By Eve Ottenberg, Responsible Statecraft, 1/22/24

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and a journalist who has published articles in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, The Nation, CounterPunch and other publications.

Ukraine and the UK announced a security agreement Jan. 12, the first of its kind and one that Kyiv hopes puts it on a glide path into NATO.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also increased military funding for Ukraine by 200 million pounds to 2.5 billion pounds in 2024-2025. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the deal an “unprecedented security agreement.” This seeming hyperbole is accurate. It is the first bilateral security pact involving Ukraine forged since the Russian invasion in 2022.

However, he then slipped into speculation, tweeting “If the UK and other countries had provided such a level of guarantees after 1991, there would have been no Russian aggression at all.”

Maybe. If such pacts had accelerated Ukraine’s entrance into NATO, before Russia recovered from its 1990s collapse, the 2022 invasion might never have occurred. However, all evidence from 2008 onward is that Moscow implacably opposed Ukraine joining NATO. If the West had moved in the 1990s to extend security guarantees to Ukraine, it is equally likely that Russia would have intervened much earlier — and if Russia was much weaker in the 1990s, so too was Ukraine.

Elements of the new UK-Ukraine security pact, like intensified intelligence sharing, have already made Moscow suspicious that the West intends to end-run a possible NATO membership, that is, to supply Ukraine with actual NATO soldiers. Indeed, the pact’s announcement drew a swift response from Kremlin hard-liner Dmitry Medvedev — no stranger to hyperbole himself — accusing London of planning just that, and threatening a nuclear response.

So what does this bode for the war’s future? Nothing good. It is not that the UK on its own can guarantee anything to Ukraine, let alone sufficient military aid to maintain Ukraine’s defense. (The British army now has only around 150 main battle tanks and in 2022 Britain’s production of artillery shells for the entire year was less than the number expended by Ukraine in a three-day period at the height of the counteroffensive. Contracts inked in 2023 to ramp up will take an estimated two years to fulfill.)

Rather, this British move will create yet another impediment to the opening of peace talks, both by increasing Russian distrust and by strengthening opponents of talks elsewhere in Europe.

The Kremlin’s goal of keeping Ukraine out of NATO has been consistent since peace talks collapsed in spring of 2022, and this latest British assault can only serve to slow Russian willingness to end combat and talk. Indeed, there’s little evidence right now that Moscow intends to cease fighting; this new security deal only makes things worse. As Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute tells me in an email, “Although as far as London is concerned much of this agreement is just the usual British play-acting as a great power, it could have serious consequences in the real world.”

In short, it’s a provocation. The British announcement comes at an especially bad time, too, amid reports that the Biden administration wants to start moving toward a negotiated settlement to end the war. This security pact ensures that no such settlement will be forthcoming soon. Because if it sketches out the West’s general refusal to contemplate a neutral Ukraine, it’s hard to see Moscow backing off.

Indeed, on Jan. 15, came news of the “Moldova Highway” between Ukraine and Romania. According to reports this highway will greatly speed the time needed to transfer U.S. weapons and equipment to Ukraine.

In addition to the security agreement funds, this pact promises “swift and sustained” help for Kyiv, if Moscow attacks again. It also advocates Ukraine’s future NATO membership, provides “comprehensive assistance to Ukraine for the protection and the restoration of its territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders,” including the maritime zone, rebuilding the economy, protecting citizens, preventing and deterring Russian military escalation, and support for Ukraine’s European integration, according to the agreement’s text.

Key elements are intelligence sharing, military and medical training, cyber security, and defense industrial cooperation. The UK’s commitment to provide thousands of military drones, “the largest ever,” according to Sunak’s office, doubtless also did little to advance peace negotiations.

In the context of President Joe Biden’s remarks two weeks ago about a “U.S.-Russia direct war” — and his earlier claim to congressional Republicans that if they failed to fund Ukraine, American and Russian soldiers would fight each other, in other words, World War III would erupt with all its dreadful nuclear implications — one might well conclude that Washington plans to follow London along the escalatory route.

