Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts

Monday, September 11, 2023

On the anniversary of 9/11, in this a year with an election campaign going on, it's worth remembering. . .

that the plot was hatched in an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban.

That resulted in George Bush launching a campaign against the Taliban regime.

Bush's focus on Iraq, however, which wasn't involved in 9/11, and Rumsfeld's belief that he could wage war with a minimum of forces, lead to us initially grossly under committing to Afghanistan.

Barack Obama committed to a surge there, which lead to the war being ultimately a low grade one, albeit one that Afghan forces did poorly in, overall.

Donald Trump arranged a deal with the Taliban to withdraw, which would ultimately mean its return to power.  Joe Biden merely carried it out.

Monday, July 17, 2023

Tuesday, July 17, 1973. The beginning of Afghanistan's descent.

Afghan King Mohammed Zahir Shah was deposed by his cousin Gen. Mohammed Daoud Khan and a republic declared.

King Mohammed Zahir Shah.

The king was in Italy undergoing eye surgery at the time.

Zahir Shah had been king for 40 years and had modernized the country.  He was the last king of Afghanistan and the country's descent began with his removal.  He died at age 92 in 2007, having returned to Afghanistan.

Daoud Khan was assassinated in 1978 in the coup that brought the Communist to power.

Friday, April 7, 2023

U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan

The White House released its long awaited report on the defeat in Afghanistan. 

 U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan 

This document outlines the key decisions and challenges surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

When he came into office, President Biden believed the right thing for the country was to end the longest war in American history and bring American troops home. As he laid out to the American people, after twenty years, the United States had accomplished its mission in Afghanistan: to remove from the battlefield the terrorists who attacked the United States on 9/11, including Osama bin Laden, and degrade the terrorist threat to the United States. Over two decades, the United States had also—along with our NATO allies and partners—spent hundreds of billions of dollars training and equipping the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) and supporting successive Afghan governments. At the outset, America’s goal was never to nation-build. But, over time, this is what America drifted into doing. Two decades after the war had started, America had become bogged down in a war in Afghanistan with unclear objectives and no end in sight and was underinvesting in today’s and tomorrow’s national security challenges. 

President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor. When President Trump took office in 2017, there were more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. Eighteen months later, after introducing more than 3,000 additional troops just to maintain the stalemate, President Trump ordered direct talks with the Taliban without consulting with our allies and partners or allowing the Afghan government at the negotiating table. In September 2019, President Trump embolded the Taliban by publicly considering inviting them to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11. In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban reached a deal, known as the Doha Agreement, under which the United States agreed to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. In return, the Taliban agreed to participate in a peace process and refrain from attacking U.S. troops and threatening Afghanistan’s major cities—but only as long as the United States remained committed to withdraw by the agreement’s deadline. As part of the deal, President Trump also pressured the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison, including senior war commanders, without securing the release of the only American hostage known to be held by the Taliban. 

Over his last 11 months in office, President Trump ordered a series of drawdowns of U.S. troops. By June 2020, President Trump reduced U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 8,600. In September 2020, he directed a further draw down to 4,500. A month later, President Trump tweeted, to the surprise of military advisors, that the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be “home by Christmas!” On September 28, 2021, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley testified that, on November 11, he had received an unclassified signed order directing the U.S. military to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan no later than January 15, 2021. One week later, that order was rescinded and replaced with one to draw down to 2,500 troops by the same date. During the transition from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration, the 2 outgoing Administration provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies. Indeed, there were no such plans in place when President Biden came into office, even with the agreed upon full withdrawal just over three months away. 

As a result, when President Biden took office on January 20, 2021, the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country. At the same time, the United States had only 2,500 troops on the ground—the lowest number of troops in Afghanistan since 2001—and President Biden was facing President Trump’s near-term deadline to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021, or the Taliban would resume its attacks on U.S. and allied troops. Secretary of Defense Austin testified on September 28, 2021, “the intelligence was clear that if we did not leave in accordance with that agreement, the Taliban would recommence attacks on our forces.” 

This experience underscores the critical importance of detailed and effective transition coordination, especially when it comes to complex military operations for which decisions and execution pass from one administration to the next, and consequential deals struck late in the outgoing administration whose implementation will fall largely to the incoming administration. 

Decision to Leave 

President Biden had committed to ending the war in Afghanistan, but when he came into office he was confronted with difficult realities left to him by the Trump Administration. President Biden asked his military leaders about the options he faced, including the ramifications of further delaying the deadline of May 1. He pressed his intelligence professionals on whether it was feasible to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan and both defend them against a renewed Taliban onslaught and maintain a degree of stability in the country. The assessment from those intelligence professionals was that the United States would need to send more American troops into harm’s way to ensure our troops could defend themselves and to stop the stalemate from getting worse. As Secretary Austin testified on September 28, 2021, “If you stayed [in Afghanistan] at a force posture of 2,500, certainly you’d be in a fight with the Taliban, and you’d have to reinforce yourself.” Chairman Milley testified on September 29, 2021, “There’s a reasonable prospect we would have to increase forces past 2,500, given the Taliban very likely was going to start attacking us.” There were no signs that more time, more funds, or more Americans at risk in Afghanistan would have yielded a fundamentally different trajectory. Indeed, the speed with which the Taliban took over the country showed why maintaining 2,500 troops would not have sustained a stable and peaceful Afghanistan. 

In early 2021, as these discussions were taking place, the intelligence and military consensus was that the ANDSF would be able to effectively fight to defend their country and their capital, Kabul. The ANDSF had significant advantages. Compared to the Taliban, they had vastly superior numbers and equipment: 300,000 troops compared to 80,000 Taliban fighters, an air force, and two decades of training and support. The Intelligence Community’s assessment in early 2021 was that Taliban advances would accelerate across large portions of Afghanistan after a complete U.S. military withdrawal and potentially lead to the Taliban’s capturing Kabul within a year or two. As late as May 2021, the assessment was still that Kabul would probably not come under serious pressure until late 2021 after U.S. troops departed. 

Faced with these circumstances, President Biden undertook a deliberate, intensive, rigorous, and inclusive decision-making process. His thinking was informed by extensive consultations with his national security team, including military leaders, as well as outside experts, Members of Congress, allies and partners. The President asked for and received candid advice from a wide array of experts inside of and outside of government. As Secretary Austin testified on September 28, 2021, “I am very much satisfied that we had a thorough policy review, and I believe that all of the parties had an opportunity to provide input. And that input was received.” Chairman Milley also testified on September 28, 2021, that the commanders on the ground “were listened to” and had an opportunity to share their advice. 

The Administration engaged in intensive consultation at senior levels with allies, and the President factored in their feedback and their differences of opinion. Secretary of State Blinken testified on September 13, 2021, “I heard a lot of gratitude from allies and partners about the work that our folks did in making sure that we could deliver on that commitment [to consult] to them.” NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg also rejected the characterization the President did not consult allies in a September 10, 2021, interview: “You see different voices in Europe, and some are talking about the lack of consultation, but I was present in those meetings. Of course, the United States consulted with European allies, but at the end of the day, every nation has to make their own decision on deploying forces.”

Ultimately, President Biden refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended for the United States long ago. 

Planning for the Withdrawal 

While recognizing the strategic necessity of withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, President Biden and his team were well aware of the challenges posed by withdrawing from a warzone after twenty years—especially under the circumstances that they inherited. The departing Trump Administration had left the Biden Administration with a date for withdrawal, but no plan for executing it. And after four years of neglect—and in some cases deliberate degradation—crucial systems, offices, and agency functions that would be necessary for a safe and orderly departure were in disrepair.

