Tag: Carnegie Endowment for international Peace

The Latest on Colby’s Strategy of Denial

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

There’s little in Elbridge A. Colby’s past to suggest that President Trump’s most loyal and fierce allies would embrace him.

Mr. Colby, 45, has deep roots in the foreign policy establishment that Mr. Trump is trying to destroy. He is the grandson of the former C.I.A. director William Colby; a product of Groton, Harvard and Yale Law School; someone who has spent much of his career working across party lines on some of the most complex national security issues: nuclear weapons strategy, China’s military buildup, the commercialization of space.

A Pentagon Nomination Fight Reveals the New Rules of Trump’s Washington

Related:

US Army War College: Adapting US Defense Strategy to Great-Power Competition

USNI: A Forward Denial Defense: Inside the First Island Chain

Colby-Pottinger document

Fico sees coup plot behind protests, but Slovaks take to the streets anyway

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Fico sees coup plot behind protests, but Slovaks take to the streets anyway

Prime Minister Robert Fico keeps claiming that Slovakia is facing an orchestrated attempt to destabilise his government, alleging that opposition-linked NGOs are plotting a “Slovak Maidan” as part of a broader, foreign-backed strategy. Citing a secret service (SIS) report he described as evidence-based, Fico issued a stark warning during a press conference on Wednesday, following a cabinet meeting.

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Chinese Military Might vs Washington’s Asymmetrical Tools of Empire

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
YouTube

China continues to strengthen its military capabilities, combining rapid growth in conventional power with readiness to counter U.S. asymmetrical strategies.

Chinese Military Might vs Washington’s Asymmetrical Tools of Empire (archived)

Previously:

US proxy groups capture Rakhine State in Myanmar

US Greenland-Panama Ambitions Aimed at War with Russia-China

Hot spots where war may break out or escalate in 2025: Balochistan

The Battle of Pokrovsk Begins

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Weeb Union

Ukraine War Map Looks ‘Grim’ for Zelensky as Russian Offensive Accelerates

Russia’s offensive has concentrated around the Donetsk logistics hub of Pokrovsk as well as Kurakhove. Moscow captured Vuhledar in October and advanced quickly to Velyka Novosilka.

“The Ukrainians have had issues in stabilizing the front here for a long time, and in November, the pace of Russian advance there only quickened even from September and October,” Kastehelmi told Newsweek.

Previously:

Russia’s Swift March Forward in Donbass [Pokrovsk is the prize]

Ukraine Faces a Double Threat if Russia Takes Pokrovsk

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Ukraine Faces a Double Threat if Russia Takes Pokrovsk

Pokrovsk, a once-vibrant city of 80,000 people, is the object of a Russian encircling move that began in July and is creeping within miles of the city as every day passes. The city has served as a key logistics and transportation hub for Ukrainian military operations in eastern Ukraine and is the gateway to conquering the rest of Donetsk Oblast-and potentially on to even bigger prizes such as Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city before the war.

But Pokrovsk’s fall could have an even more insidious impact on Ukraine’s ability to keep fighting: The city is the source of most of the coal used for the country’s steel and iron industry, once the backbone of the Ukrainian economy and still its second-largest sector, though production has fallen to less than one-third of its pre-war levels. That metallurgical coal is needed to produce pig iron, which is what feeds the majority of Ukraine’s old steel furnaces and a significant chunk of its industrial exports. A healthy steel industry also pays a big share of Ukraine’s tax take, helping fund an economy that operates hand-to-mouth these days.

“Without steel plants, the Ukrainian economy will die. It is a very, very important part of the economy,” said Stanislav Zinchenko, chief executive of GMK Center, an Ukraine-based industrial consultancy.

Poorly trained recruits contribute to loss of Ukrainian territory on eastern front + The US Is Sending $125 Million in New Military Aid to Ukraine

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Some new Ukrainian soldiers refuse to fire at the enemy. Others, according to commanders and fellow fighters, struggle to assemble weapons or to coordinate basic combat movements. A few have even walked away from their posts, abandoning the battlefield altogether.

While Ukraine presses on with its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, its troops are still losing precious ground along the country’s eastern front — a grim erosion that military commanders blame in part on poorly trained recruits drawn from a recent mobilization drive, as well as Russia’s clear superiority in ammunition and air power.

Poorly trained recruits contribute to loss of Ukrainian territory on eastern front, commanders say

Related:

Reuters: Russia and Ukraine report gains as some Ukrainians flee strategic city

But although the incursion is an embarrassment for Russia, Moscow’s forces have continued their gradual advances of the past few months against tired Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine worn down by 2-1/2 years of heavy fighting.

Moscow said its troops had taken control of the village of Mezhove in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, and that they had beaten back an attempt by a Ukrainian force to infiltrate its border in a different region to Kyiv’s Aug. 6 incursion.

Ukrainian authorities say Russian troops are now just 10 km (six miles) outside Pokrovsk, an important transport hub in eastern Ukraine, and this week started evacuating elderly residents and children.

…

Moscow’s capture of Pokrovsk, which lies at an intersection of roads and a railway line, would give Russia options to advance in new directions and also cut supply routes used by the Ukrainian military in the Donetsk region.

WSJ: Ukraine Moves to Encircle Russian Troops in Kursk and Digs In for Long Fight

The incursion hasn’t, so far, shifted the dynamic on the war’s main battlefields in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is advancing in toward Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistical hub, and Toretsk, a city on strategically important high ground.

The US Is Sending $125 Million in New Military Aid to Ukraine, Officials Say