June 30, 2023: Russian forces are losing ground in Ukraine and facing possible civil war at home. Wagner Group forces invaded Russia in an effort to remove Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and several senior generals seen responsible for the mess in Ukraine. This internal conflict failed with thousands of Wagner Group troops as well as leader Yevgeny Prigozhin ending up in Belarus, where they received asylum. In Moscow Russian leader Vladimir Putin acted to prevent another coup attempt by reviewing the reliability and loyalty of all senior generals. Putin may still be in charge, but the effort to remove his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov for their role in persuading Putin to invade Ukraine and then mismanage the operation so badly that Russian forces are now being pushed out of Ukraine and Russians are suffering from international economic sanctions that have crippled the Russian economy. Putin seems unable to deal with the mess. Putin called the failed Wagner Group march on Moscow treason. Yet many senior Russian generals quietly agreed with Prigozhin and some were secretly in touch with him and ready to openly back Wagner Group forces against Putin, but only if Prigozhin marched into Moscow. Prigozhin backed down when he realized hid forces would have to first get past some troops loyal to Putin. Prigozhin probably could have won that battle, but he was unwilling to be responsible for lots of Russians getting killed in a brief civil war. Putin also has to deal with the fact that many Russian soldiers and warplane pilots openly refused to fire on Wagner Group forces. Putin has ordered an investigation and prosecution of any troops found to be disloyal.

While Prigozhin blinked first, Putin was revealed as vulnerable because many of his senior generals regard the Ukraine invasion as a mistake that will tarnish Russia’s military reputation while also crimpling the army and forcing budget cuts for the navy and air force in order to replace what was lost in Ukraine. The government is spending money it doesn’t have on the military operations in Ukraine. To make that happen, Russia has to diminish support for its navy and air force. The financial strain has been considerable. The Russian national budget increased by $80 billion (to $480 billion) since 2021, its defense budget has nearly doubled, going from $57 billion to $83 billion, and the budget for the national police and other internal security forces has gone from $47 billion to $77 billion. Before 2022 little of this was spent in Russian-occupied Ukraine, especially Donbas and Crimea. These two areas were illegally annexed and have growing problems with local security, not all caused by Ukrainians. Then came the invasion, which was taking over $10 billion a month out of the military budget. This defense spending growth was made possible by borrowed money. These loans had to be made at very high interest rates because the domestic and international financial industries agree that Russia is currently a bad credit risk from massive international sanctions and its military defeats in Ukraine.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was not a surprise to many NATO nations near Russia. The 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea and half of two eastern provinces was seen as a prelude to something larger. The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) were the most rattled by the Ukraine crisis among NATO countries because of their borders with Russia, small size, and often issues with a large Russian minority. Estonia, one of the very few NATO countries that reach the 2 percent GDP defense spending target, has decided to exceed it by 0.05 percent GDP in 2015. Lithuania, which spent just 0.9 percent of its GDP on defense in 2014, reached 1 percent in 2015, and has committed to increase it by 0.2 percent of GDP every year, until it reaches the recommended 2 percent GDP mark. Latvia, much like Lithuania, has decided on a quick expansion of its military, its defense spending rising from 0.78 percent GDP in 2014 to 1.11 percent GDP in 2015. Unfortunately, the significant increases in military spending of Baltic countries is not a big one in real terms. Their economies are small, and as such, the biggest military budget of those three, Lithuania's, is just barely above $0.5 billion.

Poland, one of few countries taking the Ukraine crisis as seriously as the Baltics, spent $10.4 billion (1.95 percent of GDP) in 2014 and got it up to the required 2 percent of GDP in 2016, with a specific focus on procurement of modern equipment. Romania followed Poland's example, with its military spending rising from 1.4 percent in 2014 to 1.7 percent in 2015, and reached 2 percent in 2017.

It is different elsewhere in Central Europe. Bulgaria and Hungary, despite promises to increase their relatively small military budgets in 2015, actually reduced them as a portion of GDP share, by 0.15 percent and 0.04. Norway and Netherlands slightly increased their defense budgets, both of them reversing long running downwards trends.

Less than a year before the 2022 invasion, Poland announced it was doubling the size of its military to 300,000 troops, giving it the largest active-duty force among the European NATO nations. The Polish military currently consists of 110,000 troops in the land forces and 40,000 in the air force (16,500), navy (7,000), special forces (3,500), military police (4.500) and command/support (9,000). The largest component is the land forces which consists of four divisions and five independent brigades, plus support units and 30,000 TDF (Territorial Defense Force) troops. The expansion would increase the overall force to 250,000 regular troops and 50,000 TDF. The military will not resort to conscription but will increase the length of service for new volunteers. Poland already spends more (2.2 percent of GDP) than most NATO members on defense. The current budget is $13.1 billion a year. The goal for NATO nations is two percent of GDP but even in 2021 only a few had reached or exceeded that, including the United States (3.7 percent), Britain (2.2 percent) and France (2.1 percent). Russia was spending 4.3 percent. Elsewhere in the world Saudi Arabia spent 8.4 percent, Israel 5.6 percent, India 2.9 percent, South Korea 2.8 percent, Australia 2.1 percent and China somewhere between two and three percent. North Korea spends about a quarter of its GDP on the military but has a GDP that is only about five percent the size of South Korea’s. Global defense spending is about two trillion dollars and 2.4 percent of global GDP. U.S. spending accounts for 39 percent of that, which is equal to the next fourteen nations combined.

