Quotes of the Day:

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt." 

– Herbert Hoover

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." 

– Winston Churchill

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform." 

– Susan B. Anthony

1. How Putin’s Obsession With History Led Him to Start a War

2. US and allies warn Chinese cyberattackers preparing for war

3. Tucker Carlson exposed Putin’s true war motive: For Russia to own Ukraine

4. Hamas Military Compound Found Beneath U.N. Agency Headquarters in Gaza

5. We could all use a laugh (from Ukraine)

6. Outgunned and exhausted: what hope for Ukraine if US military aid dries up?

7. American allies worry the US is growing less dependable, whether Trump or Biden wins

8. Former Houthi Rebel Reveals Secret U.S. Blind Spots in Red Sea Crisis

9. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 10, 2024

10. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, February 10, 2024

11. If You Think World War III Is Unimaginable, Read This

12. If US Wants To Be A Serious Force On Global Stage, Things Must Change – Analysis

13. Is the U.S. Distracted from East Asia?

14. As Lunar New Year dawns across Asia, a blue dragon takes wing

15. Erik Prince Calls for U.S. to Colonize Africa and Latin America

16. Wisconsin GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher won’t seek reelection

1. How Putin’s Obsession With History Led Him to Start a War

Yes, so it turns out Carlson was somewhat useful since he apparently exposed this which should be useful if somewhere were conducting an information and influence campaign against Russia. But I still think he is an idiot. 

But I guess we can say, "history kills." Who knew history could be so dangerous?

How Putin’s Obsession With History Led Him to Start a War

Long-winded, often factually erroneous arguments back his conviction that Russia has a historic right to Ukraine

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/how-putins-obsession-with-history-led-him-to-start-a-war-6732f619?mod=hp_lead_pos8

By Yaroslav Trofimov

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Updated Feb. 11, 2024 12:00 am E

A statue of Prince Vladimir, whose state encompassed large parts of today’s Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, has been erected in Moscow. PHOTO: ALEXANDER MIRIDONOV/KOMMERSANT/SIPA USA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s lengthy European history lesson, presented during a two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson a few days ago, may have seemed arcane to many viewers.

But as Putin recounted events of centuries past and trotted out 17th-century documents, he was expounding on deeply held views about the past, many widely disputed by historians, that have driven him to launch the continent’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

Putin’s obsession with the history of Ukraine and the Slavic peoples is far from new. In 2008, as Putin sat down with then-U.S. Ambassador William Burns, now the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he was blunt in expressing his vision.

“Don’t you know that Ukraine is not even a real country?” the Russian president asked, according to Burns.

Putin’s moves since—from his initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the annexation of Crimea to the full-scale war Moscow launched in 2022—all stem from this conviction.

The country Putin keeps dismissing as “artificial” has been fiercely resisting Moscow’s attempts to end its independence for nearly two years, regaining half of the initially occupied territory.

Putin’s historical views aren’t unique to him. They have deep roots in the Russian Empire’s historical narrative that predates the 1917 Russian Revolution. The very name Ukraine and the printing of books and newspapers in Ukrainian were illegal in Russia at the time, with Ukrainians officially called “little Russians.”

The Russian president, according to Western intelligence officials, spent an inordinate amount of time during the Covid-19 pandemic poring over historical texts. The result was a treatise, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” that was published in July 2021 and read out to every member of the Russian armed forces ahead of the invasion.

Putin’s long-winded and often factually erroneous explanations in the first half-hour of the Carlson interview essentially repeated the main talking points of that document—though often with some even more extreme modifications and additional historical revisionism, such as saying that Hitler had no choice but to invade Poland in 1939 and trigger World War II.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviews Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. PHOTO: GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/KREMLIN POOL/ZUMA PRESS

While this fixation on events of centuries past might seem bizarre, the issue of Ukrainian identity is core to Russia’s own foundational myth—and therefore, its current politics.

Both Putin and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, are named after the Grand Prince of Kyiv who, in 988, converted to Christianity and baptized his state, Kyiv Rus, which encompassed large parts of today’s Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. (Moscow was founded more than a century after his death.)

Shortly after annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula (where the Grand Prince’s conversion occurred) in 2014, Putin ordered the construction of a giant statue of Prince Vladimir—Volodymyr to Ukrainians—just outside the Kremlin. The inconvenient fact that Kyiv today is the capital of a foreign country undermines Russia’s vision of itself as the true heir of Kyiv Rus’s glories, with a historic right to all lands once ruled by Kyiv’s princes.

In Putin’s telling, Ukrainian identity is an early 20th-century invention of Russia’s foe, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The idea “that people residing in that territory were allegedly not really Russians, but rather belonged to a special ethnic group, Ukrainians, started being propagated by the Austrian General Staff,” he told Carlson.

Parts of Ukraine under Austrian rule at the time, such as the city of Lviv, indeed became centers of Ukrainian intellectual life—but only because writers, historians and poets from Kyiv had to seek refuge there as Russia outlawed the use of Ukrainian. In 1847, Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko, was detained for writing patriotic poems and sent as a forcibly conscripted soldier to Central Asia. He was allowed to return to Ukraine more than a decade later, only to be rearrested.

Putin, who once spoke about reading Shevchenko in Ukrainian as a student, no longer mentions him in his version of history, as doing so would acknowledge that Ukrainian literature predates the supposed intrigues of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff.

In the meeting with Carlson, Putin also handed over copies of letters from Bohdan Khmelnytsky, whom he described as “the man who controlled the power in this part of Russian lands that is now called Ukraine.” Khmelnytsky’s title was hetman, or duke, of Ukraine—as attested in many portraits from his time.

Recognizing that the name Ukraine has been used for centuries, however, is taboo in Putin’s Russia. In May last year, the chairman of Russia’s constitutional court, Valery Zorkin, obsequiously handed over to Putin a 17th-century map that had been found in the court’s archives.

“Why did I bring it?” Zorkin said. “Because it doesn’t show any Ukraine.”

Putin was pleased as he examined the map, explaining once again how Ukraine only came into being as a result of the Russian Revolution in 1917. “Soviet authorities created a Soviet Ukraine. Everyone knows it well. Before that, there wasn’t any Ukraine in the history of mankind,” he beamed.

The map shown by Zorkin in May is well-known and exists in many copies. Right below Kyiv, the map bears an inscription: “Ukraine: The Country of Cossacks.”

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

2. US and allies warn Chinese cyberattackers preparing for war

Excerpts from the FBIS' 1999 translation of the PLA's Unrestricted Warfare that focus on cyber and information.

[FBIS Editor's Note: The following selections are taken from "Unrestricted Warfare," a book published in China in February 1999 which proposes tactics for developing countries, in particular China, to compensate for their military inferiority vis-à-vis the United States during a high-tech war. The selections include the table of contents, preface, afterword, and biographical information about the authors printed on the cover. The book was written by two PLA senior colonels from the younger generation of Chinese military officers and was published by the PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House in Beijing, suggesting that its release was endorsed by at least some elements of the PLA leadership. This impression was reinforced by an interview with Qiao and laudatory review of the book carried by the party youth league's official daily Zhongguo Qingnian Bao on 28 June. Published prior to the bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade, the book has recently drawn the attention of both the Chinese and Western press for its advocacy of a multitude of means, both military and particularly non-military, to strike at the United States during times of conflict. Hacking into websites, targeting financial institutions, terrorism, using the media, and conducting urban warfare are among the methods proposed. In the Zhongguo Qingnian Bao interview, Qiao was quoted as stating that "the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden." Elaborating on this idea, he asserted that strong countries would not use the same approach against weak countries because "strong countries make the rules while rising ones break them and exploit loopholes . . .The United States breaks [UN rules] and makes new ones when these rules don't suit [its purposes], but it has to observe its own rules or the whole world will not trust it." (see FBIS translation of the interview, OW2807114599) [End FBIS Editor's Note]

Everyone who has lived through the last decade of the 20th century will have a profound sense of the changes in the world. We don't believe that there is anyone who would claim that there has been any decade in history in which the changes have been greater than those of this decade. Naturally, the causes behind the enormous changes are too numerous to mention, but there are only a few reasons that people bring up repeatedly. One of those is the Gulf War. One war changed the world. Linking such a conclusion to a war which occurred one time in a limited area and which only lasted 42 days seems like something of an exaggeration. However, that is indeed what the facts are, and there is no need to enumerate one by one all the new words that began to appear after 17 January 1991. It is only necessary to cite the former Soviet Union, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, cloning, Microsoft, hackers, the Internet, the Southeast Asian financial crisis, the euro, as well as the world's final and only superpower -- the United States. These are sufficient. They pretty much constitute the main subjects on this planet for the past decade

War in the age of technological integration and globalization has eliminated the right of weapons to label war and, with regard to the new starting point, has realigned the relationship of weapons to war, while the appearance of weapons of new concepts, and particularly new concepts of weapons, has gradually blurred the face of war. Does a single "hacker" attack count as a hostile act or not? Can using financial instruments to destroy a country's economy be seen as a battle? Did CNN's broadcast of an exposed corpse of a U.S. soldier in the streets of Mogadishu shake the determination of the Americans to act as the world's policeman, thereby altering the world's strategic situation? And should an assessment of wartime actions look at the means or the results? Obviously, proceeding with the traditional definition of war in mind, there is no longer any way to answer the above questions. When we suddenly realize that all these non-war actions may be the new factors constituting future warfare, we have to come up with a new name for this new form of war: Warfare which transcends all boundaries and limits, in short: unrestricted warfare.

Mao Zedong's theory concerning "every citizen a soldier" has certainly not been in any way responsible for this tendency. The current trend does not demand extensive mobilization of the people. Quite the contrary, it merely indicates that a technological elite among the citizenry have broken down the door and barged in uninvited, making it impossible for professional soldiers with their concepts of professionalized warfare to ignore challenges that are somewhat embarrassing. Who is most likely to become the leading protagonist on the terra incognita of the next war? The first challenger to have appeared, and the most famous, is the computer "hacker." This chap, who generally has not received any military training or been engaged in any military profession, can easily impair the security of an army or a nation in a major way by simply relying on his personal technical expertise. A classic example is given in the U.S. FM100-6 Information Operations regulations. In 1994, a computer hacker in England attacked the U.S. military's Rome Air Development Center in New York State, compromising the security of 30 systems. He also hacked into more than 100 other 46 systems. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) and NASA suffered damage, among others. What astounded people was not only the scale of those affected by the attack and the magnitude of the damage, but also the fact that the hacker was actually a teenager who was merely 16 years old. Naturally, an intrusion by a teenager playing a game cannot be regarded as an act of war. The problem is, how does one know for certain which damage is the result of games and which damage is the result of warfare? Which acts are individual acts by citizens and which acts represent hostile actions by non-professional warriors, or perhaps even organized hacker warfare launched by a state? In 1994, there were 230,000 security-related intrusions into U.S. DOD networks. How many of these were organized destructive acts by non-professional warriors? Perhaps there will never be any way of knowing [see Endnote 7].

More murderous than hackers--and more of a threat in the real world--are the non-state organizations, whose very mention causes the Western world to shake in its boots. These organizations, which all have a certain military flavor to a greater or lesser degree, are generally driven by some extreme creed or cause, such as: the Islamic organizations pursuing a holy war; the Caucasian militias in the U.S.; the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult; and, most recently, terrorist groups like Osama bin Ladin's, which blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The various and sundry monstrous and virtually insane destructive acts by these kinds of groups are undoubtedly more likely to be the new breeding ground for contemporary wars than is the behavior of the lone ranger hacker. Moreover, when a nation state or national armed force, (which adheres to certain rules and will only use limited force to obtain a limited goal), faces off with one of these types of organizations, (which never observe any rules and which are not afraid to fight an unlimited war using unlimited means), it will often prove very difficult for the nation state or national armed force to gain the upper hand.

During the 1990's, and concurrent with the series of military actions launched by nonprofessional warriors and non-state organizations, we began to get an inkling of a non-military type of war which is prosecuted by yet another type of non-professional warrior. This person is not a hacker in the general sense of the term, and also is not a member of a quasi-military organization. Perhaps he or she is a systems analyst or a software engineer, or a financier with a 48 large amount of mobile capital or a stock speculator. He or she might even perhaps be a media mogul who controls a wide variety of media, a famous columnist or the host of a TV program. His or her philosophy of life is different from that of certain blind and inhuman terrorists. Frequently, he or she has a firmly held philosophy of life and his or her faith is by no means inferior to Osama bin Ladin's in terms of its fanaticism. Moreover, he or she does not lack the motivation or courage to enter a fight as necessary. Judging by this kind of standard, who can say that George Soros is not a financial terrorist? Precisely in the same way that modern technology is changing weapons and the battlefield, it is also at the same time blurring the concept of who the war participants are. From now on, soldiers no longer have a monopoly on war. Global terrorist activity is one of the by-products of the globalization trend that has been ushered in by technological integration. Non-professional warriors and non-state organizations are posing a greater and greater threat to sovereign nations, making these warriors and organizations more and more serious adversaries for every professional army. Compared to these adversaries, professional armies are like gigantic dinosaurs which lack strength commensurate to their size in this new age. Their adversaries, then, are rodents with great powers of survival, which can use their sharp teeth to torment the better part of the world.

US and allies warn Chinese cyberattackers preparing for war

Newsweek · by John Feng · February 8, 2024

Chinese state-sponsored hackers are putting in place what they need for destructive cyberattacks on communications, energy, transport and water systems in the United States in case of a crisis or conflict, U.S. security agencies warned on Wednesday.

As Newsweek reported this week, Western security agencies are increasingly concerned that Chinese cyber actors are infecting critical online infrastructure in order to disrupt or disable them at short notice, in "pre-positioning" that could be vital to winning any future cyberwar.

The concerns come at a time of growing tension between the U.S. and China, which has invested widely in its military and cyber capabilities as it seeks to challenge the U.S. and achieve its goal of global pre-eminence by 2049.

The FBI recently announced a major counter-hacking operation in which U.S. agents identified a malicious botnet that had infiltrated vulnerable small office/home office internet routers in one example of pre-positioning. They successfully cut off communication between the malware and its controllers.

This week's warning on potential cyberattacks came from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Security Agency and the FBI. Their statement was part of a joint advisory released by U.S. allies Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand—members of the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance.

It said the entity behind the attacks was a state-backed hacking group in China called Volt Typhoon—also known as Vanguard Panda, Bronze Silhouette, Dev-0391, UNC3236, Voltzite and Insidious Taurus.

Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, accused the Five Eyes alliance of "smearing and attacking China without any evidence."

"The Five Eyes alliance needs to know that falsely accusing China will not hide the fact that the Five Eyes alliance is the largest global intelligence agency and the U.S. is the No. 1 hacking state in the world," Wang said.

"We keep a firm stance against all forms of cyberattacks and resort to lawful methods in tackling them," he said. "Let's stay tuned and see what else is in the alliance's play script of spreading disinformation on 'Chinese cyberattacks.'"

The former U.S. National Security Agency-run listening station radar on the Teufelsberg hill is seen from the neighboring Drachenberg hill in Berlin, Germany, on October 16, 2020. A joint advisory issued on February 7, 2024,... The former U.S. National Security Agency-run listening station radar on the Teufelsberg hill is seen from the neighboring Drachenberg hill in Berlin, Germany, on October 16, 2020. A joint advisory issued on February 7, 2024, by the Five Eyes allied nations warned that the Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as Volt Typhoon had been attempting to infiltrate U.S. critical online infrastructure in order to pre-position disruptive malware in the event of a conflict. ODD ANDERSEN/AFP via Getty Images

The warning from the U.S. and allies said Volt Typhoon had compromised the IT environments of critical infrastructure organizations, including in communications, transportation, and water and power within the continental U.S. as well as on Guam.

