Source: https://euobserver.com/tickers/154626

The post NATO sees no signs of Russian troop withdrawal in Ukraine first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Meanwhile British intelligence says Russian troops in Ukraine are demoralized, short of equipment and refusing to carry out orders.

Mr Putin is also not being told about the full impact of sanctions on the Russian economy, the White House said.

The Kremlin has not yet commented on the assessments.

White House spokesperson Kate Bedingfield said the US had information that Mr. Putin “felt misled by the Russian military” and this had resulted in “persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership”.

“Putin’s war has been a strategic blunder that has left Russia weaker over the long term and increasingly isolated on the world stage,” she said.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby called the assessments “discomforting” because an uninformed Putin could result in a “less than faithful” effort at ending the conflict through peace negotiations.

“The other thing is, you don’t know how a leader like that is going to react to getting bad news,” he said.

Ukrainian forces have begun attempts to retake some areas from Russia, which on Tuesday said it would scale back operations around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv.

Jeremy Fleming, the head of the UK’s cyber-intelligence agency GCHQ, said the move added to indications Russia had “massively misjudged the situation” and had been forced to “significantly rethink”.

“We’ve seen Russian soldiers – short of weapons and morale – refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft,” Mr. Fleming said in a speech to the Australian National University in Canberra.

“And even though Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth, what’s going on and the extent of these misjudgments must be crystal clear to the regime.”

On the ground, US and Ukrainian officials say Russia is continuing to reposition forces away from Kyiv, probably as part of its effort to refocus on eastern regions.

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are due to restart online on 1 April, according to Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia.

In an online post cited by Reuters, Mr Arakhamia said Ukraine had proposed the leaders of both countries meet, but Russia declined, saying more work was needed on a draft treaty.

Mr. Zelensky meanwhile characterized the talks as “only words, no specifics yet”, following a similarly downbeat assessment from Russia.

Delegations from Moscow and Kyiv held three hours of discussions in Istanbul on Tuesday. Ukraine said it had proposed to become a neutral state in exchange for security guarantees.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60936117

The post Ukraine war: Putin being misled by fearful advisers, US says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“Unfortunately there’s a difference between what Russia says and what it does, and what we’re seeing is no meaningful pullback,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America.

The number of Russian troops ringing Ukraine’s borders on three sides has grown to 150,000, President Biden said Tuesday.

Commercial satellite imagery has shown their numbers swelling in recent weeks, including large deployments of attack aircraft to locations near Ukraine’s borders. In Belarus, to Ukraine’s north, some 30,000 of Russia’s troops are participating in joint military exercises.

Late last week, U.S. officials sharply escalated warnings about the situation in Ukraine, urging Americans to leave the country as soon as possible ahead of an invasion that White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said “may well happen soon.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials said that Russia’s military preparations for a full-scale invasion were complete and that an invasion was possible at any point this week.

That assessment has not changed, Blinken said Wednesday.

“President Putin’s put in place the capacity to act on very short notice. He can pull the trigger. He could pull it today, he could pull it tomorrow, he could pull it next week,” Blinken said.

Putin has consistently said that Russia does not intend to attack Ukraine. At a news conference Tuesday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin said that it is Russia’s intention to reach an agreement “by diplomatic means.”

Putin added that Russian military leaders had decided “to pull out part of the troops.”

But outside of Russia, officials said they would reserve judgment until seeing evidence of such a drawdown. “We’ve had other instances where they’ve made similar claims, and, in fact, the facts on the ground have proven otherwise,” Julie Smith, the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, said Wednesday.

NATO sees no signs of Russian withdrawal
NATO, the defense alliance that has long drawn ire from Russia, has come to similar conclusions as U.S. officials.

“So far, we do not see any sign of de-escalation on the ground. No withdrawals of troops or equipment,” said Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday. “What we see today is that Russia maintains a massive invasion force ready to attack.”

NATO is considering establishing new battlegroups in central and Eastern Europe, Stoltenberg said. The alliance has had a greater presence in Eastern Europe since Russia’s invasion of Crimea — including battlegroups stationed in each of the three Baltic states and Poland. The U.S. oversees the group based in Poland.

