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Tag: Tanks

  • Navy cleaning Red Hill pipelines in preparation for removal

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    The Navy’s Red Hill closure task force is cleaning up miles of pipelines in preparation for their eventual removal, a key step in efforts to shut down the facility for good.

    “We’re on path, you know, making good progress, ” said Rear Adm. Marc Williams, the naval engineer that has been tasked with the day-to-day operations of the closure task force. “We’re now into seven of the 14 tanks that were operational.”

    The underground fuel farm contains 20 massive tanks that were built to collectively store up to 250 million gallons of fuel at full capacity. Built during World War II, the facility was meant to protect the military’s Pacific fuel reserve from enemy attacks. A series of pipelines connect the tanks to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-­Hickam, in what’s regarded as an engineering marvel.

    But the unique underground nature of the facility also posed unique operating and maintenance challenges as it aged over eight decades. Those challenges persist as the Navy works to shut it down.

    The Navy is currently working to remove residual fuel sludge from the pipeline through a process known as “pigging.” Steven Chow, an engineer with Naval Facilities Engineering Command Hawaii, explained the process gets its name from the “squealing ” sound it produces as teams work through the pipes.

    “How this works, is like a squeegee, ” explained Chow as he showed a massive sponge-like object that Navy teams pull through the pipe with machinery to clear it out. He said “at the receiving end is where actually you’re going to have containment center. So as you pull the fluid through, it’ll be captured.”

    Drew Suesse, an Environmental Protection Agency facilities engineer who lives in Kaimuki, has been checking the Navy’s work as it goes about the massive closure effort. He said “EPA has staff in the tunnels on-site, kind of continuously keeping an eye on the Navy’s progress.”

    Suesse said that they are “continuing to address some of the unexpected site conditions that might be coming up, ” noting that with a facility that’s over 80 years old, “there’s always little quirks.”

    The facility was built just 100 feet over a critical aquifer most of Oahu relies on for drinking water. For years the Navy insisted that wasn’t a problem, arguing that the facility was well maintained and that it was critical for national security despite several spills and mishaps.

    But in 2021, fuel from the facility contaminated the Navy’s Oahu water supply that serves more than 93, 000 people. Thousands of residents reported serious rashes, gastrointestinal issues and other ailments.

    Not long after, reports emerged showing that several military officials and personnel who had worked at the site had raised concerns about poor maintenance. The pipelines were badly corroded and many of the tanks hadn’t been inspected in years. Military officials admitted that the facility and pipeline would need heavy repairs and renovations to safely remove the millions of gallons of fuel inside.

    The military established a task force of experts from across each military branch led by Vice Adm. John Wade that officially began operations in October 2022. Between repairs, planning and defueling, the mission took 18 months and removed the 104, 703, 574 gallons inside.

    But the long-term closure and remediation is a whole separate beast.

    “Every time we enter a tank, every time, it’s a learning evolution, ” Williams said. “We learn something new and use that to carry forward (and ) try to go faster, but we’re not worried about going faster for the sake of going faster … we’re not sacrificing thoroughness for expediency.”

    Suesse said that “we’re kind of finding that every tank is a little bit of a snowflake, every one is a little bit different and unique … some of those tanks haven’t been opened in a number of years and so they’ve opened up the tanks and they found the kind of infrastructure that needs to be verified that it’s clean (and ) make sure there’s no fuel left in those tanks.”

    A report released in November by the Pentagon’s Inspector General office on Red Hill found that records on the facility were, at best, spotty.

    When Pentagon investigators visited JBPHH in 2022 and asked to see engineering drawings and schematics for the interconnected fuel system, they were directed to a technical library. Their report described it as “disorganized, with documents overflowing into the hallway, a lack of labeling, and piles of engineering drawings scattered on various tables.”

    A Navy contractor told investigators there was no one on staff to “collect and integrate drawings from projects that changed the (fuel ) infrastructure over time.” Investigators wrote that they ultimately “determined that Navy officials did not have accurate and up to date as-built drawings of … tanks, pipelines, and supporting infrastructure.”

    “There are some old legacy instrument wells that, you know, maybe we’re not made aware of, or didn’t have the greatest record keeping over 80 years, ” Suesse said. “So it is really important that we’re keeping an eye on that and making sure that those, like, originally unidentified things are drained or removed.”

    Williams said that the pigging is taking care of much of the last immediate concerns. He said that “the remaining threat to the environment inside the facility is the trapped fuel in the pipeline, and that operation is capturing the vast majority of that. And then, really all that’s left from an environmental risk standpoint is the sludge, and sludge is immobile.”

    But he added that it’s not something he’s taking lightly.

    “It’s really just a matter of not letting complacency slip in, ” Williams said. “Because we’re going to be cutting pipeline out 5 to 10 feet at a time—10 miles of it.”

    The long-term impact of Red Hill’s operations is hard to quantify. The ongoing closure is being watched carefully by local agencies and community groups.

    Last month the Honolulu Board of Water Supply filed a federal civil tort complaint in the U.S. District Court of Hawaii in which it said it is suing the Navy over its handling of the leaks at and around Red Hill, particular harm that may have come to the aquifer. BWS has estimated the cost of past, current and future impacts from fuel leaks at $1.2 billion.

    “The hard part is, is people want to see things go faster, but there is a very detailed process, ” Williams said. “There’s gonna be more data to collect, so that will drive decisions on the environmental side going forward … the environmental processes is a lengthy process now that that’s going to be measured in decades, not years.”

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  • Houthi rebels fire missile at US warship, escalating Mideast crisis

    Houthi rebels fire missile at US warship, escalating Mideast crisis

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    Though unsuccessful, the attack marks an intensification in the battle between the Houthis, which control large parts of Yemen, and a U.S.-led naval operation aimed at protecting commercial shipping in one of the most important global trade routes.

    In recent weeks, Western navies have repeatedly responded to Houthi attacks against cargo ships traveling along the coast of Yemen that began soon after the October 7 attack by the Hamas militant group against Israel.

    The Yemen-based group said it was conducting its attacks in solidarity with the Palestinian group. In response, Western militaries are now increasingly targeting Houthi weapons sites in Yemen.

    On Friday, the Houthi rebels also struck an oil tanker with a missile, according to the ship’s operator Trafigura. The company said on Saturday that it was assessing the security risks of further Red Sea voyages after firefighters put out a blaze on the tanker, the Marlin Luanda.



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    Mark Scott

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  • Ukraine blows up main railway connection between Russia and China

    Ukraine blows up main railway connection between Russia and China

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    Ukraine’s security service blew up a railway connection linking Russia to China, in a clandestine strike carried out deep into enemy territory, with pro-Kremlin media reporting that investigators have opened a criminal case into a “terrorist attack.”

    The SBU set off several explosions inside the Severomuysky tunnel of the Baikal-Amur highway in Buryatia, located some 6,000 kilometers east of Ukraine, a senior Ukrainian official with direct knowledge of the operation told POLITICO.

    “This is the only serious railway connection between the Russian Federation and China. And currently, this route, which Russia uses, including for military supplies, is paralyzed,” the official said.

    Four explosive devices went off while a cargo train was moving inside the tunnel. “Now the (Russian) Federal Security Service is working on the spot, the railway workers are unsuccessfully trying to minimize the consequences of the SBU special operation,” the Ukrainian official added.

    Ukraine’s security service has not publicly confirmed the attack. Russia has also so far not confirmed the sabotage.

    “On the Itikit — Okusykan stretch in Buryatia, while driving through the tunnel, the locomotive crew of the cargo train noticed smoke from one of the diesel fuel tanks. The train was stopped, and two fire extinguishing trains were sent from nearby towns to help. The movement of trains was not interrupted, it was organized along a bypass section with a slight increase in travel time,” Russia’s state railroad company RZHD said in a statement on Thursday.

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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    Veronika Melkozerova

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  • Putin hijacks Israel-Gaza war to fuel tensions in the West

    Putin hijacks Israel-Gaza war to fuel tensions in the West

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    The Israeli-Hamas war has given Russia a golden opportunity to sow division among its Western enemies. It’s a chance Vladimir Putin’s disinformation machine was never going to miss.

    Since the outbreak of hostilities on October 7, Kremlin-linked Facebook accounts have ramped up their output by almost 400 percent, with the Middle East crisis now dominating posts from Russian diplomats, state-backed outlets and Putin supporters in the West. 

    The lies spread by Moscow’s digital propagandists now include claims that Hamas terrorists are using NATO weapons to attack Israel and that British instructors trained Hamas attackers.

    The entrenched — and bloody — conflict represents a double opportunity for Putin.

    It allows Russia to foment division in the West via targeted social media activity aimed at splitting those in support of Israel from those who back Palestine. Real-world violence, particularly against Jews, has spiked over the last seven weeks and anti-war protests by hundreds of thousands of people have sprouted up from London to Washington.

    Russia’s Middle East social media onslaught also pulls public attention away from its war in Ukraine, which has become bogged down after a succession of military missteps, a mutiny by Wagner mercenaries, and a long-running counteroffensive from Kyiv.

    “Taking attention off Ukraine is only a good thing for Russia,” said Bret Schafer, head of the information manipulation team and the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington-based think tank. “The more the Western public is focused on Israel and Hamas, the less they’re paying attention to the fact that Congress is about to not fund Ukraine’s war effort,” he added. “Shining a light on other places pulls attention away from Ukraine.”

    The Kremlin’s online assault mirrors Putin’s geopolitical game-playing since the Hamas attacks of October 7.

    His government hosted Hamas leaders in Moscow at the end of October — apparently as he sought to play a mediation role on the release of Israeli hostages. Russia and Hamas have a common ally in Iran and Putin himself has warned that Israeli military action in Gaza could escalate beyond the region.

