KYIV — Russia has launched extensive missile raids across Ukraine and is building up troops near the northeastern city of Kupyansk to test Ukrainian defenses, just as Kyiv is warning that Moscow is gearing up to launch a new offensive.
Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, said in a statement that two Kalibr cruise missiles entered the airspace of Moldova and NATO member Romania, before veering into Ukrainian territory. Romania, however, cautioned that radar only detected a missile launched from a Russian ship in the Black Sea traveling close to its airspace — some 35 kilometers away — but not inside its territory.
“At approximately 10:33 a.m., these missiles crossed Romanian airspace. After that, they again entered the airspace of Ukraine at the crossing point of the borders of the three states. The missiles were launched from the Black Sea,” Zaluzhnyy said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added, “Several Russian missiles flew through the airspace of Moldova and Romania. Today’s missiles are a challenge to NATO, collective security. This is terror that can and must be stopped. Stopped by the world.”
Governors in Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Khmelnytskyi reported power cuts due to the barrage.
The attack started before dawn in the eastern region of Kharkiv, according to the governor, Oleg Synegubov.
“Today, at 4:00 a.m., about 12 rockets hit critical infrastructure facilities in Kharkiv and the region. Currently, emergency and stabilizing light shutdowns are being employed. About 150,000 people in Kharkiv remain without electricity,” Synegubov said.
Synegubov said the barrage came the same morning as Russian invasion forces increased their attacks near Kupyansk, a city in the Kharkiv region that Ukrainian forces liberated last fall. “The enemy has increased its presence on the front line and is testing our defense lines for weak points. Our defenders reliably hold their positions and are ready for any possible actions of the enemy,” Synegubov said in a statement.
He also reported that about eight people were injured in one of the latest Russian missiles strikes in Kharkiv. Two of the victims are in critical condition.
Meanwhile, in the west of the country, Ukrainian air defense units are firing back at multiple cruise missile attacks. “That is Russian revenge for the fact that the whole world supports us,” Khmelnitskyi Governor Serhiy Hamaliy said in a statement. He also reported a missile strike in the city, saying that part of Khmelnitsky was without power.
Ukrainian Air Force Command reported the destruction of five cruise missiles and five of seven Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones Russia launched from the coast of the Sea of Azov. The Russians also launched six Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles from a Russian frigate in the Black Sea.
The Ukrainian Air Force added that air defense units shot down 61 of 71 cruise missiles that Russia launched.
“The occupiers also launched a massive attack with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles from the districts of Belgorod (Russia) and Tokmak (occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia region),” the air force said in a statement. “Up to 35 anti-aircraft guided missiles (S-300) were launched in the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, which cannot be destroyed in the air by means of air defense. Around 8:30 a.m. cruise missiles were launched from Tu-95 MS strategic bombers.”
This article has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
“I am wicked and scary with claws and teeth,” Vladimir Putin reportedly warned David Cameron when the then-British prime minister pressed him about the use of chemical weapons by Russia’s ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and discussed how far Russia was prepared to go.
According to Cameron’s top foreign policy adviser John Casson — cited in a BBC documentary — Putin went on to explain that to succeed in Syria, one would have to use barbaric methods, as the U.S. did in Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. “I am an ex-KGB man,” he expounded.
The remarks were meant, apparently, half in jest but, as ever with Russia’s leader, the menace was clear.
And certainly, Putin has proven he is ready to deploy fear as a weapon in his attempt to subjugate a defiant Ukraine. His troops have targeted civilians and have resorted to torture and rape. But victory has eluded him.
In the next few weeks, he looks set to try to reverse his military failures with a late-winter offensive: very possibly by being even scarier, and fighting tooth and claw, to save Russia — and himself — from further humiliation.
Can the ex-KGB man succeed, however? Can Russia still win the war of Putin’s choice against Ukraine in the face of heroic and united resistance from the Ukrainians?
Catalog of errors
From the start, the war was marked by misjudgments and erroneous calculations. Putin and his generals underestimated Ukrainian resistance, overrated the abilities of their own forces, and failed to foresee the scale of military and economic support Ukraine would receive from the United States and European nations.
Kyiv didn’t fall in a matter of days — as planned by the Kremlin — and Putin’s forces in the summer and autumn were pushed back, with Ukraine reclaiming by November more than half the territory the Russians captured in the first few weeks of the invasion. Russia has now been forced into a costly and protracted conventional war, one that’s sparked rare dissent within the country’s political-military establishment and led Kremlin infighting to spill into the open.
The only victory Russian forces have recorded in months came in January when the Ukrainians withdrew from the salt-mining town of Soledar in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. And the signs are that the Russians are on the brink of another win with Bakhmut, just six miles southwest of Soledar, which is likely to fall into their hands shortly.
But neither of these blood-drenched victories amounts to much more than a symbolic success despite the high casualties likely suffered by both sides. Tactically neither win is significant — and some Western officials privately say Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may have been better advised to have withdrawn earlier from Soledar and from Bakhmut now, in much the same way the Russians in November beat a retreat from their militarily hopeless position at Kherson.
