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ammg-old2 · 1 year

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Imagine that someone—perhaps a man from Florida, or maybe even a governor of Florida—criticized American support for Ukraine. Imagine that this person dismissed the war between Russia and Ukraine as a purely local matter, of no broader significance. Imagine that this person even told a far-right television personality that “while the U.S. has many vital national interests ... becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.” How would a Ukrainian respond? More to the point, how would the leader of Ukraine respond?

As it happens, an opportunity to ask that hypothetical question recently availed itself. The chair of the board of directors of The Atlantic, Laurene Powell Jobs; The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg; and I interviewed President Volodymyr Zelensky several days ago in the presidential palace in Kyiv. In the course of an hour-long conversation, Goldberg asked Zelensky what he would say to someone, perhaps a governor of Florida, who wonders why Americans should help Ukraine.

Zelensky, answering in English, told us that he would respond pragmatically. He didn’t want to appeal to the hearts of Americans, in other words, but to their heads. Were Americans to cut off Ukraine from ammunition and weapons, after all, there would be clear consequences in the real world, first for Ukraine’s neighbors but then for others:

If we will not have enough weapons, that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us. If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. That’s three Baltic countries which are members of NATO. They will occupy them. Of course, [the Balts] are brave people, and they will fight. But they are small. And they don’t have nuclear weapons. So they will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union.

And after that, if there were still no further response? Then, he explained, the struggle would continue:

When they will occupy NATO countries, and also be on the borders of Poland and maybe fight with Poland, the question is: Will you send all your soldiers with weapons, all your pilots, all your ships? Will you send tanks and armored vehicles with your young people? Will you do it? Because if you will not do it, you will have no NATO.

At that point, he said, Americans will face a different choice: not politicians deciding whether “to give weapons or not to give weapons” to Ukrainians, but instead, “fathers and mothers” deciding whether to send their children to fight to keep a large part of the planet, filled with America’s allies and most important trading partners, from Russian occupation.

But there would be other consequences too. One of the most horrifying weapons that Russia has used against Ukraine is the Iranian-manufactured Shahed drone, which has no purpose other than to kill civilians. After these drones are used to subdue Ukraine, Zelensky asked, how long would it be before they are used against Israel? If Russia can attack a smaller neighbor with impunity, regimes such as Iran’s are sure to take note. So then the question arises again: “When they will try to occupy Israel, will the United States help Israel? That is the question. Very pragmatic.”

Finally, Zelensky posed a third question. During the war, Ukraine has been attacked by rockets, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles—“not hundreds, but thousands”:

So what will you do when Russia will use rockets to attack your allies, to [attack] civilian people? And what will you do when Russia, after that, if they do not see [opposition] from big countries like the United States? What will you do if they will use rockets on your territory?

And this was his answer: Help us fight them here, help us defeat them here, and you won’t have to fight them anywhere else. Help us preserve some kind of open, normal society, using our soldiers and not your soldiers. That will help you preserve your open, normal society, and that of others too. Help Ukraine fight Russia now so that no one else has to fight Russia later, and so that harder and more painful choices don’t have to be made down the line.

“It’s about nature. It’s about life,” he said. “That’s it.”

#current events #warfare #politics #russian politics #american politics #russo-ukrainian war #2022 russian invasion of ukraine #russia #ukraine #usa #volodymyr zelenskyy #ron desantis #nato

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usafphantom2 · 3 months

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IMAGES: NATO Air Forces improve skills flying together over Lithuania 🇱🇹

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 01/26/2024 - 17:00 in Military

Allied aircraft from Belgium, France and Lithuania carried out training missions above Lithuania on January 23, conducting flights in close formation and air combat exercises to demonstrate skills and improve flight skills.

Integrated and combined training events of NATO fighter detachments in deployment are an excellent opportunity for Allied air crews. A Lithuanian Air Force C-27 transport aircraft took off from Siauliai Air Base and carried out training missions with Belgian F-16 fighters and French Mirage 2000. The flight was used to improve the readiness of the air crew and perform combined missions within the framework of NATO's Baltic Air Police.

"Integrated and combined training events of NATO fighter detachments in deployment are an excellent opportunity for the Allied air crew and are beneficial to aircraft controllers who ensure that the training is conducted safely and professionally," said Air Brigadier Michael Carver, Deputy Chief of Operations at the Allied Air Command in Ramstein, Germany.

The Belgian F-16s are currently leading NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission, and the French Mirage 2000 complement the mission. Both detachments are temporarily deployed in Lithuania, securing the skies over the three Baltic Allies.

“Belgium was the first NATO member deployed in the Baltic States. Twenty years later, our presence is even more important in light of current events. We are proud to be here as a reliable member of the Alliance to ensure security and stability at NATO borders," said Commander Laurant Wuillaume, Commander of the Belgian Detachment. “In addition to the Air Policing mission, the opportunity to train with our Allies daily improves interoperability and procedures between all members, increasing the preparation to react to any potential threat,” he added.

"This type of flight highlights all the easy coordination between NATO assets and highlights the specific skills necessary for such accurate flights," said Lieutenant-Colonel Georges, commander of the French Mirage 2000 detachment in Siauliai.

The Baltic Air Police mission is an example of NATO's regional security agreements. For 20 years, the Allies worked collectively to preserve the integrity of airspace above Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. On March 29, 2004, NATO's first jet fighter - a Belgian F-16 - landed at Siauliai Air Base to start 24/7/365 Rapid Alert services as part of NATO's new Baltic Air Policing mission.

The NATO Combined Air Operations Center in Uedem, Germany, has been responsible for leading the mission under NATO's Integrated Air Defense and Anti-Missile System or NATINAMDS.

Seventeen Allies have since taken turns protecting and preserving the integrity of the airspace of the Baltic States, deploying fighter detachments to Siauliai and, since 2014, also to Ämari in Estonia. From March to November 2024, NATO aircraft will conduct the mission from Lielvarde Air Base in Latvia, while Ämari Air Base undergoes repairs on the runway.