    The Kremlin was quick to weaponize the Israel-Hamas war for its own propaganda purposes.

    In the seven weeks since Hamas fighters attacked Israel, Russian Facebook accounts have posted 44,000 times compared to a mere 14,000 posts in the seven weeks before the conflict began, according to data compiled by the Alliance for Securing Democracy. In total, Russian-backed social media activity on Facebook was shared almost 400,000 times collectively, a four-fold increase compared to posts published before the conflict.

    The most-shared keywords now include many phrases associated with the conflict like “Hamas” and the “Middle East,” while before the war, Russia’s state media and diplomatic accounts had focused almost exclusively on either Ukraine or Putin’s role in the world.

    The near-400 percent increase in posts from Russian government-linked accounts represents a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of Facebook posts about the Middle East conflict from regular social media users over the same time period. But many of the Kremlin-backed accounts — especially those from sanctioned media outlets like RT and Sputnik — have an oversized digital reach. Collectively, these companies boast millions of followers in Europe, Latin America and Africa, even though the EU has imposed sanctions on their broadcast and social media operations.

    Surfing the wave

    “They use whatever they can to spread anti-West messaging,” said Jakub Kalenský, a deputy director at the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, a joint NATO-EU organization tracking state-backed influence campaigns. “They surf on the wave of the news cycle because they are competing for the same audience that is consuming solid media sources.”

    Such digital propaganda can have real-world effects. Some in the West now openly question how long governments can support Ukraine in its costly war against Russia in a time of economic uncertainty.

    In France, for instance, the foreign affairs ministry accused a Russian-affiliated network of social media bots of amplifying anti-semitic images of Stars of David graffiti on buildings across Paris. French officials blamed Russia for “creating tensions” between supporters of Israel and those who favored Palestine. The Russian embassy in Paris said Moscow had no ties to the covert digital activity. 

    The goal of the clandestine campaign was to heighten real-world tensions — both in France and across Western Europe — over which side governments are backing, according to two senior European officials speaking on condition of anonymity.

    “What happens online never just stays online anymore,” one of the officials said.

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    Mark Scott

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  • They’re talking, but a climate divide between Beijing and Washington remains

    They’re talking, but a climate divide between Beijing and Washington remains

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    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

    Last week’s surprise deal between China and the United States may provide a boost to the climate talks in Dubai — but the two powers remain at odds on tough questions such as how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations.

    The world’s top two drivers of climate change are also divided by a thicket of disagreements on trade, security, human rights and economic competition.

    The good news is that Washington and Beijing are talking to each other again and restarting some of their technical cooperation on climate issues, after a yearlong freeze. That may still not be enough to get nearly 200 nations to commit to far greater climate action at the talks that begin Nov. 30.

    The two superpowers’ latest detente creates the right “mood music” for the summit, said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate think tank E3G. “But it still is not saying that the world’s two largest economies and two largest emitters are fully committed to the scale and pace of reductions that are needed.”

    The deal, announced after a meeting this month between U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, produced an agreement to commit to a series of actions to limit climate pollution. Those include accelerating the shift to renewable energy and widening the variety of heat-trapping gases they will address in their next round of climate targets.

    U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping endorsed that type of cooperation after a meeting in California on Wednesday, saying they “welcomed” positive discussions on actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during this decade, as well as “common approaches” toward a successful climate summit. Biden said he would work with China to address climate finance in developing countries, a major source of friction for the U.S.

    “Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” said Xi ahead of his bilateral with Biden.

    But the deal leaves some big issues unaddressed, including specific measures for ending their reliance on fossil fuels, the main contributor to global warming. And the two countries are a long way from the days when a surprise U.S.-Chinese agreement to cooperate on climate change had the power to land a landmark global pact.

    That puts the nations in a dramatically different place than in 2014, when Xi and then-President Barack Obama made a historic pledge to jointly cut their planet-warming pollution, paving the way for the landmark Paris Agreement to land in 2015.

    Even a surprise joint deal between the two nations in 2021 failed to ease friction, with China emerging at the last minute to oppose language calling for a phase-out of coal power. The summit ended with a less ambitious “phase-down.”

    A year later, a visit to Taiwan by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi angered Beijing so much that Xi’s government canceled dialogue with the United States on a host of issues, including climate change. China, which claims that Taiwan is part of its territory, alleged that the visit had undermined its sovereignty.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks after receiving the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, Taiwan’s highest civilian honour | Handout/Getty Image

    The two countries’ struggles to find comity have come at the worst possible moment — at a time when rapid action is crucial to preventing climate catastrophe. A growing number of factors has threatened to widen the U.S.-Chinese wedge further, including their competition for supremacy in the market for clean energy.

    Two nations at odds

    While the U.S. has contributed more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than any other nation during the past 150 years, China is now the world’s largest climate polluter — though not on a per capita basis — and it will need to stop building new coal-fired power for the world to stand a chance of limiting rising temperatures.

    The recent agreement hints at that possibility by stating that more renewables would enable reductions in the generation of oil, gas and coal, helping China peak its emissions ahead of its current targets.

    The challenge will be bridging the countries’ diverging approaches to climate issues.

    The Biden administration is urging a rapid end to coal-fired power, which is waning in the U.S., even as it permits more oil drilling and ramps up exports of natural gas — much of it destined for Asia.

    At the same time, it wants the United States to claim a larger role in the clean energy manufacturing industry that China now dominates, and is seeking to loosen China’s stranglehold on supply chains for products such as solar panels, electric cars and the minerals that go into them. It’s also pressuring Beijing to contribute to U.N. climate funds, saying China’s historic status as a developing country no longer shields it from its responsibility to pay.

    China sees the U.S. position as a direct challenge to its economic growth and energy security.

    Beijing wants to protect the use of coal and defend developing countries’ access to fossil fuels. It has also backed emerging economies’ demands that rich countries pay more to help them deploy clean energy and adapt to the effects of a warmer world. China says it already helps developing countries through South-South cooperation and points to a clause in the 2015 Paris Agreement that says developed countries should lead on climate finance.

    Hanging over the talks is also the prospect of a change of administration in the U.S., and continued efforts by Republicans to vilify Beijing and accuse the Biden administration of supporting Chinese companies through its climate policies and investments. And as China’s response to Pelosi’s trip underscored, climate cooperation remains hostage to other tensions in the two countries’ relationship, a dynamic likely to heighten in the coming year as both Taiwan and the U.S. hold presidential elections.

    One challenge is that China doesn’t seem to see much to gain from offering more ambitious climate actions amid worsening relations with other countries, said Kevin Tu, a non-resident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and an adjunct professor at the School of Environment at Beijing Normal University.

    “In the past several years, China has voluntarily upgraded its climate ambitions a few times amid rising geopolitical tensions,” Tu said, pointing to its 2020 pledge to peak and then zero out its emissions. “So China does not necessarily have very strong incentive to further upgrade its climate ambition.”

    The divide between the two nations has created a dilemma for some small island nations that often walk a fine line between negotiating alongside China at climate talks while pushing for more action to scale back fossil fuels.

    The U.S. and China remain at odds on how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

    “The U.S. is trying to drag everyone to talk about an immediate coal phase-out,” Ralph Regenvanu, climate minister for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, said during a recent call with reporters, calling the effort a “U.S.-versus-China thing.”

    “But we also need to talk about no more oil or gas as well,” he added.

    Operating on its own terms

    The dynamic between China and the U.S. will either drag down or bolster the ambitions of countries updating their national climate pledges, a process that begins at the close of COP28. Nations are already woefully behind cuts needed to hit the goals they laid out in Paris.

    China’s new 10-year targets will be crucial for meeting those marks, given that China accounts for close to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and that it plans to build dozens of coal-fired power plants in the coming years. The U.S., and many other countries, will be looking for greater commitments from China — whether that’s modifying what it means by phasing down coal or setting more stringent targets.

    China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and zero them out before 2060, a decade later than the United States has promised to reach net-zero. Beijing is unlikely to accelerate that timeline, in part because — analysts say — its philosophy is fundamentally different from that of the U.S.: underpromise and overdeliver.

    Even without committing to more action, China’s massive investments in low-carbon energy installations — twice that of the United States — may inadvertently help the country achieve its peaking target early, some analysts say.

    A complicated picture

    If the Trump years drove China further from America, the global pandemic and resulting economic slowdown that started during his final year didn’t bring it closer. And the energy crunch stemming from Russia’s war with Ukraine cemented China’s drive for reliable energy to meet the rising needs of its 1.4 billion people. That created a coal boom.

    Meanwhile, China heavily subsidized the expansion of wind, solar and electric vehicle production. Its clean energy supply chain dominance has lowered the global costs for those technologies but drawn scorn from the U.S. as it tries to rebuild its own domestic manufacturing base.

    China has turned more combative in response. Rather than work with the U.S. to make joint announcements on climate action, Xi has made clear that China’s climate policy won’t be dictated by others. At G20 meetings, China has aligned with Saudi Arabia and Russia in opposing language aimed at phasing out fossil fuels.

    “At the end of the day, it’s harder to make a claim that China needs the U.S. and it’s harder to make the claim that the U.S. can rely on China,” said Cory Combs, a senior analyst at policy consulting firm Trivium China.

    Wealthy countries’ inability to deliver promised climate aid to vulnerable countries hasn’t helped. While China remains among the bloc of developing nations in calling for more action on climate finance, it also points to the investments it’s making in the Global South through its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and bilateral aid. 

    A foreign diplomat who asked for anonymity to speak openly said China has resisted pressure to contribute money to a climate fund that would help developing countries rebuild after climate disasters and would likely push back against a focus on its continued build out of coal-fired power plants.

