Tag Archives: military operations

World

Myanmar coup anniversary: A world looks away from country’s descent into horror

Leave a comment



CNN
 — 

Content warning: This story contains descriptions of violence against children and images viewers may find disturbing.

Bhone Tayza had been impatient to start school. A broken arm had kept the 7-year-old home while the other kids began their lessons, but now that his cast was off, he couldn’t wait to join in.

His mother, Thida Win, was still worried. “Just stay home for today,” she recalls telling her son on his third day back at school last September – but he went anyway.

Hours later, the airstrike hit.

Thida Win was home, in the central Sagaing region of Myanmar, when army helicopters began firing “heavy weapons” including machine guns near her house, she said. She took cover until the shooting stopped, then sprinted to the nearby school, frantic. She finally found Bhone in a classroom, barely alive in a pool of blood, next to the bodies of other children.

“He asked me twice, ‘Mom, please just kill me,’” she said. “He was in so much pain.” Surrounded by armed soldiers of Myanmar’s military who had swarmed the school grounds, she pulled Bhone into her lap, praying and doing her best to comfort him until he died.

He was one of at least 13 victims, including seven children, in the September attack – and among the thousands killed nationwide since the military seized power in a coup on February 1, 2021.

The junta ousted democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was later sentenced to 33 years in jail during secretive trials; cracked down on anti-coup protests; arrested journalists and political prisoners; and executed several leading pro-democracy activists, drawing condemnation from the United Nations and rights groups.

Two years on, the Southeast Asian country is being rocked by violence and instability. The economy has collapsed, with shortages of food, fuel and other basic supplies.

Deep in the jungle, rebel groups have taken the fight to the military. Among their number are many teenagers and fresh graduates, whose lives and ambitions have been upended by a war with no end in sight.

For months after the coup, millions across Myanmar took part in protests, strikes and other forms of civil disobedience, unwilling to relinquish freedoms won only recently under democratic reforms that followed decades of brutal military rule.

They were met with a bloody crackdown that saw civilians shot in the street, abducted in nighttime raids and allegedly tortured in detention.

CNN has reached out to Myanmar’s military for comment. It has previously claimed in state media it is using the “least force” and is complying with “existing law and international norms.”

Since the coup, at least 2,900 people in Myanmar have been killed by junta troops and over 17,500 arrested, the majority of whom are still in detention, according to advocacy group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

Though mass protests have faded, allegations of atrocities by military troops – including the school strike in the village of Let Yet Kone – continue to emerge.

Daw Aye Mar Swe, a teacher at the school, said she ushered students into classrooms as the military helicopters approached, shortly before the horror descended.

The airstrike hit the roof, sending debris falling all around them. The room filled with dark smoke – and then the soldiers arrived.

They began “shooting at the school for an hour nonstop … with the intention to kill us all,” she told CNN.

She shoved her students under beds for cover, but it was of little use. One young girl was shot in the back. As she tried in vain to stem the bleeding, she urged her crying students: “Say a prayer, as only God can save us now.”

When the shooting was over, the soldiers ordered everybody outside, she said. The students huddled together on the school grounds while the soldiers raided the rest of the village and made arrests, said Daw Aye Mar Swe. She recalled seeing Bhone Tayza among the wounded.

The National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar’s shadow administration of ousted lawmakers, said 20 students and teachers were arrested after the airstrikes.

It’s not clear what happened to them. CNN could not independently verify details of the incident.

At the time, a spokesperson for the military said government forces entered the village of Let Yet Kone to clear rebel “terrorists” and accused the Kachin Independence Army, a rebel group, and the People’s Defence Force (PDF), an umbrella organization of armed guerrillas, of using children as “human shields.”

Thida Win and Daw Aye Mar Swe denied these claims. “There is no PDF here, or shooting (done by the PDF),” the teacher said. “(The military) shoot us without any purpose or research.”

For some bereaved parents, the agony of losing their children was compounded by being denied a proper goodbye.

After the strike, two residents, who declined to be identified due to fears for their security, said the military took the bodies away and buried them in another township several miles away.

Thida Win corroborated this account, saying she had cried and begged the soldiers to “let me bury my son on my own … but they took him away.” When she contacted a military commander the next day, he said Bhone had already been cremated. To this day, she has not collected his ashes, saying she would not sign any documents issued by the junta that killed her son.

“There are no words … my heart is broken into pieces,” she said.

In between these large-scale attacks, smaller battles are unfolding every day between the military and rebel groups that have sprouted up across the country, allying themselves with long-established ethnic militias.

Some of these groups effectively control parts of Myanmar out of the junta’s reach – and many are composed of young volunteers who left behind families and friends, for what they say is the future of their nation.

Shan Lay, 20, was a high school senior when the coup took place. Now, he spends his days on the front lines as a member of the MoeBye PDF Rescue Team, a small group of combat medics that treats and evacuates injured PDF fighters in eastern Myanmar.

It can be a dangerous job; Shan Lay recalled one instance when their vehicle was shot at and destroyed by military soldiers, forcing the team to jump from the car and run to safety.

Another member of the rescue team, Rosalin, a former nurse, described once hiding in what was supposed to be a secret clinic. The building had been surrounded by junta soldiers and aircraft were circling overhead, so the team waited for nightfall so they could escape in the dark. “I thought I was going to die, and I was ready to relinquish my life,” she said.

CNN is referring to Shan Lay and Rosalin by their “revolution names,” aliases many in the resistance movement adopt for their safety.