Tags: Military AviationNATO Baltic Air Policing MissionNATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization

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Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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walkingthroughthisworld · 3 months

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U.S. Army Soldiers with 3rd Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, join Lithuanian Speaker of Parliament Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen during a tour of Camp Herkus, Lithuania Jan. 4. 2024. The 3rd Infantry Division’s mission in Europe is to engage in multinational training and exercises across the continent, working alongside NATO Allies and regional security partners to provide combat-credible forces to V Corps, America’s forward deployed corps in Europe. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Oscar Gollaz)

A U.S. Army Soldier with 3rd Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, and members of the Lithuanian Parliament take a close-up look at M1A2 Abrams tanks during a tour of Camp Herkus, Lithuania, Jan. 4, 2024. The 3rd Infantry Division’s mission in Europe is to engage in multinational training and exercises across the continent, working alongside NATO Allies and regional security partners to provide combat-credible forces to V Corps, America’s forward deployed corps in Europe. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Oscar Gollaz)

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mariacallous · 2 months

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MONS, Belgium—It was the summer of 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war in Ukraine was 6 months old. NATO officials feared more than ever that they would one day have to send hundreds of thousands of troops to fight and die against the Russians.

With war on NATO’s doorstep, the alliance faced an existential question: Was it up to the job of defending every square inch of its turf? Christopher Cavoli, the four-star U.S. Army general tapped as the alliance’s military chief that July, decided it wasn’t.

Cavoli ordered his top lieutenants to come up with a plan to transform Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE)—NATO’s military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, which had lost most of its power after the Cold War—into a proper war command center.

“His initial guidance and direction that started all of this was: I need to be able to command,” said Col. Bryan Frizzelle, the project manager for SHAPE’s strategic warfighting headquarters.

The effort to remake the alliance’s headquarters is just one element in the most ambitious military reforms that NATO has embarked on in years. NATO is growing the size of its response force by eightfold. The war room in Mons has been remade to call up troop reinforcements and map out long-range military strikes on Russian soil even before a war breaks out. For the first time, NATO forces are exercising those brand new war plans in Europe’s hinterlands this spring.

The plans could take years more to put in place. “We are talking decades—potentially plural,” said Becca Wasser, a senior fellow for the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.

But the war in Ukraine is already 2 years old. Most NATO nations are struggling to boost defense spending and produce artillery shells. Russia’s military is reconstituting faster than anyone expected. And the United States is just nine months away from a presidential election in which the Republican front-runner, former U.S. President Donald Trump, is already openly questioning whether the United States would help enforce Article 5—the self-defense clause at the heart of NATO—if he is elected as U.S. president.

All of this means that the alliance may not have decades to get its act together. “That’s the open question,” Wasser said. “Does NATO actually have that time?”

The first thing you see at SHAPE is the bunker. Built in 1985, when NATO’s military headquarters had a Soviet nuclear target on its back, the massive concrete structure looms over the parking lot. It’s not built to withstand a modern Russian nuclear blast—you can’t dig deep enough to shelter from that—but it’s a symbol of what SHAPE used to be at the height of the Cold War: the central nervous system of NATO’s 3 million troops and 100 army divisions in Europe.

It’s also where a group of NATO planners from a half-dozen countries took the first steps toward rebuilding the sleepy military command. As the Kremlin was building up more than 100,000 troops to invade Ukraine in late 2021 and early 2022, NATO scrambled jets, rolled tanks, and hardened the eastern flank with more than 8,000 troops from 30 countries. NATO once again needed a central nervous system to command them.

Anyone who worked at SHAPE had an open invitation to join a planning session in the bunker on a Saturday afternoon in late fall of 2022. Few did. Of the nearly 3,000 people who work at SHAPE, just 30 people showed up. That ragtag group of volunteers who committed to work nights and weekends became the so-called “Tiger Team” that would remake—and is still remaking—NATO’s military headquarters for war.

The team members came from all over the headquarters and hailed from all across Europe, including Denmark, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom. Some got roped in on long email chains by their bosses. Some told their colleagues about it and convinced them to join. Frizzelle told a few of them himself. Kenneth Boesgaard, a Danish special operations officer, found out the agenda had very little to do with special operations, but he went anyway. The fear of missing out was too strong.

They didn’t waste any time. Led by a three-star French Army general, they went right after NATO’s sacred cows. The two-hour discussion became the foundation for a series of “hard truths.” SHAPE was no longer useful. It was built for peacetime, not to fend off a Russian attack. It was no longer “fit for purpose,” Frizzelle said.

The group had homework: to deliver an update to Cavoli in just eight weeks, cutting through four ranks in the chain of command. And they had only four full-time planners.

By December 2022, they had written a first draft of SHAPE’s new job description. It had about a half-dozen major bullet points. It included planning for war as well as resourcing and commanding it. SHAPE also still had to advise NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on military policy and take the 31-nation political commitments that come out of NATO summits—carefully worded and littered with diplomatic jargon—and turn them into military reality: sensors, shooters, troops, and brigades on the ground.

Then they had to get the rest of the headquarters to buy in. “[In] NATO, you’ve got to build consensus,” said Lt. Col. Alex Price, a British Army officer involved in the project. “I’ve learned that the hard way.” The Tiger Team didn’t need any convincing. But the biggest problem was getting the rest of SHAPE to understand what a “strategic warfighting headquarters” was supposed to do.

The job of the command is to say who goes where—whether it’s a bomber, a fighter jet, or a rocket artillery system—and what they’re going to hit. For years, it was the other way around. NATO’s three joint force commands, which are meant to divide up responsibility for security in Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean and report back to Mons, did most of SHAPE’s job for it. They ran the show in the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and Afghanistan, where NATO’s military might was mostly delivered in airstrikes, not boots on the ground to stop Russian tanks.

By the time Putin invaded Ukraine, about 80 percent of SHAPE’s work was reporting to Stoltenberg, NATO’s civilian leader. “We were not in charge,” said French Army Lt. Gen. Hubert Cottereau, SHAPE’s vice chief of staff, who oversees the headquarters transformation effort.

That worked in the small wars of the 1990s. But computer simulations quickly made it clear that that approach wouldn’t work on a larger scale. In one digital exercise in September 2022, officials at Naples, Italy, the hub of NATO’s naval forces, and Brunssum, Netherlands, the nerve center for NATO ground troops, told SHAPE to step aside: Just give them the shooters, sensors, and troops, and they would plot out the targets.

