U.S. concerned about Ukraine strikes on Russian nuclear radar stations

Washington conveyed to Kyiv that attacks on Russian early-warning systems could be destabilizing.

By Ellen Nakashima and Isabelle Khurshudyan, May 29, 2024  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/29/us-ukraine-nuclear-warning-strikes/

The United States fears that recent Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian nuclear early–warning systems could dangerously unsettle Moscow at a time when the Biden administration is weighing whether to lift restrictions on Ukraine using U.S.-supplied weapons in cross-border attacks.

“The United States is concerned about Ukraine’s recent strikes against Russian ballistic missile early-warning sites,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on thecondition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

Washington has conveyed its concerns to Kyiv about two attempted attacks over the last week against radar stations that provide conventional air defense as well as warning of nuclear launches by the West. At least one strike in Armavir, in Russia’s southeastern Krasnodar region, appeared to have caused some damage.

“These sites have not been involved in supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine,” the U.S. official said. “But they are sensitive locations because Russia could perceive that its strategic deterrent capabilities are being targeted, which could undermine Russia’s ability to maintain nuclear deterrence against the United States.”

A Ukrainian official familiar with the matter, however, said that Russia has used the radar sites to monitor the Ukrainian military’s activities, particularly Kyiv’s use of aerial weaponry, such as drones and missiles. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter, confirmed that Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate, known by its initials as GUR, was responsible for the strikes.

Ukraine is facing a continuing threat to its existence from a Russian enemy force — which boasts the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — that has gained ground of late, in part due to its sophisticated radar and weapons-jamming technology, which has rendered virtually useless some U.S.-provided guided missiles and artillery shells. This capability has also enhanced Moscow’s ability to track British and U.S.-provided longer-range weaponry and drones, which have caused serious damage to Russia’s Black Sea fleet and military installations in Crimea, the southern peninsula illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014.

The Ukrainian official said the goal of the strikes was to diminish Russia’s ability to track the Ukrainian military’s activities in southern Ukraine. The drone that targeted the radar station near Orsk, in Russia’s Orenburg region along Kazakhstan’s northern border, traveled more than 1,100 miles, making it one of the deepest attempted strikes into Russian territory. The Ukrainian official declined to say whether the strike, on May 26, caused any damage.

U.S. officials said they are sympathetic to Ukraine’s plight — administration officials are actively weighing whether to lift restraints on the use of U.S.-provided weapons to strike inside Russia. But were Russia’s early-warning capabilities to be blinded by Ukrainian attacks, even in part, that could hurt strategic stability between Washington and Moscow, the U.S. official said.

The perception issue is likely fueled by “an erroneous conviction that Ukraine’s targeting is directed by Washington,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, security analyst and chairman of Silverado think tank. “But that means attacks by Kyiv on Russian nuclear deterrence infrastructure has potential to trigger a perilous escalation with the West. At the end of the day, nuclear command and control and early-warning sites should be off-limits.”

Some analysts were puzzled at the targets: While Krasnodar is close enough to Ukraine to track missiles and drones, the radar station near Orsk is focused on the Middle East and China, they said.

Asked why they would target a site so far away, the Ukrainian official asserted that Russia “switched all of its capabilities for war against Ukraine.”

Following Ukraine’s disappointing counteroffensive last year, Russia has regained the initiative on the battlefield in recent months, advancing in the eastern Donetsk region and recently launching a new assault in the northeastern Kharkiv region along the border. Kyiv, meanwhile, has with increasing frequency targeted sites deep in Russia — a capability many doubted was possible without Western support and sign-off.

About three weeks ago, shortly after Russia began its assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine asked the United States to ease long-standing restrictions on using U.S.-provided weapons to attack targets inside Russia. Some senior officials favor such a move, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has urged President Biden to agree to lift the restraints. The White House is considering such a proposal, but no action has been taken yet, officials say.

At a news conference Wednesday in Moldova, Blinken said the United States has “not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but Ukraine, as I’ve said before, has to make its own decisions about the best way to effectively defend itself.”

Blinken added that the United States has “adapted and adjusted” to changing conditions on the battlefield and that as Russia pursues new tactics of “aggression” and “escalation,” was “confident that we’ll continue to do that.”

There is no restriction on Ukraine using U.S.-supplied air defenses to shoot down Russian missiles or fighter jets over Russian territory “if they pose a threat to Ukraine,” the U.S. official said.