    US climate envoy John Kerry sits next to China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

    “Anything that would signal that they would need to do more is something that gets blocked,” the person said.

    China did release a plan earlier this month to cut emissions of the potent greenhouse methane, delivering on a promise it had made in a joint declaration with the U.S. at climate talks in 2021. But it has still not signed onto a global methane pledge led by the U.S. and the European Union.

    All that amounts to a complicated picture for the U.S.-Chinese relationship and its broader impact on global climate outcomes.

    “The U.S.-China talks will help stabilize the politics when countries meet in the UAE, but critical issues such as a fossil fuel phase-out still require much [further] political efforts,” said Li Shuo, incoming director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

    “It’s very much about setting a floor,” and the talks in Dubai still need to build out from there, Shuo added.

    He argues in a recent paper that China will subscribe to targets it sees as achievable and will continue to side with developing countries on climate finance. Chinese government officials are cautious about what they’re willing to commit to internationally, which sometimes serves as a disincentive for them to be more ambitious, he said.

    The calculation is likely to be different for Biden’s team, who “want a headline that the world agrees to push China,” said David Waskow, who leads the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative.

    Not impossible

    The power of engagement can’t be completely written off, and in the past it has proven to have a positive effect on the U.S.-China relationship.

    “[Climate] sort of was a positive pillar in the relationship,” said Todd Stern, Obama’s former chief climate negotiator. “And it came to be a thing where when the two sides have come to get together, it was like, ‘What can we get done on climate?’”

    Engagement with China at the state and local level and among academics and research institutes has potential — in large part because it’s less political, said Joanna Lewis, a professor at Georgetown University who closely tracks China’s climate change approach.

    There could also be opportunities to separate climate from broader bilateral tensions.

    “I do feel like there’s that willingness to say, ‘We recognize our roles, we recognize our ability to have that catalytic effect on the international community’s actions,’” said Nate Hultman, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability and a former senior adviser to Kerry. “It doesn’t solve all the world’s issues going into the COP, but it gives a really strong boost to international discussions around what we know we need to do.”

    Sara Schonhardt and Zack Colman reported, and Phelim Kine contributed reporting, from Washington, D.C.

    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM. The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.

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    Sara Schonhardt and Zack Colman

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  • Anti-green backlash hovers over COP climate talks

    Anti-green backlash hovers over COP climate talks

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    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

    LONDON — World leaders will touch down in Dubai next week for a climate change conference they’re billing yet again as the final off-ramp before catastrophe. But war, money squabbles and political headaches back home are already crowding the fate of the planet from the agenda.

    The breakdown of the Earth’s climate has for decades been the most important yet somehow least urgent of global crises, shoved to one side the moment politicians face a seemingly more acute problem. Even in 2023 — almost certainly the most scorching year in recorded history, with temperatures spawning catastrophic floods, wildfires and heat waves across the globe — the climate effort faces a bewildering array of distractions, headwinds and dismal prospects.

    “The plans to achieve net zero are increasingly under attack,” former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, who set her country’s goal of reaching climate neutrality into law, told POLITICO.

    The best outcome for the climate from the 13-day meeting, which is known as COP28 and opens Nov. 30, would be an unambiguous statement from almost 200 countries on how they intend to hasten their plans to cut fossil fuels, alongside new commitments from the richest nations on the planet to assist the poorest.

    But the odds against that happening are rising. Instead, the U.S. and its European allies are still struggling to cement a fragile deal with developing countries about an international climate-aid fund that had been hailed as the historic accomplishment of last year’s summit. Meanwhile, a populist backlash against the costs of green policies has governments across Europe pulling back — a reverse wave that would become an American-led tsunami if Donald Trump recaptures the White House next year.

    And across the developing world, the rise of energy and food prices stoked by the pandemic and the Ukraine war has caused inflation and debt to spiral, heightening the domestic pressure on climate-minded governments to spend their money on their most acute needs first.

    Even U.S. President Joe Biden, whose 2022 climate law kicked off a boom of clean-energy projects in the U.S., has endorsed fossil fuel drilling and pipeline projects under pressure to ease voter unease about rising fuel costs.

    Add to all that the newest Mideast war that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

    On the upside, investment in much of the green economy is also surging. Analysts are cautiously opining that China’s emissions may have begun to decline, several years ahead of Beijing’s schedule. And the Paris-based International Energy Agency projects that global fossil fuel demand could peak this decade, with coal use plummeting and oil and gas plateauing afterward. Spurring these trends is a competition among powers such as China, the United States, India and the European Union to build out and dominate clean-energy industries.

    But the fossil fuel industry is betting against a global shift to green, instead investing its profits from the energy crisis into plans for long-term expansion of its core business.

    The air of gloom among many supporters of global climate action is hard to miss, as is the sense that global warming will not be the sole topic on leaders’ minds when they huddle in back rooms.

    “It’s getting away from us,” Tim Benton, director of the Chatham House environment and society center, said during a markedly downbeat discussion among climate experts at the think tank’s lodgings on St James’ Square in London earlier this month. “Where is the political space to drive the ambition that we need?”

    Fog of war

    The most acute distraction from global climate work is the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The conflagration is among many considerations the White House is weighing in Biden’s likely decision not to attend the summit, one senior administration official told POLITICO this month. Other leaders are also reconsidering their schedules, said one senior government official from a European country, who was granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive diplomacy of the conference.

    The war is also likely to push its way onto the climate summit’s unofficial agenda: Leaders of big Western powers who are attending will spend at least some of their diplomatically precious face-time with Middle East leaders discussing — not climate — but the regional security situation, said two people familiar with the planning for COP28 who could not be named for similar reasons. According to a preliminary list circulated by the United Arab Emirates, Israeli President Isaac Herzog or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will attend the talks.

    A threat even exists that the conference could be canceled or relocated, should a wider regional conflict develop, Benton said. 

    The UAE’s COP28 presidency isn’t talking about that, at least publicly. “We look forward to hosting a safe, inclusive COP beginning at the end of November,” said a spokesperson in an emailed statement. But the strained global relations have already thrown the location of next years’ COP29 talks into doubt because Russia has blocked any EU country from hosting the conference, which is due to be held in eastern or central Europe.

    The upshot is that the bubble of global cooperation that landed the Paris climate agreement in 2015 has burst. “We have a lot of more divisive narratives now,” Laurence Tubiana, the European Climate Foundation CEO who was one of the drafters of the Paris deal, said at the same meeting at Chatham House.

    The Ukraine war and tensions between the U.S. and China in particular have widened the gap between developed and developing countries, Benton told POLITICO in an email. 

    Now, “the Hamas-Israel war potentially creates significant new fault lines between the Arab world and many Western countries that are perceived to be more pro-Israeli,” he said. “The geopolitical tensions arising from the war could create leverage that enables petrostates (many of which are Muslim) to shore up the status quo.”

    Add to that the as yet unknown impact on already high fossil fuel commodity prices, said Kalee Kreider, president of the Ridgely Walsh public affairs consultancy and a former adviser to U.S. Vice President Al Gore. “Volatility doesn’t usually help raise ambition.”

    The Biden administration’s decisions to approve a tranche of new fossil fuel production and export projects will undermine U.S. diplomacy at COP28, said Ed Markey, a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

    “You can’t preach temperance from a barstool, and the United States is running a long tab,” he said.

    U.N. climate talks veterans have seen this program before. “No year over the past three decades has been free of political, economic or health challenges,” said former U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa, who now heads the consulting firm onepoint5. “We simply can’t wait for the perfect conditions to address climate change. Time is a luxury we no longer have — if we ever did.”

    The EU backlash

    Before the Mideast’s newest shock to the global energy system, the war in Ukraine exposed Europe’s energy dependence on Russia — and initially galvanized the EU to accelerate efforts to roll out cleaner alternatives.

    But in the past year, persistent inflation has worn away that zeal. Businesses and citizens worry about anything that might add to the financial strain, and this has frayed a consensus on climate change that had held for the past four years among left, center and center right parties across much of the 27-country bloc.

    In recent months, conservative members of the European Parliament have attacked several EU green proposals as excessive, framing themselves as pragmatic environmentalists ahead of Europe-wide elections next year.  Reinvigorated far-right parties across the bloc are also using the green agenda to attack more mainstream parties, a trend that is spooking the center. 

    Germany’s government was almost brought down this year by a law that sought to ban gas boilers — with the Greens-led economy ministry retreating to a compromise. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has joined a growing chorus agitating for a “regulatory pause” on green legislation.

    If Europe’s struggles emerge at COP28, the ripple effect could be global, said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank. 

    The “EU has established itself as the global laboratory for climate neutrality,” he said. “But now it needs to deliver on the experiment, or the world (which is closely watching) will assume this just does not work. And that would be a disaster for all of us.”

    U.K. retreats

    The world is also watching the former EU member that stakes a claim to be the climate leader of the G7: the U.K.

    London has prided itself on its green credentials ever since former Prime Minister May enacted a 2019 law calling for net zero by 2050 — making her the first leader of a major economy to do so.

    According to May’s successor Boris Johnson, net zero was good for the planet, good for voters, good for the economy. But under current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the messaging has transformed. Net zero remains the target — but it comes with a “burden” on working people.

    In a major speech this fall, Sunak rolled back plans to ban new petrol and diesel car sales by 2030, bringing the U.K. into line with the EU’s 2035 date. With half an eye on Germany’s travails, he said millions of households would be exempted from the gas boiler ban expected in 2035.

    In making his arguments for a “pragmatic” approach to net zero, Sunak frequently draws on the talking points of net zero-skeptics. Why should the citizens of the U.K., which within its own borders produces just 1 percent of global emissions, “sacrifice even more than others?” 