Stoltenberg did not say exactly where new battlegroups would be based, but one likely setting is Romania, which borders western Ukraine. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is participating in the meetings this week.

The window for diplomacy may still be open
With Russia indicating it remains open to a diplomatic way out of the crisis, the frenzied pace of efforts by the West have not slowed. Scholz’s visits to Moscow and Kyiv this week follow a similar tour by French President Emmanuel Macron last week. In recent days, Biden has spoken by phone with Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Macron and Scholz.

Although the Kremlin has cast Western warnings of an invasion as “hysteria,” Putin also says that his most important demands — which include barring Ukraine from joining NATO and the withdrawal of NATO troops from Eastern Europe — have been ignored.

On Tuesday, Biden repeated that the U.S. will not “sacrifice basic principles” of Ukraine’s right to territorial integrity and freedom to “choose with whom they will associate” — namely, NATO.

But Biden added that the U.S. had proposed a set of measures covering arms control, transparency and strategic stability. “As long as there is hope of a diplomatic resolution that prevents the use of force and avoids the incredible human suffering that would follow, we will pursue it,” he said.

Additional reporting by Teri Schultz in Brussels.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/16/1081276661/russian-troops-ukraine-nato

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—Monday’s meeting in Moscow is extremely important for the French president, who has been pushing for a more independent European Union in terms of defense.

—Tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine have ramped up significantly in recent weeks.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron heads to Russia on Monday with one aim on his mind: Receiving assurances from Moscow that it will start to de-escalate tensions on the Ukrainian border.

“We will discuss the terms to de-escalate,” Macron told the French publication Le Journal du Dimanche ahead of his trip to Russia.

“One has to be realistic. We will not achieve unilateral gestures, but it is indispensable to avoid a degradation of the situation before we build mechanisms and gestures of reciprocal trust,” Macron added, according to a CNBC translation.

Tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine have ramped up significantly in recent weeks. The U.S., Germany, France and other NATO nations have raised concerns about Russian troop buildup on the border with Ukraine; while the Kremlin has denied claims that it is looking to invade its neighbor.

Moscow has sharply criticized NATO deployments in Eastern Europe in recent years and China has backed Russia, saying last week that it opposes further enlargement of the military alliance. The U.S. has already refused to concede to Moscow’s demands over Ukraine and NATO.

European leadership
Monday’s meeting in Moscow is extremely important for the French president, who has been pushing for a more independent European Union in terms of defense, while he also faces elections in April when his current tenure ends.

“I have always had a deep dialogue with President Putin and it is our responsibility to build historic solutions. There is, I think, an openness from President Putin to achieve this,” Macron told Le Journal du Dimanche.

The EU, which brings together 27 nations, does not have a common military capacity — instead it relies on NATO for defense matters, where the United States play a fundamental role in decision-making.

In this context, Macron has for several years looked at developing Europe’s strategic military autonomy. But this has become an even bigger issue for Macron as France is in charge of the EU’s rotating presidency until June.

“Paris wants to prioritize a European engagement strategy with Moscow — instead of a US-led one anchored in NATO,” analysts at consultancy firm Eurasia Group said in a research note in late January.

“France’s president also wants to show European leadership — instead of kowtowing to the US — as he campaigns for re-election,” the analysts also said.

Berlin void?
Macron is still yet to announce that he is running for a second mandate in April’s election, but opinion polls suggest he’ll win the vote and continue at the helm of the French presidency for another five years. However, further Russian aggression in Ukraine may hurt his potential reelection campaign.

At the same time, Macron is also looking to fill some of the void left by Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of Germany, who finished 16 years in power in late 2021. Merkel had relatively close ties with the Kremlin, aided by her fluency in Russian.

After a change in government in Berlin last year, Germany has yet to find its footing when it comes to its relationship with Russia.

“The world is becoming more and more dangerous and Germany as the biggest European country and the strongest economic power cannot allow itself to stay neutral,” Andrij Melnyk, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach Monday.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/france-macron-flies-to-meet-putin-in-risky-bid-to-avert-war.html

The post France’s Macron flies to meet Putin in risky bid to avert war first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Tensions have soared in recent weeks, as the United States and its NATO allies expressed concern that a buildup of about 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine signaled that Moscow planned to invade its ex-Soviet neighbor. Russia denies having any such designs — and has laid out a series of demands it says will improve security in Europe.