When President Biden took office, the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program for Afghans who had worked with our soldiers and diplomats required a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by Congress and involved multiple government agencies. The Trump Administration’s disregard and even hostility toward our commitment to Afghan allies led to a massive backlog of over 18,000 SIV applicants. Despite drawing down troops and committing to a full withdrawal, the departing Trump Administration had all but stopped SIV interviews. Refugee support services had been gutted and personnel dramatically reduced, lowering admissions to historic lows and forcing more than 100 refugee resettlement facilities in the United States to close. And the Federal career workforce had been hollowed out. In November 2020, as President Biden was preparing to take office, the Department of State employed 12 percent fewer employees than it had four years earlier, leaving critical gaps.

Immediately after taking office—and even before he had made a final decision to leave Afghanistan—President Biden instructed departments and agencies to begin doing the necessary work to increase capacity, in part to facilitate a withdrawal on the timeline required. During his first two weeks in office, President Biden signed Executive Order 14013 requiring departments and agencies to surge resources and streamline the application process for SIV applicants. On February 2, the Department of State resumed SIV interviews in Kabul. State doubled the number of SIV adjudicators at Embassy Kabul and quintupled the number of staff processing SIV applications—from 10 to 50—in Washington, D.C. As a result of this surge, the United States went from issuing 100 SIVs a week in March to more than 1000 a week in July, and, working with Congress to streamline the process, reduced the average SIV processing time by more than one year. In July, the United States issued a record number of SIVs to our Afghan allies and began running the first ever SIV relocation flights. 

From the beginning, President Biden directed that preparations for a potential U.S. withdrawal include planning for all contingencies—including a rapid deterioration of the security situation—even though intelligence at the time deemed this situation unlikely. In March, before he had made his final decision, the President directed his top national security officials—including the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Director for National Intelligence—to begin withdrawal planning and account for a full range of contingencies. Once the President made his final decision, national security teams accelerated the planning that was already underway. Throughout the spring and summer, the National Security Council (NSC) staff hosted dozens of high-level planning meetings, formal rehearsals of the withdrawal, and tabletop exercises to explore scenarios for an evacuation as part of responsible planning for a range of contingencies, even those that were actually worse than the worst-case predictions. 

Throughout this period, a Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) was treated as a distinct possibility and the national security team started planning for it. In March, departments and agencies were tasked with outlining plans for multiple scenarios, including a security environment that would require the departure of all U.S. personnel from Afghanistan. In April, departments and agencies were specifically tasked with 5 updating the NEO planning documents. In May, NSC staff held a senior interagency meeting that included a discussion of several specific complex issues related to a NEO, including timing, evacuee destination sites, processing, vetting, and transport logistics. It was agreed that—because of the extreme complexity and careful planning required— a dedicated group of interagency experts would regularly convene to conduct NEO planning. In a meeting of national security leadership that same month, departments and agencies were tasked with ensuring relocation plans were ready in the event of a significant deterioration in the security situation. 

In line with that planning, in early summer, President Biden directed military assets to be prepositioned in the region to be able to help with an evacuation on short notice. It was this decision that later enabled the United States to respond and deploy quickly enough to facilitate the successful evacuation of over 124,000 American citizens, permanent residents, Afghan partners, and allies. 

President Biden took the advice of his military commanders on the tactical decisions regarding the operational retrograde of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, including the dates they closed facilities, and he regularly asked them if there was anything else they needed. 

As planning intensified throughout the late spring and early summer, intelligence reports continued to suggest that—even if the Taliban made gains in some Afghan provinces— the capital, Kabul, would be more difficult for the Taliban to take and the ANDSF would defend it. In addition, President Biden urged the Afghan government to take steps to harden the resolve of the Afghan forces, including by empowering Acting Defense Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi—who U.S. commanders had assessed to be a capable combat leader— and pressed current and former Afghan officials to project a united front of support for the Afghan forces. 

As this experience underscored, when conducting contingency planning, it is necessary to plan early and extensively for low probability, high-risk scenarios. In addition, in light of the challenges of assessing psychological factors like “willingness to fight,” it is especially important to incorporate creative analytic exercises in planning. Some of the most accurate insights that surfaced in the months of planning on Afghanistan came from conducting simulation exercises. Our experience in Afghanistan directly informed the Administration’s decision to set up a small group of experts (“tiger team”) for worst-case scenario planning on Ukraine—including simulation exercises—months ahead of Russia’s invasion. We were ultimately relieved that, due to the bravery of the Ukrainian people, the leadership of President Zelenskyy, and the rallying of support from allies and partners with U.S. leadership, Russia’s invasion has failed to achieve its objectives. But we were ready for a range of contingencies, and we remain ready.  

Warning about Potential Evacuation 

As the security situation in Afghanistan worsened over the summer, the Administration grappled with the tension between highlighting growing warning signs of potential collapse and undermining confidence in the Government of Afghanistan and Afghan forces’ will to fight. Whenever a government is threatened by the prospect of collapse— whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere—there is an obvious tension between signaling confidence in the capabilities of the current government and providing warning of the risks that it might fail. 

Ultimately, the Administration made a decision to engage in unprecedently extensive targeted outreach to Americans and Afghan partners about the risk of collapse, including numerous security alerts and tens of thousands of direct phone calls and messages to U.S. citizens in particular to leave Afghanistan, but to not broadcast loudly and publicly about a potential worst-case scenario unfolding in order to avoid signaling a lack of confidence in the ANDSF or the Afghan government’s position. This calculus was made based on the prevailing intelligence and military view throughout the early weeks of August that Kabul would hold beyond the end of the withdrawal. As Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines stated on August 18, 2021, “[the collapse] unfolded more quickly than [the Intelligence Community] anticipated.” In fact, the collapse was more rapid than either the Taliban or the Afghan government expected. 

In a destabilizing security environment, we now err on the side of aggressive communication about risks. We did this in advance of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Months before the invasion, we proactively released intelligence with trusted partners. That engagement broadened—and grew louder and more public—in the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion. This approach met strong objections from senior officials in the Ukrainian government who were concerned such warnings would spark panic and precipitate capital flight, damaging the Ukrainian economy. However, our clear and unvarnished warnings enabled the United States to take advantage of a critical window before the invasion to organize with our allies, plan the swift execution of our response, and enable Americans in Ukraine to depart safely. 

Triggering the Evacuation 

Beginning in March, NSC staff led a rigorous process of reviewing conditions at the U.S. Embassy to ensure the safety of all official U.S. personnel in Kabul, consistent with our approach to all U.S. diplomatic posts around the world. A drawdown of U.S. personnel on the ground was undertaken consistent with the threat environment, but core personnel remained. Even as many Embassy personnel returned to the United States, we sent more consular officers to Kabul to process SIV applications. The Administration also made a decision to operate regular flights of SIVs starting in July, rather than initiate a massive airlift evacuation at that time, in the expectation of continuing embassy operations and SIV departures after the military withdrawal was complete. 

Intelligence indicated that the ANDSF would likely defend Kabul, and an order to begin the NEO unnecessarily could have triggered a collapse by undermining confidence in the ANDSF. Chairman Milley testified on September 28, 2021, that “[even during that time, there was] no intel assessment that says the government’s going to collapse and the military’s going to collapse in 11 days… [At that time, the assessments] are still talking weeks, perhaps months.” 

On August 6, the first provincial capital fell. As the Taliban gained control of territory, President Biden asked his top national security leaders to assess whether to formally begin the NEO. NSC convened a senior interagency meeting on August 8, which unanimously recommended against beginning the NEO based on conditions on the ground. National security leaders met on August 9 and concluded conditions on the ground did not support triggering a NEO. On August 11, at the recommendation of his senior military advisors, the President authorized the deployment of pre-planned assets and personnel for a range of contingences. The President stayed in close contact with his team, confirming daily they had what they needed. On August 13 and 14, Kabul came under direct threat. On August 14, President Biden announced that, at the recommendation of his diplomatic, military, and intelligence teams, he had formally initiated the NEO and ordered the deployment of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to support the evacuation. 