    The danger, said one EU climate diplomat — granted anonymity to discuss domestic policy of an allied country — was that other countries around the COP28 negotiating table would hear that kind of rhetoric from a capital that had led the world — and repurpose it to make their own excuses.

    Sunak’s predecessor May sees similar risks.

    “Nearly a third of all global emissions originate from countries with territorial emissions of 1 per cent or less,” May said. “If we all slammed on the brakes, it would make our net zero aspirations impossible to achieve.”

    Trump’s back

    The U.S., the largest producer of industrial carbon pollution in modern history, has been a weathervane on climate depending on who controls its governing branches.

    When Republicans regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022, it created a major drag on Biden’s promise to provide $11.4 billion in annual global climate finance by 2024.

    Securing this money and much more, developing countries say, is vital to any progress on global climate goals at COP28. Last year, on the back of the pandemic and the energy price spike, global debt soared to a record $92 trillion. This cripples developing countries’ ability to build clean energy and defend themselves against — or recover from — hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires.

    Even when the money is there, the politics can be challenging. Multibillion-dollar clean energy partnerships that the G7 has pursued to shift South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and India off coal power are struggling to gain acceptance from the recipients.

    Yet even more dire consequences await if Trump wins back the presidency next year. 

    A Trump victory would put the world’s largest economy a pen stroke away from quitting the Paris Agreement all over again — or, even more drastically, abandoning the entire international regime of climate pacts and summits. The thought is already sending a chill: Negotiations over a fund for poorer countries’ climate losses and damage, which Republicans oppose, include talks on how to make its language “change-of-government-proof” in light of a potential Trump victory, said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a bloc of island states.

    More concretely for reining in planet-heating gases, Trump would be in position to approve legislation eliminating all or part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden’s signature climate law included $370 billion in incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles and other carbon-cutting efforts – though the actual spending is likely to soar even higher due to widespread interest in its programs and subsidies – and accounts for a bulk of projected U.S. emissions cuts this decade.

    Trump’s views on this kind of spending are no mystery: His first White House budget director dismissed climate programs as “a waste of your money,” and Trump himself promised last summer to “terminate these Green New Deal atrocities on Day One.”

    House Republicans have attempted to claw back parts of Biden’s climate law several times. That’s merely a political messaging effort for now, thanks to a Democrat-held Senate and a sure veto from Biden, but the prospects flip if the GOP gains full control of Congress and White House.

    Under a plan hatched by Tubiana and backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, countries would in the future log their state and local government climate plans with the U.N., in an attempt to undergird the entire system against a second Republican blitzkrieg.

    The U.S. isn’t the only place where climate action is on the ballot, Benton told the conference at Chatham House on Nov. 1.

    News on Sunday that Argentina had elected as president right-wing populist Javier Milei — a Trump-like libertarian — raised the prospect of a major Latin American economy walking away from the Paris Agreement, either by formally withdrawing or by reneging on its promises.

    Elections are also scheduled in 2024 for the EU, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Russia, and possibly the U.K. 

    “A quarter of the world’s population is facing elections in the next nine months,” he said. “If everyone goes to the right and populism becomes the order of the day … then I won’t hold out high hopes for Paris.”

    Zack Colman reported from Washington, D.C. Suzanne Lynch also contributed reporting from Brussels.

    This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM. The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.

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    Karl Mathiesen, Charlie Cooper and Zack Colman

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  • French Jews live in fear amid rising antisemitism following Hamas attacks

    French Jews live in fear amid rising antisemitism following Hamas attacks

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    SARCELLES, France — In the usually lively “Little Jerusalem” neighborhood of Sarcelles, the only people loitering are gun-toting French soldiers on patrol.

    Since Hamas’ deadly assault against Israel on October 7, this largely Jewish enclave in the northern suburbs of Paris has gone eerily quiet, with locals keeping their movements to a minimum, and with restaurants and cafés bereft of their regular clientele — fearing an increasing number of antisemitic attacks across France.

    “People are afraid, in a state of shock, they’ve lost their love for life” said Alexis Timsit, manager of a kosher pizzeria. “My business is down 50 percent, there’s no bustle in the street, nobody taking a stroll,” he said in front of a large screen broadcasting round-the-clock coverage of the war.

    France has seen more antisemitic incidents in the last three weeks than over the past year: 501 offenses ranging from verbal abuse and antisemitic graffiti, to death threats and physical assaults have been reported. Antisemitic acts under investigation include groups gathering in front of synagogues shouting threats and graffiti such as the words “killing Jews is a duty” sprayed outside a stadium in Carcassonne in the southwest. The interior minister has deployed extra police and soldiers at Jewish schools, places of worship and community centers since the attacks, and in Sarcelles that means soldiers guard school pick-ups and drop-offs.

    “I try not to show my daughter that I’m afraid,” said Suedu Avner, who hopes the conflict won’t last too long. But a certain panic has taken hold in the community in the wake of the Hamas attacks, in some cases spreading like wildfire on WhatsApp groups. On one particularly tense day, parents even pulled their children out of school.

    France is home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel and the U.S., estimated at about 500,000, and one of the largest Muslim communities in Europe. Safety concerns aren’t new to France’s Jewish community, as to some degree, it has remained on alert amid a string of terror attacks on French soil by Islamists over the last decade.

    Israel’s war against Hamas is now threatening the fragile peace in places like Sarcelles, one of the poorest cities in France, where thousands of Jews live alongside mostly Muslim neighbors of North African origin, from immigrant backgrounds, and in low-income housing estates.

    Authorities meanwhile are often torn by conflicting imperatives — between the Jews, who are fearful for their safety, and the Muslims, who feel an affinity for the Palestinian cause. During his visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, French President Emmanuel Macron himself struggled to strike a difficult balance between supporting Israel in its fight against Hamas, and calling for the preservation of Palestinian lives.

    A community under threat

    For Timsit, the threat is very real. His pizzeria was ransacked by rioters a couple of months ago, when the fatal shooting of a teenager by a police officer in a Paris suburb caused unrest in poor housing estates across France.

    The attack was not antisemitic, he said, but was a violent reminder. In 2014, a pro-Palestinian demonstration protesting Israel’s ground offensive against Gaza degenerated into an antisemitic riot against Jewish shops. “All you need is a spark to set it off again,” said Timsit.

    France’s Jews have seen an increase in antisemitic attacks since the early 2000s, a reality that cuts deep into the national psyche given the memories of France’s collaboration with Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

    “The fear of violence [in France] appeared with the Second Intifada,” said Marc Hecker, a specialist on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with IFRI think tank, with reference to the uprising against Israeli occupation in Palestinian Territories.

    Patrick Haddad, the mayor of Sarcelles, is working to keep the communities together | Clea Caulcutt/POLITICO

    “Every time the situation in the Near East flares up, there’s an increase in antisemitic offenses in France,” he added. The threat of antisemitic attacks has led to increased security at Jewish schools and synagogues, and has discouraged many French Jews from wearing their kippahs in some areas, according to Jewish organizations.

    In addition to low-level attacks, French Jews are also a prime target for Islamists as France battles a wave of terrorist attacks that have hit schools, bars and public buildings, among other targets, in the last decade. In 2012, three children and a rabbi were shot dead at a Jewish school in Toulouse at point-blank range by Mohamed Merah, a gunman who had claimed allegiance to al-Qaida. In 2015, four people were killed at a kosher supermarket near Paris.

    While Hamas, al-Qaida and ISIS networks are separate, Hecker warned that the scale of Hamas’s attack against Israel has “galvanized” Islamists across the board, once again sparking deep fears among France’s Jews.

    Delicate local balance

    Many of Sarcelles’ Jews are Sephardic — that is, of Spanish descent — and ended up in North Africa when Spain expelled its Jewish population in the Middle Ages. Most came to France after having lived in the former French colonies of Algeria and Tunisia. Sarcelles’ Muslim population therefore shares a cultural and linguistic history with its Jewish community, and the two groups have lived together in relative harmony for decades.

    In his office, the mayor of Sarcelles, Patrick Haddad, stands under the twin gazes of Nelson Mandela and Marianne, the symbol of French republicanism, with pictures of both adorning his wall, as he reflects on the thus-far peaceful coexistence among the local population.

    “There’s been not a single antisemitic attack in Sarcelles since the attacks … It’s been over two weeks, and we are holding things together,” he said, smiling despite the noticeable strain. Relations between the city’s Muslims and Jews are amicable, said Haddad, and locals on the streets are proud of their friendship with people of a different religion.

    Israel’s war on Hamas is testing relations in Sarcelles, one of France’s poorest cities | Clea Caulcutt/POLITICO and Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images

    “Relations are easy, we share a similar culture, a lot of the Jews are originally from Tunisia, Algeria, they even speak some Arabic,” said Naima, a Muslim retiree who did not want to give her surname to protect her privacy. “My family, my husband and my children respect the Jews, but I know many who are angry with Israel,” said Naima, who moved to France from Algeria as a young adult.

    “I’ve got Muslim friends, we get along fine, we don’t go around punching each other,” said Avner.

    But for many, politics — and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — is off-limits, and communities live relatively separate lives, with most Jewish pupils enrolled in religious schools. Many Jews from Sarcelles have also chosen to emigrate to Israel in recent years.

    But Israel’s image as the ultimate, secure sanctuary for Jews has been shattered after Hamas killed more than 1,400 Israelis in horrific attacks, said Haddad.

    “Where are [Jews] going to go if they are not safe in Israel? People’s fears have been magnified, they fear what is happening here, and they are anguished about what is happening in the ‘sanctuary state’ for Jews,” he said.

    In a twist of the many tragic reversals of Jewish history, several French families have returned from Israel since the Hamas attacks to find temporary shelter in the relative peace of Sarcelles.

