Important Takeaways:
- Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has flatly stated that any long-range missile strikes carried out by Ukraine against the territory of Russia will constitute an act of war against the Russian Federation by NATO.
- He warns that if Ukraine is empowered to strike Russia with long-range missiles supplied by NATO, the alliance would be at war with his country:
- Putin notes that Ukrainian drone attacks have already taken place within Russia, most recently in Moscow. However, “When it comes to using high-precision long-range Western-made weapons, it’s a completely different story.”
- “The Ukrainian army is not able to strike with modern long-range precision systems of Western manufacture. It cannot do this. It can only do so using intelligence from satellites, which Ukraine does not have. This is data from [European Union] satellites, or from the United States, in general from NATO,” he said.
- Putin believes only NATO servicemen can enter flight assignments for the missile systems, arguing the real question is whether NATO wants to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine or not.
- Putin’s ominous words come after Biden-Harris Secretary of State Anthony Blinken hinted that Ukraine may get the green light to use long-range missiles against Russia earlier this week.
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Important Takeaways:
- Three weeks ago, Ukraine’s military launched a stunning operation to take the war in Ukraine back onto the territory of the country that launched it. Three weeks later, the Ukrainians still occupy hundreds of miles of territory in Russia’s western Kursk region.
- The incursion had a number of goals: to force Russia to divert its forces from Ukraine to defend its own towns and cities; to seize territory that might later be used for bargaining leverage in peace negotiations; and to send a political message to the Russian people and their leaders that they are not safe from the consequences of the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin nearly two-and-a-half years ago.
- But there was also a less obvious objective: Leaders in Kyiv likely hoped to send a message to their friends in the United States and Europe that their approach to the war has been overly cautious — that fears about “escalation,” “red lines,” and Russian nuclear use — a threat that Putin himself has voiced repeatedly — have been overblown.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged this explicitly in a speech on August 19, saying, “We are now witnessing a significant ideological shift, namely, the whole naive, illusory concept of so-called ‘red lines’ refs somewhere near Sudzha” — a town near the border now under the control of Ukrainian forces.
- The Russian government has certainly done everything in its power to add nuclear uncertainty to Western leaders’ calculations. From the very first day of the invasion, Putin has made repeated references to his country’s nuclear arsenal — the largest in the world — and warned countries that get in Russia’s way of “consequences that you have never faced in your history.”
- Over the course of the war, Putin and other Russian officials have made repeated references to “red lines” that should not be crossed if Western governments don’t want to face a catastrophic response. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been particularly active in threatening foreign powers with “nuclear apocalypse” via his social media accounts.
- It’s not all rhetoric: The Russian government has taken steps such as moving some of its nuclear weapons to Belarus and conducting realistic drills for using tactical nuclear weapons — seemingly in an effort to remind Ukraine’s allies of Russia’s capabilities.
- Pavel Podvig, senior researcher on Russia’s nuclear arsenal at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva [thinks] Putin would be unlikely to consider any sort of nuclear use unless the very existence of the Russian state were threatened. “Even the loss of a region like Kursk technically would not qualify,”
- As the Council on Foreign Relations’s Fix put it, Western “red lines” on aid to Ukraine have clearly shifted. The problem is “we don’t know how the red lines are shifting in Putin’s mind.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Thousands of Russian troops face being cut off in what would be a major military embarrassment for Vladimir Putin’s generals.
- Russia’s army is struggling to contain a daring and ambitious Ukrainian attack that has seized so far around 483 square miles of territory, along with 92 settlements.
- Ukraine has sought to press home its attack and has shown no sign of curtailing its assault.
- Three bridges across the Seim River have been either destroyed or badly damaged, it has been claimed, with Ukraine now poised to take even more territory.
- Kyiv’s army is looking to push forward from its existing bridgehead around the Russian town of Sudzha, captured two weeks ago.
- Reports suggest that Ukrainian forces are just 1.6 miles away from the Seim River, where Russian soldiers are stuck in the Korenevsky district.
- If the Ukrainians succeed in reaching the Seim, then Russian troops south of the river will effectively be cut off from the rest of their army.
- Ukraine’s troops will also gain another sizeable chunk of Russian land, around 270 square miles.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine’s shock incursion across the Russian border into Kursk Oblast may force important strategic decisions on Moscow as President Vladimir Putin’s troops are taken as prisoners of war and supply lines are threatened. The Ukrainian attack took Russian forces by surprise, according to one U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
- According to the Institute for the Study of War, Ukraine’s cross-border gambit has allowed Kyiv to seize the battlefield initiative, long held by Russian forces who were able to dictate the time and place of fighting and force Ukrainian troops to expend manpower and equipment on defensive operations.
- “It’s been a very real success,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, now a senior director at the Atlantic Council, told USA TODAY. “The latest data, not confirmed, says they’ve taken as much as 750 square kilometers and may have gone as far as 35 kilometers from the border.”
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the operation in a post Saturday to X, formerly Twitter, describing a push to drive the war into “the aggressor’s territory.” Zelenskyy thanked international partners for implementing sanctions against Russia and the United States for new defense aid, including Stinger missiles, HIMARS mobile artillery ammunition and 155mm artillery shells.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday warned the United States that if Washington deployed long-range missiles in Germany, then Russia would station similar missiles in striking distance of the West.
- The United States said on July 10 that it would start deploying long-range missiles in Germany from 2026 in preparation for a longer-term deployment that will include SM-6, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons.
- In a speech to sailors from Russia, China, Algeria and India to mark Russian navy day in the former imperial capital of St Petersburg, Putin warned the United States that it risked triggering a Cold War-style missile crisis with the move.
- “The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin said.
- “We will take mirror measures to deploy, taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world.”
- Russian and U.S. diplomats say their diplomatic relations are worse even that during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and both Moscow and Washington have urged de-escalation while both have made steps towards escalation.
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Important Takeaways:
- Putin ‘is prepared to SHARE Crimea with Ukraine according to new peace plan that has been presented by Russia to the US’
- It would see the Kremlin dictator gain spoils from going to war.
- ‘The main purpose of his [Kolokoltsev’s] arrival was to hand over Russia’s peace plan to the US authorities,’ said Gordon, who said it was a Putin plan ‘to end the war’.
- The demands were that Ukraine must completely withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk regions, both of which are now partially annexed by Russia.
- But Russia would hand over Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station and the nearby town of Enerhodar to Ukraine.
- And he would discuss the possible transfer of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to the control of Ukraine.
- Crimea would become a ‘specially demilitarized administrative territory with dual subordination to Ukraine and the Russian Federation’.
- Ukraine must take on itself legally binding international guarantees, not to block the supply of water to Crimea,’ said Gordon, reading from a document.
- Putin seized the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and vowed he would never return it to Ukraine.
- Ukraine would also control a 62-mile ‘demilitarized zone’ along the Dnipro River.
- The Ukrainian army would have a legal maximum size, and the country would be barred from joining NATO, a key Zelinsky goal.
- But Putin would not seek to block Ukraine joining the EU.
- The West would drop sanctions on Russian oil and gas, as well as banking.
- Gordon gave the army size as 350,000, but the Gosdumskaya Telegram channel said 150,000.
- The UN meeting that the Russian minister attended was a ‘diversionary maneuver’, said Gordon.
- The Donetsk and Luhansk regions cannot be transferred under the control of Ukraine, because this will cause, they say, the imminent genocide of the population of the territory, a third of which took part in hostilities against Ukraine,’ said Gordon.
- There has been no official comment from the US, Russia or Ukraine over the alleged back channel contacts concerning Kolokoltsev’s visit.
- Intriguingly, Kolokoltsev’s plane was seen alongside former US president Donald Trump’s aircraft as it arrived in Washington.
- Trump has vowed that he could rapidly halt the debilitating war if re-elected and hinted that this would involve Ukraine ceding territory in exchange for security assurances short of being a NATO member
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Important Takeaways:
- Putin offered to supply fossil fuels including natural gas to Vietnam for the long term during a state visit that comes as Moscow is seeking to bolster ties in Asia to offset its growing international isolation over its military actions in Ukraine.
- The two countries also agreed to work on a roadmap for a nuclear science and technology center in Vietnam.
- Of the 12 publicly announced agreements, none overtly pertained to defense. But Lam said there were other deals that were not made public.
- Putin’s recent visits to China and now North Korea and Vietnam are attempts to “break the international isolation,”
- Russia is the biggest supplier of military equipment to the Southeast Asian nation, and Russian oil exploration technologies help maintain Vietnam’s sovereignty claims in the contested South China Sea.
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Important Takeaways:
- A possible impending visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to North Korea could deepen military ties between the two countries in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, officials of South Korea and the United States warned on Friday.
- On Wednesday, a senior official at Seoul’s presidential office said Putin was expected to visit North Korea “in the coming days”.
- North Korea and Russia have denied arms deals but vowed to deepen cooperation across the board, including in military relations.
- The U.S. intelligence community assesses, however, that these relationships – including that between Moscow and Pyongyang – will remain “far short” of formal alliances because parochial interests and wariness of each other will most likely limit their cooperation, Haines said.
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Important Takeaways:
- NATO is drawing up plans to send American troops to the frontlines of Europe in the event of an all-out conflict with Russia, it has been revealed.
- New ‘land corridors’ are being carved out to quickly funnel soldiers through central Europe without local bureaucratic impediments, allowing NATO forces to pounce in an instant should Putin’s devastating war in Ukraine move further west.
- The plans are said to include contingencies in case of Russian bombardment, letting troops sweep into the Balkans via corridors in Italy, Greece and Turkey, or towards Russia’s northern border via Scandinavia, officials told The Telegraph.
- Tensions have ratcheted up in recent weeks, with Russian President Vladimir Putin openly acknowledging the ‘possibility’ of ‘a full-scale Third World War’ as he threatens ‘fatal consequences’ for western allies allowing Ukraine use of their weapons on Russian soil.
- But amid warnings from Norway’s top general that Europe only has two to three years to prepare before Russia could realistically attack the bloc, NATO is said to be exploring possible countermeasures.
- NATO leaders agreed last year to prepare 300,000 troops to be kept in a state of high readiness to defend the bloc in case of an attack on a member state – just under half the force Napoleon sent to Russia in his disastrous 1812 campaign.
- Russia meanwhile continues to amass forces. The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank assessed that the Russian military began 2023 with a ‘highly disorganized force in Ukraine’ of around 360,000 troops, rising to 410,000 by the summer.
- By the beginning of this year, they reported, there were 470,000 troops in occupied territories.
- French President Emmanuel Macron has urged NATO unity against a belligerent Russian aggressor, warning ‘the rules of the game has changed’ in a recent speech in Paris.
- ‘The fact that war has returned to European soil, and that it is being waged by a nuclear-armed power, changes everything,’ he told an audience at the Sorbonne late in April.
- Macron warned that Europe is ‘not armed against the risks we face’ abroad and urged his allies on the continent to avoid overreliance on the US for security.
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Important Takeaways:
- President Biden has made his “biggest blunder” yet by driving China and Russia into a closer strategic partnership through his faulty foreign policy
- Heritage Foundation senior fellow Michael Pillsbury argued on “Fox & Friends” that the “shocking” relationship the two nuclear world powers have fostered never would have happened under the Trump administration
- Putin visited Xi in Beijing to strengthen bilateral relations and garner additional support for the war in Ukraine
- China has vowed “resolute measures” against the U.S. in retaliation for Biden’s newly announced tariffs on $18 billion worth of Chinese imports
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