The 118th is split very closely between the Republicans and Democrats, with R having a very slight majority, which means that a very small number who wants to play hardball with their party leadership on the R side can block bills. And so that’s been happening on various bills.
In theory, a Speaker could pass a bill by relying on at least some Democrat support and ignoring said small number of people playing chicken, but Kevin McCarthy, the previous Speaker, did exactly that and then the Democrats refused to support him when the backlash on his side of the aisle came up, meaning that he lost his seat when one of the people on the R side moved to vacate his seat. That kind of set the stage to kill bipartisanship from the current Speaker, Mike Johnson.
EDIT: Okay, to clarify, the latter bill was an attempt at passing Ukraine aid in the House, months back. It won’t be the one that goes through now; there was subsequently a Senate-initiated bill, and then Johnson may do a House bill.
I think that just saying “Trump” is dramatically oversimplifying the situation.
It’s not like you have some group of moderate Republicans and then Trump.
I haven’t been following closely, but the group that was responsible for a lot of the blockage of bills – not just this one – as I understand it, has been the House Freedom Caucus, which is a small-government group; my understanding is that they wanted to force Ukraine aid to come from cutting domestic spending.
They were also the group, the House Freedom Caucus, that got Kevin McCarthy kicked out after he cut a cross-aisle deal with the Democrats on spending – one of its members, Matt Gaetz (R-FL) initiated the motion to vacate.
The head of that group, Bob Good (R-VA), supported DeSantis against Trump, got in a spat with Trump’s group over that:
During the Republican primary debates, Good endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) over former President Donald Trump. Despite endorsing Trump minutes after DeSantis dropped out of the race, his original endorsement didn’t sit well with Trump.
“Bob Good won’t be electable by the time we get done with him,” said Chris LaCivita, Trump’s campaign manager.
Trump exacerbated things because he’s relying on upset over illegal immigration and opposed a version of the bill going through that had border provisions might have reduced upset over that and weakened his position in the election.
Mike Johnson probably could pass a bill with some Democrat support even if he can’t get everyone on the Republican side onboard, but the fate of Kevin McCarthy is kind of going to discourage that. He isn’t gonna want to be Kevin McCarthy 2.0.
So it’s not simply like the House Republicans consist of a bunch of “pro-Trump” and “anti-Trump” people and that dictates everything that’s going on. There’s a more-complicated interplay between factions going on.
The elephant in the room, as I understand it, is that Kevin McCarthy didn’t get supported by the Democrats after he crossed the aisle earlier. If he had, then he’d still be in place, and could probably have done so again on the Ukraine aid bill months ago and had it pass without any problems.
The US has weak party discipline compared to many countries. Legislators can kinda do what they want regardless of what party leadership wants. That’s generally good in terms of people crossing the aisle on bills, passing centrist stuff even if people on the D or R fringes don’t like it, but that doesn’t apply if the Speaker’s going to get vacated for doing that. It also means that party leadership can’t force the Freedom Caucus or similar to support the Speaker just because he’s Republican.
Russia no longer uses the Crimean bridge to supply weapons to the front after Ukrainian strikes damaged the crossing, Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on air on March 25.
Hey, @lusterko, is there a convention as to the name used? I’d originally seen the name “Kerch Strait Bridge” used, which I personally prefer, because it talks about the specific body of water that it crosses, whereas there are many bridges in Crimea. But I’ve seen increasing use of “Crimean Bridge”. I don’t know if one is a Russian convention and the other Ukrainian, or if there’s been a shift towards one.
I’d vaguely imagine that “Crimean Bridge” is a name assigned by Russia, since, well, it’s the bridge one crosses to get to Crimea if one is coming from Russia, whereas if Ukraine were naming it, it’d probably be something like the “Russia Bridge”, using the same logic. But I don’t know if there has been any political significance attached in the way that “Ukraine” and “the Ukraine” have significance. If one is more-acceptable in Ukraine, I’d try to use that term, but I would assume that if the Kyiv Independent is using the term, that it’s not at issue. It might also be that using different terminology based on one’s political views could be dangerous, and that they don’t want to encourage different terms being used by different people in Crimea. Or it could be that people have just generally taken up the term, and don’t have strong feelings one way or another about it.
Do you have any take on what the appropriate term to use is?
Speaking yesterday, Sergei Chemezov, the head of Russia’s Rostec state defense conglomerate, said that production of the A-50 would be restarted, according to a report from the state-run TASS news agency.
"We have identified at this point half a million rounds of 155 mm caliber and another 300,000 rounds of 122 mm caliber, which we will be able to deliver within weeks if we quickly find funding for that activity," Czech President Petr Pavel said at the Munich Security Conference.
Why are they waiting for more than two years now to order any shells while European producers are begging and begging?
This won’t be new production, not if they can deliver within weeks. I expect that Czechia is going to be saying that they’re willing to give up some level of their existing military stockpiles that they previously hadn’t if someone will foot the bill (which means that they’d have funds to replace them).
All countries will have some level of emergency reserves left for their own military; they won’t leave themselves completely without munitions.
EDIT: Sorry, not Czechia’s stockpile, as the article says “abroad” – probably in someone else’s stockpiles. Might be some set of countries outside the EU.
A procedural vote on a bill that includes Ukraine aid, funds for Israel, and changes to U.S. border policy failed to get enough votes in the U.S. Senate on Feb. 7.
Former Fox News anchor and far-right commentator Tucker Carlson recently completed his speaking tour of Canada. Apparently, he wants to “liberate” us from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Carlson is now visiting Moscow to convene with the paragon of freedom and democracy himself: Russian President Vladimir Putin. The last few...
Traveling to Moscow to interview a dictator like Putin in the year 2024 is similar to visiting Berlin in 1940 to speak with Adolf Hitler. America wasn’t officially at war with Nazi Germany, but it was possible – some might even say inevitable – given Washington’s diplomatic and military support for Great Britain.
I’m not enthusiastic about this either, and I’m no fan of Tucker Carlson, but I’d add one thing that might be worth keeping in mind.
Charles Lindbergh – a famous American aviator of the time – actually did tour Berlin (well, in 1938, not 1940, but not far off).