"Volt Typhoon's choice of targets and pattern of behavior is not consistent with traditional cyber espionage or intelligence gathering operations, and the U.S. authoring agencies assess with high confidence that Volt Typhoon actors are pre-positioning themselves on IT networks," the agencies said.

The group's tactics, including knowledge of operational security, allowed for "long-term undiscovered persistence," their statement said. "In fact, the U.S. authoring agencies have recently observed indications of Volt Typhoon actors maintaining access and footholds within some victim IT environments for at least five years."

"The U.S. authoring agencies are concerned about the potential for these actors to use their network access for disruptive effects in the event of potential geopolitical tensions and/or military conflicts," said the advisory.

China's cyberattackers target US and allied militaries

Read more

China's cyberattackers target US and allied militaries

Western intelligence and cybersecurity sources who spoke to Newsweek said the hacking activity can directly target vulnerable online nodes or infiltrate the personal systems of those working in or adjacent to U.S. defense networks. Pre-positioning allows a sophisticated adversary like China to sabotage military installations to disrupt or delay responses in wartime, they said.

"It could have a very significant impact on what we need to do to provide a series of different options that our commander in the Indo-Pacific region would want to respond with," Gen. Paul Nakasone, who retired this month as head of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, told the House China committee on January 31.

"Communications; an ability to be able to leverage our most lethal weapons systems. These are all areas that we would rely on," Nakasone said.

A Pentagon spokesperson told Newsweek last week that the U.S. was strengthening cooperation with allies in cyberspace, "and we regularly exchange information to bolster our collective preparedness to deal with cyber threats and expand avenues of cyber cooperation."

"Sharing our concerns with allies and working with them to shore up their cybersecurity remains a priority for the Department," the spokesperson said.

Newsweek · by John Feng · February 8, 2024

3. Tucker Carlson exposed Putin’s true war motive: For Russia to own Ukraine

Again, Carlson showed some usefulness in helping to allow Putin to expose his true motives.

Excerpt:

“Putin just took a couple of hours to say: ‘I must destroy Ukraine because I have no idea what Russia is,’” Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian who has written extensively on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, posted on X.

The point of his ramblings may not have been accuracy but rather to overwhelm viewers with a tsunami of facts and dates, and impress them with Putin’s seeming erudition with references to Kyivan Rus or the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Ukrainians said that Carlson was irresponsible and ineffective as an interviewer.

“The propagandist Carlson” spread “a stream of idiotism, lies and heresy,” former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk wrote on Facebook, adding: “Freedom of speech and freedom to lie should not be confused, Comrade Carlson.”

Tucker Carlson exposed Putin’s true war motive: For Russia to own Ukraine

By David L. Stern, Francesca Ebel, Mary Ilyushina and Serhiy Morgunov

February 11, 2024 at 1:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by David L. Stern · February 11, 2024

KYIV — Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, thought Vladimir Putin went to war in Ukraine because he feared an imminent attack by the United States or NATO. Instead, after a two-hour interview of the Russian president in Moscow, Carlson said he was “shocked” to learn that Putin invaded for a different reason: “Vladimir Putin believes that Russia has a historic claim to parts of … Ukraine,” he said.

“What you are about to see seemed to us sincere,” Carlson told his internet viewers before the interview was broadcast on Thursday evening: “A sincere expression of what he thinks.”

For Carlson, and the American audience that the Kremlin was aiming to reach by agreeing to the interview, that may have been a surprise. But for Ukrainians, who have been living for more than two decades with Putin denying Ukraine’s right to exist as a country separate from Russia, the interview sparked only fury.

For them, perhaps the one shock was that conservative American voters might fall for Putin’s litany of lies, half-truths and distortions, including a claim that he wants to negotiate with Washington to end the war, which would mean forcing Ukraine to surrender its territory. Ukrainians accused Carlson of being a Kremlin pawn, giving a platform to a warmongering dictator with strategic designs on influencing this year’s U.S. presidential election.

“The only thing that genuinely triggers certain reactions is that Putin, a war criminal with an arrest warrant from The Hague Tribunal, is being interviewed instead of being interrogated as he should by an investigator ” said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. “That is the only thing he should be doing in the remaining days of his life, no matter how many he has left.”

Ukrainians, however were not the Kremlin’s intended audience. Putin’s message, including a 30-minute falsehood studded history lecture, was aimed at Carlson’s demographic: Republican supporters of former president Donald Trump, many of whom have expressed admiration for the Russian leader and questioned U.S. support of Ukraine.

Putin seemed eager to convince them that Ukraine rightly belongs to Russia, and that President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are the ones prolonging the war. Whether he succeeded remains to be seen. But what is already clear is that Putin dominated the interview from start to finish.

Carlson made no mention of the war crimes allegations against Putin, and at times the host seemed out of his depth, struggling to keep up with Putin’s history lecture, with its list of dates and unfamiliar names, such as the Varangian Prince Rurik of Scandinavia — stretching back to the 10th century.

Putin, a trained KGB agent, easily sidestepped Carlson’s infrequent attempts to elicit a direct answer.

“Are we going to have a serious talk or a show?” Putin snapped at one point, after Carlson tried to prod Putin to say that he invaded Ukraine because he felt NATO might launch a surprise attack. (Carlson noted that these were Putin’s actual words to justify his invasion in 2022 — one of the few times he tried to hold the Russian leader’s feet to the fire.)

Putin also proved himself better prepared than Carlson, bringing up, to the ex-Fox News presenter’s apparent surprise, the fact that Carlson majored in history in university and had attempted — and failed — to join the CIA.

“We should thank God they didn’t let you in, although it is a serious organization, I understand,” Putin said, in what appeared to be a dig at Carlson. Putin’s remarks were translated into English and a transcript was published on Carlson’s website.

Subtle taunts aside, however, Putin used each question to hammer home his main arguments: that Russia was the aggrieved party, a victim of repeated false promises by the West. Despite this, Putin insisted, Moscow was ready to negotiate an to end the war — but with the United States, underscoring his insistence that the Ukrainian government is an illegitimate puppet of the West. President Biden has repeatedly said Ukraine must decide when, or if, to make peace.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Putin asked in response to a question about the possibility of U.S. troops being sent to Ukraine — a prospect that, contrary to Carlson’s query, has never been on the table in Washington.

“Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia — make an agreement,” Putin said, adding: “Russia will fight for its interests to the end.”

“We are ready for this dialogue,” Putin told Carlson.

The supposed willingness to negotiate, however, contrasts sharply with Russia’s long insistence that only Ukraine’s total capitulation, including a broad surrender of occupied territory, will end the war.

But it was also just one of Putin’s many misrepresentations during the interview. He also suggested, for example, that Russia troops pulled back from trying to conquer Kyiv as part of a peace deal, which was later violated by Ukraine. In fact, Russia’s forces were defeated and retreated after suffering heavy losses.

Still, some of Putin’s supporters said they believed his message would be heard in America, helping Trump to win in November and encouraging congressional Republicans to continue blocking any new aid to Ukraine.

“The result of Putin’s interview with Carlson could be that a few million Americans will say, ‘yeah, so Putin is for peace. And Trump is for peace. Only Biden and Zelensky are for war,’” pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov said. “So we should vote for Trump and against Biden and then there will be peace and no threat of nuclear war.”

Markov added that as a result of the interview, “Trump will convincingly win the election and become president of the United States, Trump and Putin will quickly agree on peace in Ukraine, and the war will be over.”

Putin also told Carlson that a main reason for the invasion, and one of Moscow’s continuing chief goals, is the “denazification” of Ukraine — part of Putin’s continuing false allegation that Kyiv is controlled by Nazis. Ukraine is a democracy, and Zelensky, who was overwhelmingly elected president in 2014, is of Jewish descent, as are other top officials. Putin’s real goal, many analysts say, is to oust Zelensky in favor of a Russian puppet regime.

The rest of the interview contained an array of Kremlin falsehoods or half-truths including Putin’s insistence that “NATO and U.S. military bases started to appear on the territory, Ukraine creating threats to us.” In fact, NATO before the invasion had rebuffed Ukraine’s efforts to join the alliance largely out of concern about antagonizing Russia.

“Mixing truth with complete falsehoods has been the Kremlin’s propaganda strategy for decades,” the Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky tweeted. “It’s what made the invasion of Ukraine possible.”

The heart of the interview was Putin’s lengthy lecture covering more than 1,000 years of history, from the creation of Kyivan Rus — a state that provided the foundation for modern Ukraine, Russia and Belarus — to the present.

Although initially promising to speak just 30 seconds on the subject, the answer lasted nearly a half-hour — all to make Putin’s case that Ukrainians are actually Russians living “on the edge” of the Russian empire.

However, Putin’s version of the history of Ukraine — as well as that of Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary — was riddled with inaccuracies, experts said. This included his false assertion that Poland “pushed” Nazi Germany to attack it and start World War II.

“Putin just took a couple of hours to say: ‘I must destroy Ukraine because I have no idea what Russia is,’” Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian who has written extensively on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, posted on X.

The point of his ramblings may not have been accuracy but rather to overwhelm viewers with a tsunami of facts and dates, and impress them with Putin’s seeming erudition with references to Kyivan Rus or the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Ukrainians said that Carlson was irresponsible and ineffective as an interviewer.

“The propagandist Carlson” spread “a stream of idiotism, lies and heresy,” former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk wrote on Facebook, adding: “Freedom of speech and freedom to lie should not be confused, Comrade Carlson.”

Ebel reported from London and Ilyushina from Riga, Latvia. Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by David L. Stern · February 11, 2024

4. Hamas Military Compound Found Beneath U.N. Agency Headquarters in Gaza

Hamas Military Compound Found Beneath U.N. Agency Headquarters in Gaza

Subterranean complex had air-conditioned room with computer servers, office space

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-military-compound-found-beneath-u-n-agency-headquarters-in-gaza-7e29c758?mod=hp_lead_pos3

By Dov LieberFollow

 and David LuhnowFollow

Updated Feb. 10, 2024 3:52 pm ET

GAZA CITY—Hidden deep below the headquarters of the United Nations’ aid agency for Palestinians here is a Hamas complex with rows of computer servers that Israel’s armed forces say served as an important communications center and intelligence hub for the Islamist militant group.

Part of a warren of tunnels and subterranean chambers carved from the Gaza Strip’s sandy soil, the compound below the United Nations Relief and Works Agency buildings in Gaza City appears to have run on electricity drawn from the U.N.’s power supply, Israeli officials said.

A Wall Street Journal reporter and journalists from other news organizations visited the site this past week in a trip organized by Israel’s military. A tunnel also appeared to pass beneath a U.N.-run school near the headquarters.

Tunnel Path Under the U.N. Relief and Works Agency's Headquarters

Israel's military says subterranean base was important intelligence hub

Government passport office

This is where the Israeli military believes the tunnel started.

Detail

GAZA

STRIP

Unrwa headquarters

This is the building above a tunnel complex with a server room, electricity room, two bathrooms and a kitchen.

Al-Jala

Gamal Abdel Nasser-Althalatheny

Al Senaa St

AI-Susi tower (above ground)

Sources: Planet (satellite image); Israeli military and WSJ reporting (locations)

The location of a Hamas military installation under important U.N. facilities is evidence, Israeli officials say, of Hamas’s widespread use of sensitive civilian infrastructure as shields to protect its militant activities. Tunnel complexes have also been found near or under some of Gaza’s largest hospitals.

Israel’s discovery of the Hamas operations below Unrwa offices is likely to put further pressure on the agency, which is facing international scrutiny after Israeli allegations that at least 12 of its employees had links to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which authorities say killed 1,200 people.

Israeli military officials assert that people working at Unrwa would have been aware of the tunnel complex, either from activities during its construction or by what they said would have been a jump in electricity usage when the complex started operating.

Unrwa said in a statement that reports of tunnels under its Gaza headquarters “merit an independent inquiry,” and said that it “does not have the military and security expertise nor the capacity to undertake military inspections of what is or might be under its premises.”

The agency, which evacuated from the Gaza City compound on Oct. 12, said Israel hadn’t officially informed it of any Hamas complex under its offices. It said that whenever a suspicious cavity has been discovered near an Unrwa facility, it has filed protest letters to authorities in Gaza as well as the Israeli government.

The Israeli military dug up a parking lot adjacent to a U.N. school to create its own entrance into the tunnel network that leads into what Israeli military officials say is a Hamas military hub underneath the headquarters of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City. PHOTO: DOV LIEBER/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

An Unrwa spokeswoman said the agency is unaware of any electricity being siphoned from its facilities by Hamas.

Unrwa under pressure from donors

Unrwa provides housing, schooling, healthcare and other services to nearly six million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The organization’s main donors, including the U.S., have frozen funding pending the outcome of an investigation into the allegations.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has pleaded with donor nations not to suspend aid for the alleged criminal acts of individual employees because Unrwa is playing the leading role in delivering aid to Gaza.

Unrwa is an unusual U.N. body, tasked with looking after just one group of people: displaced Palestinians. Some of Israel’s political leaders have argued that Unrwa should be abolished. Others say Unrwa would be difficult to replace given the breadth of services it provides, including the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

Israel has come under intense international criticism for its conduct of the war in Gaza, which has included intense airstrikes and fighting in and around hospitals, U.N. buildings and other civilian sites. More than 28,000 Gazans have been killed, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities. The figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Israeli military officials say that after the Oct. 7 attack, Israel has no choice but to destroy Hamas. They argue that they can’t accomplish that without striking Hamas installations protected by civilian infrastructure.

Some of the buildings inside the Unrwa headquarters were damaged by fighting around the compound. Plastic bottles, blankets and pillows littered the compound, where Palestinians had sought shelter earlier during the war. PHOTO: DOV LIEBER/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Unrwa’s Gaza City location last year; Unrwa is facing international scrutiny after Israeli allegations that at least 12 of its employees took part in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. PHOTO: ASHRAF AMRA/ZUMA PRESS

Israeli military officials say they have known about the complex under Unrwa’s headquarters for a few years but say they decided they couldn’t use airstrikes to target it because of the U.N. presence above.

Israel has long alleged that Hamas has penetrated Unrwa and radicalized the organization, particularly in Gaza, where Hamas came to power via a coup in 2007. Israeli military intelligence has estimated in recent weeks that roughly 10% of Unrwa’s 12,000 or so employees in Gaza, most of whom are Palestinian, have ties to the militant group, including nearly a quarter of its male employees—a percentage that Israel says is higher than the roughly 15% of Gaza males who are linked to the group, through either its military or political wings.

Unrwa has pushed back on the allegation and questioned how Israel came up with such a broad figure.

Underground lair

Journalists who accompanied the Israeli military to Gaza City’s heavily damaged al-Rimal neighborhood in northern Gaza were shown the Hamas tunnel network, which snaked for about a half-mile beneath U.N. and other buildings in the area.

To show that the subterranean intelligence hub was underneath the Unrwa compound, an Israeli military officer, a lieutenant colonel who asked to be identified by his first name, Ido, placed a few small items belonging to the journalists in a white bucket, which he lowered deep into a well-like hole dug by the Israeli military.

The next time the journalists saw their things, they were in the same bucket inside the electricity room powering the Hamas base. “20 meters above us, it’s the U.N. headquarters,” the officer said, pointing up as he handed the items back.

The officer, a commander of the 401st Brigade, described the base as an intelligence hub that directed local military operations, and said that by placing it under the Unrwa headquarters, Hamas was clearly determined to keep Israel from finding it or bombing it.

