Credible Defense

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1675541176403861512

PMC "Wagner" has suspended the recruitment of mercenaries for a month "in connection with the temporary non-participation of the Wagner PMC in a special military operation and relocation to the Republic of Belarus."

Looks like the dismantling of Wagner continues.

ISW posted their latest update on the way in Ukraine

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-1-2023

Key Takeaways:

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in at least four sectors of the frontline on July 1.

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley acknowledged that Ukrainian counteroffensive operations will take longer than some Western observers had expected.

Russian officials and sources celebrated claims that Russian forces defeated small-scale Ukrainian landings in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on July 1 as if they had won a major victory.

The exaggerated Russian praise for defeating a small Ukrainian landing suggests either that the Russian military command sincerely fears a Ukrainian attack on east bank Kherson Oblast or that it is desperate for an informational victory following the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion or both.

Russian forces are likely responding to Ukrainian operations around Bakhmut by pulling forces from elsewhere in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the Russians might initiate an intentional radioactive leak at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) as part of a potential Russian strategy to freeze the war.

Russian propagandists are likely conducting an information campaign to destroy the Wagner Group’s reputation as a uniquely effective fighting force in support of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) effort to dismantle the Wagner Group and integrate former Wagner fighters into MoD structures.

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.

Ukrainian forces continued to conduct ground attacks around Bakhmut.

Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks in and transfer airborne (VDV) elements to the Bakhmut area.

Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.

Russian forces continued to counterattack recently-liberated Ukrainian positions on the administrative border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast.

Russian security procedures on the Kerch Strait bridge are likely slowing down Russian logistics from Russia to occupied Crimea.

Iran may be sending materiel and personnel to Russia to help construct a factory in the Republic of Tatarstan that will reportedly make Iranian combat drones.

Ukrainian and Western sources continue to report on the abductions of Ukrainian children and adults in the occupied territories.

Edit: formatting

What Will Happen at NATO’s Summit in Vilnius?

Q1: Will Ukraine join NATO in Vilnius?

Although Ukraine formally applied to join NATO last year, all parties have now admitted that Ukraine will not join the NATO alliance before the war in Ukraine ends.

Q2: Will Ukraine receive security guarantees in Vilnius?

However, no clear consensus has yet appeared on what assurances Ukraine’s allies might be willing to offer outside of NATO.

Q3: Have the commitments allies made in Madrid been met?

However, implementation has been mixed and it now seems unlikely these three commitments will be fully met by the Vilnius summit.

Q4: When will Sweden join NATO?

In the short term, however, very little can be done to force Erdoğan’s hand, despite Congress’ attempt to condition the sale of F-16 fighter jets on the ratification of Sweden’s NATO bid.

Q5: What’s happening with NATO defense spending?

The war in Ukraine accelerated the rise in defense spending across NATO, including among European allies who have invested a third more on defense since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Q6: Will NATO get a new secretary general in Vilnius?

The most likely outcome at Vilnius—or before the summit—is that current secretary general Stoltenberg will be asked by allies to extend for a second year, until NATO's 75th anniversary summit in Washington next July.

Wagner Uprising Highlights China’s Risks With Russia

Xi Jinping needs Vladimir Putin to remain in power, and Russia to maintain stability, to help uphold the countries’ shared interests and to keep challenging the United States.

This is a gifted article, you shouldn’t need a subscription to read it.

New Perun, includes a brief overview of coup dynamics and a discussion of the Wagner mutiny specifically

100 subscribers. Oh man, that's pretty crazy. Thanks guys!

https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1675113549704699904

Great thread pushing back against the idea that the era of great power politics is over.

https://twitter.com/HoansSolo/status/1676314547936804864

“Russia has lost nearly half the combat effectiveness of its army,” 🇬🇧’s Radakin said. “Last year it fired 10mn artillery shells but at best can produce 1mn shells a year. It has lost 2,500 tanks and at best can produce 200 [new] tanks a year,” he said.

The most credible estimates I’ve seen yet and probably my new go-to when people ask about Russian military production.