“The stakes of this fight extend far beyond Ukraine,” Biden recently said, “and affect the security of both NATO and Europe.” That is an open question. There is little evidence that Moscow intends to invade other neighbors, though fears are often whipped up by the media and carelessly chattering politicians, only impeding the necessary shift toward diplomacy.

However, given the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, and Russia’s slow, steady forward movement all along the line of contact, the U.S. has indicated an interest in talks in recent months. This is the wiser of the two courses currently, albeit schizophrenically, being signaled from inside the Beltway. Ukraine is running out of manpower, and European military cupboards are bare, since almost everything was shipped to Ukraine and destroyed by Russia, while Moscow’s wartime industrial base has expanded. Meanwhile, NATO is out of ammo. Talks now would likely secure a better deal for Ukraine than they would in six months or a year.

“It is now obvious to all that the Ukrainian summer counteroffensive failed. Meanwhile, as Russian military supplies have been ramping up, Ukrainian supplies have been dwindling,” notes Nicolai Petro, University of Rhode Island professor of comparative and international politics, in an interview. “This inevitably sets the stage for a potential Russian counteroffensive.”

But recognizing that requires a depth of Western realism for which there is so far little evidence. If Russia is the victor – and that is the path events currently follow – the Kremlin will dictate the terms. And Moscow has long made clear that it must talk with Washington, not just Kyiv. Time to salvage any aspect of this fiasco for the West is running out. New aggressive security pacts just make it run out faster.

By Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 1/23/24

Mark Curtis is the editor of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.

• UK will provide “equipment across land, air and sea” in any future Russian attack
• British arms firms have sent £437m worth of equipment to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion

A new agreement signed by Rishi Sunak and Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky on 12 January provides UK “security commitments” to Ukraine in the event of “new aggression” by Moscow.

It states: “In the event of future Russian armed attack against Ukraine, at the request of either of the Participants, the Participants will consult within 24 hours to determine measures needed to counter or deter the aggression”.

It then says the UK “undertakes” to “provide Ukraine with swift and sustained security assistance, modern military equipment across all domains as necessary.”

Strikingly, the text also encourages Ukraine to “provide effective military assistance” to Britain in the event of an attack on the UK – similar to Nato’s mutual defence pledge – although it does not make this a formal commitment for Kyiv.

Zelensky used the words “security guarantees” or “guarantees” when describing the agreement at a press conference in Kyiv following its signing. 

Sunak has tended to use the phrase “security assurances”. The text does not refer to “guarantees” but to “security commitments”.

Assurances

Some commentators say such “commitments” are toothless and do not provide a hard defence guarantee. They compare them to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum when Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet nuclear arsenal in exchange for “security assurances” which never materialised.

Neither has the agreement yet been ratified by either country’s parliament, meaning its legal position is uncertain. 

Perhaps most importantly, the accord does not explicitly commit Britain to despatching military forces to Ukraine by providing boots on the ground. However, a risk is that it could embroil the UK in any future war with Russia. 

Describing the agreement in parliament, Sunak stated that “if Russia ever invades Ukraine again, we will provide swift and sustained assistance, including modern equipment across land, air and sea. Together with our allies, the UK will be there from the first moment until the last.”

The accord is a further step towards Nato membership for Ukraine. It increases UK military cooperation with Kyiv intending “to deepen Ukraine’s interoperability with Nato”, “accelerate Ukraine’s transition to Nato equipment and standards” and develop “a pathway to a future in Nato”.   

The accord has arisen from Nato’s summit in Lithuania last July in which G7 states pledged to make a series of bilateral security agreements with Ukraine.

More arms

But the agreement goes beyond security commitments, and Britain’s arms exporters will likely be major beneficiaries. 

In a section on “defence industry cooperation”, the text says the UK will work with arms companies and Ukraine to “identify opportunities for closer defence industrial partnerships and collaboration including for mutual commercial benefit”. 

Britain “will encourage its defence industry to work with Ukraine” on “manufacturing of UK defence products” in the country.

