Thread: Russia launches Ukraine invasion

WTF do they think they are doing?

US intelligence told to keep quiet over role in Ukraine military triumphs


CIA veterans advise successors against ‘unwise’ intelligence boasts that could trigger escalation from Russia

Former US intelligence officers are advising their successors currently in office to shut up and stop boasting about their role in Ukraine’s military successes.

Two stories surfaced in as many days in the American press this week, citing unnamed officials as saying that US intelligence was instrumental in the targeting of Russian generals on the battlefield and in the sinking of the Moskva flagship cruiser on the Black Sea.

The initial report in the New York Times on Wednesday about the generals was partially denied by the White House, which said that while the US shares intelligence with Ukrainian forces, it was not specifically shared with the intent to kill Russian general officers.

The next day, NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post all quoted officials as saying that US intelligence had helped Ukraine hit the Moskva with anti-ship missiles last month, making it the biggest Russian ship to be sunk since the second world war.

As a general rule, espionage is carried out in secret, though western intelligence agencies have turned that rule on its head over the past few months by going public with what they knew about Russian preparations for invasion, and then with daily reports on the battlefield and from behind Russian lines.

The new disclosures are different however, as they concern what the US espionage agencies themselves have been doing, rather than commenting on the state of the war.

In both cases, the US was claiming a hand in historic humiliations for Moscow and for Vladimir Putin, triggering warnings of unintended consequences.

Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA official, said: “My personal view is it’s unwise. I am surprised at the extent of official confirmation of the role of US intelligence in the sinking into Moscow, and even more so the killing of the generals.

“The big concern is that this sort of public confirmation of this extensive US role in the setbacks dealt to the Russians may provoke Putin into escalation in a way that he might not otherwise feel it necessary to escalate.”

John Sipher, who served for 28 years in the CIA’s clandestine service, some of that time in Moscow, thought the decision to disclose details of intelligence sharing was misguided, but for different reasons.

“I just think it’s disrespectful to the Ukrainians,” Sipher said. “It’s taking away from the people who are actually on the ground, who are taking advantage of the intelligence, who are collecting their own intelligence, who are fighting day and night.”

However, he did not think that it significantly raised the risk of escalation between Russia and Nato.

“Putin understands how the game is played. He gets intelligence to try to kill Americans if the situation is reversed, as he did in Afghanistan and other places. The Russians have spent years attacking us with cyber warfare and disinformation,” Sipher said.

“So I don’t think them being upset that America is sharing intelligence is a game-changer.”

European officials made clear their own intelligence agencies would not be following the US lead.

“It’s stupid,” one official said. “I don’t think it is a carefully coordinated leak.”

An official from another European country cast doubt on the centrality of US intelligence to the Ukrainian targeting of Russian generals, saying the main factor was the predictability of Russian officers as they followed rigid Soviet-era doctrine. The breakdown in their secure communications equipment and the top-down hierarchy of the Russian army meant the top officers had to travel to the frontlines to be sure their orders were carried out and Ukrainian snipers were waiting for them.

In the case of the Moskva, US officials were at pains to emphasise that Ukraine made its own targeting decisions, and drew information from multiple sources.

“We are not the only sole source of intelligence and information to the Ukrainians. They get intelligence from other nations as well and have a pretty robust intelligence collection capability,” John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said.

“They’ve been fighting this war against Russia for eight years. It’s not like they are completely blind to the way Russia organises itself and the way Russia conducts itself on the battlefield.”

US intelligence told to keep quiet over role in Ukraine military triumphs | US foreign policy | The Guardian

Intense fighting is continuing in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine as troops attempt to regain control of the area from the Russians. It comes after Ukraine's armed forces claimed on Saturday that they had taken five villages north-east of the country's second largest city.

Analysts say the Ukrainian operation is developing into a successful counter-offensive

Kharkiv has been the focus of intense shelling since the February invasion.

The governor of Kharkiv region said on Saturday that Russian troops continue "to fire on civilians in Kharkiv region".

Oleh Synyehubov on Telegram reminded people to "not go out unnecessarily" and told people not to ignore the air raid sirens.

There is concern that the Russian shelling could intensify in the run up to Victory Day on May 9, when Russia commemorates its win over Nazi Germany in 1945.

The region has been heavily targeted by Russian forces since the invasion, but a report from the Institute of the Study of War says that Ukrainian troops are now "notably retaking territory along a broad arc around Kharkiv".

It added that Ukrainian troops may be able to relieve Russian pressure on Kharkiv "and potentially threaten to make further advances to the Russian border."