Next to the room with computer servers, which was air-conditioned, was an electricity-supply room fitted with massive batteries, apparently to serve as a backup if power was disrupted.

The electricity room and server room were beneath the Unrwa compound’s own electrical supply room, the officer said. He said wires snaked down into the underground base from the Unrwa compound, allowing Hamas to steal electricity from the U.N. agency to power its underground facility.

Electrical wires from the room could be seen heading up, while electrical wires in the Unrwa electrical room headed into the ground. The Journal couldn’t independently determine whether they were the same wires.

A room containing around eight black server racks inside what Israeli military officials say is a Hamas intelligence hub located directly underneath the Unrwa headquarters in Gaza City. PHOTO: DOV LIEBER/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

A room containing office chairs and other supplies, including two computers, in what Israeli military officials say is a strategic Hamas intelligence hub underneath the Unrwa headquarters. PHOTO: DOV LIEBER/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

To get to the server hub, the group of journalists first traveled to a location about half a mile from the U.N. headquarters, where the Israeli military had dug through a parking lot to access the tunnel network leading to the underground base. The parking lot was next to a bombed-out Unrwa school. Israel’s military said the underground network passed beneath the Unrwa school.

The group walked for some 10 minutes through the tunnel, whose ceilings were low enough that everyone had to hunch over while walking, before arriving at the heart of the underground compound. Along the way, there were several air-conditioning units. The Journal reporter hadn’t seen such units in other Hamas tunnels, which are normally hot, dusty and humid.

The compound consisted of a long, wide hall with a variety of rooms, all of which had white tiles on the floor and walls. Another room had a cluster of comfortable office chairs. An Israeli officer said that room was used as a command and control site.

Nearby, a few other rooms appeared to have been largely emptied. One room had a safe, which was closed, as well as an empty server rack. There had also been several computers in the room, said the officer, that had been taken away to be studied by the military.

Doug Madory, director of the internet firm Kentik, based in San Francisco, said the server racks could be used to process intelligence, such as phone data.

“This is a setup you might see in a small office years ago,” he said, adding, “It doesn’t mean it’s not doing something serious.” He said without knowing what was on the servers it would be hard to know what they were used for.

Near the electricity and server rooms were posters left by Hamas’s military branch, the Al-Qassam brigades, with special instructions for how the operatives should conduct themselves. One poster urged operatives to be careful to guard the site’s secrets.

“You must know that keeping secrets is a religious duty,” the poster begins in red.

Israeli military officials said they knew that Hamas was operating under Unwra’s headquarters at least as far back as spring 2021, the last time the two sides had a major conflict.

For years, Unrwa and the Israeli military have reported occasionally finding weapons caches at Unrwa schools or facilities.

In 2014, part of the parking lot at the Unrwa field office headquarters—perhaps a few hundred yards from where the Hamas tunnels now run—began sinking, likely because of Hamas tunnel work, according to a former top Unrwa official. Everyone at Unrwa knew what was happening, he said, but didn’t want to look too closely.

The Israeli military in a statement late Saturday said it had found large quantities of weapons, including rifles, ammunition, grenades and explosives, in rooms of the Unrwa buildings above the tunnel complex.

Documents discovered in the Unrwa offices indicated they were being used by Hamas, the military said.

In its Saturday statement, Unrwa said that since it evacuated its Gaza City offices in the early days of the war, it wasn’t in a position to know whether militants had entered the buildings.

The two dozen or so international staff at the Unrwa offices might have had no idea that a Hamas complex sat beneath the offices and were unlikely to check an electricity supply room, said James Lindsay, a former legal counsel for the agency.

Local staff were far more likely to know, but could have been either sympathetic to the militant group or afraid to denounce the activity. “Am I shocked that this would happen in a totalitarian state? No. People who lived under Communist rule were also afraid.”

A poster made by Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam brigades, warns its operatives to maintain secrecy inside what Israeli military officials say is a Hamas hub underneath Unrwa headquarters in Gaza City. ‘You must know that keeping secrets is a religious duty,’ the poster begins in red. PHOTO: DOV LIEBER/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com and David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is also referred to as Unrwa. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the agency as Unra in a photo caption. Corrected Feb. 10.)

5. We could all use a laugh (from Ukraine)

Excerpt:

In the old days, you could amuse a crowd with jokes about sex, workplace shenanigans, and political corruption. Now the jokes are about air-raid sirens, missile attacks – and dead Russians. 

Here’s one by Serkov, about the notoriously slippery winter Kyiv streets:

"When I would be younger, say age 12, and I tripped, I would fall and get back up, and continue walking without any problems. Now I'm 31, so when I trip, I text my mother and all my relatives, saying ‘goodbye, I'm dying!’

Recently, I tripped, and then a second guy tripped next to me. I asked him, 'what happened? Why did you trip as well?' He said, 'oh, I thought it was incoming!'"

Perhaps too many jokes are about the war, comics told me. Early in the fighting, some stand-up comics would simply proclaim how much they wanted to kill Russians, to raucous applause.

 “I believe there was some damage to the sense of humor of Ukrainians during the invasion, and probably we haven’t healed from it,” another comedian, Bohdan Boyarin, told me. Of his audience, he said, “They will probably be laughing at the kill-Russian jokes for 20, 30 years.” 

We could all use a laugh

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/we-could-all-use-a-laugh?utm

The dark art of comedy in wartime Ukraine: what was funny and isn’t anymore? Once serious but now hilarious? In reporter’s notebook: Oksana mulls over a statue for an executed Ukrainian soldier.

TIM MAK AND OKSANA OSTAPCHUK

FEB 11, 2024

∙ PAID

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The Comedy Room in Kyiv.

Last fall, when I visited the Comedy Room, Kyiv’s first venue devoted exclusively to stand-up, the mood was somber. The first act – Ivan Barbul, who founded the club – tried to warm up the crowd with a little dark humor.

"We all have a common dream: for Vladimir Putin to either die or be judged,” Barbul mused. “I don’t want him dead. I want him in court, so everyone can see him. But I’m really surprised by the location.” 

The Hague, in the Netherlands, wasn’t where Barbul thought Putin should get justice. He’d prefer the trial to take place in the southwestern-Ukrainian region of Zakarpattia: “So this asshole can wait in line a bit, like everyone does, and have to spend some time near some old stinky granny who’s in court because of her cow, so he will be all tired, and they will postpone the case,” he began. 

Then, alluding to an infamous case in Zakarpattia earlier that year, in which a teenage girl was raped and the assailants were given nothing more than probation, Barboul said he hoped for Putin to “get raped in some toilet by students, and for the judge to find them not guilty, because it’s a court in Zakarpattia.” The crowd rewarded him with laughter.

Performing in darkness, metaphorical and literal, has become the lot of Ukrainian comics in wartime. Power is intermittent even in cities. Comedians travel to the front lines to perform for soldiers and do stand-up in underground bomb shelters to soothe frightened civilians. Once, a comedy cellar actually became a makeshift bomb shelter when an air-raid siren sounded an hour before the start of a show, Dmytro Serkov, a comedian in Kyiv, told me. 

The venue filled to capacity, with people who were just there for their safety joining the ticket-holders.

View of the monument to Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko on February 9, 2024 in Kosmach, Ukraine. (Photo by Yan Dobronosov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Probably the most famous historical figure in Ukraine is 19th century poet and artist Taras Shevchenko. 

Considered a founding force behind Ukrainian national identity and a fierce critic of Russian colonialism, Shevchenko had a long history of poking the Russian Bear. Shevchenko’s cheeky warning in the poem ‘Kateryna’ makes me grin because of the discordance of the opening two lines: 

“O lovely maidens, fall in love / But not with Muscovites.” 

But it was his description of the Tsar’s wife as a “dried-up mushroom” in his poem ‘The Dream,’ a comedic tale that skewers Russian imperialism and the oppression of Ukraine, that got him imprisoned in 1847. 

It’s in this long tradition of anti-Russian humor, needling tsars both past and present, that the modern Ukrainian comedian continues. 

Before the war, many comedians performed their sets in Russian and eyed major comedy festivals in Russia as the pinnacle of career achievement. Now nearly all perform in Ukrainian – including Oleksandr Kachura, who grew up in Kharkiv, a Russian-speaking city in northeastern Ukraine. 

“Some people cannot give up smoking. I cannot give up Russian,” Kachura told me. He still mixes Russian into conversations with his wife and childhood friends, but he has quit the habit professionally. The audience won’t laugh at jokes delivered in Russian, comedians say. 

Unless, of course, the Russian language is the butt of the joke. 

“Nowadays, if we want to show some stupid person, an ignorant person, we always say this person’s sentences in Russian,” Barbul told me.

Local residents and volunteers cleaning up debris in an apartment building that was heavily damaged during a Russian missile attack in Kyiv on January 10, 2024. (Photo by Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In the old days, you could amuse a crowd with jokes about sex, workplace shenanigans, and political corruption. Now the jokes are about air-raid sirens, missile attacks – and dead Russians. 

Here’s one by Serkov, about the notoriously slippery winter Kyiv streets:

"When I would be younger, say age 12, and I tripped, I would fall and get back up, and continue walking without any problems. Now I'm 31, so when I trip, I text my mother and all my relatives, saying ‘goodbye, I'm dying!’

Recently, I tripped, and then a second guy tripped next to me. I asked him, 'what happened? Why did you trip as well?' He said, 'oh, I thought it was incoming!'"

Perhaps too many jokes are about the war, comics told me. Early in the fighting, some stand-up comics would simply proclaim how much they wanted to kill Russians, to raucous applause.

 “I believe there was some damage to the sense of humor of Ukrainians during the invasion, and probably we haven’t healed from it,” another comedian, Bohdan Boyarin, told me. Of his audience, he said, “They will probably be laughing at the kill-Russian jokes for 20, 30 years.” 

Earlier this year, a shark attacked and killed a Russian tourist in Egypt, which led to jeering from some on Ukrainian social media. One photoshopped a photo of the chief of the Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, to include a picture of a shark, like this: 

“I think the reality we live in has become darker and the humor has become darker as well,” another Ukrainian comedian, Oleksandr Kachura, told me. 

One comic told me that dead-Russian jokes are a “cheat code” for cheap laughs. And they are morally troublesome as well. “I’m actually sure that this hatred that we have developed since the beginning of the invasion toward Russians will play a bad joke on us in the future,” Boyarin said. “Because this hatred that you accumulate for so long doesn’t just go away that easily.”

At Barbul’s club, the bar sold shots of a cherry-flavored liquor and pledged the proceeds to the troops. 

Jokes have the power to strip away the fear of something, and the control that that fear has over you. You defang a wolf when you laugh at it – it’s why Tsar Nicholas I imprisoned Taras Shevchenko. The crowd, Barbul told me, was there for a palliative.

“Comedy works as an anesthetic for the soul,” he said. “People laugh about things that scare them. And then they stop being afraid of it, because they remember the joke about their fear.” 

Comedy is also, at its core, about relatability –about the audience’s rueful familiarity with the story the comedian tells. And so the jokes that stir Ukraine have begun to reveal fissures in the experiences of its people, particularly between what’s funny to civilian audiences in the country’s west, and what amuses military audiences farther east. 

“What is the nature of stand-up?” Serkov, who has traveled to the front many times to entertain the troops, asked me. “You live your life, you go through some experience, and then you speak about it.” 

Many soldiers near the front lines have a taste for harsh jokes reflecting the trauma and camaraderie of the trenches. 

“They can listen to your jokes, like about your wife or girlfriend or something, but it’s really far away from where they are now … They’re in this different, separate life,” Serkov said. 

Serkov told me that soldiers shared anecdotes with him that they thought were particularly funny. But not all of them would likely resound the same way for civilians. 

In one, a bunch of soldiers were given some goat meat and decided to barbecue it near the front lines. Smoke from their fire gave away their position, and nearby Russians started to pummel them with mortars. The Ukrainians retreated from the area for safer cover. But they didn’t want to waste the precious meat, so they played rock, paper, scissors to see who would continue rotating the meat while under bombardment.  

Another anecdote Serkov heard was from a soldier with a medical battalion. During a medical evacuation mission, this soldier was searching for a wounded comrade. Hearing his name shouted, the wounded man picked up his detached leg and started to wave with it, shouting that they should collect him now – otherwise he would start slashing Russians with his leg, as if it were a sword. 

“You had to be there,” Serkov admitted. “If you haven’t been in the trenches,” he said, you couldn’t really laugh. 

Behind the paywall: Our News of the Day section focuses on Ukraine’s primary challenge right now: the lack of troops. Meanwhile, in the reporter's notebook, Oksana asks herself tough questions about sacrifice and belonging while visiting the statue of Oleksandr Matsievsky in Kyiv. Matsievsky defiantly shouted “Glory to Ukraine!” before being executed by Russian troops.

Here’s what one reader had to say about why a Counteroffensive subscription is so important: 

"You touch the lives of people worldwide. You seek to understand. You empathize. You confess. You rejoice. You show by example that we all belong and have a right to exist as we are or as we want to be."

6. Outgunned and exhausted: what hope for Ukraine if US military aid dries up?

It is hard to fathom the irresponsibility of some of our political leaders.

Excerpt:

A simple figure sums up the problem. Ukraine is once again being outgunned in this near two-year-old war: the current estimate is that Russia is firing 10,000 artillery shells a day to Ukraine’s 2,000, a dismal ratio that may yet worsen in the absence of future US gifts of ammunition.

A recent report on the UK’s Sky News highlighted a group of Ukrainian gunners with the 22nd brigade, operating between Chasiv Yar and Russian-held Bakhmut, and featured their pleas for help and limited stockpiles of shells. Their Soviet-standard 152mm gun was fired only three times in a night to protect the supplies available.

“What that means is that Ukrainians can’t suppress Russian artillery any more, and if the Ukrainians can’t fire back, all they can do is try to survive,” said Sam Cranny-Evans, of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank.

Russia, meanwhile, has managed a transition to a war economy. Analysis by Estonia has concluded that Moscow’s factories will produce about 4.5m shells in 2024 (more than 12,000 a day), with Russia having lifted defence spending to a high but sustainable level of 6.5% of GDP. Smaller Ukraine is reliant on western industrial support, but the US political divisions mean the Pentagon has had no more money to spend since the beginning of January, while European efforts have faltered.

Outgunned and exhausted: what hope for Ukraine if US military aid dries up? | Ukraine | The Guardian

With Republicans blocking US military aid, if Europe does not plug the gap Ukraine risks slow-motion defeat

Dan Sabbagh Defence and security correspondent

Sun 11 Feb 2024 04.39 EST

amp.theguardian.com · by 

Show caption

Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk region. A current estimate is that Russia is firing 10,000 artillery shells a day to Ukraine’s 2,000. Photograph: Alina Smutko/Reuters

Ukraine

With Republicans blocking US military aid, if Europe does not plug the gap Ukraine risks slow-motion defeat

Dan Sabbagh Defence and security correspondent

Sun 11 Feb 2024 04.39 EST

Ukraine began 2024 on the defensive and Kyiv’s battlefield prospects are dimming further as Republicans in the US Congress appear increasingly to be intent on blocking future military aid. If Europe does not plug the gap, Ukraine risks slow-motion defeat from 2025.

A simple figure sums up the problem. Ukraine is once again being outgunned in this near two-year-old war: the current estimate is that Russia is firing 10,000 artillery shells a day to Ukraine’s 2,000, a dismal ratio that may yet worsen in the absence of future US gifts of ammunition.

A recent report on the UK’s Sky News highlighted a group of Ukrainian gunners with the 22nd brigade, operating between Chasiv Yar and Russian-held Bakhmut, and featured their pleas for help and limited stockpiles of shells. Their Soviet-standard 152mm gun was fired only three times in a night to protect the supplies available.