Videos of their daily operations, shared by the rescue team, reveal improvised tools and treacherous conditions. Often, they wear no helmets or protective gear, ducking gunfire in just flip flops, t-shirts, long pants and backpacks.

The clips show the group carrying injured fighters on rocky dirt paths, and providing medical care during bumpy rides on pickup trucks; sometimes they have nothing more than boiled water to sterilize wounds, Rosalin said.

When the fighting lulls, they treat injured civilians displaced from their homes and distribute food.

Their jobs are made more difficult by the remote terrain, choppy telecommunications, and unpredictable dangers. When they spoke to CNN over Zoom in January, they had hiked to a higher altitude for better phone service, and were running late after responding to a PDF fighter who had lost his foot after stepping on a land mine.

Rosalin said the junta left them no choice but to fight back after crushing their peaceful protests.

“We know we may have to give up our lives. But if we don’t fight like this, then we know we won’t get democracy, which is what we want,” she said. “As long as this dictatorship is present and we do not have democracy, this revolution will continue.”

Even those not on the front lines have found other ways to resist; there are underground hospitals and schools operating out of the junta’s view, and people have boycotted goods or services related to the junta.

“It’s a remarkable, remarkable show of courage and determination by people,” said Tom Andrews, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.

However, despite the rebels’ best efforts, it’s a desperately uneven fight. And after two years of conflict, their funds and resources are dwindling.

“Before, we had our own homes and pots, we had our own rice, we had some of our money,” said Rosalin. “But we had to leave behind our homes and go live in the jungle.” Finding food and accommodation is challenging, she added.

Shan Lay said some people had sold their houses and land to buy weapons and bullets – but it’s still not enough, and a difficult road lies ahead.

The fighting “is more violent” now, he said. “(The junta) are using larger weapons than before.”

Resources are slim in other rebel bases too, with footage from Myanmar’s eastern Karenni state showing uniformed youth training in the mountains, making homemade ammunition in jungle workshops and storing the rounds in refrigerators.

The pictures are a far cry from the military’s powerful arsenal of tanks and warplanes.

The junta demonstrated its devastating firepower just weeks after the school attack with one of its deadliest airstrikes on record.

Crowds had gathered in the A Nang Pa region of Myanmar’s northern Kachin state to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the political wing of the rebel Kachin Independence Army (KIA).

Though the event was organized by the KIO, it was aimed at the public, with artists, singers, religious figures and industry leaders invited, according to a businessman who attended. He described a day of festivities, with people bathing in a stream, playing golf and eating noodles under teak trees before watching a musical performance by a famous singer.

When the airstrike happened, “It was like the end of the world,” the businessman said. Footage of the moment of impact, shared with CNN by the KIO, show people sitting around tables facing the stage when there came a dazzling light and loud crash – followed by flashes of orange light, then darkness.

“I heard people crying, speaking and moaning,” said the businessman. “I was standing in a horrific scene.” Bodies appeared to be everywhere; he saw people trapped under debris and some who had lost limbs.

Videos of the aftermath show buildings reduced to rubble and body bags lined up on the ground.

CNN is not naming the businessman for his safety.

The strike killed up to 70 people, according to the KIO. CNN cannot independently verify the number.

When CNN requested comment from the junta regarding the attack, CNN’s email – and an official response – were published in the government-owned Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper. Military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it a necessary military operation targeting “a den where enemies and terrorists were hiding.” He also claimed the military had “never attacked civilians,” calling such reports “fake news.”

KIO leaders deny this. They say the venue was a day’s walk from the nearest KIA battalion, and though some KIO members were in uniform at the event, they were not carrying weapons or military equipment.

Andrews, the UN special rapporteur, also cast doubt on the junta’s claim of not striking civilians. “That statement is absurd,” he told CNN in January. “There is clear evidence we have of airstrikes on villages.”

As millions of civilians in Myanmar grapple with their grim post-coup reality, much of the world looks the other way.

“It has been two years of the devastation of the military junta and the military at war with its own people,” Andrews said. “We’ve seen 1.1 million people displaced, more than 28,000 homes destroyed, thousands of people have been killed.”

The economy is in freefall, with Myanmar’s GDP contracting 18% in 2021. While the World Bank forecasts a slight uptick to 3% growth in 2022, some experts say this is “wildly over-optimistic.”

About 40% of the population were living under the poverty line last year, “unwinding nearly a decade of progress on poverty reduction,” the World Bank said last July. Prices for basic goods like food and fuel have skyrocketed.

But little support has come from the outside. The European Parliament passed a motion in 2021 supporting the NUG as “the only legitimate representatives of the democratic wishes of the people of Myanmar,” and it remains one of the few places that has done so. But no military aid has followed.

Though the European Union and other governments have provided funding for humanitarian aid, relief remains limited. Groups such as the Red Cross say their operations on the ground have been hindered by fighting and financial challenges. In a December report, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said its response plan for Myanmar was “drastically underfunded,” amounting to $290 million out of the $826 million required.

The conflict “has been forgotten,” Andrews said, contrasting the international community’s muted response to Myanmar versus the rush to provide weapons, funding and other assistance to Ukraine in its war against Russia.

The Ukraine model could be applied to Myanmar, he added – not in terms of importing weapons, but in taking “coordinated actions such as economic sanctions that target the junta’s source of revenue, that target their weapons, that target the raw materials that they’re using to build weapons inside the country.”

Andrews pointed to signs that the junta is struggling too, which makes international aid all the more critical for turning the tide. There are reports the military controls less than half of the country and that its operations are suffering from financial difficulties, thanks in part to sanctions already in place, he said. But more is still needed.

