Friday News Roundup — February 25, 2022
This week will be one for the history books. First, the breaking news from Washington this morning, that President Biden will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to the seat vacated by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. If confirmed, Judge Jackson would be the first Black woman to sit on the nation’s highest court.
Abroad, the eyes of the world are focused on the horrors of Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine, the culmination of months of growing tensions and abortive diplomatic efforts — though this is conflict that has continued since Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and the growth of Russian-backed separatist movements in Ukraine’s Donbass. In the words of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, “It is a war of a type and a scale that we actually thought was part of history in Europe, but now it’s back in real and it’s imposing enormous suffering on innocent people in Ukraine.”
In this week’s roundup, Wes provides both an overview of the Russian invasion and Moscow’s telegraphed opening of the conflict. Ethan analyzes the missed pressure points on Russia and what we can do ahead. Evelyn covers the deal keeping the government open to buy time for a budget compromise. We wrap with news you may have missed.
Russia Attacks Ukraine: What has Happened, What is to Come
Wesley Culp
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, February 24, President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Armed Forces kicked off an invasion of Ukraine which harkened back to darker episodes in European history such as the Second World War or the 1968 Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia. The attack immediately followed an address by President Putin to the Russian people during which he declared the start of a “special military operation” against Ukraine that would “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. While Russia’s incursions into Ukraine in 2014 represented a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty then, the vast scale and overt character of Thursday’s invasion has shattered the post-Cold War understanding of the inadmissibility of interstate conflict.
Immediately following Putin’s address to the Russian people, a shelling, air strike, and missile bombardment campaign was immediately kicked off by Russia against targets across Ukraine. Cities such as Odesa in Ukraine’s southwest to Kharkiv, and Mariupol in the east immediately came under heavy bombardment from a combination of Russian naval, artillery, and air forces. The Ukrainian capital of Kyiv also endured bombardment by Russian forces and is now threatened by Russia’s advance from Belarusian territory through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which was seized by Russian forces on Thursday. Russian airborne forces additionally attempted to seize Hostomel Airport near Kyiv, potentially as a way to ferry more troops in from Russia to move on Kyiv. In the south, Russian troops moved northeast and northwest from Crimea, potentially reaching the Dnieper river and the city of Kherson. Ukrainian and Russian ground forces also appeared to be locked in combat around the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Thursday. By Friday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed forces reported that Russian troops had taken the southern city of Melitopol in their thrust from the South and had moved past the northern city of Konotop on an apparent offensive towards Kyiv from the east. The forward elements of Russia’s northern axis of advance appeared to reach Kyiv’s suburbs after a second night of bombardment of the capital in the same timeframe. Although President Putin presented his invasion as a military operation in support Donbas-based Russian-speakers, it is clear that the attack is on all of Ukraine.
Western and international response to the assault on Ukraine has been largely condemnatory. After an initial statement of condemnation following the invasion, President Biden and other G7 leaders virtually met to coordinate a unified Western response to the invasion. On February 24, Biden laid out a series of sanctions against a variety of private banks in Russia, actions to cut Russia off from access to American and Western currencies and financing, and additional individual sanctions on certain Russian elites. British Prime Minister Johnson similarly promised to cut certain influential Russians and financial institutions off from UK financing in a speech of his own to the British House of Commons. Notably missing was serious penalties applied to the Russian energy sector or the SWIFT financial transaction system, which had been floated as potential consequences previously, only to face significant opposition from European countries such as Germany, Italy, Austria, and Hungary. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has cultivated a friendly relationship with both Russia and Ukraine, said that he was “sincerely saddened” by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and that he supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Traditional allies of Russia took a supportive stance towards the invasion. In response to question from journalists, a Chinese spokeswoman declined to label Russia’s attack on Ukraine as an invasion, and additionally placed blame on the United States for creating the conditions for such a conflict to arise at all. China also condemned any Western attempt to apply sanctions to Russia and has signaled that it will help Russia weather any economic consequences of its invasion. Chinese state-linked media has tried to maintain uniformity in pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine coverage. The scope of these efforts was accidentally revealed by the publication of instructions to journalists by the state-supported Beijing News that unfavorable coverage of Russia’s invasion would not be published. Despite providing its southern border regions as a jump-off point for the Russian armed forces in their drive to Kyiv from the north, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has denied any role in Russia’s invasion, but has said that Belarusian troops could be used in operations against Ukraine if needed.
