Quotes of the Day:

“Knowledge is born and conscience awakened.”

– The Rebel (Albert Camus)

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We are no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” 

– Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."

– Epictetus

1. The weapon behind Russia’s creeping battlefield advances

2. How to win in Ukraine: pour it on, and don’t worry about escalation

3. First Replicator drones already in Indo-Pacific, DOD says

4. Lawsuit alleges contractors lied about V-22’s safety

5. Chat Xi PT? China’s Chatbot Makes Sure It’s a Good Comrade

6. The Navy’s Missile Catcher Comes Home

7. Russia Is Increasingly Blocking Ukraine’s Starlink Service

8. Exclusive: Putin wants Ukraine ceasefire on current frontlines

9. Opinion - We Haven’t Hit Peak Populism Yet – David Brooks

10. Russia’s Military Shaken as Top-Level Purge Unfolds

11.  US will announce $275 million more in artillery and ammunition for Ukraine, officials say

12. Crimea ATACMS strike hits space radar station: report

13. How Delays in Western Aid Gave Russia the Initiative: From the Ukrainian Counteroffensive to Kharkiv

14.  Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 23, 2024

15. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, May 23, 2024

16. Graphic novel tells story of Army captain who tackled suicide bomber

17. How the Army is driving enterprise training across five warfighting domains and three dimensions

18. The Inevitable Role of Clans in Post-Conflict Stabilization in Gaza

19. The Death of an Iranian Hard-Liner

20. Don’t Go to War With the ICC

1. The weapon behind Russia’s creeping battlefield advances

Long but interesting read. Video and photos at the link.

The weapon behind Russia’s creeping battlefield advances

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/the-weapon-behind-russias-creeping?utm

Glide bombs blend Cold War-era ‘dumb’ munitions with precision-guided technology. With Ryan McBeth, we’re presenting this deep dive into a weapon that shows Russian adaptability… and Russian weakness.

RYAN MCBETH AND TIM MAK

MAY 23, 2024

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Russians reportedly dropped glide bombs on Krasnohorivka, Donetsk. (Source: Ukrbavovna)

There is no weapon more responsible for recent Russian territorial gains over the past few months than the glide bomb. 

They’re not particularly sophisticated weapons: they have adapted ‘dumb’ Soviet-era bombs into modern armaments by adding a package that lets them glide to a designated target. 

But don’t let the simplicity fool you into complacency: in April, Russian troops dropped more than 3,200 of these bombs on Ukraine. In fact, the simplicity is an asset, as glide bombs don’t require highly-technical skills to be made, and they can be put together cheaply.

"For now, they are the actual main tool of Russian terror," President Zelenskyy said overnight. "Ukraine needs systems and tactics that will let us defend our positions, our cities and communities, from these bombs." 

A reported case of glide bomb usage in Vuhledar, Donetsk region. (Source: Ukrbavovna)

Russia used glide bombs together with their manpower advantage to push Ukraine out of Avdiivka in February, and are using them to capture territory in Kharkiv even now.

“The Russian command discovered through military learning and adaptation that the glide bombs are effective at destroying Ukrainian fortifications and strong points, and can be effectively used in support of Russian infantry ground assaults,” explained George Barros, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

The Russian Bear Takes Notes

The Russian Army of today is not the same army that blundered into Ukraine in February 2022. Russia has proven its ability to learn and adapt to challenges. 

After two years of war, one of those challenges is attacking Ukraine on the cheap.

The innovation that has helped their cause is taking the standard Soviet-era 1,100 pound FAB-500 bomb, which doesn’t have any propulsion…

… And place a glide and GLONASS satellite navigation kit on the weapon. 

The total cost to convert a bomb is about $20,000.

Compare that to an Iskander short-range missile, for example, which costs a whopping $3 million. 

“The Russian Air Force substantially increased its use of glide bombs [starting from the] fall 2023 after Russian forces established mass production of the retrofit glide kits for their Soviet-era gravity bombs,” explained Barros.

This allows Russian SU-34 bomber planes to drop the glide bombs, with 10 to 15 meters of precision, from up to 40 miles away.

As of May 2024, Russia is launching up to 100 glide bomb attacks per day, with most of them falling in and around Kharkiv. 

Why they’re so effective

Glide bombs are useful to Russia because they’re cheap and they draw on existing large stores of Russian ‘dumb’ bombs. 

But they also represent a formidable challenge to Ukrainian air defense. 

“The glide bombs are very difficult to intercept because the bombs themselves are small,” Barros explained. “The bombs themselves are also cheaper than expensive air interceptors, so it would not be economical for Ukrainian forces to shoot an expensive interceptor that Ukraine has in limited quantities at a relatively cheap glide bomb that the Russians have at scale.”

A photo of the aftermath of a glide bomb attack, at a cafe in the Kharkiv region. Posted by the governor of that area yesterday. 

How the glide bomb shows Russian weakness: 

But there is also hope for Ukraine in the heavy recent use of the weapon. 

That’s because the use of glide bombs shows that Russia has not been able to produce enough missiles for use in the war. 

Missiles are more precise, more aerodynamic, faster, and have longer ranges than glide bombs.

“Missiles are basically critical. These are one of the defining capabilities of this type of conflict,” said Federico Borsari, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “Russia had to resort to the use of gliding bombs because its stock of missiles is not sufficient to deliver good effects on the battlefield.” 

So switching to an inferior product shows that Russia’s manufacturing capabilities are not up to the task of keeping pace with its needs. 

How Ukraine can fight back: 

One of the weaknesses of glide bombs is that, unlike missiles, they require a Russian aircraft to take off in order to fire it. 

This could be a saving grace for Ukraine – if they could use NATO-delivered F-16 planes in response to the glide bombs. 

Deployment of this aircraft – with its long-range missiles – might force Russia to pull back its release points further from the border, limiting the usefulness of glide bombs.

But Ukrainians are held back by the controversial American demand that they not use U.S. weapons to shoot at targets on Russian territory. 

“Those systems that Ukraine does have that could strike Russian aircraft, such as Patriots, cannot be fired into Russian airspace because the White House prohibits using US-provided weapons in Russian air space and territory,” Barros said. 

A reported case of glide bomb usage in Kherson region. (Source: Ukrbavovna)

The New York Times reported in the last 24 hours that the White House is considering altering the prohibition now, pressed on by a proposal from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 

Changing that U.S. policy would protect untold Ukrainian soldiers and civilians from the effects of glide bombs.

For every sword, there is a shield. 

The shield may be coming, but it can’t arrive soon enough.

In an era of global crises and polarization, journalism must bridge divides now more than ever. Semafor is tailored to this reality, offering unparalleled transparency and diverse perspectives. Their Flagship newsletter, a trusted source for heads of state and global leaders, distills key global narratives, cutting through the noise of the news cycle. The Flagship newsletter keeps readers informed without overwhelming them, all while fostering global awareness amidst busy lives. Stay connected with the world around you with Semafor Flagship – sign up here for free.

A Brief History of Glide Bombs

Glide bombs have a long history, which actually started out in the West. The VB-1 Azon or “Azimuth Only” Guided Bomb was an American WWII design that was more like a conventional bomb that had some rudder capability. 

(Source: National Museum of the United States Air Force) 

This 1,000 pound bomb could be steered left and right using airfoils that were radio-linked to a joystick in the bomber. The bomb was mainly used on bridges and railways where the plane could fly directly toward the target. 

The Korean War saw advancements in guided bombs such as the 1,000 pound VB-3 Razon. This weapon was built off lessons learned from the VB-1 Azon, adding in Y-Axis control, although the bomb had an average error probability of 200 feet. 

The bomb was first used during the Korean War against bridges with limited success due to a failure rate of 25% and a warhead that was too small to drop bridge spans without multiple hits.

The VB-13 Tarzon, used a 12,000 pound British ‘Tall Boy’ bomb as its base. (Source: National Museum of the Air Force) 

The Vietnam War saw the further development of guided weapons, although the focus was now on missiles. These weapons didn’t carry enough explosives to destroy large targets and this was the main problem with dropping the The Thanh Hóa Bridge.

This Northern Vietnamese Bridge spanned the Song Ma River and was pounded by US aircraft for seven years with unguided weapons and primitive guided missiles to no effect. 

As the war dragged on, a small team working at Texas Instruments created a kit that could be bolted onto a 750 pound M117 “dumb bomb” that contained fins and a seeker eye that detected a near-infrared beam from a laser illuminator. 

(Source: Directory of U.S. Military Rockets and Missiles) 

The Air Force called this bomb “PAVE” for “Precision Avionics Vectoring Equipment” leading to the name “PAVEWAY.” It was the first laser guided bomb.

Laser guided bombs eventually went on to become the star of Operation Desert Storm where their precision allowed them to destroy targets with less collateral damage than ever before. However, they had one limitation – weather.

GPS originally began as a way for soldiers, ships and aircraft to navigate accurately. By 1992, research began on an all-weather bomb that could use the power of GPS to hit a precise point on Earth. By 1999, the bombs had achieved a 10 meter accuracy rate and the JDAM – Joint Direct Attack Munition – was born.

This add-on kit could convert a conventional “dumb” bomb into a precision guided weapon that essentially needed no pilot targeting other than a GPS coordinate.

Russian development of glide bombs

While America continued development of the JDAM and JDAM-ER during the 2000s, the Russians went in a different direction with specialized bombsights that allowed its planes to drop cheap, unguided bombs more accurately. 

This worked well in environments like Syria, where the threat of air defense was low.

But Ukraine is a far more dangerous place for Russian planes. 

Russia’s JSC Tactical Missiles Corporation had been producing guided weapons for domestic Russian use as well as the Indian and Chinese Export Market, and they were the natural choice to develop some kind of wing-kit for Russia’s stockpile of conventional dumb bombs. 

By January of 2023, crude prototypes of JSC’s UMPK bolt-on wing kit started appearing on Russian Telegram. By March they were raining down on eastern Ukraine.

(Source: Forbes)

NEWS OF THE DAY: 

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands. 

But for today, much of the news centers around China’s belligerence in the world. 

UK CLAIMS CHINA SENDING WEAPONS TO RUSSIA: In a break with the U.S., the British defense secretary has said that China has sent "lethal aid" to Russia, calling on NATO to "wake up." He said that he had new British and U.S. intelligence that he has been able to declassify, making it possible to reveal that Wednesday. He added that the two countries have been getting closer and closer -- their trade has grown 64 percent since the invasion began. 

… BUT U.S. PUSHES BACK AGAINST U.K. CLAIM: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said he had not seen intelligence to support that and said that he would speak with the U.K. to "make sure that we have a common operating picture."  

CHINA VOWS 'BLOOD,' LAUNCHES MILITARY EXERCISES AROUND TAIWAN: In an unusual escalation in rhetoric, a foreign policy spokesperson said "Taiwan independence forces will be left with their heads broken and blood flowing after colliding against the great... trend of China achieving complete unification." 

These comments were made as a new Taiwanese president was inaugurated, who China has branded a “dangerous separatist,” and as China launched multi-day war games around Taiwan.

BERLIN PLEDGES 11 PATRIOTS: But other countries are not yet following Germany’s lead, Politico reports. At issue is the fact that each Patriot missile system costs approximately $1 billion, and allies are worried that they will be left unprotected if they contribute to Ukrainian defense. 

Spain and Greece have refused. Poland, which has been a staunch Ukraine supporter, has said they can't sent one to Ukraine because they don't have enough for back up. 

… BUT, ROMANIA TEASES POSSIBLE PATRIOT TO UKRAINE: The president of Romania has hinted that it could send an air defense system, but it must receive something in return so that its own defense posture is not weakened. 

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK:

Hi there – It’s Ryan here. 

All this talk about bombs and missiles has me thinking about my closest call with death.

Let me set the scene: at the time, I was angry. 

I had been promised hard times on The Road, but had instead been given a cushy assignment at The Base – all because I was the only platoon sergeant with a security clearance who could enter the base command post when new orders came in.

Most people would envy me. I was living the life of Riley at Camp Victory, Iraq back in 2008 as part of the Quick Reaction Force. We sat around all day, lifted weights and ate steak. I gained 20 pounds of muscle and I looked like a Greek God. 

But I wanted to be out on the road, running convoys and patrols. It had been the only thing I was ever really good at in my life and I craved it.

I got my chance to go out on the road precisely because of my security clearance. I had just happened to be in the command post when a message came in – a new unit was standing up and each company in the brigade was to give up a soldier for a new mission on The Road.

I put my name on the list without ever telling my commander. A day later my commander told me to come into his office and broke the news to me that my name had appeared on a list and I was to be transferred to the new Road unit.

Gosh, sir. I wonder how that happened? Luck of the Irish I suppose.

The mission was to run a daily convoy of prisoners from the Victory Base Complex down Route Irish - then known as the “World’s Most Dangerous Road” - to a courthouse for trial.

The first few days were uneventful. I clicked with my unit and the soldiers in my gun truck. This was not my first deployment and every day I would check the Army’s classified network to see what threats we might encounter so I could prepare for any hot spots or trends.

I was lucky. Things were mostly quiet. 

One disturbing trend at the time was the rise of EFP’s or Explosively Formed Projectiles. Previous IEDs or Improvised Explosive Devices, were typically made of old artillery shells that were buried in the ground. They destroyed vehicles through blunt, explosive force. 

EFPs basically looked like paint cans topped with a concave copper bowl. When the weapon detonated, the bowl turned into a slug of molten copper that would slice through the vehicle, setting fires and bouncing around until it hit something soft - like a soldier.

EFPs had been introduced by Iranian proxy forces in 2007 and were wreaking havoc on convoys. But I was going to be okay. After all, I had the luck of the Irish.

One morning I checked the threat network and noticed that an attack had taken place on Route Irish. A vehicle had been destroyed and there had been casualties. 

As I read further I looked at the time of strike and realized that my convoy had driven over that exact spot just five minutes before. The funny thing was that I didn’t feel any sense of dread or relief. It felt good. They tried, and they missed me, and I wanted that feeling again.

I was alive. They missed me. Better luck tomorrow, buddy. 

That one day on Route Irish I got lucky and dodged the deadliest weapon that had yet been introduced into Iraq.

Luck of the Irish I suppose.

Today’s Dog of War is this doggo taking a break during a power outage in Kyiv. Captured by The Counteroffensive’s Oleh Tymoshenko, he’s sitting in front of a diesel generator that’s helping residents with backup power. 

Stay safe out there.

Best,

Ryan

A guest post by

Ryan McBeth

Author, journalist, OSINT Intelligence Analyst, Programmer, Cyber Guy. I believe in creating dilemmas, not problems and fighting back with knowledge. https://www.youtube.com/@ryanmcbethprogramming

2. How to win in Ukraine: pour it on, and don’t worry about escalation

The US national security and foreign policy "prime directive" of "do not allow escalation" must be ended.  

The best way to prevent escalation is to overcome the fear of escalation and act in such a dominant way that will prevent adversaries from escalating. Timidity and fear invites escalation.

How to win in Ukraine: pour it on, and don’t worry about escalation

The Biden administration has been too cautious. There’s still time to change that.

BY ANDREW RADIN

SENIOR POLITICAL SCIENTIST, RAND

MAY 22, 2024

defenseone.com · by Andrew Radin

Russia has gained on the battlefield in recent weeks, but Ukraine’s cause is far from hopeless. The United States and its allies can give Kyiv the training and technological advantage it needs, but the Biden administration has failed to provide the necessary U.S. military involvement for fears of Russia using nuclear weapons against Ukraine or taking action against U.S. forces. Such fears are overblown: such escalation would be dangerous and undesirable for Russia. The Biden administration should increase the intensity of its military activities and thereby enable a Ukrainian victory.

The administration’s caution was visible from the beginning of the war. The administration’s policy of no U.S. “boots on the ground” limits U.S. military presence to a few personnel attached to the embassy. The scope of U.S. weaponry provided to Ukraine has expanded, but only gradually: towed artillery was announced in April 2022, HIMARS wheeled rocket systems in June 2022, Patriot air defense in December 2022, ground combat vehicles in January 2023, cluster munitions in July 2023, and Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ground-launched in April.

Russia has made threats to NATO to dissuade this support, but none have come to fruition. Indeed, there is good reason to think Russia has little intention to act on them. A larger war with the United States would pose tremendous risks to Russia. Russia’s repeated aggression against Ukraine while avoiding even limited strikes against U.S. or NATO targets suggests that it understands the seriousness of NATO’s defense commitments.

Similarly, using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, would pose grave costs to Russia, including the “catastrophic consequences” warned by U.S. officials. Russian nuclear use would also put at risk its relationships with China and India that are critical to mitigating sanctions, and incentivize Ukraine, Poland, or other Russian adversaries to seek to build up their nuclear arsenals.

Shifting U.S. policy in several areas would improve Ukraine’s military situation with minimal risk of Russian escalation. First, the United States could rescind its insistence that U.S.-provided munitions only be used on Ukrainian soil, and stop pressing Ukraine to refrain from attacks on Russian territory. Given that Ukraine suffers daily casualties from attacks on purely civilian targets, retaliation against Russian infrastructure is more than fair game and can help to even Ukraine’s odds by degrading Russia’s logistical capacity. Ukraine would bear the brunt of any Russian response, but Kyiv is prepared to take that risk.

Second, the United States could expand its visible U.S. military presence in Ukraine. Western advisors need to be in Ukraine to understand the status and needs of Ukraine’s forces to provide the necessary qualitative superiority. Increases in U.S. advisors or even trainers can be distinguished from any kind of combat role. If, tragically, U.S personnel were to be killed in a Russian attack, the Biden administration would have significant latitude to control its response.

Third, the United States should look to expand its operations in space and cyberspace in response Russia’s cyber attacks against U.S. space providers and jamming against NATO allies. In a recent RAND report on strategic stability in space, we argue that reversible actions like jamming are useful options for the United States because can signal to an adversary and provide an additional threat of punishment without increasing the scope of conflict. Given Russia’s use of space communications, for example, such actions also can have a temporary operational benefit. Russia could escalate with increased cyber attacks or other activities in response but would risk exposing their exploits and losing the opportunity to use such attacks in the future.

Additional U.S. action could also catalyze other allies to increase their support, as allies traditionally look to the United States for leadership. Germany would not provide Leopard tanks until the United States provided Abrams. Perhaps further U.S. support would lead to Germany to provide Taurus, its own long-range cruise missile. From a narrow U.S. perspective, greater U.S. involvement is an opportunity to test new capabilities and gain experience helping a partner facing a numerically superior foe. Such experience could be very relevant for helping Taiwan resist Chinese aggression.

To be sure, avoiding direct military conflict with Russia is of paramount interest. Caution must be exercised to avoid a slippery slope that leads U.S. forces into combat against Russia. The measures suggested above are not a call for the involvement of U.S. combat forces, but instead a means of incrementally stepping up U.S. policy on Ukraine.

Russia cannot indefinitely sustain disproportionate losses in men and materiel. Removing constraints on U.S. assistance will enable Ukraine to attrit Russian forces and overcome its superior numbers, especially at a time when renewed Russian attacks are putting pressure on Ukraine. The United States and its allies should take advantage of Russia’s necessary restraint against NATO, and do more to help Ukraine defeat Russia. The Biden administration was understandably careful early in the war. There is now room for a far more intensive U.S. role.

Andrew Radin is a senior political scientist at RAND, a non-profit nonpartisan research institution. He is the co-lead author of the recently published RAND report “Strategic Stability in Space: Assessing U.S. Concepts and Approaches.”

defenseone.com · by Andrew Radin

3. First Replicator drones already in Indo-Pacific, DOD says

Excerpt:

Said Hicks on Thursday: “This shows that warfighter-centric innovation is not only possible; it’s producing real results. Even as we deliver systems, our end-to-end capability development process continues.”

First Replicator drones already in Indo-Pacific, DOD says

It’s a first for “warfighter-centric innovation,” says deputy defense secretary.

BY PATRICK TUCKER

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR, DEFENSE ONE

MAY 23, 2024 06:00 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600 on display at LANPAC 2024 in Hawaii, May 15, 2024. Defense One / Jennifer Hlad

By Patrick Tucker

Science & Technology Editor, Defense One

May 23, 2024 06:00 PM ET

• Drones
• China

The Pentagon’s flagship program to quickly produce large numbers of low-cost, highly autonomous drones is “producing real results,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said in a statement Thursday, noting that “the delivery of Replicator systems to the warfighter began earlier this month.”

The aim of the Replicator program, announced in August 2023, is to deliver tens of thousands of low-cost land, air, and sea drones to operators in the Pacific by the end of 2025. Each of the services are expected to play a role in testing, acquiring, and deploying them. The hope, in part, is that the rapid fielding of wide numbers of networked drones could help deter Chinese aggression in the Pacific prior to 2027, when many anticipate China could make a military move to annex Taiwan. The program could also enable the department to move toward new, much more rapid acquisition models.

The Pentagon would not specify which drones exactly have already reached INDOPACOM, and has been cagey in general in discussing the program. In May, it announced it had selected AeroVironment’s (AV) Switchblade 600 for the program, a system that INDOPACOM already has in some number. But “the first tranche of Replicator also includes certain capabilities that remain classified, including others in the maritime domain and some in the counter-UAS portfolio,” the Pentagon said earlier this month.

The Pentagon plans to spend about half a billion dollars on the effort this fiscal year, and there’s another half billion or so in the 2025 budget request.

Said Hicks on Thursday: “This shows that warfighter-centric innovation is not only possible; it’s producing real results. Even as we deliver systems, our end-to-end capability development process continues.”

4. Lawsuit alleges contractors lied about V-22’s safety

Excerpt:

The Osprey has been involved in more than a dozen deadly crashes during its development and since it came into service. Just last year, eight airmen were killed in a crash off the coast of Japan and three Marines were killed in another crash off the coast of Australia.

Lawsuit alleges contractors lied about V-22’s safety

The suit, filed by the families of Marines killed in a 2022 crash, says the tiltrotor aircraft don’t meet government safety specifications.

defenseone.com · by Audrey Decker

Family members of Marines killed in a V-22 Osprey crash two years ago are suing Boeing, Bell Textron, and Rolls Royce—accusing the companies of knowing the aircraft was unsafe and not disclosing it to the Pentagon.

The companies made “recklessly false statements” about the Osprey, leading five service members to fly in an “unsafe and unairworthy aircraft,” according to allegations in a complaint filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Everyone on board the plane was killed when it crashed in a remote training area in California.

A Marine Corps investigation found the June 8, 2022 crash was caused by a gear problem, specifically a “dual hard clutch engagement” that caused the engine and the interconnect drive system to fail. The service has been aware of the hard clutch engagement problem in Ospreys since 2010, and the crash was the 16th time it had happened since then, Marines said last year. However, the June 2022 crash was the first time anyone died as an apparent result of the issue, the Marines said.

Air Force Special Operations Command grounded its V-22s for a few weeks in 2022 because of several accidents that involved hard clutch engagements; the Marine Corps did not ground its Ospreys at that time.

The flight was part of a routine training operation called Swift 11.

“Due to the Osprey’s lack of compliance with government specifications, the Swift 11’s pilots and crew were powerless to counteract the aircraft’s uncontrollable asymmetric thrust condition where there was a sudden loss of thrust on the right-hand proprotor and positive thrust on the left proprotor,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit accuses the companies of “negligence, negligent misrepresentation, and fraudulent misrepresentation” for making what it says were false statements to the U.S. military about the Osprey, according to a statement from the lawyer representing the families. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four of the five Marines’ families.

“We seek accountability, answers, and change. Our goal isn’t to see this platform removed; it’s to know that someday we will be able to say, ‘their lives enabled others to live,’ knowing what happened to them won’t ever be repeated. Finding the root cause of these mechanical failures and pressing for full transparency for our military, service members, and their families is only part of our advocacy,” Amber Sax, the wife of Capt. John Sax, who died in the crash, said in a statement.

“We want assurance that these components have been successfully redesigned, tested, and rendered safe. The importance of addressing this cannot be overstated—it is not just about fixing a machine, but about ensuring that no other family has to endure this loss again,” Sax said.

Boeing and Bell Textron build the Osprey, and Rolls Royce supplies the engines. When asked for a comment, Boeing said it doesn't comment on pending litigation. The Marine Corps said the same.

The Osprey has been involved in more than a dozen deadly crashes during its development and since it came into service. Just last year, eight airmen were killed in a crash off the coast of Japan and three Marines were killed in another crash off the coast of Australia.

defenseone.com · by Audrey Decker

5. Chat Xi PT? China’s Chatbot Makes Sure It’s a Good Comrade

ideology and loyalty to the leader/regime come first. One of the many weaknesses of totalitarian regimes.

Chat Xi PT? China’s Chatbot Makes Sure It’s a Good Comrade

Chinese AI companies must overcome chip restrictions and strict regulations in creating chatbots on par with ChatGPT

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat-xi-pt-chinas-chatbot-makes-sure-its-a-good-comrade-bdcf575c?mod=hp_lead_pos3

By Stu Woo

Follow

Updated May 24, 2024 12:03 am ET

A new chatbot has been trained on texts that include Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s signature political philosophy. PHOTO: GREG BAKER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

SINGAPORE—Chinese artificial-intelligence companies face two big challenges in trying to create chatbots on par with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. One is overcoming U.S. export controls on buying leading-edge artificial-intelligence chips.