“If (the conflict) remains in the shadows of international attention, then we are providing a death sentence to untold numbers of people,” Andrews warned.

Thida Win, the mother of Bhone Tayza, had a similar plea. She is still grieving the loss of a son she described as studious, intelligent and kind, for whom she “had so much hope.”

“I want to ask the world to support us so our children’s death will not be in vain,” she said. “Will you just look away from us? How many kids have to risk their lives?”

Read original article here

Science

Trilobites armed with tridents could be the earliest known example of sexual combat

Leave a comment

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



CNN
 — 

From a deer’s elaborate branching antlers to the fiddler crab’s oversize claw, the animal kingdom is full of flashy features used in combat to help secure a mate.

A team of researchers announced last week that it has found the earliest known evidence of sexual combat in the form of a trident-headed trilobite that scuttled the seafloor 400 million years ago.

Trilobites were one of the earliest arthropods, the group of invertebrates containing insects, spiders, lobsters, crabs and other organisms with exoskeletons, segmented bodies and jointed limbs. These pill bug-like sea creatures first emerged 521 million years ago and died out 252 million years ago in the mass extinction that gave way to the dinosaurs.

There were over 22,000 species of trilobite, some reaching lengths of more than 2 feet, but the type that caught the eye of paleontologist Alan Gishlick was more modest in size, around 2 to 3 inches. He recalls seeing specimens of Walliserops at fossil trade shows and marveling at the trident-shaped protrusion branching off the trilobites’ heads.

“That’s the type of structure that has to have a function. You don’t put that much biological energy into something that doesn’t do something,” said Gishlick, an associate professor of paleontology at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

Researchers have proposed various uses for these forking protrusions, including defense, hunting and attracting mates.

In a paper published January 17 in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Gishlick and coauthor Richard Fortey delved into these hypotheses, ruling out the trident as a means of defense or a hunting tool based on how the trilobite would have been able to move it. The trident wouldn’t be of much use against predators attacking from above or behind, and while it could have been used to spear prey, the trilobite would then be stuck with its meal just out of reach.

What made the most sense to Gishlick and Fortey, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, was that Walliserops used the trident to fight among each other.

Their thinking was bolstered by an unusual specimen of Walliserops with a deformed trident bearing four prongs instead of the usual three. If the trident was a vital part of day-to-day survival, they reasoned, then the trilobite probably wouldn’t have lasted for long with a malformed one.

Bolstered with the evidence for Walliserops’ trident being used to win mates, the researchers turned to the closest analogue they could find in the modern world. “The structure reminds me a heck of a lot of beetle horns,” Gishlick said.

The researchers used a technique called landmark-based geometric morphometrics, which Gishlick described as a means of comparing complex shapes in a statistically robust way, to analyze the surface-level similarity of trilobite tridents and horns of rhinoceros beetles. They found that the trilobite tridents’ shape had a lot in common with the horns of beetles that flip their dueling partners in a “shoveling” motion, as opposed to other species whose horns are better for fencing or grasping.

Gishlick said he believes that, like in beetles, trilobites’ tridents were “sexual weapons” used by males sparring to win mates. “This is the earliest known structure that we can point to and say, ‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure that this is an animal weapon used in reproductive competition,’ ” he said.

Furthermore, Gishlick explained: “Generally, organisms that are involved in interspecific combat over mates are highly dimorphic” — varying in appearance from one sex to the other — “because only one does the competition, and generally in the animal world that’s the male.”

Growing features such as big combat-ready horns requires a lot of energy, and female animals already have to expend lots of it to produce eggs.

If the trilobites’ tridents are the first evidence of sexual weapons, then they could also be the earliest known evidence of sexual dimorphism. There’s one problem with this hypothesis, however: Scientists have no definitive means of telling which Walliserops are male and which are female, and no trident-less Walliserops have been discovered.

That might be due to bias by fossil collectors, who Gishlick said often prioritize bigger, flashier specimens, or because the females might be labeled as entirely different species. “This to me makes it very clear that you better be looking for females,” Gishlick said.

Erin McCullough, an assistant professor of biology at Clark University in Massachusetts, said she agrees with the researchers’ conclusion that the trilobite tridents were likely used for interspecies combat. However, she’s not sold on their argument that this was a trait only possessed by males.

“In general, if there’s going to be an extravagant trait that’s used for fighting for mates, usually, it’s the males that have the extravagant trait, but biology is fun because there’s always exceptions — female reindeer have antlers,” said McCullough, who was not involved with the study (but whose beetle analyses Gishlick and Fortey drew upon for their work).

“If they are arguing that these are male weapons that are used to gain access to females, it would have been a stronger story to me if they had evidence that the females don’t have weapons.”

Read original article here

World

Russian airstrikes reported across Ukraine, including ‘attack on the capital’

Leave a comment


Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
 — 

Air raid sirens rang out across Ukraine on Saturday as Russia carried out another series of missile attacks across the country.

Missiles and explosions were heard everywhere from Lviv in the west; Kharkiv in the northeast; Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro in the southeast; Myokaliv in the south; and Kharkiv in the northeast, officials said.

Authorities in Kyiv said there was an “attack on the capital.” Blasts were heard as early as 6 a.m. local time, according to the head of Kyiv region military administration, Oleksiy Kuleba. Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said strikes hit the city’s east bank, where several power facilities were located. The exact locations of the blasts could not be immediately verified by CNN. A thick fog blanketed much of the city.

However, Oleksandr Pavliuk, a Kyiv-based commander in the Ukrainian army, said the explosions in Kyiv were not caused by Russian attacks.

