 100% of transactions, he added, but rather in making it more difficult and expensive for bad actors to get what they need.

The rush to stop Iran from manufacturing the drones is growing more urgent as Russia continues to deploy them across Ukraine with relentless ferocity, targeting both civilian areas and key infrastructure. Russia is also preparing to establish its own factory to produce them with Iran’s help, according to US officials. On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainian forces had shot down more than 80 Iranian drones in just two days.

Zelensky also said that Ukraine had intelligence that Russia “is planning a prolonged attack with Shaheds,” betting that it will lead to the “exhaustion of our people, our air defense, our energy sector.”

A separate probe of Iranian drones downed in Ukraine, conducted by the UK-based investigative firm Conflict Armament Research, found that 82% of the components had been manufactured by companies based in the US. 

Damien Spleeters, the Deputy Director of Operations at Conflict Armament Research, told CNN that sanctions will only be effective if governments continue to monitor what parts are being used and how they got there.

“Iran and Russia are going to try to go around those sanctions and will try to change their acquisition channels,” Spleeters said. “And that’s precisely what we want to focus on: getting in the field and opening up those systems, tracing the components, and monitoring for changes.”

Experts also told CNN that if the US government wants to beef up enforcement of the sanctions, it will need to devote more resources and hire more employees who can be on the ground to track the vendors and resellers of these products.

“Nobody has really thought about investing more in agencies like the Bureau of Industry Security, which were really sleepy parts of the DC national security establishment for a few decades,” Allen, of CSIS, said, referring to a branch of the Commerce Department that deals primarily with export controls enforcement. “And now, suddenly, they’re at the forefront of national security technology competition, and they’re not being resourced remotely in that vein.”

According to the Ukrainian assessment, among the US-made components found in the drone were nearly two dozen parts built by Texas Instruments, including microcontrollers, voltage regulators, and digital signal controllers; a GPS module by Hemisphere GNSS; a microprocessor by NXP USA Inc.; and circuit board components by Analog Devices and Onsemi. Also discovered were components built by International Rectifier – now owned by the German company Infineon – and the Swiss company U-Blox.

CNN sent emailed requests for comment last month to all the companies identified by the Ukrainians. The six that responded emphasized that they condemn any unauthorized use of their products, while noting that combating the diversion and misuse of their semiconductors and other microelectronics is an industry-wide challenge that they are working to confront.

“TI is not selling any products into Russia, Belarus or Iran,” Texas Instruments said in a statement. ” TI complies with applicable laws and regulations in the countries where we operate, and partners with law enforcement organizations as necessary and appropriate. Additionally, we do not support or condone the use of our products in applications they weren’t designed for.”

Gregor Rodehuser, a spokesperson for the German semiconductor manufacturer Infineon, told CNN that “our position is very clear: Infineon condemns the Russian aggression against Ukraine. It is a blatant violation of international law and an attack on the values of humanity.” He added that “apart from the direct business it proves difficult to control consecutive sales throughout the entire lifetime of a product. Nevertheless, we instruct our customers including distributors to only conduct consecutive sales in line with applicable rules.”

Analog Devices, a semiconductor company headquartered in Massachusetts, said in a statement that they are intensifying efforts “to identify and counter this activity, including implementing enhanced monitoring and audit processes, and taking enforcement action where appropriate…to help to reduce unauthorized resale, diversion, and unintended misuse of our products.”

Jacey Zuniga, director of corporate communications for the Austin, Texas-based semiconductor company NXP USA, said that the company “complies with all applicable export control restrictions and sanctions imposed by the countries in which we operate. Military applications are not a focus area for NXP. As a company, we are vehemently opposed to our products being used for human rights violations.”

Phoenix, Arizona-based semiconductor manufacturing company Onsemi also said it complies with “applicable export control and economic sanctions laws and regulations and does not sell directly or indirectly to Russia, Belarus or Iran nor to any foreign military organizations. We cooperate with law enforcement and government agencies as necessary and appropriate to demonstrate how Onsemi conducts business in accordance with all legal requirements and that we hold ourselves to the highest standards of ethical conduct.”

Swiss semiconductor manufacturer U-Blox also said in a statement that its products are for commercial use only, and that the use of its products for Russian military equipment “is in clear breach of u-blox’s conditions of sale applicable to customers and distributors alike.”

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Business

From the unwinding of zero-Covid to economic recovery: What to watch in China in 2023

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Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.


Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

After a tumultuous end to a momentous and challenging year, China heads into 2023 with a great deal of uncertainty – and potentially a glimpse of light at the end of the pandemic tunnel.

The chaos unleashed by leader Xi Jinping’s abrupt and ill-prepared exit from zero-Covid is spilling over into the new year, as large swathes of the country face an unprecedented Covid wave.