But as expected, the U.S. and the Western alliance firmly rejected any concessions on Moscow’s main points Wednesday, refusing to permanently ban Ukraine from joining NATO and saying allied deployments of troops and military equipment in Eastern Europe are nonnegotiable.

The U.S. did outline areas in which some of Russia’s concerns might be addressed, possibly offering a path to de-escalation. But, as it has done repeatedly for the past several weeks, Washington also warned Moscow of devastating sanctions if it invades Ukraine. In addition to penalties targeting Russian people and key economic sectors, several senior U.S. officials said Thursday with certainty that Germany would not allow a newly constructed gas pipeline to begin operations in the event of an incursion.

All eyes are now on President Vladimir Putin, who will decide how Russia will respond amid fears that Europe could again be plunged into war.

In the meantime, U.S. President Joe Biden spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodmyr Zelenskyy on Thursday to reiterate American and allied support, including recent deliveries of U.S. military aid.

“Had a long phone conversation with POTUS,” Zelenskyy tweeted. “Discussed recent diplomatic efforts on de-escalation and agreed on joint actions for the future. Thanked President Joe Biden for the ongoing military assistance. Possibilities for financial support to Ukraine were also discussed.”

The White House said in a statement that Biden told Zelenskyy he was “exploring additional macroeconomic support to help Ukraine’s economy” as it comes under pressure as a result of Russia’s military buildup.

Meanwhile, the United States announced that the U.N. Security Council will hold an open meeting Monday on what U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called Russia’s “threatening behavior.” She said the deployment of more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s border and other destabilizing acts pose “a clear threat to international peace and security and the U.N. Charter.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters earlier that the response from the U.S. — and a similar one from NATO — left “little ground for optimism.” But he added that “there always are prospects for continuing a dialogue, it’s in the interests of both us and the Americans.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was circumspect when asked whether the Biden administration saw a sliver of hope in that the Russians said they would keep communications open even as they said that they lacked optimism..

“We don’t know if the Russians are playing games on diplomacy. We hope not,” Psaki said.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the U.S. response contained some elements that could lead to “the start of a serious talk on secondary issues,” but emphasized that “the document contains no positive response on the main issue.” Those are Moscow’s demands that NATO not expand and that the alliance refrain from deploying weapons that might threaten Russia.

Lavrov said top officials will submit proposals to Putin. Peskov said the Russian reaction would come soon.

The evasive official comments reflect the fact that it is Putin who will single-handedly determine Russia’s next moves. He has warned of unspecified “military-technical measures” if the West refuses to heed the demands.

Peskov added that Putin and Biden will decide whether they need to have another conversation following two calls last month.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Kyiv had seen the U.S. response before it was delivered to Russia and had no objections. He tweeted it was “important that the U.S. remains in close contact with Ukraine before and after all contacts with Russia.”

On a visit to Denmark, Kuleba emphasized his country’s need to strengthen its defenses.

“This crisis is a moment of truth, and this is why we speak about weapons,” he said. “This is why we speak about economic sanctions. This is why we speak about the consolidated position of all of us, so that President Putin sees that there are no weak links in our defensive chain.”

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said during a parliamentary debate on Ukraine that her government is closely coordinating its policy with allies, considering a range of options that could include the new Nord Stream 2 Russian gas pipeline to Germany.

While the diplomacy sputters on, so too do maneuvers that have escalated tensions. Russia has launched a series of military drills involving motorized infantry and artillery units in southwestern Russia, warplanes in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, dozens of warships in the Black Sea and the Arctic, and Russian fighter jets and paratroopers in Belarus.

NATO said it was bolstering its deterrence in the Baltic Sea region, and the U.S. ordered 8,500 troops on higher alert for potential deployment to Europe.

As war fears mounted, thousands of Ukrainians expressed their resolve to stand up to the Russian pressure under the hashtag #UkrainiansWillResist on Twitter and Facebook.

“No one will force Ukrainians to accept the Kremlin ultimatum,” wrote Andrii Levus, who initiated the campaign.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry has organized training on acting in emergency situations, with an emphasis on dealing with explosives.