For a real reversal of Russia’s military fortunes Putin will be banking in the coming weeks on his forces, replenished by mobilized reservists and conscripts, pulling off a major new offensive. Ukrainian officials expect the offensive to come in earnest sooner than spring. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov warned in press conferences in the past few days that Russia may well have as many as 500,000 troops amassed in occupied Ukraine and along the borders in reserve ready for an attack. He says it may start in earnest around this month’s first anniversary of the war on February 24.
Other Ukrainian officials think the offensive, when it comes, will be in March — but at least before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Zelenskyy warned Ukrainians Saturday that the country is entering a “time when the occupier throws more and more of its forces to break our defenses.”
All eyes on Donbas
The likely focus of the Russians will be on the Donbas region of the East. Andriy Chernyak, an official in Ukraine’s military intelligence, told the Kyiv Post that Putin had ordered his armed forces to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of March. “We’ve observed that the Russian occupation forces are redeploying additional assault groups, units, weapons and military equipment to the east,” Chernyak said. “According to the military intelligence of Ukraine, Putin gave the order to seize all of the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”
Other Ukrainian officials and western military analysts suspect Russia might throw some wildcards to distract and confuse. They have their eyes on a feint coming from Belarus mimicking the northern thrust last February on Kyiv and west of the capital toward Vinnytsia. But Ukrainian defense officials estimate there are only 12,000 Russian soldiers in Belarus currently, ostensibly holding joint training exercises with the Belarusian military, hardly enough to mount a diversion.
“A repeat assault on Kyiv makes little sense,” Michael Kofman, an American expert on the Russian Armed Forces and a fellow of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. “An operation to sever supply lines in the west, or to seize the nuclear powerplant by Rivne, may be more feasible, but this would require a much larger force than what Russia currently has deployed in Belarus,” he said in an analysis.
But exactly where Russia’s main thrusts will come along the 600-kilometer-long front line in Ukraine’s Donbas region is still unclear. Western military analysts don’t expect Russia to mount a push along the whole snaking front — more likely launching a two or three-pronged assault focusing on some key villages and towns in southern Donetsk, on Kreminna and Lyman in Luhansk, and in the south in Zaporizhzhia, where there have been reports of increased buildup of troops and equipment across the border in Russia.
In the Luhansk region, Russian forces have been removing residents near the Russian-held parts of the front line. And the region’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, believes the expulsions are aimed at clearing out possible Ukrainian spies and locals spotting for the Ukrainian artillery. “There is an active transfer of (Russian troops) to the region and they are definitely preparing for something on the eastern front,” Haidai told reporters.
Reznikov has said he expects the Russian offensive will come from the east and the south simultaneously — from Zaporizhzhia in the south and in Donetsk and Luhansk. In the run-up to the main offensives, Russian forces have been testing five points along the front, according to Ukraine’s General Staff in a press briefing Tuesday. They said Russian troops have been regrouping on different parts of the front line and conducting attacks near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Novopavlivka in eastern Donetsk.
Combined arms warfare
Breakthroughs, however, will likely elude the Russians if they can’t correct two major failings that have dogged their military operations so far — poor logistics and a failure to coordinate infantry, armor, artillery and air support to achieve mutually complementary effects, otherwise known as combined arms warfare.
When announcing the appointment in January of General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff — as the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry highlighted “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and arms of the troops,” in other words to improve combined arms warfare.
Kofman assesses that Russia’s logistics problems may have largely been overcome. “There’s been a fair amount of reorganization in Russian logistics, and adaptation. I think the conversation on Russian logistical problems in general suffers from too much anecdotalism and received wisdom,” he said.
Failing that, much will depend for Russia on how much Gerasimov has managed to train his replenished forces in combined arms warfare and on that there are huge doubts he had enough time. Kofman believes Ukrainian forces “would be better served absorbing the Russian attack and exhausting the Russian offensive potential, then taking the initiative later this spring. Having expended ammunition, better troops, and equipment it could leave Russian defense overall weaker.” He suspects the offensive “may prove underwhelming.”
Pro-war Russian military bloggers agree. They have been clamoring for another mobilization, saying it will be necessary to power the breakouts needed to reverse Russia’s military fortunes. Former Russian intelligence officer and paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who played a key role in Crimea’s annexation and later in the Donbas, has argued waves of call-ups will be needed to overcome Ukraine’s defenses by sheer numbers.
And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest necessary for an attacking force to succeed.
Ukrainian officials think Russia’s offensive will be in March, before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western tanks | Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images
But others fear that Russia has sufficient forces, if they are concentrated, to make some “shock gains.” Richard Kemp, a former British army infantry commander, is predicting “significant Russian gains in the coming weeks. We need to be realistic about how bad things could be — otherwise the shock risks dislodging Western resolve,” he wrote. The fear being that if the Russians can make significant territorial gains in the Donbas, then it is more likely pressure from some Western allies will grow for negotiations.
