Air raid sirens rang out across Ukraine on Saturday as Russia carried out another series of missile attacks across the country, including one in Dnipro that hit a nine-story apartment building and killed at least 12people.
Missiles and explosions were heard everywhere from Lviv in the west; Kharkiv in the northeast; Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro in the southeast; Myokaliv in the south; and Kharkiv in the northeast, officials said.
In Dnipro, another 27 people, including six children, were hospitalized after being wounded in the apartment building strike, according to Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration.
Local authorities are working to dig people from the rubble but 26 remain trapped, according to Reznichenko. So far, at least 15 have been rescued, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We are fighting for every person, every life,” Zelensky said on social media.
In his nightly address on Saturday, Zelensky said “dozens” of people, including a three-year-old girl, were rescued from the building even though most of the floors were “smashed” in the strike.
The Ukrainian Air Force said the Russian missile fired at the apartment block in Dnipro was a Kh-22 – the same type that hit a busy shopping mall in central Ukraine last summer.
Yurii Ihnat, spokesman for the Ukrainian air force, said the Kh-22 “was fired from a Tu-22M3 long-range bomber, launched from the area near Kursk and the Sea of Azov.”
“There were a total of five launches of these missiles,” Ihnat said.
The Kh-22 is an older type of cruise missile that is less accurate than most modern missiles.
Authorities in Kyiv said there was an “attack on the capital.” Blasts were heard as early as 6 a.m. local time, according to the head of Kyiv region military administration, Oleksiy Kuleba. Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said strikes hit the city’s east bank, where several power facilities were located. The exact locations of the blasts could not be immediately verified by CNN. A thick fog blanketed much of the city.
However, Oleksandr Pavliuk, a Kyiv-based commander in the Ukrainian army, said the explosions in Kyiv were not caused by Russian attacks.
“The explosions are not connected with the threat from the air or air defense, as well as with any military actions,” Pavliuk wrote on the encrypted social media app Telegram. “If there was a threat – you would have heard the alarm. The cause of the explosions will be reported separately.”
Russia’s latest nationwide salvo appeared to target critical infrastructure across Ukraine, as the Kremlin continues its efforts to limit the country’s ability to heat and power itself in the middle of winter.
On the battlefield, all eyes are fixed on Soledar, a town of little strategic value that Russia is attempting to retake in the hopes that it will provide Russian President Vladimir Putin a symbolic victory. Various units of the Ukrainian military said that Soledar remains the scene of “fierce fighting.” Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that its forces took control of the town, although Kyiv has denied it.
After a broad assessment regarding the situation on the ground in Ukraine, several Western governments have decided to answer Zelensky’s longstanding call to supply modern battle tanks to Kyiv.
France, Poland and the United Kingdom have pledged to soon send tanks for the Ukrainian military to use in its efforts to protect itself from Russia. Finland is considering following suit. Britain said it plans to send a dozen Challenger 2 tanks and additional artillery systems. Poland plans to send a company of German-built Leopard tanks while France will deliver its domestically built AMX 10-RCs.
Russia has carried out a wave of missile attacks across Ukrainian cities, killing at least five people and causing new disruptions in power supplies, particularly in Kyiv and Kharkiv regions, officials said.
“Unfortunately, there were hits on energy infrastructure,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Saturday. “In this connection, the most difficult situation is in Kharkiv region and Kyiv region.”
Emergency blackouts were applied in “most regions” of Ukraine on Saturday due to the raids, Energy Minister German Galushchenko said. “Today the enemy attacked the country’s energy generation facilities and power grid again. There are attacks in Kharkiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporizhia, Vinnytsia and Kyiv regions,” Galushchenko said on Facebook.
“Due to the shelling, emergency blackouts have been introduced in most regions,” the minister said.
In the east-central city of Dnipro, 20 people were rescued from an apartment block where an entire section of the building had been reduced to rubble, sending smoke billowing into the sky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office said.
“Tragedy. I’ve gone to the site. … We will be going through the rubble all night,” said Borys Filatov, mayor of the rocket-making city on the Dnieper River.
Five people were killed, and at least 60 people, including 12 children, were also wounded in the attack, with more people still trapped under the rubble, the regional governor said.
Pictures showed firefighters putting out a blaze around the carcasses of some cars in Dnipro. A broad chunk of the apartment block was missing. The exterior of the rest of the building was badly damaged. Wounded people were carried away on stretchers.
UK pledges tanks to Ukraine
In his nightly speech, Zelenskyy reiterated that Russian attacks on civilian targets could be stopped only if Ukraine’s Western partners supplied the necessary weapons.
“What’s needed for this? The kind of weapons that our partners have in stockpiles and that our warriors have come to expect. The whole world knows what and how to stop those who are sowing death,” he said.
Saturday’s attack comes as Western powers consider sending battle tanks to Kyiv and ahead of a meeting of Ukraine’s allies in Ramstein in Germany next Friday, where governments will announce their latest pledges of military support.
The barrage of attacks on Saturday came after a smaller-scale missile attack hit critical infrastructure in the capital Kyiv and the eastern city of Kharkiv.
DTEK, the biggest private electricity company, introduced emergency blackouts in several regions.
The Ukrainian Air Force said it had shot down 25 of 38 Russian missiles of different types.
Missiles struck critical infrastructure facilities in the eastern region of Kharkiv and the western region of Lviv, officials said. Kharkiv region lost power completely, and disruptions to electricity and water supplies in Lviv were also possible, officials said.
Moldova’s interior ministry said missile debris had been found in the north of the country near the Ukraine border following the air raids.
Saturday’s attacks came as Ukrainian and Russian forces battled for control of Soledar, a small salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine that for days has been the focus of a relentless Russian assault.
Ukraine insisted that its forces were battling to hold onto control of Soledar but acknowledged the situation was difficult, that street fighting was raging, and that Russian forces were advancing from various directions.
Russia said on Friday that its forces had taken control of the town with a pre-war population of 10,000, in what would be a minor advance but one holding psychological importance for Russian forces who have suffered months of battlefield setbacks.
Al Jazeera could not immediately verify the situation in Soledar.
Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with missiles and drones since October, causing sweeping blackouts and disruptions to central heating and running water.
Ukraine says that its forces have being holding out against a ferocious Russian onslaught led by Wagner mercenaries in the eastern town of Soledar, and disputes the Kremlin’s claims that Russia has taken control. Correspondent Debora Patta reports from the capital of Kyiv.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
The Western alliance’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine received a shot in the arm this week as multiple European nations for the first time answered President Volodymyr Zelensky’s longstanding call to supply modern battle tanks to Kyiv.