“The explosions are not connected with the threat from the air or air defense, as well as with any military actions,” Pavliuk wrote on the encrypted social media app Telegram. “If there was a threat – you would have heard the alarm. The cause of the explosions will be reported separately.”

As of Saturday afternoon, no casualties had been reported, but that could change, as a nine-story apartment building was struck in Dnipro. At least 10 people, including two children were wounded, according to Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration. Three are in serious condition.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, 15 people had been rescued from the rubble.

Russia’s latest nationwide salvo appeared to target critical infrastructure across Ukraine, as the Kremlin continues its efforts to limit the country’s ability to heat and power itself in the middle of winter.

On the battlefield, all eyes are fixed on Soledar, a town of little strategic value that Russia is attempting to retake in the hopes that it will provide Russian President Vladimir Putin a symbolic victory. Various units of the Ukrainian military said that Soledar remains the scene of “fierce fighting.” Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that its forces took control of the town, although Kyiv has denied it.

After a broad assessment regarding the situation on the ground in Ukraine, several Western governments have decided to answer Zelensky’s longstanding call to supply modern battle tanks to Kyiv.

France, Poland and the United Kingdom have pledged to soon send tanks for the Ukrainian military to use in its efforts to protect itself from Russia. Finland is considering following suit. Britain said it plans to send a dozen Challenger 2 tanks and additional artillery systems. Poland plans to send a company of German-built Leopard tanks while France will deliver its domestically built AMX 10-RCs.

Read original article here

World

US and Japan to strengthen military relationship with upgraded Marine unit in attempt to deter China

Leave a comment



CNN
 — 

The US and Japan are set to announce a significant strengthening of their military relationship and upgrading of the US military’s force posture in the country this week, including the stationing of a newly redesignated Marine unit with advanced intelligence, surveillance capabilities and the ability to fire anti-ship missiles, according to two US officials briefed on the matter.

The announcement sends a strong signal to China and will come as part of a series of initiatives designed to underscore a rapid acceleration of security and intelligence ties between the countries.

The news is expected to be announced on Wednesday as US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken meet with their Japanese counterparts in Washington. The officials are coming together as part of the annual US-Japan Security Consultative Committee meeting, days before President Joe Biden plans to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House.

The newly revamped Marine unit will be based on Okinawa and is intended to bolster deterrence against Chinese aggression in a volatile region and provide a stand-in force that is able to defend Japan and quickly respond to contingencies, the officials said. Okinawa is viewed as key to the US military’s operations in the Pacific – in part because of its close proximity to Taiwan. It houses more than 25,000 US military personnel and more than two dozen military installations. Roughly 70% of the US military bases in Japan are on Okinawa; one island within the Okinawa Prefecture, Yonaguni, sits less than 70 miles from Taiwan, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

It is one of the most significant adjustments to US military force posture in the region in years, one official said, underscoring the Pentagon’s desire to shift from the wars of the past in the Middle East to the region of the future in the Indo-Pacific. The change comes as simulated war games from a prominent Washington think tank found that Japan, and Okinawa in particular, would play a critical role in a military conflict with China, providing the United States with forward deployment and basing options.

“I think it is fair to say that, in my view, 2023 is likely to stand as the most transformative year in US force posture in the region in a generation,” said Ely Ratner, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, at the American Enterprise Institute last month.

The news follows the stand-up of the first Marine Littoral Regiment in Hawaii last year, in which the 3rd Marine Regiment in Hawaii became the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment – a key part of the Marine Corps’ modernization effort outlined in the 2030 Force Design report from Gen. David Berger.

As the service has described them, the Marine Littoral Regiments are a “mobile, low-signature” unit able to conduct strikes, coordinate air and missile defense and support surface warfare.

The Washington Post first reported the soon-to-be-announced changes.

In addition to the restructuring of Marines in the country, the US and Japan will announce on Wednesday that they are expanding their defense treaty to include attacks to or from space, US officials said, amid growing concern about the rapid advancement of China’s space program and hypersonic weapons development.

In November, China launched three astronauts to its nearly completed space station as Beijing looked to establish a long-term presence in space. China has also explored the far side of the moon and Mars.

The two allies will announce that Article V of the US-Japan Security Treaty, first signed in 1951, applies to attacks from or within space, officials said. In 2019, the US and Japan made it clear that the defense treaty applies to cyberspace and that a cyber attack could constitute an armed attack under certain circumstances.

The US has watched closely as China has rapidly developed its hypersonic weapon systems, including one missile in 2021 that circled the globe before launching a hypersonic glider that struck its target. It was a wake-up call for the United States, which has fallen behind China and Russia in advanced hypersonic technology.

The two countries will also build on their joint use of facilities in Japan and carry out more exercises on Japan’s southwest islands, a move sure to draw the ire of Beijing, given its proximity to Taiwan and even mainland China. US officials added that the US will temporarily deploy MQ-9 Reaper drones to Japan for maritime surveillance of the East China Sea, as well as launch a bilateral group to analyze and share the information.

The announcement comes less than a month after Japan unveiled a new national security plan that signals the country’s biggest military buildup since World War II, doubling defense spending and veering from its pacifist constitution in the face of growing threats from regional rivals, including China.

China has been growing its naval and air forces in areas near Japan while claiming the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited Japanese-controlled chain in the East China Sea, as its sovereign territory.

In late December, Japan said Chinese government vessels had been spotted in the contiguous zone around the Senkakus, known as the Diaoyus in China, 334 days in 2022, the most since 2012 when Tokyo acquired some of the islands from a private Japanese landowner, public broadcaster NHK reported. From December 22 to 25, Chinese government vessels spent almost 73 consecutive hours in Japanese territorial waters off the islands, the longest such incursion since 2012, the NHK report said.