The other? Making sure the chatbot adheres to Xi Jinping Thought.

That’s the doctrine of Xi, the leader of China’s ruling Communist Party. And Chinese authorities offered a reminder of how AI companies are expected to behave on Monday, when they announced a new chatbot trained on Xi’s 14-point theory, which emphasizes socialist values and the party’s leadership over everything in China.

Officially, the chatbot is meant to provide cybersecurity and information-technology research. Designed by China’s cyberspace academy, the chatbot derives data from seven sources. Six of them are professional databases about technology. The other is the doctrine, known formally as “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

China and the U.S. are vying for leadership in AI, a tech sector that promises to boost economic productivity while transforming how people work. But in one subset of AI, Chinese companies face a disadvantage, because Beijing censors not only what chatbots can spit out, but also what data they can learn from.

An artificial-intelligence conference in Shanghai last year. China aims to dominate AI by 2030. PHOTO: CFOTO/ZUMA PRESS

The chatbot announced Monday is being trialed internally at China’s cyberspace research institute, and it is unclear whether it will be made public. According to the announcement by China’s cyberspace regulator, people with access to the chatbot can ask it questions about network technology, and it can generate responses in Chinese and English.

The regulator said the chatbot can, for example, outline reports on the current status of AI development, or describe the difference between technologically driven economic growth and older forms of productivity.

China in 2017 announced plans to become the world’s dominant power in all aspects of AI by 2030. It outlined a top-down agenda that encouraged educational institutions and companies to get on board, and they have responded.

In competing with the U.S., China has some natural advantages. Its 1.4 billion people give it potentially much more data to quickly train systems for autonomous vehicles and computer vision, a field that involves interpreting information from images and videos.

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Nvidia’s AI chips are crucial to technology from smartphones to chatbots. Their production is outsourced to just one company in Taiwan. With growing fears that China may stage an invasion of the island, the U.S. is racing to secure the supply chain. Illustration: Zak Ross

But for training chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the U.S. has an edge. AI systems developed by OpenAI, Google and others require large oceans of information to learn from. That has prompted deals like the recent content-licensing partnership between OpenAI and Wall Street Journal owner News Corp, in which the publisher will provide data that can help improve ChatGPT.

In China, AI developers face restrictions. Just as the country’s cyberspace regulator blocks access to Google, Facebook and foreign news sources, it also has a preapproved list of sources that AI chatbots can be trained on, said Rebecca Arcesati, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a German think tank. The regulator also verifies that the chatbot avoids answering queries on politically sensitive topics.

“These large models need to implement core socialist values,” Arcesati said. “There’s this challenge of political alignment that generative AI developers need to come to terms with.”

When The Wall Street Journal tested a Chinese chatbot last year, it repeatedly declined to answer questions about Chinese politics and said conversations had to remain peaceful and constructive.

There is evidence that Chinese regulators are loosening restrictions on AI to allow chatbots to be more globally competitive. Last year, regulators released AI rules that toned down earlier proposals, a sign that they were trying to find a balance between controlling the discourse and giving companies space to innovate.

Despite restrictions on what data they can train on and what they can say, some Chinese chatbots appear to be decent alternatives to ChatGPT, Arcesati said. “Given the political limitations and the lack of access to more extended and uncensored data-training sets, they still do quite well,” she said.

But she said that in the long term, the gap between American and Chinese chatbots might widen as Chinese companies face the bigger issue of lacking the best AI chips.

Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com

6. The Navy’s Missile Catcher Comes Home

Rarely does a single US Navy warship garner a Wall Street Journal OpEd written for its excellent work. BZ to the USS Carney's sailors.

We need more USS Carneys (and the sailors who crew it)

The Navy’s Missile Catcher Comes Home

The USS Carney pulls into port, after stopping many Houthi attacks.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/uss-carney-returns-from-deployment-houthis-red-sea-lisa-franchetti-u-s-navy-03063077?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s

By The Editorial Board

Follow

May 23, 2024 5:55 pm ET

USS Carney returns to Naval Station Mayport, Fla., May 19. PHOTO: SOPHIE A. PINKHAM/U.S. NAVY

A U.S. Navy destroyer returning from a routine deployment isn’t usually headline news, but the homecoming of the USS Carney deserves notice. American naval forces are fighting at a pace not seen since World War II because President Biden refuses to deter Houthi terrorists and restore order in the Red Sea.

The USS Carney pulled into port in Florida this week after a 235-day deployment, much of it spent taking down Houthi drones and missiles fired into a global shipping artery. “Called to action on the very first day that you entered the U.S. 5th Fleet, you conducted 51 engagements in 6 months,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said, according to a Navy release.

“The last time our Navy directly engaged the enemy to the degree that you have,” she added, “was way back in World War II, and it was the USS Hugh Hadley (DD-774), with her engagement record of 23.” That was May 1945.

The Carney’s commanding officer told reporters that the crew had between nine and 20 seconds to deal with a Houthi antiship ballistic missile threat. The crew’s performance is a tremendous credit to U.S. military technology and the professionalism of American sailors. May it be a reminder to adversaries who think the U.S. is a spent power.

Yet Mr. Biden still let a U.S. Navy asset and commercial shipping come under repeated fire. The Houthis keep terrorizing cargo ships, striking a Greek oil tanker with a ballistic missile as recently as May 18. The Administration has no obvious plan to eliminate the threat, now that its international naval coalition and small strikes have clearly failed.

And will Mr. Biden put up the defense money to refill U.S. weapons stocks? Destroyers are relying on high-end precision missiles to take down cheap drones. For all the panic that the war in Ukraine is depleting America’s arsenals, Mr. Biden’s deterrence failures in the Red Sea could end up harming U.S. military readiness more than years of ground war in Eastern Europe.

That’s one more reason Mr. Biden has a duty to stop tolerating the Houthi menace and hit the Iranian proxy’s missile and radar capacities so the attacks cease. But for the moment, as they say in the Navy, Bravo Zulu to the sailors of the USS Carney, for putting up a stiff defense of America’s interests even when their Commander in Chief wouldn’t.

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In his final appearance before the House Armed Services Committee on March 20, 2024, Navy Admiral John Aquilino repeatedly referenced the need to 'speed up' the U.S. defense effort in the Indo-Pacific, with China's military expanding on a 'scale not seen since WWII,' and growing cooperation between China, Russia and Iran setting up a new 'axis of evil.' Images: AP/Zuma Press

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

Appeared in the May 24, 2024, print edition as 'The Navy’s Missile Catcher Comes Home'.

7. Russia Is Increasingly Blocking Ukraine’s Starlink Service

Commercial service is great but....

Could Russia degrade secure military communications in a similar way?

Russia Is Increasingly Blocking Ukraine’s Starlink Service - The New York Times

By Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano

Paul Mozur reported from Kharkiv and Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Adam Satariano reported from London.

May 24, 2024

Updated 12:45 a.m. ET

nytimes.com · by Adam Satariano · May 24, 2024

Russia has deployed advanced tech to interfere with Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, Ukrainian officials said, leading to more outages on the northern front battle line.

Members of the Achilles Drone battalion of Ukraine’s 92nd Assault Brigade in Kharkiv, Ukraine. They depend on Starlink service for communications and to conduct drone strikes.Credit…Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

By Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano

Paul Mozur reported from Kharkiv and Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Adam Satariano reported from London.

May 24, 2024Updated 12:45 a.m. ET

Just before Russian troops pushed across the Ukrainian northern border this month, members of Ukraine’s 92nd Assault Brigade lost a vital resource. Starlink satellite internet service, which soldiers use to communicate, collect intelligence and conduct drone attacks, had slowed to a crawl.

Operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Starlink has been critical to the Ukrainian military since the earliest days of the war with Russia. Without the full service, Ukrainian soldiers said, they couldn’t quickly communicate and share information about the surprise onslaught and resorted to sending text messages. Their experiences were repeated across the new northern front line, according to Ukrainian soldiers, officials and electronics warfare experts.

At the heart of the outages: increased interference from Russia.

As Russian troops made gains this month near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, they deployed stronger electronic weapons and more sophisticated tools to degrade Starlink service, Ukrainian officials said. The advances pose a major threat to Ukraine, which has often managed to outmaneuver the Russian military with the help of frontline connectivity and other technology, but has been on the defensive against the renewed Russian advance.

The new outages appeared to be the first time the Russians have caused widespread disruptions of Starlink. If they continue to succeed, it could mark a tactical shift in the conflict, highlighting Ukraine’s vulnerability and dependence on the service provided by Mr. Musk’s company. As the United States and other governments work with SpaceX, the disruptions raise broader questions about Starlink’s reliability against a technically sophisticated adversary.

Starlink works by beaming an internet connection down from satellites revolving around Earth. The signals are received on the ground by pizza-box-size terminal dishes, which then distribute the connection like a Wi-Fi router to laptops, phones and other devices nearby. Starlink has provided Ukraine with vital internet service since 2022, with soldiers relying on it to guide internet-connected drones that are used for surveillance and as weapons, among other tasks.

In an interview this week, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital minister, said Russia’s recent attacks against Starlink appeared to use new and more advanced technology. The service previously held up remarkably well against interference on battlefields, where there has been widespread electronic warfare, radio jamming and other communication disruptions.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the digital minister for Ukraine, said Russia was using more sophisticated means of jamming Ukraine’s Starlink access.Credit…Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

But the Russians are now “testing different mechanisms to disrupt the quality of Starlink connections because it’s so important for us,” Mr. Fedorov said, without giving details about what he called their “powerful” electronic weapons systems. Ukraine was constantly communicating with SpaceX to resolve the problems, he added.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment. An official who leads Russia’s electronic warfare efforts told state media last month that the military had put Starlink on a “list of targets” and developed capabilities to counter the service.

While Mr. Fedorov said Starlink service should improve soon, some of the outages appeared timed to Russian attacks, according to soldiers and officials. Any disruptions at critical battlefield moments put Ukraine’s already stretched army at a further disadvantage, they said.

“We’re losing the electronic warfare fight,” said Ajax, the call sign for the deputy commander of the 92nd’s Achilles strike drone battalion, who in an interview described the challenges his troops faced after Starlink connectivity failed.

“One day before the attacks, it just shut down,” said Ajax, who would be quoted only on the condition of being named by his call sign, in keeping with Ukrainian military policy. “It became super, super slow.”

The disruptions put the entire unit at a disadvantage, said a drone pilot who goes by the call sign Kartel. During the first armored attacks of the Russian offensive this month, he said, he was in a garage without food or a sleeping bag. His team began to launch drone attacks but was hindered by the connection issues with Starlink. Communicating became so slow that soldiers had to use text messages sent across chat apps, he said — and even then it took a while for the messages to send.

“During the first hours the front line was very dynamic. The enemy was moving. And we were moving as well,” he said. “We needed to be fast in communicating.”

Over three days, he said, the unit held off the Russians, but not without difficulties. “It made everything more complicated,” he said. “Everything was more time consuming.”

Kari A. Bingen, a former U.S. Defense Department official and an expert on electronic warfare, said Starlink and other satellite communications could be disrupted by the use of a high-power radio frequency to overwhelm the connection links. The invisible attacks are typically done from a vehicle with a large radio tower attached to the top, she said.

“It’s naturally in the cross hairs of Russian forces,” said Ms. Bingen, now the director of the aerospace security project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “It degrades Ukrainian forces from being able to communicate on the battlefield.”

Explanations for Starlink outages in Ukraine over the past year vary. Several experts said Russia had gotten better at interfering with the signal between the satellites and Starlink terminals on the ground by using powerful and precise jammers. Others suggested that the service had been disrupted by specialized electronic weapons mounted on drones, which can confuse Starlink’s GPS signals, the global positioning system that is used to help locate satellites.

Sharp increases in Starlink use can also degrade service. In some instances, technical restrictions intended to keep Russian forces from using Starlink have hurt service for Ukrainian soldiers along the front line. At other times, disruptions can be more random, such as earlier this month when SpaceX reported service problems worldwide because of solar storms.

Throughout the conflict, Ukrainian forces have tried various techniques to shield Starlink from attacks, including placing the terminals in holes dug in the ground and putting metal mesh over them. Infozahyst, a Ukrainian company that works with the military and specializes in building tools for electronic warfare, said it did not believe such improvised solutions were effective.

A Starlink terminal camouflaged with a net near the eastern front line in the Donetsk region of Ukraine last summer.Credit…Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

Starlink has given Mr. Musk outsize influence in the war because he controls where the satellite service is available and can choose to cut off access. In some instances, Ukrainian officials have appealed directly to Mr. Musk to turn on Starlink access during military operations so they can conduct drone strikes across enemy lines — requests that the billionaire has not always approved. The U.S. government, which has purchased Starlink terminals for Ukraine, has sometimes gotten involved in the negotiations.

Starlink is not sold directly to Russia. But this year, Ukrainian officials publicly raised alarms that Russia was using Starlink terminals bought from third-party vendors, potentially eroding Ukraine’s connectivity advantage.

Experts have warned that Ukraine is overly dependent on a single company for such a vital resource, particularly one run by someone as unpredictable as Mr. Musk. But Ukraine’s reliance on Starlink is unlikely to shrink. Few alternatives exist for such comprehensive and reliable service.

Mr. Fedorov said the Ukrainian government was constantly testing new systems. The military has specialized systems for maritime drones that have destroyed a number of Russian ships in the Black Sea, he said.

“But of course there is no mass-produced equivalent,” he said.

For Ajax, the Ukrainian commander, the loss of Starlink service brought back bad memories from the war. When he fought near the Russian border in 2022, his unit was sometimes cut off from Starlink, disrupting drone video feeds that were used for targeting artillery from a distance. In its place, the unit deployed soldiers to covertly watch enemy positions and direct attacks.

“It became the old way with radios,” he said. “We had to say, ‘Move left 100 foot.’ It was super strange.”

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Olha Kotiuzhanska from Kharkiv and Kramatorsk.

is the global technology correspondent for The Times, based in Taipei. Previously he wrote about technology and politics in Asia from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul.

is a technology correspondent based in Europe, where his work focuses on digital policy and the intersection of technology and world affairs.

See more on: Russia-Ukraine War, SpaceX, Elon Musk

nytimes.com · by Adam Satariano · May 24, 2024

8. Exclusive: Putin wants Ukraine ceasefire on current frontlines

This will certainly have an influence over certain US politicians (which is probably what it is designed to do)

Does this mean he thinks he can negotiate from a position of strength or does he believe he cannot achieve any more gains and therefore must try to keep what he has already taken by force?

The last time there was a negotiation using the current frontlines it lasted from 1951-1953 and the stalemate at the front lines cost tens of thousands of lives on both sides.

Exclusive: Putin wants Ukraine ceasefire on current frontlines

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-wants-ukraine-ceasefire-current-frontlines-sources-say-2024-05-24/?utm

By Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Osborn

May 24, 20245:14 AM EDTUpdated an hour ago

Item 1 of 5 Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, May 23, 2024. YURI KOCHETKOV/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

[1/5]Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, May 23, 2024. YURI KOCHETKOV/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

• Russian sources indicate Putin ready to halt conflict at frontPutin to take more land to pressure Kyiv to talk: sourcesDoes not want another national mobilisation: sourcesPutin has no designs on NATO territory: sourcesRussia concerned about nuclear escalation: sources

MOSCOW/LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognises the current battlefield lines, four Russian sources told Reuters, saying he is prepared to fight on if Kyiv and the West do not respond.

Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin's entourage, said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's decision to rule out talks.

"Putin can fight for as long as it takes, but Putin is also ready for a ceasefire – to freeze the war," said another of the four, a senior Russian source who has worked with Putin and has knowledge of top level conversations in the Kremlin.

He, like the others cited in this story, spoke on condition of anonymity given the matter's sensitivity.

For this account, Reuters spoke to a total of five people who work with or have worked with Putin at a senior level in the political and business worlds. The fifth source did not comment on freezing the war at the current frontlines.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in response to a request for comment, said the Kremlin chief had repeatedly made clear Russia was open to dialogue to achieve its goals, saying the country did not want “eternal war.”

Ukraine's foreign and defence ministries did not respond to questions.

The appointment last week of economist Andrei Belousov as Russia's defence minister was seen by some Western military and political analysts as placing the Russian economy on a permanent war footing in order to win a protracted conflict.

It followed sustained battlefield pressure and territorial advances by Russia in recent weeks.

However, the sources said that Putin, re-elected in March for a new six-year term, would rather use Russia's current momentum to put the war behind him. They did not directly comment on the new defence minister.

Based on their knowledge of conversations in the upper ranks of the Kremlin, two of the sources said Putin was of the view that gains in the war so far were enough to sell a victory to the Russian people.

Europe's biggest ground conflict since World War Two has cost tens of thousands of lives on both sides and led to sweeping Western sanctions on Russia's economy.

Three sources said Putin understood any dramatic new advances would require another nationwide mobilisation, which he didn't want, with one source, who knows the Russian president, saying his popularity dipped after the first mobilisation in September 2022.

The national call up spooked part of the population in Russia, triggering hundreds of thousands of draft age men to leave the country. Polls showed Putin’s popularity falling by several points.

Peskov said Russia had no need for mobilisation and was instead recruiting volunteer contractors to the armed forces.

The prospect of a ceasefire, or even peace talks, currently seems remote.

Zelenskiy has repeatedly said peace on Putin's terms is a non-starter. He has vowed to retake lost territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. He signed a decree in 2022 that formally declared any talks with Putin "impossible."

One of the sources predicted no agreement could happen while Zelenskiy was in power, unless Russia bypassed him and struck a deal with Washington. However, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Kyiv last week, told reporters he did not believe Putin was interested in serious negotiations.

SWISS TALKS

Ukraine is preparing for talks hosted by Switzerland next month aimed at unifying international opinion on how to end the war. The talks were convened at the initiative of Zelenskiy who has said Putin should not attend. Switzerland has not invited Russia.

Moscow has said the talks are not credible without it being there. Ukraine and Switzerland want Russian allies including China to attend.

Speaking in China on May 17, Putin said Ukraine may use the Swiss talks to get a broader group of countries to back Zelenskiy’s demand for a total Russian withdrawal, which Putin said would be an imposed condition rather than a serious peace negotiation.

The Swiss foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"We are ready for discussion. We never refused," Putin said in China.

The Kremlin says it does not comment on the progress of what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine, but has repeatedly said Moscow is open to the idea of talks based on "the new realities on the ground."

In response to questions for this story, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said any initiative for peace must respect Ukraine’s “territorial integrity, within its internationally recognised borders” and described Russia as the sole obstacle to peace in Ukraine.

“The Kremlin has yet to demonstrate any meaningful interest in ending its war, quite the opposite,” the spokesperson said.

In the past, Kyiv has dismissed Russia's purported readiness to talk as an attempt to shift the blame onto it for the war.

Kyiv says Putin, whose team repeatedly denied he was planning a war before invading Ukraine in 2022, cannot be trusted to honour any deal.

Both Russia and Ukraine have also said they fear the other side would use any ceasefire to re-arm.

Kyiv and its Western backers are banking on a $61 billion U.S. aid package and additional European military aid to reverse what Zelenskiy described to Reuters this week as "one of the most difficult moments" of the full scale war.

As well as shortages of ammunition after U.S. delays in approving the package, Ukraine has admitted it is struggling to recruit enough troops and last month lowered the age for men who can be drafted to 25 from 27.

TERRITORY

Putin's insistence on locking in any battlefield gains in a deal is non-negotiable, all of the sources suggested.

Putin would, however, be ready to settle for what land he has now and freeze the conflict at the current front lines, four of the sources said.

"Putin will say that we won, that NATO attacked us and we kept our sovereignty, that we have a land corridor to Crimea, which is true," one of them said, giving their own analysis.

Freezing the conflict along current lines would leave Russia in possession of substantial chunks of four Ukrainian regions he formally incorporated into Russia in September 2022, but without full control of any of them.

Such an arrangement would fall short of the goals Moscow set for itself at the time, when it said the four of Ukraine's regions - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - now belonged to it in their entirety.

Peskov said that there could be no question of handing back the four regions which were now permanently part of Russia according to its own constitution.

Another factor playing into the Kremlin chief's view that the war should end is that the longer it drags on, the more battle-hardened veterans return to Russia, dissatisfied with post-war job and income prospects, potentially creating tensions in society, said one of the sources, who has worked with Putin.

'RUSSIA WILL PUSH FURTHER'

In February, three Russian sources told Reuters the United States rejected a previous Putin suggestion of a ceasefire to freeze the war.

In the absence of a ceasefire, Putin wants to take as much territory as possible to ratchet up pressure on Ukraine while seeking to exploit unexpected opportunities to acquire more, three of the sources said.

Russian forces control around 18% of Ukraine and this month thrust into the northeastern region of Kharkiv.

Putin is counting on Russia's large population compared to Ukraine to sustain superior manpower even without a mobilisation, bolstered by unusually generous pay packets for those who sign up.

"Russia will push further," the source who has worked with Putin said.

Putin will slowly conquer territories until Zelenskiy comes up with an offer to stop, the person said, saying the Russian leader had expressed the view to aides that the West would not provide enough weapons, sapping Ukraine's morale.

U.S. and European leaders have said they will stand by Ukraine until its security sovereignty is guaranteed. NATO countries and allies say they are trying to accelerate deliveries of weapons.

“Russia could end the war at any time by withdrawing its forces from Ukraine, instead of continuing to launch brutal attacks against Ukraine’s cities, ports, and people every day,” the State Department said in response to a question about weapons supplies.

All five sources said Putin had told advisers he had no designs on NATO territory, reflecting his public comments on the matter. Two of the sources cited Russian concerns about the growing danger of escalation with the West, including nuclear escalation, over the Ukraine standoff.

The State Department said the United States had not adjusted its nuclear posture, nor seen any sign that Russia was preparing to use a nuclear weapon.

“We continue to monitor the strategic environment and remain ready,” the spokesperson said.

Coming soon: Get the latest news and expert analysis about the state of the global economy with Reuters Econ World. Sign up here.

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow and Andrew Osborn in London Writing by Andrew Osborn Editing by Frank Jack Daniel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Guy Faulconbridge

Thomson Reuters

As Moscow bureau chief, Guy runs coverage of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Before Moscow, Guy ran Brexit coverage as London bureau chief (2012-2022). On the night of Brexit, his team delivered one of Reuters historic wins - reporting news of Brexit first to the world and the financial markets. Guy graduated from the London School of Economics and started his career as an intern at Bloomberg. He has spent over 14 years covering the former Soviet Union. He speaks fluent Russian.

Andrew Osborn

Thomson Reuters

As Russia Chief Political Correspondent, and former Moscow bureau chief, Andrew helps lead coverage of the world's largest country, whose political, economic and social transformation under President Vladimir Putin he has reported on for much of the last two decades, along with its growing confrontation with the West and wars in Georgia and Ukraine. Andrew was part of a Wall Street Journal reporting team short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. He has also reported from Moscow for two British newspapers, The Telegraph and The Independent.

9. Opinion - We Haven’t Hit Peak Populism Yet – David Brooks

​This is the scariest statistic to me. I would interpret this to mean that 40% of Americans are not willing to support and defend the Constitution. 40% no longer believe in our great American experiment. 

100% should believe we need a separation of power with checks and balances to check the potential for tyranny of "strong leaders." That is the system our founding fathers strived to develop. Have we lost our way?

Excerpt:

Forty percent of Americans said they believed we need a strong leader who will “break the rules,” which was only a bit below the 49 percent globally who believed that.

Opinion - We Haven’t Hit Peak Populism Yet - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/populism-trump-elections.html

nytimes.com · by David Brooks · May 23, 2024

David Brooks

We Haven’t Hit Peak Populism Yet

May 23, 2024, 7:00 p.m. ET

Credit…Peter van Agtmael/Magnum

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

We used to have long debates about American exceptionalism, about whether this country was an outlier among nations, and I always thought the bulk of the evidence suggested that it was. But these days our political attitudes are pretty ordinary. America, far from standing out as the champion of democracy, as a nation that welcomes immigrants, as a perpetually youthful nation energized by its faith in the American dream, is now caught in the same sour, populist mood as pretty much everywhere else.

Earlier this year, for example, the Ipsos research firm issued a report based on interviews with 20,630 adults in 28 countries, including South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil and Germany, last November and December. On question after question the American responses were, well, average.

Our pessimism is average. Roughly 59 percent of Americans said they believed their country is in decline, compared to 58 percent of people across all 28 countries who said that. Sixty percent of Americans agreed with the statement “the system is broken,” compared to 61 percent in the worldwide sample who agreed with that.