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    Clea Caulcutt

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  • The future of warfare: A $400 drone killing a $2M tank

    The future of warfare: A $400 drone killing a $2M tank

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    KYIV — Sergeant Yegor Firsov, deputy commander of a Ukrainian army strike drone unit, sounds exhausted in a voice message he sent to POLITICO from Avdiivka, an industrial city at the center of intense fighting on the eastern front.

    Russian troops have been storming Avdiivka relentlessly for more than two weeks in an all-out effort to encircle the Ukrainian forces there.

    “The situation is very difficult. We are fighting for the heights around the city,” Firsov said. “If the enemy controls these heights, then all logistics and roads leading to the city will be under its control. This will make it much harder to resupply our forces.”

    Facing an enemy with superior numbers of troops and armor, the Ukrainian defenders are holding on with the help of tiny drones flown by operators like Firsov that, for a few hundred dollars, can deliver an explosive charge capable of destroying a Russian tank worth more than $2 million.

    The FPV — or “first-person view” — drones used in such strikes are equipped with an onboard camera that enables skilled operators like Firsov to direct them to their target with pinpoint accuracy. Before the war, a teenager might hope to get one for a New Year present. Now they are being used as agile weapons that can transform battlefield outcomes. Others are watching, and learning, from a technology that is giving early adopters an asymmetric advantage against established methods of warfare.

    “It’s hard to handle the emotion when a drone pilot hits a tank. The whole group and the whole platoon are happy like babies. Infantry units are rejoicing nearby. Everyone is screaming, and hugging. Although they do not know the guy who gave them this happiness,” Firsov wrote in a Facebook post.

    A typical FPV weighs up to one kilogram, has four small engines, a battery, a frame and a camera connected wirelessly to goggles worn by a pilot operating it remotely. It can carry up to 2.5 kilograms of explosives and strike a target at a speed of up to 150 kilometers per hour, explains Pavlo Tsybenko, acting director of the Dronarium military academy outside Kyiv.

    “This drone costs up to $400 and can be made anywhere. We made ours using microchips imported from China and details we bought on AliExpress. We made the carbon frame ourselves. And, yeah, the batteries are from Tesla. One car has like 1,100 batteries that can be used to power these little guys,” Tsybenko told POLITICO on a recent visit, showing the custom-made FPV drones used by the academy to train future drone pilots.

    “It is almost impossible to shoot it down,” he said. “Only a net can help. And I predict that soon we will have to put up such nets above our cities, or at least government buildings, all over Europe.”

    Contagious technology

    Commercial drones were first weaponized in Azerbaijan’s — ultimately successful — campaign to retake the Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region from Armenian separatists. Their use has expanded rapidly in the 20-month-old Russian war in Ukraine.

    And, earlier this month, Hamas militants flew drones to knock out Israeli border defenses during a surprise attack in which they massacred more than 1,400 people and took around 200 hostages. For Ukrainians, the video clip of a Hamas drone destroying an Israeli main battle tank by dropping a grenade was a film they had seen before.

    Ukrainian drone experts and intelligence officials are convinced that Russian specialists have trained Hamas in the art of drone warfare — although Moscow denies this.

    Some experts worry that militants across the world will soon learn how to use FPV drones to sow terror | Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP via Getty Images

    “Only we and the Russians know how to do this — and we definitely did not teach them,” Andriy Cherniak, a representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate, told POLITICO.

    Ruslan Belyaiev, head of the Dronarium military academy, shares that view. He warns that other militants will soon learn how to use FPV drones to sow terror.

    “No one is immune from such attacks,” said Belyaiev. “In theory, a specialist with my level of expertise could plan and execute an operation to liquidate the first persons of any European state … Pandora’s box is open.”

    Secret training

    While NATO militaries hesitate to use commercial drones that are mostly made in China, or made from Chinese components, some Western democracies have already shown interest in learning from Ukraine’s experience of drone warfare.

    Several figures in Ukraine’s drone community, granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, told POLITICO that special forces and anti-terrorist units of two NATO countries bordering Russia have taken courses from Ukrainian drone operators over the past six months.

    Their focus is on countering small kamikaze drones and commercial drones that can be successfully used for reconnaissance, correcting artillery fire and video signal transmission, one person with direct knowledge said.

    Basic training for a drone pilot takes five days. Learning how to pilot a kamikaze drone takes more than 20 days, Tsybenko said.

    Battlefield experience has led the Ukrainian government to shift its preference away from conventional military drones, which are miniature fixed-wing aircraft with a long enough range to strike targets inside Russian territory. The effectiveness of FPV drones at closer quarters has led Defense Minister Rustam Umerov to simplify approvals for new models to be deployed.

    “FPV drones are effective tools for destroying the enemy and protecting our country. The Ministry of Defense is doing everything possible to increase number of drones,” Umerov said in a statement on Wednesday.

    Team players

    Every FPV drone pilot works in tandem with aerial reconnaissance units, who fly a DJI Mavic or other type of drone with video and audio transmitters to observe their mission. “An FPV loses its video signal close to the target. So, the other drone helps the pilot and supporting units to understand the target was indeed hit,” Tsybenko said.

    Firsov confirmed that in a Facebook post from the front. What looks simple on video in fact requires close coordination between dozens of people.

    “Everything seems so simple, put on glasses — and “Bam!” you destroyed a tank,” said Firsov. “In fact, aerial scouts spend hours looking for targets. A decryptor looks at video and finds targets that the enemy has carefully hidden. A navigator who is nearby helps the pilot to fly along the route. An engineer attaching explosives, a sapper, who twists standard ammunition for drones and many, many others.”

    Russian forces use FPV drones to target single soldiers | John Moore/Getty Images

    Most FPV drones are kamikaze, Tsybenko said. And their effectiveness has changed the stakes. The Russians, who at first lagged behind Ukraine in mastering drone warfare, have learned from their mistakes. And now they are scaling up Ukraine’s methods of drone warfare.

    Russian forces now have “countless” FPV drones that they now use to target single soldiers.

    Russia has also launched its own production lines and is devising new tactics to deploy drones in swarms. “One manager and all the others will repeat the movement. This controlled pack is a very big threat on the battlefield,” Tsybenko warned.

    China factor

    However, neither Ukraine nor Russia are able to produce drones for warfare by themselves. They still source crucial parts from China — the leading maker of commercial drones. Earlier this year the Chinese Ministry of Commerce imposed restrictions on drone exports to both Ukraine and Russia out of “fear it would be used for military purposes.”

    Still, it’s possible to obtain components and drones via third countries. “Yes, China can either stop or stall the export of parts if it sees ‘Ukraine’ in export data. But it can’t control what we buy in Europe. Russia has fewer problems and a common border with China, and that makes drone imports way easier.”

    With Russia allied to China, the preference of Ukraine’s military for Chinese technology raises concerns among Kyiv’s Western partners. They fear that Beijing might pass sensitive military data to Moscow.

    “Every lock has its key. Indeed, the commercial drones we buy in stores are synchronizing their data with a server. But we learned how to create user logins that are completely anonymized. Even the drone might think it is flying somewhere in Canada — and not in Donbas,” Tsybenko said.

    “When we talked to Europeans, they were amazed at how easy it is to hack and anonymize Chinese drones. It is safe to use them, we tried to persuade our partners,” Tsybenko said, adding that Ukraine did not have the luxury of time to independently develop and certify its own drones.

    “If we waited, the war would be over when they finally arrived.”

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    Veronika Melkozerova

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  • The EU prepares for war — and this French ship is the tip of the spear

    The EU prepares for war — and this French ship is the tip of the spear

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    ABOARD THE FRENCH HELICOPTER CARRIER TONNERRE — John Denver’s “Country Roads,” a folk song from 1971, resounds through the Tonnerre. 

    It’s 7:30 a.m., and some of the crew aboard the Mistral-class amphibious helicopter carrier are already eating breakfast — loading up on coffee, bread and jam ahead of a planned exercise to storm a Spanish beach. It’s been a short night, and plans for the landing have changed several times.

    The French assault vessel — 199 meters long, 32 meters wide and able to carry 21,500 tons — is a key element in the European Union’s first live military exercise in October off the southern coast of Spain. 

    In the training scenario chosen by top EU military officials, European troops had to assault a beach to rescue the government of a fictitious ally called Seglia. 

    That’s exactly what the Tonnerre (Thunder in English), was designed to do. Called a Landing Helicopter Dock in NATO-speak, the ship can carry helicopters, armored vehicles, tanks and troops; move them overseas at 19 knots and transform into a landing base. Landing craft parked in the 885-square-meter bay can carry men and military vehicles to the shore.

    “Amphibious helicopter carriers are the core of France’s power projection, that is to say the ability to project military capabilities onto enemy territory, or onto allied land confronted with an enemy,” Vessel Captain Adrien Schaar, the commanding officer, told POLITICO speaking from the flight deck. “The Tonnerre can be deployed across the entire spectrum, from low to high intensity.”

    The vessel’s motto —“si vis pacem, para Tonnerre” — is a pun on the famous Latin adage “si vis pacem, para bellum,” meaning, if you want peace, prepare for war.

    The Tonnerre has been in service since 2007 and is stationed in Toulon on France’s Mediterranean coast.

    It’s part of the Mistral class, built by France in the 2000s. They have been deployed for a wide range of operations, including evacuating French and European citizens from the Middle East during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and backing France’s military intervention in Mali in 2013. They also participate in NATO missions and U.N. peacekeeping efforts.

    Five ships were built, with France operating three: the Tonnerre, the Mistral and the Dixmude.

    The remaining two have a much more complicated past.