The reaction of the Russian people to their country’s invasion of Ukraine has been mixed. Despite Putin’s assertion that he believed in the support of the Russian people for his invasion, spontaneous protests broke out across Russia on Thursday, particularly in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk. However, it appears that these protests represent a particularly politically active segment of Russian society, rather than common wisdom about Russia’s war in Ukraine. Polling conducted on the eve of Russia’s invasion by the Levada Center (Russia’s premier independent polling organization), found that the share of Russians blaming the West for the crisis over Ukraine rose from 50% to 60% of respondents. Simultaneously, the share of Russians who blamed Russia for instigating the crisis fell from 4% to a mere 3%. In the same period, the share of Russians who answered that they had a “bad” opinion of Ukraine shot up from 43% to 52% of respondents.
Putin’s “special operation” is still in its opening stages, and a range of outcomes remain possible. Russia has thus far been unwilling to enter urban areas with its main armed formations, with the exception of the Russian airborne assault on Hostomel Airport, which appears to have been the location of significant fighting between Ukrainian and Russian special forces. It is yet to be seen if any of Russia’s main thrusts (from the north, east, and south) will fail or succeed or break through Ukraine’s defenses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose address hours ahead of Russia’s invasion was praised as a stirring appeal to Russia to avert the looming war, has signed a decree of general mobilization of his country’s population, and has forbidden all 18–60 year old Ukrainian men from leaving the country.
While the outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is still yet to be decided, the world which existed before it is irretrievably gone. In one assault, President Putin has unleashed the prospect of wars of conquest and control back into the world, which will likely prove impossible to reverse. Whatever the outcome of this conflict may be, Russia and China will undoubtedly emerge more interconnected than they were before. As an alliance, NATO threat perception will likely coalesce around the danger posed by an aggressive Russia, but time will tell if member countries can similarly coordinate the imposition of future additional consequences on Russia for its attack on Ukraine’s statehood. Over the next days, weeks, or months, Ukraine will endure the return to interstate, Clausewitzian warfare in Europe. The world’s attention will be focused on whether Ukraine succeeds in its defense of its sovereignty or not.
Russia’s Choreographed Casus Belli
Wesley Culp
Russia’s February 24 early morning invasion of Ukraine was sudden and shockingly comprehensive in scope. However, the assault was not without warning, as it followed several days of Russian rhetorical posturing. As discussed last week, Russian state media and government officials began amplifying claims that Ukraine was engaging in the genocide of its Russian-speaking population in Eastern Ukraine last week. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Monday address and signing of acts to recognize the Ukrainian separatist “Lugansk People’s Republic” (LNR) and “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) were some of the most pronounced precursors to Russia’s invasion this week. Put together, these steps provided the Kremlin with the pseudo-legal framework it desired to back its invasion of Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s decision to recognize the independence of the LNR and DNR, which formed part of its casus belli against Ukraine, has been publicly in the works for weeks. A resolution to immediately recognize the two separatist entities was first proposed by Communist Party (KPRF) State Duma deputies on January 19 was subsequently joined by a resolution from Putin’s United Russia party to begin consultations with relevant federal agencies on recognition. To many analysts’ surprise, the KPRF version was adopted on February 16. With the stage set legislatively and rhetorically, Putin was able to immediately jump to raise the specter of a larger war beginning on Monday.
Two events defined Monday’s choreography to raise the prospect a forceful Russian intervention in Ukraine. The first was Putin’s meeting with the Russian Security Council under the pretext of asking its members to weigh in on the prospect of recognizing the independence of the LNR and DNR. Despite its supposed premise as a discussion, the meeting served to provide rhetorical backing from some of the most powerful figures in Russia’s national security leadership for Putin’s decision to recognize the LNR and DNR. Some Security Council members appeared to use the meeting to provide a full-throated justification of a course of action Putin had likely already settled on, while others with more diplomatic or domestic portfolios appeared hesitant to endorse recognition and the potential international consternation it would entail. However, Foreign Intelligence Service Chief Sergei Naryshkin’s recommendation that the LNR and DNR be annexed by Russia directly saw Putin cut Naryshkin off and curtly inform him that the Security Council was not discussing that at the moment.
Shortly thereafter, President Putin delivered a remarkably bellicose speech that questioned the foundational legitimacy of Ukraine as a sovereign state. In the hour-long speech, Putin expressed doubt towards the historical separateness of the Ukrainian people, and even claimed that the Ukrainian state as a territorial unit was an invention of Bolshevik leaders such as Vladimir Lenin. President Putin’s analysis also included lamentations on the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly the supposed irresponsibility of Ukraine and other post-Soviet states in sharing the burden of the collapse. Putin threatened to show “real decommunization” to Ukraine, which he had just labeled as a relic of the October Revolution era. While the speech did discuss supposed Ukrainian excesses in Donbas, the main thrust of the speech was to describe the threat to Russia from a Western-oriented Ukraine.