The Ukraine war has been a boon for UK arms firms. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, they have exported £437m worth of military equipment to Ukraine – over 12 times more than they sold in the previous ten years. 

Both Babcock and BAE, the UK’s largest arms exporter, have recently set up offices in Ukraine, positioning themselves to secure new deals. 

BAE’s agreement with Ukraine will “ramp up the company’s support to Ukraine’s armed forces” and enable BAE “to work alongside” them “to… support its future force structure”.

Disinformation

A section in the text on “information security” notes that Britain will also help Ukraine counter Russian propaganda “globally” – or “support each other’s efforts to tell the truth well”, as the document quaintly puts it. 

The two countries will work together “offering the world a truthful alternative to the Russian Federation’s disinformation campaigns” which will involve “closer collaboration of communications output”.

Britain’s Foreign Office is already spending millions on private “counter-disinformation” groups which tend to support UK government policy positions, such as over Ukraine.

Declassified found before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that the British government ploughed at least £82.7m of public money into media projects in countries bordering or near Russia in the four years to 2021.

The UK government’s funding of the “counter-disinformation” industry looks more like an information operation in itself rather than a neutral effort to combat fake news.

Private sector

A  further commitment is ensuring Ukraine promotes pro-Western economic policies through reforms and postwar reconstruction. 

“Before this terrible war, Ukraine’s economy was becoming a huge investment opportunity,” then foreign minister Leo Docherty said at the Ukraine Recovery Conference hosted in London last June.

That conference urged “international businesses” to invest in Ukraine in its “ambitious reform agenda”, including “reducing the size of the government”,  “privatization”, “deregulation” and “investment freedom”.

The new agreement reinforces these goals. Ukraine will have “a strong private sector-led economy… that is integrated into global markets”, the text states. This involves Kyiv fully implementing IMF reforms, promoting measures “to increase investor confidence” and “unlock private investment”.

In this, the UK will “support” activities in economic sectors such as energy, infrastructure and tech.

Russia Matters, 2/9/24

1. On Feb. 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replaced Valerii Zaluzhnyi with Oleksandr Syrskyi as the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU). Zelenskyy outlined problems in the military that Syrskyi will need to address, including disparity between the overall number of military servicemen and the number of servicemen participating in actual combat. Zelenskyy also called for “a different approach to mobilization and recruitment,” two issues over which he has had disagreements with Syrskyi’s predecessor. In the first comments on priorities since his appointment, Syrskyi himself vowed to improve the rotation of troops at the frontlines and to focus on the “introduction of new technical solutions and the scaling of successful experience,” including drones, according Bloomberg. Syrskyi—who is seen as a close ally of Zelenskyy and is considered more accessible by some U.S. commanders than Zaluzhnyi was—has been credited with the successful defense of Kyiv in Spring 2022 and recapturing territory in the east and south in Fall 2022. However, his reputation among the Ukrainian servicemen is far from stellar, with some describing him as a “butcher” for his willingness to sacrifice soldiers during the defense of Bakhmut in 2022-2023. 
2. In the past month, Russian forces have captured 64 square miles of Ukrainian territory, while Ukrainian forces have re-gained 0 square miles, according to the Feb. 6, 2024, issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. This week, Russians have penetrated the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka from the north and south in a development acknowledged by Ukrainian OSINT project DeepState. The Russians are also closing in around Kupyansk, a town in the Kharkiv region that Ukrainian forces retook in 2022, according to WSJ. Russian forces plan to retake more territory in that eastern region, having amassed more than 40,000 troops and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles near Kupyansk for that purpose, according to NYT.
3. On Feb. 8, the Democratic-controlled Senate cleared a critical hurdle toward passing a $95 billion national security-focused bill aimed at fortifying Ukraine, Israel and other allies. Most of the proposal’s funding—about $60 billion—is intended to help Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. The vote was 67-32, clearing the 60-vote bar needed to advance most legislation in the chamber, according to WSJ. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) has said that he would allow an amendment process, which is something Republican senators said they intend to engage in, suggesting to trim funds that pay public servants in Kyiv, according to WSJ. Of the $60 billion intended for Ukraine, nearly $8 billion is intended to provide direct budget support for Ukraine. The largest portion, $19.9 billion, would replenish inventory levels of Defense Department weaponry that were emptied to help Ukraine’s military, according to WSJ. However, even if the bill ultimately clears the Senate, it faces an even tougher road in the Republican-controlled House, according to WSJ. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) has declined to say whether he would bring the Senate-passed national-security package onto the floor, but Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) has already threatened to try to oust Johnson as speaker if he advances more money for Ukraine, according to WSJ.
4. If Congress doesn’t approve new funding for Ukraine, U.S. equipment won’t suddenly stop, but slowly expire, according to NYT. ”Ukraine could effectively hold for some part of this year” without more American military aid, Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military, told NYT. Western officials and experts predict it would be at least a couple months before the lack of renewed aid has a widespread impact, according to NYT. By next month, Ukraine could struggle to conduct local counterattacks, and by early summer, its military might have difficulty rebuffing Russian assaults, the officials and analysts said to this newspaper.