Our hostility to elites is average. Sixty-nine percent of Americans agreed that the “political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people,” compared with 67 percent of respondents among all 28 nations. Sixty-three percent of Americans agreed that “experts in this country don’t understand the lives of people like me,” compared with 62 percent of respondents worldwide.

Americans’ authoritarian tendencies are pretty average. Sixty-six percent of Americans said that the country “needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful,” compared with 63 percent of respondents among the 28 nations overall. Forty percent of Americans said they believed we need a strong leader who will “break the rules,” which was only a bit below the 49 percent globally who believed that.

Those results reveal a political climate — in the United States and across the world — that is extremely favorable for right-wing populists. That matters because this is a year of decision, a year in which at least 64 countries will hold national elections. Populism has emerged as the dominant global movement.

So far this year, populists have thrived in election after election. Incumbent populist regimes were or are about to be re-elected in India, Indonesia and Mexico. Populist parties have done well in Portugal, Slovakia and the Netherlands, where the far-right leader Geert Wilders shocked the world by leading his Party for Freedom to power.

European elites are bracing for the European Parliament elections next month. If the polls are to be believed, the parliament is about to shift sharply to the right, endangering current policies on climate change and Ukraine. Experts project that anti-Europe populist parties are likely to come out on top in the Euro-parliamentary voting in nine member states: France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia. Such parties are likely to come in second or third in nine others, including Germany and Spain.

Then, of course, there is Donald Trump’s slight but steady lead in the swing states in the United States.

If anything, the evidence suggests that the momentum is still on the populist side. Trump seems to be expanding his lead among working-class voters. In Europe, populists are making big gains, not just among the old and disillusioned, but among the young. According to one survey, 41 percent of European voters aged 18 to 35 have moved toward the right or far right. In the recent Portuguese elections, young voters surged to the right- wing populist Chega (Enough) party while nearly half the support for the rival Socialist Party came from voters older than 65.

One obvious takeaway is that it’s a mistake to analyze our presidential election in America-only terms. President Biden and Trump are being tossed about by global conditions far beyond their control.

The trends also suggest that we could be in one of those magnetic years in world history. There are certain moments in history, like 1848 and 1989, when events in different countries seem to build on one another, when you get sweeping cascades that bring similar changes to different nations, when the global consciousness seems to shift.

Of course, the main difference between those years and 2024 is that during those earlier pivotal moments the world experienced an expansion of freedom, the spread of democracy, the advance of liberal values. This year we’re likely to see all those widely in retreat.

Is there a way to fight back against the populist tide? Of course there is, but it begins with the humble recognition that the attitudes that undergird populism emerged over decades and now span the globe. If social trust is to be rebuilt, it probably has to be rebuilt on the ground, from the bottom up. As for what mainstream candidates should do this election year, I can’t improve on the advice offered by the Hoover Institution scholar Larry Diamond in The American Interest magazine in 2020:

• Don’t try to out-polarize the polarizer. If you stridently denounce the populist, you only mobilize his base and make yourself look like part of the hated establishment.
• Reach out to the doubting elements of his supporters. Don’t question the character of his backers or condescend; appeal to their interests and positive dreams.
• Avoid tit-for-tat name calling. You’ll be paying his game, and you’ll look smaller.
• Craft an issue-packed campaign. The Ipsos survey shows that even people who hate the system are eager for programs that create jobs, improve education, health care and public safety. As Diamond puts it, “Offer substantive, practical, nonideological policy proposals.”
• Don’t let the populists own patriotism. Offer a liberal version of national pride that gives people a sense of belonging across difference.
• Don’t be boring. The battle for attention is remorseless. Don’t let advisers make their candidates predictable, hidden and safe.

It’s looking like this year’s elections will be won by whichever side stands for change. Populists promise to tear down systems. Liberals need to make the case for changing them in a comprehensive and constructive way.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.

David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author, most recently, of “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.” @nytdavidbrooks

1

nytimes.com · by David Brooks · May 23, 2024

10. Russia’s Military Shaken as Top-Level Purge Unfolds

What will be the short and long term impacts of this?

Russia’s Military Shaken as Top-Level Purge Unfolds

By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

May 23, 2024

A high-level military purge is underway in Moscow, and gathering pace.

cepa.org · by Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan · May 23, 2024

Taken together, the arrests of at least four senior officers amount to the most serious attack on the Russian military in close to 25 years of Putin’s rule.

One by one, military officials are being thrown into jail. With the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine looking more favorable for the Kremlin than for some time, Putin appears to think this an appropriate moment to punish the army for the failures of 2022.

His repressive instrument of choice is, as always, his security service the FSB.

The campaign started within the Ministry of Defense, taking as its first victim Deputy Minister Timur Ivanov on April 23. This did not raise many eyebrows — Ivanov was famous for his lavishly luxurious lifestyle, which had long suggested possible corruption.

Three weeks later, Lt-Gen Yuri Kuznetsov, head of the personnel department at the ministry, was arrested on allegations that he was found with more than $1m in cash and valuables.

Like Ivanov’s detention, this could be waved away as not especially significant and was not thought likely to have any immediate implications for the Russian war in Ukraine. More probable, it was said, the move was just a follow-up to Sergey Shoigu losing his job as head of the ministry and moving to a new role as Secretary of the Security Council.

Then, suddenly in the week of May 20, the purge claimed two new victims, and this time it involved generals actually conducting the war — a former commander of the 58th army Maj-Gen Ivan Popov, and Lt-Gen Vadim Shamarin, deputy head of the general staff in charge of army communications.

It is notable that none of the charges relate to the conduct of Russia’s war in Ukraine. All are corruption-related, alleging massive fraud and large-scale bribe-taking.

In all cases the scheme of an attack is identical — while the criminal case is examined by the Investigative Committee, a sort of Russian FBI, the Committee uses the materials provided by the Military Counterintelligence department of the FSB (DVKR – Department Voeinnoi Konttrazvedki.)

The DVKR’s name suggests it aims to identify foreign spies in the Russian army, but that’s not exactly the case: the department has been always considered a tool to keep the military obedient, a way to secure the army’s loyalty to the existing regime.

Putin realized the need for such an organization almost immediately after he came to power in 2000. As early as February of that year, he signed into law the “Regulations for FSB Directorates in the Armed Forces,” which expanded the functions of military counterintelligence and gave it the power to fight organized crime.

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His 2000 decree broadened the role of FSB officers in the army to include the uncovering of possible threats to the regime. Added to their professional responsibilities was the fight against “illegal armed formations, criminal groups, and individuals and public associations which have set as their goal a violent change of the political system of the Russian Federation and the violent seizure or violent retention of power.” Thus Putin reinstated the FSB’s military counterintelligence department as the watchdog of army morale and also charged the agency with scenting out potential mutiny.

The army, which had hated and feared military counterintelligence since Soviet times (they were referred to as Osobists, from the Osoby Otdel, a special department, or as Major Molchi-Molchi meaning a Shush-Shush Major), took the hint.

Curiously, the huge powers given by Putin to this department didn’t make the FSB’s military counterintelligence department a political actor.

In fact, the department, by far the biggest within FSB, proved to be the least ambitious among the departments of the security service. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s the departmental heads (in 25 years there were only three) kept a low profile and always steered clear of political games.

There have been temptations. Most recently, the late mercenary leader Evgeny Prigozhin attempted to lure the head of the department into his intrigues, sending a letter to the head of the DVKR Nikolay Yuriev. Fighting to save his Wagner Group and (as it turned out) his life, he never received a reply from the intelligence officer.

The department was more focused on a systematic effort to improve its public image — sponsoring historical research, and helping with war movies set in the Great Patriotic War. It was such a large-scale propaganda effort that by the end of the 2010s one could easily think that it was the smart and heroic military counterintelligence officers of Smersh (Stalin’s military counterintelligence agency) who won the war, rather than the ordinary soldier.

But that unwavering loyalty, together with the department’s public relations campaign, has paid off now in the time of war.

The DVKR has been constantly expanding its operations since February 2022. The department took charge of the processing of PoWs in filtration camps, harassing Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories, and acting against Ukrainian underground groups. The department set up new ad-hoc teams to supervise troops on the battlefield.

Confirmation of the department’s rising star can be seen in several ways. DVKR officers are now involved in more and more investigations in Russia, which had nothing to do with the military, and politicians are calling for the regime to reinstate Smersh and give more powers to the DVKR.

Russian officers understand that “compromising materials” collected by the DVKR, which form the pretext for the arrests, are likely available on almost anyone in the army and can be swiftly presented when needed.

The message doesn’t need too much elaboration — Vladimir Putin is cold-blooded enough to take his revenge at any moment of his choosing. No one is safe.

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are Non-resident Senior Fellows with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.) They are Russian investigative journalists, and co-founders of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of Russian secret service activities.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Europe's Edge

CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.

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cepa.org · by Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan · May 23, 2024

11. US will announce $275 million more in artillery and ammunition for Ukraine, officials say

US will announce $275 million more in artillery and ammunition for Ukraine, officials say

BY TARA COPP AND MATTHEW LEE

Updated 11:12 AM EDT, May 23, 2024

AP · by TARA COPP · May 23, 2024

FILE - A sapper inspects fragments of a Russian air bomb that hit a living area injuring ten in Kharkiv, Ukraine, May 22, 2024. Two U.S. officials say the Biden administration is expected to announce an additional $275 million in military aid for Ukraine on Friday. It comes as Kyiv struggles to hold off advances by Russian troops in the Kharkiv region. This will be the fourth installment of military aid for Ukraine since Congress passed a long-delayed foreign aid bill late last month.(AP Photo/Andrii Marienko, File)

MATTHEW LEE

TARA COPP

Copp covers the Pentagon and national security for the Associated Press. She has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, throughout the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

twittermailto

AP · by TARA COPP · May 23, 2024

12. Crimea ATACMS strike hits space radar station: report

Crimea ATACMS strike hits space radar station: report

Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · May 24, 2024

A Ukrainian attack on annexed Crimea using U.S.-supplied missiles is reported to have struck a space radar station used by occupying Russian forces.

The local Crimean Wind Telegram channel reported on Friday that Kyiv's forces attacked military installations in Crimea on Thursday evening.

At least six ATACMS ballistic missiles hit a communications center used by the Russian army that houses "a radio antenna of a space observation station," it said.

Newsweek could not independently verify the report and has contacted Russia's Defense Ministry for comment by email.

An ATACMS missile is shown being fired in South Korea in 2017. At least six ATACMS missiles hit a communications center used by the Russian army in Crimea on Thursday, according to reports. An ATACMS missile is shown being fired in South Korea in 2017. At least six ATACMS missiles hit a communications center used by the Russian army in Crimea on Thursday, according to reports. South Korean Defense Ministry/Getty Images

The Context

Attacks on Crimea have ramped up throughout Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, as Kyiv attempts to reclaim the Black Sea Peninsula. The region was annexed by Moscow in 2014.

What We Know

The news outlet Krym Realii, which is part of U.S.-funded network Radio Free Liberty, said at least six explosions were reported in Crimea's Simferopol area and some eight explosions in the area of ​​the Belbek airfield—a key Russian military air base—and in the Novofedorivka settlement.

Russia's defense ministry said it had halted Ukraine's attempts to attack the region using ATACMS.

Air defense systems destroyed "three ATACMS operational-tactical missiles...over the territory of the Republic of Crimea," it said in a statement.

The defense ministry also said its forces destroyed naval drones belonging to Ukraine that were headed toward the Black Sea peninsula.

"In the Black Sea, unmanned boats of the Ukrainian Navy were discovered heading toward the Crimean Peninsula. Three unmanned boats were destroyed," it said.

Ukraine hasn't commented on the reported attacks.

Views

Footage of the reported attack was shared on social media on Thursday night.

"ATACMS in flight, heading to the illegal occupiers on #Crimea a little earlier," Tim White, journalist and documentary maker, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

A launch of 8 ATACMS Missiles on Crimea by Ukraine  has been reported

The video below shows 8 ATACMS Missiles being launched toward Crimea pic.twitter.com/bDY0QWH886

— Ukraine Battle Map (@ukraine_map) May 23, 2024

"#Russia says missile strikes in #Alushta hit "an empty commercial property" which is one of the most ridiculous statements of the war.. although maybe they meant it's now empty of life?" he wrote.

"More Ukrainian ATACMS strikes on Russian targets in Crimea. It's becoming a nightly occurrence now," said Jimmy Ruston, a Kyiv-based foreign policy and security analyst.

What's Next?

Russian military facilities have been attacked consistently throughout the war by Kyiv's forces, which maintain that they are legitimate targets, and such attacks are likely to continue.

Do you have a tip on a world news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about the Russia-Ukraine war? Let us know via worldnews@newsweek.com.

About the writer

Isabel van Brugen

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Isabel van Brugen is a Newsweek Reporter based in Kuala Lumpur. Her focus is reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war. Isabel joined Newsweek in 2021 and had previously worked with news outlets including the Daily Express, The Times, Harper's BAZAAR, and Grazia. She has an M.A. in Newspaper Journalism at City, University of London, and a B.A. in Russian language at Queen Mary, University of London. Languages: English, Russian

You can get in touch with Isabel by emailing i.vanbrugen@newsweek.com or by following her on X @isabelvanbrugen

Isabel van Brugen is a Newsweek Reporter based in Kuala Lumpur. Her focus is reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war. Isabel ...

To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.

Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · May 24, 2024

13. How Delays in Western Aid Gave Russia the Initiative: From the Ukrainian Counteroffensive to Kharkiv

We must stop being afraid of escalation.

HOW DELAYS IN WESTERN AID GAVE RUSSIA THE INITIATIVE: FROM THE UKRAINIAN COUNTEROFFENSIVE TO KHARKIV

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/how-delays-western-aid-gave-russia-initiative-ukrainian-counteroffensive-kharkiv

May 22, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

How Delays in Western Aid Gave Russia the Initiative: From the Ukrainian Counteroffensive to Kharkiv

Riley Bailey and Frederick W. Kagan

May 22, 2024

Ukraine and the West have defeated a months-long Russian effort to persuade the West to abandon Ukraine and set conditions to collapse Ukrainian defenses. Russian forces have conducted offensive operations since Fall 2023 that aimed to convince the West to abandon its commitment to Ukraine, and prolonged US debates about security assistance likely convinced the Kremlin that its efforts had partially succeeded. The effects of continued delays in US and Western security assistance set conditions for Russian forces to make more significant gains on the battlefield than they had previously been able to make, and the Russian military command likely concluded that Russian forces would be able to collapse the Ukrainian frontline at some point in the near to medium term. Ukrainian forces nevertheless prevented Russian forces from making operationally significant advances and limited the areas where Russian forces managed to make tactically significant gains even as Western supplies dwindled. The US decision to resume aid in late April 2024 and Europe's increasing efforts to mobilize support for Ukraine marked the failure of Russia's effort to convince the West to accept Russian victory. The course of operations over the past seven months has likely convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian military command that continuous Russian offensive operations will let Russia gradually subsume Ukraine and destroy Ukrainian statehood piece by piece, however. Putin has likely concluded that weakening Western support for Ukraine over time is a valid theory of victory for him and will likely continue efforts to convince the West to surrender and allow Russia to destroy Ukrainian statehood. Putin and the Russian military also appear to have concluded that Ukraine will be unable to regain territories the Russians can seize and that creeping Russian advances even at high cost will therefore ultimately lead to overall Russian success. These apparent Russian assessments will encourage Putin to continue the war in pursuit of ultimate total victory.

Russian forces have been conducting offensive operations in Ukraine since October 2023 that aim to demoralize Ukraine and the West and have expanded their goals to pursue operationally significant breakthroughs as Ukrainian materiel constraints worsened in winter and spring 2024. Russian forces launched a series of localized offensive operations in eastern Ukraine in Fall 2023 to seize the theater-wide initiative and to demoralize Ukraine and convince the West that Ukraine could not win the war. Western debates about support for Ukraine intensified in late fall into winter, likely convincing the Kremlin that it had succeeded in weakening Western support for Ukraine. The onset of pronounced Ukrainian materiel constraints due to delays in Western security assistance likely convinced the Kremlin that more operationally significant gains were possible. Russian forces subsequently intensified efforts throughout eastern Ukraine in mid-winter that aimed to achieve their existing operational objectives and more operationally significant advances. As Ukrainian material constraints became more dire and Russian forces started to make tactical gains, the Russian military command likely began to assess that Russian forces could eventually collapse the Ukrainian defensive line. The Russian military therefore began preparations for a summer offensive effort to exploit the destabilization of Ukrainian defenses that Russian forces have continued to pursue in Spring 2024. Russian forces now have a limited window to pursue tactical gains before the arrival of resumed US security assistance at scale allows Ukrainian forces to blunt Russian advances, however. The Kremlin likely did not assess that the United States would resume security assistance to Ukraine and will likely have to reassess many of its assumptions before conducting the expected summer offensive effort. Russian forces have nevertheless leveraged their possession of the theater-wide initiative and the recent months of Ukrainian material constraints to address longstanding issues with their campaign in Ukraine and to expand operational, tactical, and technological adaptations among Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. Well-provisioned Ukrainian forces will likely be able to prevent Russian forces from making operationally significant gains this summer, however.

October and November 2023: Russia fails to seize Avdiivka but does seize the theater-wide initiative

Russian forces launched localized offensive operations throughout eastern Ukraine in the Fall of 2023 in an effort to seize the theater-wide initiative and convince the West that the war was "stalemated" and that continued support for Ukraine was futile. Russian forces had successfully defended against the Summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive in western Zaporizhia Oblast and began localized offensive operations in October shortly after the tempo of the Ukrainian counteroffensive had begun to slow in September.[1] Russian forces likely aimed for their desired quick seizure of the theater-wide initiative to intensify Western questions about Ukraine's ability to liberate territory following the unmet expectations of the Summer 2023 counteroffensive.[2] Putin likely also wanted Russian forces to retain the theater-wide initiative and make tactical gains in the lead up to the March 2024 Russian Presidential election to convince the Russian public that the war effort was going well, although beginning offensive efforts later in winter 2023-2024 would have provided Putin with similar informational effects.[3] Russian forces launched localized offensive operations in eastern Ukraine during the most challenging weather of the fall-winter season when muddy ground conditions made mechanized maneuver unfavorable.[4] Instead of taking months to prepare for a wider offensive effort during more favorable conditions in the winter, Russian forces began a localized offensive operation almost immediately in hopes that it would quicken the culmination of Ukrainian counteroffensive operations and allow Russian forces to demonstratively seize the theater-wide initiative on their terms. The US intelligence community reportedly shared a declassified intelligence assessment with Congress on December 12 that Russian offensive operations in eastern Ukraine in Fall 2023 and through the upcoming winter aimed to weaken Western support for Ukraine instead of achieving any immediate operational objectives.[5]

Russian forces initially sought to conduct a rapid operational encirclement of Avdiivka in October 2023 to demoralize the West and quickly force Ukraine to cede the theater-wide initiative but failed to do so. Russian forces conducted mass mechanized assaults in the Avdiivka area from October 10 to October 16, shortly after the tempo of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in western Zaporizhia Oblast had begun to slow in September.[6] Russian forces redeployed relatively fresh elements of the 2nd Combined Arms Army (Central Military District [CMD]) from the Lyman direction, where there had been comparatively little fighting during Summer 2023, to the Avdiivka area to conduct some of the largest mechanized assaults of the war to date.[7] The Russian military command likely chose Avdiivka because Russian forces had already created favorable conditions to encircle the settlement during a previous failed effort to seize Avdiivka as part of the Russian Winter-Spring 2023 offensive operation.[8] The Avdiivka-Donetsk City front was also relatively less active during the Ukrainian Summer 2023 counteroffensive, and the Russian military command likely assessed that Ukrainian operational attention on other sectors of the frontline would give Russian forces a better chance to achieve operational surprise in the Avdiivka area.[9] Russian forces attempted to advance rapidly northwest, south, and southwest of Avdiivka to encircle Avdiivka, aiming to seize a settlement for which Russian forces had been fighting since 2014 while also attempting to destroy the Ukrainian force grouping in the area.[10] Ukrainian forces were prepared for the mechanized assaults, however, and inflicted serious armored vehicle losses on Russian forces while repelling assaults between October 10 and 16.[11] Russian forces regrouped for several days and then launched a larger second wave of mass mechanized assaults in the Avdiivka area on October 19 and 20 that failed to make significant tactical gains and resulted in even greater armored vehicle losses.[12] Russian forces lost at least 109 military vehicles, primarily armored fighting vehicles and tanks, near Avdiivka between October 10 and 20, and the scale of these losses forced the Russian military command to abandon attempts to conduct an offensive operation based solely on rapid mechanized maneuver.[13]

Failed mass mechanized assaults around Avdiivka prompted the Russian military to switch to consistent infantry assaults along the frontline in eastern Ukraine in November 2023, and constant Russian offensive pressure allowed Russian forces to seize the theater-wide initiative by December. Russian forces began consistently attacking along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front in November, sustaining a higher operational tempo with small infantry assault groups with minimal to no armored vehicle support.[14] Russian forces continued an opportunistic localized offensive operation that they had begun northeast of Kupyansk in October into November and launched localized offensive operations in the Bakhmut area in early November.[15] Russian forces likely hoped that several simultaneous offensive operations would force Ukrainian forces to divert manpower and materiel from areas where Ukrainian forces were still maintaining limited counteroffensive pressure to defensive operations along a wide front in eastern Ukraine.[16] These localized offensive operations had limited tactical goals, and there were no indications that Russian forces intended for these operations to pursue operationally significant objectives at that time. Russian forces renewed mechanized assaults near Avdiivka in late November, albeit at a smaller scale than their mechanized assaults in October, illustrating that the limited tactical objective of seizing Avdiivka remained the Russian military command's foremost priority and that Russian forces were not considering more operationally significant objectives at that time.[17]

Ukrainian counteroffensive operations largely ended in November, and Russian offensive operations likely contributed to their culmination despite Russia's failure to achieve even notable tactical gains.[18] These Russian offensive operations also likely contributed to an emerging debate in the West and the United States about continued support to Ukraine, as limited offensive operations and discussions about positional warfare generated a perception that operationally significant advances in Ukraine were impossible and that the war was in a "stalemate."[19] With the theater-wide initiative, Russian forces were now able to determine the time, location, and scale of fighting in Ukraine, an advantage that Russian forces would leverage to continue efforts to demoralize Ukraine and the West. Russian forces also could determine the resources that Ukraine would have to commit to fighting and aimed to prevent Ukrainian forces from accumulating materiel needed to contest the initiative in the near term.

December 2023: An increasingly confident Kremlin

The Kremlin likely became convinced by mid-winter that it had succeeded in weakening Western support for Ukraine. Putin and the Kremlin had cautiously discussed the war in public for much of the full-scale invasion and only briefly touched on their strategic goals for the war.[20] Putin and the Kremlin notably shifted their public rhetoric in December, however, reengaging with expansionist rhetoric from the beginning of the full-scale invasion and expressing increasing confidence in Russia's prospects in Ukraine.[21] Some of this rhetoric may have intended to bolster information operations aimed at demoralizing Ukraine and further convincing the West that Ukrainian victory was impossible, but the significant shift in rhetoric in the lead up to the Russian presidential election suggests that Putin and the Kremlin believed that Russian prospects in Ukraine were improving.[22] As it became clear that the resumption of US aid to Ukraine was a matter of debate and not procedure and as the European Union (EU) prolonged discussions on its own support package, the future of Western security assistance to Ukraine became increasingly uncertain. The West had previously debated the type, amount, and regularity of security assistance to Ukraine, but ending security assistance altogether had not hitherto gained significant traction. This inflection likely convinced the Kremlin that there were limits to Western support for Ukraine and that the Russian seizure of the theater-wide initiative had succeeded in convincing the West that facilitating Ukrainian victory was not a feasible course of action. The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reported in its 2024 Annual Threat Assessment that Putin “probably believes” that Russian forces have blunted Ukrainian efforts to retake significant territory and that US and Western support to Ukraine is “finite,” an assessment that Putin and his advisors likely started to coalesce around in Winter 2023-2024.[23]

The Russian military command likely began reassessing the scope of its localized offensive operations based on the assessment that Ukrainian materiel shortages would facilitate significant Russian advances on the battlefield. It was increasingly clear by mid-December that a combination of artillery ammunition shortages and delays in the provision of Western security assistance was causing Ukrainian forces to husband materiel and constraining Ukrainian defensive capabilities.[24] Russian forces were fielding an up to ten-to-one artillery advantage in certain sectors of the front by January, although Ukrainian forces were already trying to offset some of their artillery constraints with first person view drones (FPV).[25] Russian forces seized Marinka, a small tactically insignificant settlement west of Donetsk City that had been under Russian attack since the start of the full-scale invasion, on December 25.[26] Russian forces also recaptured some limited positions in western Zaporizhia Oblast in late December that Ukrainian forces had taken during the Summer 2023 counteroffensive.[27] Limited tactical gains that had previously eluded Russian forces likely bolstered Russian confidence, and forecasts about the consequences of continued delays in Western aid likely added to Russian perceptions that Russian forces would be conducting offensive operations against increasingly less well provisioned Ukrainian forces. The Russian military command likely believed that intensified Russian offensive operations could generate a reinforcing feedback loop wherein Russian offensive operations against less well provisioned Ukrainian forces could achieve tactically significant gains that in return would demoralize the West and prolong debates about resuming security assistance to Ukraine at scale, causing delays that would further worsen Ukrainian material constraints and set conditions for even greater Russian tactical gains.