“What that means is that Ukrainians can’t suppress Russian artillery any more, and if the Ukrainians can’t fire back, all they can do is try to survive,” said Sam Cranny-Evans, of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank.

Russia, meanwhile, has managed a transition to a war economy. Analysis by Estonia has concluded that Moscow’s factories will produce about 4.5m shells in 2024 (more than 12,000 a day), with Russia having lifted defence spending to a high but sustainable level of 6.5% of GDP. Smaller Ukraine is reliant on western industrial support, but the US political divisions mean the Pentagon has had no more money to spend since the beginning of January, while European efforts have faltered.

Europe had committed to produce 1m shells for Ukraine in the year to the end of March but has fallen short and will instead produce anywhere between 480,000 to 700,000, Estonia estimates.

“In Europe, the problem has been to put together sufficiently large orders to make it worthwhile for privately owned companies to invest in expanding their capacity,” said Nick Witney, a former chief executive of the European Defence Agency. As a result, Ukraine is reliant on its own manufacturing and any remaining gifts.

Ironically, the US, which produces its shells in government-owned plants, has found ways to lift up its own production, from 28,000 last October to a projected 37,000 in April, 60,000 in October 2024 and 100,000 in October 2025, according to a US thinktank. Even that is well short of helping Ukraine match Russia on the frontline, but without the US, Europe will have to double its own already underpowered efforts in 2024.

The war is about more than artillery, of course, and Ukraine is developing alternative strategies, focusing on developing at least 1m small and cheap “first-person view” armed drones during 2024. Controlled as if in a video game, the highly manoeuvrable drones are effective in combat but their smaller payload makes them a limited substitute for artillery – while the Russians have proved able to imitate Ukrainian efforts with their own drones.

Ukraine has recognised since the beginning of December that it needs to switch to the defensive, and the president has ordered a strengthening of fortifications. As the Russians showed successfully during 2023, mining deep behind the frontlines should prevent an immediate breakthrough.

In any event, the Kremlin’s generals have still not shown they are able to attack effectively. An assault on the frontline town of Avdivvka, in the eastern Donbas, began in October and has continued, with Russian forces making incremental gains at high costs. Western intelligence estimated last week that Russia had lost 365 main battle tanks in the four months of fighting, just about ahead of Moscow’s estimated replenishment rate of about 125 tanks a month.

Ukraine nevertheless badly needs more troops to reinforce its exhausted and depleted frontline forces, with parliament debating controversial new mobilisation laws after a call from the ousted chief of staff, Valerii Zaluzhyni, for 450,000 to 500,000 fresh soldiers. It is not clear how many will ultimately be pressed into service.

Russia, meanwhile, may not mobilise further ahead of the presidential election in March, but its larger population and use of more ruthless methods always gives it an edge in numbers, able to train 130,000 every six months, according to Estonian estimates, if this is not disrupted by the need send untrained troops into Ukraine because of the number of casualties being inflicted.

There are some technologies that in effect only the US can supply in volume at present, such as Patriot interceptors, critical in the air defence of Kyiv particularly against potent Russian Iskander and Kinzhal missiles. Russia makes and fires about 100 long-range missiles a month, Ukraine estimates, and the rule of thumb is that two interceptors are needed to halt them.

A Nato contract on behalf of Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain at the beginning of January will allow for 1,000 Patriot missiles to be made in Germany at some point, some of which could eventually reach Ukraine – although Kyiv would doubtless have preferred if such an arrangement had been reached a year earlier.

The expectation is that the Ukraine war will run into 2025, not least as the Kremlin waits to see if Donald Trump – widely perceived to be more sympathetic to Vladimir Putin than to Ukraine – is elected. For Ukraine to prevail, it will most likely have to endure 2024, regroup as far as possible, and hope European politicians concentrate on basic rearmament.

“I think the war will be with us for at least another year,” said Cranny-Evans, “and the situation need not be catastrophic if European allies fill the void left by the US. Europe’s economy is still far larger than Russia’s.”

View on theguardian.com

amp.theguardian.com · by 

7. American allies worry the US is growing less dependable, whether Trump or Biden wins

We need to reflect upon this and its impact on our national security.

From yesterday's article "Our Restraint Destroys Your Deterrence" https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/02/10/our_restraint_destroys_your_deterrence_1010986.html

(Why do they always leave out north Korea?)

Remember the advice the great geopolitical thinker, Halford Mackinder, provided in 1906, “[N]one but a powerful nation is a desirable ally. Moreover, to accept an ally, and to depend upon his aid for needful power, is to give a hostage to fortune….” 

Do not rely on the United States to march or sail to your relief. The less you need our help, the more likely we are to help you. When your adversaries attack, the United States, in service of ‘peace’ and in thrall to domestic politics, will prevent you from achieving victory. Far too many of our citizens either align with adversaries, or they believe that the peace of accommodation and weakness is superior to victory.

The autocracies of Eurasia – China, Russia, and Iran, with their proxies – have entered an alliance and are coordinating their actions, aimed at destroying the Pax Americana and the Westphalian order.

American allies worry the US is growing less dependable, whether Trump or Biden wins

By Jill Lawless | AP

AP · February 11, 2024

LONDON (AP) — As chances rise of a Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch in the U.S. presidential election race, America’s allies are bracing for a bumpy ride.

Many worry that a second term for Trump would be an earthquake, but tremors already abound — and concerns are rising that the U.S. could grow less dependable regardless of who wins. With a divided electorate and gridlock in Congress, the next American president could easily become consumed by manifold challenges at home — before even beginning to address flashpoints around the world from Ukraine to the Middle East.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent verdict was blunt: America’s “first priority is itself.”

The first Trump administration stress-tested the bonds between the U.S. and its allies, particularly in Europe. Trump derided the leaders of some friendly nations, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s Theresa May, while praising authoritarians such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He has called China’s Xi Jinping “brilliant” and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán “a great leader.”

In campaign speeches, Trump remains skeptical of organizations such as NATO, often lamenting the billions the U.S. spends on the military alliance whose support has been critical to Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion.

He said at a rally on Saturday that, as president, he’d warned NATO allies he would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that didn’t pay their way in the alliance. Trump also wrote on his social media network that in future the U.S. should end all foreign aid donations and replace them with loans.

Biden, meanwhile, has made support for Ukraine a key priority and moral imperative. But Biden’s assertion after his election in 2020 that “America is back” on the global stage has not been entirely borne out. Congressional Republicans have stalled more military aid for Ukraine, while America’s influence has been unable to contain conflict in the Middle East

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, right, reaches past U.S. President Joe Biden to shake hands with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda as they stand with other NATO members, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, left, during a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council in Vilnius, Lithuania, Wednesday, July 12, 2023. (Doug Mills/Pool via AP, File)

Then-U.S. President Donald Trump, right, meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, Friday, July 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Thomas Gift, director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, said that whoever wins the presidential race, the direction of travel will be the same – toward a multipolar planet in which the United States is no longer “the indisputable world superpower.”

Most allied leaders refrain from commenting directly on the U.S. election, sticking to the line that it’s for Americans to pick their leader.

They are conscious that they will have to work with the eventual winner, whoever it is — and behind the scenes, governments will be doing the “backroom work” of quietly establishing links with the contenders’ political teams, said Richard Dalton, a former senior British diplomat.

But many of America’s European NATO allies are worried that with or without Trump, the U.S. is becoming less reliable. Some have started to talk openly about the need for members to ramp up military spending, and to plan for an alliance without the United States.

U.S. President Joe Biden walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Feb. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “currently on the phone a lot with my colleagues and asking them to do more” to support Ukraine. Germany is the second-largest donor of military aid to Kyiv, behind the U.S., but Scholz recently told Die Zeit that the country couldn’t fill any gap on its own if “the U.S.A. ceased to be a supporter.”

Russia, meanwhile, is busy bolstering ties with China, Iran and North Korea and trying to chip away at Ukraine’s international support.

Macron also suggested American attention was focused far from Europe. If Washington’s top priority is the U.S., he said its second is China.

“This is also why I want a stronger Europe, that knows how to protect itself and isn’t dependent on others,” Macron said at a January news conference.

Trump does have supporters in Europe, notably pro-Russia populists such as Hungary’s Orbán. But former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson raised some eyebrows when he argued recently that “a Trump presidency could be just what the world needs.”

Johnson is a strong supporter of Ukraine in its struggle against Russian invasion, whereas Trump has frequently praised Putin and said he’d end the war within 24 hours. However, Johnson said in a Daily Mail column that he didn’t believe Trump would “ditch the Ukrainians,” but instead would help Ukraine win the war, leaving the West stronger “and the world more stable.”

Bronwen Maddox, director of the international affairs think tank Chatham House, said arguments like that underestimate “how destabilizing” Trump has been, and likely would continue to be if reelected.

“For those who say his first term did not do much damage to international order, one answer is that he took the U.S. out of the JCPOA, the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s acceleration of its work since then has left it a threshold nuclear weapon state,” she said during a recent speech on the year ahead.

Biden was a critic of Trump’s Iran policy but hasn’t managed to rebuild bridges with Tehran, which continues to flex its muscles across the region.

Dalton, a former U.K. ambassador to Iran, said prospects for the Middle East would be “slightly worse” under Trump than Biden. But he said divergence on the region’s main tensions — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran’s ambitions — would be limited.

“No U.S. administration is going to make a serious effort to resolve differences with Iran through diplomacy,” Dalton told The Associated Press. “That ship sailed quite some time ago.”

Palestinians and their supporters, meanwhile, implore Biden to temper U.S. support for Israel as the civilian death toll from the war in Gaza climbs. But hard-liners in Israel argue the U.S. is already restraining the offensive against Hamas too much.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, recently said Biden was not giving Israel his “full backing” and that “if Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”

Much like its allies, America’s rivals are not openly expressing a preference for the election outcome.

Trump developed a strong rapport with Turkey’s Erdogan, calling them “very good friends” during a 2019 meeting at the White House.

Yet Turkey-U.S. relations were fraught during his tenure. The Trump administration removed Turkey from its F-35 fighter jet project over Ankara’s decision to purchase Russian-made missile defense systems, while Trump himself threatened to ruin Turkey’s economy.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told CBS in January that he doesn’t “believe there will be any difference” between a Trump and a Biden presidency. He argued that Russia-U.S. relations have been going downhill since George W. Bush’s administration.

China, where leaders’ initial warmth toward Trump soured into tit-for-tat tariffs and rising tensions, little changed under Biden, who continued his predecessor’s tough stance toward the United States’ strategic rival.

Zhao Minghao, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, said that for China, the two candidates were like “two ‘bowls of poison.’”

Gift, from University College London, said the move to a more fractured world is “going to happen regardless of whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden is elected.”

“It’s just sort of a reality,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Jiwon Song in Seoul, South Korea, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, Nomaan Merchant in Washington, and Jill Colvin and Michelle Price in New York contributed to this story.

AP · February 11, 2024

8. Former Houthi Rebel Reveals Secret U.S. Blind Spots in Red Sea Crisis

Former Houthi Rebel Reveals Secret U.S. Blind Spots in Red Sea Crisis

THINK TWICE

A former Houthi member offered a stark warning to the U.S. after weeks of failed efforts to thwart attacks from the Iran-backed group.

Shannon Vavra

National Security Reporter

Updated Feb. 11, 2024 3:30AM EST / Published Feb. 10, 2024 7:24PM EST

The Daily Beast · February 11, 2024

exclusive

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

The United States and the U.K. have been trying to counter the Houthis’ unrelenting attacks in the Red Sea for weeks now, striking at their missiles, radars, ground control, and command and control.

But that strategy seems to be backfiring. The Houthis have not stopped their attacks in the Red Sea, in part because the Biden administration’s approach to deterring the Houthis has been flawed from the start, according to a former member of the Houthi movement, Ali Albukhaiti.

Instead of leaving the Houthis interested in halting their attacks, the Biden administration’s actions have likely inspired the Houthis to double down, Albukhaiti told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview through a translator.

“The Houthis, first of all, they’re energized by the whole idea now that they’re fighting the United States,” Albukhaiti, a former spokesperson for the Houthis, said. “The current approach will likely end with… they’re able to mobilize more people.”

The U.S. is struggling to halt the attacks partially because it has been targeting easily replaceable artillery, Albukhaiti warned. “Their kind of capability is simply the ability to keep launching missiles,” Albukhaiti said. “These are replaceable, very mobile, and they can be replaced by the waves of either smuggling and sending weapons that they are supplied by Iran.”

The liquefied petroleum gas tanker GAZ INTERCEPTOR, flying the Panama flag, is moored off the coast of Cyprus. Limassol, Cyprus, Friday, January 26, 2024 because of attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels in the Red Sea.

Danil Shamkin/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The Houthis have been carrying out attacks against vessels and international shipping crew in the Red Sea ever since Israel launched its war in Gaza, following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The group—which has launched at least 41 attacks so far, upending global shipping—has suggested they will only stop if Israel ends its war in Gaza.

The United States and the U.K. stepped up its response and began striking back at Houthi sites inside Yemen last month, with the purpose of degrading the group’s capability to launch attacks in the first place.

“We are going to continue to work with our partners in the region to prevent those attacks or deter those attacks in the future,” Pentagon Spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters last month.

When pressed by reporters in recent days if the current approach is having the intended effect, the Pentagon insisted that it is.

“We do assess that we are having an impact on their capability,” Ryder said this week.

But the Houthi attacks continue, fueling concerns about whether the Biden administration has a handle on the crisis. Just this week, Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles attacked a bulk carrier and a cargo ship, forcing a U.S. destroyer to respond, U.S. Central Command said on Wednesday.

Treading Carefully

There are dire consequences to miscalculating the Houthi threat, Albukhaiti warned.

If the current threat is not handled properly the United States and other countries run the risk that the Houthis escalate and block the Bab al-Mandeb strait, for instance, he said—something the Houthis have been warning they could do for years.

“If the United States does not take the current threat seriously… they are going to have to be ready for a future conflict at the Red Sea that they're gonna pay a much bigger price in terms of loss of life, in terms of financial resources, and in terms of military loss.”

Several lawmakers have been urging the Biden administration to take action against Iran in order to pressure the Houthis into halting their attacks.

U.S. officials have been stressing over the possibility that the Israel-Gaza war might spill over into a wider war, and have repeatedly said they don’t want a war with Iran. Rather than hit inside Iran, the administration is likely carrying out its counterattacks in their current form as a way to sidestep confrontation, said Emily Harding, former director for Iran on the White House National Security Council.

“I suspect what the Biden administration is really after here is a degradation of capabilities. If they can make it so that the rocket launch sites on the coast are incapable of firing, that’s a win. If they can eliminate some of the stores that they’ve stocked up of Iranian weapons, that’s a big win,” Harding told The Daily Beast. “If they can make it clear to the Iranians, look, you can keep pouring money and resources into this group and we’re gonna keep shooting at them, then that’s a win.”

The name of the game is “degrade the Houthis, deter the Iranians,” Harding said.

But even if the Iranians somehow receive the message, Iranian influence might not be enough to stop the Houthis, warned Albukhaiti.

People lift rifles and placards as they chant during an anti-Israel and anti-US rally in the Huthi-controlled capital Sanaa in Yemen on January 19, 2024,

MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP via Getty Images

“The Houthis are not mere followers of Iran. They are in an alliance with Iran. They receive a lot of weapons and funding. But they will not simply be deterred by just the Iranians telling them to do so,” he told The Daily Beast.