But Gerasimov’s manpower deficiencies have prompted other analysts to say that if Western resolve holds, Putin’s own caution will hamper Russia’s chances to win the war.
“Putin’s hesitant wartime decision-making demonstrates his desire to avoid risky decisions that could threaten his rule or international escalation — despite the fact his maximalist and unrealistic objective, the full conquest of Ukraine, likely requires the assumption of further risk to have any hope of success,” said the Institute for the Study of War in an analysis this week.
Wicked and scary Putin may be but, as far as ISW sees it, he “has remained reluctant to order the difficult changes to the Russian military and society that are likely necessary to salvage his war.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda signaled his country may not be able to deliver Western fighter jets to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s invasion.
“A decision today to donate any kind of jets, any F-16, to donate them outside Poland is a very serious decision and it’s not an easy one for us to take,” Duda told the BBC in an interview on Sunday.
Duda’s comments came after Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy traveled around Europe last week to lobby for additional military aid, including long-range artillery and ammunition, air defense systems, missiles and fighter jets.
Poland is one of Ukraine’s closest allies, and it is acutely aware of its own weapon stock. Noting that Poland currently has fewer than 50 jets, Duda said “this poses serious problems if we donate even a small part of them anywhere, because I don’t hesitate to say we have not enough of these jets.”
In any case, Duda said that any decision to send fighter jets “requires a decision by the Allies anyway, which means that we have to make a joint decision.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BRUSSELS — With Ukraine’s partners racing to send more weapons to Kyiv amid an emerging Russian offensive, fulfilling Ukrainian requests is becoming trickier.
Ukraine is still waiting for promised deliveries of modern tanks. Combat jets, though much discussed, are mired in the throes of government hesitation.
On top of that, Kyiv is using thousands of rounds of ammunition per day — and Western production simply can’t keep up.
As members of the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group gather in Brussels on Tuesday to coordinate arms assistance to Ukraine, they face pressure to expedite delivery and provide even more advanced capabilities to Ukrainian forces.
“We have received good signals,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address following visits to London, Paris and Brussels.
“This applies both to long-range missiles and tanks, and to the next level of our cooperation — combat aircraft,” he said, however adding, “We still need to work on this.”
And while most of Ukraine’s partners are committed to responding to Zelenskyy’s stump tour with expanded support as the conflict threatens to escalate, Western governments will have to overcome political and practical hurdles.
“It is clear that we are in a race of logistics,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday. “Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel, and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield.”
Existing and future supply of weapons to Ukraine will both be on the table when the defense group — made up of about 50 countries and popularly known at the Ramstein format — meets at NATO headquarters.
NATO allies will also hold a meeting of defense ministers directly afterward to hear the latest assessment from Ukrainian counterparts and discuss the alliance’s future defense challenges.
Ukrainian officials will use the session, which would typically be held at the U.S. base in Ramstein, Germany, to share their latest needs with Western officials — from air defense to ground logistics — while it will also be a venue for Kyiv’s supporters to check in on implementation of earlier pledges and availabilities in the near future.
The aim of the session, said a senior European diplomat, is “to step up military support as much as needed — not only commitments, but actual speedy deliverables is of particular significance.”
“Tanks are needed not on paper but in the battlefield,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of discussions.
Ammo, ammo, ammo
One of the most pressing issues on the table in Brussels this week is how to keep the weapons already sent to Ukraine firing.
“Of course it is important to discuss new systems, but the most urgent need is to ensure that all the systems which are already there, or have been pledged, are delivered and work as they should,” Stoltenberg said.
During meetings with EU heads on Thursday, Zelenskyy and his team provided each leader with an individualized list requesting weapons and equipment based on the country’s known stocks and capabilities.
But there was one common theme.
“The first thing on the list was, everywhere, the ammunition,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said.
“If you have the equipment and you don’t have the ammunition, then it’s no use,” the Estonian leader told reporters on Friday.
And while Ukraine is in dire need of vast amounts of ammo to keep fighting, Western countries’ own stocks are running low.
“It’s a very real concern,” said Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe. “None of us, including the United States, is producing enough ammunition right now,” he said in a phone interview on Sunday.
Munitions will also be top of mind at the session of NATO defense ministers on Wednesday, who will discuss boosting production of weapons, ammunition and equipment, along with future defense spending targets for alliance members.
Boosting stockpiles and production, Stoltenberg emphasized on Monday, “requires more defense expenditure by NATO allies.”
Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty images
And while the NATO chief said some progress has been made on work with industry on plans to boost stockpile targets, some current and former officials have expressed frustration about the pace of work.
Kallas last week raised the idea of joint EU purchases to help spur production and hasten deliveries of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, although it’s not clear whether this plan would enjoy sufficient support within the bloc — and how fast it could have an impact.
Hodges thinks companies need a clearer demand signal from governments. “We need industry to do more,” he said.
But he noted, “These are not charities … they are commercial businesses, and so you have to have an order with money before they start making it.”
Jets fight fails to take off (for now)
Fighter jets are a priority ask for Ukrainian officials, although Western governments seem not yet ready to make concrete commitments.