But the haphazard reopening also offers a glimmer of hope for many: after three years of stifling Covid restrictions and self-imposed global isolation, life in China may finally return to normal as the nation joins the rest of the world in learning to live with the virus.

“We have now entered a new phase of Covid response where tough challenges remain,” Xi said in a nationally televised New Year’s Eve speech. “Everyone is holding on with great fortitude, and the light of hope is right in front of us. Let’s make an extra effort to pull through, as perseverance and solidarity mean victory.”

Xi had previously staked his political legitimacy on zero-Covid. Now, as his costly strategy gets dismantled in an abrupt U-turn following nationwide protests against it, many are left questioning his wisdom. The protests, which in some places saw rare demands for Xi and the Communist Party to “step down,” may have ended, but the overriding sense of frustration has yet to dissipate.

His New Year speech comes as China’s lockdown-battered economy faces more immediate strain from a spiraling outbreak that has hit factories and businesses, ahead of what is likely to be a long and complicated road to economic recovery.

Its tightly-sealed borders are gradually opening up, and Chinese tourists are eager to explore the world again, but some countries appear cautious to receive them, imposing new requirements for a negative Covid test before travel. And just how quickly – or keenly – global visitors will return to China is another question.

Xi, who recently reemerged on the world stage after securing a third term in power, has signaled he hopes to mend frayed relations with the West, but his nationalist agenda and “no-limits friendship” with Russia is likely to complicate matters.

As 2023 begins, CNN takes a look at what to watch in China in the year ahead.

The most urgent and daunting task facing China in the new year is how to handle the fallout from its botched exit from zero-Covid, amid an outbreak that threatens to claim hundreds of thousands of lives and undermine the credibility of Xi and his Communist Party.

The sudden lifting of restrictions last month led to an explosion of cases, with little preparation in place to deal with the surging numbers of patients and deaths.

The country’s fragile heath system is scrambling to cope: fever and cold medicines are hard to find, hospitals are overwhelmed, doctors and nurses are stretched to the limit, while crematoriums are struggling to keep up with an influx of bodies.

And experts warn the worst is yet to come. While some major metropolises like Beijing may have seen the peak of the outbreak, less-developed cities and the vast rural hinterland are still bracing for more infections.

As the travel rush for the Lunar New Year – the most important festival for family reunion in China – begins this week, hundreds of millions of people are expected to return to their hometowns from big cities, bringing the virus to the vulnerable countryside where vaccination rates are lower and medical resources even scarcer.

The outlook is grim. Some studies estimate the death toll could be in excess of a million, if China fails to roll out booster shots and antiviral drugs fast enough.

The government has launched a booster campaign for the elderly, but many remain reluctant to take it due to concerns about side effects. Fighting vaccine hesitancy will require significant time and effort, when the country’s medical workers are already stretched thin.

Beijing’s Covid restrictions have put China out of sync with the rest of the world. Three years of lockdowns and border curbs have disrupted supply chains, damaged international businesses, and hurt flows of trade and investment between China and other countries.

As China joins the rest of the world in living with Covid, the implications for the global economy are potentially huge.

Any uptick in China’s growth will provide a vital boost to economies that rely on Chinese demand. There will be more international travel and production. But rising demand will also drive up prices of energy and raw materials, putting upward pressure on global inflation.

“In the short run, I believe China’s economy is likely to experience chaos rather than progress for a simple reason: China is poorly prepared to deal with Covid,” said Bo Zhuang, senior sovereign analyst at Loomis, Sayles & Company, an investment firm based in Boston.

Analysts from Capital Economics expect China’s economy to contract by 0.8% in the first quarter of 2023, before rebounding in the second quarter.

Other experts also expect the economy to recover after March. In a recent research report, HSBC economists projected a 0.5% contraction in the first quarter, but 5% growth for 2023.

Despite all this uncertainty, Chinese citizens are celebrating the partial reopening of the border after the end of quarantine for international arrivals and the resumption of outbound travel.

Though some residents voiced concern online about the rapid loosening of restrictions during the outbreak, many more are eagerly planning trips abroad – travel websites recorded massive spikes in traffic within minutes of the announcement on December 26.

Several Chinese nationals overseas told CNN they had been unable or unwilling to return home for the last few years while the lengthy quarantine was still in place. That stretch meant major life moments missed and spent apart: graduations, weddings, childbirths, deaths.

Some countries have offered a warm welcome back, with foreign embassies and tourism departments posting invitations to Chinese travelers on Chinese social media sites. But others are more cautious, with many countries imposing new testing requirements for travelers coming from China and its territories.

Officials from these countries have pointed to the risk of new variants emerging from China’s outbreak – though numerous health experts have criticized the targeted travel restrictions as scientifically ineffective and alarmist, with the risk of inciting further racism and xenophobia.