For the Houthis, continuing their current campaign may be a domestic political play as well, Dan Byman, former Middle East analyst for the U.S. intelligence community, warned.

“The Houthis are unpopular in large parts of Yemen, in part because of the other horrific, truly horrific, economic conditions there, but also the repression,” Byman said. “This conflict is a way of gaining nationalistic support—the support for the Palestinians is almost universal in Yemen. It's a way of presenting themselves with kind of the right side of history.”

Iran may also be leaning into the current chaos to prop up its own image on the international stage, according to Albukhaiti.

“It’s a convenient way to use the Houthis. Because it distracts the attention from Iran. Iran in a way looks like it’s acting much more responsible compared to the Houthis,” he said.

It’s also possible that Iran isn’t going to stop supplying the Houthis—and instead decide to increase their supply of weapons, Byman predicted.

“I think Iran will continue and it’s actually quite possible that Iran will increase it… to show… that even if the U.S. strikes back, that Iran will stick behind them, and that’s a reason to continue working with Iran,” Byman told The Daily Beast.

On Wednesday, Israel vowed to continue the war until “absolute victory,” clashing with the Houthis’ stated goal of ending Israel’s assault in Gaza in order to call off its campaign in the Red Sea.

But for the Houthis to back down, the United States or other allies likely need to make it clear that they are forming a counter-Houthi coalition, akin to the countering ISIS global coalition, according to Albukhaiti.

“If the Houthis do not feel that there is an actual possibility of losing their position of power inside Yemen, they’re not going to be deterred,” he told The Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast · February 11, 2024

9. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 10, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-10-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Delays in Western security assistance may lead to significant Ukrainian air defense missile shortages that could allow Russian forces to bomb Ukrainian forces or even front-line cities more aggressively.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Major General Anatoliy Barhylevych as Chief of the Ukrainian General Staff, replacing Lieutenant General Serhiy Shaptala.
• Russian drone footage published on February 9 showed Russian forces executing Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) near Klishchiivka in the Bakhmut direction.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated several Kremlin narratives aimed at justifying Russia’s war in Ukraine and threatening the West at a ceremony honoring Diplomats’ Day on February 10.
• Kremlin mouthpieces reiterated ongoing Russian narratives blaming the West, specifically the United States, for the absence of constructive peace negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite numerous Russian statements indicating that Russia is not interested in good-faith peace negotiations with Ukraine.
•  The Russian State Duma is considering a bill aimed at further censoring actors designated as “foreign agents,” likely aimed at censoring dissent from opposition media outlets and prominent information space voices.
• Russian forces made confirmed advances near Kreminna and Avdiivka.
• The relatives of mobilized Russian soldiers continue to protest throughout Russia despite previous Kremlin efforts to censor similar protests and suppress any possible resurgence of a broader social movement in support of mobilized Russian soldiers.
• Russian and occupation officials continue to set conditions for the deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine through educational and extracurricular schemes.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 10, 2024

Feb 10, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 10, 2024

Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, Riley Bailey, and Fredrick W. Kagan

February 10, 2024, 6:10pm ET 

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:15pm ET on February 10 ISW will cover subsequent reports in the February 11 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Delays in Western security assistance may lead to significant Ukrainian air defense missile shortages that could allow Russian forces to bomb Ukrainian forces or even front-line cities more aggressively. The New York Times reported on February 9 that American officials assess that Ukrainian air defense missile stocks will run out in March 2024 without further replenishment by Western security assistance.[1] Ukrainian officials have recently warned that Ukraine is facing a “critical shortage” of air defense missiles as delays in Western aid continue to force Ukraine to husband materiel.[2] Russian forces have routinely pressured Ukraine’s limited air defense umbrella through missile and drone strikes integrating Iranian and North Korean weapons with Russian systems against rear Ukrainian areas in an effort to force Ukrainian forces to expend air defense missiles and to draw and fix Ukrainian air defense systems away from the frontline.[3] Ukrainian forces previously shot down tactical Russian aircraft in Kherson Oblast in December 2023, which had a temporary chilling effect on Russian aviation support for Russian ground operations throughout the theater.[4] Ukrainian forces also shot down a Russian A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft on January 14 which similarly led to a temporary decrease in Russian aviation operations over the Sea of Azov.[5] The intensification of the Russian strike campaign in recent weeks likely further pressured Ukraine’s air defense umbrella and may have forced Ukraine to redeploy air defenses that were previously able to place constraints on Russian tactical aviation operating along the front and in the Russian rear.

Russian aviation reportedly intensified operations supporting Russian offensive operations in eastern Ukraine in January 2024, particularly near Avdiivka, suggesting that limited Ukrainian air defense missile stocks may be giving Russian aviation more opportunities to attack.[6] Critical Ukrainian shortages of air defense missiles could permit Russian forces to operate aircraft, especially manned aircraft that generally carry heavier payloads, closer to and beyond the current frontline in Ukraine at scale. The Russian military has yet to conduct consistent large-scale aviation operations supporting Russian ground offensives in Ukraine, and the intensification of Russian aviation operations at scale would represent a significant threat to Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Major General Anatoliy Barhylevych as Chief of the Ukrainian General Staff, replacing Lieutenant General Serhiy Shaptala.[7] Zelensky noted on February 10 that Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi recommended Barhylevych, and Syrskyi congratulated Barhylevych on his appointment.[8] Zelensky appointed Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi as the Deputy Commander-in-Chief responsible for unmanned systems and Colonel Andriy Lebedenko as the Deputy Commander-in-Chief responsible for innovation.[9] Zelensky also appointed Brigadier General Volodymyr Horbatiuk as the Deputy Chief of the General Staff responsible for operations, planning, and management; Brigadier General Oleksii Shevchenko as the Deputy Chief of the General Staff responsible for logistics; and Brigadier General Mykhailo Drapatyi as the Deputy Chief of the General Staff responsible for training.[10]

Russian drone footage published on February 9 showed Russian forces executing Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) near Klishchiivka in the Bakhmut direction.[11] The footage shows a Russian soldier executing an unarmed Ukrainian prisoner surrendering with his hands raised and killing a second Ukrainian prisoner after throwing a grenade into a dugout. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has started a pre-trial investigation and criminal proceedings. Attacking soldiers recognized as hors de combat, specifically including those who have clearly expressed an intention to surrender, is a violation of Article 41 of the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflict.[12] Similar previous footage has shown Russian forces executing Ukrainian POWs near Robotyne in western Zaporizhia Oblast and near Stepove in the Avdiivka direction in December 2023.[13] The Russian Southern Grouping of Forces is responsible for the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions, and a separate unnamed Russian grouping of forces is responsible for western Zaporizhia Oblast, indicating that the practice of executing Ukrainian POWs is not limited to a single sector of the front or an area under one Russian grouping of forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated several Kremlin narratives aimed at justifying Russia’s war in Ukraine and threatening the West at a ceremony honoring Diplomats’ Day on February 10. Putin claimed that one of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) priorities is to “unite the multinational and multi-confessional Russian World (Russkiy Mir) by supporting [Russia’s] compatriots abroad.”[14] The Kremlin had repeatedly claimed that the Russian World, which is vaguely defined as including ethnic Russians and Russian speakers abroad, includes Ukrainians and that Russia’s invasions of Ukraine were allegedly in the defense of “compatriots abroad” in Ukraine.[15] Putin’s calls for the unification of the multinational and multi-confessional Russian World are at odds with Russian authorities’ actual persecution of ethnic groups and religions, including some Christian sects, in Russia and occupied Ukraine.[16] Kremlin officials and mouthpieces have also recently invoked the idea of Russia’s “compatriots abroad” and intensified rhetorical attacks surrounding Soviet historical monuments in neighboring states to set information conditions to justify possible future Russian aggression abroad.[17] Putin’s speech indicates that these efforts will likely remain a Kremlin priority going forward.

Lavrov also spoke on Diplomat’s Day and reiterated Kremlin narratives about the emergence of a new multipolar world.[18] Lavrov continued to sharply criticize the West for trying to “impose an unjust unipolar neocolonial model” on the world. Lavrov claimed that the West objects to Russia’s support of the principles of international law, especially the principle of the sovereign equality of states, despite the fact that Russia has repeatedly undermined and attacked Ukraine‘s independence, statehood, and sovereignty, all of which it specifically guaranteed in 1991 and 1994.[19]  ISW previously observed Kremlin attempts to appeal to wider audiences that likely do not identify with the ideology of the Russian World, and Lavrov’s statements are likely intended for an international audience, especially in those countries that Lavrov listed as having growing ties with Russia, including Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela as well as Iran and North Korea.[20]

Kremlin mouthpieces reiterated ongoing Russian narratives blaming the West, specifically the United States, for the absence of constructive peace negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite numerous Russian statements indicating that Russia is not interested in good-faith peace negotiations with Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov claimed on February 10 that the Kremlin has not seen any indications of America’s desire or political will for peace negotiations with Russia.[21] Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova similarly claimed that the prospects of dialogue between Russia and the US depend entirely on American willingness to negotiate “on the basis of mutual respect.”[22] Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin also reiterated Kremlin claims that the West does not want peace in Ukraine and wants to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.[23] Peskov’s and Zakharova’s emphasis on negotiations with the United States are part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to frame the West as the only meaningful negotiating partner in Ukraine in order to convince the West to accept the Kremlin’s premise that Ukraine has no independent agency and to gain concessions from the West that undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russian President Vladimir Putin attempted to further the long-standing Kremlin information operation that falsely asserts that Russia is interested in a negotiated end to its war in Ukraine during a February 8 interview but instead illustrated throughout the interview that Russia has no interest in good faith negotiations, as ISW continues to assess.[24] Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly signaled and at times openly stated that Russia has not abandoned its maximalist objectives in Ukraine, which ISW assesses amount to full Ukrainian and Western capitulation.[25]

The Russian State Duma is considering a bill aimed at further censoring actors designated as “foreign agents,” likely aimed at censoring dissent from opposition media outlets and prominent information space voices. Head of the Russian State Duma Commission on Investigations of Foreign Interference in Internal Affairs Vitaly Piskarev stated on February 10 that the Duma has prepared and is considering a bill that will ban Russian citizens and companies from advertising on platforms owned by entities designated as “foreign agents.”[26] Russian State Duma Chairperson Vyacheslav Volodin added that Russia should prevent foreign agents from earning any income in Russia.[27] This bill will heavily impact Russian opposition media sources, many of which are legally designated as foreign agents. These media outlets may have to shutter their operations or move primary operations outside of Russia to maintain their sources of income, which may impact their ability to reliably report on news in Russia. Other information space actors, such as opposition-leaning media outlets without the foreign agent label or fringe ultranationalist milbloggers who rely on advertising revenue from their Telegram channels, may further self-censor their content to avoid earning the foreign agent designation and maintain sources of income. The Kremlin is notably cracking down on dissent in and consolidating control over the Russian information space ahead of the March 2024 elections, and this bill likely aims to severely restrict opposition media sources while reinforcing pressures to self-censor in the Russian information space.

Key Takeaways:

• Delays in Western security assistance may lead to significant Ukrainian air defense missile shortages that could allow Russian forces to bomb Ukrainian forces or even front-line cities more aggressively.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Major General Anatoliy Barhylevych as Chief of the Ukrainian General Staff, replacing Lieutenant General Serhiy Shaptala.
• Russian drone footage published on February 9 showed Russian forces executing Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) near Klishchiivka in the Bakhmut direction.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated several Kremlin narratives aimed at justifying Russia’s war in Ukraine and threatening the West at a ceremony honoring Diplomats’ Day on February 10.
• Kremlin mouthpieces reiterated ongoing Russian narratives blaming the West, specifically the United States, for the absence of constructive peace negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite numerous Russian statements indicating that Russia is not interested in good-faith peace negotiations with Ukraine.
•  The Russian State Duma is considering a bill aimed at further censoring actors designated as “foreign agents,” likely aimed at censoring dissent from opposition media outlets and prominent information space voices.
• Russian forces made confirmed advances near Kreminna and Avdiivka.
• The relatives of mobilized Russian soldiers continue to protest throughout Russia despite previous Kremlin efforts to censor similar protests and suppress any possible resurgence of a broader social movement in support of mobilized Russian soldiers.
• Russian and occupation officials continue to set conditions for the deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine through educational and extracurricular schemes.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
• Activities in Russian-Occupied Areas
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives
• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces recently advanced south of Kreminna amid continued positional fighting along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on February 10. Geolocated footage published on February 9 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced on the eastern outskirts of Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna).[28] Positional fighting continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; northwest of Svatove near Ivanivka, Tabaivka, and Krokhmalne; west of Kreminna near Terny, Yampolivka, and Torske; southwest of Kreminna near Dibrova and the Serebryanske forest area; and south of Kreminna near Hryhorivka and Bilohorivka.[29] Ukrainian Khortytsia Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces have recently decreased indirect fire in the Kupyansk direction likely due to poor weather conditions in the area.[30]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces reportedly advanced near Bakhmut amid continued positional engagements in the area on February 10. Russian milbloggers claimed that elements of the Russian 98th Airborne (VDV) Division advanced in a forest area south of Bohdanivka (northwest of Bakhmut).[31] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued northeast of Bakhmut near Vyimka and Rozdolivka, northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka, west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske, southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka, and south of Bakhmut near Pivdenne and Shumy.[32]

Russian forces recently made a confirmed advance in southern Avdiivka and reportedly made further advances in northern Avdiivka. Geolocated footage published on February 9 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced along Chernyshevskoho, Sportyvna, and Soborna streets in southern Avdiivka.[33] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces advanced from the Tsarska Okhota restaurant area in southeastern Avdiivka.[34] Russian milbloggers also claimed that Russian forces advanced in northern Avdiivka along Sapronova and Lesy Ukrainky streets and towards Hrushevskoho Street as well as in northeastern Avdiivka near the quarry, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[35] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces hold positions roughly 700 meters from Ukraine's alleged main ground line of communication (GLOC) in Avdiivka along Hrushevskoho Street, which is largely consistent with ISW’s assessment of Russian advances in the area.[36] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued northwest of Avdiivka near Keramik, Novobakhmutivka, Stepove, and Ocheretyne; near the Avdiivka Coke Plant in northwestern Avdiivka; and southwest of Avdiivka near Sieverne, Tonenke, Pervomaiske, and Nevelske.[37] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated that elements of the Russian 114th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Army Corps), reinforced with elements of the 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Combined Arms Army [CAA], Central Military District [CMD]), advanced along Michurina and Zaliznychnyi streets and towards the railway overpass near Chystiakova Street in northern Avdiivka in the past few days.[38] Mashovets stated that elements of the Russian 55th Motorized Rifle Brigade (41st CAA, CMD) are operating north of Optyne (south of Avdiivka).