After 2014 many East European nations feared Russia had gone from former occupier to current threat, and all decided to speed upgrades to their armed forces as quickly as their limited budgets allowed. For example, in 2015 Lithuania increased the 2016 defense budget by 35 percent. This made defense spending 1.48 percent of GDP. All this is eerily like what happened after World War I when France and Britain tried to help equip newly created (from the wreckage of the Russian and Austrian empires) countries like Poland and the Baltic States with cheap World War I surplus weapons and promises of aid if Russia should seek to rebuild its fractured empire. The Russians did attack in 1939, and now that bit of history repeated itself in Ukraine. The newly (1989) liberated nations of East Europe are seeking some solutions to avoid repeating old history. What is happening in Ukraine demonstrates that NATO itself is one solution because Ukraine was considering NATO membership before the invasion and now will definitely join once the fighting with Russia is over. The NATO rules do not allow a nation at war to join. That has not stopped NATO members from sending Ukraine over $80 billion in assistance since the invasion and continuing to send more. NATO nations also suffered economically by enforcing the economic sanctions imposed on Russia. This has cost some NATO members billions of dollars because they could no longer trade with Russia. The war has made it clear to Russia, NATO and Ukraine that Russia could not handle a war with the NATO alliance that involved NATO troops as well as large quantities of NATO weapons. The fighting so far has provided NATO nations with a growing list of improvements needed for their weapons and equipment. So far NATO weapons have generally outperformed their Russian equivalents and modifications are being made to address any problems encountered. Russia has a more extensive list of needed fixes and upgrades, but lacks sufficient money to deal with more than a few of them.

Among the results so far is the European Union doing well for its members by doing good for Ukraine, which has subcontracted much of its increased arms budget (provided by EU aid) to EU members with the industrial capacity to turn the money into new facilities producing arms, ammunition and military equipment for Ukraine while the war lasts. All of the aid given to Ukraine by the EU for building and using these new EU military production facilities will be spent in the EU. Then the same spanking new facilities will produce the same items for EU members when this war is over, in expectation that Russia will come after other EU members later on. But at less cost per unit of production for EU members than charged to Ukraine because the construction costs will have been fully paid for by prior EU aid to Ukraine.

Financing Failure

Russian leader Putin shows no sign of abandoning his unsuccessful effort to win in Ukraine. The Russian operations in Ukraine are unpopular in Russia, as are the resulting economic sanctions. Putin also ordered Russian media to stop publishing death notices for Russians killed in Ukraine. The government still pays next-of-kin death benefits but does not want to publicize how many soldiers have died in Ukraine. During the first two months of 2023, Russia spent $26 billion on military operations. Sanctions have reduced oil income by a third while spending on the war effort continues to climb. The economy (GDP) shrank by two percent in 2022 and is headed for a 3.8 percent decline in 2023. The deficit spending has caused high inflation and a growing number of Russians can’t afford to buy essential items. The percentage of Russians living below the poverty line is now more than 60 percent. This explains the popular support for the Wagner Group rebellion. Russia has few foreign supporters capable of providing economic aid. At the same time, Ukraine has already received over $80 billion in military and economic support from NATO nations. Putin is having a hard time expanding Russian defense production or even sustaining the current pace of producing new weapons, ammunition and equipment, particularly anything electronic.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine continues to advance. There are a growing number of armed Ukrainian partisans operating in Russian occupied territory. The partisans are concentrating on destroying or damaging rail and road transportation networks as well as destroying Russian supplies. Sometimes this is done by revealing to Ukraine where key Russian supplies are stored. Ukraine now has longer range weapons, like Storm Shadow air launched missiles with a range of 55o kilometers and effective countermeasures to deal with Russian air defenses.

June 27, 2023: Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin arrived in Belarus aboard a private jet. Belarus granted him asylum. Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko who has ruled Belarus as a loyal ally of Russia. Russia also closed its criminal investigation of Prigozhin, who was accused of mutiny. At the same time, Lukashenko has resisted Russian proposals that Belarus merge with Russia or send troops to fight alongside the Russians in Ukraine. Lukashenko has not helped the Belarussian economy or improved the lives of Belarus voters. A new post-Soviet Union generation of voters has seen how life is better in democracies, especially other former victims of Russian rule like neighboring Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine. They blame Lukashenko for the poverty and mismanaged economy in Belarus, as well as an incompetent response to covid19. Since 2020 Lukashenko has faced growing popular protest against government incompetence and decades of rigged elections, corrupt rule, and inability to do much of anything effectively. Since the late 1990s Lukashenko has won reelection with 80-90 percent of the vote in visibly fraudulent elections. Lukashenko is a Soviet era official, who runs Belarus using the Soviet Union as a model. Belarus is a police state, where elections, and everything else, is manipulated to keep the same politicians in power. It's a tricky business, but so far Lukashenko has kept the security forces up to snuff, and on his side. He bribes or bullies key officials to keep the country running. Lukashenko has maintained good relations with Russia, getting him cheap fuel supplies and other aid. Belarus is small (9.5 million people) compared to neighbors Russia (146 million) and Ukraine (42 million) and Russia wants to absorb Belarus and Ukraine to rebuild the centuries old Russian empire that the czars created and the communists lost. Lukashenko, like most Belarussians, opposes annexation by Russia. So far Russia has not actively tried to annex Belarus or send in security forces to help suppress what has turned into a rebellion against Lukashenko. For Russia, Lukashenko was becoming more of a liability but is currently still a “favored ally.” Russia would like to be rid of Lukashenko but there is no one in Belarus with his skills, experience and pro-Russia attitude. Russia has created a major problem for itself in Belarus. Not as bad as the mess in Ukraine, but still another setback in the Russian effort to rebuild the Soviet-era Russian empire. Lukashenko noted what happened to pro-Russia Ukrainian politicians after the Russians invaded and most Ukrainians joined or supported the fight against Russian domination and any pro-Russia Ukrainians. Most Belarussians also supported Ukraine and sabotaged Russian use of Belarus rail lines into Ukraine during the disastrous first stage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin did not make an issue of this pro-Ukraine attitude in Belarus and maintained good relations with Lukashenko, despite sheltering Prigozhin and building a camp to house at least 8,000 Wagner Group troops to follow their leader Prigozhin to Belarus.