China has also been upping its military pressure on Taiwan, the self-governing island, whose security Japanese leaders have said is vital to the security of Japan itself. In August, that pressure included Beijing firing five missiles that landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone near Taiwan in response to the visit of then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei.

Before the announcement of the increased partnership between the US and Japan was even made public, Chinese government officials were reacting to reports in Japanese media.

“US-Japan military cooperation should not harm the interests of any third party or undermine peace and stability in the region,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular press briefing Tuesday in Beijing.

A State Department official explained that the Ukraine war and strengthening of the China-Russia relationship have spurred the US and Japan to come to a series of new agreements that have been under consideration for some time.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sort of moved things on warp drive a little bit,” the official said. “The relationship between Putin and Xi Jinping that we saw in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, that kind of showed, wait a minute, the Russians and the Chinese are working in new ways. We’re facing new challenges.”

And it’s not just the US – Japan and Britain also announced on Wednesday that the two countries would be signing a “historic defense agreement” that would allow them to deploy forces in each other’s countries.

The Reciprocal Access Agreement will allow both forces to plan military exercises and deployments on a larger and more complex scale, making it the “most significant defense agreement between the two countries in more than a century,” according to a statement on Wednesday from Downing Street.

The agreement still needs to be ratified by the respective parliaments before taking effect. It will be laid before Japan’s Diet and the UK Parliament in the coming weeks, according to the statement.

Read original article here

World

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

Leave a comment


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.”

Read original article here

World

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

Leave a comment



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
” data-fave-thumbnails=”{“big”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220417075511-essing-japan-defense-pkg.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill”},”small”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220417075511-essing-japan-defense-pkg.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill”}}” data-vr-video=”” data-show-name=”” data-show-url=”” data-check-event-based-preview=”” data-network-id=”” data-details=””>

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
” data-fave-thumbnails=”{“big”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220819143103-china-amb-nicholas-burns-vpx.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill”},”small”:{“uri”:”https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220819143103-china-amb-nicholas-burns-vpx.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill”}}” data-vr-video=”” data-show-name=”” data-show-url=”” data-check-event-based-preview=”” data-network-id=”” data-details=””>

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

Read original article here

World

Taiwan’s military has a problem: As China fears grow, recruitment pool shrinks

Leave a comment


Taipei, Taiwan
CNN
 — 

Taiwan has noticed a hole in its defense plans that is steadily getting bigger. And it’s not one easily plugged by boosting the budget or buying more weapons.

The island democracy of 23.5 million is facing an increasing challenge in recruiting enough young men to meet its military targets and its Interior Ministry has suggested the problem is – at least in part – due to its stubbornly low birth rate.

Taiwan’s population fell for the first time in 2020, according to the ministry, which warned earlier this year that the 2022 military intake would be the lowest in a decade and that a continued drop in the youth population would pose a “huge challenge” for the future.

That’s bad news at a time when Taiwan is trying to bolster its forces to deter any potential invasion by China, whose ruling Communist Party has been making increasingly belligerent noises about its determination to “reunify” with the self-governed island – which it has never controlled – by force if necessary.

And the outlook has darkened further with the release of a new report by Taiwan’s National Development Council projecting that by 2035 the island can expect roughly 20,000 fewer births per year than the 153,820 it recorded in 2021. By 2035, Taiwan will also overtake South Korea as the jurisdiction with the world’s lowest birth rate, the report added.

Such projections are feeding into a debate over whether the government should increase the period of mandatory military service that eligible young men must serve. Currently, the island has a professional military force made up of 162,000 (as of June this year) – 7,000 fewer than the target, according to a report by the Legislative Yuan. In addition to that number, all eligible men must serve four months of training as reservists.

Changing the mandatory service requirement would be a major U-turn for Taiwan, which had previously been trying to cut down on conscription and shortened the mandatory service from 12 months as recently as 2018. But on Wednesday, Taiwan’s Minister of National Defence Chiu Kuo-cheng said such plans would be made public before the end of the year.

That news has met with opposition among some young students in Taiwan, who have voiced their frustrations on PTT, Taiwan’s version of Reddit, even if there is support for the move among the wider public.

A poll by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation in March this year found that most Taiwanese agreed with a proposal to lengthen the service period. It found that 75.9% of respondents thought it reasonable to extend it to a year; only 17.8% were opposed.

Many experts argue there is simply no other option.

Su Tzu-yun, a director of Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that before 2016, the pool of men eligible to join the military – either as career soldiers or as reservists – was about 110,000. Since then, he said, the number had declined every year and the pool would likely be as low as 74,000 by 2025.

And within the next decade, Su said, the number of young adults available for recruitment by the Taiwanese military could drop by as much as a third.

“This is a national security issue for us,” he said. “The population pool is decreasing, so we are actively considering whether to resume conscription to meet our military needs.

“We are now facing an increasing threat (from China), and we need to have more firepower and manpower.”

Taiwan’s low birth rate – 0.98 – is far below the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population, but it is no outlier in East Asia.

In November, South Korea broke its own world record when its birth rate dropped to 0.79, while Japan’s fell to 1.3 and mainland China hit 1.15.

Even so, experts say the trend poses a unique problem for Taiwan’s military, given the relative size of the island and the threats it faces.

China has been making increasingly aggressive noises toward the island since August, when then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi controversially visited Taipei. Not long after she landed in Taiwan, Beijing also launched a series of unprecedented military exercises around the island.