Russian forces began preparations for intensified offensive efforts in Ukraine in December 2023 and early January 2024 that indicated that the Russian military command likely assessed that tactically and operationally significant gains were possible. Russian sources claimed in early January that Russian forces were preparing to launch a new offensive effort once the ground froze in eastern Ukraine, and Russian forces likely began establishing limited operational reserves for use later in the winter throughout late fall and into December.[28] Russian forces redeployed remaining CMD elements from the Lyman direction to the Central Grouping of Forces in the Avdiivka area by January while also establishing coherent areas of responsibility for elements of the Western Military District (now Leningrad and Moscow military districts [LMD/MMD]) along the entire Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line.[29] The Russian military command established two different relatively coherent force groupings in these areas to pursue intensified offensive operations — the Central Grouping of Forces concentrated on a relatively narrow sector of the front for an intensified effort to seize Avdiivka, and the Western Grouping of Forces attacked along four mutually supporting directions of advance on the Kharkiv-Luhansk axis to push Ukrainian forces off the east bank of the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast.[30] Avdiivka remained a tactical objective likely meant to provide Putin with a battlefield victory for his reelection in March, but the effort to reach the Oskil River pursued an operationally significant objective that suggests that the Russian military command assessed that Russian forces could achieve gains that were considerably more significant than any that Russian forces had recently been able to make.[31]

Russian forces also resumed large scale missile and drone strikes against Ukraine in late December, likely hoping to reapply pressure on Ukrainian air defense assets and fix and draw Ukrainian air defense systems away from the front in order to intensify glide bomb strikes.[32] Russian forces began to significantly intensify glide bomb strikes in early December 2023 throughout the theater, and the Russian command likely hoped that sparse Ukrainian air defense coverage along the front would permit Russian fixed-wing aircraft to intensify glide bomb strikes in January and February in support of intensified offensive ground operations safely.[33] Russian forces launched 250 glide bombs against Avdiivka alone in the first half of January 2024, compared to 149 glide bombs in all of 2023.[34] Russian forces also may have imagined that large scale missile and drone strikes would exhaust Ukraine's air defense umbrella suffering from the lack of replenishment as Western aid debates continued, and that completely degraded Ukrainian air defense capabilities several months down the line could allow Russian forces to conduct widespread aviation operations at scale to bomb rear Ukrainian logistics and population centers to devastating effect.[35]

January and February 2024: Russian forces intensify offensive efforts and pursue more operationally significant gains

Russian forces significantly intensified offensive operations around Avdiivka and launched their Winter-Spring 2024 offensive operation on the Kharkiv-Luhansk axis roughly at the same time in mid-January. Russian forces intensified their use of armored vehicles to transport infantry to the frontline near Avdiivka on January 16 and reportedly entered Avdiivka as of January 19.[36] Elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army (MMD, formerly WMD) meanwhile intensified offensive operations northwest of Svatove on January 19, and elements of the 20th CAA (MMD, formerly WMD) conducted a likely battalion sized mechanized assault west of Kreminna on January 21.[37] Russian forces began advancing into Ukrainian strongholds in southern Avdiivka on January 21 and by January 25 it was evident that Russian forces intended to focus a large amount of materiel and manpower on fighting through the settlement instead of continuing attempts at an operational encirclement in the area.[38] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov stated on January 30 that the Russian Winter-Spring 2024 offensive effort on the Kharkiv-Luhansk axes was underway.[39] The near simultaneous intensification of Russian offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line and near Avdiivka likely aimed to pressure Ukrainian forces on two separate fronts and prevent Ukraine from transferring manpower and increasingly scarce materiel to another sector should Russian forces start making progress. Russian forces did not make significant tactical progress in continued intensified assaults on the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line in February and into March, however, likely because advances in the area require successful mechanized maneuver that Russian forces have routinely struggled to conduct.[40] Russian forces were able to make a tactical penetration into Avdiivka that allowed Russian infantry to mass on the settlement for urban combat, in contrast.[41]

Russian forces concentrated significant manpower and materiel on their effort to seize Avdiivka in mid-February and achieved their tactical objective in the area at high cost. Russian forces made tactical gains in northern Avdiivka between February 2 and 8 that allowed Russian forces subsequently to launch a turning movement through the settlement on February 15 that would threaten Ukrainian forces in Avdiivka with tactical encirclement.[42] Ukrainian forces began withdrawing from Avdiivka on February 16 and Russian forces seized Avdiivka on February 17.[43] The Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Press Service reported that Ukrainian forces inflicted losses of 20,018 personnel, 199 tanks, and 481 armored combat vehicles in the Tavriisk direction (from Avdiivka through western Zaporizhia Oblast) between January 1 and February 15, with the majority of those losses inflicted near Avdiivka.[44] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi stated on February 18 that during the four month long Russian offensive effort to seize Avdiivka, Russian forces lost over 47,000 personnel, 364 tanks, 248 artillery systems, 748 armored fighting vehicles, and five aircraft.[45] A Russian milblogger, who later reportedly committed suicide over the uproar about his reporting about Avdiivka, claimed that 16,000 Russian personnel died during the four-month effort to seize Avdiivka.[46] The seizure of Avdiivka in itself was not operationally significant as the settlement provided limited avenues for further advances.[47] The seizure of the settlement did, however, provide the Kremlin with its desired battlefield victory, a salient tactical gain to demoralize Ukrainians and convince the West that Russian forces could advance on the battlefield, and tactical opportunities to destabilize Ukrainian defensive positions further west of Avdiivka.[48]

Russian officials aimed to use these intensified offensive operations to further dissuade the West from supporting Ukraine as Western discussions about security assistance progressed. The US Senate unveiled its proposed supplemental appropriations bill for security assistance for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel on February 4 and passed the bill on February 13.[49] Russian forces made their important tactical penetration into northern Avdiivka by February 8 and launched their turning movement through the settlement on February 18, mere days after important milestones with the US supplemental aid bill.[50] The timing was most likely coincidental, but Russian officials were highly attuned at the time to generating effects on Western audiences about the war in Ukraine. Putin notably gave an interview to American media personality Tucker Carlson released on February 8 that Putin attempted to use to present to an American audience a long-standing Kremlin information operation that falsely asserts that Russia is interested in a negotiated end to its war in Ukraine.[51] The Kremlin likely intended for this information operation to disrupt American progress on the supplemental debate and hoped that Russian battlefield gains at the time would generate US discussions about the feasibility of Ukrainian victory and the need for a negotiated settlement instead of resumed military assistance. Russian forces also engaged in limited offensive operations to achieve informational affects that intended to further demoralize Ukrainians following the seizure of Avdiivka, notably intensifying efforts to seize Robotyne in mid-February in an attempt to regain territory lost during the Summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive.[52] Former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu prematurely claimed that Russian forces had seized Krynky, where Ukrainian forces established a limited tactical bridgehead in mid-fall 2023, to posture the Russian military as nullifying the effects of the Summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive.[53]

March and April 2024: Russia sees opportunities for the destabilization and collapse of the Ukrainian defense

The Russian seizure of Avdiivka prominently highlighted the way in which Ukrainian materiel constraints were facilitating Russian advances, and the Russian military command likely saw prospects for destabilizing Ukrainian defenses on a larger scale following the seizure of Avdiivka. Russian forces conducted upwards of 100 glide bomb strikes against Avdiivka per day in the final weeks of the offensive effort to seize the settlement, and Russian forces leveraged these strikes to destroy prepared Ukrainian positions over a wide area to facilitate the advance of Russian infantry on the ground.[54]  The successful Russian use of glide bomb strikes to tactical effect in Avdiivka likely convinced the Russian military command that the further degradation of Ukrainian air defense capabilities due to delays in US security assistance would allow Russian forces to replicate and possibly conduct the aviation operations they conducted around Avdiivka at scale along the front.[55] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces had a roughly six-to-one artillery advantage on average throughout the front in mid-February, although it was likely much greater during the Russian seizure of Avdiivka.[56] Ukrainian artillery constraints, even in the most active sectors of the front such as Avdiivka, allowed Russian forces to stage offensive operations under less pressure from Ukrainian counterbattery fire, generating an operational flexibility that Russian forces likely hoped would facilitate similar tactical gains elsewhere on the front.[57] The relatively rapid seizure of Avdiivka after months of costly gradual progress likely illustrated to the Russian military that such gains would become more feasible as Ukrainian materiel constraints worsened, and the Russian military may have determined that sustaining the tempo of offensive operations in eastern Ukraine would accelerate critical Ukrainian shortages.

Russian forces sustained a high tempo of offensive operations following the seizure of Avdiivka in order to push as far west as possible before Ukrainian forces established more cohesive and harder-to-penetrate defensive lines in the area.[58] Russian forces briefly slowed their offensive tempo in the week following their seizure of Avdiivka but had no intentions of allowing the offensive operation in the area to culminate. The Russian command transferred elements of the CMD, notably its 90th Tank Division, to the rear for rest and reconstitution to establish available reserves in the area while immediately committing other CMD elements that had participated in the seizure of Avdiivka to offensive operations west of Avdiivka.[59] Ukrainian forces had relatively less well-prepared defensive positions in the area, and Russian forces sought to gain as much ground as possible before Ukrainian forces could establish themselves at a cohesive defensive line.[60] Ukrainian forces managed to settle on a defensive line several kilometers west of Avdiivka and subsequently slowed Russian advances by mid-March, but these relatively rapid gains likely created an impression that the Ukrainian defense west of Avdiivka was unstable.[61] The Russian military command decided at this time to codify the CMD's responsibility for the small section of the front west of Avdiivka and establish CMD elements as an operational maneuver force that would exploit any envisioned penetrations in the area.[62]  

Russian forces also began approaching the outskirts of Chasiv Yar in March, setting conditions to pursue an operationally significant objective west of Bakhmut.  Russia's localized offensive operation in the Bakhmut area had been relatively less active than those along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna and Avdiivka-Donetsk City fronts, but nevertheless had made marginal tactical progress that brought Russian forces close to the outskirts of Chasiv Yar by late March.[63] The ongoing offensive effort to seize Chasiv Yar offers Russian forces the most immediate prospects for operationally significant advances as the seizure of the town would likely allow Russian forces to launch subsequent offensive operations against Kostyantynivka and Druzhkivka, cities that form the southern part of a significant Ukrainian defensive belt in Donetsk Oblast.[64] Select Russian sources described the limited localized offensive operations in the Bakhmut area between November 2023 and March 2024 as conditions setting for an intensified offensive operation to encircle and seize Chasiv Yar.[65] Russian forces have concentrated elements of several airborne (VDV) divisions and brigades, the Luhansk People's Republic [LNR] 2nd Army Corps (AC), the 3rd AC, and the 8th Combined Arms Army [CAA] (Southern Military District [SMD]) in the Chasiv Yar area, although many of these elements had already been in the area since the Summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive.[66] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that Russian forces planned to transfer forces to the Chasiv Yar area from the Avdiivka direction following the seizure of Avdiivka in mid-February, but that the opportunity to exploit tactical Ukrainian vulnerabilities immediately west of Avdiivka persuaded the Russian command not to do so.[67] The seizure of Adviivka and worsening Ukrainian materiel shortages may also have convinced the Russian military that the existing force grouping in the Chasiv Yar area was more or less sufficient to begin intensified offensive operations to seize Chasiv Yar.

Russian forces intensified mechanized assaults throughout eastern Ukraine in late March and early April and increased their general offensive tempo into April in order to destabilize the Ukrainian defense further. Reserve elements of the 90th Tank Division conducted a battalion-sized mechanized assault near Avdiivka on March 30 — the first battalion-sized mechanized assault in the area since Russian forces began the campaign to seize Avdiivka in Fall 2023.[68] From late March to early April, Russian forces increased the number and size of mechanized ground assaults throughout eastern Ukraine. Russian forces conducted a roughly reinforced company-sized mechanized assault towards Chasiv Yar on April 4 and advanced up to the eastern outskirts of the settlement.[69] Russian forces intensified the overall tempo of their offensive operations in the Lyman, Chasiv Yar, Avdiivka, and Donetsk City areas to place pressure on Ukrainian forces all along the frontline and achieve a penetration wherever possible in eastern Ukraine.[70] Ukrainian forces prevented Russian forces from penetrating Ukrainian defenses, but Russian forces did make tactical gains during these mechanized assaults.[71] These mechanized advances were not reflective of a change in Russian offensive capability but rather resulted from critical Ukrainian artillery shortages, as Ukrainian forces had previously extensively leveraged artillery in their reconnaissance fire complex (RFC) to repel Russian mechanized assaults.[72] Ukrainian forces had to rely on FPV drones to defend against these Russian mechanized assaults, a partial mitigation since FPV drones cannot destroy armored vehicles rapidly and in large numbers as artillery can.[73] Russian forces have made most their tactical gains in the past year and a half mainly through infantry assaults, and the partial successes of these mechanized advances may have prompted the Russian military command to consider that restoring maneuver to the battlefield was possible in the near term.[74]

Russian forces substantially decreased the tempo of offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line throughout March into April, however, likely viewing fewer chances for a breakthrough in the area due to failed offensive operations in the area in January and February.[75] Russian forces also began to transfer elements of the 44th AC, 11th AC (LMD), and 6th CAA (all LMD) from the Kupyansk direction to Belgorod, Kursk, and Bryansk oblasts in March and April in preparation for limited offensive operations that Russian forces would launch into northern Kharkiv Oblast in early May.[76] The Russian military command expanded the MMD's area of responsibility along the entire Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, temporarily pausing the larger Kharkiv-Luhansk offensive effort so that the MMD could adjust to assuming responsibility for the effort.[77]

Russian forces also resumed efforts to collapse Ukraine's energy grid in late March, likely viewing degrading Ukrainian air defense capabilities as an opportunity to cause significant long-term damage to Ukrainian war fighting capabilities and set conditions for significant gains on the battlefield.[78] The Russian military command likely sought to reapply pressure on Ukraine' air defense umbrella to continue fixing degraded Ukrainian air defenses to the rear as Russian aviation supported ongoing intensified offensive operations in eastern Ukraine and started to intensify strikes in Kharkiv Oblast ahead of the planned offensive operation in northern Kharkiv Oblast.[79] The Russian military command may have assessed that another set of large-scale missile and drone strikes could almost completely deplete Ukrainian air defense missile stocks amid continued delays in US security assistance, setting conditions for large-scale Russian aviation operations in support of the expected Russian Summer 2024 offensive operation. Spring 2024 also offered the best chance that Russian forces have had to collapse the Ukrainian energy grid in over a year due to the delays in Western air defense provisions, and Russian forces exploited this opportunity to try to cause long term damage to Ukrainian defense industrial and overall economic capacity that would take substantial time to repair.[80]

Ukrainian officials were issuing increasingly dire forecasts in March and April about the consequences of the continued lack of Western security assistance, likely bolstering the Russian military command's belief in a possible breakthrough. Ukrainian officials reportedly started to increasingly express concerns in private in March about significant Russian advances in the summer in the event of continued delays in Western security assistance.[81] By April Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was publicly indicating that delays in American security assistance would continue to force Ukraine to cede the battlefield initiative and that these delays were critically threatening Ukraine’s defensive capabilities.[82] Zelensky reportedly told US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson in December 2023 that Ukrainian forces would be able to “hold out” until March or April 2024 without additional US security assistance, and as Ukrainian forces passed this threshold the Russian military's belief in the potential for an operational breakthrough likely became an entrenched aspect of its operational planning.[83]

The Russian military command likely assessed that continued Russian offensive operations in Spring 2024 would prevent Ukrainian forces from stabilizing the frontline and that a large-scale Russian offensive effort in the summer would exploit this instability and even greater Ukrainian materiel constraints. Russian forces initially sought to maintain the tempo of their offensive operations this spring in order to force Ukraine to expend materiel it could otherwise accumulate for defensive efforts this summer. Russian forces aimed to compel Ukrainian forces to prioritize limited resources to critical sectors of the front, increasing the risk of a Russian breakthrough in other less-well-provisioned sectors and making the frontline overall more fragile.[84] Ukrainian officials increasingly began to warn of a large-scale Russian offensive operation in late May or June and identified the Pokrovsk direction (west of Avdiivka) and the Chasiv Yar area as the likely areas of Russian focus.[85] Ukrainian officials also warned about the potential for a Russian offensive operation in Kharkiv and Sumy oblasts, an operation that likely aims to stretch Ukraine's limited resources and worsen Ukrainian manpower constraints by forcing Ukraine to respond to ongoing Russian offensive operations across a wider swath of territory in eastern and northeastern Ukraine.[86] Russian forces likely aimed to prevent Ukrainian forces from stabilizing the defensive line so that Russian forces could quickly penetrate and exploit weaker sectors of the front to achieve an operationally significant breakthrough with their planned summer offensive effort. Russian forces have been attempting to establish operational- and strategic-level reserves in recent months for this summer offensive effort, but have likely not trained or equipped these reserves to act as coherent penetration or exploitation forces.[87] The Russian military command likely assessed that it could use these reserves to replenish existing units committed to the frontline and that even poorly trained Russian forces would be able to advance against Ukrainian forces suffering from the materiel shortages forecasted for the summer.[88] The Russian military likely viewed Russian offensive operations in late April as conditions setting for a larger offensive effort in the near term that had a chance to collapse the frontline.[89]

May 2024 and Beyond: A closing window for Russian tactical gains and the approaching Russian summer offensive effort

The resumption of US security assistance to Ukraine at the end of April was a critical turning point in the war and created a limited window for Russian forces to pursue tactically significant gains. It will still take several weeks for US security assistance to arrive to Ukrainian forces at the front at scale, and Russian forces have intensified offensive operations in certain sectors and maintained their offensive tempo in others to take advantage of the limited window before the large-scale arrival of new US aid at the front.[90] Ukrainian forces have continued to face ongoing shortages of artillery ammunition and air defense interceptors in early May, although the Ukrainian command likely has more latitude to take short-term risks with dwindling supplies to prevent significant Russian advances.[91] Russian forces have continued missile and drone strikes to take advantage of degraded Ukrainian air defense capabilities and have increasingly targeted transportation infrastructure in a bid to interdict Ukrainian ground lines of communications (GLOCs) and disrupt the flow of US aid to the frontline.[92] The resumption of US security assistance has removed the operational inflection point that Russian forces likely thought they were approaching — a critical threshold of Ukrainian materiel constraints that would have facilitated the collapse of the frontline. Russian offensive operations since October 2023 have steadily convinced the Russian military command that an operationally significant breakthrough was possible, and the resumption of US security assistance has very likely ended that possibility, whether the Russian military command has acknowledged that fact or not.

Russian forces focused on exploiting a tactical penetration northwest of Avdiivka while continuing to push near Chasiv Yar and resumed offensive operations along the wider Kharkiv-Luhansk axis. Russian forces seized on a reportedly disorderly Ukrainian rotation in the Ocheretyne area northwest of Avdiivka and made a tactical penetration in the area by April 18.[93] This penetration was almost certainly not tied to the impending vote on the US supplemental aid bill but instead resulted from the Central Grouping of Forces' existing operational task to penetrate Ukrainian defensive lines so that CMD elements could pursue a wider exploitation and from the perception of a tactical opportunity.[94] Russian forces had quickly redeployed elements of four CMD brigades to the tactical penetration near Ocheretyne by April 20 and by April 28 Russian forces had stabilized their salient northwest of Avdiivka, prompting Ukrainian forces to withdraw from other limited tactical positions along the frontline west of Avdiivka.[95] Russian forces have since made further significant tactical gains in the area but remain far from any operationally significant objectives.[96] Russian forces have committed additional reserves to what is in effect an opportunistic tactical penetration, which may consume manpower that Russian forces could have used to make operationally significant gains in the Chasiv Yar area or intended to use in the summer of 2024.[97] Russian forces will likely continue to make tactically significant gains in the Avdiivka area in the coming weeks as Ukrainian forces wait for US aid to relieve materiel constraints, however.

Russian forces have continued offensive operations near Chasiv Yar.[98] Russian forces momentarily regrouped in the Chasiv Yar area in mid-April before significantly intensifying offensive operations in the area from April 30 onward, and Ukrainian officials began publicly assessing in early May that it would “probably be a matter of time” before Russian forces seized the town.[99] Russian forces intensified mechanized assaults near Chasiv Yar in mid-May to exploit how the resumed Russian offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast and ongoing offensive operations throughout eastern Ukraine have generated greater theater-wide pressure on Ukrainian forces.[100] ISW assesses that Russian forces may take Chasiv Yar but will be very unlikely to seize nearby major Ukrainian cities in Donetsk Oblast in subsequent offensive operations this summer.[101] 

Russian forces resumed offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line in late April and began to make limited tactical gains in the area.[102] The resumption of Russian offensive operations in the area likely sought to achieve tactical gains ahead of the arrival of US aid while also placing pressure on Ukrainian forces in eastern Kharkiv Oblast ahead of the imminent start of the new Russian offensive operation in northern Kharkiv Oblast. The Russian military most certainly retains its significant operational objective of pushing Ukrainian forces off the east bank of the Oskil River, although it remains unclear if the MMD intends to pursue the four-pronged offensive effort that the WMD initially sought to conduct in the area over the winter.[103] Russian forces may intend to gradually advance towards the Oskil River well after the summer 2024 Russian offensive effort ends.

Russian forces launched limited offensive operations along the Russian-Ukrainian border in northern Kharkiv Oblast on May 10 and may have started the operation earlier than intended due to the resumption of US security assistance. Russian forces committed limited manpower from the 11th and 44th ACs and the 6th CAA (LMD) to heavy infantry assaults north and northeast of Kharkiv city and initially made tactically significant gains in reportedly less defended border areas.[104] The pace of Russian offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast began to slow as of May 14, and Russian forces appear to be prioritizing the creation of a "buffer zone" in the international border area over pursuing a deeper penetration into Kharkiv Oblast.[105] Russian offensive operations along the Kharkiv international border likely have the strategic objective of drawing and fixing Ukrainian forces to this axis to enable Russian advances in other areas of eastern Ukraine.[106] Russian forces also likely aim to advance to within effective tube artillery range of Kharkiv City so that they can conduct routine indirect fire against the city to set conditions for a larger offensive effort against Kharkiv City at a later date.[107] Russian forces reportedly launched offensive operations along the Russian-Ukrainian border in northern Kharkiv Oblast before they had completed bringing the Northern Grouping of Forces up to its reported planned end strength and have so far only committed a limited amount of combat power to offensive operations in the area.[108] The reported sizes of the Russian elements committed to these limited operations and of the Russian force grouping deployed along the border in northeastern Ukraine indicate that Russian forces are not pursuing a large-scale operation to envelop, encircle, or seize Kharkiv City at this time.[109] Ukrainian officials had previously indicated that Russian forces would likely begin offensive operations in the Kharkiv direction in late May or June, but the Russian military command may have started the effort several weeks ahead of schedule due to concerns that well provisioned Ukrainian forces with US security assistance could prevent limited Russian forces from establishing a tactical foothold within northern Kharkiv Oblast.