Cracking Down on Dissent, Russia Seeds a Surveillance Supply Chain

As the war in Ukraine unfolded last year, Russia’s best digital spies turned to new tools to fight an enemy on another front: those inside its own borders who opposed the war.

To aid an internal crackdown, Russian authorities had amassed an arsenal of technologies to track the online lives of citizens. After it invaded Ukraine, its demand grew for more surveillance tools. That helped stoke a cottage industry of tech contractors, which built products that have become a powerful — and novel — means of digital surveillance.

The technologies have given the police and Russia’s Federal Security Service, better known as the F.S.B., access to a buffet of snooping capabilities focused on the day-to-day use of phones and websites. The tools offer ways to track certain kinds of activity on encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal, monitor the locations of phones, identify anonymous social media users and break into people’s accounts, according to documents from Russian surveillance providers obtained by The New York Times, as well as security experts, digital activists and a person involved with the country’s digital surveillance operations.

This is a gifted link, so there shouldn't be any problems with the paywall.

Putin’s Corporate Takeover of Wagner Has Begun

Not since the British crown began liquidating the East India Company in 1858 and assumed direct rule over its far-flung colonies, has the world seen a government try to swallow a corporate empire comparable to Wagner.

The Wagner Group helped the Kremlin amass international influence and collect revenues, all managed by Prigozhin’s main holding company Concord. Putin is now trying to take control of a corporate monster he helped create, according to Western, Middle East and African officials alongside Russian defectors and documents detailing more than 100 Wagner-controlled companies.

https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1675845525524938752

Shashank Joshi has shared the source list for the article set he just published in the Economist. Serves as a great set of references if you want to learn more about a specific topic on the war. The articles themselves are all uniformly great, too. They’re linked in the tweet above, and I also plan on submitting them here eventually™️.

Also, am a bit tickled to know that the “big guys” are looking at the same sources as the rest of us when it comes to Ukraine updates. At least we’re on the right track.

Biden approves cluster munition supply to Ukraine

President Biden has approved the provision of U.S. cluster munitions for Ukraine, with drawdown of the weapons from Defense Department stocks due to be announced Friday.

The move, which will bypass U.S. law prohibiting the production, use or transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than 1 percent, comes amid concerns about Kyiv’s lagging counteroffensive against entrenched Russian troops and dwindling Western stocks of conventional artillery.

https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1677435161514737665

Michael Kofman’s take on DPICM:

A few thoughts on DPICM. Providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, at this stage, could have a significant impact beyond what other capabilities might achieve. Despite the drawbacks, unlocking this stockpile has important implications for the course of Ukraine's offensive.

Ukraine's offensive is limited by the artillery ammunition available. The US, and other countries, provided a significant amount for this operation. Much of this was borrowed from South Korea. Without this ammunition it is difficult to imagine this offensive taking place.

Progress has been slow, difficult, and without sustained breakthroughs thus far. While UA retains the bulk of its combat power, artillery use rate is likely higher than anticipated, especially as the past weeks have seen a largely attritional approach.

Consequently, Ukraine's hardest limit is proably not manpower, or equipment, but arty ammunition. This is foremost about the numbers. Providing DPICM gives access to a sizable stockpile of artillery ammo that can alleviate the time pressure on UA operations.

With DPICM the US is also in a much better position to sustain Ukraine's war effort into next year, which requires significant amounts of artillery ammunition on a monthly basis. While other capabilities may be great to have, providing DPICM may prove more impactful.

While UA retains options, the offensive may culminate whenever the ammunition runs low. Extending that timeline is critical. I wont get into the debate on effectiveness vs the risks, dud rates, etc. My view is these considerations are ultimately best left for Ukraine to weigh.

In Ukraine, They’re Doctors; in Britain, They’re Unemployed

Gifted Link.

Often jobless or languishing in low-skilled posts, doctors who fled Russia’s invasion are forced to confront a difficult dilemma: see their skills go unused, or return to a country at war.