June 26, 2023: General Sergey Surovikin was taken into custody and is being questioned for his role in quietly collaborating with Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin as Wagner Group forces advance on Moscow. He is one of many generals who believe Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov were most responsible for the disastrous invasion of Ukraine and the inept way military operations in Ukraine were conducted. While many other generals were critical of Shoigu and Gerasimov, none believed in touch with Prigozhin and were ready to act if Wagner Group forces reached Moscow. General Valery Gerasimov has not been seen in public since the 24th and is believed to be under investigation for his possible advance knowledge of what Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin planned to do if he reached Moscow and had been in contact with Prigozhin.

All these changes persuaded Russian leader Vladimir Putin that the threat to his power had passed. Despite that, many Russians believe Putin is less powerful now and more vulnerable to being replaced. It was obvious that Putin had few supporters in Moscow and many senior generals held him as responsible for the failures in Ukraine and the resulting economic problems in Russia.

Putin also openly sought to persuade Wagner Group officers and troops to sign contracts to work for the Russian military. To encourage the officers to cooperate he let them know that the FSB (Russian secret police) knew where their families lived in Russia and if the Wagner officers did not cooperate the families would suffer. This is the sort of thing that persuaded Wagner Group officers and troops to go along with the Prigozhin plan to march on Moscow and deal with Putin once and for all by removing Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov. These two Putin subordinates are blamed for most of the bad decisions in Ukraine. Shoigu and Gerasimov persuaded Putin that Ukraine would quickly collapse if Russian forces invaded. It went downhill from there as Shoigu sought to eliminate independent Russian units, like Wagner, by trying to persuade them to work for the Russian military and take orders from Shoigu. Many senior Russian generals quietly sided with Prigozhin because of the way Shoigu and his cronies meddled in Ukraine. Shoigu was also seen as the sponsor of much of the corruption in the military. Putin has become dependent on Shoigu to fix this mess even though Shoigu is the source of most of the problems.

Unlike Shoigu, Prigozhin was not willing to kill a lot of Russian soldiers to achieve his goals. Instead Prigozhin essentially disbanded Wagner Group and arranged asylum in Belarus for those who preferred that. The others could take their chances with Putin and Shoigu. Belarus leader Lukashenko is also under pressure from Putin to disarm and arrest Wagner Group troops in Belarus and return them to Russia. Putin has not got the troops available to invade Belarus because Russian forces in Ukraine are losing ground and morale remains low. Putin blames everything on NATO. Ukrainians and many Russians know better because Ukrainian president Zelensky openly called on NATO for weapons and economic support. So far that has brought in nearly $100 billion in assistance. Putin and his military advisers, especially Shoigu are seen as the main cause of this mess and the ones who are perpetuating it.

June 24, 2023: Wagner Group forces (over 20,000 troops and hundreds of trucks and armored vehicles) moved out of Ukraine and into the Russian of city Rostov-on-Don. There was no resistance from local security forces. Rostov-on-Don is the main command and supply center for Russian forces in Ukraine. Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said he was protesting the inept and corrupt leadership of Vladimir Putin, the Minister of Defense and most Russian generals. Prigozhin and his troops were headed for Moscow and the fact that he got as far as Rostov-on-Don without resistance proved his point that Russian military leadership was inept, corrupt and a disaster for Russia. That was because Prigozhin’s accusations were accurate and most Russians knew it, especially those willingly or unwillingly in the army and sent to Ukraine. Putin did not reward success and reacted to recent successes by Wagner by ordering Wagner troops to sign contracts with the Russian military and submit to control of the Ministry of Defense. Unlike the Ministry of Defense and Russian commanders, Prigozhin paid his troops on time and took good care of them. Because of this Wagner Group troops did not want to come under the control of Putin and his corrupt and inept Ministry of Defense. What ended the advance was Wagner Group troops shooting down several Russian helicopters that attacked them. Since Prigozhin didn’t want to kill Russians, he halted his advance after the helicopter attack and negotiated a deal arranged by Belarus president Lukashenko to give his troops the option of joining the Russian army (by signing contracts), going to Belarus with Prigozhin or leaving and returning to their homes and families in Russia. Lukashenko said that Wagner Group forces that went to Belarus could retain their weapons and organization. This was in sharp contrast to how Putin treated Wagner Group in Ukraine. After several Wagner Group victories in Ukraine angered the Russian government and refused additional support, including ammunition. Putin resented the success Wagner Group was having and how that made his management of the Ukraine War look bad. It was bad and Putin’s reaction was to try and cripple the only successful Russian force in Ukraine. This was another reason to criticize Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine was not only a failure, but triggered crippling economic sanctions on Russia by Western countries. This was cited by Prigozhin as the primary reason for his move into Russia.