The Kremlin likely did not believe that the US would resume security assistance to Ukraine and will likely have to reassess many of its operational planning assumptions for the summer offensive effort. Many of the Kremlin's assumptions for the expected summer offensive effort were likely based on the idea that Ukrainian forces would be facing critical materiel shortages by June, and the continuation of Russian offensive operations through the spring suggests that the Russian military command did not believe that it needed to accumulate significantly more manpower and materiel in case Ukrainian forces would be better provisioned by summer. Putin's belief in a "finite" level of US support for Ukraine likely led him to view the continued delays on the US supplemental bill as a reflection of serious US opposition to supporting Ukraine. The Kremlin promoted longstanding information operations aimed at prompting the West into self-deterrence in early April, possibly due to concerns about US progress on security assistance, but only significantly intensified this effort after the US resumed security assistance.[110]

The Russian military command likely envisioned that simultaneous offensive efforts towards Kharkiv City and along the current frontline in eastern Ukraine would stretch and overwhelm poorly-provisioned and undermanned Ukrainian forces and allow Russian forces to achieve a major breakthrough in at least one sector of the frontline. The Ukrainian forces that will likely hold the frontline in June 2024 will undermine this operational intent and likely have sufficient materiel to respond to these simultaneous Russian offensive operations. The Russian operational intent to stretch Ukrainian forces across a wider front will likely generate constraints on available Ukrainian manpower, however. Russian forces likely assumed that their poorly trained and equipped operational-level reserves would still be able to make tactical gains against constrained Ukrainian forces and likely planned to rely on these elements to sustain gradual tactical gains.[111] The Russian military command's likely belief in restoring maneuver to the battlefield and conducting relatively successful mechanized assaults was predicated on the experience of Russian forces benefitting from Ukrainian artillery shortages in the spring. However, Russia's past inability to conduct successful mechanized maneuver suggests that Russian forces will not be able to conduct successful assaults against well-provisioned Ukrainian forces. Improved Ukrainian air defense capabilities may allow Ukrainian forces to redeploy limited air defense assets to select sectors of the front to constrain Russian tactical aviation operations, as Ukrainian forces have temporarily achieved several times throughout the war, although the re-opening of the Kharkiv axis will likely draw Ukrainian air defenses there first according to Ukrainian official comments.[112] Russian forces are using glide bombs because they allow Russian fixed-wing aircraft to operate safely at further distances from the frontline, and even limited Ukrainian air defense coverage on sectors of the frontline is unlikely to fundamentally change how Russian forces are leveraging these strikes to facilitate ground operations.[113] Improved Ukrainian air defense coverage will reduce Russia's ability to conduct large-scale aviation operations at scale, however. Russian forces have been leveraging static artillery firing positions and relatively uncontested staging areas during recent months to prepare for and launch offensive operations, but improved Ukrainian counterbattery and strike capabilities will likely allow Ukrainian forces to reduce some of the operational flexibility that Russian forces have recently enjoyed in Ukraine.[114] Delays in Western security assistance have limited Ukrainian interdiction efforts, and it is likely that Russian forces had fewer concerns about protecting GLOCs and logistics hubs when planning their summer offensive effort.[115]

The Russian military command will likely have to consider if the intended areas and objectives of its summer offensive effort are now feasible and if the current means that Russian forces have been concentrating and preparing are sufficient to conduct planned offensive operations considering the resumption of US security assistance to Ukraine. Russian forces may launch offensive operations as planned regardless of the resumption of US security assistance, however. Russian forces launched limited offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast with limited manpower, likely predicated on the fact that limited objectives in northern Kharkiv Oblast would require fewer personnel due to degraded Ukrainian defensive capabilities. Russian forces have limited time to address operational planning assumptions and many of these assumptions will likely go unaddressed by the time that Russia starts the summer offensive effort.

Ukrainian forces will be better provisioned by the time Russia launches its summer offensive effort and will likely be able to prevent Russian forces from making operationally significant gains. Ukrainian forces will likely start fielding US security assistance at scale by June and will be able to leverage this materiel to blunt Russian efforts to pursue operationally significant advances this summer.[116] Well provisioned Ukrainian forces have proven adept at preventing Russian forces from making even marginal tactical gains during previous large-scale offensive operations, and Russian forces have not significantly changed their offensive capabilities in a way that would preclude Ukrainian forces from successfully defending against intensified Russian offensive operations.[117] Ukrainian forces will have to address persisting manpower challenges to restore their robust defensive capabilities, and Ukrainian officials are currently pursuing efforts to stand up new brigades and rotate frontline units for rest and reconstitution.[118] It will take time for these Ukrainian efforts to generate large-scale effects, and Ukrainian forces may be relatively undermanned on select sectors of the front this summer.[119] Ukraine will nevertheless likely be in a significantly improved operational position by June 2024 regardless of potential delays in the arrival of US security assistance to the frontline and persisting manpower challenges.[120]

The lasting impressions of Fall 2023-Spring 2024 on the war in Ukraine

Russian forces have leveraged the theater-wide initiative in Ukraine and the recent months of Ukrainian constraints to address longstanding issues and implement operational, tactical, and technological adaptations throughout the theater. Russian forces have notably established a more sustainable force generation apparatus for ongoing offensive operations for the time being and have intensified efforts to establish operational- and strategic-level reserves.[121] The Russian campaign in Ukraine had previously been plagued by serious manpower constraints, with Russian forces conducting offensive operations that consumed far more personnel than Russian crypto-mobilization efforts could generate.[122] Russian forces lacked significant operational reserves for at least the first year and a half of the war in Ukraine, often forcing Russian forces to use degraded units until they became combat ineffective.[123] These major manpower constraints were a large contributing factor to the culmination of several Russian offensive operations in Ukraine and posed significant vulnerabilities for defending against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.[124] Russian forces leveraged their possession of the theater-wide initiative to determine a tempo of fighting in Ukraine that would generate casualties roughly equal to or slightly less than the rate of newly generated forces.[125] This has allowed Russian forces to sustain consistent offensive pressure along the front by immediately replenishing losses and keeping force groupings at roughly their same size.[126] Additional newly generated forces not committed as reinforcements allowed Russian forces to start establishing operational reserves, permitting Russian forces to conduct rotations for degraded units on the frontline by January 2024.[127] Russian forces had previously struggled in the past year and a half to conduct rotations for frontline units, and this apparent theater-wide capability has likely allowed Russian forces to launch and maintain more sustainable offensive efforts in Ukraine.[128]

The ceiling of Russian crypto-mobilization efforts is unclear, and this careful balance between Russian casualties and newly generated forces requires that Russian forces not significantly intensify offensive operations for a prolonged period of time.[129] This approach to sustaining Russian offensive efforts in part has led to a "pulsing" of Russian offensive operations along the front, wherein Russian forces alternate between intensified assaults and a lower operational tempo to replenish losses.[130] Russian forces typically stagger areas of the front where they are intensifying operations and areas where there is a lower operational tempo, leading to a dynamically alternating operational situation along the entire frontline.[131] This pattern will likely generally hold as long as Russian forces pursue consistent Russian offensive operations throughout the frontline.

Russian forces have notably used the past seven months of offensive operations in Ukraine to improve their operational-level planning and are generally conducting offensive operations that are mutually supporting or that intend to generate theater-wide pressures on Ukrainian forces.[132] The prolonged period of Russian initiative in Ukraine has relieved pressures on Russian forces that were contributing to poor operational campaign design, and the Russian military command appears to be learning from its past operational planning mistakes. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Chief Major General Vadym Skibitskyi notably stated on May 2 that the Russian military is now operating as a “single body, with a clear plan, under a single command.”[133] The Russian military command has not become immune to poor campaign design, however, and select recent improvements in operational planning may appear more significant than they are because Ukrainian forces lacked the capabilities to respond effectively.

Russian forces have exploited the theater-wide initiative and Ukrainian materiel constraints to expand technological and tactical innovations and adaptations. Being able to determine the place, time, and scale of fighting for months on end has allowed Russian forces to experiment with different sized assault groups in different tactical situations with different levels of armored vehicle support.[134] Russian forces have expanded their use of first-person view (FPV) drones and electronic warfare (EW) systems in recent months in an offense-defense race with Ukrainian forces and have heavily integrated these systems into their reconnaissance fire complex (RFC).[135] Degraded Ukrainian counterbattery capabilities and limited Ukrainian interdiction efforts likely allowed Russian forces to more freely reconfigure and expand elements of their RFC for more effective fire along the front.[136] Degraded Ukrainian air defense capabilities have reportedly also allowed Russian forces to improve reconnaissance capabilities in the Ukrainian rear and have likely facilitated ongoing experimentation in Russia's reconnaissance-strike complex (RSC) and Russia's mixed missile and drone strike packages.[137] Limited Ukrainian air defense coverage also offered Russian forces ample flexibility to test how best to conduct glide bomb strikes to facilitate ground maneuver and how to scale Russian aviation operations to conduct intensified glide bomb strikes.[138] Russian forces still suffer from widespread tactical failures, however, and Ukrainian forces will still be able to exploit those failures as long as the Russian military command continues to struggle with internalizing and disseminating adaptations at the tactical level.[139] Fighting in Ukraine has degraded the Russian military and has largely stripped once elite formations of their elite capabilities, but Russian forces have leveraged the past seven months of theater-wide initiative to innovate and adapt in ways that increasingly pressure Ukrainian forces and exploit Ukrainian vulnerabilities.[140]

The past seven months of fighting have likely solidified Putin's calculus that he can continue gradual creeping advances in Ukraine without the threat of a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive operation. Ukrainian forces have not regained tactically significant territory from Russian forces since Russian forces resumed offensive operations in October 2023, and Ukrainian tactical counterattacks have largely only staved off further Russian gains. Delays in security assistance have forced Ukrainian forces to go on the strategic defense for all of 2024 thus far, and Ukrainian forces will likely not be able to launch a large-scale counteroffensive operation until late 2024 or 2025, depending on the level and timing of Western support.[141] The lack of significant tactical counterattacks and the prolonged pause in large-scale Ukrainian counteroffensive operations has likely generated a perception among the Russian military command and Putin that Ukraine cannot and will not be able to liberate territory seized by Russian forces.[142] This belief likely has led the Russian military command to assess that Russian forces will be able to hold any territory that Russian forces seize indefinitely, impacting how Putin and the Russian military command may be evaluating the risks, prospects, and timeline of offensive operations in Ukraine. Russian forces can make tactical gains over a longer period of time in pursuit of operationally significant goals and eschew achieving operationally significant gains through effective rapid maneuver if there is never a serious threat of Ukrainian forces making operationally significant advances of their own. Rapid operationally significant gains aim to disadvantage one's enemy and deprive them of favorable conditions to launch effective offensive operations while improving one's own operational position. The absence of major Ukrainian counteroffensive operations makes less significant gains in consistent creeping offensive operations a more assured approach to making gains on the battlefield if the Russian military command is willing to pursue offensives over longer periods of time. The past seven months of Russian offensive operations in Ukraine suggests that the Russian military is willing to commit to such creeping advances.

This operational calculus may incentivize Putin to pursue creeping offensive operations indefinitely if operations that lead to rapid decisive results and victory look unattainable. Putin and the Russian military have shown that they are willing to incur significant casualties for minor tactical gains, and there is no indication that there is a level of Russian losses that would disincentivize Russia's pursuit of further territorial gains. The Kremlin is currently preparing the Russian military, economy, and society for a long war effort in Ukraine, and the Russian military command would likely be happy to achieve operational objectives over the span of years if it believes that the gains will be locked in. This approach requires that Russian forces never lose the theater-wide initiative, however, and the Russian military will likely increasingly view retaining the initiative as a strategic imperative and pursue constant offensive operations that force Ukraine on the defense as a result. It is imperative for Ukrainian forces to disrupt any such Russian calculations as soon as possible through both limited and large-scale counteroffensive operations that liberate Russian-occupied territory as soon as conditions permit. The West must proactively provide Ukrainian forces with the necessary equipment and weapons at the scale, timing, and regularity that Ukrainian forces require for operations that liberate significant swaths of occupied Ukraine and challenge Putin's belief that he can gradually subsume Ukraine should rapid total victory appear unreachable.

Russian efforts to convince the West to abandon Ukraine are not over. Recent months have proven to Russia that morale is Ukraine's and the West's center of gravity in this war. While Ukrainian morale has held firm, the weakening of Western morale and support for Ukraine quickly began to express itself on the battlefield and created conditions that convinced Russia that operationally significant gains were possible. The past seven months have offered a framework to Russia for how to demoralize the West and prompt it to abandon Ukraine to certain defeat. Putin and the Russian military command likely believe that they can outlast the level of aid that the West has committed to giving Ukraine in the near to medium term and that continuous Russian offensive operations will eventually convince the West that Ukrainian victory is hopeless. The West must not surrender to Russia's strategic effort to destroy Western commitment to Ukrainian survival and must remember that Ukrainian victory has always been possible as long as the West remains committed to that goal.

14. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 23, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-23-2024

Key Takeaways:

The Kremlin is pursuing a concerted effort to remove senior Russian defense officials and has likely expanded this effort to senior officers commanding Russian combat operations in Ukraine.

Russian border guards removed buoys in Estonian waters of the Narva River, which demarcates the Estonian-Russian international border, likely to set conditions to further question maritime borders and test NATO resolve.

Select US officials are reportedly pressing for a reconsideration of the White House's current policy prohibiting Ukraine from using US-provided weapons to strike within Russia.

Polish Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Pawel Wronski stated on May 23 that Poland is considering using its air defense to protect Ukrainian airspace against Russian strikes.

Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) conducted a series of drone strikes against Russian defense industrial facilities in the Republic of Tatarstan on May 23.

Iranian leaders have used the occasion of President Ebrahim Raisi's funeral events to emphasize close ties with Armenia even as tensions between Yerevan and Moscow continue to increase.

Ukrainian forces advanced near Lukyantsi and Kreminna, and Russian forces advanced near Berestove, Chasiv Yar, Avdiivka, Donetsk City, and Velyka Novosilka.

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) proposed applying regular military punishments to volunteers, likely as part of the MoD's continued formalization efforts.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 23, 2024

May 23, 2024 - ISW Press

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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 23, 2024

Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, Riley Bailey, Angelica Evans, and Frederick W. Kagan

May 23, 2024, 7pm 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 1:00pm ET on May 23. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the May 24 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

The Kremlin is pursuing a concerted effort to remove senior Russian defense officials and has likely expanded this effort to senior officers commanding Russian combat operations in Ukraine. The Russian Investigative Committee announced on May 23 the arrests of Russian Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Head of its Main Communications Directorate Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin and Head of the Russian Ministry of Defense's (MoD) Department for State Procurement, Vladimir Verteletsky.[1] Shamarin is accused of accepting a bribe of at least 36 million rubles (about $392,000), and two defendants in the Russian telecommunications industry have agreed to testify against him.[2] Verteletsky is accused of corruption and accepting a large bribe with total damages of 70 million rubles (about $763,000).[3] Five senior Russian MoD officials and former military commanders have been arrested on corruption charges since the arrest of Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov on April 24, and a Russian insider source previously claimed that six more MoD officials plan to resign following former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu's removal from the MoD.[4] The Kremlin is likely using the guise of corruption charges as an excuse to hide the real reasons for ousting specific individuals from the MoD who have fallen from favor, as ISW has recently assessed.[5]

Russian ultranationalist milbloggers also claimed that the Russian MoD dismissed the commander of the 20th Combined Arms Army (Moscow Military District [MMD], formerly Western Military District [WMD]), Lieutenant General Sukhrab Akhmedov.[6] ISW is unable to confirm Akhmedov's removal, but claims of his removal are notable as this would be the first removal of an officer actively commanding Russian forces in Ukraine as a part of the most recent round of dismissals. The 20th CAA is currently heavily committed to offensive operations in the Lyman direction and failed to achieve significant tactical gains in the area during the Winter-Spring 2024 offensive on the Kharkiv-Luhansk axis.[7] The milbloggers also directly connected Akhmedov's arrest with significant command issues in Ukraine, referencing their prior complaints about Akhmedov by name for his role in commanding attritional Russian assaults near Vuhledar, Donetsk Oblast in winter 2022–2023 when he commanded the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade or his role in Russian forces suffering significant casualties due to a Ukrainian rear area strike in summer 2023.[8]

Official Kremlin statements and milblogger speculation about the arrests and command changes signal that more senior officers could face removal. Russian state newswire TASS cited Russian law enforcement on May 23 as saying there will be continued investigations in connection with Shamarin's arrest.[9] Some Russian milbloggers and insider sources have alleged that some of the arrested officials have ties to Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov but have largely not gone so far as to claim that Gerasimov himself will be removed.[10] Peskov oddly stated on May 13 that "no changes are foreseen yet" when specifically asked about Gerasimov's position, however, suggesting that Gerasimov's tenure over the longer term is not assured.[11] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov notably denied on May 23 that there is a "campaign" against Russian MoD officials, instead asserting that the MoD arrests are part of a consistent fight against corruption.[12] Peskov has previously deflected reporters' questions about the Russian MoD, and his decision to answer questions about the MoD's command changes and arrests indicates that the Kremlin may want its support of these purges.[13] Peskov's claim that the removals are part of a consistent effort are difficult to square with the sudden flurry of dismissals and arrests at an anomalous rate and with high publicity.

Russian milbloggers largely celebrated the arrests of Russian MoD officials they have claimed were inept and speculated about possible additional removals of senior commanders and officials. Russian ultranationalist milbloggers celebrated the arrests of Shamarin and Verteletsky and the alleged removal of Akhmedov and have offered criticisms of MoD officials and military officers more vocally than they had been doing before the start of the arrests in late April.[14] The milbloggers began speculating about which officials and commanders could be removed or charged next. Some named a deputy defense minister as likely next to face investigation and pointed to supposed connections between arrested or dismissed individuals and remaining MoD and military officials, presumably to indicate future possible targets.[15] Many milbloggers vaguely claimed that Russian authorities are not done with their investigations and detentions of these officials and celebrated the arrests as the start of an effort to bring corrupt officials to justice under new Defense Minister Andrei Belousov.[16] The Kremlin is likely allowing these criticisms because they are specifically directed against individuals the MoD is targeting, thereby supporting Belousov's image as the one who will solve issues within the MoD in a way that Shoigu has not. The Kremlin also benefits from allowing the milbloggers to emphasize that no Russian defense or military official is safe from the consequences of falling from Putin's favor. The Kremlin is likely attempting to secure the loyalty of the milbloggers who have long argued for significant changes in the Russian MoD and military command by allowing them to criticize the ousted individuals after months of active censorship and self-censorship as long as the criticism advances larger Kremlin objectives.

Russian border guards removed buoys in Estonian waters of the Narva River, which demarcates the Estonian-Russian international border, likely to set conditions to further question maritime borders and test NATO resolve. The Estonian Police and Border Guard Board reported on May 23 that on the night of May 22 to 23 Russian border guards removed 24 buoys used to mark shipping routes in Estonian waters in the Narva River, which demarcates the international border between Estonia and Russia.[17] The Estonian Eastern Prefecture Border Guard Bureau Head Eerik Purgel stated that Estonia had placed the first 50 of a planned 250 buoys on May 13 in accordance with a 2022 Estonian-Russian agreement made prior to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[18] Purgel reported that Russia announced that it did not agree with the locations of about half of the planned placements of the buoys earlier in 2024. The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) stated that Russia's removal of the buoys "fits well within the broader pattern of Russia's provocative behavior" and stated that Estonia would treat the event as a "provocative border incident."[19] The Estonian MFA demanded an explanation from Russian border and diplomatic officials and the buoys' immediate return. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas stated that "Russia uses border issues as a means to create fear and anxiety."[20] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) proposed on May 21 that the Russian government reassess its maritime borders in the Baltic Sea, and Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the Russian MoD's proposal "appropriate steps" to "ensure [Russian] security" in response to the escalation of tensions and the increased level of confrontation in the Baltic region.[21] Russian border guards are likely attempting to create contention along the international border between Russia and a NATO member country to gauge NATO reactions to future Russian efforts to challenge established delimitations.

Select US officials are reportedly pressing for a reconsideration of the White House's current policy prohibiting Ukraine from using US-provided weapons to strike within Russia. The New York Times (NYT) reported on May 22 that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is urging US President Joe Biden to lift restrictions on the Ukrainian use of American weapons for strikes within Russia but noted that the proposal is in a formative stage.[22] NYT reported that two US officials stated that it is still unclear how many people within the Biden administration support the measure and added that the proposal's proponents have yet to formally present it to Biden.[23] ISW assesses that Western limitations on Ukraine's ability to strike military targets in Russia have created a sanctuary in Russia's border areas from which Russian aircraft can conduct glide bomb and missile strikes against Ukrainian positions and settlements and where Russian forces and equipment can freely assemble before entering combat.[24]

Polish Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Pawel Wronski stated on May 23 that Poland is considering using its air defense to protect Ukrainian airspace against Russian strikes.[25] Wronski stated that Poland is considering protecting unspecified airspace along the Ukrainian-Polish border and acknowledged that Ukrainian officials have submitted a request to Poland on the matter.[26] Wronski stated that Poland has yet to make any decisions on the policy and that international law and technical specialist should review it.[27] Russian forces have targeted Ukrainian energy and gas infrastructure in western Ukraine in recent months, including in Lviv Oblast, which borders Poland.[28]

Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) conducted a series of drone strikes against Russian defense industrial facilities in the Republic of Tatarstan on May 23. Sources in Ukrainian special services told Ukrainian outlet Suspilne that the GUR’s drones attacked Russian defense industrial facilities in Kazan and Nizhnekamsk, which is notably just south of the Shahed-136/131 drone production facility in Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ).[29] Suspilne and Russian media outlets reported that Russian officials evacuated employees from the Nizhnekamsk Thermal Power Plant, Teneko oil refinery, Taif-Nk oil refinery, Nizhnekamskneftekhim petrochemical facility, and Nizhnekamskshina tire production facility in Nizhnekamsk and the Kazanorgsintez chemical plant in Kazan.[30] Yelabuga City Mayor Rustem Nuriyev stated that Russian air defenses destroyed a Ukrainian drone near the city and denied that the strikes caused any damage in the area.[31] Footage published on May 23 purportedly shows Russian air defenses destroying at least one Ukrainian drone near Nizhnekamsk.[32] Ukrainian forces conducted a long-range strike against Russian defense industrial and oil refining infrastructure in the Alabuga SEZ on April 2, and ISW assessed that the April 2 strike represented a significant inflection in Ukraine’s demonstrated ability to conduct long-range strikes far into the Russian rear.[33]

Iranian leaders have used the occasion of President Ebrahim Raisi's funeral events to emphasize close ties with Armenia even as tensions between Yerevan and Moscow continue to increase. NOTE: A version of this text appears in ISW-CTP's May 23 Iran Update. Mokhber met with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry, and Tajikistani President Emomali Rahmon on May 22.[34] Mokhber emphasized that Iran will continue its policy of “expanding relations and cooperation” with neighboring countries during his meeting with Pashinyan.[35] Mokhber added that Iran will continue to adhere to its “commitments and agreements” with Armenia. Pashinyan also met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on May 22.[36] It is notable that Khamenei and Mokhber met with Pashinyan amid his deteriorating relations with Russia. Pashinyan's meetings with Khamenei and Mokhber come shortly after he indirectly accused Russia of helping Azerbaijan to prepare for the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.[37]

It is also notable that the Azerbaijani prime minister and foreign affairs minister, who both traveled to Iran to attend Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral, have not yet met with senior Iranian officials, such as Khamenei and Mokhber, on the sidelines of the funeral.[38] Raisi inaugurated a dam on the Iran-Azerbaijan border with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev shortly before his death on May 19.[39] Iranian media highlighted on May 22 that Aliyev, along with the presidents of Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Venezuela, did not attend Raisi’s funeral.[40]

Key Takeaways:

• The Kremlin is pursuing a concerted effort to remove senior Russian defense officials and has likely expanded this effort to senior officers commanding Russian combat operations in Ukraine.
• Russian border guards removed buoys in Estonian waters of the Narva River, which demarcates the Estonian-Russian international border, likely to set conditions to further question maritime borders and test NATO resolve.
• Select US officials are reportedly pressing for a reconsideration of the White House's current policy prohibiting Ukraine from using US-provided weapons to strike within Russia.
• Polish Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Pawel Wronski stated on May 23 that Poland is considering using its air defense to protect Ukrainian airspace against Russian strikes.
• Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) conducted a series of drone strikes against Russian defense industrial facilities in the Republic of Tatarstan on May 23.
• Iranian leaders have used the occasion of President Ebrahim Raisi's funeral events to emphasize close ties with Armenia even as tensions between Yerevan and Moscow continue to increase.
• Ukrainian forces advanced near Lukyantsi and Kreminna, and Russian forces advanced near Berestove, Chasiv Yar, Avdiivka, Donetsk City, and Velyka Novosilka.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) proposed applying regular military punishments to volunteers, likely as part of the MoD's continued formalization efforts.