We now prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation. We did so in both Ethiopia and Ukraine. When the capitals of both countries were threatened, the President directed adjustments in the posture of the embassies by drawing down or evacuating embassy personnel. In Ethiopia, we drew down all nonemergency personnel at the Embassy well in advance of any potential threat. We did this despite the vigorous objections of the Ethiopian government. In Ukraine, we decided to evacuate personnel nearly two weeks before Russia’s invasion, despite concerns by some close allies, partners, and the Ukrainians themselves that doing so would undermine confidence in Ukraine. This decision resulted in an orderly departure and enabled our teams to safely carry out critical functions remotely for nearly three months. 

The Evacuation and the Attack at Abbey Gate 

As a result of several months of contingency planning, troops had already been prepositioned near Afghanistan in case they were needed, and the additional forces that President Biden deployed on August 14 were on the ground in Kabul within 48 hours. Within 72 hours they had secured Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) so that flights could resume. 

Once the evacuation had been initiated, President Biden repeatedly gave clear direction to prioritize force protection, relying on the advice of his senior military officials on how best to proceed on operational decisions. As Secretary Blinken testified on September 14, 2021, “Because of that [earlier] planning [for a wide range of contingencies], we were able to draw down our Embassy and move our remaining personnel to the airport 8 within 48 hours.” The U.S. Government facilitated the safe departure of remaining personnel and their families, roughly 2,500 people during the evacuation. To manage the potential threat of a terrorist attack, the President repeatedly asked whether the military required additional support to carry out their mission at HKIA. Senior military officials confirmed that they had sufficient resources and authorities to mitigate threats, including those posed by ISIS-K. 

On August 25, the President was advised by senior military officials that continuing evacuations for 48 more hours presented manageable risk to the force and the highest possibility of success in evacuating American citizens and Afghan partners. The entire national security team, including senior military officials, supported this commitment to continuing operations, despite known risks, and the President accepted the recommendation to extend evacuation operations for this period. 

During the NEO, specific decisions about which gates would be used to access the airport were made by commanders on the ground. On the afternoon of August 25, the commanders decided to keep Abbey Gate open to facilitate the evacuation of U.K. forces and Afghan partners. According to the 2021 U.S. Central Command report, “If the JTF-CR [Joint Task-Force-Crisis Response] Commander decide to close Abbey Gate while U.K. Forces were still processing evacuees, it would have isolated them at Baron Hotel.” On the evening of August 26, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive outside of Abbey Gate, killing 13 service members and 170 Afghans, while injuring 45 other service members, a tragic human toll. We continue to mourn the loss of the 13 heroes and vow to continue to support their families and the injured who survived. After the horrific attack at Abbey Gate, the President consulted senior military officials on whether to end the NEO immediately. He was advised the threat to U.S. forces was manageable and to continue until August 31 to maximize the evacuations of Americans, allied forces, and Afghan partners. 

U.S. forces remained vigilant to protect against further attacks while the evacuation proceeded. The day after the attack, August 27, the U.S. military launched a drone strike in Nangarhar Province, killing two high profile ISIS-K individuals. On August 29, as the evacuation neared completion—and in the aftermath of the horrific Abbey Gate attack—reports emerged of movements of vehicles and individuals linked to the attack on Abbey Gate, indicating that a further terrorist attack on U.S. personnel at HKIA could be imminent. To counter the perceived immediate threat, the U.S. military launched a drone strike in Kabul that mistakenly killed ten civilians. Among the causes of this tragic error was that the high-risk and dynamic threat environment led the team to inaccurately assess that the target posed an imminent threat to those on the ground. 

The President received and accepted the unanimous advice of his top national security officials to end the evacuation on August 31, given the high potential for escalating attacks on U.S. troops should they stay any longer. From the beginning of the evacuation on August 14 to its completion on August 31, U.S. military and civilian personnel engaged in an around the clock effort to execute the largest airlift of noncombatants in U.S. history. As Secretary Austin explained on September 28, 2021, “On military aircraft alone, we flew more than 387 sorties, averaging nearly 23 per day. At 9 the height of this operation an aircraft was taking off every 45 minutes. And not a single sortie was missed for maintenance, fuel, or logistical problems. It was the largest airlift conducted in U.S. history, and it was executed in 17 days.” 

The Department of Defense conducted detailed after-action reviews of the tragic attack that took American and other lives at Abbey Gate and of the drone strike that tragically killed ten civilians, and implemented their lessons learned. After the Kabul strike, the Secretary of Defense ordered a 90-day review of how the Department of Defense could better avoid civilian casualties in its activities, and has implemented new policies to do so. 

Keeping Our Promise to American Citizens and Afghan Partners 

When President Biden made his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, he made a commitment to provide every American who wanted to leave the opportunity to leave. This was an unprecedented commitment—one that the United States has not made in previous situations like Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia when we shut down U.S. embassies. In addition, because Americans are not required to register with our embassies whenever they travel to, leave, or reside in a foreign country, it is impossible to know with precision how many Americans are in a given country at a given time. The U.S. Government went to extraordinary lengths to make good on this promise. As Secretary Blinken testified on September 13, 2021, “We were intensely focused on the safety of Americans in Afghanistan. In March, we began urging them to leave the country. In total, between March and August, we sent 19 specific messages with that warning, as well as offers of help, including financial assistance to pay for plane tickets.” From August 14 through August 31, the Department reached out directly to every American known to the U.S. Government, repeatedly and through multiple channels—making 55,000 phone calls and sending 33,000 e-mails during those 17 days alone—to help facilitate evacuations for those who wished to leave. Many were dual citizens whose families had lived in Afghanistan for generations and chose to stay, and some have chosen to reenter Afghanistan after the military withdrawal. Ultimately, the U.S. Government evacuated over 6,000 American citizens from the country. We are continuing to facilitate the departures of American citizens who chose to stay or returned to Afghanistan despite our grave warnings. Since August 31, 2021 we have facilitated the departure of more than 950 American citizens who sought assistance to leave. Many doubted whether President Biden would be able to keep his promise—but he did. 

From the beginning, the President also made clear that the United States was committed to assisting our Afghan partners. At the President’s direction, the entire interagency pushed to accelerate the SIV program—and did so, surging resources to this vital program, restarting SIV interviews paused by the previous administration, increasing the number of staff processing SIV applications by more than fifteen-fold, and reviewing every stage of the cumbersome application process. As a result of these efforts, the U.S. government issued more SIVs in the months leading up to the fall of Kabul than in any other period in the history of the program. 

During the evacuation, approximately 70,000 vulnerable Afghans were evacuated by the U.S. Government to overseas Defense Department facilities for security screening, vetting, and the administration of public health vaccinations. The Department of State began seeking transit agreements for Afghans with third countries in June, secured agreements with Qatar and Kuwait in July, and negotiated arrangements with other countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, UAE, Bahrain, Kosovo, and Albania. Setting up this network of transit sites—“lily pads”—would not have been possible without the support of international partners across the Middle East and Europe. Afghan evacuees were then transported by air to eight Department of Defense domestic “safe havens.” Those in need of special medical care were moved to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and nearby hotels. More than 10,000 State, Defense, and Homeland Security personnel supported this unprecedented humanitarian effort. Veterans groups, non-profits, state and local governments, companies, and other organizations worked around the clock to assist the evacuation effort. From assisting SIV applicants with paperwork, to donating resources to help resettle families, these partners were and remain critical to our efforts. 