    Former President Nicolas Sarkozy initially sold them to Russia — the first time a NATO country planned to send military equipment to Moscow. However, after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, it became politically impossible to deliver the Sevastopol and the Vladivostok. Sarkozy’s successor François Hollande canceled the order and France had to refund Russia €950 million, in what remains one of the worst diplomatic fallouts between Paris and Moscow before Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

    France later sold the warships to Egypt, and the whole tangle ended up costing French taxpayers €409 million.

    Floating village

    While the Tonnerre’s mission is the projection of military force, it takes a lot of mundane activity for that to happen.

    The warship is a self-sufficient mini-town with a 69-bed hospital that includes two surgery units, a dentist, gyms and even a boulangerie, where bakers make hundreds of baguettes every day.

    The Tonnerre can go up to three weeks without restocking, explained Pierre, who works in the kitchens and has been a sailor for a decade (his full name cannot be disclosed for security reasons). Military cooks go through special training to learn how to provide crews of hundreds with a balanced diet. Aboard the warship, a typical dinner is chicken, rice and spinach. “You can’t have pasta or French fries every night,” Pierre said.

    For the EU’s October military exercise, the kitchen was running at full tilt, as the Tonnerre hosted about 600 military personnel, including from the army and the air force — in addition to the permanent crew of about 200. The overwhelming majority are men.

    Military cooks go through special training to learn how to provide crews of hundreds with a balanced diet | Laura Kayali/POLITICO

    “At first, some had a hard time adjusting,” said Daniel, who’s been in the army for four-and-a-half years and aboard a warship for the first time, “but if you’re not claustrophobic, you get used to it.” 

    “We’re discovering the navy,” he added, with a grin.

    Amphibious helicopter carriers are, by their nature, inter-service vessels, linking ground, air and naval forces.

    The Tonnerre can act as mobile command and control center, and can carry 16 helicopters as well as 60 armored vehicles, or 13 Leclerc tanks. The 5,200-square-meter flight deck also functions as a track for joggers looking to stretch their legs.

    It’s not always used for war. One of the Tonnerre’s missions was in Lebanon after the 2020 explosions that tore apart the Port of Beirut, when France provided food supplies and construction material. The ship’s narrow, white corridors are decorated with photos of that mission and a framed drawing by cartoonist Plantu on Franco-Lebanese friendship. 

    Not an easy life

    The crew joined for a variety of reasons — the desire to belong to a group, the chance to sail to different countries, an interesting career — but missions aren’t easy.

    Being aboard the Tonnerre for weeks or months at a time means limited contacts with friends and family. Cell phones are allowed — unless the mission requires a blackout — however there’s often no reception and only high-ranking personnel have access to computers.

    Helicopters on the deck | Laura Kayali/POLITICO

    “We adapt, that’s the life of a sailor, but the family has to keep up,” said Charles, who’s been in the navy for nearly three decades and whose father was also a sailor. “Back in the day, there was no contact at all, no contact with the family for months on end.”

    Now, there are landline telephones and TVs — which isn’t always positive.

    In mid-October, the crew gathered in the helicopter hangar to watch France’s nail-biting 29-28 defeat to South Africa in the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup.

    In the evening on deck, in a makeshift smoking area, young men in uniform check their phones for an internet connection — but the Spanish shore is too far away. “So we play silly games,” said one of them, scrolling on his smartphone screen with a shrug.

    The lack of decent Wi-Fi is a problem that needs to be addressed to attract and retain younger people, navy chief Admiral Nicolas Vaujour told the French Association of defense journalists, including POLITICO, in Paris last month.

    The warship is a self-sufficient mini-town with a 69-bed hospital that includes two surgery units, a dentist, gyms and even a boulangerie | Laura Kayali/POLITICO

    The French government is also trying to make life easier for sailors and their families, well aware that the navy — like most European militaries — has a talent retention problem. Civilian work may be less exciting, but it is more comfortable and defense contractors are more than willing to poach trained and specialized people from the military.

    The government has come up with a so-called Family Plan to help, among other challenges, with childcare.

    “We’re fully aware that we have to work for the sailors at sea,” Vaujour told the National Assembly earlier this month. “The question I ask my staff is: ‘What have you done today for those at sea? Have you used up at least five minutes of your time for those in operations?'”

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    Laura Kayali

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  • Ukraine says Israel-Hamas war shows West must ramp up arms production

    Ukraine says Israel-Hamas war shows West must ramp up arms production

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    BERLIN — Facing war on two fronts — in Ukraine and in the Middle East — Kyiv is calling on Western democracies to ramp up investment in weapons, saying that arms factory output worldwide is falling miles short of what is needed.

    In an interview, Ukraine’s Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin told POLITICO Western countries needed to accelerate production of missiles, shells and military drones as close to frontlines as possible.

    “The free world should be producing enough to protect itself,” Kamyshin said, on a mission to the German capital to persuade arms producers to invest in war-ravaged Ukraine. “That’s why we have to produce more and better weapons to stay safe.”

    Current factory capacity was woeful, he argued. “If you get together all the worldwide capacities for weapons production, for ammunition production, that will be not enough for this war,” said Kamyshin of the state of play along Ukraine’s more than 1,000 kilometers of active frontline.

    As the Israel Defense Forces continue to pummel Gaza and fighting gathers pace along the contact line in Ukraine, armies are burning through ammunition at a rate not seen in decades. Policymakers are asking whether Western allies can support both countries with air defense systems and artillery at once.

    The answer, says Kamyshin, is to start building out production facilities now. “What happens in Israel now shows and proves that the defense industry globally is a destination for investments for decades,” he said.

    Since Russia’s war on Ukraine started in February 2022, western governments have been funneling arms to Kyiv. That includes hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, armored vehicles and other equipment.

    But as the grind of war continues, Kyiv has changed tack — appointing Kamyshin, the former boss of Ukraine’s state railway — to the post of minister for strategic industries. Ukraine, formerly a major military hub in the Soviet Union, is now trying to increase output of armored vehicles, ammunition and air defense systems, he said, and wants Western partners to invest.

    A key step is expected on Tuesday, when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal will announce a new joint venture between Rheinmetall and Ukroboronprom, a Ukrainian defense company, Kamyshin said.

    In late September, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office gave the green light to the cooperation agreement after a review that found the proposed venture “does not result in any overlaps in terms of competition in Germany.”

    Building local

    Last March, EU countries pledged to send a million artillery rounds to Ukraine over the following year as part of a program to lift production. Ukraine may need as much as 1.5 million shells annually to sustain its war effort, a daunting task that Kamyshin hopes he can help, at least partially, with domestic output.

    In total, Ukraine has received over 350 self-propelled and towed artillery systems from NATO countries and Australia. Combined with Soviet-era pieces in Ukrainian stocks prior to the Russian invasion, Kyiv has approximately 1,600 pieces of artillery in service — but must cover a massive front.

    Ukraine has received over 350 self-propelled and towed artillery systems from NATO countries and Australia | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images

    And although the deepening of the German-Ukrainian defense relationship is a boon for Kyiv’s war effort, the enemy on the battlefield — Russia — can also leverage its own international relationships for war materiel, and has been quick to agree military hardware deals with the likes of Iran and North Korea.

    Earlier this month, reports pointed out Pyongyang likely transferred a sizable shipment of artillery ammunition to Russia. The details of the deal are secret, but the shipment came on the heels of a visit to Pyongyang by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in turn made a trip to Russia by rail and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Russia previously struck a deal with Tehran for Iranian loitering munitions that hammered cities across Ukraine last winter in an intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure.

    The increasingly international scope of sourcing for the war in Ukraine is not limited to non-NATO countries. Poland recently started taking delivery of tanks, howitzers, rocket launchers and light attack aircraft from South Korea, a nod to how quickly Seoul can ramp up production affordably.

    For Kamyshin, the key was to make plans for the long term.

    “This war can be for decades,” he said. “[The] Russians can come back always.”

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    Joshua Posaner and Caleb Larson

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  • Lebanese hold their breath as fears grow Hezbollah will pull them into war

    Lebanese hold their breath as fears grow Hezbollah will pull them into war

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    BEIRUT — Once again, the Lebanese are glued to their TV sets and are compulsively checking their cell phones, following every twist and turn of skirmishes on the border, trying to weigh up whether another war is imminent.

    In desperation, they are asking themselves how a nation so often shattered by conflict — and pummeled by an economic crisis — is again at risk of tipping back into the abyss.

    “People are exhausted — they can’t take much more,” said Ramad Boukallil, a Lebanese businessman, who runs a company training managers. “Lebanon is reeling — we have had four harsh years with the economic crisis, people are skipping meals and can hardly get by. We had the port explosion, the pandemic, a financial crash. Please God we’re not hit with another war,” he added, in a conversation at Beirut airport.

    The chief fear for many Lebanese is that they could soon be the second front of Israel’s war against its Islamist militant enemies, after Hamas’ brutal onslaught against Israel a week ago that killed more than 1,300 people. While most eyes are focused on an expected retaliatory ground assault against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli forces have also declared a 4-kilometer-wide closed military zone on Lebanon’s southern border, where they have exchanged fire with Hezbollah, a Shiite political party and militant group based in Lebanon.

    One person close to Hezbollah said the Golan Heights — Syrian land occupied by Israel to the southeast of Lebanon — was shaping up into an especially dangerous flashpoint, saying Hezbollah has moved elite units there in the past few days.

    Finger on the trigger

    For now, this border fighting appears contained, but Iran’s flurry of regional diplomacy is heightening the anxiety that Tehran could be about to commit its proxies in Hezbollah headlong into the war. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned on Saturday that if Israel doesn’t halt its military campaign in Gaza, then Hezbollah, a key player in the Tehran-orchestrated “axis of resistance,” is “prepared” and has its “finger is on the trigger.”