Beyond concerns about a possible Russian offensive in Ukraine, there also has been speculation that Moscow’s response could include military deployments to the Western Hemisphere.

While a senior Russian diplomat recently refused to rule out such deployments to Cuba and Venezuela, a top Putin associate expressed skepticism Thursday at that prospect.

“Cuba and Venezuela are aiming to come out of isolation and restore normal relations with the U.S. to a certain extent, so there can’t be any talk about setting up a base there as happened during the Soviet times,” Dmitry Medvedev, a deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, told Russian media.

While he charged that the West is using Ukraine as a way to contain Russia, he somberly acknowledged that a Russia-NATO conflict “would be the most dramatic and simply catastrophic scenario, and I hope it will never happen.”

While concerns about a possible Russian attack linger, a separatist conflict simmers in Ukraine. Following the 2014 ouster of a Kremlin-friendly president in Kyiv, Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and backed an insurgency in the country’s eastern industrial heartland. Fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed rebels has killed over 14,000 people, and efforts to reach a settlement have stalled.

Since the conflict began, Russia has been accused of sending troops and weapons to the separatists, something it has denied. On Thursday, Peskov wouldn’t comment on a proposal from the Kremlin’s main political party, United Russia, which suggested that Moscow respond to the delivery of Western weapons to Ukraine by sending arms to the rebels. He added that Putin is aware of the proposal but had no immediate reaction.

Envoys from Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany met in Paris on Wednesday to discuss ways to resolve that conflict, reaching no visible progress but agreeing to hold another meeting in two weeks. Zelenskyy praised the talks as “constructive” and urged a quick meeting of the four countries’ leaders.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/27/1076267324/russia-sees-little-ground-for-optimism-in-the-u-s-s-response-on-ukraine-crisis

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The Russian government has expressed anger at NATO efforts to supply Ukraine’s military with modern, high-tech weapons, arguing that those weapons would be used to provoke a conflict with Moscow.

The outcry comes during a period of heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Since its Euromaidan revolution in 2013–2014, Ukraine has pursued a pro-European Union foreign policy, drifting away from Russian orbit and signing cooperation agreements with the EU and with NATO. Russia has antagonized Ukraine by annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and aiding pro-Russian separatist militias in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region for the past seven years.

In recent months, more than ninety thousand Russian troops have congregated near the Ukrainian border, raising fears of an open invasion—and preceding U.S. sales of lethal military equipment to Kiev, most prominently including Javelin anti-tank missiles, which was first allowed under the administration of President Donald Trump. The controversy surrounding the release of lethal military aid to Kiev, which Trump allegedly attempted to connect to political prosecution of then-former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, led to Trump’s first impeachment and ultimately his acquittal in a high-profile Senate trial.

The number of provocations that Ukraine was launching against Russia “is growing and growing significantly,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said on Monday. “These provocations are being carried out with weapons being supplied by NATO countries—and we are observing this with great alarm.”

Moscow has argued that, instead of simply accepting the weapons, Ukraine used them in provocations along the Ukrainian-Russian border, attempting to incite a wider military conflict at the behest of the United States. Kiev has denied doing this, insisting that existing provocations have only come from the Russian side and further military purchases help to ensure its independence.

Western nations supplying arms to the Ukrainian government, including the United States and the United Kingdom, offered no comment.

For its part, Russia has publicly denied intending to invade Ukraine. Peskov indicated on Monday that Russian troops had not increased on the Ukrainian border, claiming that such accusations represented “hysteria,” and implied that the United States was attempting to “whip up” anti-Russian sentiment by making them.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-cries-foul-nato-arms-ukraine%C2%A0-196990

The post Russia Cries Foul as NATO Arms Ukraine first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“The crews of the Fleet’s Guards Order of Nakhimov Missile Cruiser Flagship Varyag and the Admiral Tributs large anti-submarine warship held planned drills in the Sea of Japan, where air defense launches of the [S-300 Fort], [3K95 Klinok] and [9K33 Osa] anti-aircraft missile systems against high-speed flying targets as part of the final inspection for the summer training period were carried out,” the Russian fleet said in a statement shared with Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.

The Russian fleet conducted a total of 10 missile launches on Monday, according to TASS.