Numerous countries have expressed openness to eventually providing Ukraine with jets, indicating that the matter is no longer a red line. Regardless, hesitation remains.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg | Valeria Mongelli/AFP via Getty Images
The U.K. has gone the furthest so far, announcing that it will train Ukrainian pilots on fighter jets. But when it comes to actually providing aircraft, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace cautioned that “this is not a simple case of towing an aircraft to the border.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda, meanwhile, said sending F-16 aircraft would be a “very serious decision” which is “not easy to take,” arguing that his country does not have enough jets itself.
For some potential donors, the jets debate revolves around both timing and utility.
“The essential question is: What do they want to do with planes? It’s not clear,” said one French diplomat, who was unauthorized to speak publicly. “Do they think that with 50 or 100 fighter jets, they can retake the Donbas?” the diplomat said.
The diplomat said there is no point in training Ukrainians on Western jets now. “It’ll take over six months to train them, so it doesn’t respond to their immediate imperatives.”
But, the diplomat added, “maybe some countries should give them MiGs, planes that they can actually fly.”
Slovakia is in fact moving closer to sending MiG-29 jets to Ukraine.
“We want to do it,” said a Slovak official who was not at liberty to disclose their identity. “But we must work out the details on how,” the official said, adding that a domestic process and talks with Ukraine still need to take place.
No big jet announcements are expected at the Tuesday meeting, though the issue is likely to be discussed.
Where are the tanks?
And while Western governments have already — with great fanfare — struck a deal to provide Ukraine with modern tanks, questions over actual deliveries will also likely come up at Tuesday’s meeting.
Germany’s leadership in particular has stressed it’s time for countries that supported the idea of sending tanks to live up to their rhetoric.
“Germany is making a very central contribution to ensuring that we provide rapid support, as we have done in the past,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said last week.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is shown an anti-aircraft gun tank Gepard | Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images
“We are striving to ensure that many others who have come forward in the past now follow up on this finger-pointing with practical action,” he went on. Germany’s goal is for Ukraine to receive tanks by the end of March, and training has already begun.
Along with tanks, another pending request that Ukrainian officials will likely bring up this week is long-range missiles.
Hodges, who has been advocating for the West to give Ukraine the weapons it would need to retake Crimea, said he believes long-range precision weapons are the key. “That’s how you defeat mass with precision.”
Any such weapon, he argued, “has got to be at the top of the list.”
Clea Caulcutt contributed reporting from Paris and Hans von der Buchard contributed from Berlin.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Karachi: Pakistan’s former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf was on Tuesday laid to rest with military honours in an army graveyard here in the presence of his relatives and several retired and serving military officers.
The former president’s namaz-e-janaza (funeral prayers) were held at the Gulmohar Polo Ground in Malir Cantonment in the afternoon in a low key ceremony which was neither attended by President Arif Alvi, nor Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
However, Joint Chiefs of Staff General Sahir Shamshad Mirza and former army chiefs – Qamar Javed Bajwa, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Aslam Beg – attended the funeral.
Former ISI chiefs – General (retd) Shuja Pasha and General (retd) Zaheerul Islam – and several serving and retired military officers also attended the funeral prayers.
Politicians including Muttahida Qaumi Movement (Pakistan) leaders Khalid Maqbool Siddiqi, Dr Farooq Sattar, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Amir Muqam, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf leader and former Sindh governor Imran Ismail, former federal information minister Javed Jabbar, were also in attendance.
Musharraf’s coffin was draped in Pakistan’s green and white flag, though the ceremony was not a state funeral.
After the funeral prayers, the former army chief’s body was laid to rest at the Army Graveyard.
Musharraf, the architect of the Kargil War in 1999 and Pakistan’s last military ruler, died on Sunday in Dubai after a prolonged illness. The 79-year-old former president was undergoing treatment for amyloidosis in Dubai. He was living in the UAE since 2016 in self-exile to avoid criminal charges back home.
Musharraf’s mortal remains arrived here on Monday on a special flight from Dubai.
His wife Saba, son Bilal, daughter and other close relatives arrived with the body on the special aircraft of Malta aviation arranged by the UAE authorities.
The aircraft touched down at the old terminal area of the Jinnah International Airport amid heavy security with the former president’s family and the body was taken to the Malir Cantonment area, officials said.
Musharraf’s mother was buried in Dubai while his father was laid to rest in Karachi.
On Monday, sharp differences among political leaders came to the fore in Senate over the offering of prayers for the former military ruler. Pakistani Parliament follows a tradition of offering Fateha (prayers) for the departed soul when a leading politician or personality of the country dies.
The members of the Senate, the upper House of Parliament, hurled allegations against one another for supporting dictatorial regimes and violators of the Constitution when the issue of prayers for Musharraf came up.
The move of supplication was led by the leader of the opposition in the senate Senator Shehzad Wasim of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and supported by other members of his party.