    “There’s still an opportunity to work on an initiative [to end the war] but it might be too late tomorrow,” Amir-Abdollahian told reporters after meeting Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar where they “agreed to continue co-operation” to achieve the group’s goals, according to a Hamas statement.

    Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Britain’s Spectator TV his country was ready for Hezbollah, which he labeled a twin of Hamas. “Hezbollah could try to escalate the situation, so my message is clear: if we were caught by surprise by Hamas on Saturday morning, we are not going to be caught by surprise from the north. We are ready, we are prepared. We don’t want a war in the north but if they force one upon us, as I was saying, we are ready and we will win decisively in the north too.”

    To try to forestall any such thing happening, the United States has dispatched two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region and President Joe Biden publicly warned outside actors — taken to mean Iran and Hezbollah — not to get involved. “Don’t,” he said.

    “That was music to my ears,” said Ruth Boulos, a mother of two, as she sipped coffee at a restaurant in Raouché, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Beirut, dotted with modern skyscrapers. “Let’s hope Hezbollah listens,” she added.

    At nearby tables, mostly well-heeled Lebanese Christian families could be heard debating whether the country will once again be mired in war and whether they should get out now, joining other affluent Lebanese who have been leaving because of the economic crisis that’s left an estimated 85 percent of the population below the poverty line.

    That may start to become more challenging. Airlines are getting nervous. Germany’s Lufthansa has temporarily suspended all flights to the country.

    Lebanon’s caretaker government has no power to influence the course of events, Prime Minister Najib Mikati has admitted. He told a domestic TV channel Friday that Hezbollah had given him no assurances about whether they will enter the Gaza war or not. “It’s on Israel to stop provoking Hezbollah,” Mikati said in the interview. “I did not receive any guarantees from anyone about [how things could develop] because circumstances are changing,” he said.

    Thanks to Lebanon’s hopelessly fractured politics, the country has had no fully functioning government since October 2022. The cabinet only met Thursday amid rising concerns that the border skirmishes might lead to the war’s spillover. It strongly condemned what it called “the criminal acts committed by the Zionist enemy in Gaza.” Ministers later told media the country would be broken by war. Lebanon “could fall apart completely,” Amin Salam, the economy minister, told The National.

    Scarred by war

    The rocket and artillery skirmishes along the Lebanese border since Hamas launched its terror attack on Israel have been of limited scope but have killed several people, including Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah. They are not, however, entirely out of the ordinary. An officer with the United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, who asked not to be identified as he’s not authorized to speak with the media, said he thought the skirmishes were mounted to keep Israel guessing.

    The Lebanese are no strangers to toppling over the precipice. There are still grim pockmarked reminders dotted around Beirut of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war, a brutal sectarian conflict that pitched Shiite, Sunni, Druze and Christians against each other in a prolonged and tortuous quarrel that drew in outside powers, killed an estimated 120,000 people, and triggered an exodus of a million.

    In 2006 the country was plunged into war once again when Hezbollah seized the opportunity to strike Israel a fortnight into another war in Gaza. Hezbollah, the Party of God, declared “divine victory” after a month of brutal combat, which concluded when the U.N. brokered a ceasefire. Hezbollah’s capabilities took everyone by surprise, with Israel’s tanks being overwhelmed by “swarm” attacks.  

    Some see that brief war as the first serious round of an Iran-Israel proxy war, something more than just a continuation of the conflict between Arabs and Israelis.

    No one doubts, though, that another full-scale confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah would be of much greater magnitude.

    Armed with an estimated 150,000 precision-guided missiles thanks to Iran, which has been maintaining a steady flow of game-changing sophisticated weaponry for years via Syria, Hezbollah has the capability of striking anywhere in Israel and has a force that could easily be compared to a disciplined, well-trained mid-sized European army — but with a difference; Hezbollah has thousands of war-hardened fighters, thanks to its intervention in the Syrian Civil War.

    Speculation is rife that air strikes on Damascus and Aleppo airports in Syria on Thursday were a step by Israel to impede Hezbollah’s arms supply line from Iran. Others see it as a warning to Syria not to get involved — Syrian support for Hezbollah could be especially important in the Golan Heights.

    Hezbollah itself has been rehearsing for what its commanders often dub “the last war with Israel.” Hezbollah’s intervention on the side of President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian Civil War was an “opportune training” opportunity, a senior Hezbollah commander told this correspondent in 2017. “What we are doing in Syria in some ways is a dress rehearsal for Israel,” he explained.

    Fighting in the vanguard alongside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah fighters honed their skills in urban warfare. When Hezbollah first intervened in Syria, Israeli defense analysts viewed the foray as a blessing — better to have their Lebanese arch-enemy ensnared there.

    But concern rapidly mounted in Israel that Hezbollah was gaining valuable battlefield experience in Syria, especially in managing large-scale, offensive operations, something the Shiite militia had little skill at previously. Other enhanced Hezbollah capabilities from Syria include using artillery cover more effectively, using drones skillfully in reconnaissance and surveillance operations, and improving logistical operations to support big integrated offensives.

    A question of timing

    But will Hezbollah decide to strike now?

    “I don’t think Hezbollah will open a second front,” Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute, and a seasoned Lebanon hand, told POLITICO. But he had caveats to add. “That assessment depends on what the Israelis do in Gaza.”

    “If Israel moves in a big way in Gaza and begins to get close to either defeating or evicting Hamas, let’s say like the eviction of the PLO from Lebanon in 1982, then at that point Hezbollah and Iran would not want to lose Hamas as an asset in Gaza,” he said.

    “That’s a strategic imperative that might spur them to open a second front to make sure that Hamas isn’t defeated. Another factor will be the human toll in Gaza — if it is huge that might force Hezbollah’s hand because of an angry Arab public reaction,” Salem adds.

    Tobias Borck, a security research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said Hezbollah faces a dilemma.

    When it fought Israel in 2006 it became very popular across the Arab world, but that flipped when it intervened in Syria with “people asking — even Shiites in its strongholds in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley — what fighting in Syria had to do with resisting Israel, its supposed raison d’être, although it exists really to protect Iran from Israel,” he said.

    “Hezbollah has to regain legitimacy and that puts an awful lot of pressure. That’s the worrying factor for me. How can Hezbollah still maintain it is the key player in the ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel and not get involved?” he added.

    On Friday, Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem told a rally in the southern Beirut suburbs that the group would not be swayed by calls for it to stay on the sidelines of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, saying the party was “fully ready” to contribute to the fighting.

    “The behind-the-scenes calls with us by great powers, Arab countries, envoys of the United Nations, directly and indirectly telling us not to interfere will have no effect,” he told supporters waving Hezbollah and Hamas flags.

    The question remains what that contribution might be.

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    Jamie Dettmer

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  • France, Germany pave the way to making weapons in Ukraine

    France, Germany pave the way to making weapons in Ukraine

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    PARIS — French and German defense companies are setting up local shops in Ukraine for arms maintenance — a first step toward manufacturing weapons in the country. 

    This week, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office gave the green light to a proposed joint venture between Rheinmetall, a German arms maker, and the Ukrainian Defense Industry, a Ukrainian state-owned defense group.

    France’s Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu traveled to Kyiv this week with about 20 French defense contractors — reportedly including Thales, MBDA, Nexter and Arquus — to facilitate partnerships with Ukrainian officials. 

    On Friday, the Ukrainian capital hosted the Defense Industries Forum, an arms fair attended by 165 defense companies from 26 countries.

    At the event, Ukrainian officials met directly with defense companies to sign contracts without going through Western governments, explore joint production opportunities and provide specific input about their needs on the ground in the fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.

    The goal is to “boost co-production and cooperation to strengthen Ukraine and our partners,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said earlier this week. 

    The arms fair is taking place as Western armies, especially in Europe, are reaching the limit of what they can give to Ukraine from their own stocks. For the past few months, Ukraine has sought to ramp up its own arms industry, in part because U.S. elections in 2024 could mean a return of Donald Trump as president. The former leader has hinted at not providing much support to Kyiv if he wins a second term.

    As Kyiv prepares for a long war, capitals such as Paris are seeking to shift from donations to contracts and cooperation with the private sector.

    French pivot

    In the past week, French officials have started to hammer home a new message: France can no longer sustain giving weapons to Ukraine and will instead plug Ukrainian officials into the country’s defense industry.

    According to a government report, France delivered €640.5 million worth of weapons to Ukraine in 2022, including 704 missile launchers and portable anti-tank rocket launchers, 562 12.7mm machine guns, 118 missiles and missile launchers, and 60 armored fighting vehicles for free. 

    “We can’t continue to take resources from our armed forces indefinitely, otherwise we’ll be damaging our own defense capabilities and the training levels of our troops,” Lecornu told French TV Sunday.

    Ukrainian servicemen ride on a T-64 tank during a military training exercise in Kyiv region | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

    Creating bridges between Ukrainian officials and French companies will “create long-term solidity, a more contractual relationship for ammunition and maintenance,” he told lawmakers two days later.

    In Kyiv this week, French defense contractors did ink deals with Ukraine for artillery, armored vehicles, drones and mine clearance — including for cooperation in the war-torn country.

    According to Le Figaro, French firm Arquus signed a letter of intent Thursday to ensure the maintenance of armored personnel carriers on the ground, and could install a production facility in the future. Nexter CEO Nicolas Chamussy — the manufacturer of the Caesar self-propelled howitzer — also told the French outlet it was looking for a local partner to create a joint venture for maintenance. 

    French startup Vistory will build two 3D-printing factories to make spare parts, according to La Croix.  

    Germany, Sweden and UK

    France’s shift comes on the heels of similar plans with British arms manufacturer BAE Systems and the Swedish government. 