Since then, the temperature has remained high – particularly as Chinese leader Xi Jinping told a key Communist Party meeting in October that “reunification” was inevitable and that he reserves the option of taking “all measures necessary.”

Chang Yan-ting, a former deputy commander of Taiwan’s air force, said that while low birth rates were common across East Asia, “the situation in Taiwan is very different” as the island was facing “more and more pressure (from China) and the situation will become more acute.”

“The United States has military bases in Japan and South Korea, while Singapore does not face an acute military threat from its neighbors. Taiwan faces the greatest threat and declining birth rate will make the situation even more serious,” he added.

Roy Lee, a deputy executive director at Taiwan’s Chung-hua Institution for Economic Research, agreed that the security threats facing Taiwan were greater than those in the rest of the region.

“The situation is more challenging for Taiwan, because our population base is smaller than other countries facing similar problems,” he added.

Taiwan’s population is 23.5 million, compared to South Korea’s 52 million, Japan’s 126 million and China’s 1.4 billion.

Besides the shrinking recruitment pool, the decline in the youth population could also threaten the long-term performance of Taiwan’s economy – which is itself a pillar of the island’s defense.

Taiwan is the world’s 21st largest economy, according to the London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research, and had a GDP of $668.51 billion last year.

Much of its economic heft comes from its leading role in the supply of semiconductor chips, which play an indispensable role in everything from smartphones to computers.

Taiwan’s homegrown semiconductor giant TSMC is perceived as being so valuable to the global economy – as well as to China – that it is sometimes referred to as forming part of a “silicon shield” against a potential military invasion by Beijing, as its presence would give a strong incentive to the West to intervene.

Lee noted that population levels are closely intertwined with gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic activity. A population decline of 200,000 people could result in a 0.4% decline in GDP, all else being equal, he said.

“It is very difficult to increase GDP by 0.4%, and would require a lot of effort. So the fact that a declining population can take away that much growth is big,” he said.

Taiwan’s government has brought in a series of measures aimed at encouraging people to have babies, but with limited success.

It pays parents a monthly stipend of 5,000 Taiwan dollars (US$161) for their first baby, and a higher amount for each additional one.

Since last year, pregnant women have been eligible for seven days of leave for obstetrics checks prior to giving birth.

Outside the military, in the wider economy, the island has been encouraging migrant workers to fill job vacancies.

Statistics from the National Development Council showed that about 670,000 migrant workers were in Taiwan at the end of last year – comprising about 3% of the population.

Most of the migrant workers are employed in the manufacturing sector, the council said, the vast majority of them from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

Lee said in the long term the Taiwanese government would likely have to reform its immigration policies to bring in more migrant workers.

Still, there are those who say Taiwan’s low birth rate is no reason to panic, just yet.

Alice Cheng, an associate professor in sociology at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, cautioned against reading too much into population trends as they were affected by so many factors.

She pointed out that just a few decades ago, many demographers were warning of food shortages caused by a population explosion.

And even if the low birth rate endured, that might be no bad thing if it were a reflection of an improvement in women’s rights, she said.

“The educational expansion that took place in the 70s and 80s in East Asia dramatically changed women’s status. It really pushed women out of their homes because they had knowledge, education and career prospects,” she said.

“The next thing you see globally is that once women’s education level improved, fertility rates started declining.”

“All these East Asian countries are really scratching their head and trying to think about policies and interventions to boost fertility rates,” she added.

“But if that’s something that really, (women) don’t want, can you push them to do that?”

Read original article here

World

Russians grow more critical as Putin’s military operation drags on and sanctions take a toll

Leave a comment


Moscow
CNN
 — 

November and December are known as the most depressing months in Moscow. The days are short and dark, and the weather is too cold and wet to be outdoors much but still too warm and rainy to enjoy the real Russian winter.

This year, the feeling of melancholy is increased by the sight of shuttered shops on many of the capital’s streets, as businesses face the economic fall-out from massive Western sanctions in response to the war in Ukraine, which Russian officials still call the “special military operation.”

“The mood in Moscow and the country is now extremely gloomy, quiet, intimidated, and hopeless,” said 34-year-old Lisa, who declined to give her last name and said she was a film producer. “The planning horizon is as low as ever. People have no idea what might happen tomorrow or in a year.”

While the shelves in most stores remain well stocked, Western products are becoming increasingly scarce and very expensive, further driving prices that are already hammering many Russian households.

“Familiar goods disappear, starting from toilet paper and Coca-Cola, ending with clothes,” said Lisa.

“Of course, you can get used to all this, this is not the worst thing at all,” she said. But she also took a jab at Western governments and companies that have left the Russian market in response to the invasion of Ukraine. “I do not really know how this helps in resolving the conflict, because it affects ordinary people, not those who make decisions,” Lisa said.

Some economists believe Russia will face growing economic hardship and a population that will grow increasingly critical of the “special military operation” amid mounting defeats such as seen in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson, where a determined Ukrainian offensive forced a Russian withdrawal.

Sergey Javoronkov, a senior researcher at the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, says the mood is already more critical than it was, thanks to “both the economic price and the dissatisfaction with the task not being solved,” contrary to the expectations created by the Kremlin.

“We were supposed to win. Officials promised to capture Kyiv in three days but, as we see, it turned out to be foolish,” he told CNN.

“In his February 24 speech, (Russian President) Vladimir Putin stated that the military operations would be conducted only by professional troops. But in September a partial mobilization was declared – also an unpopular measure: those who do not want to fight are being recruited.

