Senior Russian military officers vowed on Thursday to protect well-equipped insurgents who illegally occupied eastern Donbass in eastern Ukraine in 2014 with the help of Russian troops. According to the Associated Press, General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian military's general staff, said in Moscow on Thursday.
Gerasimov’s warning came as U.S. intelligence officials said this week that Russia has stationed at least 70,000 soldiers near the Ukrainian border in preparation for a new invasion as early as January 2022. CBS News reported on Thursday that as many as 100,000 Russian soldiers may have been involved. Russian officials denied any plans to invade and claimed in their counterclaim that Ukraine was actually trying to retake the territory taken by the rebels from Kiev through military means.
Record: Since Russia’s first invasion seven years ago, more than 14,000 people have died; on Thursday, Russian leaders somewhat ominously claimed that what is happening in eastern Ukraine is “very reminiscent of genocide”.
At the same time, according to the head of the Kiev military, when it comes to regional tensions, Russian officials still seem to disagree with the facts. The Associated Press reported from Moscow on Thursday, “The Russian Federal Security Service stated that a Ukrainian navy ship was sailing towards the Kerch Strait between the Azov Sea and the Black Sea, ignoring the signal from the Russian Coast Guard vessel. The FSB accused the Ukrainian ship. Donbas’s manipulation endangers the safety of navigation.” According to Reuters’ Idrees Ali, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksi Reznikov denied these allegations, calling it an “information attack from Russia” and manipulation.
To be sure, Russia is disturbed by the anti-tank missiles provided by the United States and the Turkish drones purchased by the Ukrainian military. But Gerasimov also said on Thursday that he believes that the United States has been practicing cruise missile attacks against Russia during its recent strategic bomber flights in the region.
U.S. officials told CBS News that from a U.S. point of view, if Russia tries to invade again, it "will wait for the ground to freeze before sending tanks and other tracked vehicles to Ukraine." "But for now, it is not clear whether [Russian authoritarian leader Vladimir] Putin really wants to launch an invasion or use the threat of invasion to win concessions from the West." More here.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that as for the concessions Moscow hopes to make, it is seeking to sign some kind of legal document agreeing to “NATO will not expand eastward and will not deploy any threats near our territory. Our weapon system". In the state-run media TASS. According to Russian affairs analyst and doctoral student Rob Lee, these weapons are likely to be the US Aegis missile defense systems onshore in Poland and Romania.
Overall consideration: If Moscow continues to play cards correctly, the outside world will not know what the tricks and troop movements Russia really want until Russia has achieved its goals. "If it's just compulsory diplomacy, Moscow will demand what it can actually get," said Michael Kofman, CNA's head of Russian research, on Twitter on Tuesday. "Upgrading to this level and gaining nothing will be a political loss. Everyone will say that Putin is either bluffing or being intimidated. I think it may be more complicated." (This means that he was in a relaxed Joked in his notes that Russian observers should expect the end of 2021 to be the same as in 1938, at least there may be a bad opinion soon.)
According to the record, the United States did not try to persuade Ukraine to hand over Donbass to Russia so that they could relieve their pressure. "No, this is absolutely wrong," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday. "I know there is a lot of controversy in the media about whether there are concessions. Obviously no," a senior government official told reporters in another briefing on Thursday. "I think President Biden has made it very clear in his phone call with the Russian leader on Tuesday that he adheres to our principles." "He made it clear that one country cannot force another country to change its borders, one country cannot tell another country to change its politics, and the country cannot tell other countries who they can cooperate with," the White House official said. Add to.
It was also Thursday: POTUS46 played his Ukrainian opponent for approximately 90 minutes. According to a senior White House official, “The president shared his conversation with President Putin-including telling [President of Ukraine Volodmir] Zelensky that, as he told Putin, if Russia invades Ukraine further , The United States and our European allies will respond with strong economic measures, provide Ukraine with additional defense materials, and use additional capabilities to strengthen our NATO allies in the east wing."
FWIW: France has just commissioned a new patrol boat for the Ukrainian Coast Guard. Check it out on Twitter here.
Also from Paris on Thursday: "Macron calls on the EU to strengthen borders and establish closer defense relations", from the Financial Times (paywall). The announcement was made six months before French President Emmanuel Macron assumed the presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2022.
The Navy is still stuck at the dock without a leadership team. // Brent D. Sadler: Nearly 11 months after Biden was in power, the three highest positions of the service were held by temporary workers.
This air force is targeting AI and believes it has a 90% success rate. It's more like 25% // Patrick Tucker: Too little correct data may deviate from the target algorithm. But try to tell the algorithm.
The combat mission in Iraq has ended. But the troops will not go home. // Tara Copp: The Pentagon stated that training-consulting-assistance will continue and there are no plans to lay off staff.
General Atomics launches a new drone that can carry 16 Hellfire missiles // Marcus Weisgerber: The Mojave Desert sold for special forces does not require a traditional runway to launch.
Welcome to this Friday's edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson, Jennifer Hlad and Bradley Peniston. If you have not subscribed to The D Brief, you can subscribe here. On this day in 2017, the Iraqi army held a military parade in Baghdad to celebrate the defeat of the Islamic State in its country.
A big global problem: No one really knows the true state of the Chinese economy, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday after assessing the impact of the new data security law that took effect three months ago. In short, Liza Lin and Chun Han Wong of The Wall Street Journal wrote: “Business people and political analysts say that China’s increasing secrecy is not the result of any single policy, but a combination of multiple factors: The response to the pandemic, the security of data, and the political environment of suspicion.” This includes Beijing restricting data to global ship tracking platforms. As an analyst told The Wall Street Journal, this can be very bad news for global supply chain monitoring. This is also a great secret of scams and fraud. The story is here.
As explained in the multimedia report produced by the New York Times and the Propublica reporter team on Wednesday, through the case of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, a better understanding of how the Chinese state-run muffler works. According to a new report released on Thursday, FDD China observers said in Washington that they found that “28 American universities and schools in 19 states maintain academic and research partnerships with Chinese institutions that support Beijing’s defense agencies.” "Using the Confucius Institute as a modern Trojan horse, the Chinese government managed to establish a complex network of academic and research partnerships between top American universities and Chinese schools, directly making China's military-industrial complex possible," said Craig Sin, a part-time researcher Gelton said in a statement. What should we do now? According to FDD, “Congress should require American universities to publish copies of their Confucius Institute contracts and foreign cooperation agreements, and legislators should direct the closing of the remaining 34 Confucius Institutes in the United States. Congress and the White House should also take measures to detain certain American universities. With certain types of federal funding, these universities voluntarily choose to maintain problematic partnerships with malicious universities in China." Read more, here. ICYMI: The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have all withdrawn their diplomats to participate in the upcoming Winter Olympics hosted by China. France is not slumbering in spy games, and announced on Thursday that it will actually send its diplomats to Beijing. Reuters has more information from Paris, please click here.
President Biden is expected to deliver a closing speech at the first ever democracy summit. This is a two-day virtual event that will begin on Thursday and will end before 2 pm today.
The Associated Press’s Lita Baldor reported after a speech on Thursday night that Al-Qaeda may have only grown "slightly" in Afghanistan, but the U.S. military cannot say with certainty, because of course, there are no more U.S. troops in the country. General Frank Mackenzie, the highest commander in the Middle East of the United States and Marine Corps Central Command.
At the end of the week: DIA becomes the open source leader of the Pentagon. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency will become the “lead agency” for the Department of Defense’s open source intelligence, “highlighting the importance of non-confidential information extracted from social media, online materials, and commercial data sources in modern military operations. Increasing." Bystanders have been begging the Pentagon to take open source seriously, such as:
I wish you a nice weekend. See you on Monday!
Next story: The Iraqi combat mission has ended. But the army won't go home
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