Immediately following his speech, the Kremlin broadcasted the official signing of acts to recognize the LNR and DNR as sovereign states and signed two treaties of friendship and cooperation the two statelets. These treaties later allowed the two separatist entities to officially request military support from Russia against a supposed Ukrainian offensive on Wednesday. The Tuesday decision by the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament the Federal Assembly) to give broad approval for use of force abroad was a further step in this choreographed journey towards further military action against Ukraine.
The night of February 23 marked the official request for military assistance from the LNR and DNR which would prove to be the pretext the Kremlin needed to launch its desired invasion of Ukraine. President Putin then delivered a second, early-morning address to the Russian people, this time to announce the start of a “special military operation” in Donbas. While Putin’s speech recycled many of the themes about Ukrainian statehood and fear of NATO expansion from his speech on Monday, Putin also promised to “denazify” Ukraine and strike forcefully against any state which attempts to intercede on behalf of Ukraine. As Putin spoke, Russian units began their operation in force, and has continued unabated since then.
While indeed a relic of previous eras in world history where wars of conquest or control were the norm, Putin’s war against Ukraine was not a bolt from the blue. While Putin’s invasion was by no means a permissible action, Putin’s Kremlin did endeavor to build up a justification for war through public messaging and procedure. While these actions were primarily targeted at the Russian people, whose acquiescence is highly valued by the Kremlin, it was possible to piece together the Kremlin’s intentions as they were being assembled. This helped Western intelligence agencies provide warning to Ukraine and the rest of Europe on what was to come. In his choreographed justification of war with Ukraine in the days, weeks, and months before the invasion, Putin has swept aside previous notions of what conditions must exist for hard power to be used, potentially providing a framework for autocrats around the world to use in their own regional designs.
Ukraine is today’s Berlin crisis of 1948, and we missed the decisive pressure point
Ethan Brown
In the most unsurprising headline fodder of the year, the invasion became ‘official’, although the west generally knew long ago that Russian forces would be called in to ‘maintain the peace’ amidst unrest. What remains to be seen now is the scope and scale of the invasion, and monitoring the performance of Ukrainian forces and within the other domains of conflict between state powers. The Russian President is playing a game of pressure with the west, one which has many historical parallels from which we could draw lessons; most notably from the crisis in 1948 in Berlin where President Eisenhower outwitted Joseph Stalin and avoided another bloody war…but today that pressure point remains undetermined as the west falls back on old habits to deter aggression.
The western response to this slow simmer of a Russian invasion has been habitual and predictable, with late night executive orders from the White House yielding new economic sanctions against Russian sovereign debt, its VEB Bank and Promsvyazbank (the chief military financial institution), which President Biden said “cut off Russia’s government from western financing”. The impact of those actions remains to be seen for its efficacy, as Putin has demonstrated repeatedly his indifference to the influence of economic sanctions. Concurrently, American forces have begun deploying throughout the European continent which included several thousand paratroopers, a repositioning of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, AH-64 Attack helicopters, and other defense personnel along NATO’s eastern flank in the Baltics, in an effort to deter any Russian incursion beyond Ukraine’s crisis. While the theoretical war strategist in me is intrigued by Moscow pursuing a multi-pronged incursion into Europe a la “Red Metal” plot lines, forces not directly related to proximal Ukraine are but a tiny step towards engagement rather than a stolid deterrent.
Token resistance
The influx of American war power is merely a token force, equivalent to the combat power of a heavy Brigade Combat Team with integrated air power support, albeit dispersed along several states and hundreds of miles of geography. The forward staging (or simple repositioning, as in the case of the F-35’s and Aviation Combat teams who were already based in NATO allied bases) isn’t precisely a deterrent or counter invasion force, since the total Russian forces positioned in and around Ukraine and Belarus outnumber that American package by roughly 12-to-1. NATO has an emergency response force (the NRF), a 40,000-strong joint warfighting package that includes air, land, maritime, special operations and CBRN capabilities maintained on a high-readiness cycle; but NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted this week that those forces remain on high-alert, but have not been activated to respond to Russian aggression — worth mentioning here yet again that Ukraine is not part of NATO or the EU. Thus, activating NATO military forces to protect the ‘sovereignty’ of breakaway principalities whose loyalties lie with Moscow anyway is a risky endeavor that could well plunge this crisis into a full-scale war.