Once the simulated bullets started flying in NATO’s digitized war with “Occasus”—a bloc of four fictional Russia-like countries—the lower-level commanders hit a wall. Who would prioritize the main effort? Who would give them the resources? And who would call up the reserves?

They needed SHAPE to do it.

Cavoli didn’t go easy on the Tiger Team. The group had missed a key bullet point: strategic targeting. If Putin ever ordered Russian troops onto NATO soil, Cavoli knew he would need to be able to strike back, hitting targets deep inside Russia to paralyze the Kremlin’s war industry and break their logistical chains.

Dating back to the end of the Cold War, most NATO countries wanted to make nice with Russia. Few were comfortable with identifying military targets in the Kremlin’s backyard, fearing that first Boris Yeltsin, and then Putin, would see it as warmongering. So they gave that power away.

“We discovered that SHAPE actually in peacetime had no targeting authorities because that was politically sensitive,” Frizzelle said. If a war had broken out, NATO military planners would have had to start planning out Russian targets from scratch.

Ukraine changed everything. In the summer of 2023, during the annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, the alliance unanimously granted SHAPE the ability to conduct targeting. Now, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, SHAPE is using that authority—in peacetime. NATO planners are deciding what would be valid targets on Russian soil, plotting them out for Naples, Brunssum, and NATO’s U.S.-based command in Norfolk, Virginia, and running the potential bull’s-eyes through all of the legal traps.

Cavoli needed to get NATO’s eyes on the target, too. Until last summer, SHAPE’s around-the-clock watch center had only a dozen seats. After a three-month construction project, the center now fits a workforce of 85 people, seven times as big as it was.

Left: SHAPE’s new headquarters appears under construction in Mons on March 21, 1967. Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Right: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg (second from right) walks with outgoing and incoming Supreme Allied Commander Europe generals toward a change-of-command ceremony at SHAPE in Mons on May 4, 2016. Thierry Monasse/AFP via Getty Images

It’s not just a watch center, though. Officials see it as a nerve center of all of NATO’s military operations. By putting all of the experts in one room, within a few minutes, a few chair swivels, and a couple of phone calls, the new multidomain operations team can quickly give Cavoli and his aides-de-camp everything they need to respond to a Russian attack.

“Let’s say there’s a report of a Russian rocket or part of a drone landing in Romania,” Frizzelle said. “The senior watch officer can turn around in her chair and say, ‘OK, we have this report. Give me the geographic subject matter expert.’” They can brief Cavoli within a few minutes of getting the alert.

They’re still getting all of the right people in place. In a crisis, there’s no time to be flipping through the phone book; SHAPE needs officers in the bunker who can immediately direct it to NATO’s land, air, and maritime commanders. The idea is to be able to connect from Mons to a shooter on the eastern flank if war breaks out—almost instantly.

“The key to effective deterrence is the demonstrated capability to inflict real pain on Russia,” said Ben Hodges, a former head of U.S. Army Europe who is now a NATO senior mentor for logistics. “If you want to prevent the Russians from making a terrible decision, then that means we have to be able to move as fast—or faster—than them.”

Two years into Russia’s invasion, NATO nations have now put 150,000 ground troops on the eastern flank. But NATO has no troops of its own. It has no tanks. It has no fighter jets. It’s the job of each country to get its troops, tanks, and planes ready to go when the alliance asks for them.

“The biggest catastrophe can be summed up in two words,” Cottereau said. “Too late.”

For decades, SHAPE had very little power over troops in NATO countries. But Russia’s invasion prompted those nations to give Cavoli more authority. He can adjust the level of air defense cover in Europe. He can move NATO’s two standing maritime task forces at sea. He can scale up the eight battlegroups on Russia’s border from battalions, with just over 1,000 troops, all the way up to brigades, which are at least three times that size. Some of them are already on the way.

Cavoli still can’t order troops to fire, but he can order more troops to move into place—or get ready to move. And he now has at his command 300,000 troops ready to exercise and respond to a crisis—almost eight times what he had before the war. It’s called the Allied Response Force.

Once it’s activated in July, the newly readied force will be trained twice a year: once for a pre-crisis simulation and again for an out-of-area operation that simulates a real war. The aim is to send a clear message to Russia: Keep out.

“Every ship that sails, every aircraft that flies, every tank that rolls sends a message,” said Gunnar Bruegner, the one-star German general who serves as assistant chief of staff to Cavoli for developing and training NATO’s forces. “We are ready.”

The new force is intended to be the tip of NATO’s spear, similar to the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, the Pentagon’s on-call force of paratroopers that deployed to Afghanistan for the 2021 evacuation effort and then served as the boots on the ground in Poland when Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine started.

The next stage is to keep a larger reserve of forces prepared for an Article 5-level war, distinct from the eastern flank battlegroups, that would be the size of somewhere between the 300,000-troop rapid response force and the 3.2 million-plus troops in NATO’s 31 militaries. Each unit will be assigned its own patch of dirt to defend and will exercise based on NATO’s war plans. Cavoli could order some of those troops to be ready immediately, more at a month’s notice, and even more in six months.

“That’s the kind of process we’re going through now,” said a NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity based on ground rules set by the alliance. “[We’re] going to allies and saying, ‘What have you got? What could you stick on the table in an Article 5 situation?’”

Although defense spending in Europe has grown by almost a third in the past decade and as many as 20 countries could hit the alliance’s 2 percent defense spending target this year, there’s an ongoing give-and-take. In NATO, members have the control button by providing the money and the troops. Just one ally saying “no” can cause a major headache. Greece refused to participate in airstrikes on the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. During NATO’s 2011 intervention to shut down Libya’s skies, Germany refused to provide its early warning aircraft.

The NATO official said European nations are going to have to invest more in weapons systems and training that they’ve been leaning on the Americans to provide, such as air and missile defense, long-range artillery and missiles, command and control, and land combat formations.