While Russia characterized the military actions near Russia as part of its regular training routine, the drills comes just days after the new Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida took office. Russia and Japan have no open hostilities but have disputed control over the Kuril Islands, a series of islands directly to Japan’s north, for decades.

Japan controlled parts of the Kuril Island chain until Soviet Russia seized control of the islands at the end of World War II and they have been under Russian administration ever since. Russia and Japan never signed a peace treaty after World War II and, according to TASS, one of the main obstacles to such a peace treaty has been the dispute over ownership of the Kuril islands

On Tuesday, the day after the Russian missile drills, Kishida said Japan’s sovereignty extends to southern Kuril islands.

“The sovereignty of our country extends to the Northern Territories,” Kishida said, according to ANI News, referring to the Japanese term for the islands. “It is necessary to resolve the issue of territories, not leaving it to the next generations.”

Kishida also said Japan is determined to resolve the territorial dispute and reach an overall formal peace agreement.

Russian officials have responded to Kishida’s remarks, calling them a falsification of history.

“Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s populist statements are geared not only to gain authority in his own country but also to cater to the US authorities who are always glad when someone criticizes or is seeking to ‘bite’ Russia on the international arena,” Viktor Bondarev, chairman of the defense and security committee of Russia’s Federation Council told TASS. “The Japanese prime minister’s words about the sovereignty of the Southern Kuril Islands cannot change the existing status-quo. Such pronouncements should be interpreted as a falsification of history, as these territories came over to the winning side. The results of the Second World War are no subject for discussion or revision.”

Source: https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/10/video-russian-warships-launch-missiles-off-japans-coast/

The post Video: Russian warships launch missiles off Japan’s coast first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: The Warsaw Pact plan makes clear two things. First, in a surprise attack, the most important forces are the ground forces. The quicker they can advance, the sooner they can overrun NATO—and that includes airbases and naval facilities. The faster they can force West Germany to surrender, the sooner the rest of NATO runs out of reasons to continue fighting—and the specter of all-out nuclear war recedes.

Last month in the National Interest we discussed NATO’s plan for World War III in Europe. The scenario, set in the late 1980s, assumed that the forces of the Soviet Union and the rest of the Warsaw Pact—namely East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary—steamrollered West Germany to defeat NATO. The plan assumed the western alliance would defend as far forward as possible while avoiding the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

But what about the Warsaw Pact? After the Cold War ended, the Polish government made public classified Soviet documents that revealed the likely war plan. The plan, known as “Seven Days to the Rhine,” was the basis of 1979 military exercise that assumed NATO as the aggressor, having nuked a series of twenty-five targets in Poland, including Warsaw and the port of Gdansk. The cover story of countering aggression was a mere fig leaf for the true nature of the anticipated conflict: a bolt-from-the-blue Soviet attack against NATO.

(This first appeared in 2016.)

By the 1980s NATO had shifted to a “Flexible Response” nuclear doctrine: the alliance was prepared to use nuclear weapons but would seek to win the war conventionally. This is in stark contrast to the Warsaw Pact, which saw their use as inevitable and planned to use them from the outset. Such early would confer the pact an enormous strategic advantage over NATO.

In “Seven Days to the Rhine,” Soviet nuclear forces would destroy Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, and the West German capital of Bonn. NATO headquarters in Brussels would be annihilated, as would the Belgian port of Antwerp. The Dutch capital and port of Amsterdam would also be destroyed. Denmark would suffer two nuclear strikes.

The result would be a headless NATO and the destruction or demoralization of civilian governments in West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark—precisely the countries likely to be occupied at the end of the seven days. The elimination of the port cities of Hamburg, Antwerp, and Amsterdam would severely curtail NATO’s ability to flow reinforcements from the United Kingdom and North America.

Curiously, France and the United Kingdom were to be spared nuclear strikes. This is probably because both had independent nuclear arsenals not tied to the United States. The United States might have hesitated to retaliate for fear of escalating to strategic nuclear warfare, but for France and the UK the European atomic battlefield was much closer and the dividing line between tactical and strategic not so clear-cut. The Soviet leadership probably had no intention of continuing war with either one on the eighth day.