When Senator Mushtaq Ahmad of rightwing Jamaat-i-Islami, who was about to lead a joint invocation for those killed in the earthquake in Turkey, was asked to also pray for Musharraf’s soul, he refused by saying that he would only lead the invocation for the quake victims.
The refusal led to vociferous exchanges among lawmakers with some members reminding Senator Mushtaq that his party had also once supported Musharraf.
Later, the PTI lawmakers led by Senator Wasim, who was given a break in politics by Musharraf, offered a customary prayer while the treasury senators refused to join them.
The split in the upper House over offering a prayer for a dead person was rare and an apt reflection of Musharraf’s chequered legacy.
Musharraf, who seized power after a bloodless military coup in October 1999 and ousted the elected government of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, ruled Pakistan till 2008 as chief executive and President.
The former president and army chief was suffering from amyloidosis, a rare disease caused by a build-up of an abnormal protein called amyloid in organs and tissues throughout the body, according to his family.
Musharraf, who was born in New Delhi in 1943 and migrated to Pakistan after Partition in 1947, was the last military dictator to rule Pakistan.
The military is concerned the remnants of balloon’s payload could contain explosives or hazardous material, and wants to ensure the safety of the site, VanHerck said. The balloon was as much as 200 feet tall, with a payload the size of a jetliner that weighed “in excess of a couple thousand pounds.”
The efforts to recover the balloon began as new details emerged of previous incidents of Chinese spy balloons flying over the United States. The military tracked eight such incidents, a member of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff told a member of Congress on Sunday.
“I had a conversation with someone at the Joint Staff that used the number eight,” said Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, in a Monday interview.
Two of those incidents occurred over Florida, and one over Texas, Defense Department officials told Waltz separately by phone on Sunday. Officials declined to provide details about the other incidents, he said, including under whose administration they occurred.
After the military shot down the balloon on Saturday, senior DoD officials told reporters that Chinese balloons had traversed the United States during the Trump administration. The comments caused an uproar in Republican circles, with senior Trump national security officials denying they had ever been briefed on such an incident.
Administration officials have conducted a series of briefings for members of Congress and staff since last week. On Thursday, the staff of the “Gang of Eight” lawmakers received a classified briefing, followed by a briefing for national security committee staffs on Friday.
Before the balloon was shot down on Saturday, the Pentagon notified the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees and the defense panels of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, and followed up with a briefing after the operation, a White House spokesperson said.
During a separate Sunday briefing, representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense read an opening statement about the three incidents over Florida and Texas but did not take questions, Waltz said. They also did not disclose details about the nature or size of the balloons, or whether the incidents were reported up the chain of command.
Waltz said he spoke separately with a member of the Joint Staff, who told him similar incidents had occurred eight times.
Senior Biden administration officials have since said the information was discovered after the previous administration had left office, and have offered to brief former officials on the new intelligence.
However, Robert O’Brien, Trump’s final national security adviser, said that as of Monday afternoon, he had not been contacted about any potential briefings. He reiterated previous comments that he had never heard of any such incident during his tenure.
“We were never briefed, we never heard any of it,” he said.
Waltz said he was not satisfied with the briefing he received on Sunday and is asking for additional information from the Pentagon.
“You can’t just put that out there that our airspace was violated multiple times and not give us any details,” he said.
VanHerck told reporters that the incidents went undetected due to shortfalls in military capabilities at the time.
“We did not detect those threats and that’s a domain awareness gap,” he said. The intel community, after the fact, assessed those threats through “additional means of collection.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
KYIV — Heads are rolling in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s expanding purge against corruption in Ukraine, but Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov is denying rumors that he’s destined for the exit — a move that would be viewed as a considerable setback for Kyiv in the middle of its war with Russia.
Two weeks ago, Ukraine was shaken by two major corruption scandals centered on government procurement of military catering services and electrical generators. Rather than sweeping the suspect deals under the carpet, Zelenskyy launched a major crackdown, in a bid to show allies in the U.S. and EU that Ukraine is making a clean break from the past.
Tetiana Shevchuk, a lawyer with the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a watchdog, said Zelenskyy needed to draw a line in the sand: “Because even when the war is going on, people saw that officials are conducting ‘business as usual’. They saw that corrupt schemes have not disappeared, and it made people really angry. Therefore, the president had to show he is on the side of fighting against corruption.”
Since the initial revelations, the graft investigations have snowballed, with enforcers uncovering further possible profiteering in the defense ministry. Two former deputy defense ministers have been placed in pre-trial detention.
Given the focus on his ministry in the scandal, speculation by journalists and politicians has swirled that Reznikov — one of the best-known faces of Ukraine’s war against the Russian invaders — is set to be fired or at least transferred to another ministry.
But losing such a top name would be a big blow. At a press conference on Sunday, Reznikov dismissed the claims about his imminent departure as rumors and said that only Zelenskyy was in a position to remove him. Although Reznikov admits the anti-corruption department at his ministry failed and needs reform, he said he was still focused on ensuring that Ukraine’s soldiers were properly equipped.
“Our key priority now is the stable supply of Ukrainian soldiers with all they need,” Reznikov said during the press conference.