And the biggest question mark is Trump. Again the Republican front-runner in the 2024 election, the former president is publicly throwing cold water on NATO’s self-defense pledge. If European nations don’t pay up for defense, he said at a campaign rally this month, he would encourage Russia to attack them. (NATO officials fired back: While the alliance gives nations a defense spending target, it is not a dues-paying group. “This is not a country club,” Julianne Smith, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, told CNN.)

Trump’s rhetoric might not have been an existential issue for NATO in the days of voluntary operations such as Kosovo and Libya. But after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, everything has changed.

“Article 5 is fundamentally different,” the NATO official said. “Everybody is on the hook.”

When he was Estonia’s defense chief, between 2016 and 2017, Margus Tsahkna and his aides counted more than 120,000 Russian troops massed on the other side of the country’s Baltic border. Putin could send those troops into battle within 24 to 48 hours. “All that was needed was the command from the Kremlin,” said Tsahkna, now Estonia’s top diplomat.

The invasion never came. Today, two years after Russian troops began to roll over the border into Ukraine, most of the soldiers arrayed against the borders of the three former Soviet nations on NATO’s eastern flank—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—are gone. Many of them have fought and died in Ukraine.

It may not be an all-out invasion of the Baltic states that’s coming. After all, more than 315,000 Russian troops have been killed or injured in Ukraine. It could be a hybrid attack, too—cyberattacks, the cutting of pipelines, or a limited invasion to undermine Western confidence in Article 5 that’s already been damaged by Trump. But either way, there’s a growing fear in the West that Russia is already picking itself up off the mat much faster than anyone expected.

The question is not just when a Russian attack might come but where.

“[Putin] will continue. He must continue the aggression. He needs to have a new conflict somewhere,” Tsahkna said. “Testing NATO, is it Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland? I don’t know. [But] it’s not even a question.”

Estonian officials believe that Putin is planning to put two to three times more firepower against the borders with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland than it did before the Ukraine war. And Putin is making up for Russia’s combat losses, expanding the size of the military to more than 1.3 million troops, only a bit smaller than the U.S. armed forces.

NATO planners said last October that they were following expert estimates that Russia could reconstitute in a three-to-five-year period after the shooting stops in Ukraine, with Russian land forces degraded but much of the rest of the military intact. But Russia’s military comeback has accelerated. Some European officials now believe Russia could attack NATO directly. This month, Denmark’s defense minister said Russia could test Article 5 within three to five years.

So NATO’s planning has accelerated, too.

This year’s ongoing Steadfast Defender exercise, which started in January and won’t end until May, will top out at 90,000 troops—only about a quarter of them American. Marines from three countries will ship out of Norfolk aboard the USS Gunston Hall and launch an amphibious assault to take back the beaches of Norway. Then NATO’s highest-readiness troops will assault across the Vistula River in Poland.

It’s the alliance’s biggest military demonstration in 36 years. “If you’re Russia, you might say: ‘I can attack this spot here now, and maybe I’ve got a temporary advantage,’” the NATO official said. “But the knowledge that we can and will bring basically two full American corps to Europe—and they will fight—that is a pretty big deterrent.”

Another key reason for doing large-scale exercises so soon after Cavoli’s team put the plans on paper is to see what works and what doesn’t. How do you move land forces across Europe? How do you supply them? And when the shooting starts, will they arrive in time?

“There might be a big attack coming on NATO,” Bruegner said. “It gives you the bloody truth about what you really are capable of doing.”

Back in Mons, dozens of military officers from NATO countries huddled in the SHAPE bunker in October 2023 to test their latest plans in a 10-day exercise dubbed “Steadfast Jupiter.” This time, they were fighting off a fictional invasion of Eastern Europe from Occasus, their Russia-like foe.

In the end, SHAPE received more than a passing grade. The allies didn’t steamroll their enemy but degraded Occasus enough to the point that the mock conflict could end at the bargaining table.

Every three to four months, Frizzelle’s team emerges from the bunker to present Cavoli with another set of recommendations to change the SHAPE headquarters, each time wrenching down on more problems. In the October exercise, Cavoli and his team realized their rules of engagement were too strict—better suited for Afghanistan than Article 5. So they tweaked them.

Their next assignment is to present their work to all 31 NATO allies—and Sweden—at the upcoming Washington summit in July. It’s a chance for the civilian brass to grill Cavoli. “How far are we? How good are we at being able to execute the plans?” said Royal Netherlands Navy Adm. Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee.

In the meantime, they’ve got more homework to do. SHAPE’s experts are still looking at how to optimize intelligence gathering, integrating artificial intelligence into the headquarters, and building out their own wargaming capability, with a team of experts who live, breathe, eat, and sleep Russian tactics as the “red team” on the other side.

The tweaking will continue as long as Cavoli is NATO’s military commander—at least for the next year and a half. But they’ll never be 100 percent sure that the war plans will work until the first shot is fired in an actual war.

“We’ve built an airplane—the new strategic warfighting headquarters,” Frizzelle said. “It’s informed by the blueprints of airplanes that have flown well in the past. But until we fly the airplane, we don’t know how it’s going to handle. We don’t know if we’ve forgotten a part.”

“Hopefully,” he added. “We haven’t.”

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highlights-of-the-lowlife · 9 months

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lets hope this is massive levels of cope after the kerch bridge funni times because this makes zero sense on any level.

for background: the suwalki gap is a corridor along the poland/lithuania border that stretches to kaliningrad which is a historic russian exclave. with finland and sweden now joining on, the baltic sea has become lake nato limiting russian movement. the russians have long threatened to make a land bridge between belarus and kaliningrad to secure their access to the baltic sea. what lake nato means is they can't drive their warships wherever they please, not that they are unable to fish or move freight through the area.

poland and lithuania are both nato members. both have experienced a huge level of military buildup thanks to the war in ukraine making them feel justifiably unsafe. charging through the suwalki gap will invoke article 5 meaning it will be everyone pile on russia till the job is done. the only hope russia would have is to threaten nukes in the hopes of halting article 5.

also wagner is a disloyal force. they literally couped a month ago. this might be a way of sending them to their deaths but there are easier ways to do that. there is also zero plausible deniability because everybody knows wagner is a russian force now. if they claim not to be then it would be a case of belarus attempting to attack russian soil by charging to kaliningrad. at best it will be like the beginning of the ukraine war where russian troops moved through belarus to attack ukraine and only got away with it because ukraine was incredibily preoccupied. if belarus thinks nato will just overlook moving hostile forces through then they are sorely mistaken.

nobody on the russian side has any reason to believe this will work. not russia, not belarus, not wagner. i'm inclined to believe this is posturing for the sake of appearing strong but russia have dug their graves deeper at every turn of this war so who fucking knows. all i know is if wagner does try this it will be the battle of khasham all over again.