Wagner Group, a private military contractor organization employing Russian mercenaries, was formed in 2014 on the order of Vladimir Putin. He asked Prigozhin, one of the wealthy Russian businessmen who backed Putin, to organize it and that included finding an experienced special operations officer to run day-to-day operations. This turned out to be retired spetsnaz Lt. Col. Dmitry Utkin, whose code name was “Wagner.” Utkin understood that Wagner Group was created for carrying out illegal military operations outside Russia. The first of these was the 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. Wagner Group has been in Ukraine ever since and increased its personnel there to over 50,000 by 2022. Smaller number of Wagner Group personnel work around the world as highly paid mercenaries working for foreign governments, especially in Africa. Wagner Group requires large payments from the Russian government to keep its operations going and expanding. These payments are illegal, if only because private military contractors are illegal in Russia. Recently additional military contractor organizations have been created by powerful Russian businessmen. For many Russians, this proliferation of private armies seems to be the prelude to another Russian Civil War.

June 23, 2023: Wagner Group forces entered Russian and advanced towards Rostov-on-Don. This came as a surprise to Vladimir Putin, who declared Prigozhin a traitor and ordered the security forces to arrest or kill Prigozhin.

June 22, 2023: In Ukraine, Russian commanders made a lot of mistakes and one of the most fatal, and personal, was not making an effort to conceal their field headquarters. The Ukrainians took advantage of this and during an eight month period in 2022 attacked Russian command posts over twenty times, killing ten generals and 152 colonels and lieutenant-colonels along with hundreds of lower ranking staff officers. This crippled Russian efforts to carry out offensive operations, and even defensive operations were clumsy because combat units often lacked timely communications with senior commanders. Requests for supplies or updates on the overall situation resulted in Russian operations being sluggish and less effective.

June 21, 2023: Russia and Israel are both major developers of systems that disrupt satellite navigation systems like GPS or the Russian GLONASS. Both nations use their jamming and anti-jamming tech against each other because Russia maintains a naval base and airbase on the Syrian coast while Israel is constantly under attacks by Iranian UAVs and missiles launched from Syria. Israeli missiles regularly hit Iranian targets in Syria and Russia uses its GPS jamming systems to disrupt these attacks. Israel has responded with new tech installed in the missile guidance systems that reduces or eliminates the effectiveness of the jamming. This GPS jamming and counter-jamming competition has been going on for over a decade and became particularly intense when Russian forces arrived in Syria. Before that Russia had provided their ally Syria with these jamming weapons while Israel and the United States cooperated in developing new jamming tech.:

June 20, 2023: Chinese military leaders are observing the War in Ukraine with great interest and anxiety. Chinese generals were surprised that Russia invaded Ukraine. This was unexpected, as was the effectiveness of the Ukrainian forces opposing the Russians. Since the 1990s, China has had a growing trade relationship with Ukraine. This included obtaining Russian and Western military tech from Ukraine. Russia was considered a major military ally of China but its sorry performance in the Ukraine has demonstrated that Russian military capabilities were much overrated. Western nations supplied the Ukrainians with a lot of very effective and some ineffective ones that will have to be upgraded. Russian weapons had a similar experience, but with far more failures than successes. The Chinese generals expected that and have been steadily replacing Russian tech with Western versions. The Chinese believe Russia must upgrade its military equipment and do it with superior Western or Chinese tech. Russia resists that suggestion and continues to believe its own defense industries can develop and deliver what it needs.

June 18, 2023: In Ukraine, the Ukrainians have emphasized destroying Russian supplies or disrupting their delivery. This is done at all levels, from attacking large fuel and ammunition storage sites to going after individual supply trucks headed from troops on the front line. This has forced the Russians to move their large supply collection and distribution facilities farther from the front. That means greater use of trucks to transport supplies to the troops. The Ukrainians noted this and concentrated on attacking those trucks as they got close to the front lines. This led the unsupplied Russian troops to request that smaller, more difficult to detect and attack trucks be used. Russian logistics officers refused to do this and kept sending full-size trucks to the front, where they were often detected and destroyed by the Ukrainians.

June 17, 2023: Russia is believed to have added 12 nuclear warheads to the 4,477 it had in 2022. Russia and the United States had reduced, not added to their nuclear arsenals because of the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) disarmament treaty signed near the end of the Cold War. The U.S. did admit that the main reason for not renewing the INF Treaty with Russia in 2019 was not just Russian cheating, but also because China never signed the INF treaty and was free to develop ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers the INF prohibits. China has openly developed a lot of ballistic missiles that the INF forbids. Originally INF was created to reduce the proliferation of shorter-range missiles with nuclear warheads. The Chinese preference for non-nuclear missiles was ignored or played down for a long time. China also insists it is unconcerned about who is the target for its nuclear armed missiles. In 2009, China announced that its nuclear-armed ballistic missiles were not aimed at anyone and that was probably true. Like most countries, China has long refused to say who its nuclear-armed missiles are aimed at. Most of those missiles only have enough range to hit Russia, or India, or other nearby nations. For a long time, most were very definitely aimed at Russia, which had rocky relations with China from the 1960s to the 1990s. After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the new, much smaller, Russia became much friendlier with the wealthier, more capitalist, but still run by communists China. Relations between China and India also warmed up then went into a deep freeze as China claimed more and more Indian territory.

Nations with a free press, like the United States, are unable to keep details of warhead reliability secret. Debates over how much money needs to be spent on maintaining warheads often become public. In the early 1990, many Soviet nuclear secrets were revealed. The Soviet warheads were less reliable and the Russian solution was to build more of them so that, if used, enough would work to get the job done. Post-Soviet nukes were more reliable because arms reduction treaties allowed for the older ones to be dismantled. Recent nuclear powers, like North Korea, India and Pakistan, not only have fewer warheads but also less reliable ones. Because of intense international scrutiny, the reliability and effectiveness of North Korean nuclear weapons is much scrutinized. It is unclear if North Korea even has reliable nuclear warheads because they only recently developed working nuclear weapons. Turning these nukes into reliable weapons for ballistic missiles is another chore and it is unclear how effective the North Korean nuclear warheads are.

June 15, 2023: NATO members account for 45 percent of $2.24 billion in global defense spending for 2022. NATO spending is likely to continue increasing faster than global spending because of the war in Ukraine. Denmark is the latest NATO member to increase its defense budget because of the Russian threat. Denmark will gradually increase defense spending over the next ten years until it reaches about $21 billion. At that point defense spending will be three times what it is now and meet the NATO suggested two percent of GDP. Denmark had long spent much less, safe in the knowledge that the United States and larger NATO members met or exceeded the spending goal applicable to all NATO members.

This annoyed the United States, but America had the largest economy in the world and military commitments worldwide. The U.S. has long had the largest defense budget in the world. During the Cold War (1948-91), European NATO members believed their job was to keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out. After 1945 Germany was divided, with West German eventually joining NATO and prospering economically while East Germany stagnated economically and was controlled by Russia. Germans had had enough of militarism and preparing for war. West Germany joined NATO in order to keep the Russians out and spent what was necessary to meet NATO goals. West Germans knew that if Russia attacked, they would be the main target. West Germany was where other NATO members stationed most of their troops assigned to defend Europe.

After the Soviet Union collapsed and a much smaller Russia became a democracy, defense spending by NATO members plummeted. The newly reunified Germany had huge costs associated with the merger of West and East Germany and even more reason to reduce defense spending. This was the “peace bonus” and it turned out to be temporary. By 2000 Russia was rearming and becoming more aggressive. One thing led to another and now we have the Ukraine War. This is the largest conflict NATO has ever had to deal with. Russia accuses Ukraine of planning to join NATO. That wasn’t true, at least until 2014 when Russia seized Crimea and portions of two eastern Ukraine provinces. Not content with that, Russia invaded in 2022, seeking to absorb Ukraine back into a Greater Russia. Despite all the previous Russian defense spending and military reorganization, the invasion failed. This was due to Russian incompetence and corruption, huge reforms in the Ukrainian military, a spike in Ukrainian patriotism, ferocious Ukrainian resistance, and $80 billion (so far) military and economic aid sent to Ukraine by NATO members. Fourteen months after the invasion, Russian forces are significantly outnumbered, on the defensive and the Ukrainians are attacking.:

June 12, 2023: Syrians blame outsiders for the length and severity of the 12- year-long civil war. Iran and Russia came to the aid of the Syrian government while Israel continued to attack Iranian forces in Syria, and Turkish forces crossed the border to deal with Islamic terrorists threatening Turkey and Syrian Kurds control most of the northern border with Turkey. In the northwest there is Idlib province, which remains under the control of Islamic terrorists who don’t belong to ISIL. For years the Assads made deals with Islamic terror groups that controlled areas throughout Syria for them to move to Idlib rather than fight to the death with the Assad troops. The Assads did this to maintain morale among their own troops, who had been fighting for years and were liable to desert rather than face a death-match with Islamic terrorists. For the last few years there has been fighting in Idlib involving the Islamic terrorists attacked by Assad, Turkish and Kurdish forces, with air support from Russia and Turkey. The fighting is slow, methodical and relentless in killing Islamic terrorists and shrinking the terrorist controlled area. Although there are fewer than a thousand American military personnel in Syria, they are constantly attacked by Iran-backed militias and harassed by Russian warplanes. The Iranian violence has been going on for a long time but the harassment of American aircraft by Russian fighters is recent. Both countries long had an agreement to avoid such interference by each other’s aircraft. Both nations were using their warplanes mainly to seek out and attack ISIL forces. Apparently in response to Western economic sanctions on Russia because of the Ukraine War, the Russian fighters are now engaging in dangerous maneuvers around American aircraft.