Despite his insistence that any decision on his removal could only come from Zelenskyy, Reznikov did still caution that he was ready to depart — and that no officials would serve in their posts forever.
The speculation about Reznikov’s fate picked up on Sunday when David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskyy’s affiliated Servant of the People party faction in the parliament, published a statement saying Reznikov would soon be transferred to the position of minister for strategic industries to strengthen military-industrial cooperation. Major General Kyrylo Budanov, current head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, would head the Ministry of Defense, Arakhamia said.
However, on Monday, Arakhamia seemed to row back somewhat, and claimed no reshuffle in the defense ministry was planned for this week. Mariana Bezuhla, deputy head of the national security and defense committee in the Ukrainian parliament, also said that the parliament had decided to postpone any staff decisions in the defense ministry as they consider the broader risks for national defense ahead of another meeting of defense officials at the U.S. Ramstein air base in Germany and before an expected upcoming Russian offensive.
Zelenskyy steps in
The defense ministry is not the only department to be swept up in the investigations. Over the first days of February, the Security Service of Ukraine, State Investigation Bureau, and Economic Security Bureau conducted dozens of searches at the customs service, the tax service and in local administrations. Officials of several different levels were dismissed en masse for sabotaging their service during war and hurting the state.
“Unfortunately, in some areas, the only way to guarantee legitimacy is by changing leaders along with the implementation of institutional changes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address on February 1. “I see from the reaction in society that people support the actions of law enforcement officers. So, the movement towards justice can be felt. And justice will be ensured.”
Yuriy Nikolov, founder of the Nashi Groshi (Our Money) investigative website, who broke the story about the defense ministry’s alleged profiteering on food and catering services for soldiers in January, said the dismissals and continued searches were first steps in the right direction.
“Now let’s wait for the court sentences. It all looked like a well-coordinated show,” Nikolov told POLITICO. “At the same time, it is good that the government prefers this kind of demonstrative fight against corruption, instead of covering up corrupt officials.”
Still, even though Reznikov declared zero tolerance for corruption and admitted that defense procurement during war needs reform, he has still refused to publish army price contract data on food and non-secret equipment, Nikolov said.
During his press conference, Reznikov insisted he could not reveal sensitive military information during a period of martial law as it could be used by the enemy. “We have to maintain the balance of public control and keep certain procurement procedures secret,” he said.
Two deputies down
Alleged corruption in secret procurement deals has, however, already cost him two of his deputies.
Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who oversaw logistical support for the army, tendered his resignation in January following a scandal involving the purchase of military rations at inflated prices. In his resignation letter, Shapovalov asked to be dismissed in order “not to pose a threat to the stable supply of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a result of a campaign of accusations related to the purchase of food services.”
Another of Reznikov’s former deputies, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who managed defense procurement in the ministry until December, was also arrested over accusations he lobbied for a purchase of 3,000 poor-quality bulletproof vests for the army worth more than 100 million hryvnias (€2.5 million), the Security Service of Ukraine reported. If found guilty he faces up to eight years in prison. The director of the company that supplied the bulletproof vests under the illicit contract has been identified as a suspect by the authorities and now faces up to 12 years in prison if found guilty.
Both ex-officials can be released on bail.
Another unnamed defense ministry official, a non-staff adviser to the deputy defense minister of Ukraine, was also identified as a suspect in relation to the alleged embezzlement of 1.7 billion hryvnias (€43 million) from the defense budget, the General Prosecutors Office of Ukraine reported.
When asked about corruption cases against former staffers, Reznikov stressed people had to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Reputational risk
At the press conference on Sunday, Reznikov claimed that during his time in the defense ministry, he managed to reorganize it, introduced competition into food supplies and filled empty stocks.
However, the anti-corruption department of the ministry completely failed, he admitted. He argued the situation in the department was so unsatisfactory that the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption gave him an order to conduct an official audit of employees. And it showed the department had to be reorganized.
“At a closed meeting with the watchdogs and investigative journalists I offered them to delegate people to the reloaded anti-corruption department. We also agreed to create a public anti-corruption council within the defense ministry,” Reznikov said.
Nikolov was one of the watchdogs attending the closed meeting. He said the minister did not bring any invoices or receipts for food products for the army, or any corrected contract prices to the meeting. Moreover, the minister called the demand to reveal the price of an egg or a potato “an idiocy” and said prices should not be published at all, Nikolov said in a statement. Overpriced eggs were one of the features of the inflated catering contracts that received particular public attention.
Reznikov instead suggested creating an advisory body with the public. He would also hold meetings, and working groups, and promised to provide invoices upon request, the journalist added.
“So far, it looks like the head of state, Zelenskyy, has lost patience with the antics of his staff, but some of his staff do not want to leave their comfort zone and are trying to leave some corruption options for themselves for the future,” Nikolov said.
Reznikov was not personally accused of any wrongdoing by law enforcement agencies.