#ukraine

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66-bl1tz-kr13g-fr1tz · 3 hours

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//The Wire//2130Z April 25, 2024// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: PROTESTS CONTINUE AT MAJOR UNIVERSITIES. BELARUS ALLEGES LITHUANIAN DRONE ATTACK.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Europe: Belarus has revealed that KGB agents have foiled a plot to conduct a drone attack on targets in Belarus from neighboring Lithuania. Though few details of the alleged plot have been made public, rhetoric from Belarussian President Lukashenko has increased in severity (moreso than usual). AC: While Lukashenko’s rhetoric is not taken seriously most of the time, this may lead to yet another political milestone being reached, as this is essentially a formal accusation that a NATO member has directly attacked Belarus. The truth of the matter likely will not be known for some time (if ever), but this could lead to even more souring of relations as priorities shift and realign as Europe begins to eye a post-war Ukraine. -HomeFront- USA: As expected, unrest continues at many major universities and Ivy League institutions around the United States. Many of the pro-Palestine protests at universities around the country have been host to immediate mass arrests, and overwhelming responses by authorities to remove encampments. However, demonstrations continue not without disruptions. The University of Southern California has canceled their main commencement event due to the unrest, and Columbia has moved all students to an online class schedule as encampment events continue. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: Most demonstrations continue to some degree, as the conglomeration of politically leftist groups engaging in these events take advantage of substantial funding to sow discord during this protest season. As many citizens rush to support one side or the other, a separate observation is the expediency and decisiveness by which authorities have acted upon these demonstrations, but not others. To the casual observer, this results in questions remaining as to why these responses were warranted in these specific instances, but not the other situations of normalized mass rioting, chaos, and destruction over the past few years. Analyst: S2A1 //END REPORT//

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tomorrowusa · 10 months

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That distant boom you hear is Vladimir Putin's head exploding at frustration with the upcheck of the alliance led by President Biden.

Ret. Adm. James G. Stavridis, former Supreme Commander of NATO, commenting on this week's NATO summit in Lithuania and President Biden's visit to Finland – currently NATO's newest member.

Adm. Stavridis was in conversation with Joy Reid and David Jolly on MSNBC.

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Putin's unprovoked and illegal invasion has had the direct opposite effect on NATO. The alliance is stronger than ever with the recent addition of Finland, impending addition of Sweden, and the eventual addition of Ukraine.

When Joe Biden was in Helsinki he stood in the same building where Donald Trump cowered before Vladimir Putin in July of 2018. That's the contrast Adm. Stavridis couldn't get over.

Biden was warmly welcomed by NATO allies and leaders of Nordic countries. That's a contrast to how other leaders openly made fun of Trump in 2019.

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Trump keeping classified nuclear secrets next to his Mar-a-Lago toilet is a perfect metaphor for the current Republican attitude on national security and international stability.

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myrddin-wylt · 1 year

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How would Isolationism even work in this day and age?

it wouldn't, not fully, but that's not really the issue.

NATO is built on deterrence. Eastern Europe especially needs NATO to be credible enough that Russia won't even consider invading, because frankly, if deterrence fails, there is absolutely nothing NATO could do to help its members that border Russia except like. maybe liberate them from Russian occupation. I mean, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, et al are small countries; we estimated Ukraine would fall in three days even after accounting for its huge size, so consider how quickly a country as small as Latvia would be overrun. re: Ukraine Putin made a fuckton of blunders that will hopefully cost him the war but Russia's military is still formidable and Ukraine's survival still depends on expedited aid from the US.

also, I don't think Eastern Europe ever really fully believed that the US would actually launch nuclear war on their behalf. though part of that opinion may be due to US vs USSR (and post-USSR states) nuclear doctrine making perception of nuclear war very different; the USSR (and currently Russia's) nuclear doctrine allows for 'strategic' nuclear strikes, whereas the US says 'once someone throws the first nuke, escalation into Mutually Assured Destruction is in reality impossible to avoid, so either don't fucking throw any nukes or throw all of them, an attack on one of us is an attack on all.' so Eastern Europe still worries that Russia could get away with a limited nuclear strike despite MAD.

for Western Europe the issue is a bit different and honestly it makes me so fucking tired but if you really wanna have at it, here ya go.

NATO Seen Favorably Across Member States (February 9, 2020)

NATO is generally seen in a positive light across publics within the alliance, despite lingering tensions between the leaders of individual member countries. A median of 53% across 16 member countries surveyed have a favorable view of the organization, with only 27% expressing a negative view. [...] Despite the organization’s largely favorable ratings among member states, there is widespread reluctance to fulfill the collective defense commitment outlined in Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty. When asked if their country should defend a fellow NATO ally against a potential attack from Russia, a median of 50% across 16 NATO member states say their country should not defend an ally, compared with 38% who say their country should defend an ally against a Russian attack. Publics are more convinced that the U.S. would use military force to defend a NATO ally from Russia. A median of 60% say the U.S. would defend an ally against Russia, while just 29% say the U.S. would not do so. And in most NATO member countries surveyed, publics are more likely to say the U.S. would defend a NATO ally from a Russian attack than say their own country should do the same.

Confidence in NATO sharply declined in France, Germany, US, says study (Feb 10, 2020)

Why Germany Is Undermining NATO Unity on Russia (Jan 26, 2022) (also important to pay attention to Macron in that article!)

NATO’s new center of gravity (Feb 21, 2023)

if you'd like a very, very, very strongly opinionated piece that I am honestly too tired to vet entirely myself: The Cold War roots of Scholz’s tank trauma (Jan 25, 2023)

anyway. less confidence in NATO + US shifting priorities to Pacific, esp Australia = panic.