June 10, 2023: In the last few months the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR), two anti-Putin Russian militias based in Ukraine, launched raids into Russia. The two militias are not identical. The LSR began when about a hundred Russian soldiers defected mostly as a single group in early 2022. The RDK was formed around Russians living and working in Ukraine when the invasion began. Both groups are almost entirely composed of Russians who oppose Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The raids are meant to embarrass Putin, not kill Russian soldiers and civilians. Some of the Russian responses to the raids did that, notably by doing the same things they did in Ukraine, like bombing and using thermobaric weapons in civilian areas, looting (of Russian instead of Ukrainian civilians), etc.. Most of the responses against the Ukrainian-backed Russian militias were ineffectual, which is typical of the Russian Army Putin has created to fight in Ukraine. These raiding operations took place in the Russian province of Belgorod, which is on the border north of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Initially these raids faced no armed opposition and when Russian security forces showed during more recent raids, the Russian troops either retreated or surrendered. This was not unexpected because Russian troops in Ukraine have performed poorly from the beginning. Worse, the raiders were all Russians who, unlike most Russian army personnel in Ukraine, were competent and effective fighters whose motivation was to discredit Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine.

It was also a mystery, at first, where these anti-Putin Russians came from. The LSR was formed in early 2022 from a company of Russian soldiers who defected to the Ukrainians in March 2022 and became part of the International Legion Ukraine formed from the many foreign veterans who went to Ukraine to fight the invaders. The RDK consisted of Russians living in Russia and Ukraine who were fed up with Putin and also joined the International Legion but later left that to form the RDK

While the International Legion was formed to defend Ukraine, the RDK and LSR were formed to embarrass, discredit and oust Putin from power. Since the invasion began in February 2022, there have been a growing number of Russians who oppose the war. This is one reason why some of the raids are carried out deep (over 50 kilometers) inside Russia. The Russian armed response to these raids has been embarrassingly ineffective.

Inside Russia the media cannot report the problems on the border or inside Ukraine. Russians who are curious have other ways, usually via the Internet, to find out what is really going on. As the economic sanctions on Russia continue and are increased, that means more economic privation for Russian civilians. Putin is confident that the traditional Russian willingness to tolerate the shortages and higher unemployment will prevent any protests inside Russia. That has generally been the case. But because this is not a war where Russia has been invaded and is defending itself, Russian military losses and economic losses are harder to justify. Russia is the invader of a neighbor that was not attacking Russia. This reduces the Russian people’s willingness to tolerate the cost of the war. And now Russia is facing armed Russians fighting inside Russia to protest the Putin policies.

June 8, 2023: The Ukraine War saw a lot of innovations and many of them involved the innovative use of commercial UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) like the Chinese Mavic quadcopters. Ukrainians also designed and built their own UAVs or heavily modified commercial models like Mavic. Russian soldiers also use Mavic quadcopters when they can get them. Corruption in Russia makes importing Mavic quadcopters difficult. This isn’t just about Mavic because corruption became more widespread in Russia after the Ukraine War and the subsequent sanctions disrupted the Russian economy. The government bureaucracy in Russia discourages and disrupts any private efforts to design and build not merely UAVs, but private efforts to build most anything which might compete with government ways of building or doing things. Because that will interfere with government corruption. Ukrainians have noticed that one of their assets in the war is the disruptive effect the Russian bureaucracy has on the Russian military.

While there is some corruption in Ukraine, there is also a lot more popular anger and active opposition to any corruption hurting the war effort. Less corruption in wartime Ukraine means there are a lot more opportunities for innovation without interference from some corrupt official or supplier. Russian troops still had a lot of UAVs but not as many as the Ukrainians and not with all the innovations found in many Ukrainian UAVs. This made a difference and still does, even though the Russians have been quick to use new forms of jamming to disrupt or destroy Ukrainian UAVs. Both sides suffer heavy (in the thousands) UAV losses each month and Ukraine, with NATO support and unencumbered by economic sanctions, is able to maintain a UAV edge on the battlefield.

Ukrainians were particularly adept at modifying quadcopters to carry explosives. If the operator found an enemy tank or lighter armored vehicle with a top hatch open, the vehicle could be destroyed when an explosive was dropped through the open hatch. The explosives were often used against Russian troops in foxholes or open trenches. This capability is bad for Russian morale and the Ukrainians made the most of it.

June 7, 2023: In northern Syria (Aleppo province) Russia has withdrawn troops from positions near Turkish-backed Syrian forces. Russia only has a few thousand troops in Syria, most of them stationed at the Russian controlled Hmeimim airbase that was built by Russia in 2015 near the port city of Latakia, which is 85 kilometers north of Tartus and 50 kilometers from the Turkish border. Part of the Tartus port has become a long-term foreign base for Russia, along with Hmeimim. Currently Russia stations several warships plus some support vessels at Tartus. Russian warplanes and helicopters based at Hmeimim regularly carry out attacks on Islamic terrorists in Eastern Syria as well as nearby Idlib province. Russia sees its forces in Syria as peacekeepers. Russia has treaties with the Assad government legalizing Russian presence in Hmeimim and Tartus. Russian forces have also helped Syria revive smaller airbases in eastern Syria after recapture from ISIL. A year ago, some Russian forces in Syria returned to Russia to be used in Ukraine. The remaining Russian forces in Syria are close to the entrance to Black Sea and Russian ships and aircraft regularly monitor who uses the Turkish straits to enter or leave the Black Sea.