With many Ukrainian hospitals operating with skeleton crews, some doctors who fled the conflict are considering returning and putting their skills to use again. But for those with families, the question is complicated by the fear of putting their loved ones back in harm’s way.

Xi’s Schadenfreude Over Moscow’s Mutiny

In war, more things often go wrong than right. If that inconvenient truth was somehow lost on Chinese leader Xi Jinping more than 16 months into Russia’s planned two-day takeover of Ukraine, then last weekend’s rebellion and march toward Moscow by the Wagner Group surely set him straight. Indeed, while Xi often champions the ostensible novelty of the Chinese system, deep down he fears that China is afflicted by the very same ideological ills that once plagued the Soviet Union—and continue to curse its Russian remnants.

Exclusive: Wagner fighters neared Russian nuclear base during revolt

As rebellious Wagner forces drove north toward Moscow on June 24, a contingent of military vehicles diverted east on a highway in the direction of a fortified Russian army base that holds nuclear weapons, according to videos posted online and interviews with local residents.

Once the Wagner fighters reach more rural regions, the surveillance trail goes cold – about 100 km from the nuclear base, Voronezh-45. Reuters could not confirm what happened next, and Western officials have repeatedly said that Russia's nuclear stockpile was never in danger during the uprising, which ended quickly and mysteriously later that day.

But in an exclusive interview, Ukraine's head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said that the Wagner fighters went far further. He said that they reached the nuclear base and that their intention was to acquire small Soviet-era nuclear devices in order to "raise the stakes" in their mutiny. "Because if you are prepared to fight until the last man standing, this is one of the facilities that significantly raises the stakes," Budanov said.

The only barrier between the Wagner fighters and nuclear weapons, Budanov said, were the doors to the nuclear storage facility. "The doors of the storage were closed and they didn't get into the technical section," he said.

Reuters was not able to independently determine if Wagner fighters made it to Voronezh-45. Budanov did not provide evidence for his assertion and he declined to say what discussions, if any, had taken place with the United States and other allies about the incident. He also didn't say why the fighters subsequently withdrew.

A source close to the Kremlin with military ties corroborated parts of Budanov's account. A Wagner contingent "managed to get into a zone of special interest, as a result of which the Americans got agitated because nuclear munitions are stored there," this person said, without elaborating further.

A lot of talk about what may have happened to the Kerch Bridge, or some part of the Kerch Bridge. It has been pointed out that Russia and Crimea are quite close together and there are ferryboats, including a roll-on-roll-off boat. It has also been suggested that the rail bridge is still intact. So it might have mostly symbolic value for Ukraine.

China Tries to Gain U.S. Cooperation Over Upcoming Taiwan Elections

Taiwan’s coming presidential election loomed large in talks between senior Chinese officials and Antony Blinken during the U.S. secretary of state’s recent visit to Beijing, according to people briefed on the matter.

The people said Beijing tried to size up Washington’s interest in the race in self-ruled Taiwan, with Chinese officials sharing with Blinken their concerns over the presidential candidate of the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP.

Chinese officials indicated the political position of Vice President Lai Ching-te, considered by Beijing as a member of the “pro-independence” wing, could exacerbate tensions across the Taiwan Strait, further harming the relations between the U.S. and China, the people briefed on the matter said.

Lai hails from a DPP camp that is typically more aggressive about asserting Taiwan’s independence than President Tsai Ing-wen, who is barred by term limits from running again. Lai, who once described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence,” has moderated his position and, as a candidate, has promised to take a practical approach to China.

In apparent hopes of eliciting U.S. cooperation, the Chinese officials referred to how in 2003, then-President George W. Bush issued a warning to another Taiwan president and DPP leader, Chen Shui-bian, whose policies threatened the cross-strait status quo. With then-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao sitting next to him in the Oval Office, Bush bluntly cautioned the Taiwanese government against stoking pro-independence sentiment.

Russian Military Hit by Uncertainty as One General Is Killed and Another Remains Absent

One top commander has disappeared since a mutiny. Another was killed in an airstrike in Ukraine. And a third former commander was gunned down while out on a jog in what may have been an organized hit.