Despite predictions to the contrary, we have and will continue to facilitate the departure and resettlement of our Afghan partners through Enduring Welcome, our multi-year effort to relocate those who worked with and for us to the United States through a variety of legal immigration pathways. We have been proud to welcome approximately 100,000 Afghans as part of Operation Allies Welcome and now with Enduring Welcome. We are also continuing to harness the resources and expertise we saw emerge during the evacuations to help new Afghan arrivals and assist those who arrived last year with integration. With the help of nine domestic refugee resettlement agencies and a network of about 200 local affiliate organizations, each and every Afghan family has been resettled into American communities. We also need Congress to act on legislation, such as the Afghan Adjustment Act, to support those joining new communities to become well settled and integrated. 

We are now deliberate and clear about the support the U.S. government is able to provide to Americans abroad in challenging country conditions, as well as the limits of that support. We did this in Ukraine and Ethiopia. We proactively messaged about risks and explained clearly and repeatedly that those who chose to remain could not expect the U.S. Government to evacuate them. We also distinguished in our public messaging between the populations that the U.S. Government could directly evacuate if needed—primarily our own U.S. Government staff—and others who should heed our warnings and plan for their own evacuations, such as private American citizens. 

Rebuilding Long-Term Capacity

The withdrawal is over, but we need to continue to work to rebuild the systems that we need to be able to respond to a future crisis. The Trump Administration had hollowed out much of the career workforce, including at senior levels, at a moment when more resources were needed. The capacity needed in a crisis is not something that can simply be “turned on.” The steady state work of developing our workforce, building our internal processes and forging partnerships is necessary to being able to manage an unfolding crisis. 

We are investing heavily in creating additional capacity: attracting, retaining, and enhancing talent within the Federal workforce, which we regard as a fundamental source of strength for our national security. We are also building new kinds of partnerships. During the withdrawal, the resources and expertise of non-profits, veterans service groups, companies, and other organizations were critical to our efforts. Today, we are building on these partnerships to help new Afghan arrivals and assist those who have already arrived with integration. 

Putting the United States on Stronger Footing 

When President Biden announced his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, some voices doubted that America would be on a safer and stronger footing as a result. President Biden promised Americans that we would maintain an enduring capacity to address terrorist threats in Afghanistan without thousands of boots on the ground. In July 2022, he demonstrated that capability in the successful operation that killed the emir of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In addition, when the President Biden made his decision in 2021, he rightly recognized that the terrorist threat of today is more diverse and diffuse than it was in 2001. His decision to leave Afghanistan freed up critical military, intelligence, and other resources to counter terrorist threats around the world, including in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and Yemen. The Administration has done so successfully, including by eliminating ISIS leader Hajji Abdullah and a number of top ISIS leaders in Syria and Somalia through continued U.S. counterterrorism efforts. We also remain committed to supporting significant humanitarian assistance and standing up for the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, and we will continue to condemn and isolate the Taliban for its appalling human rights record. 

More broadly, when the President made the decision to leave Afghanistan, some worried that doing so could weaken our alliances or put the United States at a disadvantage on the global stage. The opposite has happened. Our standing around the world is significantly greater, as evidenced by multiple opinion surveys. Our alliances are stronger than ever. Finland has been admitted into NATO, and Sweden will soon be admitted as well. We are strengthening our existing partnerships and building new ones with nations around the world. On the global stage, America is leading. We have rallied our allies and partners to support Ukraine and hold Russia accountable for its aggression—and to rise to compete with China. It is hard to imagine the United States would have been able to lead the response to these challenges as successfully—especially in the resource-intensive way that it has— if U.S. forces remained in Afghanistan today. 

Ultimately, after more than twenty years, more than $2 trillion dollars, and standing up an Afghan army of 300,000 soldiers, the speed and ease with which the Taliban took control of Afghanistan suggests that there was no scenario—except a permanent and significantly expanded U.S. military presence—that would have changed the trajectory. 

As President Biden said on August 31, 2021, “When I hear that we could’ve, should’ve continued the so-called low-grade effort in Afghanistan, at low risk to our service members, at low cost, I don’t think enough people understand how much we have asked of the 1 percent of this country who put that uniform on, who are willing to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation…There is nothing low-grade or low-risk or low-cost about any war.”

Did I say defeat?

Yes I did.

Well, the reality of it is that Trump abandoned the country and was slowed in his surrender by the military, but it was completed by President Biden. Shameful all the way around.

Ironically, the departure from the Central Asian country may have paid off by allowing the US to play the role it is in Ukraine, which is sort of a happy accidental byproduct of it, as well as a monumental misread of events by Putin.  The withdrawal was shameful none the less.

Monday, October 3, 2022

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition, Part Seven

September 1, 2022

Sasha, age 9, with prosthetic giving the Ukrainian trident salute.  She lost her arm due to a Russian attack.Whatever Russia's excuses for invading a neighboring country that doesn't wish to be part of it may be, taking off the arms of children as part of the cause is beyond any excuse. Live URL Link from: https://twitter.com/DefenceU

Russian propaganda is attempting to portray Ukraine's long anticipated offensive has having already failed, which it has not.

The Ukrainian government, in contrast, is observing operational silence, and requesting that media sources abstain from predicting Ukrainian moves.

September 2, 2022

  • Afghanistan

The Taliban has arrested a woman for defamation for accusing her husband, the former Taliban interior minister, of forced marriage and rape.

The charge by the entity which the United States allowed to take power due to Donald Trump's Doha agreement followed by our withdrawal under President Biden was based on the Taliban position that nobody is allowed to defame the Taliban.

September 2, cont

Israel struck a Syrian runway yesterday.

September 3, 2022

  • China/Taiwan

The United States is selling $1,100,000,000 in arms to Taiwan

September 5, 2022

  • Russo Ukrainian War

The Ukrainians liberated Vysokopilla in Kherson Oblast.  Gains were also made in the Donetsk Oblast.   The Ukrainians have had a news blackout on their operations, and it appears clear that the announced successes are just part of a collection of wider successes they have not yet felt comfortable in publicly stating.

September 6, 2022

Russia has postponed a referendum on Kherson joining Russia for "security reasons".

September 7, 2022

Russia is getting ready to purchase rockets and artillery shells from North Korea.

The fact that Russia is in the position of buying this sort of ordinance suggest that it is either seriously depleted its stocks of the same, or that it is worried about doing so and seeking to use up newly purchased stores so as to have a reserve ammunition supply for other contingencies, real or imagined.

Ukraine retook territory near Kharkiv.

September 9, 2022

While it's not at all clear what's going on, it suddenly seems to be the case that the Ukrainians are advancing all over the front.  Fighting has been hard in Kherson, but there are reports today of advancing in the north and the center, with some of these reports coming from Russian sources.

It's too early to really predict what's going on, but if this keeps up, the Russians are in a very bad spot. 

September 10, 2022

What seemed to be promising local advances a couple of days ago is developing into open field running by the Ukrainians, who are now outsmarting and outfighting the Russians darned near everywhere.

Ukraine has retaken Izium in the Kharkiv region, with the Russians openly retreating and admitting as much.  This region of Ukraine wasn't even imagined to be the focus of what is turning out to be an effective broad front offensive.  They're closing on Sievierodonetsk, whose loss in June was regarded as a major Ukrainian defeat.  Some reports had the Russians deploying helicopters to intercept their own fleeing men as they attempted, and failed, to reinforce Izium.

It's still too early to tell, but things are beginning to take on an appearance of a systemic Russian collapse.

September 11, 2022

Situation as of September 11, 2022.  By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-2021).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source:BNO NewsTerritorial control sources:Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map / Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed relief mapISW, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

Further reports now reveal that the Russian withdrawal from Izium is a disorderly route, with retreating troops mixing with an attempt to reinforce the southern Donbas.  Ukraine has retaken Velikiy Burluk which puts them with 15 kilometers of the Russian border.