“It is a known effect: a short victorious war may provoke enthusiasm, but if the war lasts endlessly and does not lead to the desired outcome, then comes disappointment.”

A 30-year-old PR manager who gave her name only as Irina disagrees, saying she believes the situation is stabilizing after an initial exodus of Russians fleeing not only Western sanctions but also possible conscription following Putin’s September 21 announcement of a nationwide partial mobilization.

The Kremlin says more than 300,000 Russians were drafted into the military between late September and early November while hundreds of thousands of mostly young Russian men fled the country, often to places like Kazakhstan or Georgia.

“The first wave of panic has already passed, everyone has calmed down a little. Many have left, but many remain. I am pleased with the people who stay and support Russia,” Irina told CNN.

At the same time, she emphasized that she is opposed to the war in Ukraine, as it is beginning to sink in for her, as for many Russians, that the fighting may go on for a very long time. This is especially the case since Ukraine’s forces managed to take back the major city of Kherson from the Russian military – an area Russia had annexed in September and which Putin had said would remain part of Russia “forever.”

“I have a negative attitude. I believe that any aggression or war are evil. And to say that if we wouldn’t attack them, they would attack us is of course absurd,” Irina said, referring to Putin’s repeated claim that Russia is acting in self-defense in its invasion of Ukraine.

Well-known Russian blogger Dmitry Puchkov, who goes by the name “Goblin” and supports his country’s military operation in Ukraine, acknowledges that the recent battlefield defeats have shaken many people’s trust.

“From the point of view of civil society, it is not good for our troops to leave the territories that have become part of the Russian Federation. But we think it’s a tactical move and it won’t last long,” he wrote, answering written questions from CNN online. Puchkov says he believes Russia will fight back fiercely and force Ukraine into a ceasefire.

“The morale of the Russian military is very high,” Puchkov wrote, as he laid out how he thinks victory will be achieved. “The necessary strategic decisions are well known: first and foremost is the destruction of the Ukrainian infrastructure. The electricity, hot water and heat systems must be destroyed,” he said.

The Kremlin appears to be following that playbook. Russian forces have repeatedly targeted power infrastructure in Ukraine in recent weeks, leaving more than 7 million people without power after one wave of strikes a week ago, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainians remain resolute in the face of Russian missile attacks, however, and hopes for any kind of negotiated end to the war remain distant, even as America’s top general pushes for diplomacy. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Sunday called for greater support for Ukraine, telling NATO allies: “We must be prepared to support Ukraine for the long haul.”

Asked what the mood is like in the Russian business community given the prospects of a prolonged conflict, Javoronkov used a single word: “Pessimistic!”

“The economic experts realize that nothing is expected for the economy if the military actions continue,” Javoronkov said. Russia’s economy is now officially in a recession, which he believes will only get worse.

The country’s industrial firms are facing major problems replacing Western technology, leading the automobile company AvtoVAZ – manufacturer of the Lada vehicle brand – to first halt production earlier this year and then move to producing some vehicles without basic electronic features like air bags and anti-lock braking systems.

The problems span everything from the airline industry to consumer electronics, leading former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to call for a nationalization of foreign assets.

Yevgeny Popov, a well-known journalist and member of the Russian parliament, ripped into Medvedev’s idea in a rare moment of open criticism.

“What will we drive, we have nothing to drive. Are we going to drive railcars?” Popov yelled at a former Russian general who supported the idea of nationalization on the state TV talk show “60 Minutes.”

“Let’s nationalize everything, but what will we drive, how will we make phone calls, what will we do? Yes, all our technology is Western,” Popov said.

The Kremlin has been promoting the idea of replacing Western goods with products and technologies from allied countries such as China or Iran, but also of increasing Russia’s own production.

On Monday, Putin opened – via videolink – a turkey breeding farm in the Tyumen region. The move was hailed as a sign of growing Russian economic independence by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who labeled it “a significant event in the president’s schedule related to the development of domestic breeding and selection of the meat and poultry sector of the agriculture industry. A crucial sector that is directly connected with Russia’s food security.”

But Russia’s increasing isolation from the world is not necessarily welcomed by all its citizens. Film producer Lisa said she would rather have her country end the war and renew ties with foreign countries than go it alone.

“I wait and hope that it will all end because there is nothing more valuable than human lives,” she said.

Read original article here

World

Israel blames Iran for drone attack on oil tanker in Gulf of Oman

Leave a comment



CNN
 — 

Israel on Wednesday accused Iran of launching a drone attack on an oil tanker off the coast of Oman, with one official describing it as “an Iranian provocation in the Gulf” linked to the World Cup in Qatar.

A self-destructing drone attacked the Pacific Zircon, a Liberian-flagged, Israeli-affiliated tanker carrying gas oil, at about 10 p.m. Monday but it did not cause major damage, a US military official told CNN. The drone did not disable the ship or interrupt its journey, the US official said.

“We are in communication with the vessel and there is no reports of injuries or pollution. All crew are safe and accounted for,” Eastern Pacific Shipping, the vessel’s operating company, said Wednesday. “There is some minor damage to the vessel’s hull but no spillage of cargo or water ingress.”

Marine Traffic showed the last known position for the tanker off the coast of Oman near Liwa on Monday.

The Israeli official said the weapon was an Iranian “HESA Shahed 136 self-destructing drone, the same ones being used in Ukraine.” Iran has sent its self-destructing drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine, underscoring the extent to which Iran has developed its attack drone technology.

“We see this as an Iranian provocation in the Gulf – it’s not an attack against Israel – it’s the same thing they usually do in the Gulf, trying to disrupt stability and mainly influence World Cup events,” said the Israeli official, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation.