But U.S. officials have previously expressed concern to Ukrainian officials over Kyiv’s attacks on Russian soil, sometimes even intervening during the planning stage. Ahead of the one-year mark of the war, theGUR was planning attacks on Moscow, according to a leaked classified report from the U.S. National Security Agency that was later confirmed by two senior Ukrainian military officials.

Days before the attack, U.S. officials asked Kyiv to scrub their plans, fearing it could provoke an aggressive response from the Kremlin; the Ukrainians complied, according to the leaked U.S. documents and the senior Ukrainian officials.

In a more recent example, Washington took exception to Ukrainian drones targeting oil refineries inside Russia — a request that came directly from Vice President Harris to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference in February, according to officials familiar with the matter. U.S. officials believed the strikes would raise global energy prices and invite more aggressive Russian retaliation inside Ukraine.

Amid growing concern over Russia’s battlefield advances, Washington is facing pressure from NATO and several key European allies to allow Ukraine to use the full force and range of U.S.-provided weapons.

If you cannot attack the Russian forces on the other side of the front line because they are on the other side of the border, then of course you really reduce the ability of the Ukrainian forces to defend themselves,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s top political official, said during a visit to Bulgaria on Monday.

Khurshudyan reported from Kyiv. Siobhán O’Grady in Kyiv and Alex Horton in Washington contributed to this report.

May 31, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Endgame in Ukraine — War Without End, Amen

Even the mainstream press, loathe to report the setbacks the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have suffered, describes Russia’s northeast campaign, which began a few weeks ago, as a rout. The Kremlin says it has no interest in taking Kharkiv, and this so far appears to be the case.

the well-coordinated if not very artful American propaganda machine has begun preparing the public for a wider war that is to extend, as a matter of policy and military strategy, into Russian territory.

What happens when a powerful nation cannot afford to lose a war it has already lost?

By Patrick Lawrence, Special to Consortium News May 28, 2024

It is now two and a half years since Moscow sent two draft treaties, one to Washington, one to NATO in Brussels, as the proposed basis of talks toward a new security settlement — a renovation of relations between the trans–Atlantic alliance and the Russian Federation.

An urgently needed renovation, we must quickly add. And after that we must also quickly add the Biden regime’s rejection of Russia’s proposals as a “nonstarter” faster than you can say “deluded.”

Let us pause for a sec to bring to mind all those who have died in the war that erupted in Ukraine a year and a few months after Joe Biden refused, even mocked, Vladimir Putin’s honorable diplomatic demarche. All the maimed and displaced, all the towns and cities destroyed, all the farmland turned into moonscape.

And the all-but-complete peace accord, negotiated in Istanbul a few weeks into the war that the U.S. and Britain rushed to scuttle. And of course all the billions of dollars, somewhere north of $100 billion now, not spent on improving Americans’ lives but spent instead on arming a regime in Kiev that steals aid extravagantly while fielding an army with professed neo–Nazis.

It is useful to recall these things because they give context to a string of recent developments it’s important to understand, even if our corporate media discourage any such understanding.

If we keep recent history in mind, we will be able to see that the viscously irresponsible decisions of a couple of year ago, so wasteful of human life and common resources, are now repeated such that it is now certain the brutalities and waste will continue indefinitely even as their pointlessness is now way, way, way beyond denying.

The doorway opening on to this new sequence of events is the recent advance of the Russian military in Ukraine’s northeast. This new incursion now threatens Kharkiv, which is Ukraine’s second-largest city and lies a mere 25 miles from the Russian border.

Even the mainstream press, loathe to report the setbacks the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have suffered, describes Russia’s northeast campaign, which began a few weeks ago, as a rout. The Kremlin says it has no interest in taking Kharkiv, and this so far appears to be the case.

But the AFU’s rapid retreat bears a strong whiff of final defeat wafting in from not so far off in the distance. “Several Ukrainian combat brigades have not defected, or considered doing so,” Seymour Hersh, quoting his customary “I have been told” sources, reported in his newsletter last week, “but have made it known to their superiors that they will no longer participate in what would be a suicidal offensive against a better trained and better equipped Russian force.”

Brigades average 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers each and can run to 8,000 or even more. Hersh’s report suggests that a considerable number of Ukrainian troops, and maybe a very considerable number, are now effectively in mutiny against the AFU’s high command.