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 three subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Push Ukrainian forces back from the international border with Belgorod Oblast and approach to within tube artillery range of Kharkiv City
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #3 – 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
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives
• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Kharkiv Oblast (Russian objective: Push Ukrainian forces back from the international border with Belgorod Oblast and approach to within tube artillery range of Kharkiv City)

Ukrainian forces recently recaptured marginal territory north of Kharkiv City amid continued Russian ground attacks in the area on May 23. Geolocated footage published on May 22 shows that Ukrainian forces recently marginally advanced southeast of Lukyantsi (northeast of Lyptsi).[41] Russian forces continued ground attacks near Lyptsi, and Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked near Lyptsi and Hlyboke (north of Lyptsi).[42] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 500 meters in depth near Lyptsi, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[43] Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that Russian forces have switched to an active defense in the Lyptsi direction.[44]

Russian forces continued ground attacks in and around Vovchansk on May 23 but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 400 meters in depth within Vovchansk, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[45] Another prominent Russian milblogger claimed that fighting in Vovchansk is becoming positional.[46] Syrskyi stated that Russian forces are now "bogged down" in street fighting in Vovchansk despite initial tactical successes and are now transferring reserves to the area from other operational directions.[47] Russian forces also continued ground attacks near Starytsya (southwest of Vovchansk), and Russian sources claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian counterattacks within Vovchansk.[48]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Ukrainian forces recently marginally advanced south of Kreminna amid continued Russian ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on May 23. Geolocated footage published on May 23 indicates that Ukrainian forces recently marginally advanced north of Bilohorivka (south of Kreminna).[49] Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi reported on May 23 that Russian forces continued assaults in forest areas north of Kupyansk and are trying to break through Ukrainian defenses near Kyslivka (southeast of Kupyansk) in order to reach the Oskil River.[50] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are advancing along a railway line north of Kyslivka in the direction of Ivanivka (southeast of Kupyansk) and are conducting reconnaissance-in-force operations near Ivanivka's southern outskirts.[51] A Russian milblogger denied the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) May 20 claim that Russian forces seized Bilohorivka (south of Kreminna) and claimed that Russian forces have only made limited advances in the area at the cost of significant manpower losses.[52] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces lost several hundred troops per day during infantry-led frontal assaults on Bilohorivka in February 2024 and that Russian forces temporarily suspended assaults on Bilohorivka in late April but resumed assaults in early May after reinforcements arrived in the area. Russian forces also conducted assaults northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; southeast of Kupyansk near Berestove and Stelmakhivka; southwest of Svatove near Novoyehorivka, Hrekivka, Nevske, Makiivka, Druzhelyubivka, and Novovodyane; west of Kreminna near Terny and Torske; and south of Kreminna near Hryhorivka and Bilohorivka.[53]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #3 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces recently advanced in the Siversk direction. Geolocated footage published on May 22 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced north of Berestove (southeast of Siversk).[54] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on May 22 that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Verkhnokamyanske (southeast of Siversk).[55] Elements of the Russian 123rd Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People's Republic Army Corps [LNR AC]) reportedly continue operating near Berestove.[56]

Russian forces reportedly advanced near Chasiv Yar on May 23, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces seized Andriivka (southeast of Chasiv Yar).[57] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced on the northeastern outskirts of the Kanal Microraion (easternmost Chasiv Yar), within Kanal, and near the Novyi Microraion (eastern Chasiv Yar).[58] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 800 meters deep and 1.55 kilometers wide in the northern part of the Stupky-Holubovski 2 nature reserve (southeast of Chasiv Yar).[59] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these Russian claims. Fighting also continued east of Chasiv Yar near Ivanivske and southeast of Chasiv Yar near Klishchiivka.[60] Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that Russian forces are attempting to seize Chasiv Yar "at any cost" and are using T-90 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) in the area, which Ukrainian forces destroy with anti-tank systems and first-person view (FPV) drones.[61] Elements of the Russian 58th Spetsnaz Battalion (1st Donetsk People's Republic Army Corps [DNR AC]) and Sever-V Brigade (Russian Volunteer Corps) are reportedly operating near Chasiv Yar, and elements of the 98th Airborne (VDV) Division are reportedly operating near Novyi.[62]

Russian forces recently advanced west and northwest of Avdiivka amid continued Russian offensive operations in the area on May 23. Geolocated footage published on May 22 showing Ukrainian forces striking a Russian ammunition supply point in northwestern Umanske likely indicates that Russian forces recently seized Umanske (west of Avdiivka).[63] Russian forces would likely only establish an ammunition supply point in a frontline settlement under Russian control. Additional geolocated footage published on May 22 indicates that Russian forces advanced west of Berdychi (northwest of Avdiivka).[64] Fighting also continued north of Avdiivka near Kalynove; northwest of Avdiivka near Ocheretyne, Novooleksandriivka, Arkhanhelske, Sokil, Novopokrovske, and Solovyove; and west of Avdiivka near Netaylove.[65] Syrskyi stated that the most intense fighting is ongoing in the Pokrovsk (Avdiivka) and Kurakhove (west and southwest of Donetsk City) directions and that the most prepared Russian units are attempting to break through between Berdychi and Staromykhailivka (west of Donetsk City).[66] Syrskyi stated that Russian forces Russian forces are conducting mechanized and infantry-led assaults and sometimes use motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) in assaults. Elements of the Russian 114th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st DNR AC) are reportedly operating near Umanske, and elements of the 27th Motorized Rifle Division (2nd CAA, Central Military District [CMD]) are reportedly operating near Sokil.[67]

Russian forces recently advanced west of Donetsk City amid continued Russian offensive operations in the area on May 23. Geolocated footage published on May 22 and 23 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced in southwestern and eastern Krasnohorivka (west of Donetsk City).[68] Fighting also continued west of Donetsk City near Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Novomykhailivka, Paraskoviivka, Kostyantynivka, and Vodyane.[69]

Russian forces recently advanced in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area. Geolocated footage published on May 23 indicates that Russian forces on motorcycles recently advanced into central Staromayorske (south of Velyka Novosilka).[70] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian assault groups are using motorcycles near Staromayorske because they can more effectively evade Ukrainian artillery and FPV drone strikes than armored vehicles.[71] Fighting also continued south of Velyka Novosilka near Urozhaine.[72]

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

The spokesperson for a Ukrainian unit operating near Robotyne stated on May 22 that Ukrainian forces control Robotyne, refuting the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) recent claim that Russian forces seized the settlement.[73] The spokesperson stated that Russian servicemen riding dirt bikes and small groups conducting reconnaissance-in-force are operating on the outskirts of Robotyne. Russian milbloggers claimed on May 23 that Russian forces seized two unspecified positions while advancing northwest of Verbove (east of Robotyne), although ISW has not observed confirmation of this claim.[74] Elements of the Russian 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating near Robotyne.[75]

The Ukrainian General Staff reported on May 23 that Russian forces continued assaults against Ukrainian positions in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast, including near Krynky.[76] Elements of the Russian 76th Airborne (VDV) Division are reportedly operating near Nestryha Island in the Dnipro River Delta.[77] Select Russian and Ukrainian sources have recently speculated that the Russian military may be redeploying elements of the 7th and 76th VDV divisions from the Robotyne area to Luhansk Oblast, Kherson Oblast, or Kursk Oblast.[78] A Russian milblogger with an avowed bias against VDV and ”Dnepr” Grouping of Forces Commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky claimed on April 29 that the Russian military command transferred elements of the 76th VDV Division to Krynky, Kherson Oblast to relieve elements of the 104th VDV Division, and reports of the 76th VDV Division operating in the Kherson direction support the milblogger’s claim.[79]

Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Captain Third Rank Dmytro Pletenchuk stated on May 22 that Ukraine’s May 19 strike against Sevastopol damaged the Russian Tsyklon Karakurt-class (project 22800) small missile ship and that Ukrainian forces are still clarifying information about damage to the Russian Kovrovets Natya-class minesweeper.[80] The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) assessed on May 23 that that the May 19 strike ”almost certainly” sunk the Tsyklon small missile ship.[81] Satellite imagery published on May 23 shows damage to Russian port infrastructure in Sevastopol as a result of the May 19 strike.[82]

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

Russian forces struck Kharkiv City and Lyubotyn, Kharkiv Oblast with 15 S-300/400 air defense missiles on May 23, mainly damaging transportation infrastructure.[83] Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor’s Office Spokesperson Dmytro Chubenko stated that Russian missiles struck a railway station in Lyubotyn and damaged transportation infrastructure in the area.[84] Kharkiv City Mayor Ihor Terekhov stated that Russian forces also struck transportation infrastructure and a utilities facility in the city.[85] Ukrainian state-owned railway company Ukrzaliznytsia stated that Russian missiles struck several railway facilities in Kharkiv Oblast but that trains continued to run according to schedule.[86] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that Russian forces are taking advantage of Ukraine’s limited air defense capabilities.[87] ISW has observed Russian forces increase strikes against Ukrainian transportation infrastructure in recent weeks in an apparent effort to disrupt Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) and constrain the flow of expected US security assistance to the frontline.[88]

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

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) proposed applying regular military punishments to volunteers, likely as part of the MoD's continued formalization efforts. The Russian federal portal of draft regulations published a proposal from the Russian MoD on May 23 that would amend the law on volunteer formations to extend criminal liabilities for military service crimes to volunteers, including for leaving one's unit without permission and for refusing to comply with an order.[89] Russian volunteers have routinely presented serious command and control issues to Russian forces, and the Russian military command likely hopes that extending punishments to these personnel will allow Russian forces to more easily integrate volunteer formations into the Russian military.

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)

ISW is not publishing coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts today.

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)

ISW is not publishing coverage of activities in Russian-occupied areas today.

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze amplified recent Russian information operations depicting the West as a destabilizing actor, and the ruling Georgian Dream party will likely continue to closely follow Kremlin rhetoric. Kobakhidze stated on May 23 that special services of an unspecified country closely related to the "Global War Party" organized the assassination attempt against Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.[90] The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed on May 22 that the assassination attempt against Fico shows that “adherents of the globalist sect” in the West are “moving towards open political terror against opponents.”[91] Kobakhidze accused unspecified EU officials of threatening him with "Fico's fate" if Georgia Dream overrules Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili's veto of Georgia Dream's Russian-style "foreign agents" bill.[92] Kobakhidze claimed that the "Global War Party" intends to bring chaos to Georgia, a continuation of Georgia's Dreams Kremlin-inspired rhetoric about the threat of alleged Western intervention and destabilization in Georgia.[93] Georgian Dream actors likely intend to purposefully derail long-term Georgian efforts for Euro-Atlantic integration, which plays into continued Russian hybrid operations to divide, destabilize, and weaken Georgia.[94]

Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Spokesperson Andriy Yusov warned that Russian actors will continue longstanding information operations. Yusov stated that Russian officials will continue to use the January 24 crash of a Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft in Belgorod Oblast allegedly transporting Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) to discredit the Ukrainian government and that the Russian Investigative Committee plans to intensify this information operation in July 2024.[95] Yusov stated that Russian actors continue an existing information operation called “Maidan 3” aimed at generating tensions within Ukrainian society and creating doubt about the legitimacy of Zelensky’s presidency among Ukrainians.[96] Yusov also added that Russian actors will continue efforts to baselessly tie Ukraine to the March 22 Crocus City Hall terrorist attack.[97] ISW remains confident that the Islamic State (IS) conducted the Crocus City Hall attack and has yet to observe independent reporting or evidence to suggest that an actor other than IS was responsible for or aided the attack.[98]

Russian officials immediately characterized a Norwegian protective measure against actual Russian threats as escalatory. The Norwegian Government announced on May 23 that from May 29 the country will deny entry to Russian citizens for tourism or other non-essential travel purposes.[99] Norway has increasingly warned that there is a high threat of Russian security services conducting sabotage against Norwegian infrastructure and defense enterprises.[100] Russian Ambassador to Norway Teimuraz Ramishvili and Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova described the Norwegian travel measure as discriminatory against Russians.[101] Ramishvili added that Russia had ceded unspecified territory more than once to Norway but claimed that Russia will not make any new demands, an unrelated aside likely meant to raise the specter of confrontation between Norway and Russia.[102]

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)

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko appointed Major General Pavel Muraveiko as the new Belarusian Chief of the General Staff on May 23.[103] Muraveiko served as the Belarusian Security Council's First Deputy Secretary of state prior to this appointment, and previously served as the Belarusian General Staff's Main Operational Directorate from 2013 to 2022.[104] Lukashenko dismissed the prior Chief of the General Staff, Major General Viktor Gulevich, on May 10 because he reached mandatory retirement age.[105]

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.

15.  Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, May 23, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-may-23-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Iran is capitalizing on the presence of senior Axis of Resistance officials in Tehran for Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral to coordinate and cohere their approaches to the Israel–Hamas war.
• West Bank: The IDF found militia tunnels in Jenin as part of an Israeli effort to destroy militia capabilities and tunnels in the West Bank before they can be used to attack Israel.
• Gaza Strip: Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that Israel would deploy additional military assets to Rafah.
• Yemen: The Houthi supreme leader announced that the Houthis attacked international shipping in the Mediterranean Sea in recent days. There is no evidence to support this claim.

IRAN UPDATE, MAY 23, 2024

May 23, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, May 23, 2024

Alexandra Braverman, Kathyrn Tyson, Annika Ganzeveld, Kelly Campa, Andie Parry, Johanna Moore, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00pm ET

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. 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.

CTP-ISW defines the “Axis of Resistance” as the unconventional alliance that Iran has cultivated in the Middle East since the Islamic Republic came to power in 1979. This transnational coalition is comprised of state, semi-state, and non-state actors that cooperate to secure their collective interests. Tehran considers itself to be both part of the alliance and its leader. Iran furnishes these groups with varying levels of financial, military, and political support in exchange for some degree of influence or control over their actions. Some are traditional proxies that are highly responsive to Iranian direction, while others are partners over which Iran exerts more limited influence. Members of the Axis of Resistance are united by their grand strategic objectives, which include eroding and eventually expelling American influence from the Middle East, destroying the Israeli state, or both. Pursuing these objectives and supporting the Axis of Resistance to those ends have become cornerstones of Iranian regional strategy.

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.

Iran is capitalizing on the presence of senior Axis of Resistance officials in Tehran for Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral to coordinate and cohere their approaches to the Israel–Hamas war. Iranian leaders held two meetings with senior Axis of Resistance officials in Tehran on May 23.[1] The first meeting included senior IRGC officers and representatives from several Palestinian militias, Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Houthis.[2] The participants discussed the “continuation of the jihad and struggle until the complete victory of the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip.” Photos published by Iranian state media indicate that the following individuals were in that meeting:

• IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami
• IRGC Quds Force Commander Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani
• Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh
• Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Deputy Secretary General Mohammad al Hindi
• Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Deputy Secretary General Jamil Mezher
• Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem
• Houthi spokesperson Mohammad Abdul Salam

The second meeting involved the following individuals based on photos published by Iranian state media:

• Acting Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Bagheri Kani
• Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh
• Hamas founder Mousa Abu Marzouk
• Hamas Deputy Leader in the West Bank Zaher Jabarin
• PIJ Deputy Secretary General Mohammad al Hindi
• PIJ Leader in Lebanon Ihsan Ataya
• PFLP Deputy Secretary General Jamil Mezher

The publication of this information is especially noteworthy given that Iranian state media does not typically report on such meetings in such detail. Iran likely published the information to signal the close alignment and cooperation between Tehran and its regional partners and proxies.

The IDF found tunnels used by Palestinian militias during a two-day operation into Jenin City in the West Bank.[3] The IDF announced that hundreds of Israeli personnel participated in the operation to destroy militia infrastructure, including tunnels, and kill Palestinian fighters. The IDF engaged fighters from Hamas and the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades during the operation.[4]

The IDF targeted tunnels in Jenin City as part of an Israeli effort to destroy militia capabilities and infrastructure, especially tunnels, in the West Bank before Palestinian militias can use them to attack Israel. IDF Chief of Staff Major General Herzi Halevi framed the operation into Jenin City in such terms on May 22.[5] The IDF seeks to prevent Palestinian militias from building tunnels around the Israel-West Bank border that would support offensive cross-border attacks like what Hamas did in October 2023. The IDF has targeted other tunnels around the Israel-West Bank border in recent months to this end. The IDF discovered and destroyed a tunnel that was dozens of meters long in the Jenin refugee camp in July 2023, for instance.[6] Israeli media separately reported in March 2024 that the IDF has found tunnel shafts in the Nour Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm, which like Jenin is close to the border with Israel.[7]

Palestinian militias building offensive tunnels in the West Bank could be at least partly based on how Iranian leaders are planning to destroy Israel in the long term. Senior Iranian military officers are arguing that their Axis of Resistance should launch surprise ground attacks into Israel from Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.[8] Their thinking proceeds from the theory that protracted ground campaigns into Israel would disrupt the Israeli political and social order and compel Jewish citizens to flee Israel. Major General Gholam Ali Rashid, who is a senior Iranian military decisionmaker responsible for joint operations, asserted on May 4 that a force of 10,000 fighters from Lebanon, 10,000 fighters from the Gaza Strip, and 2,000-3,000 from the West Bank would be enough to destabilize Israel in this manner.[9] The tunnels that the IDF is targeting could facilitate attacks along the lines that Iranian leaders have described by helping Palestinian fighters move into Israel and stage follow-on ground attacks.

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Iran is capitalizing on the presence of senior Axis of Resistance officials in Tehran for Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral to coordinate and cohere their approaches to the Israel–Hamas war.
• West Bank: The IDF found militia tunnels in Jenin as part of an Israeli effort to destroy militia capabilities and tunnels in the West Bank before they can be used to attack Israel.
• Gaza Strip: Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that Israel would deploy additional military assets to Rafah.
• Yemen: The Houthi supreme leader announced that the Houthis attacked international shipping in the Mediterranean Sea in recent days. There is no evidence to support this claim.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to sustain clearing operations in the Gaza Strip
• Reestablish Hamas as the governing authority in the Gaza Strip

The IDF announced on May 23 that its Netzah Yehuda Battalion (900th Kfir Brigade) conducted a raid into Beit Hanoun in recent days.[10] Israeli forces have conducted several operations into Beit Hanoun since beginning ground operations in the Gaza Strip in late October 2023.[11] The Netzah Yehuda Battalion last operated in Beit Hanoun in late April 2024.[12] The IDF reported that the battalion killed Palestinian fighters and destroyed militia infrastructure above and below ground in Beit Hanoun during the most recent operation.[13] Three IDF soldiers were killed in two separate incidents during the operation.[14] Hamas fighters engaged Israeli forces using small arms, anti-personnel mines, grenades, and an explosively formed penetrator (EFP).[15] Hamas also claimed that it conducted a complex, multi-stage attack targeting Israeli forces.[16] The repeated IDF raids into Beit Hanoun and the complex attack indicate that Palestinian militias remain active and combat effective there.

The IDF 98th Division killed Hamas Beit Hanoun Battalion Commander Hussein Fayyad in Jabalia on May 23.[17] Israeli forces engaged Fayyad in an “underground compound.” The 98th Division is currently operating in uncleared parts of Jabalia. The IDF said that Fayyad directed mortar and anti-tank missile launches into Israel from the northern Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in Jabalia on May 23. The IDF 98th Division directed an airstrike on an ammunition storage building in the “heart of Jabalia” and killed several Hamas fighters.[18] The IDF 7th Brigade seized small arms, explosive charges, grenades, and combat equipment.[19] An Israeli Army Radio correspondent said that the 98th Division ”has gained operational control over most of the area” after two weeks of operations in Jabalia.[20] Palestinian fighters targeted Israeli forces with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms fire in Jabalia refugee camp and eastern Jabalia on May 23.[21]

The IDF 99th Division continued operations along the Netzarim corridor in southern Gaza City on May 23. The 99th Division directed airstrikes targeting Palestinian fighters that had fired at Israeli forces and another fighter that had entered Israeli territory on October 7.[22] The IDF 679th Reservist Armored Brigade directed strikes targeting several Palestinian militia cells, including a cell moving military equipment.[23]

The IDF engaged Palestinian fighters in eastern Rafah on May 23. The IDF Nahal, Givati, and 401st brigades conducted operations in the Brazil and Shabura neighborhoods in Rafah.[24] The Brazil neighborhood borders the Philadelphi corridor, of which Israeli forces control at least half.[25] The Nahal and Givati brigades identified and destroyed tunnel shafts and rocket launchers and engaged Palestinian militias in close-range encounters.[26] The IDF 401st Brigade located a loaded rocket launcher.[27] The Israeli Air Force killed three Palestinian mortar squad fighters, who had fired rockets at IDF units in Rafah.[28] Palestinian fighters engaged Israeli forces in Rafah using mortars and improvised explosive devices (IED) on May 23.[29]

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on May 23 that Israel would deploy additional military assets to Rafah.[30] Gallant said that additional air and ground forces in Rafah would “create the conditions for the hostages to return home” and “cause a very hard blow to Hamas.”[31] There are currently five IDF brigades in eastern Rafah.[32]

The Israeli War Cabinet directed its negotiating team on May 22 to continue ceasefire and hostage talks, according to Israeli media.[33] Unspecified Arab sources reported that Egyptian officials are attempting to renew indirect talks between Israel and Hamas.[34]

An IDF spokesperson said that Israel has temporarily evacuated about one million civilians from Rafah.[35] The IDF estimated earlier this week that between 800,000 and 950,000 civilians had evacuated from Rafah.[36] Commercially available satellite imagery shows that make-shift camps in Rafah have been dismantled and moved to Khan Younis, Deir al Balah, and the al Mawasi humanitarian zone.

Palestinian militias conducted at least one indirect fire attack from the Gaza Strip into Israel on May 23.[37] The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) fired rockets at an IDF site near the Gaza Strip border.[38]

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

West Bank

Axis of Resistance objectives:

• Establish the West Bank as a viable front against Israel

Israeli forces have engaged Palestinian fighters in at least five locations in the West Bank since CTP-ISW's data cut off on May 22.[39] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fired small arms and detonated IEDs targeting Israeli forces in Nablus.[40] PIJ detonated an IED targeting Israeli forces in Jenin.[41]

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

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance objectives:

• Deter Israel from conducting a ground operation into Lebanon
• Prepare for an expanded and protracted conflict with Israel in the near term
• Expel the United States from Syria

Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, have conducted at least ten attacks into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's data cut off on May 22.[42]

The IDF killed a Hezbollah weapons expert in an airstrike in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, on May 23.[43] The IDF said that Mohammad Ali Nasser Farran was responsible for weapons manufacturing and created “strategic and unique weapons” for Hezbollah.[44] The IDF added that Israeli forces have targeted Farran’s manufacturing infrastructure in southern Lebanon in recent months. Hezbollah mourned Farran’s death on May 23.[45]

The IDF detained two individuals attempting to cross into the Golan Heights from Syria on May 23.[46]

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

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Houthi Supreme Leader Abdul Malik al Houthi claimed on May 23 that Houthis have attacked international shipping in the Mediterranean Sea in recent days.[47] Abdul Malik’s claim comes after the Houthis announced on May 3 that they began a “fourth phase” of escalation by targeting international shipping bound for Israel in the Mediterranean Sea.[48] An unnamed senior defense official told Bloomberg on May 22 that the Houthis have weapons that can reach the Mediterranean Sea.[49] The unnamed official added that they have not detected any Houthi strikes in the Mediterranean Sea to this point.

The Houthi rhetoric about the Mediterranean Sea reflects the larger intent of Iran and its Axis of Resistance to extend their military reach into the Mediterranean Sea. Senior Iranian and Houthi officials have discussed repeatedly in recent months the need to project force into the Mediterranean Sea as part of their effort to impose an unofficial blockade on Israel.[50] Tehran and its allies appear to be operating on the theory that severe economic disruption would coerce Israel to accept defeat in the Gaza Strip.

The United Kingdom Maritime Transit Organization (UKMTO) reported an incident 98 nautical miles south of Hudaydah, Yemen, on May 23.[51] UKMTO stated that a missile impacted the water “in close proximity” to a merchant vessel. UKMTO reported that all members of the crew are safe.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—has claimed three attacks targeting Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cut off on May 22.[52] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed two separate drone attacks targeting the Golan Heights and an unspecified “vital target” in Eilat.[53] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq also claimed an al Arqab cruise missile attack targeting Haifa port.[54] CTP-ISW cannot verify whether any of these attacks actually occurred.

Iranian Interim President Mohammad Mokhber emphasized that Iranian foreign policy will remain unchanged while meeting foreign leaders visiting Tehran for Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral on May 22. Mokhber met with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry, and Tajikistani President Emomali Rahmon.[55] Mokhber emphasized that Iran will continue its policy of “expanding relations and cooperation” with neighboring countries during his meeting with Pashinyan.[56] Mokhber added that Iran will continue to adhere to its “commitments and agreements” with Armenia. Pashinyan also met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on May 22.[57] It is notable that Khamenei and Mokhber met with Pashinyan amid his deteriorating relations with Russia. Pashinyan met with Khamenei and Mokhber shortly after he indirectly accused Russia of helping Azerbaijan to prepare for the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.[58]

It is also notable that the Azerbaijani prime minister and foreign affairs minister, who both traveled to Iran to attend Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral, have not yet met with senior Iranian officials, such as Khamenei and Mokhber, on the sidelines of the funeral.[59] Raisi inaugurated a dam on the Iran-Azerbaijan border with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev shortly before his death on May 19.[60] Iranian media highlighted on May 22 that Aliyev, along with the presidents of Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Venezuela, did not attend Raisi’s funeral.[61]

Former Iranian reformist President Mohammad Khatami called on the Iranian regime to hold competitive presidential elections, warning that a lack of competition will lead to low voter turnout.[62] Khatami suggested that Iranian elections have become meaningless and stated that people lose their desire to vote when their preferred candidate does not compete. Khatami was referring to the fact that the range of acceptable political discourse in Iran has continued to narrow, as Khamenei and his underlings have marginalized relative moderate and reformist factions in recent years. Iranian officials have touted the historically high voter turnout in Iran as demonstrating the regime’s legitimacy and public backing.[63] Voter participation in presidential and parliamentary elections has declined precipitously in recent years, however, as significant swaths of the population have become increasingly disillusioned with the regime.[64] Khatami also stated that the Iranian constitution must be revised but did not specify how. Reformist media outlet Jamaran published Khatami’s remarks, which is noteworthy given that the Iranian judiciary banned outlets from mentioning Khatami in 2015.[65]

Iran held two additional funeral services for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Birjand, South Khorasan Province, and Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi Province, on May 23.[66] Iranian state media reported that three million people gathered in the streets outside the funeral in Mashhad.[67] Raisi was buried in Mashhad, where he was born.[68]

​16. Graphic novel tells story of Army captain who tackled suicide bomber

Graphic novel tells story of Army captain who tackled suicide bomber

militarytimes.com · by Riley Ceder · May 24, 2024

A new graphic novel tells the story of a soldier who received the Medal of Honor for tackling a suicide bomber to save the lives of his fellow soldiers.