In the months before the United States entered World War II, Lindbergh’s non-interventionist stance and statements about Jews and race led some to believe he was a Nazi sympathizer, although Lindbergh never publicly stated support for the Nazis and condemned them several times in both his public speeches and personal diary. However, like many Americans before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he opposed not only the military intervention of the U.S. but also the provision of military supplies to the British.[6] He supported the isolationist America First Committee and resigned from the U.S. Army Air Corps in April 1941 after President Franklin Roosevelt publicly rebuked him for his views.[7] In September 1941, Lindbergh gave a significant address, titled “Speech on Neutrality”, outlining his position and arguments against greater American involvement in the war.[8]
He didn’t meet Hitler, but did dine with and was given a medal by Goering. He supported an America First position, advocated for non-intervention in Europe, and was a prominent advocate, right up until the US was actually attacked by Japan and had war declared on it by Germany and Italy, of not providing aid to European countries at risk. Kind of Carlsonian, honestly.
But there was also a bit more to the story of his time in Germany that the public didn’t know at the time.
SAN FRANCISCO – Charles A. Lindbergh, often branded as a Nazi sympathizer during World War II, gathered intelligence for the United States on four visits to Germany before the war, according to papers of the pre-war U.S. military attache in Berlin.
Smith wrote that before World War II, American military intelligence had no undercover agents in Germany and relied solely on the Berlin attache and his two aides to keep tabs on the rapidly growing German forces.
Because Smith himself was busy assessing Germany’s growing army and its Panzer divisions, he decided to recruit Lindbergh to make an assessment of Luftwaffe. He correctly judged that Goering would be delighted to show the world’s most renowned flier his new toys.
Lindbergh actually made four visits to Germany. At the end of at least two of them he helped Smith write detailed reports for G-2 military intelligence in Washington. These reports described aircraft not shown to any other foreigners and factories and airfields from which all other American, French and English visitors were banned.
Lindbergh was allowed to inspect in detail new and experimental German warplanes such as the Junkers 52 bomber and the Messerschmidt 109 fighter plane, and even allowed to fly some of them, Smith writes. The data supplied by Lindbergh on these aircraft and installations proved to be extremely accurate.
Smith wrote that Lindbergh not only collected important data for U.S. intelligence but made it possible for the American air attache in Berlin, a trained intelligence officer, to visit numerous bases and factories that were otherwise off limits.
I’m not going to say that Carlson is doing something like that, or even that one has to like Lindbergh. But I am going to point out that at the time, a number of people felt very much the same way about Lindbergh that they did about Carlson for rather similar reasons and in a rather similar scenario, and on that occasion, they were making the call with only a partial picture of the situation.
The government's revised draft law on mobilization contains provisions that violate Ukraine's Constitution, chief Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on social media Feb. 6.
I’m no Ukrainian constitutional lawyer, but taking a plain-English read, I’m skeptical that Article 17 explicitly prohibits use of the military to prevent people from leaving.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military units shall not be used by anyone to restrict the rights and freedoms of citizens or with the intent to overthrow the constitutional order, subvert the bodies of power or obstruct their activity.
Okay, but is it a right? Well, there’s Article 33:
Everyone who lawfully stays on the territory of Ukraine is guaranteed freedom of movement, free choice of place of residence, and the right to freely leave the territory of Ukraine, with the exception of restrictions established by law.
The “with the exception of restrictions established by law” seems like it’s okay for the Rada to impose restrictions on that right. That is, it’d just prevent the executive portion of the government from doing that without legislative permission. And according to the article, Zelenskyy is asking the legislature to pass this, so it seems kinda like he’s taking the correct route.
The government submitted a new draft of the mobilization law to parliament on Jan. 30, more than two weeks after withdrawing its initial, contentious version.
And I kind of doubt that this was just overlooked.
And registering an account with the government hardly seems like a violation of privacy.
Yeah, but the devil is in the details there. I can’t imagine just having an account being an issue, but maybe there’s some sort of case law that the government can’t require people to notify people of their current location or something, and it might be that this is required.
One more point – the Ukrainian constitution also provides that certain rights can be restricted when martial law is in force, in Article 64:
Article 64
Constitutional human and citizen’s rights and freedoms shall not be restricted, except in cases envisaged by the Constitution of Ukraine.
Under conditions of martial law or a state of emergency, specific restrictions on rights and freedoms may be established with the indication of the period of effect of these restrictions. The rights and freedoms envisaged in Articles 24, 25, 2 7, 28, 29, 40, 47, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62 and 63 of this Constitution shall not be restricted.
Article 17 is not in the “cannot be restricted” list.
Martial law has been declared since about the start of the war:
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared martial law on 24 February 2022, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[26]
On 22 May the Ukrainian parliament extended martial law for another 90 days and automatically renews from that point on.
I would assume that the government is going to maintain martial law for about as long as Ukraine is fighting the war, and as long as that is the case, I believe that Zelenskyy is probably acting in accord with the constitution just on the above point alone.
And while I’m not going to track down the source of all of the privacy objections – several reasons, including treaties, were mentioned – one thing that was referenced was the Ukrainian constitution. The only reference to privacy is in Article 31 (well, and maybe you could count Article 32, for storing data about people), which also is not in the “exempt from being restricted under martial law” list.
The Ecuadorian government announced in January that it would send what it called "Ukrainian and Russian scrap metal" to the U.S. in exchange for modern equipment worth $200 million.
Russia’s Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision (Rosselkhoznadzor) announced on Feb. 3 that it is banning imports from five Ecuadorian banana companies, claiming that a disease had been discovered in previous shipments.
Entirely understandable. Wouldn’t want Russia’s vast banana plantations to become infected. /s
Canada's opposition Conservative Party asked the government to send tens of thousands of decommissioned rockets to Ukraine instead of destroying them, CBC reported on Feb. 2. The Canadian Defense Ministry has confirmed that the donation is under consideration.
The Canadian Armed Forces reportedly store 83,303 CRV7 air-to-ground unguided rockets, which were introduced in the 1970s and taken out of service in the early 2000s.