The ranks of the Russian military have continued to be roiled by instability in the days since a short-lived insurrection by Wagner mercenaries three weeks ago, as pressures from Moscow’s nearly 17-month war reverberate across the armed forces.

On Wednesday, mystery deepened over the fate of Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the country’s former top commander in Ukraine, who has been dubbed “General Armageddon” for his ruthless tactics, and who has not been seen since the Wagner rebellion.

One of the country’s top lawmakers said, when pressed by a reporter, that the general was “taking a rest.”

Donors Are War-Weary, So Ukrainian Soldiers Get Creative for Funds

“Most people are just tired of this war already,” said Ruslan Zubariev, a soldier from the 92nd Mechanized Brigade, who became a one-man fund-raiser after he used a helmet camera to film himself stopping a Russian advance nearly alone. “Civilians don’t realize that if they’re tired and stop donating, it doesn’t mean the war is over.”

What’s the latest out of the Robotnye front? I’ve seen rumors and hints about breakthroughs in the are, but nothing concrete.

Michael Kofman and co. performed a fact-finding mission to Zaporizhia over the past couple of weeks. They have released a podcast about the experience which viewers might appreciate. Featuring Dmitri Alperovitch, Rob Lee, and Michael Kofman.

https://geopolitics-decanted.simplecast.com/episodes/trip-report-what-i-learned-in-kyiv-and-conversation-with-mike-kofman-and-rob-lee-about-counteroffensive-and-wagner

How Wars End - Negotiations, Coercion & War Termination Theory

Perun publishes his best video yet in my opinion, covering war termination--the process by which nations decide to negotiate the end of a military conflict. A bit more technical than his usual fare, but massively informative and my go-to recommendation for this topic into the future.

Russia pulls out of Ukraine grain deal, in potential blow to global food supplies

Russia said Monday it was suspending its participation in a crucial deal that allowed the export of Ukrainian grain, once again raising fears over global food supplies and scuppering a rare diplomatic breakthrough to emerge from Moscow's war in Ukraine.

The agreement, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July 2022, was officially set to expire at 5 p.m. ET on Monday (midnight local time in Istanbul, Kyiv, and Moscow).

Cutting off the nose to spite the face.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unpacking-the-chinese-readouts-of-blinkens-meetings-in-beijing/

Yes, it's not strictly defense-related, but I found this analysis of Chinese press reports about Blinken's visit to America quite illuminating.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66106980

The MoD on Wednesday abandoned an effort to restrict any mention of Special Forces' involvement in alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.

The MoD's stance had been challenged by bereaved family members and by several media outlets, including the BBC.

The inquiry follows years of reporting into alleged SAS unlawful killings.

Taiwan’s Impossible Choice: Be Ukraine or Hong Kong

Great article laying out the debate and difficulties around preparing Taiwan for a possible Chinese attack. Also a great reminder that other countries are watching how this plays out to determine if democracy is really worth the price.

People in Taiwan have been following every twist of the war in Ukraine. But, while their sympathy for the Ukrainian cause is near-universal, the conclusions for the island’s own future widely diverge.

To some, the takeaway is that even a seemingly invincible foe can be defeated if a society stands firm, an inspiration for Taiwan’s own effort to resist a feared invasion by China. Others draw the opposite lesson from the images of smoldering Ukrainian cities. Anything is better than war, they say, and Taiwan should do all it can to avoid provoking Beijing’s wrath, even if that means painful compromises.

“I don’t think anybody rational could look at this and say dialogue is going to change Xi or the CCP,” said Vincent Chao, a former national-security official and Lai’s spokesman, referring to China’s Communist Party. “They see the subjugation of Taiwan as part of their national rejuvenation, as something inherently connected to their political legitimacy. It’s incumbent upon any candidate to be realistic about the situation.” Ukraine, he added, has given Taiwan a “brilliant lesson” in how to defend itself—and how to build coalitions with like-minded democracies.

The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine

A must read, apparently, since the people who wrote this tripe are apparently meeting with Lavrov for unofficial peace talks.