June 6, 2023: Unless there’s a war going on, developing new or improved military equipment or weapons is delayed by bureaucrats more concerned about avoiding mistakes than getting the job done. This leads to lots of delays. The Ukraine War has changed that for NATO nations and Russia. While the Ukrainians develop a lot of their own weapons, and always have, they need more and that is what their NATO allies are supplying. With a war going on in Ukraine, it’s easier for the NATO defense procurement officials to say yes. With their nation under attack, Ukrainian developers are coming up with new weapons and equipment as well as upgrades for items they have received from NATO nations. Ukraine can put new or improved systems to the test quickly. Sometimes the Ukrainians don’t tell their NATO allies about new items used or produced in Ukraine because the NATO countries are more likely to publicize that. The Ukrainians are more discreet, realizing that what the Russians don’t know about will hurt them more. At the start of the war the Russians underestimated Ukrainian weapons and military equipment and the Ukrainians’ ability to use it effectively. This continues to supply the Russians with unexpected and unpleasant surprises.

NATO countries still supply most of the weapons and ammunition the Ukrainians need and for that they receive a lot of feedback on what works and what doesn’t. This has been valuable to NATO nations, which are now producing more effective weapons and military equipment for Ukrainian forces as well as for NATO to use in some future conflict. NATO countries may not have troops in Ukraine but there are a lot of technical specialists examining captured Russian weapons and equipment as well as how well, or not so well, donated NATO material is performing. Some of these NATO specialists are military, often described as diplomatic personnel, and are there to speed up the assessments. Sometimes NATO nations will find Ukrainian assessments incredible and hard to believe. By having NATO nation experts on hand, the Ukrainian assessments can be confirmed.

June 5, 2023: British media have published details of Iranian sales documents describing sales of over a million dollars’ worth of ammunition and spare parts for weapons to Russia. Iran denies this even though details of how the ammo and parts got to Russia were known.

June 4, 2023: Because of the disastrous performance of the Russian military and intelligence agencies in Ukraine, many prominent Russians in the military and intelligence agencies are calling for bringing back the World War II era Smersh (Smert Shpionam or death to spies) organization to deal with the growing leaks of secret information and anti-government commentators.

In Ukraine Russia is having a lot of problems Ukrainians in areas Russian troops occupy. This is especially true in areas like Crimea and the Donbas, which Russia has controlled since 2014. Some of the Ukrainian resistance is showing up just across the border in Russia (Belgorod province). This was not supposed to happen and has caused many Russians to question the wisdom of Russians trying to conquer Ukraine.

Smersh only existed from 1943 to 1947 and, even while paranoid dictator Josef Stalin was still alive, was seen as excessive. After Stalin died in 1953 there was even less police state terror in Russia as the 1930s NKVD was replaced by the less oppressive KGB.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 it became obvious that Russians wanted nearly all Soviet era security practices gone for good. The KGB turned into a less threatening FSB. This meant less arbitrary justice, state-controlled economy and massive conscription. Democracy was introduced but it never really took hold and when Vladimir Putin gained national power in 1999, he gradually brought back many Soviet-era practices.

Putin joined the KGB in 1975 and missed its police state powers after 1991. When Putin gained national power in 1999 he began turning the FSB into a more powerful agency similar to the KGB. Putin has encountered increasing resistance to this from Russians with long memories or just unwillingness to live in a police state. Putin’s response has been to increase the police state practices and consider backing another use of Smersh tactics. The source of all this unrest is the invasion of Ukraine in2022. Putin thought this would be a quick victory and absorption of a neighboring nation that Putin declared part of Russia and not meant to be independent. The Ukrainians successfully fought back and inside Russia many people blamed Putin for this mess and supported getting out of Ukraine. Recently some of these Russians have been armed and fighting back against Russian security forces.

The Russian situation should not surprise anyone, especially when you consider the growing police state oppression in Russia over the last decade. In 2013 Russia completed reforms of its police forces, which comprise over one percent of the population and have traditionally been far more powerful than their counterparts in the West. Russia has also been using its police much more aggressively since 2000. For example, the number of court approved wiretaps (mainly on phones or Internet accounts) grew, reaching about 400,000 by 2013 and continuing to increase. Causing more unrest among Russians.

In Russia the security services include the national police force and the FSB (federal investigative agency). The FSB replaced the Soviet era KGB in the 1990s. This growth in wiretap activity continued, apparently unaffected by the enormous changes the police forces underwent during this period. For example, the national police underwent a major reform a decade ago, with all police now reporting to federal control. Before that, and since the establishment of police in Russia 300 years ago, police forces had been controlled by city or regional governments, which paid for and controlled the local police. There was some supervision from the Ministry of the Interior, but the cops were mainly local. Since a new law was passed in 2011, that has changed. All police now work for the Ministry of the Interior and police strength in Russia has been cut 20 percent.