September 13, 2022

  • Russo-Ukrainian War

Russia has suspended sending volunteer units into Ukraine, apparently being concerned that they are not dependable.

Ukraine is making advances in the Kherson Olbast.

29 additional municipalities have signed a petition asking Putin to resign, making the number 47.

  • Armenia/Azerbaijan
The countries have fought two prior wars over areas they assert a right to control, with the last one going badly for Armenia.  Yesterday there were clashes between their forces.

September 14, 2022

The Russians are engaging in some serious spin, acknowledging defeat in northern Ukraine while also attempting to blame anyone other than Putin.

Russian authorities in Crimea have urged their families to flee Crimea, and there have been home sales and family evacuations by Russian authorities there.

September 16, 2022

Pope Francis in interview on September 15 regarding providing weapons to Ukraine by third party powers:
This is a political decision which it can be moral, morally acceptable, if it is done under conditions of morality … Self-defence is not only licit but also an expression of love for the homeland,. . .  Someone who does not defend oneself, who does not defend something, does not love it. Those who defend . . .  love it.”
September 17, 2022

Ukrainian advances into territory that has been occupied by Russia has revealed evidence of torture and murder by the Russians.

Putin has threatened increased attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure in retaliation for Ukrainian partisan attacks on Russian property in the territory occupied by Russia, taking a page, more or less, out of Hitler's book, to the extent he's not already operating from it.  He might want to skip to the last chapter and see how that worked out for Hitler.

Ukraine is warning of false flag operations in Russian occupied areas over the next few days.

September 18, 2022

Ukrainian troops continue to advance in the north.

By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-2021).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source:BNO NewsTerritorial control sources:Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map / Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed relief mapISW, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

September 21, 2022

A long feared mobilization of Russian forces may be starting to occur in the wake of recent Russian defeats.

What's held Russia back from full mobilization, a step urged by Russian milbloggers and some parliamentarians, isn't known, but it may be the fear that Russian reservists just won't show up, or that the move will spark large scale discontent.  

300,000 reservists will be called into active Russian service.

Putin also vaguely threatened to use nuclear weapons if Ukraine continues its efforts to reclaim its territory.

And Putin is also holding "referendums" in the territory which Russia occupies nearly immediately, which will have the guaranteed result of resulting in Russian annexation of the same.

This step takes the world deeper into the war, not further from it. Essentially, Putin is placing Russia in a position in which it will be committing its reserves to an effort which will now be claiming to defend its own territory. Putin, and maybe Russia itself, will not be able to back out of this, and Ukraine and the rest of the non toady world will not be able to recognize it.

It'll be interesting to see what the mobilization accomplishes.  It's effectively a massive admission of Russian military weakness.  Russia has the numbers, but the numbers haven't worked in their favor so far.  With discontent on the war growing inside of Russia, Putin may be going down the same path as Czar Nicholas II.

September 22, 2022

It now appears that the Russian call up of reservists shall be in stages and will not have an immediate effect on the war in Ukraine, as long as Ukraine continues to act swiftly. That is, the impact shall not be for many months.

While at the 300,000 level, this should raise some questions on whether the call-up is to offset losses.  It really isn't clear what Russia's combat loss has been.

Russia, like many other countries, only requires a year of service for conscripts.  While this practice is common, for the most part it leaves those trained in that fashion with incomplete military skills that wane fairly quickly.  Called up reservist, therefore, are likely to need months of training if they're to be combat worthy troops, although Russia has certainly seemed to be willing to commit troops with less than adequate combat skills.

The British Ministry of Defense has stated that Russia has run out of willing volunteers.

Protests in Russia resulted in 1,200 arrests.  Reports have held that flights out of the country have received an enormous boost as men eligible to be called into service have sought flights out.

September 23, 2022

Russia's partial mobilization is spawning domestic discontent and protests, which in turn has caused the Russians to conscript protesters as part of its reaction.  Rather obviously, the tactic of conscripting those bold enough to protest against the war isn't likely to produce combat worthy troops.  Indeed, at some point, it has the effect of arming and training those who are likely to turn their guns on their government.

Russia has also gone beyond calling trained reservists into service in other ways, now conscripting men who have never served and actually, in at least one instance, using a press-gang university on students to drag them directly from classes for services, something directly contrary to a statement exempting students from this levy and a shocking reversion to very primitive conscription methods.

In response, some Russian federal regions are passing laws prohibiting reservists from leaving their places of permanent residence in order to attempt to keep men from fleeing service.  Reports also indicate that the Russians are disproportionately conscripting non Russians.

All of this would suggest a Russia much more at trouble at home, and with much wider opposition to the war, than previously expected.  The chances of building an effective replacement army under these circumstances is slight.  Moreover, this must be obvious to Russia's allies, such as China, demonstrating the nation is rotting from the edifice.

September 28, 2022

Russia's sham elections were held in the last couple of days with the predictable results being that votes in the Russian occupied portions of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk supposedly were overwhelmingly in favor of annexation into Russia. That will now occur within the next couple of days.

It won't end the war, certainly, but now Russia will have legal cover for deploying conscripts into the war.  Conscription, however, is going very badly.  Oddly enough, Russia is conscripting outright opponents to the war, which is not likely to result in willing soldiers.

Two undersea explosions occurred on the idled Nord Stream pipeline.  

Accomplishing an underwater strike such as this would require some expertise to pull off and there are suspicions, not yet proven, that Russia itself did it.  Ukraine has claimed just that. The hard thing to figure out, however, is what the goal of such an attack would be.

September 29, 2022

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukrainian forces are about to take Lyman and are generally advancing, although not necessarily rapidly, everywhere along the front.

Russian forces are now so depleted that they're being supplied with replacements out of the newly called up men who have very little training.  In one instances of this that hit the news, a Russian commander informs his troops they'll be given a uniform, body armor, and a rifle, and nothing else, including no medical supplies.

The U.S. is providing an additional $1.1B in aid to Ukraine.

Additional leaks have been found in the Nord Stream pipeline, which is now more or less officially viewed as having been hit by sabotage.  German sources feel the damage is irreparable although, due to subsequent pipeline construction elsewhere, the loss may not be as significant as it might at first appear.

The mystery of the destruction remains, given the illogic involved in hitting it.  For the most part, most of the attention is focused on the Russians, but some conspiracy theorist of various stripes have accused the US, which certainly did not do it.  U.S. right wing commentator Tucker Carson basically took the Russian line and suggested, if not outright stated, that the U.S. was responsible for the act, and on the same day, Donald Trump absurdly offered to attempt to broker a peace.  Not too surprisingly, loyal Trump rank and file accolades praised the former President's ridiculous offer and some have adopted the absurd U.S. did it thesis.

Iraq/Iran

The Iranian air force struck Kurdish targets in Iraq in retaliation for Kurdish support of Iranian women protestors.  

The protests in Iran broke out after a young woman was killed after Kurdish Iranian Mahsa Amini died in police detention after being taken into custody for wearing her hajib incorrectly.  Iran has religious police that enforce the Iranian interpretation of Islam's religious behavior rules, something that is not unique to Iran in the Islamic world.  Women in Iran have chaffed for years under the strict rules applied in Iran and have now engaged in days of protests over the event.  Protestors have openly defied the rules in their protests, and some have now called for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

At the same time, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been absent from the public, fueling speculation that he may not be able to return to his duties following bowel surgery in early September.

September 30, 2022

NATO declared the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines sabatage and warned that it would regard any attacks upon the infrastructure of its member states as an attack upon the member nations.

Ukrainian forces have enveloped Lyman.