After the Warsaw Pact had launched nuclear strikes, conventional forces would be sent in to conquer. Seven Days to the Rhine assumed a radioactive zone that used to be called Poland, dividing the Soviet Union from its forces in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Those forces, along with their East German, Czechoslovak, and Hungarian counterparts, would need to suffice to carry out the attack. While Polish forces were theoretically available, by 1979 the Soviets would have reason to suspect their political reliability.

As a result, total forces committed would be roughly the same number of forces the pact would have in a no-notice attack on NATO. Planning with the assumption of a radioactive curtain severing forward pact forces from the Soviet Union itself is also a reasonable model for assuming a quick war without a prewar buildup of ammunition and fuel from the Soviet Union.

Leading the spearhead aimed at the heart of NATO would be the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. The GSFG was comprised of five armies, each with three or four tank and motor-rifle (mechanized infantry) divisions.

In the North, the Soviet and East German attack force would consist of the Soviet Second Guards Tank Army, Twentieth Guards Army, and Third Shock Army, consisting of seven tank divisions and five motor rifle divisions. East Germany’s National People’s Army, considered the best of the non-Soviet pact forces, would contribute two tank and four mechanized-infantry divisions.

This combined northern force of eighteen combat divisions, plus artillery, air assault, and special forces, would smash into the combined Danish, Dutch, West German, British, and Belgian forces facing them. The battle would take place on the so-called North German Plain, a stretch of relatively flat, rolling country from the inner German border to the Low Countries. This was considered the quickest, most direct way to knock out the largest number of NATO countries.

Somewhere in the endless stream of combat vehicles headed west would be what was known as the Operational Maneuver Group, or OMG. Anywhere from two brigades to two divisions large, the OMG would be held in reserve until a breakthrough was achieved. Once committed, the OMG would lunge deep behind enemy lines, cutting off NATO forces as it did so.

In southern Germany, the spearhead would be the Soviet Eighth Guards Army and the First Guards Tank Army, totaling three tank divisions and three motor rifle divisions. The Soviet Central Group of Forces, based in Czechoslovakia, would add two tank and three motor rifle divisions; the Czechoslovak People’s Army would also add three tank and five motor rifle divisions. Czechoslovak forces were formidable in theory, but the Soviets likely still considered them politically suspect twenty years after the Prague Spring of 1968.

This southern force of nineteen divisions would enjoy the shortest route to the Rhine River, only 120 miles as the crow flies, but faced serious military and geographical obstacles. The ten West German and American divisions facing them were among the best-equipped in NATO, and the correlation of forces, to use a Soviet Army phrase, did not favor the attacker. The terrain was a mixture of hills, mountains, and connecting valleys, all of which strongly favored the defender.

In the meantime, Soviet airborne and air assault forces would fan out and occupy key bridges, particularly over the Weser and Rhine Rivers. Seizing river crossings would be essential for maintaining the momentum of the ground offensive. Airfields, military headquarters, and known alternate seats of government would also be targets. Soviet spetsnaz special forces would also target NATO tactical nuclear weapons, seeking to neutralize Pershing II, Ground Launched Cruise Missiles, and nuclear gravity bombs before they could be used.

At sea, the Soviet Navy would immediately go on the offensive. The Soviet Navy would, like the German Navy before it, try to sever the naval supply line from North America to Europe. The Soviet Navy would also immediately try to destroy American aircraft carriers, which with their airborne nuclear weapons were a wild card, capable of delivering nuclear strikes against a variety of targets over vast ranges.

The most important goal of the Soviet Navy would be to safeguard its ballistic missile submarines hiding in the Barents Sea bastion. Whether or not Moscow won or lost in the conventional realm, this would preserve a second-strike strategic capability against the United States. If the Americans were successful in wiping out Soviet boomers, that could embolden them to launch a nuclear first strike.

Warsaw Pact aviation was to be very busy. Assuming a short seven-day war, there would not be time to execute a proper air-defense suppression campaign. Much of NATO’s leadership would have been killed during the nuclear attacks, and as a result, NATO air defenses would be disorganized. Pact air forces might simply press on without attempting to destroy NATO air defenses.