By Lee Fang, Substack, 1/25/24

The year is 2028, and a new and highly infectious coronavirus has struck the sailors of the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed in the South China Sea. As the world grapples with this emerging pandemic, confusion runs rampant among officials at the CIA, CDC, and DOD, who bicker over the most effective response strategies. 

Meanwhile, China, seemingly immune to the novel virus, seizes the opportunity to launch a full-scale assault on Taiwan, capitalizing on the global chaos. 

While the World Health Organization praises China’s successful social distancing measures, little do they know that the Chinese government had covertly vaccinated its military and essential workers under the guise of a standard COVID-19 booster campaign.

This scenario, initially conceived by Pentagon researchers, may sound like science fiction, but military strategists believe that a “coronavirus bioweapon” may lurk on the horizon. This possibility is one of several outlined in a new report sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The report “Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War Research” delves into how CRISPR gene-editing technology, mRNA vaccines, brain networking, and other technological advancements could unleash new forms of military conflict.

Released earlier this month and reported here for the first time, this provocative report, conducted within the Acquisition and Technology Policy Program of the RAND National Security Research Division, offers futuristic scenarios that military planners should consider.

“We see a complex, high-threat landscape emerging where future wars are fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts” and “synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues” that cripple the American military-industrial base,” the report warns.

In another intriguing scenario, seemingly inspired by the decline of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and this time set in a more distant future, the report suggests that elderly congressional leaders, desperate to retain power, secretly install state-of-the-art Brain-Computer Interface devices. These devices, commonly used among wealthy senior citizens in the scenario, initially help the senators regain mobility and speech after years of clear cognitive decline. However, when the brain implants malfunction, causing erratic and belligerent behavior, foreign allies begin to distance themselves from the U.S., damaging national security.

The report further highlights the potential hacking vulnerabilities associated with BCI implants, which, while promising for patients with neuromuscular impairments, could be exploited to inject fear, confusion, or anger.

Additionally, the authors caution against the possibility of government employees replacing their natural eye lenses with artificial ones containing tiny cameras connected to micro-storage devices. The small cameras could collect classified intelligence and leak it to foreign adversaries.

However, not all aspects of the report focus on vulnerabilities. In a section discussing human genomic editing, the researchers explore the potential for creating “supersoldiers” through genetic modifications that enhance physical and psychological capabilities. Despite their vulnerabilities, BCI devices could also serve as a means for commanders to communicate swiftly with their forces during military operations.

The report extensively analyzes the technological capabilities of both China and the U.S. in biotechnology and brain technology, highlighting the differences in focus and status between the two nations. It highlights previous reporting on Chinese research into “ethnic-specific genetic weapons” and “purported brain-control weaponry.”