October 1, 2022

Russia declared itself to have annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia yesterday.  In his speech he engaged in nuclear saber rattling.

Ths move grossly complicates finding a peaceful solution to the war as Russia, which is losing, will now claim that its defending its own territory even though it will be largely alone in the world in recognizing its claims.  Putin will not be able to give up ground he's annexed, so at this point the war can largely only really end with Putin deposed.

The current borders in Europe, it might be noted, are those that largely came into existance post World War Two.  Ukraine's post 1917 borders were larger than the current ones by a signficant extent:

By Spiridon Ion Cepleanu - History Atlases available., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17831314

As the map above demonstrates, the real territorial growth of Ukraine was at the expense of Poland, post Second World War, but that change also featured the Soviets expelling Poles to the west, and in what is now Poland, expelling Germans also to the west.  And the territory Ukraine aquired at that time was in fact largely claimed by Ukrainians in 1918.  Indeed, that region of Ukraine had been fought over between the two countries, with the Poles also seeking to claim quite a bit of land to its post 1918 eastern boundaries.  The only signficant part of modern post Soviet collapse Ukraine that had not been part of Ukraine until after World War Two is Crimea, which traditionally had neither a Ukrainian or Russian population, something the Russians changed through heavy migration into the region.  Ukraine did claim it, however, in 1917.

Ukraine did claim lands much to the east of its current boundaries following 1917, and indeed even much further to the east of what this map shows based on Ukrainian settlements of Russian regions to the east.

While it won't do it, Ukraine would have just about as much right to annex the territories it lost to the Soviet Union as its own as Russia does to do the reverse.

Russia is also blaming the US for the Nord Stream gas severance event, a baseless conspiracy theory.  Russia is the nation most likely to have sabataged the line.

October 1, 2022

The Russians have withdrawn from Lyman.

Below, by the way, is a map that's linked in to its original source showing the percentages of the vote in current Ukraine that voted for independence from Russia in 1991.


As shown, even Crimea had over 50% of its population wanting out of Russia.

It's also worth remebering that the newly free Ukraine was a nuclear state.  It gave those weapons up following a Western promise to guaranty its freedom.

October 3, 2022

It appears that the Ukrainians may have broken through at Kherson.

While, once again, its too early to tell, this is beginning to have the apperance of being a generalized Russian collapse.

Last prior edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition, Part Six

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Hubris and Strange Coincidence.

There is, I'd note, no proof that Donald J. Trump is a Russian agent.

Nonetheless, two days after the Russians (we suspect) blew a hole in their own gas pipeline to Germany for no rational reason, our former President, who is now in trouble for all the classified information he packed home to his golf resort dwellings, come out with this steaming pile of pooh.


What the crap?

And what hubris.

"I will head up group???"

You have to be joking.

What idiot would want the same man who betrayed Afghanistan into Taliban hands and made twenty years of American, and Allied, effort there meaningless to head up a delegation to try to sort out the war between Ukraine and Russia, a war we might note which Trump buddy Putin is losing badly.1 

What would his solution be?  Russia takes half of Ukraine, 3/4s of Poland, and a slice of Lithuania to go?

Only a diehard Trump loyalist seriously would believe that Russia would not have raped Ukraine if Trump were President, although you can surely believe that the United States would have done nothing whatsoever to stop it.  Nothing.  The war would be over, alright, with Ukraine in Russian hands and a followup guerilla war in Ukraine going on right now.  Biden's leadership on this topic at least has been monumental.

And why does this come out now?

That's the odd thing.

As noted, there's no evidence that Trump is a Russian agent.

There's reason to suspect he's a Russian asset, probably unknowingly.

But it's sure easy to have suspicions, if, for no other reasons, his own actions, which is in fact probably the only reason, which is why it probably also isn't true.

Anyway you look at it, this offer is beyond absurd.

Footnotes:

1. After posting this, I actually saw a recycled Twitter, or maybe Truth (sic) Social tweet in which somebody cheered "this is how a real President acts".

Not a really good President.

Also, according to the Washington Post, Tucker Carson suggested, which is different from actually stated, that the US may have sabotaged the pipeline.  I'm not going to link into the original Carson broadcast as I can't stand him, but if Carson suggested that, I find it difficult in the extreme to believe that he believes that's possible. At this point, anyone still listening to him, really ought to stop.

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition, Part Five


Russo Ukrainian War

Why part five so soon?

Well, lots of reasons, including that these threads are filling up quickly.

But beyond that, a big one is that it appears that the war is definitely taking a new turn.

The Russian offensive has been an embarrassing failure in numerous ways.  Thought of as a large scale armored blitzkrieg through inadequate Ukrainian forces, in fact it was held back everywhere and slowed down enormously where it wasn't.  Ukrainian forces proved more than a match for Russian ones, which have proven to be largely inept and badly equipped.  They've now been thrown back in the north and out of the that region of the country, with Russian units abandoning great masses of equipment that Russia will not be able to rapidly replace.  Such material replacement as will be forthcoming, moreover, will simply be with the demonstrably bad equipment that's been failing in Ukraine.

The thought is that Russia will not concentrate its offensive in the East and Southeast, where it has already had a measure of success.  Perhaps it's now aiming for a more limited goal.

Numerous Russian generals have been killed in the war, and as part of its renewed effort, it seems to be reshuffling its command structure.  As noted herein, the other day:

Alexander Dvornikov, age 60, has been placed in commanad of the Russian effort.  He has prior combat command experience from Syria.  It is widely speculated that the Russians shall commences a renewed offensive in the east to consolidate their gains there.

Dvornikov has been known as the Butcher of Syria.  That may be telling as well.

Russian troops withdrawing from the north have left a swath of murder and violence perpetrated against civilians.  We've already cataloged that in a prior thread.  With each passing day, it grows worse and gets harder to ignore.  The missile strike on a train station the other day featured a missile with the words "for the children" written on it.  In many areas, Russian troops seem to have murdered military aged men and raped women on a wide scale.  This report surfaced from a Ukrainian journalist just the other day:

Anastasiia Lapatina
@lapatina_
At least 25 women and girls, as young as 14, were raped by Russians in one basement in Bucha. Nine of them are pregnant. Russian soldiers said “they would rape them to the point where they wouldn't want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children."

Since the Second World War, the debate has existed on whether the Red Army was a professional army or simply an armed mob.  To at least some degree, it was both, getting better doctrinaly as the war ended.  But at that same time, the Red Army committed the largest example of mass rape in modern history.  Somewhat ignored after the war, the debate has always existed if this was an example of a breakdown in discipline or institutional revenge.

Whatever it was, it seems to have become institutionalized in the Russian army, which is made up of conscripts from the bottom of Russian society.  Whether or not the Red Army was a gang of undisciplined, brutalized ignorant peasants, the modern Russian army seems to be made up of undisciplined, poorly trained, badly equipped, lowlifes.  

The Ukrainian Army, in contrast, has gone from amateur to Western proficient in a little under a decade.  It may very well beat the Russian army if it's given the equipment to do it, and right now that means armor and artillery.  The Ukrainians themselves are not giving up anywhere, and even now the fighting goes on in occupied Mariupol.

Whatever has happened here, it's clear that Putin is a mentally deranging cancer in Russia.  The Russians have to be defeated before that can be addressed by his own people.  We should give them whatever is necessary to achieve that goal.

Course of war from beginning through April 9, 2022MaitreyaVaruna & Bacon Noodles, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

As for the war's currenet status, lines have not seemed to change for some days. There is widespread speculation that the Russians are preparing for a new offensive in the East/Southeast.  The speculation is likely correct, but the often cited claims taht troops withdrawn from the north are going to be redeployed in that effort strikes me as unlikley, given their unit destruction and material loss to date.