#ask #anon #irl current events #if you wanna be really cynical and risk sounding like you support Trump the answer is that Europe might have to spend money on defense #and there's not much popular support in Europe for increased military spending #which is something the US has been bitching about since NATO was established tbh

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leeenuu · 2 years

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the german magazine der spiegel released an article a few days ago on how germany (specifically the former chancellor kohl and the foreign minister genscher) in 1991 tried to stop the collapse of the soviet union and the east-ward expansion of nato.

and some highlights:

kohl thought that the dissolution of the union would be a "catastrophe" and anyone who was in favour of the union collapsing was an "ass"

and he repeatedly lobbied in the rest of the western countries to stop the baltic states and ukraine from gaining independence

even though west germany never recognized the annexation of estonia, latvia and lithuania by stalin in 1940, when the baltics moved toward independence, kohl felt that they were on a "wrong path"

and yet germany got reunified asap but the baltics should have waited at least 10 years to be free... and even then, those countries should be neutral and not become the members of nato and the european community (later the eu)

also ukraine should've remained in the soviet union, so that the union could've lived on

once they realised that there was no stopping the union from collapsing, kohl in november 1991 offered yeltsin to "exert influence on the ukrainian leadership" to join a confederation with russia and other former soviet republics

two weeks later, over 90% of ukrainians were in favour of indenpendence, which made kohl (and genscher) change course

genscher tried to stop poland, hungary and romania from joining nato because the union was concerned

nato membership for eastern-central europeans was "not in our interest" and also those countries have the right to join the alliance but the west should be ensuring "that they don't exercise that right"

they even wanted nato to declare that nato wouldn't expand eastward. only after the foreign minister visited the us in may 1991 and was told that an expansion "cannot be excluded in the future", they backed off

kohl was an big supporter of gorbachev because he had allowed germany to reunify and kohl was very thankful for that so he supported gorbachev's attempts to keep the union together

kohl and genscher believed that if the baltics left the union, ukraine would follow and after that the soviet union would collapse which meant the fall of gorbachev (which did happen) but kohl doubted how peaceful the dissolution would be, feeling that a "civil war" was possible

also that if the baltic states became independent once again, "the clash with poland will start (anew)". poland and lithuania fought against each other in 1920

but if u think that only kohl and genscher were such bastards, then of course not. they weren't the only ones:

french president mitterrand had complained about the baltics, saying "you can’t risk everything you have gained (with moscow – eds.) just to help countries that haven’t existed on their own in 400 years."

and bush sr had complained about the forcefulness of the baltic politicians as they pushed for independence

and to finish a direct extract from the article because this is just so enraging:

"Germany’s friendship with the Kremlin even led Chancellor Kohl to overlook a criminal offense on one occasion. On Jan. 13, 1991, Soviet special forces in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius were unleashed on the national independence movement there, storming the city’s television tower and other buildings. Fourteen unarmed people were killed and hundreds more injured.

The protests from Bonn were tepid at best.

Just a few days after the violence, Kohl and Gorbachev spoke on the phone. The diplomat listening in on the call noted that the two exchanged "hearty greetings." Gorbachev complained that it was impossible to move forward "without certain severe measures," which sounded as though he was referring to Vilnius. Kohl’s response: "In politics, everyone must also be open to detours. The important thing is that you don’t lose sight of the goal." Gorbachev concluded by saying that he "very much valued" the chancellor’s position. The word Lithuania wasn’t uttered even a single time, according to the minutes."

#fck them all!! that's it!!#it's so fckn enraging how always someone tries to make decisions for us and i just wanna scream #germany #estonia #latvia #lithuania #ukraine #poland

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rvps2001 · 5 months

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Russia-Ukraine Daily Briefing

🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Tuesday Briefing:

- Russia bars Moldovan nationals, summoning ambassador - Czech parts make their way to Russian mil helicopters despite sanctions - Cyprus invites foreign experts to help with Russian sanction evasion investigations - Biden admin announces new security assistance for Ukraine - NATO members nearing deal on joint Black Sea mine-clearing force - Dossier Center finds Putin's 9th yacht — the $50M Victoria - Anti-mobilization protests by Russian soldiers' wives and mothers quashed - Finland mulls more border restrictions - Russian theft of Ukrainian grain likely a war crime, legal analysis says - Lithuania to use fines collected for sanction non-compliance to rebuild Ukraine - NATO commits to Bosnia’s territorial integrity, condemns ‘malign’ Russian influence - Japan to provide €160M to support Ukraine’s economic recovery

--------------------------------- 📨 More in a daily newsletter: https://russia-ukraine-newsletter.beehiiv.com/

💬 My socials: https://linktr.ee/rvps2001

#russia ukraine war #ukraine russia war #ukraine war #russian army #russian war crimes #news #newsletter #russia #ukraine

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usafphantom2 · 2 months

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IMAGES: French fighters intercept Russian aircraft off the coast of Estonia 🇪🇪

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 02/22/2024 - 15:00 in Interceptions, Military

On the morning of February 21, 2024, two French Mirage 2000-5 took off from Siauliai Air Base under NATO orders to perform a visual identification of a Russian Il-78 flying over international waters on the coast of the Estonian Baltic Sea.

NATO air controllers observed the trajectory of the Russian air-to-air refueling quad-engine plane flying out of the Kaliningrad enclave heading north and ordered the French Mirage 2000-5 fighters to launch and conduct the identification to establish the facts of the flight.

French fighter pilots boarded the Russian aircraft according to standard procedures, performed a routine identification and escorted it before returning to the NATO Air Police base in Siauliai.

NATO and the Allies collectively protect airspace above all member nations. Alert outbreaks and interceptions like this are regularly conducted under the Baltic Air Policing and demonstrate permanent situational awareness and readiness to deter and, if necessary, defend every inch of NATO territory.

In Siauliai, French fighter pilots, along with their Belgian colleagues, currently provide Baltic Air Policing over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Allied detachments have perfectly carried out the lasting defensive mission for the last 20 years, underlining NATO's cohesion and solidarity.

Tags: Armée de l'air - French Air Force/French Air ForceMilitary AviationInterceptionsMirage 2000NATO - Air Police MissionRussia

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collapsedsquid · 1 year

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Sweden, which applied to join Nato at the same time last May, is still being blocked by Ankara over similar complaints.

Any Nato expansion needs the support of all its members.

Finland will now be formally admitted into Nato at its next summit, taking place in July in Lithuania.

I guess it's been a while already but still you'd think there'd be some sort of accelerated process here.

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mariacallous · 4 months

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European intelligence suggests that Russia may launch an attack on Europe during the winter of 2024-2025 if the United States finds itself "without a leader" following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the German tabloid Bild reported on Dec. 23, citing an anonymous European intelligence source.

The intelligence service source contends that a potential Russian strike on Europe could occur within the presidential transitionary period, contingent on President Joe Biden not securing re-election in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. This transition period spans three months, from the November 2024 U.S. presidential election to the subsequent inauguration in January 2025.

According to the intelligence source, Russia may aim to launch an attack on Europe during this transition, especially if the leading Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, is re-elected. Assistance to European countries is anticipated to follow, albeit with some delay.

Throughout his campaign for the presidency, former President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the level of aid President Joe Biden's administration provides to Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelensky has also previously warned that the result of the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election can "very strongly" influence the course of Russia's war against Ukraine.

The German think tank DGAP has issued prior warnings to Western nations, suggesting that Russia might launch a direct attack against NATO in "as little as six to 10 years." While Poland's national security agency has expressed a more urgent concern, estimating that Russia could potentially attack NATO in less than 36 months.

Polish officials have previously suggested that Russia might target a NATO alliance member in Eastern Europe, including countries such as Poland, Estonia, Romania, and Lithuania.

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ukrainenews · 1 year

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Daily Wrap Up January 18-19, 2023

Under the cut:

A helicopter carrying the leadership team of Ukraine’s interior ministry crashed near a kindergarten and residential block in the Kyiv region on Wednesday, killing at least 14 people, including all nine people on board, according to officials. A further 25 people were injured following the incident in the city of Brovary Wednesday, including 11 children, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.

Moldova has requested air defence systems from its allies with the aim of strengthening its capabilities as the war in neighbouring Ukraine continues, its president, Maia Sandu, said.

Lithuania’s defence minister, Arvydas Anušauskas, has said several countries will announce sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine at tomorrow’s meeting of defence ministers at the Ramstein airbase in Germany.

Nine European countries have pledged further militarily support to Ukraine, which will help forces move from “resisting to expelling Russian forces,” according to a joint statement published by the British government following a meeting in Tallinn, Estonia.

A group of 11 NATO countries, including Britain and Poland, pledged a raft of new military aid to support Ukraine's war with Russia on Thursday ahead of a crunch meeting on arms for Kyiv scheduled to take place in Germany on Friday.

(The above two stories overlap, but I included them both because they both have good information.)

The United States is set to finalize a huge military aid package for Ukraine totaling approximately $2.5 billion worth of weaponry, including — for the first time — Stryker combat vehicles, two sources briefed on the next tranche of aid told CNN. The package is not yet finalized, one of the sources said, but could come before the end of the week.

The death toll from Russia’s attack Saturday on an apartment building in Dnipro, Ukraine, has risen to 46, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region military administration said Thursday.

Wallace says Britain has “unlocked” a number of military aid packages in the last year, and will be “going further” by sending a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine. The UK will also send at least three batteries of AS-90 155 long-range deep dire artillery, a number of armoured vehicles, including the Bulldog, he said.

“A helicopter carrying the leadership team of Ukraine’s interior ministry crashed near a kindergarten and residential block in the Kyiv region on Wednesday, killing at least 14 people, including all nine people on board, according to officials.

A further 25 people were injured following the incident in the city of Brovary Wednesday, including 11 children, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.

Fourteen bodies were found at the crash site, including one child and all nine people who were on board the helicopter – six ministry officials and three crew members, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SES).

Ukrainian National Police confirmed that Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky, First Deputy Minister Yevheniy Yenin and State Secretary Yuriy Lubkovychis were among the dead.

The official cause for the crash has yet to be announced, and there has been no suggestion from any Ukrainian officials about Russian involvement.

“Ukraine lost the whole generation of young politicians…it’s a huge grief for everyone,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian government, told CNN on Wednesday.

When asked why the entire leadership of the interior ministry was traveling together, Gerashchenko replied: “I think this bloody lesson will be a clear example for us that such high politicians and ministers cannot travel altogether. But this tragedy brought the death of children which is amazingly horrible – and obviously everyone who died – every life of every Ukrainian is priceless.”

The crash has stunned the country at a critical moment in the war: Ukraine has been imploring Western allies for more weaponry as Russian strikes hit its critical infrastructure and civilian populations with abandon.”-via CNN

“Moldova has requested air defence systems from its allies with the aim of strengthening its capabilities as the war in neighbouring Ukraine continues, its president, Maia Sandu, said.

Moldova’s spy chief, Alexandru Musteata, warned last month of a “very high” risk of a new Russian offensive towards his country’s east and said Moscow still aimed to secure a land corridor through Ukraine to the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria.

Moldova has long had Russian troops based in Transnistria, a predominantly Russian-speaking region in eastern Moldova. The area has been controlled by pro-Russia separatists since 1992, after a short war when Moscow intervened on the side of the rebels.

Russian efforts to destabilise Moldova have so far failed, Sandu told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.”-via The Guardian

“Lithuania’s defence minister, Arvydas Anušauskas, has said several countries will announce sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine at tomorrow’s meeting of defence ministers at the Ramstein airbase in Germany.

Anušauskas told Reuters:

Some of the countries will definitely send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, that is for sure.

The total number of armoured vehicles pledged at tomorrow’s meeting would go into hundreds, Anušauskas said.”-via The Guardian

“Nine European countries have pledged further militarily support to Ukraine, which will help forces move from “resisting to expelling Russian forces,” according to a joint statement published by the British government following a meeting in Tallinn, Estonia.

“We recognize that equipping Ukraine to push Russia out of its territory is as important as equipping them to defend what they already have,” they said in the statement. This latest pledge comes ahead of a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Group in Ramstein, Germany, on Friday, chaired by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Beyond continued support for Ukraine, here's what the countries pledged:

Denmark: Train Ukrainian forces. The country has donated or financed military aid worth close to 600 million euros (about $649 million).