In 2006 Bristol started testing a new version of the CRV7, the CRV7-PG. The weapon was introduced at Eurosatory 2006.[18] Bristol’s current owners, Magellan Aerospace, offered it for sale starting in 2007.
The PG version, for “precision guided”, adds a seeker developed by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace to the front of any version of an otherwise unmodified CRV7. The seeker uses a simple inertial guidance system through the midcourse, and homes during the terminal approach using a laser designator. Other versions offer anti-radiation seeking, or GPS guidance. The precision guided kit includes the addition of tail fins and an in-flight control system. Combining the laser seeker with the FAT warhead produces a capable long-range anti-tank missile that is faster and much less expensive than traditional platforms like the AGM-114 Hellfire.
If these still work and if the guidance package – which is much newer – is available, it might be possible to convert these to guided air-to-ground missiles.
We did something similar with a guided Hydra conversion; Hydras are cheap and available in great number in the US, and turning them into a precision-guided weapon considerably increases their utility.
The Hydra 70 rocket is a 2.75-inch (70 mm) diameter fin-stabilized unguided rocket used primarily in the air-to-ground role. It can be equipped with a variety of warheads, and in more recent versions, guidance systems for point attacks. The Hydra is widely used by US and allied forces, competing with the Canadian CRV7, with which it is physically interchangeable.
Speaking about Russia’s defense industry, Putin said it “demonstrates a very good both pace and quality of work,” and the superior weapons it produces includes “missile equipment, armored vehicles and everything that is used on the battlefield.”
We are indeed fortunate that Putin’s sense of innate fair play and sportsmanship causes him to refrain from deploying these world-beating T-14s to Ukraine.
His pronouncements included claims that American soldiers were committing suicide “by the hundreds” outside the city, and denial that there were any American tanks in Baghdad, when in fact they were only several hundred meters away from the press conference where he was speaking and the combat sounds of nearing American troops could already be heard in the background.
US intelligence analysts later concluded that Al-Sahhaf confidently made false statements because he genuinely believed in what he was saying. As the American forces approached Baghdad, the Iraqi army falsely reported that they had successfully counterattacked US forces, destroying numerous tanks and killing hundreds of American troops. Army Col. Steve Boltz, the deputy chief of intelligence for V Corps, expressed that they held the belief that Al-Sahhaf sincerely held the information he reported to be true. Boltz theorized that because Saddam’s regime was known for frequently punishing those who delivered bad news, military officers would fabricate reports about the battlefield situation. This systemic self-deception within the Iraqi hierarchy led to a surprising lack of awareness when the Americans entered the capital, with some captured Iraqi officers later bewilderingly admitting that they had no idea that the US forces had been so close.
Russia's foreign ministry condemned the decision of Ecuador to hand over old Russian-made military hardware from its stocks to the U.S. for use in Ukraine, Russian state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti reported on Feb. 2.
The Ecuadorian government announced last month that it would send what it called “Ukrainian and Russian scrap metal” to the U.S. in exchange for modern equipment worth $200 million, according to Reuters.
scratches chin
Hmm. This sounds like what happens is maybe that we may not have funds budgeted to send aid to Ukraine, but do have funds budgeted to send aid to Ecuador.
QUITO, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Ecuador expects to seal a deal for the United States to provide $200 million worth of security equipment and support as it tackles rising violence on the streets and in prisons blamed on drug trafficking gangs, the government said on Wednesday.
As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags into its fourth month, the U.S. government under Pres. Joe Biden has found a clever new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons and ammunition they need to defend their country.
It is, in essence, an American version of Germany’s circular weapons trade—the so-called Ringtausch. The United States is gifting older surplus weapons to Greece with the understanding that Greece donates to Ukraine some of its own surplus weapons.
Greek media broke the news last week. According to the newspaper Kathimerini and other media, the Biden administration offered the Greek government three 87-foot Protector-class patrol boats, two Lockheed Martin C-130H airlifters, 10 Allison T56 turboprop engines for Lockheed P-3 patrol planes plus 60 M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and a consignment of transport trucks.
All this hardware is U.S. military surplus—and is available to Greece, free of charge, under a U.S. legal authority called “excess defense articles.” Federal law allows an American president to declare military systems surplus to need, assign them a value—potentially zero dollars—and give them away on the condition that the recipient transport them.
The law caps annual EDA transfers at $500 million. The same law doesn’t dictate the value the president assigns to surplus weapons. In a letter to Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the ships, planes, engines and vehicles as “free concessions.”
The EDA gifts to Greece sweeten a larger arms package that includes 40 Lockheed F-35 stealth fighters, which Greece is buying for $8.6 billion. The Biden administration previously approved, in 2022 and 2023, $60 million in financing for arms-purchases by Athens.
In exchange for this largess, the Americans want the Greeks to donate more weapons to the Ukrainians. “We continue to be interested in the defense capabilities that Greece could transfer or sell to Ukraine,” Blinken wrote.
The Americans even offered a reward once the donation is complete. “If these capabilities are of interest to Ukraine, and pending an assessment of their status and value by the U.S. government, we can explore opportunities for possible additional foreign armed forces financing of up to $200 million for Greece.”
This sounds like a good year to be a country looking to trade in a bunch of weapons for some flashy new ones.
Probably not the most economically-efficient way to get aid to Ukraine, but I suppose politics are a cost of doing business.
Polish farmers’ Solidarity trade union announced a nationwide strike on Feb. 1 that will start with the blockading of all Polish border crossings with Ukraine.
Farmers in France, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, and Germany have also been protesting what they claim are the negative impacts on farming of the EU’s efforts to address climate change, as well as the influx of cheap Ukrainian imports to aid Ukraine’s war effort.
“Additionally, the passivity of the Polish authorities and declarations of cooperation with the European Commission … regarding the import of agricultural produce and food products from Ukraine leave us with no other choice but to declare a general strike.”
Protip: push for corn ethanol and say that it’ll protect the environment if you want a trendy way to get artificial demand for agriculture.
We produce like half of the world’s ethanol in the US.
It is debatable whether the production and use of corn ethanol results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline.[1][2] Approximately 45% of U.S. corn croplands are used for ethanol production.[3]
Staggering amount of artificial demand right there.