CNN has reached out to the Iranian government for comment.

The weapon and the target fit the pattern of attacks linked to Iran in the past. On July 30, 2021, an armed drone attacked a cargo ship named Mercer Street off the coast of Oman, killing two. That ship was associated with an Israeli billionaire.

Soccer teams and supporters from 32 nations, including Iran, are gathering in Qatar ahead of the World Cup, which kicks off on Sunday.

Read original article here

World

Russian troops slam generals over ‘incomprehensible battle’ that reportedly killed 300 in Donetsk

Leave a comment



CNN
 — 

Russian troops have denounced an “incomprehensible battle” in Donetsk after apparently sustaining heavy losses during a week of intense fighting in the key eastern region of Ukraine.

Moscow has been trying to break through Kyiv’s defenses around the town of Pavlivka for at least the past seven days, but it seems to have made little progress with as many as 300 men killed in action, according to an open letter published on a prominent Russian military blog on Monday.

The men of the 155th Brigade of the Russian Pacific Fleet Marines launched stinging criticism against a senior Russian official in a rare display of defiance, accusing authorities of “hiding” the number of casualties “for fear of being held accountable.”

The letter, purportedly sent from the front lines to a regional Russian governor, came amid Moscow’s shaky offensive in a region President Vladimir Putin claimed to have illegally annexed just over a month ago.

“Once again we were thrown into an incomprehensible battle by General Muradov and his brother-in-law, his countryman Akhmedov, so that Muradov could earn bonuses to make him look good in the eyes of Gerasimov (Russia’s Chief of the General Staff),” the men said in the memo, sent to the governor of Primorsky Krai.

“As a result of the ‘carefully’ planned offensive by the ‘great commanders’ we lost about 300 men, dead and wounded, with some MIA over the past four days.

“We lost 50% of our equipment. That’s our brigade alone. The district command together with Akhmedov are hiding these facts and skewing the official casualty statistics for fear of being held accountable.”

They implored Governor Oleg Kozhemyako: “For how long will such mediocrities as Muradov and Akhmedov be allowed to continue to plan the military actions just to keep up appearances and gain awards at the cost of so many people’s lives?”

Russian military commentators have also criticized the army’s approach in Donetsk.

“The situation in Pavlivka has been discussed at the highest level for several days, and the blood keeps spilling,” Aleksandr Sladkov, a Russian military journalist working for All-Russian State Television and Radio, said on Telegram.

“Troops say that there is a dilemma now: exhausted units cannot be withdrawn without fresh ones being brought in. There are no fresh units and no possibility of withdrawal and replacement due the constant firing,” Russian military journalist Alexey Sukonkin, also posted on Telegram.

“Why did we retreat from Pavlivka and have to recapture it now?” Aleksander Khodakovsky, a Russian-backed commander from the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, said in criticism of Moscow’s tactical approach to the region.

Khodakovsky said Russian troops had been using basements as defensive positions, which meant they had not seen a flanking movement by the Ukrainians.

“That’s why quite a few Marines, including company commanders, were taken prisoner then. Not because they were weak in spirit, but because they were held hostage by their organization of defenses,” Khodakovsky said, adding that Ukrainian reconnaissance troops had used high-rise buildings in nearby Vuhledar and cameras fixed to the top of mine shafts to guide artillery strikes.

“The defenders of Pavlivka will again be taken hostage. Supplies and rotations will be difficult, it will be impossible to move through Pavlivka,” he said.

CNN cannot verify how many soldiers signed the letter nor their ranks, but Governor Kozhemyako confirmed he had received a letter from the unit.

“We contacted our Marine commanders on the front lines. These are guys who have been in combat since the beginning of the operation,” the governor said on Telegram.

Kozhemyako added the combat commander had emphasized that the deaths of the (Primorsky) troops were considerably exaggerated.

“I also know at first hand that our fighters showed at Pavlivka, as well as during the whole special military operation, true heroism and unprecedented courage. We inflicted serious damage on the enemy.”

Kozhemyako said the complaint made by the soldiers had been sent to the military prosecutor’s office.

Russia’s defense ministry issued a rare public response to criticism of the military operation in Donetsk, denying that its forces suffered “high, pointless losses in people and equipment.”

Russia’s losses in the area of Vuhledar and Pavlivka in the Donetsk region “do not exceed 1% of the combat strength and 7% of the wounded, a significant part of whom have already returned to duty,” the ministry claimed Monday, Russian state media agency TASS reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the fierce battle for Donetsk “remains the epicenter of the biggest madness of the occupiers” and refuted Kozhemyako’s claims that Moscow’s losses were “not that big.”

“They are dying in hundreds every day,” Zelensky added. “The ground in front of the Ukrainian positions is literally littered with the bodies of the occupiers.”

Noting that the governor was some 9,000 kilometers (around 5,500 miles) from the frontlines, Zelensky said: “The governor probably can see better from there how many military men and in what way are being sent for slaughter from his region. Or he was simply ordered to lie.”

Social media and drone videos in the past few days show numerous Russian tanks and other armored vehicles being struck around Pavlivka, which is about 50 kilometers southwest of Donetsk and has been on the front lines for several months.

The Ukrainian military released footage showing two Russian T-72B tanks and three BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles struck by Ukrainian artillery and anti-tank systems, with senior officials referencing repelled attacks of intense shelling in the area.

“The enemy is losing the opportunity to implement their plans,” Oleksii Hromov, deputy head of Ukraine’s Operations Directorate of the General Staff, said Thursday.

Read original article here