“Medal of Honor: Flo Groberg” provides a succinct overview of Capt. Florent “Flo” Groberg’s life, from his childhood in France to the heroic act that saved the lives of many and made him a Medal of Honor recipient in 2015. It was written by Chuck Dixon, drawn by Geof Isherwood, and colored by Peter Pantazis, with lettering by Troy Peteri.

Groberg, who served with the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, was the first foreign-born recipient of the nation’s highest military award for valor since the Vietnam War.

The Association of the United States Army published the newest edition of their Medal of Honor series, which began in 2018, on May 22. Other issues have covered past Medal of Honor recipients, including Alvin York, Daniel Inouye and Alwyn Cashe, among others.

“The whole idea of the series is to use the graphic novel format as a way to reach out to a new generation and teach them about Army history and Army values,” said Joseph Craig, director of the book program for the Association of the United States Army.

He said they employ seasoned professionals from the comic book world to help bring the stories to life, relying on award citations and government and military documents to paint a cohesive narrative. They also work with professional historians to ensure biographical details are accurate.

On Aug. 8, 2012, Groberg was escorting 28 coalition and Afghan National Army personnel to a security meeting in Afghanistan while serving as a personal security detachment commander, according to the Army.

Halfway to their destination, a suicide bomber approached the group. Groberg rushed the attacker with the help of another soldier, pushing him away from the group as his vest exploded.

The blast caused the suicide vest of a second unseen suicide bomber to detonate prematurely, primarily striking a nearby building.

Groberg’s actions caused the bombs to detonate away from the group, saving countless lives.

Four soldiers died that day, including U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Kevin J. Griffin, U.S. Army Maj. Thomas E. Kennedy, U.S. Air Force Maj. Walter D. Gray and USAID Foreign Service Officer Ragaei Abdelfattah.

16 other soldiers were injured.

As a result of the explosion, Groberg lost nearly half of his left calf muscle, while also suffering nerve damage, a blown eardrum and a traumatic brain injury. He spent nearly three years recovering and medically retired from the Army on July 23, 2015.

Former President Barack Obama bestowed the Medal of Honor on Groberg during a ceremony Nov. 12, 2015.

“On his very worst day, he managed to summon his very best,” Obama said at the White House ceremony.

Groberg, in a 2020 interview with Military Times, described the history of his dedication to the armed forces.

RELATED

‘I had to go through that dark period’ ― 5 Insights from a Medal of Honor recipient

Capt. Florent “Flo” Groberg talks about the struggles that come from being wounded in battle ― and his elevation to the status of national “hero” after receiving the Medal of Honor.

Growing up, his uncle was killed in 1996 by terrorists in Algeria.

Groberg says his uncle fought for what he believed in and, as a result, was shot, beheaded and dismembered, all during a ceasefire. His remains were sent in a box to Groberg’s grandfather.

Groberg was 12 at the time and says he realized then what it meant to serve a purpose. When 9/11 happened, he said he realized his purpose: to serve a country that had adopted him and given him opportunities.

Only five months after becoming a citizen of the United States of America, Groberg enlisted in the Army.

“The proudest thing I have ever done in my life is to wear this uniform and serve my country,” he said in a statement on the Army’s website.

About Riley Ceder

Riley Ceder is an editorial fellow at Military Times, where he covers breaking news, criminal justice and human interest stories. He previously worked as an investigative practicum student at The Washington Post, where he contributed to the ongoing Abused by the Badge investigation.

​17. How the Army is driving enterprise training across five warfighting domains and three dimensions

At least the human is a "dimension." But it is still subordinate to the land domain.

As an aside, who is responsible for developing Irregular Warfare proficient campaign HQ?

Excerpts:

When FM 3.0 [update] was released in October of ’22, our new operating concept became multi-domain operations. Where that was a huge departure from previous ones was before we thought of the domains as land, air, and sea, and this added in land, air, sea, space, and cyber.

Then it added in the three dimensions: the human dimension, the physical dimension, the information dimension. That’s what’s driving our training, and driving the way we train for multi-domain operations. It’s changing the way that we execute training, the way we fund training, it’s changing some of our priorities in the training environment.

In the land domain, I have the physical domain of the land itself – the terrain, the infrastructure, whether it’s out in the mountains or in a city.

Then I have the human dimension, the people that live in those places and how they affect the battlefield – and the enemy, because they’re humans.

Then you have the information dimension. Look at how that’s changed our lives in the last five or 10 years with everything in the information environment from the media, to social media, to soldiers passing information back and forth on the battlefield.

When you look at each of the five domains, you have to take into account the three dimensions within each one of those as you’re planning.

How the Army is driving enterprise training across five warfighting domains and three dimensions - Breaking Defense​

An enterprise change in some corps-level training moves higher control (HICON) from Fort Leavenworth to the service component command.

breakingdefense.com · by Barry Rosenberg · May 23, 2024

Soldiers from the 42nd Infantry Division, 36th Infantry Division, and 1st Armored Division battle track during Warfighter Exercise 23-5 at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, June 5, 2023. (DVIDS)

If there’s a potential silver bullet to the threats of near-peers, it’s mastering multi-domain operations. Training for MDO is an Army wide enterprise imperative, and we discuss the training challenges of transforming in contact with Brig. Gen. Scott Woodward, deputy commanding general, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center-Training, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

BREAKING DEFENSE: What is the requirement/threat scenario necessitating the need for enterprise training, especially for multi-domain operations?

BRIG. GEN. SCOTT WOODWARD: When I look at the requirement driving MDO, there’s multiple threats, peer threats, near-peer threats. I think the real requirement is not necessarily the threat, it’s MDO. If you can do MDO, you can defeat any threat.

When you look at how our doctrine’s evolved and FM [Field Manual] 3.0, it started with the Airland Battle in the ’80s and went into the late ‘90s. Then we went to full-spectrum operations in 2001 because we were in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we were just coming out of the Balkans. Then we went to Unified Land Operations in 2011, which was focused on doing large-scale ground combat again.

When FM 3.0 [update] was released in October of ’22, our new operating concept became multi-domain operations. Where that was a huge departure from previous ones was before we thought of the domains as land, air, and sea, and this added in land, air, sea, space, and cyber.

Then it added in the three dimensions: the human dimension, the physical dimension, the information dimension. That’s what’s driving our training, and driving the way we train for multi-domain operations. It’s changing the way that we execute training, the way we fund training, it’s changing some of our priorities in the training environment.

Deputy Commanding General Brig. Gen. Scott Woodward, Combined Arms Center – Training, speaks during his promotion ceremony in January at Fort Leavenworth, KS. Photo by Tisha Swart Entwistle.

What are examples of those dimensions in MDO?

In the land domain, I have the physical domain of the land itself – the terrain, the infrastructure, whether it’s out in the mountains or in a city.

Then I have the human dimension, the people that live in those places and how they affect the battlefield – and the enemy, because they’re humans.

Then you have the information dimension. Look at how that’s changed our lives in the last five or 10 years with everything in the information environment from the media, to social media, to soldiers passing information back and forth on the battlefield.

When you look at each of the five domains, you have to take into account the three dimensions within each one of those as you’re planning.

What are the challenges associated with managing a growing network of systems such as training networks and live ranges that have to operate in five domains and three dimensions to create a meaningful training environment for soldiers?

The way I look at it is, what can we afford to do now, or what is critical that we do quickly that we can afford? Then what do we do in the midterm?’

The way the chief describes it is continuous transformation. Transforming in contact is the next 12 to 24 months. What can we get done in the next 12 to 24 months, with the resources we have?

Then there’s deliberate transformation, which is two to seven years out, [followed by] concept-driven transformation, which is beyond seven years.

An example of transforming in contact is our work on the command and control networks and battle command systems that we have realized are not survivable on the modern battlefield.

They’re too big, they put out too much of a signature, they’re hard to move around. How do we make them smaller, more agile, less seen in the electromagnetic spectrum? That’s a 12 to 24 month challenge.

Under the Synthetic Training Environment, the idea is that we are going to be able to be better integrated [through] live, virtual, and constructive [training]. In the near term, we’re working on what’s the next generation of MILES laser engagement system [and] what’s our next collective trainer for our aircraft and our ground combat vehicles going to be.

Then a little farther off in the future we’re looking at what we call next-gen constructive, which is going to be our simulation engine that is driving our corps and division warfighter exercises. When you look at what we do now for our divisions and our corps, we use a program called Joint Land Component Constructive Training Capability.

That was developed 10, 15 years ago, and what it was developed and designed for, it does very well. It does the land domain well. It does the air domain well. It does the maritime domain a little bit, but doesn’t do space and it doesn’t do cyber at all.

We’re thinking if we’re going to make the Synthetic Training Environment [then] it’s all going to be connected. How do we make what our next generation of this is going to be – all five domains in the three dimensions – so that we can train our corps and divisions in a multi-domain scenario?

During these enterprise training exercises, you’re also changing the way higher control [HICON] is executed. Explain, please.

The Mission Command Training Program here at Fort Leavenworth, or MCTP as we call it, are the ones who run those exercises. In the past, we’ve done a multinational warfighter [exercise] about every other year. Not only are we going to do them now every year, but in some cases we’re going to do multiple exercises a year with our multinational partners.

The big change this year was that the chief asked us [that] when we have a corps-level warfighter [exercise], that the Army service component command for that corps – wherever they’re doing the exercise, whether it be in the Pacific, Europe, or Central Asia – be the HICON for it instead of MCTP acting as the HICON.

If you look at the big exercise that just happened in Europe, Austere Challenge 24, it was a EUCOM-level exercise run by the Joint Staff J7, [and] underneath it we conducted a warfighter exercise where US Army Europe and Africa was the HICON.

Fifth (V) Corps was the training audience with the First Division, the Third Division of the US, a UK division, and an Estonian unit. [It was a] huge exercise from the GCC [geographic combatant command] level all the way down to the division level that was integrated.

We’re trying to pull as much as we can out of that so that we can have an effective simulation to train those size units to be able to conduct combat operations in the future.

How is operations and maintenance of training systems in an enterprise environment evolving?

That is a huge part of my day-to-day job. Once the training system is fielded, it’s our responsibility. We’re responsible for all training aids, training devices, simulators, simulations in the Army.

You have to prioritize how much money you have every year, what you can spend, and what we can keep sustained to a level that soldiers can still train on it. Now we’re to the point of [determining] what are we going to stop doing, what are we going to get rid of, what’s obsolete, and what do we need right now that’s a high priority that’s new?

Let’s take ranges, for example. Keeping the 7,000-plus Army ranges not only maintained but modernizing them is a huge task. One example [looking] across all our ranges – our small arms ranges, our tanks ranges – [are our] targets and target lifters.

They’re done by six or seven different vendors; some of them have proprietary software and mechanisms in them so that if a target breaks at Fort Moore, GA, and I don’t have that part there, I can’t necessarily just grab a part from Fort Stewart, GA, and bring it over there and fix it because they’re all different.

We’re working on what’s called the Future Army System of Integrated Targets, FASIT. These things are all going to be the same. It’s going to be owned by the government instead of private companies. Parts will be interchangeable.

We’ll be able to have what’s called multi-spectral targets, where the targets will be able to give off different EW signatures and infrared. They’ll be able to receive effects from EW systems under a new software program where the target operators, instead of hitting old buttons that are hooked up by fiber optic cable, it’ll all be on iPads over the air, and you can change scenarios very quickly.

When you look at ranges, what are we going to prioritize? We’re bringing new weapon systems online like Next Generation Squad Weapon, we’re bringing Mobile Protected Firepower online. We have to build ranges for those, or we have to modify our existing ranges.

breakingdefense.com · by Barry Rosenberg · May 23, 2024

18. The Inevitable Role of Clans in Post-Conflict Stabilization in Gaza

Excerpts:

In fact, clans are likely to play some part under any political constellation. If, in the less likely scenario that Hamas recovers and seeks to regain control over parts of the Strip, it is bound to encounter the now emboldened clans seeking to reassert their autonomy and retain their smuggling routs. Any administration that may wish restore security in Gaza, including the Palestinian Authority, will need to take into account the clans’ interests and influence.

The major clans, for their part, have publicly denied any interest in collaborating with Israel or agreeing to take over Gaza Strip. Thus, it is unlikely that any formal body will be created from clan leaders to run Gaza’s political affairs. On the other hand, some clans have demonstrated their ability to coordinate their actions, denying any affiliation with either Israel or Hamas and reiterating their autonomy. Therefore, any Israeli plan to delegate authority and power to clan leaders will likely take be informal, with each clan securing control over its turf and smuggling routes in return for possible coordination against Hamas pockets. With reference to past examples, clan participation after the end of fighting looks more like an informal Village Leagues system than the South Lebanon Army.

Delegating authority to clan leaders is certainly a short-term solution and would not prevent the possible return of the Palestinian Authority. However, an Authority-led administration, too, would find itself bargaining with clans. After nearly two decades of absence and amid the destruction of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority will need a basis for its security infrastructure. And this is where its experience of dealing with West Bank clans and its relations with Gazan clans would prove useful. Some clans may indeed see this as an opportunity to expand their criminal activities.

On the other hand, previous examples suggest that marginalizing the clans or attempting to subdue them may not only miss an opportunity for constructive engagement but also drive them to search for other opportunities. In Iraq, for example, Nuri al-Maliki’s antipathy toward the tribes that fought against al-Qaeda ended up driving disaffected tribe members to collaborate with the Islamic State.

Any administration that will emerge in Gaza, whether an interim Israeli one, a Palestinian Authority-led one, or even a recovered Hamas government, will only be able to cope with clans’ potential criminal activity through securing their participation in the institutions designed by civilian authorities.

The Inevitable Role of Clans in Post-Conflict Stabilization in Gaza

warontherocks.com · by Yaniv Voller

The Inevitable Role of Clans in Post-Conflict Stabilization in Gaza - War on the Rocks

National security.

For insiders. By insiders.

Yaniv Voller

May 24, 2024

Commentary

“Palestinian tribes, clans and families are not an alternative to any Palestinian political system.” This statement was made not by a Palestinian government official or an expert advisor on democratic reforms in Palestine. Rather, it was made by representatives of Gazan clans and families themselves. This emphatic denial came in response to assertions that the Israeli government seeks to promote these clans as future proxies following the end of combat operations in the territory.

The Israeli government has indeed considered this idea, which has in turn attracted fierce criticism from commentators across the political spectrum. Many of these criticisms are valid. But the outright dismissal of the clans as potential security and service providers ignores realities on the ground, where clans are already significant actors who have stepped in to fill the vacuum created by Hamas’s administrative withdrawal.

The question of clans’ role in post-conflict Gaza has yet to gain any significant attention among policymakers outside of Israel and Palestine. However, experience in both the region and other post-conflict environments shows that the involvement of clans and tribes in post-conflict environments is inevitable.

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Day After Scenarios

The Israel Defense Forces’ looming entrance into the city of Rafah, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has labelled as Hamas’ last stronghold in the Gaza Strip, brings the conflict one day closer to the much-discussed “day after.” The long-term challenge facing the Israeli government remains the need to control the security situation in the Strip without direct Israeli intervention while establishing a semblance of order. Primarily foreign but also Israeli observers have advocated the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza to run civilian affairs as the most reasonable solution.

Although the Palestinian Authority suffers from inherent weaknesses such as corruption and accusations from radical factions for collaborating with Israel, the proponents of this solution have highlighted that it is the only actor that can assume responsibility over Gaza, due to its connections with the Gazan population, familiarity with the territory, and the experience it has gained in governance and engagement with the Israeli authority. The Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, has signaled its readiness to take on what might prove to be an unrewarding task, with the condition of renewing negotiations toward establishing a Palestinian state.

However, the Netanyahu government has adamantly rejected such plan, at least publicly. It has offered different justifications, but underlying cause is likely Netanyahu’s disdain toward any move that might boost the case for Palestinian statehood.

What are the alternatives? After the invasion of Rafah, the Israeli government could remain in direct control over the Strip through the Israel Defense Forces. In another potential scenario, Hamas may be able to recuperate and, following an Israeli withdrawal, recapture parts of the Strip. Finally, in a scenario favored by some Israeli policymakers, an international task force led by Arab countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations (i.e., the United Arab Emirates and Egypt), the United States, and Europe takes over the mandate over Gaza.

Searching for further alternatives, the Israeli government has also contemplated the idea of delegating authority and power to some of the prominent clans in the Strip. Israeli security officials have already approached clan leaders and village mukhtars to explore the possibility of the clans filling in the vacuum after the Israel Defense Forces’ possible withdrawal from the Strip. Israel has not officially declared this a policy. And it is not entirely clear how the clans would fulfill their designated function: Will there be a council of clan and village leaders to run Gaza’s affairs, or will each of the leading clans gain control over a territory? The Israeli government has not presented a blueprint for involving the clans.

Still, even before this policy has materialized, it had attracted fierce criticism. Some of the critiques of this strategy have warned that the clans (colloquially called hamulas) are “a thing of the past.” These critics argue that ever since the first intifada, Palestinians have broken away from this kinship structure. Others have pointed to Israel’s past attempts to establish a system of civilian governance in the West Bank based on local clans. The Village Leagues, as this system was named, failed to achieve its goals and dissolved ahead of the breakout of the first intifada. A more radical perspective has depicted this plan as essentially colonial, seeking to “divide Gaza into emirates ruled by local tribes” in the same way that colonial regimes had done in the past. Finally, observers have highlighted clan involvement in illicit economic activities, including smuggling and human trafficking. Therefore, they have warned that affording clans a role in post-conflict Gaza risks deepening competition and rivalry between them and resulting in intensified criminal violence and warlordism.

Of all these scenarios, the Palestinian Authority’s return to the Strip remains, despite Netanyahu’s objections, the most likely. Direct Israeli control over Gaza will encounter fierce international response and will also constitute a burden on the Israeli economy. The return of Hamas, too, seems unlikely at this point. Israel has clearly fallen short of Netanyahu’s initially declared goal of annihilating the organization, as Hamas pockets continue attacking Israeli forces inside and outside the Strip. Yet, Hamas has lost a significant proportion of its manpower and infrastructure, which will make it difficult to restore governance capabilities. Finally, Israel’s partners in the Middle East have rejected any role that will not involve an indigenous Palestinian leadership, once again bringing the Palestinian Authority back into the picture.

But this does not mean that clans will not play a role in governing the strip. Given the realities on the ground, clans’ involvement in any political and security activities in Gaza is inevitable. Any policy, including one that paves the way to the Palestinian Authority’s return, should take into account the clans’ prominent role in any political constellation in Gaza.

History

The Israeli state has a long history of relying on clans and tribes to interact with and mobilize support from Arab populations under its control. In the 1940s, the Yishuv (the precursor to the State of Israel) used clan and tribal divisions to ally with Druze and Bedouin Arabs in the Mandate of Palestine, and Israel’s early years saw the integration of Druze and many Bedouins into Israel’s security forces. During Israel’s first decades of existence and until the early 1980s, the dominant Mapai Party used satellite lists that incorporated clan notables and mukhtars as members of the Knesset to secure Arab votes.

The example of the Village Leagues, which the critiques of Israel’s clan policy in Gaza have brought up, is another episode in Israel’s relations with Palestinian clans. The Village Leagues was an initiative by the Military Governorate in the West Bank to erect an indigenous conservative leadership as an alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s increasing influence the late 1970s. The Leagues, which the Israel Defense Forces initially funded, were made up of clan notables willing to cooperate with the Israeli authorities in return for securing the countryside’s interests. Each League encompassed several villages and clans, and notables were given local administrative authority and weapons to protect themselves. Although these notables still committed to Palestinian nationalism and independence in the West Bank, their rivals blamed them for collaborating with Israel and targeted League leaders. The system eventually faded away, and the clans either relinquished their leadership claims or allied with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the years leading up to the first intifada. Since then, the Village Leagues have been used by critics as an example of the failure to rely on traditional social structures to control Palestine and as synonymous with the betrayal of the Palestinian cause. And this memory has served Israel’s critiques in downplaying reliance on clan leaders in Gaza.

On the other hand, one of the main reasons for the system’s failure was that the Likud government actively sabotaged the initiative. The settler Gush Emunim lobby group feared any attempt to bolster a native leadership that might advance autonomy or even independence for the Palestinians. Therefore, its representative in the Likud and the Knesset pushed Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon to cease supporting the initiative. In other words, the failure of the Village Leagues may have had much to do with Israeli reluctance to continue the policy as with the unpopularity of the system.

A different example is that of the South Lebanon Army, which served as Israel’s proxy in the Security Belt in South Lebanon. As I show in my recent research, Israel relied on family and clan structures to mobilize Shiite recruits who, by the late 1980s, became the majority of the South Lebanon Army’s rank-and-file. The force is mainly remembered for its precipitous collapse following Israel’s withdrawal from the Security Belt in May 2000. Nonetheless, for nearly two decades, it facilitated Israel’s control of the Security Belt (which was more than double the size of the Gaza Strip but more sparsely populated) with a minimal Israel Defense Forces presence.

For Israel, then, resorting to the clan as a potential ally is almost a natural move embedded in historical experience.

Clans Today

How much influence do clans and their leadership still have? Looking at the Palestinians through the prism of clannism and tribalism risks reductionism. Palestinian society has indeed gone through significant social and economic changes, which had driven the urbanizing and better educated Palestinian away from traditional kinship structures. In many ways, Hamas’ Islamist ideology also emerged as a radical alternative to clannism and tribalism.

On the other hand, entirely dismissing the relevance of clans to Palestinian politics and society may be too hasty. The drift from the clan has not been linear. The clans still consist of hundreds of thousands of members. Ironically, after Israel’s withdrawal from parts of the West Bank following the Oslo Accords, it was the Palestine Liberation Organization’s leadership, now assuming key positions in the Palestinian Authority, that replaced the Israeli authorities in elevating clan leaders, integrating them into positions of power in the new administration. When the Palestinian Authority’s administrative capacity collapsed during the second intifada, these were the clans that filled in the vacuum in providing security and services to local populations. In the West Bank, the clans remained powerful even after Abbas succeeded Yasser Arafat as the Authority’s president. These relations may have been dotted with tensions and contestation, with the Palestinian Authority sometimes able to curtail clans’ opposition to its policies and subordinate clan leaders. Nonetheless, they show that the clan, as a social institution, is still relevant to Palestinian social and political life.

In Gaza, too, clans have remained active in society and local politics. The Gazan clans have not been monolithic in their policies and interaction with the other political actors. Some of the clans, for instance the Helles clan, remained loyal to Fatah even after Hamas had driven the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza following the 2006–2007 clashes between the two movements. The Helles and other Fatah-allied clans continued clashing sporadically with Hamas in the years following its takeover of Gaza. Other clans, such as the Doghmush, have claimed to have joined al-Qaeda and fought Hamas under the guise of this organization. Other clans, on the other hand, have collaborated with Hamas throughout the years, mainly to protect their lucrative smuggling and trafficking ventures. These relations have remained strained and occasional rifts and clashes have occurred, as well as cooperation.

Hence, the clans have remained a part of Palestinian politics, and their relations with the local leadership, whether the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, have remained complex but not irrelevant. Moreover, as Hamas was weakened following Israel’s retaliation for the Oct. 7 onslaught, clan leaders once again have emerged forcefully in Gaza. Influential Gazan clans have been securing and protecting aid convoys, distributing aid, and regulating other routine activities across the territory, including among the internally displaced population. At the same time, at least some of these clans have taken advantage of the chaos and the violence to expand their criminal activities and benefit, in addition to their smuggling operations, from looting the property left behind by displaced Gazans.

The rise of Palestinian clans at times of crisis fits with common trends in other cases. Past experience shows that the shortcomings or breakdown of modern states can actually strengthen and reconstitute the influence of “traditional” social structures like clans. Thus, during the civil wars that tore societies apart in Syria and Iraq, tribes and clans experienced renewed cohesion. Similarly, in post-2001 Afghanistan, tribal warlords in primarily non-Pashtun parts of the country regained the influence that they had lost with the rise of Taliban in the 1990s. In Iraq and Syria, the governments grudgingly turned to these tribes for help in counter-insurgency operations, whereas in Afghanistan, tribal strongmen became effective governors and partners to the central government in Kabul.