Russian forces reportedly advanced west of Donetsk City amid continued positional engagements west and southwest of Donetsk City on February 10. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced in eastern Heorhiivka (west of Donetsk City).[39] A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces recaptured previously lost positions on the southern outskirts of Novomykhailivka, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[40] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Pobieda, Novomykhailivka, and Vodyane.[41] Mashovets stated that Russian forces are preparing to intensify assault operations near Novomykhailivka even though available Russian manpower and materiel in the area are limited.[42] Mashovets stated that elements of the Russian 39th Motorized Rifle Brigade (68th Army Corps, Eastern Military District) are trying to advance from Solodke to Vodyane (southwest of Novomykhailivka) while also advancing towards Novomykhailivka from the south. Mashovets stated that Russian efforts in the Marinka-Novomykhailivka area are aimed at pushing Ukrainian forces out of positions east of the O0532 Marinka-Vuhledar road. Elements of the Russian 238th Artillery Brigade (8th CAA, Southern Military District) are reportedly operating near Heorhiivka.[43]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Positional fighting continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on February 10. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that there were positional engagements south of Zolota Nyva (southeast of Velyka Novosilka), near Urozhiane and Staromayorske (both south of Velyka Novosilka), southwest of Rivnopil (southwest of Velyka Novosilka), and north of Pryyutne (southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[44] Elements of the Russian 5th Combined Arms Army (Eastern Military District), including elements of its 60th Motorized Rifle Brigade, are operating south of Velyka Novosilka near Staromayorske and Orlynske.[45]

Positional engagements continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast near Robotyne and west of Verbove (east of Robotyne) and Novopokrovka (northeast of Robtoyne) on February 10.[46] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced from Kamianske (35km northwest of Robotyne) and achieved unspecified success near Kopani (west of Robotyne) and Robotyne.[47]

Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast, including near Krynky.[48]

Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed on February 10 that Russian patrol ships and electronic warfare (EW) systems intercepted several Ukrainian naval drones targeting Russian civilian transport ships in the southwestern Black Sea.[49]

Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign (Russian Objective: Target Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure in the rear and on the frontline)

Ukrainian military sources reported that Russian forces launched 31 Shahed drones from occupied Cape Chauda, Crimea, and Kursk Oblast and that Ukrainian forces downed 23 drones over Odesa and Kharkiv oblasts.[50] Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Colonel Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces conducted three waves of drone strikes on Odesa City and Oblast and damaged port infrastructure.[51] Ukrainian officials stated that Russian drones struck civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv City and Velykyi Burluk, Kharkiv Oblast, killing several civilians including children.[52] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian drones struck an oil depot in Kharkiv City.[53]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

The relatives of mobilized Russian soldiers continue to protest throughout Russia despite previous Kremlin efforts to censor similar protests and suppress any possible resurgence of a broader social movement in support of mobilized Russian soldiers. Russian opposition outlets Sota and Mobilization News published footage on February 10 showing members of the Russian “Way Home” social movement laying flowers and gathering at monuments in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, and Yekaterinburg to call for the demobilization of their relatives.[54] Mobilization News reported that ”Way Home” members also visited the campaign headquarters of Russian presidential candidate Vladislav Davankov in Moscow and submitted letters advocating for demobilization to Davankov’s team.[55] Russian authorities recently attempted to censor a protest by ”Way Home” members at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow and nearby Manezhanaya Square.[56] ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin’s efforts to censor and discredit the ”Way Home” social movement underscore the Kremlin’s desperation to shut down these movements, particularly ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential election.[57]

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Kalashnikov Concern drone production facilities in the Udmurt Republic on February 10. Shoigu also visited a facility belonging to Lancet drone manufacturer and Kalashnikov Concern subsidiary Zala Aero and inspected the drone production lines and new drone models.[58] Kalashnikov representatives told Shoigu that Kalashnikov has increased its drone production volume by 60 percent since 2022. Shoigu highlighted the Russian military’s demand for anti-aircraft guided missiles to protect critical infrastructure and economic facilities, specifically oil and gas refineries. Ukrainian actors have recently conducted several successful drone strikes against Russian oil refineries in Leningrad and Volgograd oblasts and Krasnodar Krai.[59]

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)  

Nothing significant to report.

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

Nothing significant to report.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian and occupation officials continue to set conditions for the deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine through educational and extracurricular schemes. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated on February 10 that Russian Presidential Administration First Deputy Head Sergey Kiriyenko met with Ukrainian children in occupied Kherson Oblast to discuss future educational and extracurricular opportunities in Russia.[60] Russia has routinely used educational and youth engagement programs as avenues to deport Ukrainian children to Russia.[61]

Russian occupation officials continue to consolidate control over agricultural enterprises in occupied Ukraine. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration stated on February 10 that it signed an agreement to join the All-Russian “People’s Farmer” Association, a non-governmental business organization that works closely with the Russian Ministry of Agriculture and the Russian Agricultural Bank.[62] The “People’s Farmer” Association stated on February 8 that it signed cooperation agreements with the Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk Oblast occupation administrations.[63]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian officials and Kremlin mouthpieces targeted Germany using longstanding information operations that aim to discourage further security assistance to Ukraine. Russian Ambassador to Germany Sergei Nechaev claimed that German military assistance to Ukraine is prolonging Russia’s war in Ukraine and accused Germany of harboring “everyday Russophobia” against Russians.[64] Nechaev’s claim that Western aid prolongs the war in the current context of Russian rhetoric implies a sense of triumphalism that Russia would be able to win quickly in Ukraine if Western military assistance stopped. Prominent Russian milbloggers, including a Kremlin-affiliated milblogger, levied claims that Germany’s industrial sector is suffering under its current government, likely aimed at discouraging domestic German support for continued assistance to Ukraine.[65]

Russian officials and Kremlin mouthpieces continue to accuse Moldova and Latvia of discriminating against Russians over efforts to remove Soviet-era monuments and alleged issues with Russian polling stations abroad, likely creating justifications for future escalation against these states. The Russian Investigative Committee announced on February 9 that it is opening an investigation into the alleged demolition of part of a Soviet-era monument to Soviet soldiers in Bilicenii Vechi, Moldova.[66] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger also criticized Moldova for gravitating away from Russia and towards the European Union.[67] Russian Ambassador to Latvia Oleg Zykov claimed that Latvia is intentionally attempting to prevent Russians in Latvia from voting in the upcoming March 2024 Russian presidential election.[68]

Senior Russian diplomats continue to criticize international institutions and frame Western states as threats to Russia. Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) Vasily Nebenzya reiterated several ongoing Kremlin rhetorical lines during an interview with Kremlin newswire TASS, including portraying the US as an inept leader of the UN, portraying UN leadership itself as inept, and claiming that the UN’s now defunct Black Sea grain initiative poses a security threat to Russia.[69] Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin stated that he expects members of the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to ”more clearly” object to ”anti-Russian” policies in the UN and criticized Ukraine and Moldova for gravitating towards the West.[70]

Significant Activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Nothing significant to report.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

10. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, February 10, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-february-10-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Northern Gaza Strip: The Israel Defense Forces published details of a division-sized clearing operation it has been conducting for the past two weeks in western Gaza City.
• Southern Gaza Strip: The Israel Defense Forces continued to conduct clearing operations in western Khan Younis.
• Political Negotiations: Unidentified Egyptian officials warned that Egypt would suspend the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty if Israel conducted a ground operation into Rafah.
• West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters four times.
• Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
• Iraq: The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed that the United States violated “the rules of engagement” when it killed senior Kataib Hezbollah member Wissam Mohammed Saber al Saedi.
• Yemen: US Central Command forces conducted preemptive, self-defense strikes targeting Houthi unmanned surface vessels and missiles.

IRAN UPDATE, FEBRUARY 10, 2024

Feb 10, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, February 10, 2024

Ashka Jhaveri, Johanna Moore, Amin Soltani, Kathryn Tyson, Peter Mills, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST 

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Key Takeaways:

• Northern Gaza Strip: The Israel Defense Forces published details of a division-sized clearing operation it has been conducting for the past two weeks in western Gaza City.
• Southern Gaza Strip: The Israel Defense Forces continued to conduct clearing operations in western Khan Younis.
• Political Negotiations: Unidentified Egyptian officials warned that Egypt would suspend the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty if Israel conducted a ground operation into Rafah.
• West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters four times.
• Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
• Iraq: The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed that the United States violated “the rules of engagement” when it killed senior Kataib Hezbollah member Wissam Mohammed Saber al Saedi.
• Yemen: US Central Command forces conducted preemptive, self-defense strikes targeting Houthi unmanned surface vessels and missiles.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) engaged in “intense” fighting with Palestinian fighters in the northern and central Gaza Strip on February 10.[1] Hamas fighters fired anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) targeting Israeli forces southwest of the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City.[2] Palestinian media reported on February 10 that Israeli artillery targeted areas in eastern Jabalia.[3] The IDF Nahal Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) killed and detained an unspecified number of Palestinian fighters in the central Gaza Strip.[4] Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighters mortared Israeli forces east of Maghazi in the central Gaza Strip.[5]

The IDF published on February 10 details of a division-sized clearing operation it has been conducting for the past two weeks in western Gaza City.[6] The IDF 401st Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) and Israeli special operations forces (SOF) killed approximately 120 Palestinian fighters and destroyed Hamas infrastructure in al Shati refugee camp and the Tal al Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City. Israeli forces located a Hamas “data center” underneath the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in addition to weapons inside the headquarters.[7] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken photos of the tunnel underneath the UNRWA headquarters on February 7.[8]

The IDF continued to conduct clearing operations in western Khan Younis on February 10. The IDF 89th Commando Brigade (assigned to the 98th Division), 35th Paratroopers Brigade (assigned to the 98th Division), and the 646th Brigade (assigned to the 99th Division) found large quantities of weapons and clashed with Palestinian fighters.[9] PIJ fighters returned from the areas of fighting in western Khan Younis and reported several attacks targeting Israeli forces.[10] A physician at Nasser Hospital in western Khan Younis reported that Israeli tanks reached the hospital gates on February 10.[11] Associated Press reported that the IDF said that it is not currently operating inside the hospital and called the surrounding area “an active combat zone.”[12]

The IDF conducted an airstrike targeting three Hamas members, including two senior military operatives, in Rafah.[13] Western media and Palestinian sources reported that Israeli airstrikes in Rafah killed two policemen and three senior officers in the Civil Police on February 10.[14] One of those killed was Ahmed al Yaqoubi, who was ”responsible for security for senior Hamas leaders and served as a senior commander in the Rafah district.”[15] The IDF identified another member as Iman Rantisi, who was Yaqoubi’s deputy, according to Palestinian sources.[16] The IDF has targeted Hamas’ police and internal security apparatus to disrupt Hamas’ attempts to rebuild its governing authority.[17] The Civil Police and the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry's Internal Security Forces in Gaza both employ fighters from the Hamas military wing. [18]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF to complete clearing operations in Rafah before Ramadan begins on March 10, according to an unidentified Israeli source.[19]

Unidentified Egyptian officials warned that Egypt would suspend the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty if Israel conducted a ground operation into Rafah.[20] The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty limits the Egyptian military presence in the Sinai Peninsula.[21] Egypt has deployed approximately 40 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to the Rafah border crossing and added additional fortifications to the border over the past two weeks in anticipation of a potential wave of refugees from Rafah.[22] Israel approved previous Egyptian requests to surge forces into the Sinai for counterterrorism operations[23]

Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns will travel to Cairo on February 13 to discuss resuming hostage release negotiations with Egyptian officials, according to unidentified US and Israeli officials.[24]

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters four times across the West Bank on February 10.[25]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on February 10.[26]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraq militias—claimed that the United States violated “the rules of engagement” when it killed senior Kataib Hezbollah member Wissam Mohammed Saber al Saedi (Abu Baqr al Saedi).[27] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq called on its supporters to take up arms against the United States and join an Iranian-backed militia. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al Sudani previously claimed that the Iranian-backed Iraqi militias agreed to pause attacks targeting US forces in exchange for a pause in US strikes.[28]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed an attack on an unspecified “vital” target near the Dead Sea on February 10.[29]

US Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted preemptive, self-defense strikes targeting Houthi unmanned surface vessels (USV) and missiles on February 9.[30] CENTCOM forces struck two USVs, four anti-ship cruise missiles, and one land attack cruise missile in Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen. CENTCOM conducted the preemptive, self-defense strikes after determining that the USVs and missiles presented an “imminent threat” to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the Red Sea.

11. If You Think World War III Is Unimaginable, Read This

If You Think World War III Is Unimaginable, Read This

Novelists and filmmakers have long developed alternative histories of major conflicts that should serve as warnings for complacent Americans.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-11/what-would-america-look-like-if-it-lost-world-war-iii?sref=hhjZtX76

February 11, 2024 at 12:00 AM EST

By Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author, most recently, of “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.”

Are we unable to imagine defeat?

You might have thought that, having so recently lost a small war, Americans would have no difficulty picturing the consequences of losing a large one. But the humiliating abandonment of Afghanistan in 2021 has been consigned with remarkable swiftness to the collective memory hole.

Presumably a similar process would occur if at some future date the Ukrainian army, starved of ammunition, were overrun by its Russian adversaries. A year ago, US President Joe Biden traveled to Kyiv and told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy: “You remind us that freedom is priceless; it’s worth fighting for as long as it takes. And that’s how long we’re going to be with you, Mr. President: for as long as it takes.” That turned out to mean, “For as long as it takes House Republicans to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy and cut off aid to Ukraine.” (McCarthy was gone by early October.)

Will the news networks replay Biden’s Kyiv speech the night the Russians march into the Ukrainian capital? Or will one of them air Tucker Carlson’s next interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin?

And how will we react if — say, later this year — we are informed that Iran has successfully built a nuclear weapon and has unleashed its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, to rain missiles down on Israel? Will we threaten to use our own nuclear weapons against Iran to save Israel from destruction, as we threatened to the Soviet Union in 1973, when it considered intervening on the Arab side in the Yom Kippur War? Or will Washington issue yet another of its warnings to Israel not to “escalate” the struggle for its own survival?

Or what if we hear news that Taiwan has been blockaded by the People’s Liberation Army and that the president has decided — after carefully reviewing the considerable risk of starting World War III — not to send a naval expeditionary force to enforce freedom of navigation and supply the Taiwanese people with weapons and essential supplies?

How much attention will we devote to the end of Taiwan’s democracy and the imposition of Chinese Communist Party rule on its people? More than we pay to the next Grammy awards ceremony or Super Bowl?

I fervently hope none of these grim scenarios comes to pass. However, especially when I recollect the fall of Kabul in 2021, I find it hard to dismiss the idea that we might acquiesce quite insouciantly in all three cases. And the only explanation I can find for this is that Americans, deep in their hearts, do not think that defeat applies to them.

I can see why. The costs of defeat in Vietnam in 1975 were borne not by Americans but by the citizens of South Vietnam, just as the costs of defeat in Afghanistan were mostly borne by the Afghan people. The men and women who served in America’s most recent wars were a tiny fraction of the population. Those who died were long ago buried; those who suffered severe physical or mental injury are out of sight and out of mind.

Under these circumstances, it is very difficult indeed to make the following argument stick: If the US allows Ukraine, Israel and/or Taiwan to be overrun by their adversaries, there will be dire consequences for Americans, too. And by “dire consequences,” I mean something considerably worse than another 9/11.

Re-reading Len Deighton’s novel SS-GB reminded me that, not so very long ago, Britons could readily imagine the consequences of defeat. Published in 1978, SS-GB vividly depicts life in the UK following a successful German invasion of England in 1940. The story unfolds less than a year after the British surrender. The King is a prisoner in the Tower of London. Winston Churchill is dead, having been tried and executed in Berlin. There is a puppet government, as in France, but power is really in the hands of the German “Military Commander GB.”

Born in London in 1929, Deighton had come close enough to disaster in the Battle of Britain and the Blitz to make his depiction of Nazi-occupied London entirely plausible. Moreover, he was writing at a time when life in Britain had more than a whiff of defeat about it. Dogged by stagflation, the UK economy in the 1970s was the sick man of Europe; West Germany, by contrast, was still the land of the economic miracle.