Miroslavs Mitrofanovs is the co-chair of the Latvian Russian Union political party along with Tatjana Zdanoka, the lawmaker accused of spying for Russia.
The phrase “witch hunt” was later echoed by Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov in comments about the allegations against Zdanoka.
I’m not entirely sure that having the spokesman for the entity that you’re supposed to be spying for jump in to defend you is necessarily the most-compelling argument that could be made for innocence.
One of Russia's top narratives is that it invaded Ukraine to "denazify" this multi-ethnic democracy led by a president with Jewish roots and holocaust survivors in his lineage. In fact, Russia's public obsession with "fighting Nazis" masks how its closest relations among European political parties are with those on the
One of Russia’s top narratives is that it invaded Ukraine to “denazify” this multi-ethnic democracy led by a president with Jewish roots and holocaust survivors in his lineage.
When asked how Russia can claim that it is fighting to “de-Nazify” Ukraine when President Volodymyr Zelensky is himself Jewish, Mr Lavrov said: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews.”
The minister’s statement was met with outrage across Israel’s political spectrum.
I get that The Great Patriotic War is a big thing in Russia and fighting Nazis sells well, but I wonder if Lavrov and company ever look at the narrative they’re working on and think “you know, maybe a different narrative would be easier to support”.
The data had been collected after Germany put pressure on the EU’s External Action Service to try to nail down reliable data on each member state’s contributions.
Some say it was out of a sense of frustration in Germany, which has so far contributed €17bn (£14bn) with another €7.4bn committed for 2024, that other member states, particularly the large economies of France, Italy and Spain, were not doing enough.
Hmm.
thinks
Not really an immediate issue, but that’s actually a role for the EU institutions to have that might be able to bear some interesting fruit. The EU is a confederation of sovereign states, and there are things, like foreign policy or intelligence, on which there is very limited integration.
And not every member might want to share full information with other countries.
But if you can’t share some information, then you can’t make some decisions that might depend on the output of that information, like what the average contribution is.
However, it might be possible for all countries to share information with a trusted entity – like some designated person at the EU – who would then report aggregate information or information in a way processed so as to make specific decisions possible.
If even that isn’t possible, there are even some ways in which calculations on secret data can be performed without the information being input being disclosed to any party at all.
Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands approved a deal aimed at speeding up the process of cross-border movement of troops and weapons along one of the main corridors leading from the North Sea to NATO's eastern flank, Reuters reported on Jan. 30.
Yeah, that’s gonna exacerbate existing demographic issues that are affecting Ukraine (as well as the rest of Europe). It was one of the first issues that I remember raising back when the war kicked off and a bunch of refugees left, that Ukraine’s going to have to deal with stabilizing its post-war population…and that’s something that the EU even as an aggregate hasn’t done a great job with thus far, and for Ukraine, it’s only going to be a tougher job if there’s gonna be freedom of population movement with the EU as a whole, as population tends to flow from poorer areas to wealthier ones.
That’s UN projections for Europe as a whole, not just the EU, but it’s already just past the peak and is entering a period of quite-significant projected population decline.
"We are able to produce something that flies, costs from $350 per item up to something that flies to St Petersburg this night. It’s produced in Ukraine. So we hit the target this night. This thing flew exactly 1250 kilometers," — Kamyshin said.
“We are able to produce something that flies and costs $350 per item, something that flew to St. Petersburg this night. It’s produced in Ukraine. So we hit the target that night. This thing flew exactly 1,250 kilometers,” Kamyshin said at a panel discussion of the Deciding Your Tomorrow project in Davos, Switzerland.
Yeah, this is why I was excited about those Australian cardboard drones – as un-sexy as they may be, they are very cheap, and effective air defenses against really cheap drones is not something that we really have today. If Russia wants to build air defense against something that runs $350/unit, it’s going to have to be a lot more cost-effective than what’s out there already. If it costs $3,500/unit to stop something that costs $350/unit to launch, the party launching the drone already wins, even if there is a 100% intercept rate. And that’s before one even gets to the issue that the attacker can generally choose the point of attack, which complicates things for the defender; with static air defenses, the attacker can concentrate their attack, and the defender is forced to disperse their defenses or forego defending some things.
I’d also note, though, that this goes both ways: if Ukraine develops a particularly-successful inexpensive drone and puts it into use, then Russia will probably aim to clone it. If one assumes that launching low-end drones is an effective tactic in today’s environment, then I think the real contest becomes who can deploy effective air defenses against low-end drones.
From what I’d read in the past, this is something that had been on the US’s radar prior to Russia’s invasion – China is the world’s dominant producer of (non-military) low-end drones. That’s a dual-use capability that could be put to military ends, and people were already concerned about the possibility of employment of swarms of them; we don’t really have a good counter to that yet.
America’s adversaries, including both state and non-state actors, have developed creative ways of using cheap, commercially available, and easily weaponized drones to assassinate opponents, destroy tanks, wage surprise attacks, smuggle drugs, and even conduct aerial dogfighting. Most recently, extremist groups such as the Houthis in Yemen have used drones to attack commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The democratization of drone technology means that countries, as well as terrorist organizations and “lone wolves,” are now able to conduct attacks with near impunity. This includes attacks against U.S. military forces deployed abroad, America’s commercial interests on land, sea, and air, and even critical infrastructure and population centers on the homeland.
In response to this drone proliferation crisis, the U.S. government has largely focused on a narrow “right-of-launch” approach. This relies on defeating tactical drones after they are en route to their targets with a variety of point and stationary defenses — small-arms fire, arresting nets, dazzling lasers, frequency jammers, and even other drones. This prevailing approach is reflected in the administration’s Domestic Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Action Plan, as well as the Department of Defense’s Counter Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Strategy, both of which focus mostly on mitigation technologies.
Yet our research suggests that a right-of-launch strategy is too reactionary. It cedes the initiative to America’s adversaries, and it requires expending costly munitions that are not designed to counter drones. This problem will only worsen as a new generation of drones, enabled by artificial intelligence, begin to collaborate in large numbers to overwhelm stationary and mobile military positions with swarm tactics. Defending every target, right-of-launch, with a “bullet-on-bullet” approach is likely to be technically difficult, costly, and insufficient. The Houthis’ recent drone attacks in the Red Sea are prima facie evidence that America’s current ad hoc and tactical response to these low-cost and easy-to-use capabilities is not working. This is not to say that mitigation efforts are not worth pursuing — the use of microwave energy to disorient and ultimately defeat drones holds particular promise. But this is only part of the solution.