In light of these examples, the growing strength and cohesion of Gazan tribes is only natural at a time of a looming social crisis, and we may see more Gazans returning to the clan and tribe for protection. The clans have already filled the vacuum left by Hamas in their territories. With their possession of stockpiles of arms and ability to mobilize members in their turfs, clans may be the first ones to maintain a semblance of order and, given their interests and history, counter the remaining Hamas pockets in the Strip.

What’s Next

In fact, clans are likely to play some part under any political constellation. If, in the less likely scenario that Hamas recovers and seeks to regain control over parts of the Strip, it is bound to encounter the now emboldened clans seeking to reassert their autonomy and retain their smuggling routs. Any administration that may wish restore security in Gaza, including the Palestinian Authority, will need to take into account the clans’ interests and influence.

The major clans, for their part, have publicly denied any interest in collaborating with Israel or agreeing to take over Gaza Strip. Thus, it is unlikely that any formal body will be created from clan leaders to run Gaza’s political affairs. On the other hand, some clans have demonstrated their ability to coordinate their actions, denying any affiliation with either Israel or Hamas and reiterating their autonomy. Therefore, any Israeli plan to delegate authority and power to clan leaders will likely take be informal, with each clan securing control over its turf and smuggling routes in return for possible coordination against Hamas pockets. With reference to past examples, clan participation after the end of fighting looks more like an informal Village Leagues system than the South Lebanon Army.

Delegating authority to clan leaders is certainly a short-term solution and would not prevent the possible return of the Palestinian Authority. However, an Authority-led administration, too, would find itself bargaining with clans. After nearly two decades of absence and amid the destruction of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority will need a basis for its security infrastructure. And this is where its experience of dealing with West Bank clans and its relations with Gazan clans would prove useful. Some clans may indeed see this as an opportunity to expand their criminal activities.

On the other hand, previous examples suggest that marginalizing the clans or attempting to subdue them may not only miss an opportunity for constructive engagement but also drive them to search for other opportunities. In Iraq, for example, Nuri al-Maliki’s antipathy toward the tribes that fought against al-Qaeda ended up driving disaffected tribe members to collaborate with the Islamic State.

Any administration that will emerge in Gaza, whether an interim Israeli one, a Palestinian Authority-led one, or even a recovered Hamas government, will only be able to cope with clans’ potential criminal activity through securing their participation in the institutions designed by civilian authorities.

Become a Member

Yaniv Voller is a senior lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Kent. His recent book, Second-Generation Liberation Wars, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. His works on irregular warfare, counterinsurgency, and militias have appeared in International Affairs, Political Psychology, and Terrorism and Political Violence, among other journals. He is the recipient of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Distinguished Scholar Award for 2023-2025.

Image: Wikimedia

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Yaniv Voller

19. The Death of an Iranian Hard-Liner

Excerpts:

None of this means that Raisi’s death will deal no damage to Iran. The president was viewed as the top contender to be Iran’s next supreme leader, and Khamenei, age 85, will now have to scramble to find someone else. There is no clear answer to who that might be. Some analysts have speculated that Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, and the current head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, are the leading candidates. But ultimately, the individual chosen may not matter as much as the kingmaker. The conservative institutions that choose the next supreme leader, and that backed Raisi as president and as a potential successor to Khamenei, will have great power over whoever comes next.

That means that Iran’s long-term trajectory is unlikely to change. Whoever becomes president will be a loyal insider. He will be as politically similar to Raisi as one can be. In fact, Khamenei’s successor could even explicitly claim the latest president’s mantle. After all, in the official narrative of the Islamic Republic, Raisi will be remembered for putting Iran on the right path after a series of presidents who challenged the supreme leader’s vision. He will be memorialized for positioning Iran as a nuclear threshold state and establishing it as a rising power—and for doing so not despite external pressure, but because of it.

The Death of an Iranian Hard-Liner

Ebrahim Raisi Helped Engineer the Islamic Republic’s Hawkish Turn—and Whoever Succeeds Him Won’t Change Course

By Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar

May 24, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran · May 24, 2024

The sudden death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in helicopter crash on May 19 marked a momentous day for the Islamic Republic. His presidency ushered in a new era for his country, characterized by increased militarization abroad and growing tumult at home. Not since the 1979 revolution had Iran’s political system faced such a fast-paced transformation. Externally, the country surprised the world with its military capabilities and its willingness to deploy them. Internally, Iran grappled with rising secularization, putting society at odds with the government. These shifts meant that the Iran that exists today is very different from the one that existed when Raisi came to power just three years ago.

Without Raisi, it may seem like Iran is headed for a period of great turbulence. Before his ascent, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, spent 30 years in near-constant conflict with Iran’s presidents, sparring over what path the country should take at home and abroad. But Raisi adopted Khamenei’s preferred, Middle East–first approach to foreign policy, expanding Iran’s regional influence and improving relations with its neighbors, including its rival, Saudi Arabia. He made sure that Iran’s presidential bureaucracy synced up with the supreme leader’s. He deepened ties with China and Russia and vastly expanded his country’s nuclear program. Raisi was so loyal to Khamenei that he was widely viewed as his heir apparent.

Yet it is unlikely that Raisi’s death will cause much tumult in Tehran. In fact, it is unlikely to prompt much change at all. Despite popular discontent and an expanding crisis of legitimacy, Iran’s powerful ruling class remains steadfast in its commitment to Raisi and Khamenei’s strategy. Iranian elites will ensure that the presidency stays in the hands of a loyal establishment conservative. They will keep the country’s policies steady. There will still be palace intrigue, as the country gears up for a snap election and ambitious politicians launch their candidacies to succeed Raisi. But Iran’s next president will almost certainly be just like its last one, and nationwide grief at Raisi’s death will ensure that the winning candidate has a smooth transition.

THICK AND THIN

Raisi’s rise to power began in the 1980s. Then a prosecutor and judge, he made a name for himself by having thousands of leftist prisoners executed. A student of Khamenei’s jurisprudence classes, he eventually advanced to become Iran’s attorney general, taking up the post in 2014. He next presided over a multibillion-dollar religious foundation in the holy city of Mashhad before being tapped in 2019 to head the judiciary.

Raisi ran to become Iran’s president in 2017, but lost to the incumbent, Hassan Rouhani. His defeat in that contest also turned into a defeat for Khamenei. Although the supreme leader controls key institutions, including the military forces, and sets Tehran’s overall policies, Iranian presidents control a vast bureaucracy and budget that give them many levers to shape, challenge, delay, or sabotage Khamenei’s programs. Iran’s presidents also derive some legitimacy from being elected directly, unlike the supreme leader. Rouhani, for example, used his power to chart a course far more moderate than that preferred by Khamenei, including pursuing a nuclear deal with the United States during his first term.

As a result, in the leadup to the 2021 election, Khamenei maneuvered to ensure that Raisi would win. Seizing on the collapse of the nuclear agreement, which was precipitated by the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal in 2018, the supreme leader had Iran’s Guardian Council disqualify all other serious contenders. The result was less a contest than a carefully managed coronation. With Khamenei’s blessing, Raisi won office with 62 percent of the vote—and the lowest voter turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

Many of Raisi’s supposed wins have little to do with his decisions.

Raisi took over the executive branch when Iran was under economic siege. The Trump administration had imposed crippling sanctions in 2019. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration tried to leverage those sanctions to reach what Biden called a “longer and better” deal. But Raisi, unlike his predecessors, showed little interest in talks. Instead, he shifted Iran’s foreign policy from a westward-looking approach aimed at removing U.S. sanctions—what Khamenei derisively termed a “begging” foreign policy—to a more Middle Eastern and Asian- focused strategy aimed at neutralizing them. This policy aligned with the vision that Iran’s supreme leader had been advocating for decades.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry, for example, has traditionally been at odds with the supreme leader’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which prioritizes supporting Iran’s extensive network of nonstate proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. But Raisi tapped Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, a diplomat close to senior corps officials, to lead the ministry. (Amir-Abdollahian died in the helicopter crash with Raisi.) Once marginalized for being too tightly in sync with the IRGC, Amir-Abdollahian set about making sure that his ministry acted in tandem with the corps. He promoted other diplomats with ties to the IRGC and provided more support for Iran’s allied forces throughout the region

The result of this realignment was an assertive foreign policy. The IRGC, for example, was once so constrained by the Foreign Ministry that the head of the corps’ aerospace division bitterly complained about efforts by Rouhani’s officials to block missile tests. But when Raisi came to power, the IRGC began testing at will. It also began launching more outright missile attacks, such as the barrage unleashed on Israel in April after Israel bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus. Under previous presidents, the corps might not responded with such force.

FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE

The Raisi administration had some unambiguous accomplishments. It managed to reestablish relations with Saudi Arabia, for instance, and it forged new economic ties with China. According to the Financial Times, the Islamic Republic succeeded in increasing its oil exports from roughly 400,000 barrels per day to 1.5 million—despite crushing U.S. sanctions.

But many of Raisi’s supposed wins have little to do with his decisions. The new ties to China and Russia, for example, are the product of growing tensions between Washington and Beijing and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—not developments in Tehran. And many of the Iranian president’s other policies have failed. His attempt to create an inward-looking self-sufficient economic policy, an aim shared by Khamenei, fell flat. Raisi spent a significant portion of his presidency traveling throughout the country, reopening bankrupt factories, building roads, and initiating various infrastructure projects. In fact, he was returning from the opening ceremony for a dam when he died. But despite his claims that the Islamic Republic could thrive under Western sanctions, the country continued to suffer from major economic problems. The country’s inflation rate, for example, has remained above 40 percent.

Raisi also faced social unrest. Even government-sponsored reports acknowledge that Iran is rapidly becoming more secular. The vast majority of the population supports separating religion and politics, and many Iranian women walk around unveiled, particularly in major urban centers. The government’s decision to arrest and jail people for doing so prompted major protests in 2022. Even some traditionally conservative women are now bucking the regime’s dress code, if only to avoid being associated by other Iranians with the political system and its failures (especially its draconian human rights record).

Raisi continued to enforce the country’s dress requirements, and he responded to the mass protests with more mass executions. But despite the violence, the Islamic Republic is reluctantly acknowledging its population’s secular shift. During the 2021 presidential campaign, for example, women who did not adhere to traditional veiling practices appeared in pro-Raisi advertisements. And today, state-controlled media show people from all walks of life paying respect to the late president. In a television interview from a vigil in Tehran, one mournful, partially unveiled woman told Iran’s state broadcaster that although her “appearance may not be what it should be,” nobody had forced her to attend. “I came here myself with all my being.”

MEET THE NEW BOSS

Raisi’s vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, is now the country’s acting president. Like Raisi, he is a Khamenei loyalist; Mokhber joined the administration after overseeing business conglomerates controlled by the supreme leader. But his tenure may not last long. Under Iran’s constitution, a new election must be held within 50 days, and multiple candidates will vie for the presidency.

The election could reopen Iran’s old factional wounds as candidates from different camps enter the race, only to be disqualified. Yet such an outcome is unlikely. Instead, the tragic circumstances leading to the election will probably strengthen conservatives’ hands, mending or covering over such fault lines. Prominent moderates are already mourning Raisi: Rouhani, for example, has offered condolences, as has another moderate former president, Mohammad Khatami. They have done so even though they have been marginalized from politics by Khamenei.

The national mourning could shape more than just this election: it could mold the presidency in the image of Raisi for years to come. The country’s clerical elite will memorialize the late president as the kind of loyal Iranian public servant that all future presidents should aspire to be. Their ideal successor will, accordingly, be a conservative associate of Raisi—someone capable of quickly assuming office and ensuring that “there will be no disturbances in the country’s affairs,” as Khamenei promised in his first statement about the helicopter crash in which Raisi perished.

In the official narrative, Raisi will be remembered for putting Iran on the right path.

Iranian society itself might also embrace Khamenei’s policies. Iran’s elite may struggle to win over the public through religious messaging, but it does gain support by promoting nationalistic narratives that portray Iran as a great power under siege from the West. After the United States assassinated the senior IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020, for example, the country experienced a powerful rally-round-the flag effect, with hundreds of thousands of Iranians coming out to pay tribute. Although Raisi’s death was an accident, it could have a similar effect. Because he was killed while serving the nation, the government declared him a martyr. In a country facing external challenges, his death while on duty will resonate with many citizens, particularly the regime’s base. The Islamic Republic is a resourceful system that benefits from having loyal elites, living and dead.

None of this means that Raisi’s death will deal no damage to Iran. The president was viewed as the top contender to be Iran’s next supreme leader, and Khamenei, age 85, will now have to scramble to find someone else. There is no clear answer to who that might be. Some analysts have speculated that Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, and the current head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, are the leading candidates. But ultimately, the individual chosen may not matter as much as the kingmaker. The conservative institutions that choose the next supreme leader, and that backed Raisi as president and as a potential successor to Khamenei, will have great power over whoever comes next.

That means that Iran’s long-term trajectory is unlikely to change. Whoever becomes president will be a loyal insider. He will be as politically similar to Raisi as one can be. In fact, Khamenei’s successor could even explicitly claim the latest president’s mantle. After all, in the official narrative of the Islamic Republic, Raisi will be remembered for putting Iran on the right path after a series of presidents who challenged the supreme leader’s vision. He will be memorialized for positioning Iran as a nuclear threshold state and establishing it as a rising power—and for doing so not despite external pressure, but because of it.

• MOHAMMAD AYATOLLAHI TABAAR is a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, Associate Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service and a Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. He is the author of Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran.

Foreign Affairs · by Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran · May 24, 2024

20. Don’t Go to War With the ICC

Some might say it is the ICC that is going to war.

What if the ICC is wrong? What if the ICC is acting in ways that are counter to a nation's national interests? We do not have a one world government and the ICC only has the authority nations' grant it.

Excerpts:

The United States should continue to offer its strongest support for the security of Israel. But that does not require attacking the court. If the United States and Israel truly believe there is no legal basis for the charges, they should call the ICC prosecutor’s bluff. Israel should launch a genuine investigation of its own. It should demonstrate its commitment to the rule of law and justice by carefully reviewing the evidence and showing that the charges are, indeed, groundless. Opening a genuine investigation would force the court’s hand, as it would have no choice under its own rules but to find the cases against Netanyahu and Gallant inadmissible, while allowing the cases against the leaders of Hamas to continue.

Of course, Netanyahu, who is already facing domestic corruption charges, is extremely unlikely to agree to a domestic investigation. He has proven impervious to U.S. pressure, ignoring the Biden administration’s calls to better protect civilians in Gaza again and again, as he and Gallant continue to wage a war that Biden has called “indiscriminate” and “over the top.” If Israel will not take advantage of the one surefire way to end the proceedings before they go any further, the United States should not shred its credibility simply to protect the men who have ignored every warning.

Don’t Go to War With the ICC

America Can Help Israel Without Attacking the Court

By Oona A. Hathaway

May 24, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Oona A. Hathaway · May 24, 2024

For weeks now, Israeli government officials have taken aim at the International Criminal Court, which they expected would issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for alleged war crimes. It is now clear they were right to be concerned. On May 20, ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he has applied for arrest warrants for three leaders of Hamas—including its chief, Yahya Sinwar—as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the country’s minister of defense. He is charging the Hamas leaders with war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the group’s October 7 attack on Israel, when it killed and assaulted over 1,100 people, and its continued holding and mistreatment of hostages inside the Gaza Strip. The alleged Israeli crimes include using starvation as a weapon and withholding humanitarian aid from the civilian population in Gaza. It is now up to the court’s pre-trial chamber whether to issue the warrants, a decision that could take several months to consider.

Israel has made clear that it intends to attack the court, not cooperate with it. Many have argued the United States should join the Israelis in this effort. Indeed, earlier this month, 12 Republican senators signed a letter promising to retaliate against the court if the cases proceed. “Target Israel and we will target you,” they warned, threatening to sanction ICC employees and associates, and even their family members. U.S. President Joe Biden denounced the ICC’s decision to pursue Israeli leaders for war crimes, calling the application for arrest warrants “outrageous.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 21 that the administration would consider Republican proposals to retaliate against the court and “take it from there.”

Attacking the ICC is the wrong way to respond. The Biden administration has not suggested the charges are baseless, nor can it. For months, the administration has been highly critical of the Netanyahu government’s failure to allow enough aid into Gaza. Earlier this month, it released a report finding that the Israel Defense Forces “has struck humanitarian workers and facilities” and that “numerous credible” reports “have raised questions about Israel’s compliance with its legal obligations under [international humanitarian law] and with best practices for mitigating civilian harm.”

Sanctioning the court and its officials would send a clear message: the United States’ commitment to international justice is not principled but purely political. Instead, the Biden administration should work with Israel to take advantage of the one sure way to derail the proceedings against Israeli officials while allowing the cases against the Hamas leaders to proceed: encourage Israel to undertake its own genuine investigation of its actions in Gaza.

CASE BY CASE

One might reasonably wonder whether the court even has jurisdiction over Hamas leaders and Israeli government officials. Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the court. But the “State of Palestine” has been a party to the court since it signed on to the Rome Statute in 2015. Around the same time, it submitted a declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the ICC “in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” Based on that declaration, then Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced that she had opened a “preliminary examination” into the situation in Palestine, and in December 2019 she sought a ruling to clarify the territorial scope of the ICC’s jurisdiction. In 2021, the pre-trial chamber determined that the court’s jurisdiction “extends to Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

At the time, the United States objected to the ICC’s decision to extend its jurisdiction to those places. It stated, “The Palestinians do not qualify as a sovereign state and therefore, are not qualified to obtain membership as a state in, participate as a state in, or delegate jurisdiction to the ICC.” The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, however, and that limits its influence over how the ICC operates. Moreover, although the United States and Israel do not recognize Palestine as a state, over 140 other states do, including Spain, Norway, and Ireland as of this week. Earlier this month, the United Nations General Assembly voted 143 to nine in favor of a resolution that grants new “rights and privileges” to the “State of Palestine” at the UN, extending to its delegation nearly all rights except the right to vote, which is a privilege only the Security Council, where the United States wields a veto, can grant. The United States was one of the nine states, together with Israel, who voted against the resolution. Following Khan’s announcement, Blinken reaffirmed the U.S. view that the ICC has no jurisdiction over “this matter.”

For Israel, the acts at issue are its alleged use of starvation as a method of war and the denial of humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza. As Khan’s statement explains, “Israel has intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival.” The statement cites the warning from UN Secretary-General António Guterres two months ago, when he said, “1.1 million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger—the highest number of people ever recorded—anywhere, anytime” as a result of an “entirely manmade disaster.” Since then, World Food Program Director Cindy McCain has reported that “full-blown famine” is underway in northern Gaza. In mid-April, Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said it was “credible” to assess that famine was occurring in parts of Gaza. The United States has repeatedly pressed Netanyahu to increase the flow of aid into Gaza, largely unsuccessfully.

Attacking the ICC is the wrong way to respond.

Khan is likely focusing on starvation and restriction of aid for the simple reason that these crimes are the easiest to demonstrate. Indeed, on October 9, Gallant made a statement that has been seen by some as essentially a confession to precisely the acts being charged by Khan. Gallant declared, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”

The ICC prosecutor’s application is far from the first time these allegations have been made against Israel since October 7. On March 19, the UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, said that Israel’s policies of restricting the flow of aid into Gaza might amount to a war crime. That same month, Oxfam, a nongovernmental organization focused on the alleviation of global poverty, issued a statement that Israel “has been using starvation as a weapon of war for over five months now.”

Although the decision to seek the arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant is getting the most attention, it is important to note that Khan is also seeking warrants for top Hamas officials. That application focuses on Hamas’s October 7 assault and the treatment of the hostages taken on that day, many of whom continue to be held and abused in Gaza. Khan alleges numerous war crimes committed against the hostages held in captivity in Gaza, including rape and other acts of sexual violence, torture, other inhumane acts, cruel treatment, and outrages against personal dignity. Both Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, commander-in-chief of the military wing of Hamas, are believed to be living in Gaza, but Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas’s political bureau, lives in Doha, Qatar. Qatar is not a party to the ICC, and therefore not obligated to turn him over, but Khan’s request for an arrest warrant will likely increase the pressure Qatar faces from ICC member states to turn him over for prosecution.

COURT OF LAST RESORT

So far, there are only applications for arrest warrants. It remains possible that the pre-trial chamber will not grant the applications. Given the political sensitivity of the matter, however, Khan almost certainly limited this opening request to warrants he believes he will be successful in obtaining. He is likely right. A panel of leading international law experts convened by Khan to review the full applications and the materials supporting them—none of which has yet been publicly released—concluded that the materials “demonstrate reasonable grounds to believe that the Court has jurisdiction over the crimes set out in the applications for arrest warrants, that these crimes were committed and that the suspects are responsible for them.”

Israel still has one surefire way to derail the cases against Netanyahu and Gallant: investigate and, if warranted, prosecute them itself. The Rome Statute makes clear that the ICC can exercise its jurisdiction only when a state is either unwilling or unable to complete an investigation and, if necessary, prosecute a crime itself. Khan’s office said it had not received "any information that has demonstrated genuine action at the domestic level [in Israel] to address the crimes alleged or the individuals under investigation." If Israel began an active and genuine investigation of the same cases, it could challenge their admissibility before the court. This challenge would prevail even if they are ultimately exonerated, as long as the proceedings are genuine.

There are almost certainly more requests for arrest warrants coming. These, too, could be headed off by a genuine investigation by Israel. Indeed, Israel could have successfully stalled and perhaps even altogether prevented the current request by opening an investigation and then requesting a deferral of the court’s investigation in whole or in part in light of its own domestic proceedings—a step it declined to take. But it is not too late to change course.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

There are those in Congress who want to return to the Trump administration’s all-out war on the court. A bill proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives—dubbed the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act—would sanction and revoke the visas of any ICC employee or associate involved in the investigation into the war in Gaza. Although this proposed bill may not win enough votes to pass, the Biden administration has signaled it is open to working with Republicans to retaliate against the court. That would be a huge mistake.

Even if the court issues arrest warrants, the chance of a criminal trial for either Netanyahu or Gallant remains a remote possibility. Israel is highly unlikely to turn either one over to be tried any time soon. The main effect of arrest warrants will likely be to undermine their legitimacy and make it impossible for them to travel to any ICC member state without risk of apprehension.

Meanwhile, sanctions on ICC staff would undermine Washington’s efforts to bring Russia to justice for its crimes in Ukraine. In the wake of Russia’s invasion, a Senate resolution sponsored by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and cosponsored by members of both parties described the court as “an international tribunal that seeks to uphold the rule of law, especially in areas where no rule of law exists.” Legislation passed in 2023 amended existing law to allow the United States to assist with investigations and prosecutions of foreign nationals related to the situation in Ukraine. That has, in turn, led to unprecedented levels of cooperation between the ICC and the United States, resulting so far in four arrest warrants—including one for Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. Sanctions also would put at risk cooperation over accountability for crimes in Sudan as a new genocide looms, as well as witness protection and fugitive apprehension efforts.

Israel should launch a genuine investigation of its own.

Retaliating against the ICC would also cripple the United States’ capacity to advocate for international justice in other situations in the future. The United States has long made advocacy for global criminal justice a key element of its foreign policy. Ambassador-at-large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack travels the world pressing states to meet their international legal obligations and ensure that they hold those who commit international crimes to account. Those efforts would be rendered ineffective if the United States is seen to support criminal accountability only for geopolitical opponents.

Demonstrating hypocrisy in response to the ICC’s work would further isolate and alienate the United States on the global stage at a moment when it is engaged in a contest for the hearts and minds of people and states around the globe to uphold the rules-based international order. The effort to win influence abroad does not just require creating effective economic or military ties. It also requires demonstrating that the United States can live up to the principles it claims to support. Attacking the ICC proves just the opposite: it shows that the United States supports global justice only when applied to its adversaries. And in doing so, it suggests that the United States’ commitment to the rule of law extends only so far as its short-term naked self-interest allows. There is no surer way to erode the global legal order.

The United States should continue to offer its strongest support for the security of Israel. But that does not require attacking the court. If the United States and Israel truly believe there is no legal basis for the charges, they should call the ICC prosecutor’s bluff. Israel should launch a genuine investigation of its own. It should demonstrate its commitment to the rule of law and justice by carefully reviewing the evidence and showing that the charges are, indeed, groundless. Opening a genuine investigation would force the court’s hand, as it would have no choice under its own rules but to find the cases against Netanyahu and Gallant inadmissible, while allowing the cases against the leaders of Hamas to continue.

Of course, Netanyahu, who is already facing domestic corruption charges, is extremely unlikely to agree to a domestic investigation. He has proven impervious to U.S. pressure, ignoring the Biden administration’s calls to better protect civilians in Gaza again and again, as he and Gallant continue to wage a war that Biden has called “indiscriminate” and “over the top.” If Israel will not take advantage of the one surefire way to end the proceedings before they go any further, the United States should not shred its credibility simply to protect the men who have ignored every warning.

• OONA A. HATHAWAY is Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School and a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 2014–15, she took leave to serve as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Foreign Affairs · by Oona A. Hathaway · May 24, 2024

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