Hubanov Pavlo, a children's doctor in Kharkiv told the BBC that people are still hiding in shelters and are not going to work.

"There is no normal life in the city," he said. "Kharkiv is very close to the Russian border and so the city is constantly under attack. Unfortunately while the war continues, we cannot relax and we are constantly on alert."

Mr Pavlo used to work at Kharkiv Regional Pediatric Hospital but it was destroyed by shelling.

"The shells hit our hospital several times, and now the building is destroyed and it was impossible to provide medical care there, because Russians were shooting all the time. I am now working in another hospital," he said.

On Saturday, a museum dedicated to philosopher and poet Hryhoriy Skovoroda in Kharkiv region was confirmed to have been destroyed after Russian shelling hit the roof. Items had been removed ahead of time.

Ukraine: Intense shelling as troops battle to regain Kharkiv region - BBC News

As I said a few days ago, the Russians are being pushed out of Kharkiv oblast.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive northeast of Kharkiv is making significant progress and will likely advance to the Russian border in the coming days or weeks. Russian forces may be conducting a limited withdrawal in the face of successful Ukrainian attacks and reportedly destroyed three bridges to slow the Ukrainian advance. Armies generally only destroy bridges if they have largely decided they will not attempt to cross the river in the other direction anytime soon; Russian forces are therefore unlikely to launch operations to retake the northeast outskirts of Kharkiv liberated by Ukrainian forces in the near future. Russian forces previously destroyed several bridges during their retreat from Chernihiv Oblast—as did Ukrainian forces withdrawing in the face of the Russian offensive in the initial days of the war.


This Ukrainian offensive is likely intended to push Russian forces out of artillery range of Kharkiv city and drive to the border of Russia’s Belgorod Oblast. As ISW previously forecasted, the Ukrainian counteroffensive is forcing Russian units intended for deployment elsewhere to redeploy to the Kharkiv front to halt Ukrainian attacks. Given the current rate of Ukrainian advances, Russian forces may be unable to prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border, even with additional reinforcements. Ukrainian forces are not directly threatening Russian lines of communication to Izyum (and ISW cannot verify claims of a separate Ukrainian counteroffensive toward Izyum at this time), but the Ukrainian counteroffensive demonstrates promising Ukrainian capabilities and may set conditions for further offensive operations into northeastern Kharkiv Oblast.

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 7 | Institute for the Study of War

High casualties feared after school shelter in Ukraine bombed


Ukraine has accused Russia of dropping a bomb on a school in Luhansk region where 90 people were taking shelter.


Serhiy Hayday, the head of the Luhansk region military administration, said a Russian aircraft had dropped a bomb on the school in the village of Bilohorivka, which is about 7 miles from the front lines.


Hayday said 30 people had so far been rescued from the rubble.


"Almost the entire village was hiding. Everyone who did not evacuate. After the social club was hit, the basement of the school was the only place of salvation, but the Russians took this chance from people," Hayday said.


The rescue operation is ongoing, he said. Photographs posted by the regional authorities show the school in ruins.

High casualties feared after school shelter in Ukraine bombed

Fighting raged in eastern Ukraine on Sunday between Russian forces and Ukraine defenders who mounted a defiant attempt to hold the Luhansk region’s main city of Severodonetsk.

The governor of Luhansk region said pitched battles were under way for Severodonetsk, formerly an industrial city of 100,000 people, and Russian troops were attempting to cut it off.

“The heaviest fighting is going on towards Severodonetsk [but] all free settlements in the Luhansk region are hotspots,” Governor Serhiy Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Right now, there are shooting battles in [the villages] of Bilohorivka, Voivodivka and towards Popasna.”

Dozens of Ukrainians are feared dead after a Russian air strike destroyed a school sheltering about 90 people in its basement in Bilohorivka village, he said.
The Luhansk governor said the fight for Severodonetsk would be aided by incoming weapons.

“It [new weaponry] is arriving now. Only the military will decide when should they use it. But we can see results even now. And new military supplements can change the course of the war here in Donbas,” said Haidai.

Battles rage in Ukraine’s Luhansk as Russia targets main city (msn.com)

As MK reported, another day another Russian attrocity.

Ukraine war: 60 people killed after bomb hits school, Zelensky says

Around 60 people were killed after a bomb hit a school in east Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

Earlier, the governor of Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, said 90 people had been sheltering in the building in Bilohorivka, and 30 were rescued.