    In August, Kyiv and Stockholm signed a statement of intent to deepen cooperation “in production, operation, training, and servicing” of the Combat Vehicle 90 (CV90) platform, manufactured by a Swedish branch of BAE Systems. A few days later, BAE Systems announced it would set up a local entity to ramp up production of 105mm light artillery guns.

    The German competition authority’s decision this week to green-light Rheinmetall’s joint venture with the Ukrainian Defense Industry — which will be based in Kyiv and operate exclusively in Ukraine — paves the way for a partnership designed to maintain and service military vehicles. It will also include “assembly, production and development of military vehicles.”

    Both parties also hope to eventually develop military systems jointly, “including for subsequent export from Ukraine.”

    Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger expressed a desire to manufacture the company’s next generation Panther tank in Ukraine — up to 400 per year. Although still a prototype, the new tank would be the successor of the company’s Leopard 2 main battle tank.

    Laura Kayali reported from Paris. Caleb Larson reported from Berlin.

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    Laura Kayali

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  • NATO bolsters forces in Kosovo as US urges Serbia to withdraw from border

    NATO bolsters forces in Kosovo as US urges Serbia to withdraw from border

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    NATO said on Friday it is increasing its peacekeeping presence in northern Kosovo as a result of escalating tensions with neighboring Serbia, as the U.S. called on Serbia to withdraw a military buildup on the border with Kosovo.

    The heightening of tensions comes after about 30 heavily armed Serbs stormed the northern Kosovo village of Banjska last Sunday. A Kosovo policeman and three of the attackers were killed in gun battles.

    “We need NATO because the border with Serbia is very long and the Serbian army has been recently strengthening its capacities,” Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti told the Associated Press. “They have a lot of military equipment from both the Russian Federation and China,” he said.

    “These people want to turn back time,” Kurti said. “They are in search of a time machine. They want to turn the clock back by 30 years. But that is not going to happen,” he said.

    Kosovo declared independence in 2008, but Belgrade and Moscow have refused to recognize it.

    White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby confirmed a “large military deployment” of Serbian tanks and artillery was on the border. He described the buildup as “a very destabilizing development” and called on Serbia to withdraw these forces.

    The White House also “underscored the readiness of the United States to work with our allies to ensure KFOR [NATO’s Kosovo Force] remained appropriately resourced to fulfill its mission,” according to a readout of a call between the U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Kurti.

    Kirby added that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had called Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to urge “immediate de-escalation” and a return to dialogue.

    The U.K. also said it was sending troops to support NATO’s peacekeepers on the ground.

    Milan Radoicic, the vice president of Serb List, the main Kosovo-Serb political party, resigned on Friday after admitting to setting up the armed group responsible for the attack.

    The U.S. ambassador to Kosovo earlier said Washington had concluded that the weekend attack was intended to destabilize the region and warned of potential further escalation. “We know it was coordinated and sophisticated,” Ambassador Jeffrey M. Hovenier told POLITICO, adding the gunmen appeared to have had military training. “The quantity of weapons suggests this was serious, with a plan to destabilize security in the region,” he said.

    The EU and the U.S. have pushed for years to broker a lasting peace between Kosovo and Serbia, but a deal has remained elusive amid continued divisions over the status of northern Kosovo, where a majority of the population is Serbian.

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    Mathieu Pollet

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  • In Pictures: Russian Forces Assault World War I Hellscape At Bakhmut

    In Pictures: Russian Forces Assault World War I Hellscape At Bakhmut

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    In October, the city of Bakhmut is now virtually the sole focus of major Russian offensive operations in Ukraine. Last Saturday, Ukraine’s military reported repelling eleven separate attacks on Bakhmut and Avdiivka to the south.

    For months, Russian tanks and troops have repeatedly assaulted the Donetsk Oblast city and its approaches, inching gradually forward even after Ukrainian forces liberated large swathes of territory to its northeast.

    After five months of shelling and direct attacks that began in May, Bakhmut and its surrounding towns and farmland have come to resemble a war-torn World War I battlefield. Ukrainian soldiers repel waves of Russian Wagner mercenaries and tanks backed up by massive artillery barrages from the cover of complex trench systems, surrounded by a shell-torn landscape of leafless trees, mud and impact craters.

    On October 13, Russian troops managed to penetrate into Bakhmut’s outlying southern suburbs of Ivanhrad and Optyne, only to be ejected by counterattacks by Ukraine’s recently rotated-in 93rd Brigade.

    The town of Bakhmut itself is thoroughly shelled out and no longer has running water or electricity. On October 14, a fresh Russian bombardment destroyed its historic College of Transport and Infrastructure.

    Other landmarks damaged or destroyed by Russian shelling and missiles include a machine-building plant, a trolleybus depot, the Metalurh stadium, a hotel, the Martynov Palace of Culture, the city’s central market, and many shops and residences.

    Destruction of a bridge in Bakhmut has made resupply of its defenders difficult. Ukraine has established a pontoon bridge to ease the flow of supplies.

    Only 20,000 civilians remained in Bakhmut, out of 80,000 prior to the war, when the Russian siege began in earnest in May. While even more have evacuated, some—particularly the elderly—refuse to leave.

    The battle has been costly for both sides. A Ukrainian medic told Estonian journalists he and his colleagues were having to stabilize 130 wounded personnel daily, of which 90% can be saved.

    Recently, elements of five Ukrainian brigades have held the defensive positions around Bakhmut including:

    • 30th Mechanized Brigade (one T-72AMT tank battalion and three mechanized battalions)
    • 57th Motorized Infantry Brigade (three motorized infantry battalions)
    • 58th Motorized Infantry Brigade (one tank and three infantry battalions)
    • 80th Air Assault Brigade (three air assault battalions mounted in BTR-80 APCs)
    • 93rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade (one tank, three mechanized (BMP-1) and one motorized infantry battalions)

    In the clip below you can see infantry and a T-64BV tank of the 93rd mechanized engaging Russian forces near an asphalt plant.

    At least two artillery brigades provide fire support:

    The Russian attacks are primarily spearheaded by Wagner mercenaries and separatist troops (many forcibly conscripted) of the Luhansk People’s Republic. Some identified units involved in these assaults include:

    • LPR 6th “Cossack” Motor Rifle Regiment
    • LPR 14th “Prizrak” Territorial Defense Battalion (decimated in June)
    • 27th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (1 T-90A tank battalion, 3 motor rifle battalions with BMP-3s, BTR-82As, BTR-80s)
    • 31st Air Assault Brigade (3 airborne battalions, BMD-2 and BMD-4)
    • 137th Air Assault Regiment of 106th Airborne Division (decimated September)
    • 144th Motor Rifle Division (1 tank and 2 rifle regiments with T-72 tanks, BTR-82A APCs)
    • 150th Motor Rifle Division (2 tank and 2 rifle regiments, T-72B3s, BMP-3s, BTR-82As)
    • 45th Engineering Camouflage Regiment

    These frontal wave assaults have incurred heavy losses.

    In mid-October, Russian TOS-1A vehicles unleashed extremely destructive thermobaric rockets on Ukrainian positions.

    Videos also show Russian kamikaze drones have actively targeted Ukrainian artillery and armored vehicles near Bakhmut.

    Presently, Russian units appear to be positioned a short distance outside southern and eastern Bakhmut but have yet to secure a lasting foothold in the city itself.

    The Big Picture: Offense, Defense and Bakhmut

    By October, it’s clear Russian forces are dangerously overstretched and vulnerable to counterattacks in multiple sectors across Ukraine. In September, Ukrainian forces overran a weak Russian garrison in Kharkiv province forcing Russian troops concentrated in Izium and (eventually) Lyman to retreat. Then in October in southern Ukraine, another surprise offensive forced Russian troops to fall back 20 miles out of northeastern Kherson province.

    Thus, it has mystified Western military analysts why Russian forces doggedly, even “robotically”, continue to assault heavily entrenched Ukrainian positions around Bakhmut at great cost and for only marginal gain.

    True, before Ukraine’s offensives in September-October, the fall of Bakhmut seemed inevitable. But now that Russia’s situation is so precarious nearly everywhere else, the continued expenditure of men and materiel for marginal gains seems foolish.

    Yes, in theory Bakhmut’s fall would open a corridor down the M03 highway to attack the strategically and symbolically important cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk 20 miles to the northwest. However, Russia’s ability to exploit that seems doubtful as other Russian forces previously threatening Slovyansk from the north (from Izium) and east (from Lyman) were driven out in September.

    Nonetheless, while most attacks are repelled, Russian forces have inched closer and closer to Bakhmut, even as the armies covering their flanks seem more and more vulnerable.

    Perhaps Russia’s military is desperate to claim any sort of offensive victory at a time it’s mostly compelled to be on the defensive. Online, pro-Russian bloggers and propagandists excitedly seize on reports of progress towards Bakhmut, emphasizing the rosy news (from their perspective) amidst grim reports coming from all other fronts. On multiple occasions, pro-Russian sources have falsely reported the fall of Bakhmut.

    Despite the huge strain on Bakhmut’s defenders, Ukraine’s military seems to believe Russia’s assault there is barbed lodestone bleeding resources away from more critical fronts. Despite Ukraine’s declared intention to hold Bakhmut, some commanders have admitted they’re willing to risk losing the city if it comes at sufficiently heavy cost to Russian forces and tolerable casualties for its own.

    That’s likely why rather than diverting additional reserves to counterattack around Bakhmut, it’s seemingly husbanding reserves for an offensive elsewhere. If such a new attack meets with sufficient success, it may finally compel Russia’s military to give up its ceaseless assaults, giving Bakhmut’s defenders brief respite.

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    Sebastien Roblin, Contributor

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