Other notable actions, which may prove to be more influential than redeploying forces in and around non-Ukraine sectors, include Germany’s decision to suspend certification on the NORD STREAM 2 gas pipeline from Russia. Although energy security is a tricky subject whose immediate impact isn’t going to be felt on the frontlines of a simmering conflict. The European Union has deployed a cyber-defense team to Ukraine, with the aim of defeating Russian cyber-attacks related to potential kinetic warfare following a formal request from Kiev for cyber support. In even more compelling news, the U.S. Army has fielded a spy-plane dubbed the ARTEMIS — a jet-engine Bombardier Challenger 650 equipped with the High-Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES), a radar and collection suite which gathers high-resolution data for tracking, targeting, and in the near-future, Electronic Warfare and Air-delivered Effects capabilities. For now, this advanced spy plane is merely collecting and tracking data, but the option of performing electronic attack and augmented cyber effects could prove to be decisive, although its limited employment now is little more than another reporting sensor for overmatched coalition forces waiting on Moscow’s next moves.
All of these movements and deployments remain reactionary on the part of the west, and no one factor nor the combination thereof has proven to be decisively deterrent for Moscow’s actions. Hard power most certainly matters, and the ability to reassure allies and European partners, to say nothing of the fusion of inter-NATO behaviors should be seen as a positive. However, if we consider some historical parallels, what stands out is the decisive point in which American escalation or actions gives Moscow the tactical pause at the realization that ongoing aggression is untenable. Indeed, Putin seems to care not at all with this invasion foreordained weeks before, and we are only now just seeing it unfold in a conventional sense, the hybrid mechanisms of conflict have been ongoing for months.
In history: pinging the right pressure point
I’d like to point to the Berlin crisis of 1948, culminating in the Berlin airlift which ultimately forced Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to back down from continuing escalation that could have plunged Europe back into violence just a few years after the bloodiest episode of human history. The story is well known (but better told by Bill Whittle in this epic podcast) — Soviet forces moved to constrain western freedom of movement inside the isolated Berlin zone of occupation, while escalating aggression and rhetoric in order to force capitulation by the west in Stalin’s aims to consolidate his oppressive rule. Stalin was dead-set on pressuring the west to accept his regional hegemony, but paranoid of being the leader whose decisive actions were the pressure-button that ticked off another war. Thus, Soviet actions were gradual, carefully calculated to induce a response…sounds familiar doesn’t it?
It started with small gestures — limiting western forces’ access to East Berlin through the Potsdam-established checkpoints, then full on denial of travel for those typically permitted transit (diplomats, military police, families), followed by tanks massing along the line of demarcation that would ultimately become the Berlin Wall. Finally, all ground routes into and out of the western half of the city — a site completely surrounded by Soviet-occupied East Germany, were cut off. Joseph Stalin, in his strategic brilliance, assumed that American President Eisenhower would flag under the pressure of an entire city dependent on wester energy and supplies, would forego his responsibilities to ensure West Berlin’s sovereignty, and under fear of an escalation into conflict, would withdraw the west from its stronghold deep inside Soviet claims.
Here then, was that era’s pressure point, one which we haven’t divined in today’s crisis: Eisenhower ordered what would become the Berlin airlift, ultimately resulting in history’s single-largest air mission ever flown to sustain the demands of millions of Berliners. Stalin could not risk interfering with the cyclic flights from surrounding Europe into Berlin’s sovereign airspace, else risk being perceived as the one who instigated another conflict and thus turn the planet against him in total war. For once in that early chapter of the Cold War, the west outfoxed a realist who was used to being the one ratcheting up the pressure nodes.
What pressures on Moscow today?
Ukraine is far more complicated than Berlin was, admittedly. The stakes, however, are not that much different in scope, scale, and potential devastation. We also happen to live in an age where public awareness and global opinion is shaped faster by access to information heretofore unknown in history (and thank goodness for the memes which inevitably follow). What Moscow has done, time and time again since Berlin, is figure out what buttons to push to get the reaction that it wants from the West, who has only been too keen to respond exactly as predicted. The west has accepted that the current norm in international relations is a zero-sum gambit dictated by aggressors in Moscow, Beijing, and elsewhere, while only crisis seems to unify the liberal rules-based order to action after escalation.
What are the options for 2022-Ukraine’s version of the Berlin Airlift? Again, the complexity is different here, but in it the West has far more options than President Eisenhower did in 1948, both politically and militarily. Our leadership team here at the CSPC recently penned a compelling thought-piece on actions to deter Russian aggression in the Ukraine, which denote a multi-faceted approach to strengthening western resolve that doesn’t have to presage a conflict over seperatist regions already in bed with Moscow. It may be that there isn’t an ‘if X then y’ action on par with the Berlin Airlift to give Putin (and the ever watchful Xi Jinping a world away) pause in their efforts, but doubling down on the token resistance measures which the west has taken to date aren’t going to quell this crisis either.