I’m not so much interested in that author’s particular take on what should be done (and I’m not sure that it’s relevant to the Russo-Ukrainian War anyway…I’m not sure that it’s practical to destroy drones in that case before they leave the ground) so much as his summary of the situation today – that is, we really aren’t to the point of having a solid counter yet.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Pentagon’s counter-drone office will focus on neutralizing swarms of unmanned aircraft in its next demonstration planned for June 2024, according to a slideshow displayed during an Aug. 8 presentation by the office’s director.
The proliferation of drones on the battlefield is rising. For example, Ukraine is losing 10,000 per month while defending itself from Russian invaders, according to the Royal United Services Institute think tank. Flooding the battlefield with a large number of drones, especially those able to fly in a coordinated fashion, is a threat the U.S. military is still trying to address.
But that will take a layered approach, Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, who leads the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, told an audience at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.
“To get after a large amount of UAS [unmanned aerial systems], because you won’t have enough interceptors … you have to leverage the [electronic warfare] capability, the high-powered microwave,” as well as kinetic interceptors like 30mm guns, he explained.
The counter-drone office released a request for whitepapers from industry on Aug. 4, seeking demonstrations of “fixed/stationary or mobile/mounted Detect, Track, Identify, and/or Defeat (DTID) capabilities against [small UAS] Swarm systems.”
What have you learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine about the use of drones in battle? Has the capacity exceeded your expectations?
What we’ve seen is the validation that the threat is real, the threat is evolving. And we at the DoD are taking this seriously. What we’re seeing in Ukraine really is a validation of what we’re seeing inside of U.S. Central Command’s [area of responsibility]. And our methodology of how to get after this threat is a layered approach integrated in a common C2.
Globally, we’re seeing the threat continues to grow, and you’ll see a range of employment of that threat from large to small amounts, depending on where you are.
Russian Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev took to Telegram on Wednesday to argue, not for the first time, that Ukraine should not exist in any form.
Russian Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev took to Telegram on Wednesday to argue, not for the first time, that Ukraine should not exist in any form.
In a mini-essay titled “Why Ukraine is dangerous for its residents,” Medvedev argued that from now on, any independent state that lies on “historical Russian territories” will serve as a “pretext for renewed hostilities” for as long as it exists.
And it is that logic, fellow citizens of the glorious Motherland, that leads us to the utter necessity for today’s announcement: the concurrent declarations of war upon, with the aim of eliminating their existence, the following so-called “countries”, tumors that contain territory once controlled by the Russian Empire:
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Mongolia
Djibouti
Moldova
Romania
Georgia
Belarus
Iran
Finland
Estonia
Lithuania
Latvia
Greece
Turkey
The People’s Republic of China
The United States of America
We anticipate a brief, victorious war of about three days.
The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American air superiority fighter that Kyiv has begged for since the start of the full-scale invasion and is expected to finally start receiving this year. It’s a versatile workhorse of a jet that’s fought in dozens of wars and is
“Ukrainian pilots flying F-16s, equipped with anti-radiation weapons, would have to fly well into the S-400’s engagement range to bait Russian operators into emitting,” said Grieco.
Well, maybe. Don’t necessarily have to fly an actual aircraft in.
The ADM-160 MALD (Miniature Air-Launched Decoy) is an air-launched, expendable decoy missile developed by the United States. It uses gradient-index optics to create a radar cross section that simulates allies’ airplane,[citation needed] in order to stimulate, confuse, and degrade the capability of missile defense systems.
I’d add that a similar “send in decoys” approach was used to bait SAMs into illuminating back during the early portion of Desert Storm, followed by a large anti-radiation missile attack.
According to Fedorov, the Victory Drones NGO is behind the "People's Drone" project. Participants can take a free engineering course to teach themselves how to assemble a 7-inch FPV (first-person-view) drone at home.
That’s arguably good in terms of resistance to airstrikes, since it spreads production out. However, I bet that it also isn’t as efficient as centralized production.
MOSCOW, Jan 11 (Reuters) - A senior ally of President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow.
If Moscow wants to draw a credible line in the sand regarding nuclear war in 2024, it isn’t going to do so by having Medvedev issue another vague statement.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed a decree that will facilitate granting Russian citizenship to deported Ukrainian children, which, in turn, will allow for adopting them as Russians and changing their identity, Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on Jan. 5.
The Ukrainian authorities have identified over 19,000 Ukrainian children who have been illegally deported to Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their s as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.
The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.
The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
Then:
According to Lubinets, Russia aims to grant Russian citizenship to more of the deported Ukrainian children so that they don’t de-jure count as Ukrainians remaining on their territory anymore.
[snip]
“We understand the terrible consequences of such actions because the next step after they receive the ‘citizenship’ of the Russian Federation will be the adoption of children as Russians, and after that - the change of their personal data.”
[snip]
Originally named Marharyta Prokopenko, the child was abducted from a children’s home in then-occupied Kherson, adopted by a Russian lawmaker’s family, granted Russian citizenship, and renamed Marina Mironova. Her birthplace was purportedly changed in the records as Russian Podolsk.
And on to the very next article in the Fourth Geneva Convention:
Article 50
The Occupying Power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.
The Occupying Power shall take all necessary steps to facilitate the identification of children and the registration of their parentage. It may not, in any case, change their personal status, nor enlist them in formations or organizations subordinate to it.
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an Occupying Power from changing a child’s personal status (article 50). Therefore, neither his nationality nor civil status should be changed if his country is occupied during an international armed conflict.
Also, just to address the “this isn’t an occupied territory, but part of Russia because Russia annexed it, so the Fourth Geneva Convention doesn’t apply” argument that I imagine is Russia’s position:
Article 47
Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of the present Convention by any change introduced, as the result of the occupation of a territory, into the institutions or government of the said territory, nor by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power, nor by any annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory.