As China emerges from its self-imposed isolation, all eyes are on whether it will be able to repair its reputation and relations that soured during the pandemic.

China’s ties with the West and many of its neighbors plummeted significantly over the origins of the coronavirus, trade, territorial claims, Beijing’s human rights record and its close partnership with Russia despite the devastating war in Ukraine.

The lack of top-level face-to-face diplomacy certainly didn’t help, neither did the freeze on in-person exchanges among policy advisers, business groups and the wider public.

At the G20 and APEC summits, Xi signaled his willingness to repair relations with the United States and its allies in a flurry of bilateral meetings.

Communication lines are back open and more high-level exchanges are in the pipeline – with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, French President Emmanuel Macron, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Italy’s newly elected Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni all expected to visit Beijing this year.

But Xi also made clear his ambition to push back at American influence in the region, and there is no illusion that the world’s two superpowers will be able to work out their fundamental differences and cast aside their intensifying rivalry.

In the new year, tensions may again flare over Taiwan, technological containment, as well as China’s support for Russia – which Xi underlined during a virtual meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 30.

Both leaders expressed a message of unity, with Xi saying the two countries should “strengthen strategic coordination” and “inject more stability into the world,” according to Chinese state media Xinhua.

China is “ready to work” with Russia to “stand against hegemonism and power politics,” and to oppose unilateralism, protectionism and “bullying,” said Xi. Putin, meanwhile, invited Xi to visit Moscow in the spring of 2023.

Beijing has long refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or even refer to it as such. It has instead decried Western sanctions and amplified Kremlin talking points blaming the US and NATO for the conflict.

As Russia suffered humiliating military setbacks in Ukraine in recent months, Chinese state media appeared to have somewhat dialed back its pro-Russia rhetoric, while Xi has agreed to oppose the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine in meetings with Western leaders.

But few experts believe China will distance itself from Russia, with several telling CNN the two countries’ mutual reliance and geopolitical alignment remains strong – including their shared vision for a “new world order.”

“(The war) has been a nuisance for China this past year and has affected China’s interest in Europe,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center. “But the damage is not significant enough that China will abandon Russia.”

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Science

2022’s unforgettable moments in space exploration

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Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

This year, humankind glimpsed the universe in ways that were never before possible, and space missions took unprecedented leaps forward in unraveling the mysteries of the cosmos.

We witnessed the first mission to the International Space Station funded entirely by space tourists. A new space-based internet service played a key role in the war in Ukraine. And there were historic launches of spacecraft and technology by NASA and its international partners that could one day be used to land humans on Mars.

“There is no doubt that 2022 was out of this world,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “2022 will go down in the history books as one of the most accomplished years across all of NASA’s missions.”

Here are some of the unforgettable space discoveries and moments from 2022.

After years of preparation, NASA finally got its latest lunar exploration program off the ground with an uncrewed test flight that carried anastronaut-worthy spacecraft around the moon.

The mission was chock-full of huge moments. The rocket that got the mission off the ground, the Space Launch System or SLS, became the most powerful rocket ever to reach orbit — boasting 15% more thrust than the Saturn V rockets behind the Apollo program.

Upon reaching space, the Orion capsule, which flew empty save for a few test mannequins, captured stunning images of the Earth and moon. And Orion’s orbital path swung farther out beyond the far side of the moon than any spacecraft designed to carry humans has traveled before.

The trial run has paved the way for future Artemis missions, with the aim of returning humans to the lunar surface before mapping out a pathway for the first human spaceflight to Mars.

In partnership with international space agencies, NASA not only made strides in its human exploration program, but it also notched steps forward in scientific endeavors. After decades of anticipation, the James Webb Space Telescope finally began observing the universe in July.

Since then, the world’s most powerful space observatory has turned its gaze on planets, stars and galaxies in infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.

The telescope has spied unseen aspects of the universe and previously hidden features, including the most distant galaxies ever observed. Webb has also shared new perspectives on some of astronomy’s favorite cosmic features and captured them in a new light, such as the Pillars of Creation.

The telescope’s images have already gone beyond what astronomers expected — and the best news: Webb is just getting started.

The Webb telescope, however, wasn’t the only space observatory expanding our understanding of deep space. The Hubble Space Telescope spied the most distant single star ever observed, faintly shining 28 billion light-years away. The star existed just 900 million years after the big bang created the universe, and its light has traveled nearly 13 billion years to reach Earth.

Astronomers nicknamed the star Earendel, derived from an Old English word that means “morning star” or “rising light.”

Meanwhile, astronomers used the Event Horizon Telescope to capture an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy for the first time. This first direct observation confirmed the presence of the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, as the beating heart of the Milky Way.

While black holes don’t emit light, the shadow of the cosmic object was surrounded by a bright ring — light bent by the gravity of the black hole.