Mr Haidai said a Russian plane had dropped the bomb on Saturday - Russia has not commented.

Luhansk has seen fierce combat as Russian troops and separatist fighters seek to surround government forces.

Much of the region has been under the control of Russia-backed separatists for the past eight years.

Bilohorivka is close to the government-held city of Severodonetsk, where heavy fighting was reported in the suburbs on Saturday. One Ukrainian newspaper, Ukrayinska Pravda, says the village became a "hot spot" during fighting last week.

The blast brought down the building which caught fire and it took firefighters three hours to extinguish the blaze, according to the governor, writing on Telegram.

He said almost the entire village had been sheltering in the basement of the school.

The final death toll would only be known when the rubble had been cleared, the governor said.

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was "appalled" by the deadly attack, adding: "civilians must always be spared in times of war".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61369229

Originally Posted by David48atTD

Vladimir Putin compares Russia's invasion of Ukraine to WWII at Victory Day parade

He's right, WWII was about a lunatic who committed war crimes.

Let's hope it has the same outcome for the lunatic.

I doubt many Russians will see this clip

Early this March, I and two other U.S. veterans spent 10 days helping to train Ukrainian troops on the ground. I’m just one of many volunteers, many of us former soldiers, who did so. For nearly three decades, the United States and other NATO countries have sent personnel to help train Ukrainian forces, efforts that intensified and crystalized after the loss of Crimea and parts of the Donbas in the 2014 Russian invasion. It would be nice to think, as some have claimed, that Ukraine’s success is due to that training. But the truth is that it probably hasn’t played a decisive role in shaping Ukraine’s remarkable underdog performance against the Russian military.

For many analysts, the focus has been on an army burdened, until recently, by Soviet doctrine. Various articles and op-eds describe a Ukrainian military deeply shaped by the experience of the Soviet Union. To be sure, the senior officers of the 1990s had been soldiers and junior officers in the Soviet army, and many Ukrainians served in Afghanistan. But the crucial difference isn’t between the Soviet era and today. The reforms imposed on the Ukrainian army in the 1990s—and the decisions Ukrainians themselves made after those reforms—led to disaster in 2014.

Between 1991 and 2014, Ukraine’s military was shrunk and systematically robbed of resources until it had almost vanished as a fighting force. In 1991, Ukraine’s military had nearly 800,000 personnel on the books, along with thousands of armored vehicles and tanks. It had 2,500 nuclear weapons and a robust air force with hundreds of planes and bombers. In 1993, the nuclear weapons were given to Russia in exchange for guarantees of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty by the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia (formalized in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, now clearly worthless). Once the nukes were gone, other items seemed equally superfluous. Air forces, especially bombers, are expensive. So are big armies, and tanks, and sophisticated anti-aircraft systems. And Ukraine was going through an economic crisis of apocalyptic scale, with its GDP collapsing by nearly half.

So, by 2014, Ukraine’s military was a shadow of its former size and capability. Officially, Ukraine had some 130,000 soldiers in uniform and around 800 tanks when Russia invaded.

What was left of the military had been hollowed out by corruption. Whatever the official totals of soldiers and officers were in Ukraine’s military in March 2014, I have it on good authority from Ukrainian officers that there were just 7,000 soldiers in three brigades that were “combat ready” in terms of training, equipment, and personnel. The 25th, the 93rd, and the 95th brigades were units in any meaningful sense of the word, capable of being assigned tactical objectives and staffed with people able to issue and carry out orders. Of the 800 tanks, I was told by a high-ranking Ukrainian officer in 2016 that a dozen were operational—the dozen used for parades. The rest needed a severe retrofit to make them fit for field action. Many ended up being cannibalized for spare parts to make others whole. Ukraine’s air force was in a similar state of disrepair and neglect.

And the military and intelligence agencies had been staffed by pro-Russian officers and leaders, under the administration of Viktor Yanukovych, further minimizing combat power when applied against Russia. Betrayal by traitors was a huge problem for Ukraine in 2014, with some units defecting outright to Russia.

To summarize: Ukraine’s usable military in March 2014 consisted of about 7,000 soldiers in three brigades, a dozen tanks, and a handful of aircraft, the deployment of which was frustrated in some cases by people acting on behalf of Russia rather than Ukraine. Most units couldn’t fight, and many of their leaders wouldn’t fight—or were fighting for the other side. The weakness of Ukraine’s military was well known to Russian intelligence, and the Kremlin’s decision to invade then was premised on a combination of knowledge of that weakness, plus a calculated—and correct—gamble that the West would not intervene.