Assuming a no-notice war, most combat missions would be preplanned counter-air missions and airstrikes against known airfields, army bases, and NATO ground positions. Prepositioned stocks of U.S. Army equipment in Germany and the Netherlands would be particularly vulnerable, allowing the pact to knock out entire divisions without fighting them.

The Warsaw Pact plan makes clear two things. First, in a surprise attack, the most important forces are the ground forces. The quicker they can advance, the sooner they can overrun NATO—and that includes airbases and naval facilities. The faster they can force West Germany to surrender, the sooner the rest of NATO runs out of reasons to continue fighting—and the specter of all-out nuclear war recedes.

Second, NATO would have lost the war. NATO’s assumption that the war would gradually escalate to nuclear weapons would have been fatal against an adversary that planned to use them on Day One. The use of nukes in Western Europe would devolve the decision to employ them away from NATO as a collective body to heads of the United States, France, and the UK. All three would be forced to use battlefield nukes to save their troops—and risk escalation that would devastate their homelands—or walk away from the rest of NATO.

While the World War III scenario in Europe was always unlikely, it was also the most dangerous. We now know that, instead of an escalation to nuclear war being a possibility, it was virtually guaranteed. The only question would have been to what extent—and whether or not human civilization would have survived it.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.

This article was published earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Flickr

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/recipe-world-war-iii-russia-plan-crush-nato-and-possibly-end-world-186507

The post A Recipe for World War III: Russia Plan to Crush NATO And Possibly End the World first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

An eight-hour crash course conducted exclusively in Ukrainian teaches them methods to staunch blood flow, deal with shrapnel wounds, and administer emergency assistance to heart-attack victims. The participants — yoga teachers, gym trainers, lawyers, policemen — come from various walks of life.

“We don’t want war,” Kateryna Sukhomlynova, the 42-year-old instructor and longtime volunteer for the Ukrainian armed forces, said during a coffee break between classes last week. “But we want to be ready if war comes.”

First-aid instructor Kateryna Sukhomlynova (right): “We want to be ready if war comes.”

The prospect of an invasion, unimaginable for most Europeans, has for the past seven years hung like a specter over this industrial port city located just 100 kilometers from Russian territory.

Amid increasingly strained ties between Moscow and the West, a massive buildup of Russian troops along the border last month fueled fears of a military offensive, as well as speculation that the Kremlin was simply sending a signal of strength to Kyiv and its backers in the new administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

Russia, which said the troops had gathered for military exercises, announced in late April that many units participating in the maneuvers had been ordered to return to their permanent bases. However, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said troops would remain “in a state of readiness for an immediate response” in connection with perceived threats from long-scheduled NATO exercises in Eastern Europe.

But in Mariupol, a city well used to rumors of invasions and war, many seem inured to headlines announcing new negotiations or prophesying a fresh escalation. “Everyone’s just tired,” says Pavel Kovbasenko, a 23-year-old who works at the blast furnace plant of Azovstal, one of two steel factories that power the city’s economy.

Signs throughout Mariupol indicate entrances to the bomb shelters that still dot the eastern Ukrainian city.

That’s because the tension has rarely subsided since separatists in nearby Donetsk, capital of the surrounding Donetsk region of which Mariupol is the second-largest city, took up arms in April 2014, with Moscow’s backing. Mariupol found itself in deadly proximity to a conflict that rapidly spiraled out of control in large areas of the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk regions, and prompted concerns that Russia might seize swathes of Ukraine’s southeast to gain control of the Azov Sea and land access to the Crimean Peninsula it seized from Ukraine that March.

A shaky cease-fire declared in September 2014 raised hopes of an end to the fighting. Then, in early 2015, a massive salvo of Soviet-made Grad rockets rained down on Mariupol’s eastern district, killing 27 people, wounding 97 others, and decimating a crowded open-air market. Ukraine accused the separatists of launching the attack with weapons supplied from Russia; the Kremlin has denied any involvement in a war that has now claimed some 14,000 lives and uprooted millions more.

Central Mariupol on a recent afternoon

The feared invasion of Mariupol never came to pass, and on the surface, the artillery strike seems a distant memory. The end of Ukraine’s long coronavirus lockdown in early May brought crowds to the city’s newly redesigned park and packed its bars and cafes with patrons. There are the usual gripes over corruption, stagnant wages, and the slow pace of reform since the Maidan revolution overthrew the pro-Russia government of President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. But talk of Russia’s latest saber-rattling was nothing new.