Nevertheless, the report ventures into cultural observations, emphasizing that the U.S. values openness, diversity, and democratic principles. In the face of a more contagious and deadly pandemic, China’s ethnically homogenous and compliant population could give it an advantage in deploying vaccines swiftly. At the same time, authoritarian states might similarly brutally suppress “anti-vaccine populists” and enforce compliance. The report claims this could hinder the U.S. due to its more relaxed regulatory environment that values individual liberties, where such crackdowns and forced vaccinations are more difficult to deploy…

Subscribe to Lee Fang’s Substack to read the full article.

By Prof. Geoffrey Roberts, Brave New Europe, 1/18/24

As the world is facing up to Ukrainian defeat, what are the most important propaganda points that continue to enable a doomed war?

Geoffrey Roberts is Emeritus Professor of History at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy

Cross-posted from Geoffrey’s Website

1. Putin as Hitler. The über alles of these mis-analogies is the one with the least foundation. Putin is not a maniacal, genocidal, war-mongering dictator. He is not a racist or a militarist bent on European or world domination. Nor does he have a messianic ideology driving him to re-make the world in Russia’s image. Putin’s geopolitical ambitions are remarkably conservative: security and respect for Russia and its civilisation, a peaceful and prosperous, multipolar world of sovereign states in which there is a balance of interests mediated and harmonised by multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. Such aspirations seem radical only in the context of crumbling Western global hegemony.
2. Putin as Stalin. Putin is a true son of the post-Stalin Soviet system, but he hasn’tbeen a communist since the late 1980s. As he said not long after he first became President of the Russian Federation, anyone who doesn’t regret the destruction of the Soviet Union has no heart; anyone who wants to see it re-created has no brain. A pro-Western liberal in the 1990s, nowadays his ideology is Christian and capitalistic, not Marxist or socialist. He wields enormous power in Russian politics but does not preside over a totalitarian party dictatorship like Stalin did. The soft authoritarianism of the Russian Federation bears no resemblance to the mass repressions of the Stalin era and not a lot to the much less violent and repressive one-party state of Stalin’s communist successors. Patriotism, multinationalism, internationalism and a love of history are what Putin has in common with Stalin, not dictatorship.
3. Appeasement and the Munich Syndrome. This most damaging of historical mis-analogies has popularised the idea that the Munich agreement betrayal of Czechoslovakia in September 1938 shows you can’t appease aggressors. Actually, the problem wasn’t appeasement per se, it was the fact that Hitler was bent on world war and didn’t want to be appeased. Stalin was the leader the British and French should have sought to appease, but they eschewed a collective security alliance with the USSR in favour of deals with Nazi Germany. Before invading Ukraine, Putin was desperate to be appeased by the West. That’s why he proposed a comprehensive European security deal between Russia and the West. A few weeks into the war he sought a compromise peace that would have left Russia with a neutral and disarmed Ukraine on its doorstep but gained relatively little additional territory. Moscow remains open to such a negotiation, though the price of peace will be a lot higher than it was two years ago. The sooner Putin is appeased, the quicker the war will end and save Ukraine from further unnecessary suffering.
4. The Prague analogy. An extension of the Munich analogy which claims Hitler’s occupation of Prague in March 1939 shows that if you concede Putin a territorial inch he will take a proverbial yard. However, Poland was Hitler’s target in 1939, not Czechoslovakia. German troops entered the country, supposedly to impose order, because of an internal crisis that split Slovakia and the Czech lands following the loss of German-populated Sudetenland at Munich. Ukraine may well suffer a deep domestic crisis following military defeat by Russia, but the more likely ‘restorers of order’ in Lviv and Kiev are Polish and Romanian troops. Completely reliant on foreign aid, battered Ukraine is half-way to becoming a Western protectorate not a Russian one.