But that initial defeat brought immediate lessons for Ukraine. And while Ukrainian soldiers and officers have always been happy to learn and receive aid from others, those were lessons it learned and on which it capitalized itself. From that core of 7,000 or so functional soldiers, the military quickly expanded through April and May, with tens of thousands of Ukrainians being conscripted, mobilized, and volunteering to join and fight. This group included Red Army veterans in their late 40s and 50s, some of whom were veterans of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It also included an inspiringly representative swath of Ukrainians from all walks of life.

In addition to the military’s efforts to replace notional soldiers with real soldiers, and as fighting broke out in the east, Ukraine’s government took a desperate step, one that harked back to the warfare of the past—it authorized the formation of militias, organized and funded by individuals and groups. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians (including far-right extremists, who joined groups such as Azov and Right Sector) joined these groups or supported them with logistics, and some immediately joined the fighting in the east. Whether self-funded or funded by oligarchs, these units were not an official part of Ukraine’s military structure, though they operated alongside Ukrainian military units that began filtering into the Donbas in June 2014.

The militias fought side by side with regular soldiers in harsh battles. Azov rose to prominence through its part in helping to retake the ancient port city of Mariupol in May-June 2014. By the time July and August came around, the military had pushed Russia’s first wave of conscripts and local militias back, but Russia’s military had begun to intervene directly from across the border.

Events such as the Battle of Zelenopillya, where Russian artillery targeted Ukrainian formations, became commonplace (though the effects were not—Ukraine learned its lesson there, the lesson being not to gather units in open fields within range of Russian artillery). Unwilling to cross the Russian border to hit back at their opponents, Ukrainian units fought Russian militias and Russian mercenaries while under constant artillery fire.

From September 2014 to February 2015, the war entered a new phase, as regular Russian soldiers and units entered Ukraine’s east and inflicted defeats on Ukrainian operations, composed of militias and the military, in Ilovaisk, at Donetsk Airport, and at Debaltseve. A cease-fire was brokered on terms very favorable to Russia, preserving the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic, and Russia’s occupation of Crimea. Ukraine started to dig in to face new attacks, while Russia consolidated its gains—and then went back to business as usual with European and American partners willing to turn a blind eye to the invasion.

One area where the West was quick to help Ukraine was in offering more and greater training opportunities from active-duty military units. The first thing I did in June 2015 when I arrived in Ukraine was embed with the 173rd Airborne, my old unit, which was training Ukrainian militias cycling back from the new front lines. I wrote about what I saw there in Forbes: essentially, that the Ukrainians enjoyed the opportunity to train hard but were teaching U.S. paratroopers, sergeants, and officers more about war than they were learning.

Other veterans of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq corroborated my observations: Our focus on counterinsurgency had allowed our basic warfighting skills to atrophy. The 173rd leadership was quietly thrilled to have an opportunity to learn about fighting tanks, being shelled by heavy artillery, and facing tactical challenges unseen by U.S. forces at a grand scale since Vietnam. I saw something similar take place during a joint training exercise in Romania in 2017, where the Ukrainian soldiers present were, again, the stars of the show. My assessment—that it was the United States that was unprepared for war with Russia, not Ukraine—was shared internally at this time by junior and mid-level leaders within the U.S. military itself, as evidenced by a paper circulated within the 173rd and other units and reported on by Wesley Morgan for Politico.

When I spoke to both Ukrainian regulars and militia soldiers in the following years, they agreed that the experience of 2014-15 had been crucial to Ukraine’s understanding of itself as a nation and for the military’s understanding of its capabilities and deficiencies. Others have had similar conversations. The traitors who had been part of Ukraine’s military and intelligence apparatus were fired or fled to Russia, and the soldiers and officers who joined the Ukrainian military in 2014 were promoted based on their competence on the battlefield, rather than on patronage or connections, as had previously been the case. War helped separate the wheat from the chaff—and made military corruption no longer something that one could turn a blind eye to but a threat to national survival and the survival of one’s comrades.

This meritocratic process was even more conspicuous in the militias, which adopted military hierarchies without any of the traditions or institutional baggage that usually interferes. It was entirely common to find platoon leaders and company commanders in 2015 in the militias who had started out as privates in 2014 and rose quickly through the ranks by virtue of their skill and energy. When, in 2015, most of the militias were wrapped into the military or the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ National Guard (for technical legal reasons, there were parallel military organizations created under Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Internal Affairs to deal with what, for reasons of diplomatic expediency, was then classified as an internal conflict), it was a further infusion of meritocratic, bottom-up units led by trustworthy and combat-experienced leaders into the military’s broader structure.

So, by the end of 2015, as Ukraine’s military continued to fill its capacity on paper and expand, about half of all its forces had been exposed to, or were actively running, an innovative and meritocratic military culture of a type unknown under the top-heavy Soviet system (a system that lacks an empowered professional corps of noncommissioned officers, or NCOs). Certainly, efforts to train Ukrainian units to adopt more Western models, including an NCO corps, have been useful in reinforcing lessons learned at the front. But Ukrainians, not Western trainers, have been responsible for transforming their army.

“The Ukrainian army has achieved some success with professional NCO establishment due to an early push of reforms and the dynamic of war, where a lack of officers bolstered NCO opportunities to step forward,” a Ukrainian general wrote to me on May 8 when asked for an assessment of Ukraine’s military versus that of the United States. “However, NATO standards have not been achieved yet.”

The general went on to explain that the Russian military had yet to begin any systemic effort to stand up a professional NCO corps and attributed some battlefield success to the advantage Ukraine enjoyed from deliberately transitioning authority and trust from officers to NCOs and decentralizing battlefield decision-making.

There are other areas where U.S. and NATO training has provided Ukrainians with a meaningful advantage, especially in the use of weaponry. While Ukrainians could probably have figured out the transport, prep, and operation of Stingers, Javelins, Carl Gustafs, and the other weapons the United States and NATO have provided to Ukraine, training expedited the process dramatically.

And while Ukraine was already in the process of standing up a more Western-style approach to special operations when Russia invaded in 2014, Western aid afterward helped greatly. I have reliable information from direct participants that partnering and training with U.S. special operations forces over the following eight years transformed the Ukrainian approach to that way of warfare, by improving their selection process, access to equipment, and establishing training that has become more rigorous and helped Ukraine approach the level of professionalization of elite U.S. units. While difficult to gauge while the war is ongoing, some successes of Ukrainian special operations are likely due to a commitment to the Western way of designing and training teams.

Ukraine’s military has been a hospitable place for training because its leaders hit on a similar structure and sense of purpose to U.S. and NATO armies organically in 2014-15. If they hadn’t, Ukraine would have ceased to exist. Offering them assistance and helping them to codify mechanisms by which to reinforce that culture is useful and good, but it is not correct to attribute Ukraine’s extraordinary battlefield accomplishments solely or even primarily to Western training. Those accomplishments belong to the brave men and women of Ukraine’s military and also in part to a Ukrainian public and civil society that are proving themselves to be democratic, humanistic, and deserving of Western support.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/09...a-us-training/

War in Ukraine claims lives of at least 3,381 civilians, 3,680 more wounded – UN


Civilian casualties from February 24, when Russia started the war against Ukraine, to 24:00 on May 9 totaled 7,061 civilians (the report three days earlier said 6,802), including 3,381 dead (3,309), the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said Monday.

OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration, " the report reads.


This concerns, for example, Mariupol (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), and Popasna (Luhansk region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties. They are subject to further verification and are not included in the above statistics.


"Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes, " it says.


The UN confirmed that 1,227 men, 787 women, 91 boys and 75 girls were killed, while the gender of 69 children and 1,132 adults could not be determined yet.


The 3,680 wounded include 93 boys and 83 girls, as well as 170 children whose gender has not been determined yet.


Compared to the report made a day earlier, one child was killed and 16 others were wounded.


OHCHR indicates that as of midnight on May 6, there were 1,699 (1,646) deaths and 1,441 (1,312) injuries in government-controlled territory and 111 (108) deaths and 443 (420) injuries in territory controlled by self-proclaimed "republics" in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.


In other regions of Ukraine under government control (in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Sumy, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions) the UN recorded 1,571 (1,555) deaths and 1,796 (1,761) wounded.


The daily summary traditionally states that the increase in numbers to the previous summary should not be attributed only to cases on May 6-8, as the Office verified some cases from the previous days during this period.

War in Ukraine claims lives of at least 3,381 civilians, 3,680 more wounded – UN

• House approves $40B in aid for Ukraine; 57 Republicans vote ‘no’

The House approved a $39.8 billion aid package for Ukraine on Tuesday, sending the massive supplemental to the Senate as Russia’s invasion nears the three-month mark.

The aid package passed in a 368-57 vote. All lawmakers who voted against the bill were Republicans. Two Democrats and three Republicans did not vote.

The legislation includes $6 billion for security assistance — including training, equipment, weapons, logistical support, supplies and services for military and national security forces in Ukraine — and $900 million for refugee support services such as housing, language classes and trauma services for individuals fleeing Ukraine.

Roughly $8.7 billion of the cash in the legislation will go to the Economic Support Fund “to respond to emergent needs in Ukraine,” including budget support and countering human trafficking.

“For those in this country and others, Mr. Speaker, who thought that war was a 19th or 20th century concern, this crisis has underscored the importance of capable military alliances, the centrality of NATO, and the critical importance of American leadership in the trans-Atlantic alliance,” Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), the dean of the House, said on the House floor.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that the bill was about “democracy versus a dictatorship.”

“The Ukrainian people are fighting the fight for their democracy, and in doing so, for ours as well,” Pelosi said. “The world needs to know why it’s important.”

Democrats proposed the nearly $40 billion package this week with a larger price tag than the $33 billion President Biden asked Congress to authorize last month. The legislation put forth by lawmakers includes an additional $3.4 billion for military and humanitarian assistance than the package requested by the White House.

In a shift in strategy, Democrats decided to propose the current Ukraine aid package without linking it to a COVID-19 assistance package. The pandemic aid, which totals $10 billion, has stalled for weeks because Senate Republicans are demanding a vote on a border policy measure. They want a vote on an amendment to stop the administration from rescinding Title 42, the Trump-era pandemic policy that allows for the fast expulsion of migrants at the border and prohibits them from seeking asylum.

The aid package also allocates $4.365 billion to the U.S. Agency for International Development, with the majority of the cash going toward efforts to provide emergency food assistance for individuals experiencing hunger as a consequence of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Additionally, the legislation includes $8.7 billion to restock the U.S. supply of equipment that was dispatched to Ukraine through the president’s drawdown authority and allocates $11 billion to funding for the presidential drawdown authority.

The Biden administration has utilized the drawdown authority to send aid to Ukraine throughout the Russian invasion, which began on Feb. 24.

Republicans opposing the bill pointed to the fact that the bill was not paid for, adding to the national debt. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) lamented getting text for the $40 billion bill at “3 in the afternoon” before the House voted on it Tuesday night, calling portions of the bill “a massive slush fund that goes to the State Department.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday evening said the House passage of the supplemental was a “critical step” in showing the world that the U.S. supports Ukraine amid the Russian invasion.

“The House took a critical step today in sending a clear, bipartisan message to Ukraine, to Russia, and to the world that the United States stands with the people of Ukraine as they defend their democracy against Russian aggression,” she wrote in a statement.

Psaki said the additional resources in the aid package will allow the U.S. to “send more weapons, such as artillery, armored vehicles, and ammunition, to Ukraine,” and help the U.S. “replenish our stockpile and support U.S. troops on NATO territory.”

“As the President said yesterday, we cannot afford any delay in this vital effort. We look forward to continuing to work with Senate leadership to get this bill to the President’s desk quickly and keep assistance flowing to Ukraine without interruption,” she added in a statement.

_____________

• Ukraine to halt key Russian gas transit to Europe, blames Moscow

Ukraine said on Tuesday it would suspend the flow of gas through a transit point which it said delivers almost a third of the fuel piped from Russia to Europe through Ukraine, blaming Moscow for the move and saying it would move the flows elsewhere.

Ukraine has remained a major transit route for Russian gas to Europe even after Moscow's invasion.

GTSOU, which operates Ukraine's gas system, said it would stop shipments via the Sokhranivka route from Wednesday, declaring "force majeure", a clause invoked when a business is hit by something beyond its control.

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But Gazprom (GAZP.MM), which has a monopoly on Russian gas exports by pipeline, said it was "technologically impossible" to shift all volumes to the Sudzha interconnection point further west, as GTSOU proposed.

GTSOU CEO Sergiy Makogon told Reuters that Russian occupying forces had started taking gas transiting through Ukraine and sending it to two Russia-backed separatist regions in the country's east. He did not cite evidence.

The company said it could not operate at the Novopskov gas compressor station due to "the interference of the occupying forces in technical processes", adding it could temporarily shift the affected flow to the Sudzha physical interconnection point located in territory controlled by Ukraine.

Ukraine's suspension of Russian natural gas flows through the Sokhranivka route should not have an impact on the domestic Ukrainian market, state energy firm Naftogaz head Yuriy Vitrenko told Reuters.

The state gas company in Moldova, a small nation on Ukraine's western border, said it had not received any notice from GTSOU or Gazprom that supplies would be interrupted.

The Novopskov compressor station in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine has been occupied by Russian forces and separatist fighters since soon after Moscow began what it describes as a "special military operation" in February. read more

It is the first compressor in the Ukraine gas transit system in the Luhansk region, the transit route for around 32.6 million cubic metres of gas a day, or a third of the Russian gas which is piped to Europe through Ukraine, GTSOU said.

GTSOU said that in order to fulfil its "transit obligations to European partners in full" it would "temporarily transfer unavailable capacity" to the Sudzha interconnection point.

Gazprom said it had received notification from Ukraine that the country would stop the transit of gas to Europe via the Sokhranivka interconnector from 0700 local time on Wednesday.

The Russian company said it saw no proof of force majeure or obstacles to continuing as before. Gazprom added that it was meeting all obligations to buyers of gas in Europe.

The United States has urged countries to lessen their dependence on Russian energy and has banned Russian oil and other energy imports in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday's announcement does not change the timeline to lessen global dependence on Russian oil "as soon as possible."

_____________

Little extra……

• China ‘learning lessons’ from Russia war in Ukraine, intelligence officials say

Chinese President Xi Jinping is watching closely how Russia’s war in Ukraine unfolds and the global response as Beijing weighs the risks of taking over Taiwan, top intelligence officials told lawmakers on Tuesday.

“The Chinese are going to watch this very, very carefully,” Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“It’s going to take some time for them to sort out all elements of — diplomatic, information, military, economic — that have occurred with this crisis,” he added.

Berrier made his comments during a hearing to evaluate the intelligence community’s assessment of worldwide threats. Lawmakers largely focused on the successes and shortcomings of U.S. intelligence in assessing Russia’s capability in Ukraine and how they relate to the threats facing Taiwan.

“We pretty dramatically overestimated the strength of the Russian military. I’d be surprised, for one, if China’s military strength proves to be so attenuated,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said to intelligence officials. “Don’t you think we’re dealing with a significantly more formidable adversary with China?”

Berrier and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, also testifying at the hearing, said that Beijing would rather subsume Taiwan through diplomatic and economic pressure, but the threat of a military takeover between now and 2030 remains acute.

“It’s our view that they are working hard to effectively put themselves in a position in which their military is capable of taking Taiwan over our intervention,” Haines said.

“They would prefer not to use military force to take Taiwan. They’d prefer to use other means,” she added.

There is robust bipartisan support in Congress for supporting Taiwan to prevent it from coming under forceful control from Beijing.

Berrier and Haines both listed China as an unparalleled priority for the intelligence community and a major security challenge for the U.S. and called its expanding nuclear arsenal “historic.”

The democratically elected government in Taipei is viewed as a key U.S. partner in the region for pushing back against China’s efforts to overtake the democratic international order.

Yet Beijing views Taiwan as part of its sovereign territory and the government in Taipei as a rogue actor and is intent on exercising control over the island.

The U.S. is committed to Taiwan’s self-defense without officially recognizing the island as independent from Beijing. Intelligence officials said lessons learned from Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia and American assistance have provided key takeaways for how Washington can engage with Taipei.

“There are some things we can do with Taiwan. I think they’re learning some very interesting lessons from the Ukrainian conflict,” Berrier said, pointing to how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s leadership has inspired the forces, the success of small tactical military units against Russian units incapable of acting independently and “effective training with the right weapons systems.”

Yet Berrier said that the Taiwan military is not “where it should be,” pointing to a large conscript force with a short enlistment period.

“I think we have to engage with our [Indo-Pacific Command] partners within the Department of Defense, the Taiwan military and leadership to help them understand what this conflict has been about, what lessons they can learn and where they should be focusing their dollars on defense and their training,” Berrier said.

Berrier and Haines said it is too soon to tell what lessons China is taking away from the U.S.-led global response against Russia, between the coordinated sanctions imposed by allies in Europe and the Group of Seven nations, isolation at the United Nations, and the success of Ukraine’s military.

Still, China is unlikely to accelerate its plans to take over Taiwan, officials said.

“They’re thinking about future operations probably against Taiwan and how difficult that might be. They’re probably also thinking about the scrutiny they would come under should they entertain thoughts or operations like that,” Berrier said.

He added that one of those lessons he hoped the Chinese take away from Russia’s war in Ukraine is “just how difficult a cross-strait invasion might be and how dangerous and high risk that might be.”