Militarily, we are still woefully behind the curve in terms on creating effects that don’t have to equate to kinetic or lethal outcomes, but those which still induce consequences that would force Russian military decision-makers to weigh the benefits of recommending or carrying out operations in Donetsk and Luhansk. Defeating cyber incursions (exemplified by the Estonia-led counter-cyber group mentioned earlier) is a valid, but critically undermanned effort which NATO should support full stop. Expanding the Electronic Warfare panoply to interfere, disrupt and deny Russian military capabilities is another vector missing from the wests toolkit, ARTEMIS collection notwithstanding.
Simply, the west needs to make its inventory more complex and compelling to achieve the political outcomes favorable to everyone involved — this includes denial of Russian aggression and incentives to join the party, not fracture it. Herein lies the great failure of the liberalist approach to international relations — few carrots and only the heaviest of sticks are enough to change the behavior of realist powers aiming for regional hegemony. But failure to engage in new options and capabilities will be the bulk of historical review in this chapter — when diverse options were available to prevent a war in Ukraine, traditional methods were employed instead, to a predictable result.
Congress Scrambles to Prevent a Government Shutdown
Evelyn Jimenez
This past week the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to continue federal funding for at least three weeks with the prime goal of preventing another government shutdown. The “Continuing Resolution” passed 272–162 in the House and made its way to the Senate where Senators voted 65–27 on February 17th. The measure prevented a government shutdown scheduled for February 18 when the previous spending bill was set to expire. This solution is only temporary: a new stopgap bill is needed to keep the government funded at least through September. These investments promote the creation of jobs that support the middle and lower classes, according to House Appropriations Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). President Joe Biden officially signed the measure this past Friday.
Although the bill passed with the majority vote in both the Senate and the House, Republican Senators tried to delay quick passage of the bill by demanding votes on conservative bills. The constant bickering between parties on the legislation sends the wrong message and projects an unprofessional image to other foreign countries during a period of heightened global tensions. Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) expressed this sentiment when he scolded U.S. Senators for arguing about routine bills when there is the possibility of war in Ukraine.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) advocated for a vote on a bill to bar the Department of Health and Human Services from funding the distribution of pipes used for crack cocaine, as well as syringes and needles. However, a $30 million HHS program aimed at combatting substance abuse and overdose would not cover the expenses of “crack pipes.” Rubio’s bill failed to gain popularity and Democratic Senators dismissed his proposal to focus on the “continuing resolution” legislation.
Other bills that were shelved included Sen. Mike Braun’s (R-IN)., bill to require the federal government to balance its budget every year. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) both proposed amendments focusing on COVID- 19 restrictions such as removing funding for the enforcement of vaccine mandates and for schools and child care centers that require students to obtain vaccines; these proposals27 votes that opposed the spending bill all came from Republican Senators.
If Congress had failed to pass the temporary legislation, they would be left with a series of last-minute options. This included passing a bill that would extend current funding at levels that were previously approved by former President Donald Trump’s administration. This would have caused some Pentagon layoffs and freeze funding for the National Institutes of Health; this would have been catastrophic due to the continuing pandemic. Or Congress would have to approve a fourth temporary funding bill with the goal of negotiating a future spending bill. The last alternative risked the federal government shutting down which would affect thousands of federal workers.
For the time being, federal agencies have developed their own backup plan to use federal funding from last year while the long-term spending bill is being negotiated at this time.
News You May Have Missed
The Justice Department Ends the China Initiative
This past Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it would eliminate the so-called China Initiative and integrate it under broader counter-intelligence programs related to China, Russia, North Korea, and others. The China Initiative was originally established under former President Donald Trump to counter Beijing’s theft of American intellectual property. It had mixed success in convicting clandestine PRC government agents operating in U.S. universities and research labs, and according to some advocacy groups produced fear amongst the Asian American Community. The head of the DOJ’s National Security Division, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, stated that although the Chinese government poses a significant threat, the initiative was not the proper method to combat this issue Olsen affirmed that the Department of Justice will continue to combat Chinese espionage and cyberattacks while taking into consideration the concerns that civil rights groups have raised about the initiative. Racial profiling and attacks on the Asian Community arose as a result of the initiative and have only worsened due to the continuing pandemic. The Chinese government has made a determined effort to obtain U.S. secrets, technology, and research. It is crucial that an effective new initiative be developed as soon as possible to prevent such actions from occurring.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.