5. Finland and the Winter War. Not the worst analogy but more complicated than its proponents may think. Yes, the Finns did sensibly sign a peace treaty with the USSR in March 1940 to save the country’s independence and sovereignty, but they had previously spurned a similar Soviet offer that would have seen them gain as well as lose territory in the borderland region of Karelia. It was not plucky Finnish defence that stopped the Soviet onslaught but Stalin’s fear that an Anglo-French military intervention would turn the country into a battleground of the wider European war – a fate the Finns did not relish either. Finland could have sat out the rest of the Second World War as a neutral but, disastrously, chose to ally itself with Nazi Germany in the so-called ‘continuation war’. Finnish leaders redeemed themselves by turning their armed forces against the Germans in 1944 and then refused Western meddling in their affairs with the Soviets – a stance that persuaded Stalin to allow Finland to become a semi-detached member of the Soviet bloc. ‘Finlandisation’ – domestic autonomy in exchange for restricted external sovereignty – was a far better model for independent Ukraine than the internally divisive path that has led to its partition.
6. Genocide and the Holocaust. Both sides have bandied the g-word but the atrocities committed during the Russo-Ukrainian war bear no comparison whatsoever with the Nazi mass murder of millions of Jew during World War II. In fact, this war has been notably free of large-scale, systematic atrocities against civilians. The vast majority of the war’s casualties have been combatants. That doesn’t negate the immense suffering of millions of Ukrainian civilians, but as Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan show us, it could have been a lot worse. The g-word propaganda battle also serves to obfuscate two essential facts about the actual Holocaust: it began with the SS’s execution of a million Soviet Jews in 1941-1942 and ended with the Red Army’s liberation of Nazi death-camps in 1944-1945.
7. Containment and the Cold War. Staring defeat in the face, Western hardliners are increasingly agitating for a long-term strategy to contain Russia that will involve extensive militarisation of their own societies, including, perhaps, the re-introduction of conscription. This re-vamped cold war strategy bears little relation to the views of the containment concept’s originator, George F. Kennan, who saw the policy as primarily a political device: the US would win the cold war not by confrontation and military competition with the USSR but by the demonstrated superiority of its domestic system. Kennan, who vociferously opposed NATO’s post-Soviet expansion eastwards, was fond of quoting President John Quincy Adams’s aphorism that “America should not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy”.
8. The Domino Theory. President Eisenhower’s eponymous theory was devised, in part, to entice British involvement in France’s losing colonial war in 1950s Indochina. But Winston Churchill didn’t buy the idea that a Red victory there would be followed by the fall of the rest of South-East Asia to the communists, and neither did his Tory and Labour successors as PM when the domino concept was revived in the 1960s to justify massive US intervention in the Vietnam War. Its current incarnation is that if Putin wins in Ukraine, the Baltic States will be his next target. There is no evidence that Putin has any such intentions. No doubt Russia could occupy the Baltics if it chose to do so, but not without running the risk of a nuclear war with NATO. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was risky and adventuristic but his restrained conduct of the war has shown that he is far from reckless – unlike some of his Western counterparts, who have sought every opportunity to escalate the conflict.
9. The Korean Stalemate Scenario. The Korean War bogged down quite quickly after a few dramatic months of invasion and counter-invasion in the summer and autumn of 1950 but an armistice was not signed until July 1953. Some Western hardliners yearn for a repeat of that scenario, hoping that hostilities will resume once Ukraine has recovered its strength and NATO countries have ramped up their armaments industries. But the Ukraine war is not a stalemate – it is a war of attrition that Russia is slowly but surely winning. Putin will never agree to a ceasefire that does not ensure Russia’s security and safeguard the situation of its Ukrainian supporters. The longer the war goes on, the more likely becomes a dictated peace on the back of a Russian victory.
10. Proxy Wars Past & Present. Conflicts labelled proxy wars come in all different shapes, sizes and guises. The Russo-Ukrainian war has some similarities with the Spanish Civil War, the Korea and Vietnam wars, and the Soviet war in Afghanistan, but its scale, scope, intensity and dangerousness are unprecedented. It is simultaneously a civil war between Ukrainian nationalists and Russia-leaning Ukrainians; an inter-state war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation; and a Western-waged proxy war on Russia. Without Western military, economic and political support, Ukraine would have lost the war long ago. It is the West’s over-arching anti-Russia and anti-Putin goals that have prolonged the war and could yet transform it into a truly existential conflict.