Potential use of chemical weapons by the Russians is being investigated in Mariupul.  It's inportant to note that this has not been established.

The Pentagon is ramping up the effort to supply weapons to Ukraine, with the US already being the largest supplier. Reflecting the effort to date to supply Ukraine with Soviet pattern weapons, a cache of Mi-17 helicopters in US inventories is being supplied.  Humveh trucks are being supplied. Artillery is being supplied.  Switchblade drones have already been supplied, and now Predator or Reaper drones, or both, appear to be slated.

The US clarified that it is not opposed to Polish Mig 29s being supplied to Ukraine, but only to their being flown from a US base in Germany directly to Ukraine.

Poland, for its part, is supplying up to 100 T-72s to Ukraine, a very substantial contribution, although as we've learned so far in this war, Russian armor is junk.  Of note, at least some of the Polish T72s are T72M1Rs, an upgraded variant with modern sights.

April 13, cont:

According to reports coming out today, Sweden will seek to join NATO in June, and it's likely Finland will apply around the same time.

This is really an amazing development.  Both nations have maintained an officially neutral stance since World War Two, although not for the same reasons.  Sweden has due to a traditional defense posture which allowed it to stay out of World War Two.  Finland, of course, was invaded by the Soviet Union prior to World War Two and then became an Axis ally in an unsuccessful effort to recapture and keep the territory it has only recently given up to the Soviets.  Its neutrality was enforced due to the bargain that it cut with the Soviet Union in order to remain an independent state.

Finland must feel that its security can no longer be guaranteed by its "Finlandization" arrangement, and Sweden must be nervous about Russian aspirations in the neighborhood as well. Additionally, in spite of being officially neutral, Sweden has long armed itself with NATO compliant standards and obviously assumed that it its territory was invaded NATO would come to its aid.  With a longstanding position emphasizing global cooperation and peace, it must also feel that modern Russia has become a threat to its ideals.

April 14, 2022

The Russian Navy's Black Sea Flag Ship Moskva was hi in a Ukrainian missile strike, although the Russians deny that and attribute its current problems to an ammunition explosion, and is being withdrawn from service for repairs, maybe.

The Moskva.

It could be worse than that, as it is admitted the ship capsized.  Assuming it is still afloat, it could be perhaps righted, or perhaps towed, but this is a major Russian loss.  The Russian Navy reported it sinking.

The Moskva was the ship which Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island told to the new famous line, "Russian warship, go fuck yourself" ("Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй").

Two Neptune missiles apparently struck the ship, with the same being launched from a Bayraktar TB2 drone.  The Neptune is a Ukrainian designed missile that just entered service last year.  The drone is a highly effective Turkish designed and manufactured pilotless aircraft.

The 40-year-old ship had been built for the Soviet Navy and was regarded as heavily armored.  The Ukrainian missile strike on it suggest that no Russian ship is safe from attack, meaning that while the Russian navy is obviously free to dominate the surface of the Black Sea, its effective control of it is contested at this point, a significant factor given the Russian strategy of taking the southeastern Ukrainian coast.

Yesterday was also the date of first issuance of a Ukrainian postage stamp dedicated to the men on Snake Island, depicting a border guard giving a Russian ship the middle finger salute.


The strike on the Moskva yesterday was either the height of irony, or exceedingly well planned and executed, given the date.   The Moskva appeared on the stamp.

April 14, cont.

And the Moskva sank.

April 16, 2022

Russia demanded that nations quit supplying weapons to Ukraine and vaguely threatened severe consequences if they do not.

Ukraine's president speculated that Russia may use chemical or tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

There are concerns that the Moskva may have housed nuclear weapons.

Ukrainians report that Russia failed to mobilize 26,000 reservists who evaded service to avoid being in the war.

Pope Francis proposed having Ukrainian and Russian families together in Good Friday services, which brought objections from Ukrainians mad at the implied suggestion of reconciliation, which of course it was.  Services were modified at the Stations of the Cross so that a Russian woman and a Ukrainian women jointly held the cross at the 13th Station.

All of this brought objections from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, part of the Catholic Church, and the Latin Rite in Ukraine in varying tones.  The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church called the actions "untimely". A Latin Rite bishop termed them incomprehensible.  They were neither, but it does show how views have evolved rapidly in Ukraine.

April 17, 2022

Russian Major General Vladimir Petrovich Frolov was killed in action, the eight Russian general to lose his life in the Russian assault on Ukraine.

April 18, 2022

While it will take some time to sort out, it appears that Russia has launched a largescale offensive in the east.

April 19, 2022

Reports are forthcoming of a large Russian offensive in the East, but details are so far fairly lacking.

Here's the situation map as of April 11, a little over a week ago:

April 11, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW &amp; Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

And here's the current one.

April 18, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW &amp; Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

Over the past week, the Ukrainian position in the East actually improved slightly.

One place where things have improved in an existential sense is Mariupol, where a remnant of Ukrainiain forces is still hanging on in spite of Russian surrender demands.

April 19, cont.

Russian actions in the Battle of the Donbas so far have been limited, but are expected to increase. The Ukrainian city of Kreminna has apparently been taken by the Russians.

April 20, 2022

NPR's State of Ukraine blog for this morning featured retired U.S. Army General Ben Hodges.

The interview was surprising.  In it, Hodges expressed optomism regarding the Ukrainian effort, and also discussed how the Seige of Mariupol demonstrated Russian ineptitude.  He predicted the collapse of the Russian Federation within the next five years.

April 21, 2022

Coat of Arms for Mariupol.

Russian gains yesterday were minor. That's being attributed to probing, but there are other possible explanations.  Mariupol still hadn't fallen.

Russia has publically declared that it will not storm the steel works where the defenders are holding out.  Why Putin made this order public is subject to debate, but storming it would result in an outsized Russian loss and make the steel works, which has already taken on the character of the famed tractor works of Stalingrad, a Ukrainian symbol beyond that already obtained by the long and heroic defense.

Germany and the US are providing howitzers to Ukraine, with the Germans providing highly advanced 155 self propelled howitzers and the US providing 155 towed howitzers.  Training of Ukrainian artillerymen is taking place outside of the country, in Europe.

One of the things of note here is that this means NATO powers are providing heavy weapons that are in NATO standard ammunition sizes, not Warsaw Pact sizes. They'll require Western logistical support to keep them in action.  Additionally, this means Ukraine's military is now converting to NATO standards by default.

NATO logistical support has returned 20 Ukrainian aircraft to operational support.

Russia is planning political purges of its allies in the breakaway Donbas region for failing to produce military results.  There are reports that it also is planning on conscripting Ukrainians for front line service, which will be a mistake if true.  Libyan mercenaries are showing up in action, and in the Russian war dead.

A group of Ortodox bishops in communion with Moscow has demanded that Patriarch Kirill resign.  The Patriarch has made statements supporting the Russian invasion which has angered elements of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine which retained communion with the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Russian Orthodox Church itself severed communion with the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan, who is regarded as being essentially the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church in some ways.  This occured before the war when the Metropolitan recognized the Ukranian Orthodox Church as autocephalous.  Since the start of the war the elements of Orthodoxy that had remained loyal to the Patriarch of Moscow have been rapidly moving away from Patriarch Kirill, who has already declared some of them to be in schism.

This has all brought into sharp focus some contemporary problems in Orthodoxy.  The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest Orthodox Church, but here its head has seemingly been distinctly Russian.  In the West, the Orthodox are moving away from national associations, recognizing that the day of national churches has essentially passed.  In Ukraine, there have been calls for Kirill to condemn the invasion, which he has failed to do.  This has revived notations that there are indications that Patriarch Kirill had an active KGB affiliation during the days of the Soviet Union, as did his predacessor Patriarch Alexy, the latter of which acknowledged that he had made compromises during the Soviet days that he thought necessary.  Patriarch Alexy had asked for forgiveness, but Patriarch Kirill has not.  The affiliation, to be clear, seems to have been in the case of churchmen of keeping the church in line so as to not become a threat to the state.