So is the IFV a decoy? I mean, it seems expensive to expend a working IFV if you have decoy soldiers and are expecting the thing to maybe be hit.
I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like it might be. In the photo from directly above, it looks like one might be seeing soil through the hatch, like there’s no floor on the vehicle.
Whether they’re more-efficient is going to be depend on the specific case in which they’re being used.
The actual quote in the article reflects that, is more qualified than the title:
“They work sometimes even more efficiently than artillery,” he told Newsweek. “So, FPV drones are indeed a tech revolution, even though the tech itself is quite easy. But it turned out to be very efficient.”
An artillery shell moves a lot faster than a drone does. If one needs to make something explode soon, then that time may make artillery preferable.
An artillery shell is going to be harder to shoot down than a drone is (and my guess is that this factor is only going to become more-prominent; it looks like counter-drone systems are getting attention, and the article mentions them).
An artillery shell is going to be generally less-affected by jamming than a drone is (though there are some guided artillery shells that make use of GPS or the like in Ukraine, like Excalibur).
As far as I know, there aren’t artillery shells that make use of two-way radio communication, whereas FPV drones do (or at least can). I’m not familiar with what the state-of-the-art is for identifying operator location from their radio broadcasts – and separating the operator from the transmitter could maybe help mitigate this – but I’d guess that there are probably efforts to identify an operator’s location.
On the other hand:
A drone can adjust its target in-flight to deal with movement of the target. Most existing artillery shells cannot do that (though some do to a limited extent; BONUS, one of the shells used by Ukraine, identifies and targets vehicles during the last part of its flight).
A drone doesn’t require the degree of (visible) infrastructure that artillery does.
Units launching drones can be more-dispersed than units firing artillery (each unit could just carry a single drone, which isn’t likely practical for a tube artillery unit).
A drone can be launched more-quietly.
A drone can fly at low altitude. Russia has counter-battery radar, as does Ukraine; a shell fired by artillery can be seen on such radars, and travels in a predictable, ballistic arc, exposing the location from which the shell was launched. While there are also ways to detect a drone, my guess is that in general, artillery firing at a target runs more risk of exposing its location than someone launching a drone.
A drone might have better range than artillery. Artillery shells need to have their kinetic energy imparted at the time they are fired (well, mostly, since there are things like base bleed shells or rocket-assisted shells). Air resistance grows as the square of velocity. Drones don’t have to fight that particular laws of physics, since they’re keeping a lot of their energy in the form of chemical energy for much of the flight. There are longer- and shorter- range drones in use in the conflict, and theoretically one can scale up artillery as well, but broadly-speaking, I’d say that drones have more potential for longer range than artillery.
I’d also add that, speaking from an American standpoint, my understanding from past reading is that the dual-purpose nature of small civilian/military drones has been something of a concern in the US. China dominates the small civilian drone market, and this is something that could have useful military applications. In a war, both expertise and production facilities for use at scale would be present in China. If mass drone production capacity is militarily-important, that’d be something to pay attention to.
And there are people who also argue the other way, that drones aren’t going to be that useful and receive undue emphasis. I’m not sure that I agree with that position, but I will agree to the extent that drones are not a mature technology and we don’t yet know how things will play out as drones and counter-drone systems (not to mention counter-counter-drone systems) evolve.
That can address things from Ukraine’s standpoint, but it doesn’t really resolve the broader political issue from the EU’s standpoint.
The fundamental problem is that there is a political dispute between Brussels and Orban related to political changes in Hungary. Brussels has decided to put pressure on Orban over it, to use as leverage against him, first with attempting to invoke Article 7 to strip Hungary’s voting rights in the EU, and then with withholding funds. Orban has decided to disrupt EU operations to use as leverage against Brussels.
Orban’s got a bunch of other things that he can block or disrupt. He could do the next EU FTA, say – there, it’s not practical for a subset of EU members to sign an agreement themselves, the way they could potentially do with Ukraine funds.
One way or another, they’re going to have to make a peace at some point.
Putin said in a Russian state television interview that fears of Russia fighting NATO members directly are "complete nonsense." The ISW believes Putin's reassurances are better interpreted as threats.
I mean, I doubt that he’d move against NATO directly, but that’s got nothing to do with his statements. He spent years swearing up and down that he wasn’t going to attack Ukraine, too.
If he could get away with it one way or another, yeah, I think that he’d give it a try. I just doubt that he’s going to have a realistic opportunity.
Also, while it’s probably not ISW’s principal interest, Russia under Putin did start conducting assassinations on the soil of several NATO members, and I am not at all sure that Russia will refrain from that in the future.
You had the polonium and the attempted Novichok assassination in the UK. In the case of the attempted Skripal hit, I distinctly remember reading a quote from Mike Pompeo about how we had specifically warned Moscow to knock off the assassinations shortly before it went through. When that happened shortly afterwards, he said that everyone was pretty pissed off with Putin.
You had the attempted assassination of that Bulgarian arms dealer, Emilian Gebrev.
You had the assassination via shooting of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Germany.
You had – and the US did not release information on this at the time – an attempted assassination on US soil of Aleksandr Poteyev.
That’s stuff that was generally considered off limits during the Cold War. You do espionage, but you don’t do hits on each other’s soil. The CIA’s assessment in the mid-Cold War:
Since World War II, and especially in the years since Stalin’s death, assassination attempts abroad have become increasingly rare. Currently the emphasis in the executive action field is placed on sabotage and sabotage planning, rather than terrorism against individuals. The Soviets now apparently resort to murder only in the case of persons considered especially dangerous to the regime and who, for one reason or another, cannot be kidnaped.