Berrier and Haines also came under pressure over failures of the U.S. intelligence community that overestimated Russia’s military capabilities to take over Ukraine — and that followed the overestimation of the strength of the Afghan military forces to resist the Taliban — in how it assesses Beijing’s intentions.

“Within 12 months we missed the ‘will to fight,’ we overestimated the Afghans’ will to fight and underestimated the Ukrainians will to fight,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said.

“I hope that the intelligence community is doing some soul searching about how to better get a handle on that question,” he added.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Republicans opposing the bill pointed to the fact that the bill was not paid for, adding to the national debt.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand of all a sudden the Republicans care about the national debt again.

Yawn.

From what i just saw on tv, boris has extended the uk nuclear deterrent to Sweden.

Yikes.

UK strikes security agreement with Sweden and Finland as NATO bids loom | Reuters

^
Strange offer from Boris. This may deter Sweden and Finland from joining NATO now that the UK has offered mutual defence without joining commitment.

It begs the question why was Ukraine not offered the same?

Originally Posted by Iceman123

^
Strange offer from Boris. This may deter Sweden and Finland from joining NATO now that the UK has offered mutual defence without joining commitment.

It begs the question why was Ukraine not offered the same?

Nobody thought of it at the time?

Certainly an interesting wrinkle with lots of implications.

Occupied Ukrainian Territories Will Ask to ‘Join Russia’ — Reports


Officials in Russian-occupied Kherson will petition the Kremlin to formally recognize the southern Ukrainian region as part of the Russian Federation, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Wednesday.


The Russian military gained control of the Kherson region in late April, replacing its Ukrainian leadership with a pro-Moscow “military-civilian administration” and transitioning to the Russian ruble.

The Kremlin neither confirmed nor denied plans to annex Kherson, saying instead that the decision would be “up to local residents.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that the process would be “absolutely clear and legitimate” and drew parallels with the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 after holding a referendum that the United Nations General Assembly later declared as invalid.


Earlier Wednesday, a senior official for the Russian administration in annexed Crimea said he had “no doubt” that newly occupied territories in southern Ukraine would be absorbed by Russia.


Georgiy Muradov, Crimea’s permanent representative under President Vladimir Putin, told RIA Novosti that Russians and Ukrainians shared a “common cultural code.”


“Civil-military administrations are being formed in these [occupied Ukrainian] territories, Russian TV channels have arrived, Russian textbooks have appeared in schools and the Russian ruble is successfully entering economic life in the region,” he said.


Despite other setbacks in its almost three-month invasion of Ukraine, Russia has achieved at least one of its early primary objectives: seizing a land bridge to connect mainland Russia to annexed Crimea.


Occupied Kherson, as well as the Pryazovske region on the Sea of Azov, reportedly began trading with Crimea shortly after Russian forces installed pro-Moscow administrations in the area.

Occupied Ukrainian Territories Will Ask to ‘Join Russia’ — Reports - The Moscow Times

Originally Posted by Iceman123

^
Strange offer from Boris. This may deter Sweden and Finland from joining NATO now that the UK has offered mutual defence without joining commitment.

It begs the question why was Ukraine not offered the same?

Because it's too late?

1 Dead, 3 Wounded in Russia After Ukraine Attack – Belgorod Governor

One person died and three more were injured in southwestern Russia as a result of an attack from Ukraine, the governor of Belgorod said on Wednesday.


"As of now, one person lost his life, he died in an ambulance, and there are three wounded," the governor of the southwestern region of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on messaging app Telegram.

He said it was the "most difficult situation" in his region since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Gladkov accused Ukraine of targeting the village of Solokhi, adding that one house was partially destroyed.


The announcement came on the 77th day of Russia's military campaign in Ukraine, which has left thousands dead.


Authorities in Russian regions bordering Ukraine have repeatedly accused Ukrainian forces of launching attacks.


In April, Gladkov said Ukrainian helicopters carried out a strike on a fuel storage facility in Belgorod.

1 Dead, 3 Wounded in Russia After Ukraine Attack – Belgorod Governor - The Moscow Times

Originally Posted by misskit

Gladkov accused Ukraine of targeting the village of Solokhi, adding that one house was partially destroyed.

I read the article and no more information.

I wonder what military target was in the village of Solokhi?

It's a tiny poor village, about 10 klms from the Ukraine/Russian border.

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

^One of the videos (CNN) bsnub just posted showed how close the Ukrainians are to Russia in that spot. The next video shows the long range of the missiles they are now firing. Perhaps a mistake?