Deighton’s central character is not a hero of the Resistance, but a collaborator. Yet so sympathetically is Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer presented that the reader does not condemn him, but rather identifies with him. Archer’s wife has been killed and his home destroyed during the final defense of London. He lives with his young son in cramped and chilly lodgings. For young Douggie’s sake, life must go on and homicides must be investigated, even if that means reporting to an SS Gruppenführer: “Archer had not been a soldier. As long as the Germans let him get on with the job of catching murderers, he’d do his work as he’d always done it.”

By comparison with Robert Harris’s more ambitious Fatherland — published in 1992 and set long after a German victory — SS-GB is imbued with gritty realism. You can almost smell the soot and smog of a bombed-out, broken-down London. Deighton, who was no mean historian, convincingly depicts the interagency feuds that played out across Hitler’s Third Reich. He plausibly assumes that, with Britain vanquished, Hitler has no need to break the Nazi-Soviet Pact and invade the Soviet Union, while the US can remain neutral. And Deighton keeps the British Resistance so shadowy that its bombing of a “German-Soviet Friendship Week” ceremony at Highgate Cemetery (an inspired scene) strikes the reader as a terrorist outrage rather than an act of freedom-fighting heroism. When Archer is reluctantly drawn into the Resistance, his part in the attempt to liberate the King is a shabby fiasco.

A quarter of a century has passed since I persuaded Andrew Roberts to write a chapter of the book Virtual History devoted to the historical plausibility of Deighton’s scenario. I vividly recall the cold sweat his first draft induced, with its detailed quotations from the documents in which the Germans had meticulously set out their plans for invading, defeating and occupying England. Even to us children of the 1960s, it all still seemed horribly immanent, especially the list of names of people to be arrested.

Under certain circumstances, imagining defeat can sap your morale. But it can also focus the mind on the burning imperative not to lose. Ukrainians have no difficulty imagining what defeat would mean today. They have seen the bodies strewn in the streets of Bucha after the Russian execution spree of September 2022. They know the horrors of which Putin’s colonial army is capable. Likewise, most Israelis understand only too well that victory for Hamas and its backers would be the prelude to a second Holocaust. They will never forget the hideous atrocities perpetrated last Oct. 7.

But few if any Americans think this way. It is now exactly 40 years since the release of Red Dawn, one of the few commercially successful attempts to envision a Soviet invasion of the US. Patrick Swayze plays Jed Eckert, one of a group of high school heroes who take to the hills of Colorado to fight the invaders in a succession of Rambo-esque battles. It is hard to imagine such a movie getting made today. The closest thing is Leave the World Behind, which vividly depicts the chaos into which this country would descend if all our technology — from our iPhones to our Teslas — simultaneously stopped working. Cleverly, or perhaps evasively, the film does not specify who or what is behind the cataclysmic outage.

Yet the American relationship to disaster movies has always struck me as rather different from the British one. Fans of Doctor Who, Britain’s longest-running science fiction series, regularly see disaster befall London. No matter how bizarre the alien invaders, there is always some allusion to the Blitz, to remind viewers that terror can indeed descend from the skies above the nation’s capital. But when Americans watched Contagion (2011), few appear to have imagined a real pandemic sweeping the land. When one arrived in the early months of 2020, I still remember the deep-seated reluctance of even well-educated people to believe that Covid-19 was something a lot more serious than seasonal influenza.

When Americans switch on their flat-screen TVs, they seriously want to Leave the World Behind. Rather than contemplate dystopian futures, they prefer to immerse themselves in the Taylor Swift cult — a form of mass escapism that recalls the mania for screen goddesses in the isolationist 1930s.

Here, then, is the movie nobody is going to make. Sometime this year, the Chinese blockade Taiwan — or maybe it’s the Philippines. Or maybe North Korea launches missile against South Korea. But let’s go with Taiwan.

The first thing that would come up in the White House Situation Room would be a request from the Taiwanese government for a US naval force to lift the blockade and restore freedom of navigation. That would need to consist of at least two aircraft carrier strike groups and a significant number of attack submarines.

Now that would be possible even if it had to happen tomorrow. Only one carrier is in the Red Sea right now, the Eisenhower. The Carl Vinson and the Theodore Roosevelt are off the Philippines. The Ronald Reagan is in Japanese waters.

But before those ships could even set off for the Taiwan Strait, Wall Street would be in panic mode. Stocks would be down 20%. Apple would be down 50% (because so much of its hardware is still made in China); Nvidia too (because so many of its chips are made in Taiwan). The dollar would rally on international markets, as you would expect in any crisis, but there might well be a general bank run at home, with people lining up at the ATMs.

As in the financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, such a dash for liquidity might prompt calls for yet another round of quantitative easing and rate cuts, though Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell might fret about the inflationary risks to his cherished 2% inflation target.

Matters would not get easier if China were able to attack the US carrier groups with either missiles or drone swarms. The president would also have to make a quick decision on whether to approve Japanese attacks on Chinese missile and air bases (assuming, that is, if the Japanese were game). He would be reminded by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that, in the case of a shooting war, the US would run out of certain key weapons, notably long-range anti-ship missiles, within a week.

And all this would be going on — if it happened this year — in the middle of an election, with most-likely Republican candidate Donald Trump berating Biden for either starting another “forever war” or for showing weakness by doing the opposite, while Chinese-owned TikTok would be busy persuading young Americans of the moral necessity of Taiwan’s “reunification” with the mainland.

Any successful Chinese disruption of the country’s telecommunications infrastructure — as imagined in Leave the World Behind — would with high probability unleash chaos in major cities.

Now all you have to imagine — after communications were restored— is Vice President Kamala Harris announcing the new policy of “Asianization” (by analogy with Vietnamization in 1969), which would mean bringing all those American troops back home where they belong. This would be followed by live coverage of President Xi Jinping’s arrival in Taipei. Finally, a week later, the foreign ministers of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea would meet in Beijing to announce the formation of the Greater Eurasian Co-prosperity Sphere.

All this may strike you as whimsical or fantastical. But it is not a great deal more outlandish than the extraordinary global upheaval that began at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. And we must remember that, for contemporaries, it was far from clear — until the success of the D-Day landings two and a half years later — that the Allies would ultimately win the war.

The interesting thing is to imagine daily life in CCP-US. At first, quite normal, aside from a lot of burnt-out inner cities and an influx of newly demobilized soldiers and sailors. Taylor Swift would probably keep singing and the Kansas City Chiefs keep playing. Only gradually would our friends from Beijing start to make their presence felt.

Only after a few months would you start to worry seriously about what you might have said in your phone calls and emails and old columns. And then you would start to delete things. And then you would have to worry that deletion didn’t really get rid of those offending words because they were backed up on the big-tech servers regardless.

Some would collaborate. Some would resist. Most would acquiesce. This is how Len Deighton sets the scene in SS-GB:

Some said there had not been even one clear week of sunshine since the cease-fire. It was easy to believe. Today the air was damp, and the colourless sun only just visible through the grey clouds, like an empty plate on a dirty tablecloth. And yet even a born and bred Londoner, such as Douglas Archer, could walk down Curzon Street, and with eyes half-closed, see little or no change from the previous year. The Soldatenkino sign outside the Curzon cinema was small and discreet, and only if you tried to enter the Mirabelle restaurant did a top-hatted doorman whisper that it was now used exclusively by Staff Officers from Air Fleet 8 Headquarters, across the road in the old Ministry of Education offices. And if your eyes remained half-closed you missed the signs that said “Jewish Undertaking” and effectively kept all but the boldest customers out. And in September of that year 1941, Douglas Archer, in common with most of his compatriots, was keeping his eyes half-closed.

Speaking for myself, I would loathe nothing more than to walk around New York or San Francisco with my eyes half-closed, to avoid noticing the telltale signs of CCP surveillance.

But if you don’t open your eyes — and open them wide — to the plausible scenario of defeat right now, then you run the risk of one day having to do precisely that.

Ferguson is also the founder of Greenmantle, an advisory firm, FourWinds Research, Hunting Tower, a venture capital partnership, and the filmmaker Chimerica Media.

12. If US Wants To Be A Serious Force On Global Stage, Things Must Change – Analysis

Can we change? Or is this a fantasy?

Excerpt:

It is time for members of Congress to stop playing political games and start reaching across the aisle and working together to find a way forward to reestablish America’s reputation and role in the world. The nation’s friends, partners, and allies are watching events closely and wondering what the future holds in store. Meanwhile, adversaries can sense weakness, indecisiveness and divisions, not only within the US political establishment but also among the American people.

This gridlock in US foreign policy comes at a dangerous time in global affairs. The inability of the US to develop serious foreign policy has had disastrous, and at times deadly, consequences for Americans and the country’s partners.

It is not too late to get US foreign policy back on track. However, it will require political compromise and consensus of the kind the American political system has not seen in years.

But if the US wants to be a serious force on the global stage, things must change.

If US Wants To Be A Serious Force On Global Stage, Things Must Change – Analysis

 February 11, 2024  0 Comments

By Arab News

By Luke Coffey

eurasiareview.com · February 10, 2024

By Luke Coffey

It has been a bad week for US foreign policy. The divide between the Democrats and the Republicans, and the splits within the Republican Party, have led to political paralysis on Capitol Hill.

If it was a bad week for Congress, it was particularly bad for the American people and the nation’s partners around the world. The southern border of the US remains unsecured, and no additional funding has been approved for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia and Iran continue to test the resolve of the US and its partners around the globe. At least three US soldiers have been killed and more than 100 wounded as a result of more than 200 attacks by Iranian and Iranian-backed militias.

The Houthis in Yemen continue to disrupt commercial shipping in the Red Sea. President Joe Biden’s response has been to launch limited, expensive and seemingly ineffective air strikes that were advertised days in advance. Until the US acts decisively, American troops and international shipping will continue to face attacks. There is no indication that Biden will take a tougher stance.

As for the US Congress, there is no better example of its ineptitude than the issue of American support for Ukraine. Listening to some members of Congress, one would think America is emptying its state coffers to fund Ukraine. In reality, as a percentage of gross domestic product, the US ranks 30th in the world in terms of aid to Ukraine. The last time Congress approved any aid for the country was December 2022 — more than 400 days ago.

As a result of the inability of Congress to pass additional funding, there are reports that Ukrainians are now rationing ammunition. Consequently, Russia is starting to make some advances on the frontlines in some places.

Viewing the matter strictly from a US point of view, any objective person can see that helping Ukraine is in America’s national interest. Russia is one of its main adversaries. Europe, which is being destabilized as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, is one of its most important economic partners.

Without a single American soldier pulling a trigger or getting shot at, the US can provide support for an important European partner while delivering a geopolitical blow to one of its leading rivals. At the same time, supporting Ukraine can help deter other adversaries in regions around the world.

Even when considering these obvious advantages to the US of support for Ukraine, there are some in Congress who choose to put political pettiness ahead of policy and are doing their best to block further assistance. They essentially are willing to sell out America’s partners in Ukraine for the sake of domestic political squabbles in Washington. This sends a horrible message to friends and foes alike.

No doubt America’s partners and friends are watching this drama unfold. If they are not paying attention to what is happening in Washington, they should be. Considering the lack of support for Ukraine, if you were a US partner in a dangerous neighborhood, it would not be unreasonable to wonder whether you could be the next to be sold out. For example, can Taiwan, Japan and South Korea really depend on Congress to support them during a time of conflict in East Asia?

In the US system of government, foreign policy is mostly the responsibility of the White House. However, Congress is the branch of government that provides the funding for the executive branch to function. Without congressional support, White House foreign policy does not function well. This, in part, is the problem being faced today.

The political situation in the US does not look likely to improve anytime soon. Therefore, American foreign policy will continue to suffer. It remains to be seen how foreign affairs will affect the US presidential election campaign this year, if at all.

Most American voters are driven to the polls on “bread-and-butter” domestic issues such as the economy, the state of the job market, and access to affordable healthcare. Unless America is directly involved in a war, foreign policy rarely plays a prominent role in US elections. Therefore, there is unlikely to be a grassroots drive to change the current foreign policy approach taken by Congress or the White House.

In fact, the possibility of any meaningful change for the better in terms of foreign policy is bleak for the coming years. Not only should this be a concern for the American people but also America’s partners.

It is time for members of Congress to stop playing political games and start reaching across the aisle and working together to find a way forward to reestablish America’s reputation and role in the world. The nation’s friends, partners, and allies are watching events closely and wondering what the future holds in store. Meanwhile, adversaries can sense weakness, indecisiveness and divisions, not only within the US political establishment but also among the American people.

This gridlock in US foreign policy comes at a dangerous time in global affairs. The inability of the US to develop serious foreign policy has had disastrous, and at times deadly, consequences for Americans and the country’s partners.

It is not too late to get US foreign policy back on track. However, it will require political compromise and consensus of the kind the American political system has not seen in years.

But if the US wants to be a serious force on the global stage, things must change.

• Luke Coffey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

eurasiareview.com · February 10, 2024

13. Is the U.S. Distracted from East Asia?

Yes.

Conclusion:

The Chinese threat must be put in perspective. Xi Jinping’s recent purge of generals in the PLA indicates that he fears that the rot exhibited by Russia’s military and its botched invasion of Ukraine could afflict his own military in an attack on Taiwan. As in autocratic Russia, no one in despotic China has any incentive to tell the emperor that his military has no clothes. Also, Xi has increased party and state involvement in the economy, which has already added to China’s huge economic problems caused by existing inefficient state-owned industries and banks. Therefore, the increasing relative GDP of the East Asian region and the potential of a rising China should require most of the United States’ attention and resources, but not to the point of excessive alarm or hysteria.

Is the U.S. Distracted from East Asia?

With a growing portion of the world's GDP, East Asia should be the focus of any reasonable American strategy. 

The National Interest · by Ivan Eland · February 10, 2024

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have captured international media attention. In the past, such “international crises” have pressured U.S. presidents to “do something” about them. President Joe Biden—who is a veteran of the Cold War and the War on Terror—has reflexively and zealously enmeshed the United States within them. Yet he has also verbally gone beyond deliberate past ambiguity on U.S. policy toward Taiwan and pledged multiple times to defend the island from an attack or invasion by China. This interventionist policy in multiple regions—Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia—is a dangerous overstretch.

Whether U.S. policymakers admit it or not—they don’t—the United States has acted as the world’s policeman since the end of World War II. Back then, the other great powers had suffered catastrophic damage to their economies and societies. In contrast, the largely damage-free United States accounted for half the world’s remaining economic output. The United States became the world’s policeman not because of its security needs but because it could. After the war, the principal potential U.S. adversary, the Soviet Union, had tempered its revolutionary expansionism and sought to rebuild its industrial capacity torched by the Nazi invasion. Also, the United States developed a lead in new potent nuclear weapons technology.

However, the world has changed much since the Allied victory in the World War and the end of the Cold War. Today, the United States only accounts for about 15 percent of global GDP but nearly 40 percent of the world’s military spending. That global overstretch is currently unsustainable and unnecessary.

The Middle East, with its chronic instability and conflicts, has forced U.S. interventions since the late 1970s to secure the global oil supply. Yet the fracking revolution has made the United States the number one oil producer in the world again. Thus, the United States maintains land, sea, and air forces in the region to guard other nations’ supplies of oil—especially those of wealthy nations in Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Even if the fracking revolution had not happened, buying oil at the international market price would have been cheaper than paying for expensive military forces to protect a lucrative commodity that flows even during, around, and through wars. As for the $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel, it seems to subsidize behavior counterproductive to a long-term two-state solution to the perennial conflicts over Palestine.