In this connection, comments made by state security defectors Petr Deryabin and Yurv Rastvorov in 1954 about what the Soviets would or would not do are still of interest. Both believed that the Soviets would murder one of their officials on the verge of defecting if that were the only way of preventing the act. The same would apply to a Soviet official who had just defected, if thereby state secrets could be preserved, and if they believed that killing him would not bring about a more adverse situation in terms of politics and propaganda than already existed. Deryabin and Rastvorov doubted, however, that the Soviets would murder an official who had been in non-Communist hands long enough to have been exploited for intelligence and propaganda purposes. While both granted that in particular cases the Soviets might go to any extreme, they both believed, generally speaking, that the adverse propaganda resulting from such an act would negate its original purpose. On the other hand, Khokhlov, who might have been in a better position to know, has stated without qualification that the Soviets would continue to assassinate defectors in the future. The threat of Soviet executive action against defectors is also considered a real one by Reino Hayhanen, who defected from the KGB in 1957. A still more recent Soviet intelligence source also believes that standard Soviet practice is to mount a kidnaping or assassination operation “through all intelligence opportunities” against defectors from the Soviet intelligence services. Deryabin and Rastvorov further agreed that the Soviets, without hesitation, would forcibly return to the USSR someone on the verge of defecting at a mission abroad. This was borne out by the aforementioned Strygin and Zelenovskiy cases. Deryabin and Rastvorov also believed that the same policy would apply to a Soviet official who had just defected, or one who had been in non-Communist hands long enough to have been exploited for intelligence and propaganda purposes, if the capability existed for returning him physically to the USSR.
Lastly, Deryabin believed that the assassination of an Allied official would be highly unlikely and probably unprofitable. He also doubted that the Soviets would attempt to kidnap any U.S. officials unless they were particularly knowledgeable. Such an incident would not be worth the trouble for an average official, but an important person conceivably would have sufficient information to make it worthwhile.
Hungary's position on Ukraine's EU accession remains unchanged, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook on Dec. 11, following a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
Mike Pompeo, a former U.S. State Secretary in Donald Trump's administration, said in a comment for New Voice on Nov. 27 that whether his former boss or any other candidate wins the 2024 presidential election, the support for Ukraine will continue.
Because if Trump, DeSantis, or someone equally as extreme manages to win the presidency, they’ve been pretty clear that they’re going fuck Ukraine over.
I realize that that is what you are claiming. I’m asking you to show the evidence for this. Why do you think that the US will end support for Ukraine?
Major figures in both parties have said that support is going to continue. This isn’t a particularly partisan issue.
But Republicans are holding up the current Ukraine aid bill in the House.
Republicans aren’t holding up the Ukraine aid bill in the House because they’re opposed to Ukraine aid. Even the people holding it up have stated that. They’re holding up the Ukraine aid bill because it’s a big, important bill, and they’re trying to use it as leverage to get their border policy – which is a big crowd-pleaser for their voters – through.
Similarly, Democrats aren’t holding up the Israel aid bill in the Senate because they’re opposed to Israel aid. They’re doing it for the same reason.
This stuff happens on a pretty regular basis in the US political system, and it’s part of how the system works. There are three different entities that can affect the legislative process – two legislative houses and the Presidency – and it’s rare for both parties to control all three. In any situation other than that, you’ll see parties blocking legislation to obtain leverage to get what they want.
But Trump said that he would end the war in 24 hours.
Trump also said in his last campaign that he would have Mexico pay for a wall between the US and Mexico. Trump has put numerous short statements out on campaign that aren’t even consistent with his own statements; I remember him saying that he would increase H1-B visas in one campaign stop in his last campaign where that was popular, and decrease them in another. He’s made quite a few one-liners like that, and they don’t wind up translating into policy.
When Trump was in office, he was pretty unremarkable from a policy standpoint. How he presented himself was unusual. But he didn’t represent dramatic change from a policy standpoint. Hell, even the “wall” that was the centerpiece of his last campaign – and some wall was built – was a rehashed form of Bush’s fence that he scored points with voters on.
There are two parties in the US. These parties are centrist, big-tent, and from a policy standpoint, don’t dramatically differ. Most policy stays pretty similar from administration to administration. But even if they did differ, most foreign policy isn’t driven at the political level – the people who are doing that are bureaucrats lower down in the executive branch. They don’t change from election to election. There are rare exceptions, like popular opposition to the Vietnam War, where politics does get seriously involved. But that’s not the norm. The US has had the same parties in place for a long time, and US foreign policy doesn’t whipsaw back and forth election by election. This isn’t our first time around the block on this.
ADM-160 Miniature Air Launched Decoy Spotted On Ukrainian MiG-29 (www.twz.com)
Artillery Rocket-Firing Ukrainian Drone Boat Shown During Testing (www.twz.com)
Ukrainian officials claim that the drone boat, fitted with Grad artillery rockets, has already been used in combat.
Speaker Johnson likely to face hurdles upon introducing Ukraine aid bill (kyivindependent.com)
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson is likely introducing a Ukraine aid bill after Easter, facing potential challenges due to internal party dynamics.
SBU head: Russia no longer using Crimean bridge for weapons supplies after repeated strikes (kyivindependent.com)
Russia no longer uses the Crimean bridge to supply weapons to the front after Ukrainian strikes damaged the crossing, Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on air on March 25.
Russia Building More Dated A-50 Radar Planes Is Desperate But May Be Necessary (www.twz.com)
Speaking yesterday, Sergei Chemezov, the head of Russia’s Rostec state defense conglomerate, said that production of the A-50 would be restarted, according to a report from the state-run TASS news agency.
Pavel: Czechia can deliver 800,000 shells to Ukraine if allied financing secured (kyivindependent.com)
"We have identified at this point half a million rounds of 155 mm caliber and another 300,000 rounds of 122 mm caliber, which we will be able to deliver within weeks if we quickly find funding for that activity," Czech President Petr Pavel said at the Munich Security Conference.
New Ukrainian ‘Kamikaze’ Jet Drone Appears In Russia (www.twz.com)
US Senate blocks Ukraine, Israel aid bill (kyivindependent.com)
A procedural vote on a bill that includes Ukraine aid, funds for Israel, and changes to U.S. border policy failed to get enough votes in the U.S. Senate on Feb. 7.
Opinion: Tucker Carlson visiting Moscow is like touring Berlin in 1940 (kyivindependent.com)
Former Fox News anchor and far-right commentator Tucker Carlson recently completed his speaking tour of Canada. Apparently, he wants to “liberate” us from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Carlson is now visiting Moscow to convene with the paragon of freedom and democracy himself: Russian President Vladimir Putin. The last few...