In late September, NASA successfully completed the first test mission for planetary defense. The space agency slammed a spacecraft into Dimorphos, a small asteroid that orbits a larger space rock named Didymos — and yes, the collision was intentional. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, was a full-scale demonstration of deflection technology.

Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos poses a threat to Earth, but the system was a perfect target to test a technique that may one day be used to protect the planet from an asteroid strike.

The DART mission marked the first time humanity intentionally changed the motion of a celestial object in space. The spacecraft altered the moonlet asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes.

And that’s not all 2022 offered when it came to the study of unusual objects in the skies. In June, NASA announced it would delve into the mysteries surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena, more popularly known as unidentified flying objects or UFOs. The space agency later selected a team of experts across numerous disciplines — including astrobiology, data science, oceanography, genetics, policy and planetary science — for the task.

Officials at NASA aren’t suggesting aliens may be responsible for such phenomena. The goal is merely to take a serious look at the as-yet-unexplained — but much publicly debated — topic of UAPs and how they might be studied through a scientific lens.

“Without access to an extensive set of data, it is nearly impossible to verify or explain any observation, thus the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to scientifically discern the nature of UAP,” according to a NASA news release.

Meanwhile on the red planet, the InSight lander’s mission came to an end due to a surplus of dust on its solar panels (and no whirlwinds to vacuum them clean), but the stationary spacecraft made history in 2022. InSight detected the largest quake on Mars and captured the sounds of space rocks slamming into the planet — which created craters that revealed treasure troves of subsurface ice.

As InSight winds down, the Perseverance rover’s sidekick has continued to take to the Martian skies, above and beyond its original five-flight mission. The Ingenuity helicopter broke its own altitude record and has aced 37 flights on the red planet since April 2021. The little chopper has acted as an aerial scout for Perseverance, which collected an incredible diversity of Martian rock and sediment samples.

Now, the rover is setting up a depot of samples that will be stored on the Martian surface. The samples will be retrieved and returned to Earth in 2033 via the ambitious Mars Sample Return program, which will send a lander and a duo of retrieval helicopters to the red planet later this decade.

Speaking of space rocks, a rare specimen traveled to Earth in 2014. But scientists just put its puzzle pieces together this year, and the discovery was announced in a US Space Command document.

The first known interstellar meteor to hit Earth crash-landed along the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea in January 2014.

Interstellar meteors are space rocks originating from outside our solar system, such as ʻOumuamua, the first known interstellar object in our solar system that was detected in 2017.

To be sure, NASA has seen many successes this year but also faced reminders of tragedy and disaster. Investigators set off in March to search suspected shipwreck sites in the Bermuda Triangle, a swath of the northern Atlantic Ocean said to be the site of dozens of shipwrecks and plane crashes, for a TV docuseries. But the crew stumbled upon something unexpected at another site off Florida’s east coast: a 20-foot-long (6-meter-long) piece of debris from the Space Shuttle Challenger, which broke apart shortly after takeoff in 1986 and killed all seven crew members aboard.

It was the first debris to be discovered since pieces from the shuttle washed ashore in 1996.

“This discovery gives us an opportunity to pause once again, to uplift the legacies of the seven pioneers we lost, and to reflect on how this tragedy changed us,” Nelson, the NASA administrator, said in a statement. “At NASA, the core value of safety is — and must forever remain — our top priority, especially as our missions explore more of the cosmos than ever before.”

As Russia launched its invasion in February and some areas of Ukraine lost internet access, a space-based internet system that barely existed a few years ago began to provide crucial connectivity.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX designed and launched the system, called Starlink. It makes use of thousands of small satellites orbiting a few hundred miles above Earth. The satellites work in tandem to blanket the globe in internet connectivity, and all that’s needed to get online is an easy-to-use Starlink satellite dish.

Musk and SpaceX sent thousands of those dishes to Ukraine. Though a funding controversy later ensued, the use of Starlink in the Eastern European country was hailed as a game changer in strategic communication for its military, allowing Ukraine to fight effectively, even as the ongoing war disrupted cellular phone and internet networks.

Starlink, however, is one small part of SpaceX’s booming business. The company routinely launches not only satellites but also astronauts into space on NASA’s behalf. And this year, SpaceX even flew a few wealthy thrill-seekers to the International Space Station on a mission brokered by Axiom. The event marked the first space station mission that was fully paid for by paying customers and included only private citizens.

There were four crew members. Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut-turned-Axiom employee, was mission commander. And the three paying customers were Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe, Canadian investor Mark Pathy and Ohio-based real estate magnate Larry Connor.

The mission, called AX-1, launched on April 8 and was originally billed as a 10-day trip. Delays, however, extended the mission by about a week.

Allowing private missions to the space station is part of NASA’s plan for more commercial activity in low-Earth orbit as it turns its focus to exploring deep space.

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