But the minister acknowledged that there was reputational damage in relation to his team and communications. “This is a loss of reputation today, it must be recognized and learned from,” he said. At the same time, he believed he had nothing to be ashamed of: “My conscience is absolutely clear,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
As a private citizen over the past year, Vindman watched the slow Russian buildup along Ukraine’s borders and, he said, became concerned about how Kyiv would support and sustain a long conflict. Vindman and his twin brother Yevgeny, also an Army officer, were born in Ukraine and immigrated to the U.S. as children.
Since the invasion last year, the Biden administration has approved hundreds of Bradley fighting vehicles, Strykers, Humvees, mobile howitzer systems and now Abrams tanks for shipment to Ukraine. But those machines must be taken from Ukraine to Poland or other NATO countries for major repairs, costing Ukrainian forces weeks as they wait for their armored vehicles to come back.
“We’ve got all sorts of resources going into depots and advanced bases in Poland, mainly, and inside Ukraine basically they’re on their own,” Vindman said in an interview. It’s something he hopes to change in the coming weeks if the money, the support and the workers can be lined up.
Right now, for minor repairs and basic maintenance, Ukrainian troops can call American troops on standby in Poland who can walk the Ukrainians through repairs via secure telephone and video links, a process the Pentagon says is working well.
But it’s not a panacea for all the problems, with battle damage and wear and tear as howitzers and vehicles are ridden to their breaking points in hard combat. The government in Kyiv has welcomed virtually all Western help, and with the new influx of more advanced equipment just before what is expected to be another spring and summer of brutal fighting, the experienced hands close to the front could help keep that equipment in the fight.
Vindman’s group has secured enough private funding to launch a pilot project in March, and has some backing from at least one company, which declined to be named but confirmed to POLITICO their interest in getting parts and material to Ukraine for more rapid repairs.
The plan is to find 100 to 200 experienced contractors who would travel to Ukraine and embed themselves with small units near the front lines. Under the project, called Trident Support, those contractors would in turn teach the Ukrainian troops how to fix their equipment on the fly.
The Biden administration has long tried to dissuade Americans from going to Ukraine, but private efforts like this are still possible with the blessing of the Ukrainian government. There is also a pool of thousands of non-American mechanics qualified to work on U.S. and NATO equipment who could be recruited.
The presence of U.S. citizens on the ground providing military logistics support would likely be a new irritant to the Kremlin, and any injuries, deaths, or capture of Americans by Russian forces would be a black eye for the White House as it works to keep congressional support for arming Ukraine. Yet the amount of foreign equipment pouring into the country — with more expected — means taking some risks in order to keep that machinery humming.
“There is absolutely a way to do this and secure American contractors or Western defense contractors in-country,” Vindman said. “You could do this using what we call ‘third country nationals’ where it’s not American.”
There are already a handful of contractors working on systems donated by their countries inside Ukraine, but those Polish and Czech mechanics are relatively few in number and go for short stints only.
“The biggest challenges are that the U.S. government currently is deeply reluctant to put defense contractors on the ground,” Vindman said. “That means that people are getting paid to repair stuff in Poland, but that doesn’t satisfy the warfighting capability of the Ukrainians. So this would be a kind of a policy change.”
There is no talk of trying to replicate the massive effort the U.S. ran in Iraq and Afghanistan, where at times there were more contractors fixing vehicles, cooking food and running communications systems than troops doing the fighting.
“If you’re doing this smartly, and you’re distributing five or six facilities [in Ukraine], you could do this for about 150 to 200 mechanics,” spread out at various locations across the front, Vindman said.
Part of the reason for the smaller-scale operation is the fact that any large depot with a visible manufacturing capability would be an obvious target for Russian drones and artillery. Russian strikes hit the Ukrainian manufacturing sector hard in the opening weeks of the war, particularly plants focused on the defense industry.
Another is the simple problem of throughput. Material is stacking up in Poland at repair facilities, and it’s much harder to get that equipment over the border in significant quantities on a regular basis, given the limits of trucking and rail capacity.
One employee of a non-profit organization in Ukraine who has done similar work in other conflict zones said that in Ukraine, “it’s a really complex system and the structure for tracking logistics is spread very thin right now because they’re fighting.”
“I do not see the large logistics companies that have had experience in other areas transporting stuff in and out, or really helping out on that level in Ukraine,” said the person, who requested anonymity due to ongoing contracts in Ukraine.
Doing that work inside Ukraine could save time and start the process of getting the Ukrainians up to speed on fixing equipment that the country will likely need to maintain for years to come.
“It’s complicated, but not an intractable problem,” said Ken Letcher, a retired Army colonel who specialized in logistics. The U.S. spent two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan supplying equipment across the globe and training locals to do the work for themselves.
Letcher is helping on the project, which he said is seen as “a fairly finite requirement of 12 to 18 months. At some point either after the Ukrainians are caught up on maintenance, this capability would stand down, or at some point after the war, it is then handed over.”
While some of the larger, more complicated work will still have to be done in large depots in Poland and the Czech Republic, “in the meantime the Ukrainian army needs to create such a hub in Ukraine itself,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies.