April 23, 2022

A Russian general made comments about the war providing access to Transnistria, a breakaway portion of Moldova, which have been widely interpreted as suggesting that this is the next stage of a Russian armed expansion, but careful analysis of it suggests that this is likely being misinterpreted.

Still, as I've noted here before, if I lead Moldova right now, which is Romanian in culture, I'd be petitioning Romania for annexation.  Moldova only exists apart from Romania as Russia insists that it must.

The general did state that Russia wants to take full control of southern Ukraine.

A possible mass grave near Mariupol containg as many as 9,000 bodies was discovered through satellite imagry.

April 24, 2022

Contrary to what I'd guessed, and contrary to all military logic, Russian troops withdrawn from northern Ukraine are being redeployedin the East without rest, reorganization or refitting.

April 24, cont.

Two more Russian generals have been killed in Ukraine and a third wounded.

April 25, 2022

Ukraine hit Russian oil storage facilities today in Bryansk, Russia with drones.  The strikes occured twelve hours ago and fires are still burning.

While it has not drawn much attention, the Russians have suffered a series of odd accidents in their infrastructure over the last few days.

April 26, 2022

The war in Ukraine is taking on a long range target characteristic.  Russia hit feul and transportation targets with missles yesterday.  Ukraine hit feul targets inside of Russia with something.

Something has been going on sabatogue wise inside of Russia as well. All sorts of industrial and transportation facilities have been suffering unexplained failures.

Ukrainian forces retaken territory north of Kherson and west of Izyum.

Acts of sabatogue against Russian related targets have been going on inside Transdniestria, the region of Moldova that broke away in support of, in essence, rejoining Russia.  Attacking Moldova was referenced by a Russian general recently.  Moldova convened its security council after a Russian language radio tower was attacked yesterday.

Gepard antiaricraft armor is being sent to Ukraine by Germany.

April 27, 2022

The Institute for the Study of War regards teh attacks in Transdniestria as Russian or Russian sympathetic false flag operations.  Their speculation is that it has something to possibly do with an intended Russian attack on Odessa.

The Russians are cutting off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, both of which have refused to pay in rubles.  Poland has indicated that it has been working on an alternative supply of gas for years and its not concerned.

April 29, 2022

Russia is protecting its Black Sea ports from threats of underwater, probably frogmen, attacks with trained dolphins.

Russia has been attacking Kyiv with rockets.

The Canadian House of Commons declared Russia to be guilty of genocide.

May 2, 2022

Russia has begun to transition areas they occupy to the Ruble, an almost certain sign that they intend to incorporate them or to set up sham states.

Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats were in Kyiv yesterday.

May 4, 2022

A Ukrainian offensive has pushed the Russians 40 km back from Kharkiv.

May 5, 2022

May 5, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW &amp; Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

We posted the map today as it depicts the result of Ukrainian counteroffensives and the stalled nature of Russian offensives.  The Ukrainians have not been gaining much ground, but they are gaining ground. The Russians are not.

May 7, 2022

A Ukrainian offensive near Kharkiv is gaining ground and my push the Russians outside of artillery striking distance of the city shortly.

The Ukrainians hit the Russian ship Admiral Makarov with an anti-shipping missle.

May 8, 2022

Russo Ukrainian War

May 8, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW &amp; Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

The Ukrainian offensive near Kharkiv is gaining ground, with the Russians blowing down bridges as they retreat.

There are very strong indicators that the Russian government is set to make a series of declarations tomorrow on "Victory Day", the day commemorating the victory over Germany in World War Two.  What these will be is not yet clear, but it seems clear that something will occur. Something almost has to given the place the day holds in Russian culture.

Afghanistan

The Taliban have returned to the policy of requiring all women in the country to wear burkas if possilbe, or at least wear clothing that reveals only their eyes.

That serves, of course, as a clear indicator the direciton the country is headed towards, or rather back towards.

May 10, 2022

Russo Ukrainian War

Contrary to expectations, Russia's May 9 Victory Day was not marked by anything particularly noteworthy coming from Russia.

Reports now indicate that Russian troops are disobeying the orders of their officers and are firing on the tires of their own vehicles to prevent them from going into combat.

President Biden signed a Lend Lease law into effect.

May 11, 2022

Finland's coat of arms.

For the first time since 1945, Finland will abandon neutrality and join an alliance, that alliance being NATO.

This is a huge change in Finland's position and indeed in European strategic alignment.

May 13, 2022

The Russians are reportedly using semiconductors from kitchen appliances in military equipment now, as they have run out of an adequate supply of them due to sanctions.

Current Ukrainian offensive operations appear calculated to split Russian forces in Ukraine in two, basically right down the middle of their occupation.  Reports hold that the Ukrainians have deployed new French acquired artillery in this effort.

A Russian soldier has appeared in a Ukrainian court on charges of war crimes.

Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian and fiscal conservative, has pushed Ukraine's military aid package that is presently in Congress into next week through a procedural move, essentially making himself the modern equivalent of America First Charles Lindbergh in a way.  Paul, it might be noted, has endorsed Wyoming candidate Harriet Hageman, although his endorsement has been pretty much ignored locally.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin has indicated that supplying arms to Ukraine is morally legitimate under the Catholic Just War theory, albeit with the conditions of proportionality applying.  Pope Francis has been very critical of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has discussed the war with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill.  Indeed, that became news when Pope Francis stated that he had told the Patriarch to quit being "Putin's alter boy", which caused the Patriarch to give an alternative account of their discussion.

May 16, 2022

Ukranian troops advancing east from Kharkiv have reached the Russian border.

Russian losses have been so severe that it depleted its reserve manpower pool and is now making up replacement units by putting together depleted elements of other units, including private military companies.  It's even resorted to putting paratroopers into depleted contract military companies, indicating a severe manpower crisis.

McDonald's is selling its stores in Russia and leaving the country.

Sweden will also be petitioning to join NATO, abandoning a position of neutrality held since the Napoleonic Wars.

May 17, 2022

Ukraine was allowed to evacuate its remaining forces from the Azoz steel plant in Mariupol, a remarkable concession from the Russians, who simply could not take it.  This means, of course, that the Russians have finally taken Mariupol, which was a goal they have been working on nearly the entire war.

They will now attempt to reopen the port.

The British estimate that the Russians have lost 1/3d of their combat capacity in the war so far.  By some independent analysis, they will be completely exhausted within thirty days.  As the country is not without enemies, of its own making, it's an open question if they'll seek to make use of the destruction of the Russian army at some point.

Turkey has indicated it does not support the admission of Finland and Sweden into NATO due to both countries' past harboring of Kurdish separatists.

Russian military bloggers, which up to now have been acting as apologists for the Russian army, have suddenly changed their tune and are reporting the army defeated.  What impact this has in Russia itself is yet to be seen, but just like in the West, the country has a community of amateur military analysts who follow military affairs.  The fact that they're not reporting critically on the performance of the Russian army and that it has been defeated in combat will  have some sort of impact, up until they are shut down, which is probable.

Russian authorities are now in conflict with Russian collaborationist in some of the areas they occupy.

May 18, 2022

Ukraine announced it has downed 200 Russian aircraft in the war.  Russian aircraft now often launch their weaons over Russian airspace rather than enter Ukrainian territory.

In a report Russian soldiers reported a commanding officer shooting his own non ambulatory wounded rather than try to move them.

Last Prior edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition, Part Four


Related threads:

Russo Ukrainian War Threads.