May 30, 2023: Russian efforts to declare the ten-month battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut a victory were disputed by revelations about Russian losses and continued advances by Ukrainian forces. When Russia declared victory in Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces were still holding western portions of the city. As Russia began moving most of its troops from the city after the victory announcement, Ukrainian forces advanced and reoccupied the territory Russians had recently captured. The Russian victory was further tarnished when Wagner Group officials complained that they lost 20,000 troops killed and many more wounded during the long battle for the city. Wagner accused the Defense Ministry of not supplying Wagner with sufficient ammunition and supplies to speed up the fighting and reduce Russian (especially Wagner) losses. Ukraine does not release casualty data but it was obvious from satellite photos and reports from eyewitnesses that Ukrainian casualties were much lower because the Russians were doing most of the attacking without using many armored vehicles or tanks. Ukrainian forces largely fought from inside buildings or well-protected bunkers and had several safe (from enemy fire) displacement routes prepared so that the Ukrainian troops could safely abandon a position and move to another. These protected routes were also used to bring in supplies or evacuate casualties. The Internet chatter about losses in Bakhmut confirmed the heavier Russian losses. Some Ukrainians criticized the defense of the city because of the Ukrainian losses. In the end, the Battle for Bakhmut absorbed all the offensive forces available to the Russians and basically lost most of those troops taking a city where a proclaimed victory turned out to be an embarrassing defeat. Russia is rebuilding an offensive force in Russia but this process won’t be complete for another year. Meanwhile the reluctant conscripts and mobilized reservists in Ukraine have little training, few weapons and poor leadership. Russia is also training more junior combat officers to replace the heavy losses suffered in early 2022.

Most of the Russian losses at Bakhmut were not Russian soldiers but Russian mercenaries working for the Wagner Group, a private military contractor organization formed in 2014 on the order of Vladimir Putin. He asked Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of the wealthy Russian businessmen who backed Putin, to organize it and that included finding an experienced special operations officer to run day-to-day operations. This turned out to be retired spetsnaz Lt. Col. Dmitry Utkin, whose code name was “Wagner.” Utkin understood that Wagner Group was created for carrying out illegal military operations outside Russia. The first of these was the 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. Wagner Group has been in Ukraine ever since and increased its personnel there to over 50,000 by 2022. Smaller number of Wagner Group personnel work around the world as highly paid mercenaries working for foreign governments, especially in Africa. Wagner Group requires large payments from the Russian government to keep its operations going and expanding. These payments are illegal, if only because private military contractors are illegal in Russia. Recently additional military contractor organizations have been created by powerful Russian businessmen. To many Russians, this proliferation of private armies seems to be the prelude to another Russian Civil War.

The heavy dependence on Wagner Group forces in Ukraine is the result of Wagner Group having access to more money and fewer restrictions than the Russian Defense Ministry and military. The high cost of operation Wagner Group has been noticed because Wagner Group operations are often noted as a reason for the heavy economic sanctions imposed on Russia by NATO countries because of the fighting in Ukraine. Initially, the invasion force included no mercenaries, just military personnel. This force was largely destroyed during the first few months of fighting. Putin promised a short war and now was stuck with a much larger war that eventually threatened his position as Russian leader. Putin brought in the Wagner Group to save the situation in Ukraine. Wagner Group made a difference, but not enough to change the likely outcome of the war. This led to Wagner Group and the Defense Ministry blaming each other for the mess.

The war in Ukraine is not popular inside Russia and that has made it difficult for the military to recruit new troops to fight in Ukraine. Russia conscripts a quarter million young Russian men each year for one year of conscript service. The law stipulates that conscripts cannot be sent to a combat zone outside Russia. Putin tried to get around this by declaring Ukraine was actually part of Russia and Russian troops were there to put down an insurrection. Most conscripts and especially their parents, did not go along with this. This forced the government to spend a lot more money to get more nominally volunteers (contract soldiers) by forcing men with military service or and many with none to be “mobilized” into the military as highly paid contract soldiers. This worked initially until reports of the high casualty rates of contract soldiers in Ukraine became widely known. This led to more illegal schemes to obtain “volunteers”. This included forcing or deceiving conscripts into signing contracts to serve longer as contract soldiers. The war-related sanctions on Russia had caused an economic recession and good civilian jobs were hard to find. Pay for contract soldiers was completive with similar jobs and that was not a bad deal when there was not a war going on in Ukraine. So far this year, Russia has recruited nearly 200,000 contract soldiers. Most of these have no training and this means a few months, or at least weeks, of training is needed to make these men useful, rather than an obstacle, in combat. Wagner Group is not restricted in how it recruits and it was able to recruit many convicts from prison. The deal was that if they survived their six month contract they would be free to leave and would also get a pardon and not return to prison. The Defense Ministry later tried this but had little success as Wagner Group had few restrictions on how it handled convict contract soldiers. If any of these men disobeyed orders or faltered in combat, they could be killed on the spot. That was standard practice in the Russian military during World War II and was enforced by special secret police (NKVD) units and political officers (Zampolits) assigned to commanders of units’ company or larger on up. Zampolits could execute reluctant soldiers or commanders. Wagner Force is the only military organization in Russian that is allowed to use this older but now officially forbidden, leadership style. It’s common knowledge that Wager Group operates this way and anyone joining knows it. Some Russians have called for the military to adopt the old-school disciplinary procedures, Most Russians do not want that, or the Wagner Group, the war in Ukraine or Vladimir Putin. This has led to more popular opposition to the war and Putin and more of the opposition are resorting to violence because nothing else seems to work. Putin stays in power by dealing with the opposition. That comes at a visible cost. Many Russians are getting out of Russia to avoid military service or unemployment or simply because of Putin’s autocratic rules. Putin’s response was to declare it illegal to leave Russia without official permission. Many are leaving despite the restrictions; via whatever way they can come up with. Putin always admired the Soviet Union and now he is turning Russia back into a totalitarian police state. Those who back Putin believe Russia will eventually prevail in Ukraine, even if it takes decades. Most Russians, Ukrainians and NATO members disagree and now consider Russia a threat to everyone.