“Since we managed to create [Humvee] maintenance in Ukraine with the involvement of private funds, the next level of maintenance is something we might dare to do in future,” with other vehicles and weapons systems, he said.
Vindman, for his part, said that while the repair project is a philanthropic effort at the moment, “this may become a viable business with government support.”
“But we aren’t holding our breath or waiting for permission,” he added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
As part of the agreement, the U.S. has allocated $82 million toward infrastructure improvements at five current EDCA sites, and expand its military presence to four new sites in “strategic areas of the country,” according to the statement.
Austin arrived in the Philippines on Tuesday from South Korea, where he said the U.S. would increase its deployment of advanced weapons such as fighter jets and bombers to the Korean Peninsula to bolster joint training with South Korean forces in response to North Korea’s growing nuclear threat.
In the Philippines, Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia and a key front in the U.S. battle against terrorism, Austin visited southern Zamboanga city and met Filipino generals and a small contingent of U.S. counterterrorism forces based in a local military camp, regional Philippine military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Galido said. The more than 100 U.S. military personnel have provided intelligence and combat advice for years to Filipino troops battling a decades-long Muslim insurgency, which has considerably eased but remains a key threat.
More recently, U.S. forces have intensified and broadened joint training focusing on combat readiness and disaster response with Filipino troops on the nation’s western coast, which faces the South China Sea, and in its northern Luzon region across the sea from the Taiwan Strait.
American forces were granted access to five Philippine military camps, where they could rotate indefinitely under the 2014 EDCA defense pact.
In October, the U.S. sought access for a larger number of its forces and weapons in an additional five military camps, mostly in the north. That request would be high on the agenda in Austin’s meetings, according to Philippine officials.
“The visit of Secretary Austin definitely, obviously will have to do with many of the ongoing discussions on the EDCA sites,” Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Romualdez said at a news briefing.
Austin was scheduled to hold talks Thursday with his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Galvez Jr., and National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano, Romualdez said. Austin will separately call on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in June and has since taken steps to boost relations with Washington.
The U.S. defense chief is the latest senior official to visit the Philippines after Vice President Kamala Harris in November in a sign of warming ties after a strained period under Marcos’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.
Duterte had nurtured cozy ties with China and Russia and at one point threatened to sever ties with Washington, kick visiting American forces out and abrogate a major defense pact.
Romualdez said the Philippines needed to cooperate with Washington to deter any escalation of tensions between China and self-ruled Taiwan — not only because of the treaty alliance but to help prevent a major conflict.
“We’re in a Catch-22 situation. If China makes a move on Taiwan militarily, we’ll be affected — and all ASEAN region, but mostly us, Japan and South Korea,” Romualdez told The Associated Press, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the 10-nation regional bloc that includes the Philippines.
The Philippines and ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam, along with Taiwan, have been locked in increasingly tense territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. The U.S. has been regarded as a crucial counterweight to China in the region and has pledged to come to the defense of the Philippines if Filipino forces, ships or aircraft come under attack in the contested waters.
The Philippines used to host two of the largest U.S. Navy and Air Force bases outside the American mainland. The bases were shut down in the early 1990s after the Philippine Senate rejected an extension, but American forces returned for large-scale combat exercises with Filipino troops under a 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement.
The Philippine Constitution prohibits the permanent basing of foreign troops and their involvement in local combat.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Seoul: North Korea said on Thursday it will take the “toughest reaction” to the US move to expand joint military exercises with South Korea.
The North’s warning came US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Seoul earlier this week for talks with his South Korean counterpart and said there would be more deployments of strategic assets, including F-22 and F-35 jets, to Seoul in order to deter Pyongyang’s evolving military threats, reports Yonhap News Agency.
Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry claimed the US has been driving the security situation on the Korean Peninsula toward an “extreme red-line” and is pushing to spur further tensions through joint military drills of larger scale and scope with South Korea.
“This is a vivid expression of the US dangerous scenario which will result in turning the Korean Peninsula into a huge war arsenal and a more critical war zone,” the Ministry said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
North Korea will “take the toughest reaction” to any military action by the US under the principle of “nuke for nuke and an all-out confrontation for an all-out confrontation”, it added.
The North said it is ready to counter any military challenges from the US with the “most overwhelming nuclear force,” while stressing it is not interested in any dialogue with Washington as long as the latter pursues a “hostile policy”.
Earlier on Thursday, South Korea and the US staged combined air drills, involving B-1B strategic bombers, as well as F-22 and F-35B stealth fighters, from the US Air Force, in a show of Washington’s “will and capabilities” to provide credible extended deterrence against North Korea’s military threats.
North Korea launched around 70 ballistic missiles last year alone, the most in a single year, amid persistent speculation it may conduct a nuclear test in the near future.
The North’s leader Kim Jong-un called for an “exponential” increase in its nuclear arsenal and the need to mass-produce tactical nuclear weapons at a key party meeting held late last year.
North Korea is likely to hold a military parade on February 8 to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of its armed forces.