Ombudsman: Mobilization law at odds with Constitution (kyivindependent.com)
The government's revised draft law on mobilization contains provisions that violate Ukraine's Constitution, chief Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on social media Feb. 6.
Ukraine Says It’s Getting Long-Range Strike Missiles With Its F-16s (www.twz.com)
Russia restricts Ecuador's banana exports amid dispute over military supplies to US for Ukraine (kyivindependent.com)
The Ecuadorian government announced in January that it would send what it called "Ukrainian and Russian scrap metal" to the U.S. in exchange for modern equipment worth $200 million.
Canada considers sending decommissioned air-to-ground rockets to Ukraine (kyivindependent.com)
Canada's opposition Conservative Party asked the government to send tens of thousands of decommissioned rockets to Ukraine instead of destroying them, CBC reported on Feb. 2. The Canadian Defense Ministry has confirmed that the donation is under consideration.
Russia's weapons are "clearly superior" to NATO's, says Putin (www.newsweek.com)
The Russian leader praised his country's arms while meeting with defense industry workers.
Media: Russia condemns Ecuador's decision to send Russian military equipment to US for Ukraine (kyivindependent.com)
Russia's foreign ministry condemned the decision of Ecuador to hand over old Russian-made military hardware from its stocks to the U.S. for use in Ukraine, Russian state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti reported on Feb. 2.
Polish farmers to stage more protests at Ukrainian border, nationwide (kyivindependent.com)
Polish farmers’ Solidarity trade union announced a nationwide strike on Feb. 1 that will start with the blockading of all Polish border crossings with Ukraine.
Media: Ally of Latvian lawmaker accused of spying for Russia calls allegations 'witch hunt' (kyivindependent.com)
Miroslavs Mitrofanovs is the co-chair of the Latvian Russian Union political party along with Tatjana Zdanoka, the lawmaker accused of spying for Russia.
Ukraine thought to have sunk Russian warship near occupied Crimea (www.theguardian.com)
Overnight drone attack deals another blow to Moscow’s fleet and demonstrates Kyiv’s expanding power in Black Sea
AfD’s rise in Germany set to disrupt Berlin’s lead in supporting Ukraine (kyivindependent.com)
One of Russia's top narratives is that it invaded Ukraine to "denazify" this multi-ethnic democracy led by a president with Jewish roots and holocaust survivors in his lineage. In fact, Russia's public obsession with "fighting Nazis" masks how its closest relations among European political parties are with those on the
EU leaders enter showdown with Viktor Orbán over €50bn Ukraine package (www.theguardian.com)
Member states hope to persuade Hungary to remove its block on funding at Brussels emergency summit
3 NATO countries sign deal to speed up military deployments to eastern flank (kyivindependent.com)
Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands approved a deal aimed at speeding up the process of cross-border movement of troops and weapons along one of the main corridors leading from the North Sea to NATO's eastern flank, Reuters reported on Jan. 30.
Ukraine Aid-Border Security Deal in Congress Likely a Week Away (www.voanews.com)
Ukraine Situation Report: Long-Range Drone Strikes Expand To St. Petersburg (www.thedrive.com)
6/10 Ukrainian refugees hope to return, study says (kyivindependent.com)
More than half of Ukrainians surveyed said they plan to return to Ukraine in the future, a 2023 study by Vox Ukraine released Jan. 16 says.
Minister confirms Ukraine hit 'a target' near St Peterburg with homegrown drone (kyivindependent.com)
"We are able to produce something that flies, costs from $350 per item up to something that flies to St Petersburg this night. It’s produced in Ukraine. So we hit the target this night. This thing flew exactly 1250 kilometers," — Kamyshin said.
Dmitry Medvedev says Ukraine should not exist in any form, calling it a ‘cancerous growth’ — Meduza (meduza.io)
Russian Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev took to Telegram on Wednesday to argue, not for the first time, that Ukraine should not exist in any form.
F-16s for Ukraine: When will they arrive and what can they do? (kyivindependent.com)
The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American air superiority fighter that Kyiv has begged for since the start of the full-scale invasion and is expected to finally start receiving this year. It’s a versatile workhorse of a jet that’s fought in dozens of wars and is
Minister urges Ukrainians to create drones for army at home (kyivindependent.com)
According to Fedorov, the Victory Drones NGO is behind the "People's Drone" project. Participants can take a free engineering course to teach themselves how to assemble a 7-inch FPV (first-person-view) drone at home.
Russia's Medvedev warns of nuclear response if Ukraine hits missile launch sites (www.reuters.com)
MOSCOW, Jan 11 (Reuters) - A senior ally of President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow.
Ombudsman: Putin's Jan. 4 decree will facilitate granting Russian citizenship to deported Ukrainian children (kyivindependent.com)
Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed a decree that will facilitate granting Russian citizenship to deported Ukrainian children, which, in turn, will allow for adopting them as Russians and changing their identity, Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on Jan. 5.
Photos show remains of Russian IFV carrying dummy soldiers, revealing new deception tactics used (english.nv.ua) Ukrainian
Ukraine's cheap FPV drones "more efficient" than prized artillery (www.newsweek.com) Ukrainian
Rarely used loophole could allow Ukraine allies to unlock aid funds (www.newsweek.com) Ukrainian
EU nations may proceed without Hungary by establishing a new fund outside of the common EU budget that does not require Budapest’s signoff.
ISW: Putin's NATO rhetoric poses threat to Western security (kyivindependent.com)
Putin said in a Russian state television interview that fears of Russia fighting NATO members directly are "complete nonsense." The ISW believes Putin's reassurances are better interpreted as threats.
Hungarian FM: Hungary's position on Ukraine EU accession unchanged (kyivindependent.com)
Hungary's position on Ukraine's EU accession remains unchanged, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook on Dec. 11, following a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
Pompeo: US to back Ukraine no matter who wins presidential election (kyivindependent.com)
Mike Pompeo, a former U.S. State Secretary in Donald Trump's administration, said in a comment for New Voice on Nov. 27 that whether his former boss or any other candidate wins the 2024 presidential election, the support for Ukraine will continue.