Czech Republic: Increase production capacities for large caliber ammunition, howitzers and armored personnel carriers; increase maintenance, repair and operations capacity.

Estonia: Tens of 155mm FH-70 and 122 mm D-30 howitzers; thousands of rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition; support vehicles for artillery units; hundreds of Carl-Gustaf M2 anti-tank grenade launchers with ammunition with the total replacement values of approximately 113 million euros (about $122 million) and training for hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers.

Latvia: Tens of man-portable Stinger air-defense systems; two M-17 helicopters; tens of machine guns with ammunition; several tens of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); spare parts for M109 howitzers and training of about 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers in various programs.

Lithuania: Support package worth 125 million euros (about $135 million) consisting of dozens of L-70 anti-aircraft guns with tens of thousands of ammunition; two Mi-8 helicopters with the total replacement value of approximately 85 million euros (about $92 million); 40 million euros (about $43.3 million) for procurements like anti-drones, optics, thermo-visual devices and drones and 2 million euros (about $2.1 million) to the UK International Fund for financing heavy weaponry acquisitions projects.

Poland: S-60 anti-aircraft guns with 70,000 pieces of ammunition; already donated 42 infantry fighting vehicles; training packages for two mechanized battalions; more 155mm Krab howitzers and various types of ammunition.

Slovakia: Increase production of howitzers, de-mining equipment and ammunition; train Ukrainian soldiers and expand the training as required by Ukraine.

UK: Challenger 2 tanks with armored recovery and repair vehicles; AS90 self-propelled 155mm guns; hundreds more armored and protected vehicles; minefield breaching and bridging capabilities; dozens more un-crewed aerial systems; 100,000 artillery rounds; guided multiple launch rocket system (GMLRS) rockets; Starstreak air defense missiles; medium-range air defense missiles; 600 Brimstone anti-tank munitions; spares to refurbish up to a hundred Ukrainian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles; continued training of soldiers and coordinate the International Fund for Ukraine which has raised almost 600 million pounds (about $742.7 million) with partners.”

-via CNN

“A group of 11 NATO countries, including Britain and Poland, pledged a raft of new military aid to support Ukraine's war with Russia on Thursday ahead of a crunch meeting on arms for Kyiv scheduled to take place in Germany on Friday.

"The West must stay united and continue to support Ukraine with military aid," Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur told a news conference in his home country, held jointly with his British counterpart and other officials.

"What Ukraine needs most is heavy weaponry ... The hardest battles are still ahead," Pevkur said.

Gathering at a military base, the officials pledged missiles, stinger air defence systems, anti-aircraft guns, machine guns, training, and other equipment and services.

Britain, which has already announced plans to send tanks to Ukraine, will also send 600 Brimstone missiles, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said as he outlined details.

Poland was sending S-60 anti-aircraft guns with 70,000 rounds of ammunition and was ready to donate a company of German-made Leopard 2 tanks, "pending (a) wider coalition" of Leopard donors, according to a joint statement from the meeting.

The potential supply of Leopard tanks is expected to be high on the agenda when a broader group of nation, including the United States, meets on Friday at Germany's Ramstein Air Base.

The United States and Germany tried on Thursday to resolve a stand-off over the Leopard, which the German government has so far resisted supplying to Ukraine, but no conclusion has so far been communicated.

Kyiv has pleaded for the tank, which it believes would help it to turn the tide against Russian forces.

Hours after the meeting the Danish government announced it would donate 19 French-made Caesar howitzer artillery systems to Ukraine, fulfilling the wish of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy but stunting the Nordic country's military build-up.”-via Reuters

“The United States is set to finalize a huge military aid package for Ukraine totaling approximately $2.5 billion worth of weaponry, including — for the first time — Stryker combat vehicles, two sources briefed on the next tranche of aid told CNN. The package is not yet finalized, one of the sources said, but could come before the end of the week.

The new package is one of the largest to be announced since the war started last February, according to one source. It would include more armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles that, combined with the Strykers, is a significant escalation in the armored vehicles the US has committed to Ukraine for its fight against Russia. Mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, are also on the list, the source said.

The announcement is not expected to include tanks or the long-range missiles that has been repeatedly asked for by Ukraine. The US is expected to send Ukraine more ammunition for its artillery systems and HIMARS rocket systems that have been consistent in recent aid packages.

Ukrainian officials have been fiercely lobbying Washington for longer-range missiles known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of around 200 miles (300 kilometers). The Biden administration has resisted sending them out of fear of escalating the conflict with Russia. The administration has also pushed back on sending M1 Abrams tanks because of logistical and maintenance complications.”-via CNN

“The death toll from Russia’s attack Saturday on an apartment building in Dnipro, Ukraine, has risen to 46, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region military administration said Thursday.

According to Valentyn Reznichenko, 11 people remain missing. Of those killed, 11 are still yet to be identified, he said.

The attack injured an additional 80 people, 24 of whom remain hospitalized. Three of those are in serious condition, among them a 9-year-old girl.”-via CNNA group of 11 NATO countries, including Britain and Poland, pledged a raft of new military aid to support Ukraine's war with Russia on Thursday ahead of a crunch meeting on arms for Kyiv scheduled to take place in Germany on Friday."The West must stay united and continue to support Ukraine with military aid," Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur told a news conference in his home country, held jointly with his British counterpart and other officials.”-via CNN

“Wallace says Britain has “unlocked” a number of military aid packages in the last year, and will be “going further” by sending a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine.

The UK will also send at least three batteries of AS-90 155 long-range deep dire artillery, a number of armoured vehicles, including the Bulldog, he said.

He continued:

Today I can say we’re also going to send another 600 Brimstone missiles into theatre which will be incredibly important in helping Ukraine dominate the battlefield.

He said the UK will be working with the US and others “to make sure that this package is put in Ukraine in the right way”.”-via The Guardian

#Daily Update #Ukraine #Russia #War in Ukraine #Dnipro #Kyiv #NATO #Moldova #lithuania

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