For starters, Europe, the primary theater of U.S. concern during the Cold War, has receded in relative economic importance. The European Union’s share of the world’s GDP has been declining and now accounts for less than 15 percent of the total. Yet, Europe’s GDP is still large compared to that of the country most threatening it, Russia, which has a GDP of less than 3 percent of the global total. With a GDP of about five times that of Russia, the Europeans must provide for their own defense and, more specifically, take over assisting Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Increasing their assistance to Ukraine and keeping the Russians busy is less costly in lives and money than fighting the Russians directly. Although the Ukrainians have done a heroic job—eliminating one-third of Russian combat forces—Ukraine is far less strategic to the United States than it is to European nations. Nevertheless, U.S. aid has already topped $75 billion—a huge contribution to European security.

The United States instead needs to focus its attention and resources on what now seems to be the region most important to the United States: East Asia. In recent decades, the combined GDP of East Asia has risen to 26 percent of the world’s total. In this region, the rise of China, the United States’ most likely future adversary, and its recent more assertive actions toward Taiwan and the South China Sea bear watching. However, President Biden should quit straying from the U.S. official policy of ambiguity toward defending Taiwan.

The Chinese threat must be put in perspective. Xi Jinping’s recent purge of generals in the PLA indicates that he fears that the rot exhibited by Russia’s military and its botched invasion of Ukraine could afflict his own military in an attack on Taiwan. As in autocratic Russia, no one in despotic China has any incentive to tell the emperor that his military has no clothes. Also, Xi has increased party and state involvement in the economy, which has already added to China’s huge economic problems caused by existing inefficient state-owned industries and banks. Therefore, the increasing relative GDP of the East Asian region and the potential of a rising China should require most of the United States’ attention and resources, but not to the point of excessive alarm or hysteria.

Ivan R. Eland is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and Director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty. He is the author of War and the Rogue Presidency. His Twitter is @Ivan_Eland.

Image: Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest · by Ivan Eland · February 10, 2024

14. As Lunar New Year dawns across Asia, a blue dragon takes wing

As Lunar New Year dawns across Asia, a blue dragon takes wing

Fabled creature has a deep hold on culture, imaginations across continent

washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon

Women take a selfie with a giant dragon lantern decorated near the frozen Houhai Lake in Beijing, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Andy Wong) Women take a selfie with a … more >

By - The Washington Times - Saturday, February 10, 2024

SEOUL, South Korea — As dawn broke across East Asia Saturday, festivities region-wide ushered in the Lunar New Year — the Year of the Dragon.

The celebrations for one of Asia’s most important holidays are culturally specific, but this year’s centerpiece is universal and ubiquitous.

Dragons may be one of humanity’s favorite artistic subject, seen on T-shirts and tattoos, starring in computer games and Hollywood movies. The fascination is ancient. Mythical reptiles have captured man’s imagination for millennia, embedding themselves into lore and literature, art and religion.

“In temples from Southeast Asia all the way through China and Korea and Japan, there are dragons,” said David Mason, 66, an American author who has dedicated his life to exploring East Asia’s cultural roots in the field. “But look at churches in Europe – how many have windows with dragons, and St. George killing it? So many damned dragons!”

While they assume different forms and roles, west and east, the first dragon likely hatched in Eurasia’s center: the cradle of civilization.

Here be dragons

“We think Mesopotamia is where dragons started – there is a stone carving of a river monster from ancient Babylon,” said Mr. Mason, whose next book will be a study on dragonology. “Later, they added wings and started to fly as well as swim in water, then went east and west.”

Western dragons are predominantly perilous, hoarding gold, threatening maidens, and being slain by heroes like St. George, Beowulf, and Siegfried. Mr. Mason notes that dragons can also symbolize strength and loyalty, as on the Welsh flag, but “are mainly evil – like a snake, or like Satan” in the Western European imagination.

Dragons traveled east early in human history: “The Chinese had the character for dragon (“yong”) around 3,500 years ago,” the author said, and Eastern dragons tend to be more benevolent than their Western counterparts, drawing on a more benign tradition.

“The authority of the dragon is in the clouds,” Mr. Mason said. “It is the symbol of heaven, and the dragon with five claws is the symbol of the emperor.”

Under Chinese imperial codes, foreign kings and top nobles could only represent dragons with four claws, and lower nobles were limited to three. “In old days if you put a carving of a dragon with five claws on your house, you’d be arrested,” he said.

Reflecting the culture from which they sprung culture, Chinese dragons observe hierarchies. According to Chinese folklore and geomancy, 2024’s dragon is blue (from the primary colors), eastern (from the cardinal directions), and wooden (from the five elements).

Such complications may baffle outsiders, but for common people tilling the soil, subject to seasons and storms, dragons meant something very different: water dynamics.

“On the ocean, there are always waves — because there are dragons down there making it move!” Mr. Mason noted. “Mist comes off the ocean and become clouds, and clouds twist and turn — because there are dragons in there!”

Before the development of environmental science, dragon beliefs helped encourage sound land-use practices for poor, struggling farmers.

“They did not know why water moved, but saw that if it became stagnant, it became poison and fish died,” Mr. Mason explained. “They saw that clouds moves from oceans to mountains, then it rains, rain is captured in the mountains, and this becomes springs or waterfalls.”

Fresh, clean water sources are where Asian dragons were worshiped. And the flow of dragon-inspired wisdom goes on.

“Springs become rivers, and rivers become human civilization: All settlements were built on riverbanks,” Mr. Mason said. “Without water moving there is no life and no civilization. So dragons are good!”

Snakes, dinosaurs, crocodiles

Across East Asia, dragons appear in paintings and sculptures, writhe across vases, curl around pillars. Embroidered on silk, they inspire dances and martial arts, and they feature frequently in proverbs. “Do not despise the snake because he has no horns,” one warns. “One day, he may become a dragon!”

Asian dragons have snakelike qualities, fearsome qualities reflected in modern phobias. “Snakes were scary,” Mr. Mason said. “We would light fires to keep them away.”

As present-day horror films make clear, man captures his fears in art. Snakes inspired dragon imagery as Buddhism traveled east from India.

“In images from India are these giant cobras that protected the Buddha, and as Chinese influence grew, these giant snakes become dragons,” Mr. Mason said. “You can see gigantic dragons that are really snakelike in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand, but in India, they are still giant snakes. In Northeast Asia, the dragons are more ‘T-Rex-ish.’”

Did dinosaurs, whose bones were first excavated and scientifically categorized in 19th century in Europe and the U.S., inspire the widespread interest in dragons? The Gobi Desert is a trove of dinosaur relics, and Chinese called traditional medicines of powdered bones “dragon bones.”

“It’s speculated that ancients found bones and thought this was a monster that still lived,” Mr. Mason said. “It’s an interesting theory.”

Today’s most dragon-like creatures — crocodiles and alligators — most likely served as inspirations. “Babylonians saw dragons as big fish with big teeth,” Mr. Mason said. “The idea of crocodiles might have blended into that, to make them reptilian.”

Subsequently, imperial Romans and Crusaders in the Middle Ages encountered Nile crocodiles, possibly influencing Western dragon imagery and art. Eastern dragons, however, are rarely depicted in swamps or jungles. They swim through oceans or rivers, and writhe through clouds over mountains.

American interpreter of Asian lore

It was the mountains and the lore associated with them that first lured Mr. Mason to Asia.

Peering through thick glasses under a shock of receding white hair, he favors voluminous khaki shorts and could be an extra in an “Indiana Jones” movie. He speaks passionately and emotionally about the research subjects that still enthrall him.

Growing up a Boy Scout in “white bread” Detroit stoked an interest in more distant cultures, he recalls. When the boy from flat Michigan first visited the Rockies, the impression was powerful: “I got a religious sense,” Mr. Mason said.

He majored in Eastern philosophy at the University of Michigan, then jetted east as soon as possible: “The Boy Scouts gave me the skills to pick up a pack and a map and go.”

He ended up in South Korea, where backpackers could earn a living as English teachers. Beyond the cities, he discovered a thriving, ancient culture in the Korean peninsula’s high places.

“There are these really beautiful mountains and nature, but also all these Buddhist temples and Shaman shrines — not museum stuff, real stuff!” Mr. Mason said. “This combination was perfect for me. Everything I loved was in one location.”

He was astonished to find that, that though Koreans proudly showed their Buddhist culture and roots to foreigners, they denigrated the more ancient beliefs of shamanism, which includes such practices as communicating with the dead and exorcisms.

“The oldest format of Korean culture is Shamanism, indeed, of human culture,” Mr. Mason said. “It started 20-30,000 years ago, moved into paganism and then into religions.”

“The government said it was old witchcraft, and shameful,” he continued. “That’s still an attitude today.”

Diving deeply into his subject, he earned a master’s degree in religious history at Yonsei University, taught at South Korean colleges, and guided specialized tours. His books include a “Lonely Planet” Korea guide, an award-winning work on Korea’s mountain spirits and an encyclopedia of Korean Buddhism.

Today he divides his time between Korea, where he works as a tour guide and lecturer, and his home in the Philippines, where his wife and son live.

There, his book on dragons is taking shape. The research he has done in the field, on Shamanism, Daoism and Buddhism, swarms with dragons, and the universality of the mythical creatures means that, even compared to his 600-page tome on Buddhism, it could be a big book.

“It’s dynamic power! Macho energy! The king of heavens, fire-breathing — people love the idea!” he said. “There may be more depictions of dragons than of anything or anyone. It’s mind-blowing, it’s like counting stars in the sky.”

• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.

Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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15. Erik Prince Calls for U.S. to Colonize Africa and Latin America

It is difficult to take this guy seriously. He is not a serious person.

Excerpt:

Here’s are Prince’s exact words:

If so many of these countries around the world are incapable of governing themselves, it’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries … ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. …

You can say that about pretty much all of Africa, they’re incapable of governing themselves.

Erik Prince Calls for U.S. to Colonize Africa and Latin America

What could possibly go wrong?

The Intercept · by Jon Schwarz · February 10, 2024

Erik Prince speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2023, on March 4, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md.

Photo: Alex Brandon/AP

Erik Prince has been many things in his 54 years on Earth: the wealthy heir to an auto supply company; a Navy SEAL; the founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater, which conducted a notorious 2007 massacre in the middle of Baghdad; the brother of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s secretary of education; a shadow adviser to Trump; and the plaintiff in a lawsuit against The Intercept.

Last November, Prince started a podcast called “Off Leash,” which in its promotional copy says he “brings a unique and invaluable perspective to today’s increasingly volatile world.” On an episode last Tuesday, his unique and invaluable perspective turned out to be that the U.S. should “put the imperial hat back on” and take over and directly run huge swaths of the globe.

Here’s are Prince’s exact words:

If so many of these countries around the world are incapable of governing themselves, it’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries … ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. …

You can say that about pretty much all of Africa, they’re incapable of governing themselves.

Prince’s co-host Mark Serrano then warned him that listeners might hear his words and believe he means them: “People on the left are going to watch this,” said Serrano, “and they’re going to say, wait a minute, Erik Prince is talking about being a colonialist again.”

Prince responded: “Absolutely, yes.” He then added that he thought this was a great concept not just for Africa but also for Latin America.

Prince and Serrano either do not know or do not care that previous bouts of the European flavor of colonialism led to the deaths of tens of millions of people around the world. Then in the 20th century, the ideology of colonialism gave birth to Nazism.

Like the previous enthusiasts of imperialism, Prince is completely blind to his own motivations and where they inevitably lead. He doesn’t want to do this for America’s benefit, you see. No, it’s because “if you go to these countries and you see how they suffer, under absolutely corrupt governments that are just criminal syndicates, a lot of them deserve better.”

This was the rationale for Britain’s white man’s burden, France’s mission civilisatrice, Spain’s misión civilizadora, Portugal’s missão civilizadora, and even imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which aimed to conquer every nearby country for the benefit of all. Imperialists have always told themselves that they are subduing other lands to help their benighted inhabitants. This beneficence somehow always leads to mass death.

This curious psychological phenomenon is famously portrayed in “Heart of Darkness,” the 1899 novel by Joseph Conrad. The book’s narrator, Charles Marlow, describes his voyage up a river into the interior of an unnamed African country that is obviously Congo in the process of being colonized by Belgium.

Marlow explains:

It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale … the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea — something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to.

Marlow attempts to find out what happened to Mr. Kurtz, an upriver colonial agent. When he arrives, he finds Kurtz is living in a villa surrounded by heads stuck on spikes. Marlow learns that Kurtz has written a report for the “International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs.” It begins with Kurtz declaring, “By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded.” Before long it degenerates into an exhortation to “exterminate all the brutes!”

That’s in fiction. In reality, Belgium’s well-meaning imperialism killed perhaps 10 million Congolese.

It always seems to work this way. For instance, here are a series of 2003 quotes about the Iraq War from Mississippi’s Trent Lott, then the GOP’s Senate minority leader:

March 27: “I ask Mississippians of all faiths to pray for all our coalition forces and the Iraqi people as they engage in an intense but noble battle against what is nothing but sheer evil.”

April 15: “We went in there to free those people.”

October 28: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens.”

Serrano at least is more in touch with the grimy reality of what they’re talking about, and he excitedly mentions how America could bring lesser nations “the professionalism they need to capitalize on their natural resources.”

In any case, Prince’s words illustrate that we are living in a time in which many of humanity’s worst ideas, ones we thought were long dead and buried, have risen from the grave and are now staggering about again.

Fascism? Maybe things went off the rails last time, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. A pea-brained fear of vaccines? Sure, why not? A conviction that the old lady who lives in the forest is stealing our children and vivisecting them to consume their adrenochrome? That makes perfect sense.

Related

Erik Prince Claims His Vaporware Super-Phone Could Have Thwarted October 7 Hamas Attack

Later in the show Prince also resurrects another old popular favorite, The Enemy Within Is in League With the Enemy Without. “You get the BLM and the Hamas militias of the Democrat Party, very active in the United States this summer,” he says. “When that BLM or Hamas militia shows up to start wrecking things, you show them what law and order looks like, immediately.”

So that’s where we are in today’s America. Maybe we could return to medicine based on the four humors, in which all human afflictions are due to imbalances in your phlegm, blood, and yellow and black bile. And why not give chattel slavery another shot? If we’re going to do imperialism again, really, the sky’s the limit.

The Intercept · by Jon Schwarz · February 10, 2024

​16. Wisconsin GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher won’t seek reelection

I wonder what he has in mind for his political future.

Wisconsin GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher won’t seek reelection

By OLIVIA ALAFRIZ

02/10/2024 02:13 PM EST

Politico

Gallagher chairs the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and has been a leading voice in the House on cybersecurity issues.

Rep. Mike Gallagher told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he would enter the private sector at the end of his term, but would continue to focus on national security and defense policy. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

02/10/2024 02:13 PM EST

Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher will not seek reelection this November, he announced on social media Saturday.

Gallagher chairs the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and has been a leading voice in the House on cybersecurity issues. He was first elected in 2016.

Gallagher’s vote against the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas earlier this week prompted reports of a possible primary challenge from a close Trump ally.

Gallagher told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he would enter the private sector at the end of his term, but would continue to focus on national security and defense policy.

In his statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Gallagher said he had always intended to limit his congressional tenure and thanked his constituents.

“Though my title may change, my mission will always remain the same: deter America’s enemies and defend the Constitution,” he added.

“Mike is a mentor and friend & his chairmanship of @committeeonccp will undoubtedly better position the U.S. to compete with China longterm,” said Iowa GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson on X, calling it a “huge loss for Congress.”

Former Michigan lawmaker and Senate candidate Peter Meijer said Gallagher was the “most thoughtful and intelligent member” he had served with.

“Can’t overstate the loss this is to the House’s ability to smartly counter China and lead from the front on AI/cyber,” Meijer added.

POLITICO

Politico

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com