France and Poland have pledged to soon send tanks for the Ukrainian military to use in its efforts to protect itself from Russia. The UK and Finland are considering following suit.
Speaking alongside Zelensky in the Ukrainian city of Lviv on Wednesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda said he hoped tanks from a range of Western allies would “soon sail through various routes to Ukraine and will be able to strengthen the defense of Ukraine.”
The moves have piled pressure on Germany, which last week said it would transfer infantry fighting vehicles to Kyiv but is yet to commit to sending tanks. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has insisted that any such plan would need to be fully coordinated with the whole of the Western alliance, including the United States.
Western officials told CNN said that the decision by some countries but not others to send more tanks was part of a broader assessment of what was happening on the ground in Ukraine. NATO allies have spent recent weeks talking in detail about which countries are best placed to provide specific types of assistance, be it military equipment or money.
One senior Western diplomat suggested that more countries could increase their levels of military support in the coming weeks as the war enters a new phase, and a fresh Russian offensive could be just around the corner as the anniversary of the invasion approaches.
But Germany’s support is seen as crucial. Thirteen European countries, including Poland and Finland, are in possession of modern German Leopard 2 tanks, which were introduced in 1979 and have been upgraded several times since, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
While any re-export of the tank by these nations would typically need approval from the German government, Berlin has suggested it would not block their transfer to Kyiv.
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said Thursday that Berlin would not stand in the way of other countries re-exporting Leopard tanks.
“Germany should not stand in the way of other countries taking decisions to support Ukraine, independent of which decisions Germany takes,” Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said Thursday said on the sidelines of a Greens party meeting in Berlin.
German deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann said Friday that it had not received an official request from Poland or Finland.
“There is no question to which we would have to say no. But we’re saying right now that we are in a constant exchange about what is the right thing to do at this point in time and how we best support Ukraine,” Hoffmann told reporters.
General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s most senior military commander, told the Economist in December that the military needed around 300 tanks to beat back the Russians. The European Council on Foreign Relations estimates that around 2,000 Leopard tanks are spread across Europe.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said on Thursday he was confident that the tanks promised from the European partners would be delivered “very, very fast” and that Ukrainian Armed Forces would “master” the use of the tanks “in a matter of weeks.”
The decision of NATO members to send the tanks to Ukraine is not an uncontroversial move. German diplomats are privately briefing their concern that it marks an escalation in the West’s response to Russia and will be viewed in Moscow as an provocation.
Other European officials argue that the West has already transfered plenty of other advanced weapons that have been used to kill Russians, as well as provided intelligence used extensively to the benefit of Ukraine. Notably, the US has supplied its long-range advanced HIMARS rocket systems to Ukraine, which have helped it turn the tide of the war in recent months. In light of this, the officials contend, sending additional tanks is not that significant an escalation, regardless of what Moscow might say.
While European allies remain largely united in their support of Ukraine, diplomats who spoke to CNN said there was disagreement as to whether sending tanks and more weapons is the fastest and most effective way to bring the conflict to an end.
According to the Kiel Institute’s tracker on how much nations have donated to Ukraine, the UK, France and Poland have given $7.5bn, $1.5bn and $3.bn respectively. That money comprises a combination of military, financial and humanitarian aid, with Poland previously sending over 200 Soviet-style tanks.
European citizens remain strongly in favor of providing support to Ukraine, according to a recent Eurobarometer poll, which found that 74% thought European countries should continue to provide assistance. This means that if Germany does decide to move in line with France, the UK and Poland, it will probably find it has the political cover to do.
It is expected that the UK and France will continue to pressure Germany into joining them in the effort in coming days. If they succeed it would mean the three major European powers in lockstep as the war rumbles toward its one-year anniversary.
Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday that its forces had captured the salt-mining town of Soledar, the focus of a bloody battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces for months. A Ukrainian military commander quickly rejected the claim, however, saying the “severe” battle was still raging.
Soledar is located in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province, one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed in September and has been trying to wrest full control over since.
The town’s fall would mark a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of battlefield setbacks in its invasion of Ukraine. From the outset, Moscow identified Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk province as priorities, and it has treated the areas as Russian territory since their alleged annexation.
This grab taken from AFP video shows a member of Ukraine’s military looking away as a BM-21’Grad’ MLRS 122mm rocket launcher fires on the outskirts of Soledar, Ukraine January 11, 2023.
ARMAN SOLDIN/AFP/Getty
“The liberation of the town of Soledar was completed in the evening of Jan. 12,” Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, declared, adding that the development was “important for the continuation of offensive operations in the Donetsk region.”
Taking control of Soledar would allow Russian forces “to cut supply lines for the Ukrainian forces” in the Donestsk city of Bakhmut and then “block and encircle the Ukrainian units there,” Konashenkov claimed.
But Sergiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces’ in the country’s east, was quoted by the French news agency AFP as saying “severe fighting” was still underway, with his troops managing to keep “the situation under control in difficult conditions.”
An infographic shows key locations where Russian forces have stepped up their attacks aiming to capture the Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Soledar in the Donetsk region.
Elmurod Usubaliev/Anadolu Agency/Getty
While the battle for the small town has become hugely symbolic, and it does sit in close proximity to the larger Ukrainian-held city of Bakhmut, the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington, said a Russian seizure of Soledar would not represent “an operationally significant development and is unlikely to presage an imminent Russian encirclement of Bakhmut.”
Commander of the Ukrainian army, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, gives instructions from a shelter in Soledar, the site of heavy battles with the Russian forces, in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, January 8, 2023.
Roman Chop/AP
The institute said that Russian information operations have “overexaggerated the importance of Soledar,” a small settlement, arguing as well that that long and difficult battle has contributed to the exhaustion of Russian forces.
An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who runs the Wagner group, claimed earlier this week that his mercenary forces — who operate with some degree of coordination with Russian regular troops — had captured Soledar. His claim was quickly challenged by both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, however, which said the fight continued.
The vicious fighting over Soledar and Bakhmut has highlighted a rift between the Russian Defense Ministry’s leadership and Prigozhin and his private military force, with Putin’s shakeup this week of the military brass seen as a bid to show that the Ministry still has his support as the troubled conflict nears the 11-month mark.
On Wednesday, the ministry announced unexpectedly that a new commander was being put in charge of the war in Ukraine, which Russian officials refer to only as a “special military operation.” The move, coming only three months after the previous commander was tapped, was a clear indication of unease in Moscow over the trajectory of the war.
Russian forces have taken the town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine, according to Russia’s defense ministry, in what would be Moscow’s first significant victory in months.
Russia took control of Soledar on Thursday evening, the ministry said in a Friday briefing.
Ukraine’s armed forces have denied Moscow’s claim. Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, told Ukrainian outlet RBC-Ukraine that Russia’s claim of capturing Soledar is “not true,” adding that “fighting is going on in the city.”
In recent days there have been competing claims over who has control of the town amid fierce fighting. Wagner, the Russian private military company, said it had taken complete control of Soledar on Tuesday, a claim refuted by Ukraine. Russian forces had fought hard to take the town, but more battles remained, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.
On Friday morning, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that fighting overnight had been “hot.”
The taking of Soledar would mark Russia’s first gain in the Donbas region for months – offering President Vladimir Putin some welcome news after a string of defeats on the battlefield since last summer.
The significance of the town in military terms is minimal. However, its capture allows Russian forces, and especially the Wagner mercenary group, to turn their focus on nearby Bakhmut, a key target.
Wagner posted a video on Telegram Thursday directly disparaging the Russian defense ministry’s claim that regular Russian military forces have participated in the assault on Soledar.
Which Russian forces are responsible for the assault in eastern Ukraine has become a key point of contention in the machinations of Russia’s power structure.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that regular Russian forces were operating in and around Soledar, without mentioning Wagner.
Taking Soledar would represent a symbolic PR win for the man who runs Wagner – oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has frequently criticized Moscow’s management of the “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.
One Ukrainian soldier in Soledar had on Thursday evening described to CNN the desperate situation on the ground.
“We tried to withdraw ourselves, but the orcs (a pejorative Ukrainian term for Russian troops) are already there,” he said over the phone. CNN is not identifying the soldier for security reasons.
“If there is no order to withdraw today, we will most likely not have time to leave,” he added. “We were told that we would be withdrawn. And now we аre just abandoned.”
The soldier said that his group had run out of food, were running low on water, and had wounded colleagues, but still had some ammunition.
“The last evacuation was three days ago,” he said. “The order was to hold out to the very end. Judging by the sounds of the battle, our neighbors (other units) either withdrew or were ordered to withdraw. We were told to hold out.”
General inflation is easing, but the prices of some food items are not going down anytime soon. And the reasons are largely out of the Federal Reserve’s control.
The consumer price index cooled in December, falling to an annualized 6.5% from the 7.1% annual rate recorded in November, according to government data. Still, the annualized inflation rate in food was 10.4% in December, significantly higher than the overall inflation rate even as it represented a slower rate of increase than November, when food prices were 12% higher than in November 2021.
Inflation running at nearly 40-year highs over the past year has put a squeeze on American wallets. Through a series of jumbo rate hikes, the Federal Reserve has sought to tamp down inflation. Its target interest rate was lifted from a negligible level to a range of 4.25% to 4.50% by the end of 2022.
But a few factors impacting food prices are not going away. War is still ongoing in Ukraine, which affected the prices of fertilizers and animal feeds; the avian flu continues to impact the egg supply; and extreme weather conditions are adding complexities to food production.
The following is a look at how a few popular food items are affected.
Eggs
The price of eggs surged 59.9% on the year in December, up from 49% in November, according to the most government data. That means a carton of Grade A large eggs on average more than doubled in cost with prices reaching $4.25 in December 2022, compared to $1.79 a year earlier. In some parts of the country, consumers could pay up to $8 for a carton of organic eggs.
Avian flu, which has forced millions of chickens to be culled and caused a shortage of eggs, is the main reason behind the price increase. In a change from previous breakouts that faded as summer ended, this time the avian flu lingered into winter.
The holiday season is usually the peak for consumer egg demand, which means that we could see egg prices tick down a little in the new year, experts said.
But it will not be a significant drop given the ongoing flu and high cost of feed. If input costs continue to increase and the bird flu continues to kill large quantities of hens, the costs will most likely be passed on to consumers, said Curt Covington, senior director of partner relations at AgAmerica Lending, a financial services company providing agriculture loans.
Experts, including the biggest egg producer in the country, Cal-Maine, said the avian flu will be hitting egg supplies for the long term. “More than 43 million of the 58 million birds slaughtered over the past year to control the virus have been egg-laying chickens, including some farms with more than a million birds apiece in major egg-producing states like Iowa,” the Associated Press reported this week.
“I suspect it will take much additional effort to ‘stamp-out’ HPAI this time around and we may very well be dealing with the reality that this will be a year-round issue,” said Brian Earnest, lead economist for animal protein at CoBank, a national cooperative bank serving industries across rural America, in an email to MarketWatch.
The weekly supplies of eggs on hand has also reached a historic low, he told MarketWatch. For the week ended Dec. 19, cases on hand reported by the USDA totaled 1.176 million. That’s a 20% drop year-over-year, and the lowest level for the same week since 2014, he said.
Butter prices rose by 31.4% on the year in December, up from 27% in November, making the average price for a pound of butter $4.81 nationally. It was $3.47 a year earlier.
Extreme heat and smaller cow herds are the main reasons behind that, experts told MarketWatch. Cows eat less and produce less milk in the heat, and the cost of maintaining milk production skyrocketed last year, making farmers unwilling to expand their herds.
Going forward into 2023, the price of butter could soften, but year-over-year price increases could still stay high, said Tanner Ehmke, lead economist of dairy and specialty crops at CoBank.
Cows are approaching their prime milk-producing season, which usually runs from March through May, although customer demand usually peaks during the recently completed holiday season, he said.
But the increase of supply will not be much, Ehmke said, because costs are staying at record highs for farmers to maintain and expand their herds. Drought in the Western part of the country and the war in Ukraine continue to impact the supply and costs of feed.
“It’s [going to be] a very modest increase,” said Ehmke.
About 58% of the U.S. is at least “abnormally dry,” according to the National Integrated Drought Information System. It’s likely this year will see more drought-inducing La Niña weather conditions, according to National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.
“If so, the third dry year in a row would signal the worst drought since at least 2011- 2013,” said Rob Fox, director of CoBank’s knowledge-exchange division in a 2023 preview released in December. “But this time it is more concentrated in the Western states, and it would be even more devastating to their already precarious water supplies and desiccated pastures,” he added.
At the same time, butter production is competing with the growing production of and appetite for cheese in the U.S., Ehmke told MarketWatch last September. U.S. cheese consumption per capita is growing around 1% to 2% each year, according to the USDA. U.S. cheese exports also increased, particularly to countries like South Korea and Japan.
Margarine, which is largely made of vegetable oil, is also seeing a huge price increase. The price of margarine, the substitute for butter in the old days, rose by 43.8 % in December, down slightly from 47.4% in November compared to a year before.
While soybeans, corn and sunflower oil are among the food items that have been hugely impacted by the war in Ukraine, another dynamic is at play here, analysts suggested: A large quantity of vegetable oil is being used for the production of renewable diesel.
In 2021/2022, 38.4% of soybean-oil supplies were used for biofuel production — biofuel is a broader category than renewable diesel — up from 35.6% the year before, according to USDA data updated in October 2022.
Transitioning to a green economy laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act will require more soybean supply. The expected growth in soybean oil-based renewable diesel will require considerably more soybean bushels for domestic production, wrote Kenneth Scott Zuckerberg, CoBank’s lead economist for grain and farm supply, in a report in September.
At the moment, global grain and oilseed supplies are tight, and the combined global stocks of corn, wheat and soybeans are forecast to decline for the fifth straight year in 2023, according to the CoBank report.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes a quick reshuffle of generals can revive the fortunes of his faltering campaign in Ukraine and quell bitter turf wars among his commanders, he’s likely to be disappointed.
After only three months as overall commander of Russia’s war, General Sergei Surovikin has been replaced by his boss, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, the country’s most senior soldier. Colonel General Alexander Lapin was promoted to chief of the general staff of the ground forces.
Both Western security analysts and pro-war Russian military veterans, however, are skeptical this game of musical chairs will trigger any game-changing tactics or help restore momentum to the Russian campaign. Surovikin will continue as Gerasimov’s battlefield deputy.
They see the shake-up as largely political, and a sign of infighting in the Kremlin, with the defense ministry trying to reassert control of the management of the war and to curb the growing influence of paramilitary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the mercenary Wagner Group.
Prigozhin is seeking to seize the limelight by claiming to have made breakthroughs with a massive wave attacks in the east of Ukraine, using so-called penal battalions comprised largely of former prison inmates to deliver a rare Russian victory. This week, for example, Prigozhin claimed Wagner mercenaries had overrun the salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine retorts that fighting is still ongoing and that Prigozhin’s tactics are insane because of the huge casualties that he is willing to accept for negligible strategic gains.
In a sign of the personality politics that seem to be looming larger in the splintered Russian military, Prigozhin is also keen to depict himself as a fighter in helmet and flak jacket with his troops on the battle fronts.
The pro-war ultranationalist camp of Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has long been pushing for a restructuring of the top echelons of the command.
It looks, though, like Putin is not giving them the new arrangement they want, but is instead strengthening the hand of the ministry men, who are often the target of the radicals’ most excoriating denunciations.
General Armageddon
Surovikin, known as General Armageddon for overseeing a vicious bombing campaign in northern Syria in 2016, has not been the butt of the hardline camp’s anger. They credit him with having brought more tactical coherence and focus to Russia’s ground campaign. They had been calling instead for Gerasimov, who they blame for failing to seize Kyiv in the early days of the war, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Lapin, another of their bêtes noires, to be sacked.
Ultimately, Putin has chosen to deal with the internal power fissures plaguing the military by elevating Gerasimov and Lapin, and demoting Surovikin.
Rob Lee, an analyst at the U.S.-based security think tank Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted that Prigozhin had praised Surovikin, and suggested this week’s promotions may “partially be a response to Wagner’s increasingly influential and public role in the war.”
Influential pro-war Russian military blogs such as Rybar, which has a million followers on Telegram, were also scathing about the decision to replace Surovikin. The Rybar blog, the work of several authors all apparently well connected to the Russian military, credited Surovikin with achieving much in his three months as overall battlefield commander and for starting to bring some order to a chaotic campaign.
Russian President Vladimir Putin presents an award to Colonel General Sergei Surovikin on 28 December, 2017 | Alexei Nikolsky/AFP via Getty Images
Rybar fumed Surovikin would be left taking the blame for recent debacles — including the Ukrainian missile strike on New Year’s Day on conscripts billeted temporarily at a college in Makiivka that may have left more than 400 dead. Western military experts say the Russians, who claim 89 died, laid themselves wide open to the devastating attack by crowding the soldiers in one building.
Lapin’s promotion has drawn disdain from Igor Girkin, a former intelligence officer and paramilitary commander who played a key role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass.
Girkin, who uses the pseudonym Igor Strelkov, said on his Telegram channel that Lapin’s new role must be “to put it mildly, a misunderstanding.” The appointment represents a “boorish” bid by the Russian defense ministry to demonstrate its invulnerability from criticism and impunity, he said. Lapin was sacked earlier this year after failing to rebuff a Ukrainian offensive that saw the Russians pushed out of the strategic town of Lyman, in the Donetsk region.
Chechen leader Kadyrov publicly blamed Lapin for the loss of Lyman, saying he should be stripped of his medals and rank and sent to the front line barefoot with a light machine gun to “wipe away his shame with blood.” Kadyrov’s outburst prompted a warning from the Kremlin to curb his criticism and to “set aside emotions.”
Surovikin’s appointment in October as overall commander of what Russia calls its special military operation was greeted with delight by Russia’s hawks. Kadyrov praised him as “a real general and a warrior.” He will “improve the situation,” Kadyrov added in his social media post.
Russia’s defense ministry said the reshuffle amounted to “an increase in the level of leadership of the special military operation” and said the change was needed to boost the effectiveness of the military. It specifically cited “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and arms of the troops,” in other words to improve combined arms warfare, the integration of infantry, armor, artillery and air support to achieve mutually reinforcing and complementary effects, something Russia has failed to accomplish.
After his appointment, Russia made a conspicuous shift to pummeling civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, knocking out power stations and water facilities.
The decision to keep Surovikin as Gerasimov’s No. 2 has gone some way to mollify the ultranationalists, but it hardly answers their calls for a root-and-branch makeover of the top brass of Russia’s armed forces.
Over to you, Gerasimov
Whether Gerasimov, a veteran of Russia’s war in Afghanistan, can pull that off remains to be seen. He has experience as a battlefield commander in Ukraine: He oversaw Russian forces and pro-Russian insurgents in August 2014, outmaneuvering the Ukrainians at Ilovaisk in the Donetsk region, where more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed. That battle forced then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to agree to peace talks.
Gerasimov is seen as an advocate of hybrid warfare and is the author of a doctrine, named after him, calling for combining military, technological, information, diplomatic, economic, cultural and other tactics to achieve strategic goals. In May, there were unconfirmed reports that he was wounded when visiting the frontlines, but Ukrainian officials denied the claims, saying he had left a command post shortly before they targeted it.
The Chechen leader and other hawks looked to him to reverse a series of stunning battlefield Ukrainian successes and to turn the tide of war in Russia’s favor. The shaven-headed veteran officer, who has the physique of a wrestler, served in Chechnya and Syria. A ruthless and unscrupulous tactician, he oversaw the relentless targeting of clinics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in rebel-held Idlib in 2019, an effort to break opponents’ will and to send refugees toward Europe via neighboring Turkey. The 11-month campaign “showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly 3 million civilians in the area,” noted Human Rights Watch in a damning report.
General Sergei Surovikin has been replaced by his boss, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov | Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP via Getty Images
Since Gerasimov was part of a small circle of Kremlin hawks that advised Putin to invade Ukraine, his future likely now all depends on the outcome of the war. The job he has been given is “the most poisoned of chalices,” according to Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian military. “It’s now on him,” he added in a tweet.
Ukraine’s defense ministry took a more laconic approach to Gerasimov’s appointment.
Every Russian general “must receive at least one opportunity to fail in Ukraine,” it tweeted.
The U.K. agreed to send next-generation tanks to Kyiv in a bid “to seize on the moment with an acceleration of global military and diplomatic support to Ukraine,” Downing Street announced on Saturday.
The decision, which came following a call between U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, put an end to days of uncertainty on whether London should supply “game-changing” battle tanks like the Challenger 2 to the war-stricken country. It also increased pressure on Germany as Chancellor Olaf Scholz weighs whether to send Leopard 2 tanks.
“The Prime Minister outlined the U.K.’s ambition to intensify our support to Ukraine, including through the provision of Challenger 2 tanks and additional artillery systems,” the government said in a statement.
Ukraine had previously requested about 300 tanks — a number that a Western official had described as “not unreasonable” to create the mass needed for a second successful counteroffensive against Russian invaders.
“The Prime Minister and President Zelenskyy welcomed other international commitments in this vein, including Poland’s offer to provide a company of Leopard tanks,” according to the statement.
Warsaw already has pledged to dispatch 14 Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine “as part of the building of an international coalition,” while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appears to still be reluctant on whether to satisfy Ukraine’s growing pleas for more weapons.
Sunak’s spokesman said on Wednesday that the U.K. was “accelerating” its support for Ukraine “with the kind of next-generation military technology that will help win this war.” He said tanks such as the Challenger 2 could be a “game-changing capability.”
Attention is now focused on whether Germany will agree to send Leopard 2 tanks. That would paving the way for other EU countries to do the same; as the tanks are German-made, Berlin’s permission is needed.
Western defense ministers are due meet in Germany on Friday, when Berlin is expected to allow partner countries like Poland and Finland to send their German-made Leopards to Ukraine.
As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 323rd day, we take a look at the main developments.
Here is the situation as it stands on Thursday, January 12, 2023:
Fighting
Russia appointed Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov as overall commander of forces to take charge of its invasion of Ukraine in the biggest shake-up yet of its military command structure after months of battlefield defeats.
The head of the private military firm Wagner Group said his forces had achieved the complete “liberation” of Soledar, killing about 500 pro-Ukraine soldiers.
In a video address aired before the statement, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy mocked Russian claims to have taken over parts of Soledar, saying fighting was still on.
Russia and Ukraine agreed on an exchange of 40 prisoners of war each, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.
Wagner Group said it found the body of one of two British voluntary workers who had been reported missing in eastern Ukraine.
Poland has decided to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine as part of an international coalition, the Polish president said, as Warsaw seeks to play a leading role in reaching a consensus among Western allies on such support.
Economy
Russian oil revenues are falling due to the price cap that Western countries imposed on its crude oil shipments, a US Treasury official said. The Kremlin said it had not yet seen any cases of price caps on Russian oil.
The Kremlin said Putin discussed energy and transport projects with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in a phone call.
Diplomacy
Zelenskyy urged NATO to do more than just promise Ukraine its door was open at a July summit, saying Kyiv needs “powerful steps” as it tries to join the military alliance.
Estonia has told Russia to reduce the number of diplomats at its embassy in Tallinn by February.
The European Union is prepared for a long war and will support Kyiv for as long as it takes, Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billstrom, said.
Greece and Malta lag behind their EU peers in freezing Russian assets, an internal document and an EU official said.
It was (yet another) bad climate year for our planet — and an even worse one for Europe, according to the EU’s climate change service.
Copernicus’ latest report, published Tuesday, paints a dire picture that is now all too familiar.
Last year was the fifth-warmest on record globally and the second-warmest for Europe, where temperatures have increased by more than twice the global average in the past 30 years.
The Continent also experienced its hottest-ever summer, marked by devastating heat waves and wildfires that destroyed over 800,000 hectares of land and caused a spike in carbon emissions.
Extended droughts hit crop yields, with little hope in sight for a quick recovery. Unusually warm winters might be good for consumer energy bills, but without enough snow to restore rivers’ water supply this winter, farmers fear that the effects of last year’s drought might extend well into 2023.
The combination of adverse weather conditions and the fallout of the war in Ukraine is creating the perfect storm for a global food crisis, with millions of people facing starvation. Prices of staple commodities like wheat and vegetable oils, which had already experienced volatility in previous years, spiked in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though early signs suggest the crunch might be starting to ease.
Here’s Europe’s hot, long, dry 2022 — in eight charts and maps.
The shelter was jammed with people on the eve of Orthodox Christmas.
Some were trying to warm up around the wood stove after traveling in the freezing drizzle. Others lined up for a cup of hot coffee and biscuits. Under the Christmas tree lay a tangle of wires charging mobile phones.
There has been no electricity, running water or cell phone service in Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, for months.
This shelter, with a generator, a wireless router connected to a satellite link up, offers hot food and drinks, medicine, and equally important, volunteers with a sympathetic ear. It’s an oasis of comfort in a frigid landscape of danger, destruction and deprivation. Roughly 40 to 50 people were there when CNN visited.
Tetyana Scherbak, a volunteer in a bright green high visibility vest, hustled about that Friday, stopping to speak to an elderly woman hunched over in front of the stove, coaxing a chuckle from another.
“Unfortunately, I am not the sun and I can’t illuminate and warm everyone. I try to listen to them. I know many of their stories. I try my best,” Scherbak told CNN. But she can only do so much.
She did manage to coax a broad smile from 9-year-old Vlodymyr, the only child in the shelter, with a bright orange and green octopus she gave him from a shelf of toys and games.
“The entire roof has already been blown off our house,” he told CNN with the matter-of-fact tone of voice you might expect from a war veteran. “We have already had two hits.”
He said he spent the evenings playing cards with his mother, Lidiya Krylova.
Unlike the 90% of the original inhabitants of Bakhmut who have left, according to the head of Bakhmut City Military administration, Krylova and her family have stayed behind in the city, which has been at the center of fierce fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in recent months.
“Here is our home, our homeland, my parents, acquaintances and friends,” Krylova said of her decision to stay.
The volunteers had laid a table with small cakes, biscuits, apples, oranges and candy. Between the dishes of food were small cardboard Christmas trees. People gathered round the table.
“We wish each of you salvation and peace,” Scherbak told them. “We want to give you a bit of warmth and comfort. We wish you a Merry Christmas as best we can. Please come and treat yourself.”
A brief commotion followed as everyone grabbed what they could. Within less than a minute, the table was empty.
Andriy Heriyak watched it all from in front of the stove. A veteran cameraman for a local television company, who is now retired, he recalled happier Christmases past.
“It’s so sad,” he said. “Sad, sad day.”
As the day progressed, temperatures dropped below freezing. Heavy snowflakes fell from the leaden sky. And all the while, the thud of outgoing and incoming artillery and rockets, and the intermittent hollow rattle of small arms fire, could be heard.
Barely a soul ventured out. We came across a shepherd herding his flock through a park. His face hooded against the cold, he stooped to pick up chestnuts from the snowy ground.
Further down the road, soldiers scrambled between buildings with crates of ammunition.
The shelling went on. Russian President Vladimir Putin last week proposed a 36-hour truce over Orthodox Christmas but the unilateral move was dismissed by Kyiv as “hypocrisy.” Ukrainian officials said a string of Russian missiles were fired during that period.
As darkness gathered Friday, the CNN crew found cover in a basement where three of the last seven doctors still in Bakhmut were preparing their Orthodox Christmas eve dinner.
They moved down here there months ago. As bomb shelters or basements go, theirs is surprisingly comfortable. Each end of the basement is partitioned off to make separate bedrooms. A generator provides power, and a wood stove warmth. They’d set up a Christmas tree in the corner, complete with colored lights.
Tarpaulins from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, covered the cold concrete walls.
Neurosurgeon Elena Manukhina has seen up close the toll the war raging around Bakhmut has taken. “It has changed a lot in the people here. They’re worried, they’re rethinking their lives. The war has caused a change in people’s psyche and health,” she told CNN.
We joined the doctors for dinner. They toasted the holiday with Ukrainian champagne and fiery cognac, but the mood was subdued.
Elena Molchanova, a specialist in infectious diseases, was the most animated at the table, trying to raise spirits.
But even she flagged. “I feel pain,” she said, her eyes misting up, “because I can’t be with my family. I can’t sit at the same table with my mother and daughter.”
The CNN crew spent the night in a separate room in the basement. The doctors provided us with a tarp to cover the concrete floor, mattresses and firewood for a stove in the corner. Throughout the long night, shelling rumbled in the distance.
Then, Orthodox Christmas dawned in Bakhmut with clear blue skies and bone-chilling cold.
KYIV — When the Russians first came to the school where Larysa taught history in southeastern Ukraine, they asked for all the history and Ukrainian language textbooks.
The director refused to hand them over.
The school closed — but then reopened virtually on September 1, with up to 80 percent of its 700 pupils attending online. More than half of them remain in occupied Berdiansk in Zaporizhzhia region, said Larysa, who left in April for the Odesa region.
“Some go to Russian school and do homework with us,” she said. “We do all we can to make it incognito. We deleted all electronic lists, never put up any photos or screenshots or write names.”
Larysa did not give her surname or name the school for security reasons. Half of her colleagues are still on occupied territory and teaching online, risking imprisonment or worse from occupying forces — two were already detained and later released in September.
“They’re holding lessons in extreme conditions,” Larysa said. “Some were saved just because someone was on lookout. The wife was teaching a lesson and her husband was watching from the window so that she had time to hide everything before they came.”
After reopening in autumn 2021, following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, Ukrainian schools have moved mostly back online following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. But from bombs to blackouts to displacement to occupation, millions of Ukrainian children and young adults face an education interrupted, with educators struggling to work under desperate conditions.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, more than 3,000 educational institutions in Ukraine — 10 percent of the total — have been damaged or destroyed, according to the Ministry of Education. School buildings are at risk of shelling or lack heating after massive damage to the country’s energy infrastructure, while blackouts and interrupted internet connections hamper learning from home.
Meanwhile, thousands of students and teachers living under occupation face pressure to switch to Russian schooling.
Education, with its propaganda potential to influence young hearts and minds, has become a front line in the war.
Ideological battle
Crimea, under Russian control for more than eight years, is an example of how Russian education in occupied territories aims — with eventual success — to erase Ukrainian identity and militarize children.
History lessons there claim that Ukraine was always part of Russia. Army cadet courses and classes sponsored by law enforcement agencies start for children as young as six, says Maria Sulyanina from the Crimean Human Rights Group.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, more than 3,000 educational institutions in Ukraine — 10 percent of the total — have been damaged or destroyed | Genya Savilov AFP via Getty images
“We see that these children who were small kids when the occupation started, after eight years they have been turned into Russians,” she said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has steadily been moving its educational system away from that inherited from the Soviet Union. It has relegated Russian to foreign language teaching; moved Russian literature to part of the study of world literature; and revised history courses to include events like the Holodomor, the Soviet-caused famine in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians and is still largely denied in Russia.
Yet despite Russia’s carrot-and-stick approach — from September, parents in recently occupied territories are paid a one-off of 10,000 rubles (€145) to send their children to Russian school, plus 4,000 per month that they stay — many families are sticking to a Ukrainian education for their children, and teachers are still teaching it.
But the war has made Ukrainian education extremely tenuous.
When Russia invaded and occupied Kupiansk, a town in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, the vocational school where Viktoria Scherbakova taught was pressured to switch to the Russian system, and later damaged and looted.
Now, her classroom — and office — is the kitchen table at a small rented flat she shares with her two children and elderly parents in Kyiv, after she and her children fled the Russian occupation. The flat is also her daughter’s Kharkiv university virtual lecture hall and her son’s Kyiv ninth-grade classroom on days when air raid sirens sound and he can’t attend school.
The motor transport vocational college in Kupiansk where Scherbakova taught, which offered practical training for mechanics and drivers along with courses in transport logistics to some 300 pupils aged 14 to 18, exists as a displaced, virtual entity, with no home of its own. Although she is offering lessons online, Scherbakova doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to teach there again in person.
“We’re not in Kyiv, not in Kharkiv, not in Kupiansk,” she said. “We’re not anywhere.”
The education front line
As of October, about 1,300 schools were on Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. Teachers have been targeted for collaboration and detained, threatened and mistreated. Staff have been sent to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea for retraining in the Russian education system or told they would be replaced by teachers from Russia if they refused to work.
In Kupiansk, after the then-mayor surrendered to the Russians on February 27, educational establishments stayed open. However, many parents kept their children out of school — including Scherbakova, whose 14-year-old son stayed at home although she herself continued to work at the college.
Apart from hoisting a Russian flag outside, the occupiers left them alone — until June. But by the end of term, it became clear that staff would be forced to decide: leave, or start the next school year under the Russian system.
“And if you didn’t work for them, it wasn’t clear what the consequences would be,” said Scherbakova. “If you openly said you didn’t support them, you would end up in their prisons or cellars.”
Many families are sticking to a Ukrainian education for their children, and teachers are still teaching it | Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty images
One school director in Kupiansk, who refused to open her school after occupation, spent almost a month detained in the basement of the police station.
Of nearly 50 teaching and administrative staff in the vocational college, only seven refused to work with the Russian occupying authorities, according to Scherbakova.
“I’m ashamed of my college,” she said.
Spurred by the apparent ultimatum, Scherbakova and her children managed to leave Kupiansk for free Ukrainian territory in early June. The college was moved to operate virtually in Ukrainian-controlled territory, with her role shifting to acting director. With a colleague, they printed diplomas for those graduates who were reachable — 35 out of 53 — and developed a program to start the new teaching year.
But when she and a colleague started calling students, they found out that the teenagers had been enrolled to start the year in the college in Kupiansk — under the Russian system.
The physical and the virtual college started teaching parallel courses on September 1. Eight days later, Ukrainian forces took back Kupiansk.
When Scherbakova went back to Kupiansk after liberation, she found that though the college had been completely looted of its equipment and training vehicles, the library was full of untouched new Russian textbooks.
Some of the college staff who had remained in Kupiansk fled to Russia. Others got in touch with Scherbakova asking if they could work with her.
“At first I didn’t have an answer. I’m not the SBU [Ukrainian security services], I can’t judge them,” she said.
Some are under suspicion of collaboration. Later, the Ministry of Education clarified that teachers who had collaborated or brought in the Russian education system were banned from teaching. According to Ukrainian legislation on collaboration adopted in early September, teachers who engage in Russian propaganda in schools can be sentenced to prison terms. By mid-September, 19 proceedings had been opened against teachers in Ukraine.
Back in Kyiv,Scherbakova conducts online lessons and end-of-term exams amid daily power cuts since Russia began bombing essential infrastructure in Ukraine.
Her students, scattered around the country by war, face power outages too. Others, displaced abroad, are fitting lessons around schooling in Germany or England. And some remain in Kupiansk, recently liberated from occupation, where there is no internet, and the town comes under Russian shelling morning and night.
Viktoria Scherbakova conducts online lessons and end-of-term exams amid daily power cuts since Russia began bombing essential infrastructure in Ukraine | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty images
“Those ones, all I can do is call and ask: ‘Are you alive? How did the night go? This is your exam question, just tell me something, whatever comes into your head,’” said Scherbakova.
“Of course, I can’t give them good marks. But I can’t abandon them.”
Lost generation
The physical challenges of war and the ideological battle as Russia seeks to impose its education system threaten the very basis of education in Ukraine: participation.
Scherbakova says her students, many of whom come from low-income families, are dropping out of online courses. “They need to survive. They dropped everything to find work,” she said. “Many of them had to leave their homes, and they need to live on something.”
Teachers are leaving the profession too — due to migration, retirement, low salaries, and war-related stresses and bans. The Kharkiv region has lost nearly 3,000 of 21,500 teachers since February, according to its education department.
In Kupiansk, as in many liberated towns and villages, the will to learn is not matched by the necessary infrastructure of electricity, internet and teachers. Children can only get an education if they move.
“We don’t want to leave. This is our land, and we want to live here,” said Iryna Protsenko, who was recently collecting humanitarian aid in Kupiansk with her daughter Zlata, 6. The family ran a small dairy business in the town before the war and stayed throughout occupation. “But now I’m afraid we will have to leave, because of school.”
Zlata, smiling shyly next to her mother, wants to learn, said Protsenko. She should start school this year. For the moment they read books together at home — easier now that electricity has been restored. “But she’s lonely.”
Ukrainian children were already starved of live interaction due to pandemic restrictions. Now, with only online teaching, plus the interrupted routines and safety restrictions of war, they are becoming increasingly stressed and withdrawn.
“It’s not so much the quality of education as the communication. They are losing socialization,” said Larysa, the teacher from Berdiansk.
Some parents compare the situation to that of their grandparents, who missed years of education during World War II. When the war was over, they had to study together with much younger children, earning themselves the name ‘pererostki,’ or ‘overgrown.’
“I think it will be like my grandma,” said Maria Varenikova, a journalist living in Kyiv with her son Nazar, 11. “Something will have to be figured out in Ukraine, given that for years children don’t have an education because of COVID, and now war.”
“They try hard and worry so much. They are lost children” said teacher Viktoria Scherbakova | Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty images
Nazar’s school opened in person this September, keeping going with generators, bottled water and a basement bomb shelter. But Nazar is repeating the largely lost previous school year.
Scherbakova’s son, on top of the trauma of fleeing his home, had to cram in most of the last school year in extra classes over the summer in order to progress to the next grade in Kyiv.
“They try hard and worry so much,” said Scherbakova. “They are lost children.”
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026 would result in thousands of casualties among Chinese, United States, Taiwanese and Japanese forces, and it would be unlikely to result in a victory for Beijing, according to a prominent independent Washington think tank, which conducted war game simulations of a possible conflict that is preoccupying military and political leaders in Asia and Washington.
A war over Taiwan could leave a victorious US military in as crippled a state as the Chinese forces it defeated.
At the end of the conflict, at least two US aircraft carriers would lie at the bottom of the Pacific and China’s modern navy, which is the largest in the world, would be in “shambles.”
Those are among the conclusions the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), made after running what it claims is one of the most extensive war-game simulations ever conducted on a possible conflict over Taiwan, the democratically ruled island of 24 million that the Chinese Communist Party claims as part of its sovereign territory despite never having controlled it.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has refused to rule out the use of military force to bring the island under Beijing’s control.
CNN reviewed an advance copy of the report – titled “The First Battle of the Next War” – on the two dozen war scenarios run by CSIS, which said the project was necessary because previous government and private war simulations have been too narrow or too opaque to give the public and policymakers a true look at how conflict across the Taiwan Strait might play out.
“There’s no unclassified war game out there looking at the US-China conflict,” said Mark Cancian, one of the three project leaders and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Of the games that are unclassified, they’re usually only done once or twice.”
CSIS ran this war game 24 times to answer two fundamental questions: would the invasion succeed and at what cost?
The likely answers to those two questions are no and enormous, the CSIS report said.
“The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of service members. Such losses would damage the US global position for many years,” the report said. In most scenarios, the US Navy lost two aircraft carriers and 10 to 20 large surface combatants. Approximately 3,200 US troops would be killed in three weeks of combat, nearly half of what the US lost in two decades of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“China also suffers heavily. Its navy is in shambles, the core of its amphibious forces is broken, and tens of thousands of soldiers are prisoners of war,” it said. The report estimated China would suffer about 10,000 troops killed and lose 155 combat aircraft and 138 major ships.
Japan expands defense of its southern front line to counter China (April 2022)
The scenarios paint a bleak future for Taiwan, even if a Chinese invasion doesn’t succeed.
“While Taiwan’s military is unbroken, it is severely degraded and left to defend a damaged economy on an island without electricity and basic services,” the report. The island’s army would suffer about 3,500 casualties, and all 26 destroyers and frigates in its navy will be sunk, the report said.
Japan is likely to lose more than 100 combat aircraft and 26 warships while US military bases on its home territory come under Chinese attack, the report found.
But CSIS said it did not want its report to imply a war over Taiwan “is inevitable or even probable.”
“The Chinese leadership might adopt a strategy of diplomatic isolation, gray zone pressure, or economic coercion against Taiwan,” it said.
Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), sees an outright Chinese invasion of Taiwan as extremely unlikely. Such a military operation would immediately disrupt the imports and exports upon which the Chinese economy relies for its very survival, Grazier told CNN, and interrupting this trade risks the collapse of the Chinese economy in short order. China relies on imports of food and fuel to drive their economic engine, Grazier said, and they have little room to maneuver.
“The Chinese are going to do everything they can in my estimation to avoid a military conflict with anybody,” Grazier said. To challenge the United States for global dominance, they’ll use industrial and economic power instead of military force.
But Pentagon leaders have labeled China as America’s “pacing threat,” and last year’s China Military Power report mandated by Congress said “the PLA increased provocative and destabilizing actions in and around the Taiwan Strait, to include increased flights into Taiwan’s claimed air defense identification zone and conducting exercises focused on the potential seizure of one of Taiwan’s outlying islands.”
In August, the visit of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island prompted a wide-ranging display of PLA military might, which included sending missiles over the island as well as into the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Since then, Beijing has stepped up aggressive military pressure tactics on the island, sending fighter jets across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, the body of water separating Taiwan and China and into the island’s air defense identification zone – a buffer of airspace commonly referred to as an ADIZ.
And speaking about Taiwan at the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress in October, Chinese leader Xi Jinping won large applause when he said China would “strive for peaceful reunification” — but then gave a grim warning, saying “we will never promise to renounce the use of force and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”
The Biden administration has been steadfast in its support for the island as provided by the Taiwan Relations Act, which said Washington will provide the island with the means to defend itself without committing US troops to that defense.
The recently signed National Defense Authorization Act commits the US to a program to modernize Taiwan’s military and provides for $10 billion of security assistance over five years, a strong sign of long-term bipartisan support for the island.
Biden, however, has said more than once that US military personnel would defend Taiwan if the Chinese military were to launch an invasion, even as the Pentagon has insisted there is no change in Washington’s “One China” policy.
Under the “One China” policy, the US acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the self-governing island.
“Wars happen even when objective analysis might indicate that the attacker might not be successful,” said Cancian.
The CSIS report said for US troops to prevent China from ultimately taking control of Taiwan, there were four constants that emerged among the 24 war game iterations it ran:
Taiwan’s ground forces must be able to contain Chinese beachheads; the US must be able to use its bases in Japan for combat operations; the US must have long-range anti-ship missiles to hit the PLA Navy from afar and “en masse”; and the US needs to fully arm Taiwan before shooting starts and jump into any conflict with its own forces immediately.
“There is no ‘Ukraine model’ for Taiwan,” the report said, referring to how US and Western aid slowly trickled in to Ukraine well after Russia’s invasion of its neighbor started and no US or NATO troops are actively fighting against Russia.
“Once the war begins, it’s impossible to get any troops or supplies onto Taiwan, so it’s a very different situation from Ukraine where the United States and its allies have been able to send supplies continuously to Ukraine,” said Cancian. “Whatever the Taiwanese are going to fight the war with, they have to have that when the war begins.”
Washington will need to begin acting soon if it’s to meet some of the CSIS recommendations for success in a Taiwan conflict, the think tank said.
Those include, fortifying US bases in Japan and Guam against Chinese missile attacks; moving its naval forces to smaller and more survivable ships; prioritizing submarines; prioritizing sustainable bomber forces over fighter forces; but producing more cheaper fighters; and pushing Taiwan toward a similar strategy, arming itself with more simple weapons platforms rather than expensive ships that are unlikely to survive a Chinese first strike.
Those policies would make winning less costly for the US military, but the toll would still be high, the CSIS report said.
“The United States might win a pyrrhic victory, suffering more in the long run than the ‘defeated’ Chinese.”
“Victory is not everything,” the report said.
Breakdown in US-China relations a ‘manufactured crisis,’ US ambassador says (August 2022)
A war of information and disinformation rages over the Russian and Ukrainian airwaves as Russia claimed to have killed hundreds in its latest attack — while Ukraine said no one died on the ground. Chris Lee reports from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Missed the second half of the show? The latest on President Biden visiting El Paso, Texas; how cutting aid to Ukraine would be “catastrophic”; and Ukrainian ambassador to U.S. Oksana Marakova says Kyiv needs “even more” military aid to defeat Russia.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
The U.S. is sending its largest assistance package yet to aid Ukraine in its war with Russia. The $3 billion in direct aid to Ukraine includes 50 Bradley fighting vehicles. It’s the first time the armored carrier will be sent to Ukraine. The package also includes nearly 300 other armored vehicles, as well as air defense systems and anti-tank rockets. Ian Lee reports.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