In evident response to Russia’s swift new incursion and the direction of the war altogether, the well-coordinated if not very artful American propaganda machine has begun preparing the public for a wider war that is to extend, as a matter of policy and military strategy, into Russian territory. This effort began with a New York Times interview with Volodymyr Zelensky, which was videoed and published in last Wednesday’s editions. A transcript of the interview is here.

This document is plainly intended to appeal to kale-consuming, Biden-supporting liberals who must be assured of the Ukrainian president’s just-like-us humanity and good judgment. He talked about his children and his dogs — there must be dogs in this sort of imagery — and how he reads fiction every night but is too tired to get very far.

But the core point, beyond the window dressing, was to insist that it is time to begin bombing Russian territory and that the Biden regime must reverse its prohibition of such operations.

A key passage:

“So my question is, what’s the problem? Why can’t we shoot them down? Is it defense? Yes. Is it an attack on Russia? No. Are you shooting down Russian planes and killing Russian pilots? No. So what’s the issue with involving NATO countries in the war? There is no such issue.

Shoot down what’s in the sky over Ukraine. And give us the weapons to use against Russian forces on the borders.”

Zelensky, a television actor we must not forget, has played this role on numerous occasions: Badger us for tanks, planes, long-range artillery, and missiles, the script written in Washington reads, and we will hesitate briefly before granting you your pressing needs as you defend democracy, the free world, and all those other “values” in the Cold War inventory.

Two days later, two, the Times reported exclusively that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, returning from “a sobering visit to Kyiv,” has of a sudden decided it is indeed time to broaden the war in the direction of a direct confrontation with Russia…………………………………………………………..

Let us all declare we feel unsafe as we realize what these people are talking about and what they are risking. Any allowance for expanded use of U.S.–made weapons against Russian targets, which will require American personnel on the ground in Ukraine, will unambiguously escalate the proxy war into a direct conflict between the U.S. and the Russian Federation.

Quagmire, anyone?

Reuters filed an impressive, equation-changing exclusive last week featuring unmistakably intentional leaks from the Kremlin signaling President Putin’s desire to stop the war in Ukraine and negotiate a ceasefire. Guy Faulconbridge and Andrw Osborn cited interviews with “five people who work with or have worked with Putin at a senior level in the political and business worlds.”

Time to sit up.

“Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin’s entourage,” the two correspondents reported, “said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s decision to rule out talks.”

They then quoted one of their sources, “a senior Russian source who has worked with Putin and has knowledge of top-level conversations in the Kremlin,” as asserting, “‘Putin can fight for as long as it takes, but Putin is also ready for a ceasefire—to freeze the war.’”

While Putin has sent such signals on numerous occasions over the course of the past decade of war, this is big, in my view. For one thing, it strongly indicates what the new Kharkiv campaign is all about. Moscow does not want to take Kharkiv, the Faulconbridge and Osborn reporting suggests: It wants to enter talks from the position of strength all sides in all conflicts seek in the pre-negotiation phase.

Some other details confirm what distinguishes this set of signals from the Kremlin from others sent previously…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Via his leaky confidants, who were almost certainly authorized, Putin proposes what amounts to an armistice. Both sides would stop shooting, and territorial dominion would remain as it is—not necessarily etched into the earth, but until both sides can negotiate on to another step toward a lasting settlement.

No, Kiev would not regain Crimea or the four republics that voted in September 2022 to rejoin Russia; and no, Russia would neither have demilitarized nor de–Nazified Ukraine, as it has many times stated as its aims……………………………………………………………………

The net response to the new Russian advances toward Kharkiv and the Kremlin’s artful leaks last week is to launch a new phase in a proxy war the West has already lost — a phase that also seems to have little chance of success, but holds more danger than any truly responsible statesman would ever risk.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s dapper spokesman, told Faulconbridge and Osborn the other day that Russia didn’t want “an eternal war,” a forever war in the American idiom. This is a good thing not to want.

Neither Biden nor Zelensky, on the other hand, wants this war to end: They cannot afford it for a variety of reasons. This is the reality. They are the main impediment to peace. They have painted the conflict as some kind of cosmic confrontation between good and evil, and in so doing they have also painted themselves into a corner.

But what happens when a powerful nation cannot lose a war it has already lost?  https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/28/patrick-lawrence-us-endgame-in-ukraine-war-without-end-amen/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=aed8d1d4-5275-4b05-9f51-750290521dba

May 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment