RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — American-made Abrams tanks that Ukrainians will use for training will arrive in Germany in the next few weeks, allowing soldiers to begin learning to use the much-anticipated armor, according to two U.S. Defense Department officials.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected to announce the move at a Friday press conference after the 11th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a gathering of more than 40 nations dedicated to supporting Kyiv against Russia’s all-out assault, said one of the DoD officials, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive operations.
The 31 M1A1 Abrams tanks — a Ukrainian battalion’s worth — will arrive at the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany by mid-to-late May, according to the officials. The training will begin a week or two later, after the tanks go through a maintenance period.
But the tanks the Ukrainian armed forces will train on in Germany are different from the ones that will eventually arrive in Ukraine for use on the battlefield, the first DoD official added, noting that those are still being refurbished.
The training on how to operate and maintain the Abrams is expected to take up to 10 weeks and may include instruction on how to maneuver in combat, the official said. Some 250 Ukrainians are expected to go through the training program, which is run by 7th Army Training Command.
The U.S. is accelerating the delivery of the Abrams by opting to send older M1A1 versions, rather than the newer M1A2 type originally planned to go to Ukraine. The Pentagon anticipates the tanks will arrive on the battlefield by the end of the year.
During his opening remarks ahead of the contact group meeting, Austin applauded his counterparts for their donations. He noted that Italy, France, Canada and Norway are also providing air defense systems, while Estonia has spent more than 1 percent of its GDP on Ukraine.
“Our common efforts have made a huge difference to Ukraine’s defenders on the battlefield. And they underscore just how badly the Kremlin miscalculated,” Austin said. “After more than a year of Russian aggression and deceit, this contact group is as united as ever and more global than ever.”
The group is also working to deliver defense systems to counter Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, Austin said. Two Patriot missile defense systems, including one from the U.S. and one made up of components from Germany and the Netherlands, arrived in Ukraine on Wednesday.
In total, the members of the contact group have provided more than $55 billion in security assistance for Ukraine since the group’s founding a year ago. The U.S. alone has provided $35 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began, including the most recent package of $325 million.
Doubts are growing about the wisdom of holding the shattered frontline city of Bakhmut against relentless Russian assaults, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is digging in and insists his top commanders are united in keeping up an attritional defense that has dragged on for months.
Fighting around Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donbas dramatically escalated late last year, with Zelenskyy slamming the Russians for hurling men — many of them convicts recruited by the Wagner mercenary group — forward to almost certain death in “meat waves.” Now the bloodiest battle of the war, Bakhmut offers a vision of conflict close to World War I, with flooded trenches and landscapes blasted by artillery fire.
In the past weeks, as Ukrainian forces have been almost encircled in a salient, lacking shells and facing spiking casualties, there has been increased speculation both in Ukraine and abroad that the time has come to pull back to another defensive line — a retrenchment that would not be widely seen as a massive military setback, although Russia would claim a symbolic victory.
In an address on Wednesday night, however, Zelenskyy explained he remained in favor of slogging it out in Bakhmut.
“There was a clear position of the entire general staff: Reinforce this sector and inflict maximum possible damage upon the occupier,” Zelenskyy said in a video address after meeting with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyy and other senior generals to discuss a battle that’s prompting mounting anxiety among Ukraine’s allies and is drawing criticism from some Western military analysts.
“All members expressed a common position regarding the further holding and defense of the city,” Zelenskyy said.
This is the second time in as many weeks that Ukraine’s president has cited the backing of his top commanders. Ten days ago, Zelenskyy’s office issued a statement also emphasizing that Zaluzhnyy and Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, agreed with his decision to hold fast at Bakhmut.
The long-running logic of the Ukrainian armed forces has been that Russia has suffered disproportionately high casualties, allowing Kyiv’s forces to grind down the invaders, ahead of a Ukrainian counter-offensive expected shortly, in the spring.
City of glass, brick and debris
Criticism has been growing among some in the Ukrainian ranks — and among Western allies — about continuing with the almost nine-month-long battle. The disquiet was muted at first and expressed behind the scenes, but is now spilling into the open.
On social media some Ukrainian soldiers have been expressing bitterness at their plight, although they say they will do their duty and hold on as ordered. “Bakhmut is a city of glass, bricks and debris, which crackle underfoot like the fates of people who fought here,” tweeted one.
A lieutenant on Facebook noted: “There is a catastrophic shortage of shells.” He said the Russians were well dug in and it was taking five to seven rounds to hit an enemy position. He complained of equipment challenges, saying “Improvements — improvements have already been promised, because everyone who has a mouth makes promises.” But he cautioned his remarks shouldn’t be taken as a plea for a retreat. “WE WILL FULFILL OUR DUTY UNTIL THE END, WHATEVER IT IS!” he concluded ruefully.
Iryna Rybakova, a press officer with Ukraine’s 93rd brigade, also gave a flavor of the risks medics are facing in the town. “Those people who go back and forth to Bakhmut on business are taking an incredible risk. Everything is difficult,” she tweeted.
A Ukrainian serviceman gives food and water to a local elderly woman in the town of Bakhmut | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
The key strategic question is whether Zelenskyy is being obdurate and whether the fight has become more a test of wills than a tactically necessary engagement that will bleed out Russian forces before Ukraine’s big counter-strike.
“Traveling around the front you hear a lot of grumblings where folks aren’t sure whether the reason they’re holding Bakhmut is because it’s politically important” as opposed to tactically significant, according to Michael Kofman, an American military analyst and director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses.
Kofman, who traveled to Bakhmut to observe the ferocious battle first-hand, said in the War on the Rocks podcast that while the battle paid dividends for the Ukrainians a few months ago, allowing it to maintain a high kill ratio, there are now diminishing returns from continuing to engage.
“Happening in the fight now is that the attrition exchange rate is favorable to Ukraine but it’s not nearly as favorable as it was before. The casualties on the Ukrainian side are rather significant and require a substantial amount of replacements on a regular basis,” he said.
The Ukrainians have acknowledged they have also been suffering significant casualties at Bakhmut, which Russia is coming ever closer to encircling. They claim, though, the Russians are losing seven soldiers for each Ukrainian life lost, while NATO military officials put the kill ratio at more like five to one. But Kofman and other military analysts are skeptical, saying both sides are now suffering roughly the same rate of casualties.
“I hope the Ukrainian command really, really, really knows what it’s doing in Bakhmut,” tweeted Illia Ponomarenko, the Kyiv Independent’s defense reporter.
Shifting position
Last week, Zelenskyy received support for his decision to remain engaged at Bakhmut from retired U.S. generals David Petraeus and Mark Hertling on the grounds that the battle was causing a much higher Russian casualty rate. “I think at this moment using Bakhmut to allow the Russians to impale themselves on it is the right course of action, given the extraordinary casualties that the Russians are taking,” retired general and former CIA director Petraeus told POLITICO.
But in the last couple of weeks the situation has shifted, said Rob Lee, a former U.S. Marine officer and now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the kill ratio is no longer a valid reason to remain engaged. “Bakhmut is no longer a good place to attrit Russian forces,” he tweeted. Lee says Ukrainian casualties have risen since Russian forces, comprising Wagner mercenaries as well as crack Russian airborne troops, pushed into the north of the town at the end of February.
The Russians have been determined to record a victory at Bakhmut, which is just six miles southwest of the salt-mining town of Soledar, which was overrun two months ago after the Wagner Group sacrificed thousands of its untrained fighters there too.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has hinted several times that he sees no tactical military reason to defend Bakhmut, saying the eastern Ukrainian town was of more symbolic than operational importance, and its fall wouldn’t mean Moscow had regained the initiative in the war.
Ukrainian generals have pushed back at such remarks, saying there’s a tactical reason to defend the town. Zaluzhnyy said on his Telegram channel: “It is key in the stability of the defense of the entire front.”
Volodymyr Zelensky and Sanna Marin attend a memorial service for Dmytro Kotsiubailo, a Ukrainian serviceman killed in Bakhmut | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Midweek, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials have been urging the Ukrainians since the end of January to withdraw from Bakhmut, fearing the depletion of their own troops could impact Kyiv’s planned spring offensive. Ukrainian officials say there’s no risk of an impact on the offensive as the troops scheduled to be deployed are not fighting at Bakhmut.
That’s prompted some Ukrainian troops to complain that Kyiv is sacrificing ill-trained reservists at Bakhmut, using them as expendable in much the same way the Russians have been doing with Wagner conscripts. A commander of the 46th brigade — with the call sign Kupol — told the newspaper that inexperienced draftees are being used to plug the losses. He has now been removed from his post, infuriating his soldiers, who have praised him.
Kofman worries that the Ukrainians are not playing to their military strengths at Bakhmut. Located in a punch bowl, the town is not easy to defend, he noted. “Ukraine is a dynamic military” and is good when it is able “to conduct a mobile defense.” He added: “Fixed entrenches, trying to concentrate units there, putting people one after another into positions that have been hit by artillery before doesn’t really play to a lot of Ukraine’s advantages.”
“They’ve mounted a tenacious defense. I don’t think the battle is nearly as favorable as it’s somewhat publicly portrayed but more importantly, I think they somewhat run the risk of encirclement there,” he added.
Protesters blocked the road to one of the main terminals of Israel’s central international airport on Thursday, intensifying a nationwide movement against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to weaken the country’s judicial system.
A CNN team at Ben Gurion Airport saw people walking towards Terminal 3 with suitcases because of the blocked road, as scenes emerged of what is being called a “Day of Disruption.”
Israeli television also showed a separate protest in the city of Tel Aviv that appeared to number in the thousands, with demonstrators waving Israeli flags.
Protesters on foot blocked the Ayalon highway, one of Tel Aviv’s main roads, with some resisting police efforts to clear the highway, a CNN team at the scene saw.
Demonstrators chanted “democracy,” “shame” and “where were you in Huwara?” at police, a reference to a West Bank Palestinian village that was the target of a violent riot by Jewish settlers nearly two weeks ago.
The demonstration brought traffic to a standstill on the highway, CNN saw, before police on horseback succeeded in pushing protesters off the highway, clearing it. Demonstrators dispersed off the highway but remain in the area.
Some protesters handed out roses to police, or placed them on police cars, TV pictures showed. As in previous protests, many of the demonstrators carried Israeli flags, while a few Pride flags were also in evidence.
CNN saw protesters trying to block a truck mounted with a water cannon aimed at them.
Opponents of government plans to give Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, the power to overrule Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority have been protesting every Saturday night across Israel for the past nine weeks. The largest protests, in Tel Aviv, have regularly drawn more than 100,000 demonstrators, in a country with a population of just over nine million.
The package of legislation would also give the government the authority to nominate judges, which currently rests with a committee composed of judges, legal experts and politicians. It would remove power and independence from government ministries’ legal advisers, and take away the power of the courts to invalidate government appointments.
Supporters of the plan to overhaul the judiciary say the changes are necessary to rein in a Supreme Court that has become too powerful and is not democratically accountable.
The protest at Ben Gurion Airport came hours before Netanyahu flew to Rome to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
It also took place the day US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Israel for meetings with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Austin was originally due to come to Israel on Wednesday but delayed his arrival by a day at the request of Israeli officials concerned about the protests, the Pentagon said Wednesday. The location of his meeting was also changed because of the protests, Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryde said.
Austin will bring up Israeli violence in the West Bank during his short stay in Israel as part of a broader Middle East trip, a senior US defense official told reporters traveling with the secretary before his arrival in Israel.
He is “going to share his deep and profound concern about activities that contribute to a cycle of violence on the West Bank,” the official said in a background briefing. “By spending so much time focusing on violence in the West Bank, it detracts from our ability to focus on what the strategic threat is right now, and that is Iran, dangerous nuclear advances and continuing regional and global aggression.”
Undercover Israeli Border Police operatives killed three suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank Thursday morning, just hours before Austin landed, the Border Police announced. The Israeli security forces came under fire from a vehicle on an operation to arrest two suspected Palestinian Islamic Jihad military operatives, returned fire, and killed all three people in the vehicle, the police statement said.
The widespread demonstrations across Israel on Thursday are unconnected to Austin’s visit.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CNN that he and his Chinese counterpart have not spoken for a “couple of months,” with Chinese Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe refusing to take a call in the wake of the US shootdown of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.
“The last time that I talked to him was a couple of months ago,” Austin in an interview with Kaitlan Collins for “CNN This Morning” on Thursday.
“I think we’ll continue … to stress how important it is and hopefully Minister Wei will schedule that call,” Austin added. “He knows where to find me.”
The confirmation leaders of the two largest militaries in the world are not in direct contact comes as the two countries continue to build up their forces in Asia. CNN reported Thursday that the US is planning to increase the number of US troops training Taiwanese forces on the self-governing island in the coming months, something Austin declined to confirm. In recent weeks China accused the US of undermining peace and stability in the region after it strengthened its posture around Taiwan by bolstering forces in nearby Okinawa and Guam.
And tensions significantly escalated at the beginning of the month when a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was drifting tens of thousands of feet up across the continental United States. President Joe Biden eventually ordered it shot down off the coast of South Carolina after officials determined that the risk the balloon would pose to civilians and property on the ground if shot down outweighed the intelligence collection risk it presented.
Chinese officials claimed that the balloon was a “civilian airship” for research and weather purposes which had drifted off course, though the US reaffirmed it had surveillance capabilities.
Austin told CNN that it’s possible Chinese President Xi Jinping did not know about the balloon, but he would “let the Chinese speak for themselves.”
Austin did emphasize that that while he and Wei haven’t spoken during that period, it doesn’t mean the US doesn’t have other lines of communications open with different Chinese officials.
“You just saw [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] talk to his counterpart in Munich,” he said Thursday. “And so there are diplomatic lines of communication open. But I think for the military, it’s really, really important that we maintain open lines of communication.”
On top of existing tensions, US officials have begun warning partners and allies of intelligence that showed China could provide lethal military aid to Russia’s military in Ukraine. The issue was even raised at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend in a conversation between Blinken and his counterpart, Wang Yi.
“The Secretary was quite blunt in warning about the implications and consequences of China providing material support to Russia or assisting Russia with systematic sanctions evasion,” a senior State Department official previously told reporters.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing for a year now, with no signs of slowing. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels last week that Russia is “now a global pariah” since its invasion of Ukraine, and has lost “strategically, operationally, and tactically.”
Austin added last week from Brussels that they expect to see Ukraine conduct an offensive in the spring against Russia.
Thus far, China has not appeared to actually go through with sending lethal aid to Russia, Austin said in the interview, but it has not been “taken off the table.”
“[T]here’s reputational risk, and of course, I’m sure China would love to enjoy a good relationship with all the countries in Europe,” he said. “And again, if you just look at the numbers of countries around the world, that really think that what Russia has done is horrible, I mean, adding to that, I think China – it would be a very ill-advised step for China to take.”
China has a “lot of capability in terms of munitions and weapons,” Austin added, “and if they provide the substantial support to Russia, it prolongs the conflict.”
“I woke at 5 o’clock,” the Estonian prime minister recalled recently. The phone was ringing. Her Lithuanian counterpart was on the line.
“Oh my God, it’s really happening,” came the ominous words, according to Kallas. Another call came in. This time it was the Latvian prime minister.
It was February 24, 2022. War had begun on the European continent.
The night before, Kallas had told her Cabinet members to keep their phones on overnight in anticipation of just this moment: Russia was blitzing Ukraine in an attempt to decapitate the government and seize the country. For those in Estonia and its Baltic neighbors, where memories of Soviet occupation linger, the first images of war tapped into a national terror.
“I went to bed hoping that I was not right,” Kallas said.
Across Europe, similar wakeup calls rolled in, as Russian tanks barrelled into Ukraine and missiles pierced the early morning sky. In recent weeks, POLITICO spoke with prime ministers, high-ranking EU and NATO officials, foreign ministers and diplomats — nearly 20 in total — to reflect on the war’s early days as it reaches its ruinous one-year mark on Friday. All described a similar foreboding that morning, a sense that the world had irrevocably changed.
Within a year, the Russian invasion would profoundly reshape Europe, upending traditional foreign policy presumptions, cleaving it from Russian energy and reawakening long-dormant arguments about extending the EU eastward.
But for those centrally involved in the war’s buildup, the events of February 24 are still seared in their memories.
In an interview with POLITICO, Charles Michel — head of the European Council, the EU body comprising all 27 national leaders — recalled how he received a call directly from Kyiv as the attacks began.
“I was woken up by Zelenskyy,” Michel recounted. It was around 3 a.m. The Ukrainian president told Michel: “The aggression had started and that it was a full-scale invasion.”
Michel hit the phones, speaking to prime ministers across the EU throughout the night.
Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell speak to the press on February 24, 2022 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
By 5 a.m., EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was in his office. Three hours later, he was standing next to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the duo made the EU’s first major public statement about the dawning war. Von der Leyen then convened the 27 commissioners overseeing EU policy for an emergency meeting.
Elsewhere in Brussels, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg was on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who were six hours behind in Washington, D.C. He then raced over to NATO headquarters, where he urgently gathered the military alliance’s decision-making body.
The mood that morning, Stoltenberg recalled in a recent conversation with reporters, was “serious” but “measured and well-organized.”
In Ukraine, missiles had begun raining down in Kyiv, Odesa and Mariupol. Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to social media, confirming in a video that war had begun. He urged Ukrainians to stay calm.
These video updates would soon become a regular feature of Zelenskyy’s wartime leadership. But this first one was especially jarring — a message from a president whose life, whose country, was now at risk.
It would be one of the last times the Ukrainian president, dressed in a dove-gray suit jacket and crisp white shirt, appeared in civilian clothes.
Europe’s 21st-century Munich moment
February 24, 2022 is an indelible memory for those who lived through it. For many, however, it felt inevitable.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, an annual powwow of defense and security experts frequented by senior politicians.
It was here that the Ukrainian leader made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions, hitting out at Germany for promising helmets and chiding NATO countries for not doing enough.
“What are you waiting for?” he implored in the highly charged atmosphere in the Bayerischer Hof hotel. “We don’t need sanctions after bombardment happens, after we have no borders, no economy. Why would we need those sanctions then?”
The symbolism was rife — Munich, a city forever associated with appeasement following Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated attempt to swap land for peace with Adolf Hitler in 1938, was now the setting for Zelenskyy’s last appeal to the West.
Zelenskyy, never missing a moment, seized the historical analogy.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, where he made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions | Pool photo by Ronald Wittek/Getty Images
“Has our world completely forgotten the mistakes of the 20th century?” he asked. “Where does appeasement policy usually lead to?”
But his calls for more arms were ignored, even as countries began ordering their citizens to evacuate and airlines began canceling flights in and out of the country.
A few days later, Zelenskyy’s warnings were coming true. On February 22, Vladimir Putin inched closer to war, recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine. It was a decisive moment for the Russian president, paving the way for his all-out assault less than 48 hours later.
The EU responded the next day — its first major action against Moscow’s activities in Ukraine since the escalation of tensions in 2021. Officials unveiled the first in what would be nine sanction packages against Russia (and counting).
In an equally significant move, a reluctant Germany finally pulled the plug on Nord Stream 2, the yet unopened gas pipeline linking Russia to northern Germany — the decision, made after months of pressure, presaged how the Russian invasion would soon upend the way Europeans powered their lives and heated their homes.
Summit showdown
As it happened, EU leaders were already scheduled to meet in Brussels on February 24, the day the invasion began. Charles Michel had summoned the leaders earlier that week to deal with the escalating crisis, and to sign off on the sanctions.
Throughout the afternoon, Brussels was abuzz — TV cameras from around the world had descended on the European quarter. Helicopters circled overhead.
European leaders gathered in Brussels following the invasion | Pool photo by Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images
Suddenly, the regular European Council meeting of EU leaders, oftena forum for technical document drafting as much as political decision-making, had become hugely consequential. With war unfolding, the world was looking at the EU to respond — and lead.
The meeting was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. As leaders were gathering, news came that Russia had seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Moldova had declared a state of emergency and thousands of people were pouring out of Ukraine. Later that night, Zelenskyy announced a general mobilization:every man between the ages of 18 and 60 was being asked to fight.
Many leaders were wearing facemasks, a reminder that another crisis, which now seemed to pale in comparison, was still ever-present.
Just before joining colleagues at the Europa building in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron phoned Putin — the French president’s latest effort to mediate with the Russian leader. Macron had visited Moscow on February 7 but left empty-handed after five hours of discussions. He later said he made the call at Zelenskyy’s request, to ask Putin to stop the war.
“It did not produce any results,” Macron said of the call. “The Russian president has chosen war.”
Arriving at the summit, Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš captured the gravity of the moment. “Europe is experiencing the biggest military invasion since the Second World War,” he said. “Our response has to be united.”
But inside the room, divisions were on full display. How far, leaders wondered, could Europe go in sanctioning Russia, given the potential economic blowback? Countries dug in along fault lines that would become familiar in the succeeding months.
The realities of war soon pierced the academic debates. Zelenskyy’s team had set up a video link as missile strikes encircled the capital city, wanting to get the president talking to his EU counterparts.
One person present in the room recalled the percolating anxiety as the video feed beamed through — the image out of focus, the camera shaky. Then the picture sharpened and Zelenskyy appeared, dressed in a khaki shirt and looking deathly pale. His surroundings were faceless, an unknown room somewhere in Kyiv.
“Everyone was silent, the atmosphere was completely tense,” said the official who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Zelenskyy, shaken and utterly focused, told leaders that they may not see him again — the Kremlin wanted him dead.
Black smoke rises from a military airport in Chuguyev near Kharkiv on February 24, 2022 | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
“If you, EU leaders and leaders of the free world, do not really help Ukraine today, tomorrow the war will also knock at your door,” he warned, invoking an argument he would return to again and again: that this wasn’t just Ukraine’s war — it was Europe’s war.
Within hours, EU leaders had signed off on their second package of pre-prepared sanctions hitting Russia. But a fractious debate had already begun about what should come next.
The Baltic nations and Poland wanted more — more penalties, more economic punishments. Others were holding back. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi aired their reluctance about expelling Russian banks from the global SWIFT payment system. It was needed to pay for Russian gas, after all.
How quickly that would change.
Sanctions were not the only pressing matter. There was a humanitarian crisis unfolding on Europe’s doorstep. The EU had to both get aid into a war zone and prepare for a mass exodus of people fleeing it.
Janez Lenarčič, the EU’s crisis management commissioner, landed in Paris on the day of the invasion, returning from Niger. Officials started making plans to get ambulances, generators and medicine into Ukraine — ultimately comprising 85,000 tons of aid.
“The most complex, biggest and longest-ever operation” of its kind for the EU, he said.
By that weekend, there was also a plan for the refugees escaping Russian bombs. At a rare Sunday meeting, ministers agreed to welcome and distribute the escaping Ukrainians — a feat that has long eluded the EU for other migrants. Days later, they would grant Ukrainians the instant right to live and work in the EU — another first in an extraordinary time. Decisions that normally took years were now flying through in hours.
Looming over everything were Ukraine’s repeated — and increasingly dire — entreaties for more weapons. Europe’s military investments had lapsed in recent decades, and World War II still cast a dark shadow over countries like Germany, where the idea of sending arms to a warzone still felt verboten.
There were also quiet doubts (not to mention intelligence assessments). Would Ukraine even have its own government next week? Why risk war with Russia if it was days away from toppling Kyiv?
“What we didn’t know at that point was that the Ukrainian resistance would be so successful,” a senior NATO diplomat told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “We were thinking there would be a change of regime [in Kyiv], what do we do?”
That, too, was all about to change.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed Germany on the night of Russia’s invasion | Pool photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images
By the weekend, Germany had sloughed off its reluctance, slowly warming to its role as a key military player. The EU, too, dipped its toe into historic waters that weekend, agreeing to help reimburse countries sending weapons to Ukraine — another startling first for a self-proclaimed peace project.
“I remember, saying, ‘OK, now we go for it,’” said Stefano Sannino, secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic arm.
Ironically, the EU would refund countries using the so-called European Peace Facility — a little-known fund that was suddenly the EU’s main vehicle to support lethal arms going to a warzone.
Over at NATO, the alliance activated its defense plans and sent extra forces to the alliance’s eastern flank. The mission had two tracks, Stoltenberg recounted — “to support Ukraine, but also prevent escalation beyond Ukraine.”
Treading that fine line would become the defining balancing act over the coming year for the Western allies as they blew through one taboo after another.
Who knew what, when
As those dramatic, heady early days fade into history, Europeans are now grappling with what the war means — for their identity, for their sense of security and for the European Union that binds them together.
The invasion has rattled the core tenets underlying the European project, said Ivan Krastev, a prominent political scientist who has long studied Europe’s place in the world.
“For different reasons, many Europeans believed that this is a post-war Continent,” he said.
Post-World War II Europe was built on the assumption that open economic policies, trade between neighbors and mild military power would preserve peace.
“For the Europeans to accept the possibility of the war was basically to accept the limits of our own model,” Krastev argued.
The disbelief has bred self-reflection: Has the war permanently changed the EU? Will a generation that had confined memories of World War II and the Cold War to the past view the next conflict differently?
And, perhaps most acutely, did Europe miss the signs?
Ukrainian refugees gather and rest upon their arrival at the main railway station in Berlin | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
“The start of that war has changed our lives, that’s for sure,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. It wasn’t, however, unexpected, he argued. “We are very attentive to what happens in our region,” he said. “The signs were quite clear.”
Aurescu pointed back to April 2021 as the moment he knew: “It was quite clear that Russia was preparing an aggression against Ukraine.”
Not everyone in Europe shared that assessment, though — to the degree that U.S. officials became worried. They started a public and private campaign in 2021 to warn Europe of an imminent invasion as Russia massed its troops on the Ukrainian border.
In November 2021, von der Leyen made her first trip to the White House. She sat down with Joe Biden in the Oval Office, surrounded by a coterie of national security and intelligence officials. Biden had just received a briefing before the gathering on the Russia battalion buildup and wanted to sound the alarm.
“The president was very concerned,” said one European official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “This was a time when no one in Europe was paying any attention, even the intelligence services.”
But others disputed the narrative that Europe was unprepared as America sounded the alarm.
“It’s a question of perspective. You can see the same information, but come to a different conclusion,” said one senior EU official involved in discussions in the runup to the war, while conceding that the U.S. and U.K. — both members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — did have better information.
Even if those sounding the alarm proved right, said Pierre Vimont, a former secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic wing and Macron’s Russia envoy until the war broke out, it was hard to know in advance what, exactly, to plan for.
“What type of military operation would it be?” he recalled people debating. A limited operation in the east? A full occupation? A surgical strike on Kyiv?
Here’s where most landed: Russia’s onslaught was horrifying — its brutality staggering. But the signs had been there. Something was going to happen.
“We knew that the invasion is going to happen, and we had shared intelligence,” Stoltenberg stressed. “Of course, until the planes are flying and the battle tanks are rolling, and the soldiers are marching, you can always change your plans. But the more we approached the 24th of February last year, the more obvious it was.”
Then on the day, he recounted, it was a matter of dutifully enacting the plan: “We were prepared, we knew exactly what to do.”
“You may be shocked by this invasion,” he added, “but you cannot be surprised.”
Clea Caulcutt and Cristina Gallardo contributed reporting.
ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT (AP) — The first class of 635 Ukrainian fighters has finished a five-week advanced U.S. training course in Germany on sophisticated combat skills and armored vehicles that will be critical in the coming spring offensive against the Russians, the Pentagon said Friday.
Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said that additional training is already underway at the Grafenwoehr training area, and will involve about 1,600 more Ukrainian troops. The completion of the first class coincided with a visit to the base by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, giving him his first chance to see Ukrainian soldiers training there.
The first group of Ukrainian forces arrived at the base on Jan. 15 and was put through an intense course that prepared them to take Bradley fighting vehicles and M109 Paladins into battle. The Bradleys and Paladins are two of the many armored vehicles and tanks that the U.S. and allies have pledged to the Ukrainians to help them punch through entrenched Russian troop lines. The Paladin is a self-propelled howitzer that runs on tracks rather than wheels.
Ryder said another battalion of Ukrainian troops began training on the Bradley fighting vehicle two weeks ago, and a field artillery battalion started instruction on the Paladin. Those two units total about 710 troops. Another field artillery unit and a Stryker battalion will start training next week, involving about 890 troops. That will be the first Ukrainian battalion to get training on the Stryker, an armored personnel carrier.
Defense leaders have called the latest training program key to expanding Ukraine’s ability to launch a coordinated offensive, teaching its military to effectively move and coordinate its company- and battalion-size units in battle, using combined artillery, armor and ground forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has continually pressed Western allies to hasten their military support. Speaking at a major international security conference in Munich on Friday, Zelenskyy said delays would play into Russia’s hand as the war approaches its first anniversary.
During a visit to the Grafenwoehr training base last month, U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the new skills will better prepare Ukrainian troops to counter any surge in Russian attacks.
“This is not a run of the mill rotation,” he said when meeting with U.S. commanders there. “This is one of those moments in time where if you want to make a difference, this is it.”
The training, which is being done by the 7th Army Training Command, includes classroom instruction, field work and larger combat exercises.
Before China’s spy balloon was shot down, U-2 spy planes flew by it, taking high-resolution photos of what U.S. officials described as an array of antennas for intercepting communications. David Martin reports.
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says most debris from the suspected Chinese spy balloon has been recovered. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin sat down with Austin in his first interview since the object was shot down on Saturday and discussed his interview with Anne-Marie Green and Seth Doane.
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John Dickerson reports on the ongoing relief efforts in Turkey and Syria after the earthquakes, China’s vast surveillance program after its spy balloon was shot down off the South Carolina coast, and why the IRS is telling millions to hold off on filing tax returns.
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U.S. officials said the Chinese spy balloon shot down last weekend was part of a global surveillance program that has operated for years. David Martin spoke to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the U.S. military’s response to the balloon.
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When President Joe Biden learned a likely Chinese spy balloon was drifting through the stratosphere 60,000 feet above Montana, his first inclination was to take it down.
By then, however, it was both too early and too late. After flying over swaths of sparsely populated land, it was now projected to keep drifting over American cities and towns. The debris from the balloon could endanger lives on the ground, his top military brass told him.
The massive white orb, carrying aloft a payload the size of three coach buses, had already been floating in and out of American airspace for three days before it created enough concern for Biden’s top general to brief him, according to two US officials.
Its arrival had gone unnoticed by the public as it floated eastward over Alaska – where it was first detected by North American Aerospace Defense Command on January 28 – toward Canada. NORAD continued to track and assess the balloon’s path and activities, but military officials assigned little importance to the intrusion into American airspace, having often witnessed Chinese spy balloons slip into the skies above the United States. At the time, the balloon was not assessed to be an intelligence risk or physical threat, officials say.
This time, however, the balloon kept going: high over Alaska, into Canada and back toward the US, attracting little attention from anyone looking up from the ground.
“We’ve seen them and monitored them, briefed Congress on the capabilities they can bring to the table,” another US official told CNN. “But we’ve never seen something as brazen as this.”
It would take seven days from when the balloon first entered US airspace before an F-22 fighter jet fired a heat-seeking missile into the balloon on the opposite end of the country, sending its equipment and machinery tumbling into the Atlantic Ocean.
The balloon’s week-long American journey, from the remote Aleutian Islands to the Carolina coast, left a wake of shattered diplomacy, furious reprisals from Biden’s political rivals and a preview of a new era of escalating military strain between the world’s two largest economies.
It’s also raised questions about why it wasn’t shot down sooner and what information, if any, it scooped up along its path.
What was meant to be a high-profile moment of statesmanship -as Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared to travel to China instead transformed into a televised standoff, testing Biden’s resolve at a new moment of reckoning with China. As Navy divers and FBI investigators sort through the tangle of equipment and technology that tumbled into the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, Biden and his team must also piece together what the episode means for the broader relationship with Beijing.
Minutes after the balloon was shot down at his order, a reporter asked Biden what message his decision sent to China. He looked on silently before stepping into his SUV.
On Tuesday, as Biden darted from Washington to New York City for an infrastructure event and a fundraiser, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed him there was a Chinese balloon floating over Montana.
The location was unnerving: As officials watched the balloon’s path, there was alarm at what appeared to be deliberate effort to sit over an Air Force base that maintains one of the largest silos of US intercontinental ballistic missiles.
For some administration officials, the timing also appeared intentional. The balloon floated over the US the same week Blinken was due to depart for China, a high-stakes visit viewed as the culmination of intensive diplomatic efforts launched late last year by Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in Bali.
In his Tuesday briefing with the President, Milley informed Biden the balloon appeared to be on a clear path into the continental United States, differentiating it from previous Chinese surveillance craft. The President appeared inclined at that point to take the balloon down, and asked Milley and other military officials to draw up options and contingencies.
At the same time, Biden asked his national security team to take steps to prevent the balloon from being able to gather any intelligence – essentially, by making sure no sensitive military activity or unencrypted communications would be conducted in its vicinity, officials said.
That evening, Pentagon officials met to review their military options. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, traveling abroad in Asia, participated virtually. NASA was also brought in to analyze and assess the potential debris field, based on the trajectory of the balloon, weather, and estimated payload. When options were presented to Biden on Wednesday, he directed his military leadership to shoot down the balloon as soon as they viewed it as a viable option, given concerns about risks to people and property on the ground.
“Shoot it down,” Biden told his military advisers, he would later recount to reporters.
But Austin and Milley told Biden the risks of shooting the balloon down were too high while it was moving over the US, given the chance debris could endanger lives or property on the ground below.
“They said to me, ‘Let’s wait till the safest place to do it,’” Biden told reporters on Saturday
Biden had another key request, though: he wanted the military to shoot down the balloon in such a way that it would maximize their ability to recover its payload, allowing the US intelligence community to sift through its components and gain insights into its capabilities, officials said. Shooting it down over water also increased the chances of being able to recover the payload intact, the officials said.
While Beijing insisted on Friday that the balloon was simply a meteorological device that had strayed off course, the US government was confident that the balloons were being used for surveillance. Both the balloon discovered over the US and another spotted transiting Latin America carried surveillance equipment not usually associated with standard meteorological activities or civilian research, officials said – specifically, both featured collection pod equipment and solar panels located on the metal truss suspended below the balloon itself. The US also observed small motors and propellers on the balloons, leading officials to believe Beijing had some control over its path.
US officials said the balloons were part of a fleet of Chinese spy balloons that have been spotted across five continents over the last several years.
For the bulk of its journey across the US, the scramble to assess, monitor and eventually debilitate the balloon was kept to a close circle of Biden’s top national security advisers.
But by the middle of the week, however, the mysterious white object floating above more populated areas of Montana was difficult to conceal. The balloon caused an hours-long grounding of commercial flights around Billings on Wednesday as the military worked to respond.
And people starting looking up.
Michael Alverson was working at the mines in Billings when he looked up and noticed a glowing orb in the sky. Realizing it couldn’t be the moon, he brought out his binoculars to take a closer look.
“Me and my coworkers were shocked,” Alverson said. “It appeared to be a weather balloon – or so we thought.”
Ashley McGowan told CNN she received a call from her neighbor wondering if she had heard jets flying about their neighborhood in Reed Point, Montana, on Wednesday. McGowan said she went outside with her dogs and saw a bright white dot in the sky.
“What’s happening?” she recalled wondering. “Is this a UFO or is it like trash or is it the star? I had somebody try to tell me it was the green comet, I’m like that’s way too close to be the comet.”
“This isn’t normal,” she remembered thinking. “There’s jets flying everywhere.”
Officials attributed the decision to publicize the balloon’s existence to several factors, including the fact “that people were just going to see the damn thing,” one official acknowledged.
As the military was fine tuning its options, a parallel effort was underway with the Chinese to assess the feasibility of Blinken making his highly anticipated visit to Beijing at a moment of fresh tension.
Heading into the visit, White House officials had been cheered by more robust communications with China following Biden’s meeting with Xi late last year. After shutting down virtually all talks following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last summit, the Chinese were finally back at the table – a critical step, in the eyes of Biden’s advisers, to maintaining stability in the world’s most important bilateral relationship.
The balloon would dash all of it.
On Wednesday evening, China’s top official in Washington was summoned to the State Department, where Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman delivered “a very clear and stark message” about the discovery of the surveillance balloon, officials told CNN.
Biden himself relayed to his top national security officials that he no longer believed the time was right for Blinken to visit Beijing, in part because the balloon would likely end up dominating his talks there.
The trip was postponed hours before Blinken was due to board his plane.
“In this current environment, I think it would have significantly narrowed the agenda that we would have been able to address,” a senior State Department official said.
Republicans immediately moved to attack Biden for not shooting the balloon down immediately. The attacks, which came as Biden ignored questions on the issue throughout the day on Friday, served as an annoyance “that evolved into frustration,” inside the White House, one person familiar with the dynamic said.
“This was a decision that was made at the recommendation of the Pentagon, for public safety reasons,” the person said in describing the rationale.
Still, administration officials moved to brief key lawmakers and staff on Capitol Hill. That included briefings for the staff of the top Republicans and Democrats on the intelligence panels, as well as the top four congressional leaders – a group known as the Gang of 8.
A formal briefing for the lawmakers in the Gang of 8 is scheduled to take place next week.
Still, coming just ahead of Blinken’s travel to China, it was a move that officials across the administration said made little sense on its face and required a public and private response.
US officials spoke to their Chinese counterparts throughout the week, making clear the balloon was likely to be shot down, an official said.
Biden himself would be updated regularly over the course of the week, with his national security team providing updates on their conversations with Chinese counterparts and military officials presenting updated military options.
US military and intelligence officials moved quickly to identify and close off any risks that may have extended from the balloon, though one official described them as “rather small to begin with,” given ongoing US efforts to mitigate spying threats from more sophisticated satellites.
Another official also said US assets were immediately put into motion to monitor and collect any intelligence from the balloon as it followed its path through the US – including the scrambling of military aircraft as the balloon floated high above the central part of the country.
Still, even without a direct threat to the American public, the widely held view inside the administration was that the balloon would need to be shot down, likely after it moved over open water.
Waiting to carry out the operation allowed the US to “study and scrutinize” the balloon and its equipment, a senior Defense official said.
“We have learned technical things about this balloon and its surveillance capabilities. And I suspect, if we are successful in recovering aspects of the debris, we will learn even more,” the official added.
Officials also suggested that collecting debris from the balloon could be easier if it landed in water as opposed to on land.
Government agencies worked throughout week to find the right place and right time to intercept the Chinese spy balloon, according to a government source familiar with the shoot-down plans. Earlier in the week, the Federal Aviation Administration had been told by the Pentagon to prepare options for shutting down airspace.
A plan to shoot down the balloon was once again presented to Biden on Friday night while he was in Wilmington, where he approved the execution plan for Saturday.
“We’re gonna take care of it,” Biden said later on the frigid tarmac Saturday in Syracuse, New York, where he was paying a brief visit to visit family.
Government officials were told Friday night “decisions would be made (Saturday) morning” on when to close down airspace, and FAA officials were told to “be by the phone” early Saturday morning and “ready to roll.”
Austin gave his final approval for the strike shortly after noon on Saturday from the tarmac in New York, according to a defense official. Austin had traveled north on Saturday for a funeral, but remained very engaged throughout the planning process and the operation, the official said.
At about 1:30 p.m. ET, the FAA instituted one of the largest areas of restricted airspace in US history, more than five times the size of the restricted zone over Washington, DC, and roughly twice the size of the state of Massachusetts.
The Temporary Flight Restriction – put in place at the request of the Pentagon, the FAA said – included about 150 miles of Atlantic coastline that effectively paralyzed three commercial airports: Wilmington in North Carolina and Myrtle Beach and Charleston in South Carolina.
Biden had just taken off from Syracuse when fighter jets that had taken off from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia fired a single missile into the balloon.
As its wreckage tumbled toward the Atlantic Ocean, Biden was on the phone with his national security team on Air Force One.
Western allies failed to reach a decision on supplying powerful battle tanks to Ukraine at a meeting at the Ramstein air base in Germany this week. First, CBS News foreign correspondent Debora Patta reported from the front lines in Ukraine. Then, retired Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack, a global fellow at the Wilson Center, joined CBS News to discuss what a new Russian offensive could mean for the war.
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The next few months are crucial to the success of any Ukrainian counteroffensive in the spring, according to the top officials at the Pentagon.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday said there is “a window of opportunity” ahead of the spring to get Ukraine the capabilities they need to go on the offensive.
Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley were at Ramstein air base in Germany this week to attend a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, where representatives from 54 nations gathered to discuss the equipment and training Ukraine would need to expel Russia from its territory.
Milley told reporters after the meeting that militarily it would be “very, very difficult” for Ukraine to completely push Russia out of Ukraine this year.
However, he suggested that Ukrainians could execute a successful operation to reclaim some of the Russian-occupied territory, depending on the training and new equipment they receive in the next few months.
He also said it would be a “very heavy lift” to get the equipment to the Ukrainians and then trained on both how to use the equipment and how to maneuver together on the battlefield.
Last weekend, the U.S. started its training of approximately 500 Ukrainians per month on combined arms maneuvers — that is, how to operate among battalion-sized groups and coordinate between air and ground.
The latest U.S. assistance package, valued at $2.5 billion and released on Thursday, includes more air defense capabilities and additional armored fighting vehicles, but no tanks.
Some expected the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group to pressure Germany to provide or allow the third-party export of German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine. There are about 2,000 Leopard tanks around NATO, and some countries have signaled they would be willing to provide them to Ukraine but need Germany to approve the transfer.
Austin told reporters the German defense minister has not yet made a decision on the Leopard tanks. He also clarified that Germany’s decision is not dependent on the U.S. providing Abrams tanks to Ukraine. U.S. officials have argued that the Abrams tanks, which run on jet fuel that is more difficult to acquire, are too hard to maintain, while the Leopards, which use diesel, are more accessible and easier to use.
“We have a window of opportunity here, you know, between now and the spring when they commence their operation, their counteroffensive,” Austin said Friday. “And that’s not a long time, and we have to pull together the right capabilities.”
BERLIN — Olaf Scholz has once again rebooted his security policy, nominating a new defense minister to take the reins. But when it comes to his reluctance to send battle tanks to Ukraine, the German chancellor is still waiting for the U.S. to take the lead.
Tuesday’s nomination of Boris Pistorius puts an end to a growing government crisis that had left Europe’s biggest economy for several days effectively without clear military leadership. But Pistorius — whom Scholz hailed as having “the strength and calmness that is needed in view of the Zeitenwende,” Germany’s historic military revamp — will have little time to get adjusted to the new role.
Pressure is mounting on Germany to participate in a broader alliance of countries that would supply Ukraine’s army with modern Leopard 2 battle tanks. And moments after being sworn in on Thursday, the new defense minister is scheduled to meet U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is coming to Berlin before a key meeting Friday in Germany where allies will discuss tank deliveries for Ukraine.
Pistorius is replacing Christine Lambrecht, a loyal defender of Scholz’s cautious tank stance who resigned on Monday after a series of gaffes and missteps that weighed on Berlin’s reputation.
That means expectations are high for the 62-year-old Pistorius, who is from Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Yet Social Democratic lawmakers say the appointment by itself won’t tilt the scales on supplying Ukraine with tanks.
“I don’t think one has anything to do with the other,” Wolfgang Hellmich, the SPD’s defense policy spokesperson, told POLITICO.
Kristian Klinck, an SPD member of the Bundestag’s defense committee and an army reserve officer, also said he didn’t see “any significant change in this regard because of the personnel change in the defense ministry.”
While stressing that Pistorius will play a role in deciding on further military aid for Ukraine, Klinck said “this very important question of the delivery of battle tanks” would be decided “primarily in the chancellor’s office” and in coordination with other allies.
Scholz himself reiterated his reluctant position during an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, saying that any decisions on further weapon supplies could only be taken in close coordination with allies.
That argument for holding back tank deliveries has started to sound less convincing, however, given the calls from allies like Poland to jointly send Leopards, and after the U.K. announced it would supply Ukraine with its own Challenger 2 battle tanks.
German officials have indicated, though, that Scholz would likely move if he received backing from the U.S., especially if Washington also agreed to send battle tanks.
During a call between Scholz and U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday, both leaders discussed “effective, sustainable and closely coordinated” military support for Ukraine, according to a German spokesperson. This has raised expectations that a breakthrough on tanks could still be feasible.
Pressure on Scholz
Green MP Anton Hofreiter, chair of the Bundestag’s European affairs committee and a long-standing critic of Scholz’s cautious position, said it was time for the chancellor to act.
“The decision to supply tanks ultimately rests with the chancellor. Behind him is his Social Democratic Party, which unfortunately is still often under the illusion that relations with Russia can be normalized again and that Moscow should therefore not be provoked too much,” Hofreiter told POLITICO.
Anton Hofreiter, co-head of the German Green Party Bundestag faction | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Hofreiter, whose Green party is part of Germany’s government coalition alongside Scholz’s SPD and the pro-business Free Democratic Party, argued Germany was presenting “an unclear, wavering and hesitant picture” of its military support for Ukraine.
“Allies are now watching Berlin very closely: If we continue to close our minds on the Leopard issue, Germany would be increasingly isolated in Europe,” he said.
Scholz’s vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, also from the Greens, upped the pressure on the chancellor last week, saying Berlin should not stand in the way if allies like Poland, Finland or Spain want to send their own Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine — an important demand because Berlin must authorize any re-export of the German-made battle tanks.
The government’s deputy spokesperson later clarified that there were “no differences” on the issue between Habeck and Scholz, suggesting the chancellor would support his deputy’s line.
The remarks raised expectations that Berlin may use Friday’s meeting to at least give its allies the green light on sending Leopard tanks. But it remains uncertain whether Scholz will join the coalition and offer Germany’s own tanks, either from the German army or defense industry stocks.
Scholz said Tuesday that he would not debate these questions in public.
There are also questions in Germany about whether the recent political crisis within the defense ministry has left Scholz weakened. Scholz personally chose Lambrecht and defended her until the end, despite concerns she had failed to properly spend a reject influx of defense funds and let Germany’s ammunition stockpiles run low (in addition to her gaffes and waning standing among the military).
The SPD’s Hellmich, however, expressed optimism that these shortcomings would now improve with the newly appointed minister.
“Boris Pistorius has been in the political business for a long time and is knowledgeable on the subject. He sits on the defense committee of the Bundesrat [Germany’s upper house of parliament] and is a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly,” Hellmich said.
“That’s why the troops are in good hands with him.”
This article was updated to include details of a call between Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden.
A bill to rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the U.S. military and provide nearly $858 billion for national defense passed the House on Thursday as lawmakers scratch off one of the final items on their yearly to-do list.
The bill provides for about $45 billion more for defense programs than President Joe Biden requested, the second consecutive year Congress significantly exceeded his request, as lawmakers seek to boost the nation’s military competitiveness with China and Russia.
The House passed the bill by a vote of 350-80. It now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to pass easily, then to the president to be signed into law.
To win bipartisan support for the bill, Democrats agreed to Republican demands to scrap the requirement for service members to get a COVID-19 vaccination. The bill directs Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to rescind his August 2021 memorandum imposing the mandate. Only days earlier he voiced support for keeping the mandate in effect.
Rep. Adam Smith, Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told colleagues that the decision to impose the vaccine mandate was the right call at the time.
“It saved lives and it made sure that our force was as ready as it could possibly be in the face of the pandemic,” Smith said.
But, he said the directive only required the initial vaccination and by now that protection has worn off.
“It’s time to update the policy,” Smith said.
Republicans said the mandate hurt recruiting and retention efforts. Rep. Mike Rogers, top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said he intends in the next Congress to examine who was adversely affected by the mandate, “so we can try to revisit that and make them whole to the extent desirable.”
More than 8,000 active-duty service members were discharged for failure to obey a lawful order when they refused the vaccine.
“Some of the folks who have moved on are not going to want to come back,” said Rogers, who will become chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the next Congress.
Smith said he opposed efforts to reward those service members who disobeyed a military order.
“Orders are not optional in the United States military,” Smith said. “And if Congress expresses the opinion that they are, I cannot imagine anything that would more significantly undermine the good order and discipline within our military.”
Military leaders have argued that troops for decades have been required to get as many as 17 vaccines in order to maintain the health of the force, particularly those deploying overseas. Recruits arriving at the military academies or at basic training get a regimen of shots on their first day — such as measles, mumps and rubella — if they aren’t already vaccinated. And they routinely get flu shots in the fall.
Service leaders have said that the number of troops who requested religious or other exemptions to any of those required vaccines — prior to the COVID pandemic — was negligible.
The politicization of the COVID-19 vaccine, however, triggered an onslaught of exemption requests from troops. As many as 16,000 religious exemptions have been or are still pending, and only about 190 have been approved. Small numbers of temporary and permanent medical exemptions have also been granted.
While the rescission of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate has generated much attention, it takes up one paragraph of what is a 4,408-page bill.
The defense policy legislation is critical in shaping the military’s future. It sets the maximum number of service members authorized to be in the various branches of the military. It authorizes money for specific major weapons programs and it establishes pay and benefits. This year’s bill authorizes money to support a $4.6% pay raise for military members and the Defense Department’s civilian workers.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday that he hoped they would come to a bipartisan agreement and act “rather quickly.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the Pentagon’s COVID vaccination policy, but said Mr. Biden would judge the bill “on its entirety.”
“What we think happened here is Republicans in Congress have decided that they’d rather fight against the health and well-being of our troops than protecting them,” Jean-Pierre said. “And we believe that it is a mistake.”
BEIJING — China strictly adheres to its policy of no first use of nuclear weapons “at any time and under any circumstances,” its Defense Ministry said Tuesday in a scathing response to a U.S. report alleging a major buildup in Beijing’s nuclear capabilities.
The Pentagon last week released an annual China security report that warned Beijing would likely have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, and that it has provided no clarity on how it plans to use them.
That report “distorts China’s national defense policy and military strategy, makes groundless speculation about China’s military development and grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs on the issue of Taiwan,” ministry spokesperson Tan Kefei said in a statement.
Tan accused the U.S. of being the “biggest troublemaker and destroyer of world peace and stability,” and repeated that Beijing has never renounced the use of force to conquer self-governing Taiwan, a U.S. ally that China considers part of its territory.
Tan did not directly address the report’s allegations about a Chinese nuclear buildup, but blamed the U.S. for raising nuclear tensions, particularly with its plan to help Australia build a fleet of submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology, which the French president has described as a “confrontation with China.”
Australia has said it will not seek to arm the submarines with nuclear weapons. Tan also accused the U.S. of having the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, although that title is actually held by Russia, a close Chinese military, economic and diplomatic partner.
As of 2022, Russia possesses a total of 5,977 nuclear warheads compared to 5,428 in the U.S. inventory, according to the Federation of American Scientists. China currently has 350 nuclear warheads, according to the federation.
China has long adhered to what it calls a purely defensive national security strategy, including a claim that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. That stance has frequently been challenged at home and abroad, particularly if it comes to a confrontation over Taiwan.
“What needs to be emphasized is that China firmly pursues the nuclear strategy of self-defense and defense, always adheres to the policy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances, and maintains its nuclear force at the minimum level required for national security,” Tan said in the statement, which was posted on the ministry’s website.
His remarks came days after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. is at a pivotal point with China and will need military strength to ensure that American values, not Beijing’s, set global norms in the 21st century.
Austin’s speech Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum capped a week in which the Pentagon was squarely focused on China’s rise and what that might mean for America’s position in the world.
China “is the only country with both the will and, increasingly, the power to reshape its region and the international order to suit its authoritarian preferences,” Austin said. “So let me be clear: We will not let that happen.”
Austin was on hand Friday for a dramatic nighttime rollout of the U.S. military’s newest nuclear stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, which is being designed to beat the quickly growing cyber, space and nuclear capabilities of Beijing.
The bomber is part of a major China-centric nuclear overhaul underway that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will cost $1.2 trillion through 2046.
Already-tense relations between Washington and Beijing soured even more in August when U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. China responded by firing missiles over the island and holding wargames in what was seen as a rehearsal for a possible blockade of the island.
While the U.S. and Taiwan have no formal diplomatic relations in deference to Beijing, the U.S. maintains informal relations and defense ties with Taiwan, along with a policy of “strategic ambiguity” over whether the U.S. would respond militarily if the island were attacked.
Despite some moves to improve relations, China has shown an increasingly hard line on military affairs. Following a rare meeting last month between Austin and his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, the Chinese side issued a statement saying, “The responsibility for the current situation facing China-U.S. relations is on the U.S. side, not on the Chinese side.”
In his remarks on Taiwan, Tan warned that, “The Chinese military has the confidence and capability to thwart any external interference and separatist plots for ‘Taiwan independence’ and realize the complete reunification of the motherland.”
America’s newest nuclear stealth bomber made its debut Friday after years of secret development, and as part of the Pentagon’s answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China.
The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years. Almost every aspect of the program is classified.
As evening fell over the Air Force’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, the public got its first glimpse of the Raider in a tightly controlled ceremony. It started with a flyover of the three bombers still in service: the B-52 Stratofortress, the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit. Then the hangar doors slowly opened and the B-21 was towed partially out of the building.
The U.S. Air Force on Dec. 2, 2022, unveiled the B-21 Raider in Palmdale, California. It is the first American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years.
U.S. Air Force
“This isn’t just another airplane,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. “It’s the embodiment of America’s determination to defend the republic that we all love.”
The B-21 is part of the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China’s rapid military modernization.
China is on track to have 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, and its gains in hypersonics, cyber warfare and space capabilities present “the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and the free and open international system,” the Pentagon said this week in its annual China report.
“We needed a new bomber for the 21st Century that would allow us to take on much more complicated threats, like the threats that we fear we would one day face from China, Russia, ” said Deborah Lee James, the Air Force secretary when the Raider contract was announced in 2015.
While the Raider may resemble the B-2, once you get inside, the similarities stop, said Kathy Warden, chief executive of Northrop Grumman Corp., which is building the bomber.
“The way it operates internally is extremely advanced compared to the B-2, because the technology has evolved so much in terms of the computing capability that we can now embed in the software of the B-21,” Warden said.
Other changes include advanced materials used in coatings to make the bomber harder to detect, Austin said.
“Fifty years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft,” Austin said. “Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect a B-21 in the sky.”
Other advances likely include new ways to control electronic emissions, so the bomber could spoof adversary radars and disguise itself as another object, and use of new propulsion technologies, several defense analysts said.
“It is incredibly low observability,” Warden said. “You’ll hear it, but you really won’t see it.”
Six Raiders are in production. The Air Force plans to build 100 that can deploy either nuclear weapons or conventional bombs, and can be used with or without a human crew. Both the Air Force and Northrop also point to the Raider’s relatively quick development: The bomber went from contract award to debut in seven years. Other new fighter and ship programs have taken decades.
The cost of the bombers is unknown. The Air Force previously put the price at an average cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars – roughly $753 million today — but it’s unclear how much is actually being spent. The total will depend on how many bombers the Pentagon buys.
“We will soon fly this aircraft, test it, and then move it into production. And we will build the bomber force in numbers suited to the strategic environment ahead,” Austin said.
The undisclosed cost troubles government watchdogs.
“It might be a big challenge for us to do our normal analysis of a major program like this,” said Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight. “It’s easy to say that the B-21 is still on schedule before it actually flies. Because it’s only when one of these programs goes into the actual testing phase when real problems are discovered.” That, he said, is when schedules start to slip and costs rise.
The B-2 was also envisioned to be a fleet of more than 100 aircraft, but the Air Force built only 21, due to cost overruns and a changed security environment after the Soviet Union fell. Fewer than that are ready to fly on any given day due to the significant maintenance needs of the aging bomber.
The B-21 Raider, which takes its name from the 1942 Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, will be slightly smaller than the B-2 to increase its range, Warden said. It won’t make its first flight until 2023. However, Warden said Northrop Grumman has used advanced computing to test the bomber’s performance using a digital twin, a virtual replica of the one unveiled Friday.
Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota will house the bomber’s first training program and squadron, though the bombers are also expected to be stationed at bases in Texas and Missouri.
Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican of South Dakota, led the state’s bid to host the bomber program. In a statement, he called it “the most advanced weapon system ever developed by our country to defend ourselves and our allies.”
Northrop Grumman has also incorporated maintenance lessons learned from the B-2, Warden said.
In October 2001, B-2 pilots set a record when they flew 44 hours straight to drop the first bombs in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. The B-2 often does long round-trip missions because there are few hangars globally that can accommodate its wingspan, which limits where it can land for maintenance. The hangars also must be air-conditioned because the Spirit’s windows don’t open and hot climates can cook cockpit electronics.
The new Raider will also get new hangars to accommodate its size and complexity, Warden said.
However, with the Raider’s extended range, ‘it won’t need to be based in-theater,” Austin said. “It won’t need logistical support to hold any target at risk.”
A final noticeable difference was in the debut itself. While both went public in Palmdale, the B-2 was rolled outdoors in 1988 amid much public fanfare. Given advances in surveillance satellites and cameras, the Raider was just partially exposed, keeping its sensitive propulsion systems and sensors under the hangar and protected from overhead eyes.
“The magic of the platform,” Warden said, “is what you don’t see.”
PALMDALE , Calif. — America’s newest nuclear stealth bomber made its debut Friday after years of secret development and as part of the Pentagon’s answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China.
The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years. Almost every aspect of the program is classified.
As evening fell over the Air Force’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, the public got its first glimpse of the Raider in a tightly controlled ceremony. It started with a flyover of the three bombers still in service: the B-52 Stratofortress, the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit. Then the hangar doors slowly opened and the B-21 was towed partially out of the building.
“This isn’t just another airplane,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. “It’s the embodiment of America’s determination to defend the republic that we all love.”
The B-21 is part of the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China’s rapid military modernization.
China is on track to have 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, and its gains in hypersonics, cyber warfare and space capabilities present “the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and the free and open international system,” the Pentagon said this week in its annual China report.
”We needed a new bomber for the 21st Century that would allow us to take on much more complicated threats, like the threats that we fear we would one day face from China, Russia, ” said Deborah Lee James, the Air Force secretary when the Raider contract was announced in 2015.
While the Raider may resemble the B-2, once you get inside, the similarities stop, said Kathy Warden, chief executive of Northrop Grumman Corp., which is building the bomber.
“The way it operates internally is extremely advanced compared to the B-2, because the technology has evolved so much in terms of the computing capability that we can now embed in the software of the B-21,” Warden said.
Other changes include advanced materials used in coatings to make the bomber harder to detect, Austin said.
“Fifty years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft,” Austin said. “Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect a B-21 in the sky.”
Other advances likely include new ways to control electronic emissions, so the bomber could spoof adversary radars and disguise itself as another object, and use of new propulsion technologies, several defense analysts said.
“It is incredibly low observability,” Warden said. “You’ll hear it, but you really won’t see it.”
Six Raiders are in production. The Air Force plans to build 100 that can deploy either nuclear weapons or conventional bombs and can be used with or without a human crew. Both the Air Force and Northrop also point to the Raider’s relatively quick development: The bomber went from contract award to debut in seven years. Other new fighter and ship programs have taken decades.
The cost of the bombers is unknown. The Air Force previously put the price at an average cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars — roughly $753 million today — but it’s unclear how much is actually being spent. The total will depend on how many bombers the Pentagon buys.
“We will soon fly this aircraft, test it, and then move it into production. And we will build the bomber force in numbers suited to the strategic environment ahead,” Austin said.
The undisclosed cost troubles government watchdogs.
“It might be a big challenge for us to do our normal analysis of a major program like this,” said Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight. “It’s easy to say that the B-21 is still on schedule before it actually flies. Because it’s only when one of these programs goes into the actual testing phase when real problems are discovered.” That, he said, is when schedules start to slip and costs rise.
The B-2 was also envisioned to be a fleet of more than 100 aircraft, but the Air Force built only 21, due to cost overruns and a changed security environment after the Soviet Union fell. Fewer than that are ready to fly on any given day due to the significant maintenance needs of the aging bomber.
The B-21 Raider, which takes its name from the 1942 Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, will be slightly smaller than the B-2 to increase its range, Warden said. It won’t make its first flight until 2023. However, Warden said Northrop Grumman has used advanced computing to test the bomber’s performance using a digital twin, a virtual replica of the one unveiled Friday.
Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota will house the bomber’s first training program and squadron, though the bombers are also expected to be stationed at bases in Texas and Missouri.
U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican of South Dakota, led the state’s bid to host the bomber program. In a statement, he called it “the most advanced weapon system ever developed by our country to defend ourselves and our allies.”
Northrop Grumman has also incorporated maintenance lessons learned from the B-2, Warden said.
In October 2001, B-2 pilots set a record when they flew 44 hours straight to drop the first bombs in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. The B-2 often does long round-trip missions because there are few hangars globally that can accommodate its wingspan, which limits where it can land for maintenance. The hangars also must be air-conditioned because the Spirit’s windows don’t open and hot climates can cook cockpit electronics.
The new Raider will also get new hangars to accommodate its size and complexity, Warden said.
However, with the Raider’s extended range, ’it won’t need to be based in-theater,” Austin said. “It won’t need logistical support to hold any target at risk.”
A final noticeable difference was in the debut itself. While both went public in Palmdale, the B-2 was rolled outdoors in 1988 amid much public fanfare. Given advances in surveillance satellites and cameras, the Raider was just partially exposed, keeping its sensitive propulsion systems and sensors under the hangar and protected from overhead eyes.
“The magic of the platform,” Warden said, “is what you don’t see.”
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the Air Force at https://apnews.com/hub/air-force.
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This story has been corrected to show the B-2 rollout was in 1988, not 1989.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Saturday Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offers a preview of a world where nuclear-armed countries could threaten other nations and said Beijing, like Moscow, seeks a world where might makes right.
Austin made the remarks at the annual Halifax International Security Forum, which attracts defense and security officials from Western democracies.
“Russia’s invasion offers a preview of a possible world of tyranny and turmoil that none of us would want to live in. And it’s an invitation to an increasingly insecure world haunted by the shadow of nuclear proliferation,” Austin said in a speech.
“Because (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s fellow autocrats are watching. And they could well conclude that getting nuclear weapons would give them a hunting license of their own. And that could drive a dangerous spiral of nuclear proliferation.”
Austin dismissed Putin’s claims that “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia,” calling it a vision of “a world in which autocrats decide which countries are real and which countries can be snuffed out.”
He added that the war “shows the whole world the dangers of disorder. That’s the security challenge that we face. It’s urgent, and it’s historic.
But we’re going to meet it. … The basic principles of democracy are under siege around the world,” he said.
U.S. President Joe Biden last month declared that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis; Russian officials have raised using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering massive setbacks in the nearly nine-month invasion of Ukraine.
While U.S. officials for months have warned of the prospect that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine in the face of battlefield setbacks, Biden administration officials have repeatedly said nothing has changed in U.S. intelligence assessments to suggest that Putin has imminent plans to deploy nuclear weapons.
CIA Director Bill Burns recently met with his Russian intelligence counterpart to warn of consequences if Russia were to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
Austin said nuclear weapons need to be responsibly controlled, and not used to threaten the world.
“Ukraine faces a harsh winter. And as Russia’s position on the battlefield erodes, Putin may resort again to profoundly irresponsible nuclear saber-rattling,” he said
Austin also compared Russia to China, saying Beijing is trying to refashion both the region and the international system to suit its authoritarian preferences. He noted China’s increasing military activities in the Taiwan Strait.
“Beijing, like Moscow, seeks a world where might makes right, where disputes are resolved by force, and where autocrats can stamp out the flame of freedom,” he said.
Austin called Putin’s invasion the worst crisis in security since the end of the Second World War and said the outcome “will help determine the course of global security in this young century,” Austin said..
Austin said the deadly missile explosion in Poland this week is a consequence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war of choice” against Ukraine. “The tragic and troubling explosion in Poland this week reminded the whole world of the recklessness of Putin’s war of choice,” Austin said.
On Tuesday, two workers were killed when a projectile hit a grain-drying facility close to Poland’s border with Ukraine. While the source of the missile is under investigation, NATO officials have said they suspect it was fired from a Ukrainian missile battery.
Officials from Poland, NATO and the United States have blamed Russia for the deaths in any case, saying a Ukrainian missile would not have misfired had the country not been forced to defend itself against heavy Russian attacks that day.
Russian officials have cast the conflict as a struggle against NATO — though Ukraine is not a NATO member even if it has been receiving aid from NATO member states.
Austin said NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to Russia.
“Make no mistake: we will not be dragged into Putin’s war of choice. But we will stand by Ukraine as it fights to defend itself. And we will defend every inch of NATO territory,” Austin said.
A Polish investigation to determine the source of the missile and the circumstances of the explosion was launched with support from the U.S. and Ukrainian investigators joined the probe on Friday.
Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said in an interview broadcast live at the forum that “It’s not right to say it’s a Ukrainian rocket, or a Russian rocket, before the investigation is over.”
In its 14th year, about 300 people gather each year at Halifax International Security Forum held at Halifax’s Westin hotel, where about 13 Ukrainian refugees now work.
Russia’s defense minister accused Ukrainians of planning to use a so-called dirty bomb – a claim that was strongly refuted by US officials on Sunday as a Russian false flag operation.
The allegation from Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu came during a phone call with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday, the second call in three days between the two top officials.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said the two discussed the situation in Ukraine but did not provide further details. It was Shoigu who initiated the phone call to Austin, according to a senior US administration official.
A second official familiar with the conversation said Shoigu made the claim about the planned usage of a dirty bomb, a weapon that combines conventional explosives and uranium. That claim, which the Kremlin has amplified in recent days, has been strongly refuted by the US, Ukraine and the United Kingdom as a Russian false flag operation.
Shoigu has made similar comments to his French and British counterparts as well.
“We reject reports of Minister Shoigu’s transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told CNN in a statement. “The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation.”
The US is also watching very closely for any intelligence that Russia has a specific plan to blow up a major dam near Kherson where Russia has ordered citizens to evacuate, the official said.
Later Sunday, the US State Department released a joint statement with the foreign ministers of France and the UK that also called Shoigu’s allegations false and reiterated their unified support for Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.
On Friday, Austin called Shoigu, the first call between the two in several months. Before Friday, the two had not spoken since May.