“We’ve heard it all many times. We’re used to it,” Diana Berg, a graphic designer who left her native Donetsk when fighting erupted in April 2014, said in an interview outside a cafe overlooking Mariupol’s bustling Prospekt Mira (Peace Avenue). “Yes, it’s quiet now, but we know that can change at any moment. Everyone here has a suitcase packed.”

Away from the city center in Mariupol’s eastern district, however, the muffled sounds of explosions can often be heard in the evenings, a deadly orchestra that resumes once international monitoring teams have left frontline towns.

In Shyrokyne, an abandoned former resort east of Mariupol that sits just a kilometer from the front line, Ukrainian Army volunteer Oleh Horbenko operates a fleet of drones that surveil enemy positions. He analyses the data on a large screen in his makeshift office in a house vacated by fleeing civilians in 2015.

Oleh Horbenko, a Ukrainian Army volunteer: “You can’t win this war by military means.”

An ex-soldier who retired in 2016 because he had passed the age limit for active-duty officers, the 60-year-old Horbenko believes Russia’s recent troop buildup was aimed at facilitating a vast transfer of military equipment near insurgent positions.

“They may have withdrawn the troops, but the equipment remained,” he said, echoing an assessment backed by some Western analysts.

Horbenko’s wife and two sons, aged 17 and 21 live in Dnipro, a city four hours’ drive north that he visits during lulls in the fighting. He used to take orders from Moscow while fighting for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; now he fights on the side of an independent Ukraine, against an enemy that Moscow backs. A Russian-speaker like most residents of Mariupol, he disapproves of Ukrainian nationalism. But he believes harsh Western sanctions against Russia are the only way to end the violence.

“You can’t win this war by military means. Russia understands that a full-scale assault on Ukraine will be a Pyrrhic victory,” he says.

The Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol’s eastern district, where the muffled sounds of gunfire can be heard on some evenings

Horbenko’s 80-year-old mother, who lives in Russia, used to visit each summer and stay in his dacha outside Dnipro. But her support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom many Ukrainians hold ultimately responsible for the war, means mother and son avoid discussing politics. She has not visited since 2014.

“She tells me, ‘When you finally stop your war and retire to the dacha, I’ll come to see you,'” he says. “I always respond, ‘OK, maybe when you get rid of Putin.'”

Mariupol

Berg, the graphic designer, fled Donetsk in May 2014 after a pro-Ukrainian rally she organized was attacked by pro-Russian thugs. She traveled to the Black Sea port of Odesa, expecting to return home after a week. Instead, she ended up spending months at a time at several Ukrainian cities before finally settling in Mariupol — a place she chose so that she can be among the first people to return to a Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk.

But if that happens in her lifetime — and Berg is not convinced it will — she warns that the task of rebuilding and assimilating Donetsk, Luhansk, and other parts of separatist-held eastern Ukraine may be an insurmountable challenge.

“Everyone talks about the war. No one considers what will happen after,” she says, noting that residents of separatist areas have spent years living in a pro-Russian information space. “Once the fighting ends, and the political talks begin, those people will have to be integrated. And that’s when the real shit show will begin.”

Matthew Luxmoore

The post After Seven Years Of Conflict, Ukraine’s Frontline City Of Mariupol Is ‘Just Tired’ Of The Fighting first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Despite Moscow’s statement, about 80 000 Russian military men are still left on the border with Ukraine, The New York Times writes, referring to a high-ranking official in the Pentagon, UATV informs.

According to the newspaper, Russia has withdrawn only a few thousand troops, and a large number is still at the border. Many units have left their trucks and armored vehicles, which is a signal that they can return.

At the same time, US military officials are unsure about Putin’s missions.

According to UATV, last month the Russian Federation accumulated over 150 000 soldiers along the Ukrainian borders. Then the whole world was worried about the possibility of a full-scale invasion to Ukraine.

On April 23, Russia began to withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian border and from the occupied Crimea to the points of permanent deployment.

The post 80 000 Russian military men still remain along the border with Ukraine, – media first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.