LONDON, Sept 6 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin was shown in an awkward encounter with his military chief of staff on Tuesday as he inspected war games in Russia’s Far East, thousands of miles from the war in Ukraine.

The Zvezda military news service published video of Putin and chief of staff General Valery Gerasimov entering an observation booth, sitting down with a wide space between them and maintaining an uncomfortable silence while waiting for Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to arrive.

Gerasimov stroked his hair and shuffled papers and Putin picked up and peered through a pair of binoculars, at one point acknowledging a comment from the general by nodding tersely.

The awkward body language drew scrutiny from political and military analysts on social media.

“Putin obviously doesn’t even want to talk with the commander of the Russian armed forces,” wrote former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt on Twitter.

In a separate clip, the mood appeared lighter as Putin and Shoigu were shown exchanging a joke while Gerasimov spoke on the phone.

Gerasimov has been almost absent from public view during the 195 days of Russia’s war in Ukraine, prompting speculation about his standing with Putin and even at times about his health.

Having captured about a fifth of the country, Russia has been fought to a virtual standstill while suffering heavy losses in troops and equipment.

By proceeding with the four-yearly “Vostok” (East) war games, Putin appeared to be sending a signal that Russia’s military is able to conduct business as usual despite the demands of the war.

But the defence ministry says the exercises that began on Sept. 1 involve only 50,000 troops, a fraction of the 300,000 they said took part in 2018. Western military analysts say they believe both figures are exaggerated.

The manoeuvres have included forces from both India and China, though it was not clear if Putin had seen troops from those countries in action.

On Tuesday the defence ministry released video of the naval part of the exercise, showing Russia’s Pacific Fleet practising launching Kalibr cruise missiles which it said had successfully struck a target more than 300 km (185 miles) away.

On Monday, Russian and Chinese combat ships practised repelling an enemy air attack using air defence artillery systems. Last week warships from the two countries carried out anti-ship, anti-air and anti-submarine defence tasks in the Sea of Japan, the ministry said.

Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared a “no limits” partnership in February, promising to collaborate more closely against the West.

Russia is the biggest supplier of military hardware to India, which went ahead with the exercise days after the United States said it had concerns about any country holding such manoeuvres with Russia now.

Moscow says the war games also involve military contingents and observers from Algeria, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Syria and six former Soviet republics.

Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Angus MacSwan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

In the early 1990s, Senator Patrick Moynihan campaigned for the abolition of the CIA. The brilliant campaigner thought the US Department of State should take over its intelligence functions. For him, the age of secrecy was over.

In a New York Times opinion piece, Moynihan wrote:

“For 30 years the intelligence community systematically misinformed successive presidents as to the size and growth of the Soviet economy … Somehow our analysts had internalised a Soviet view of the world.”

In the speech introducing his Abolition of the CIA Bill in January 1995, Moynihan cited British author John le Carré’s scorn for the idea that the CIA had contributed to victory in the cold war against the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev and his successors. “The Soviet Empire did not fall apart because the spooks had bugged the man’s room in the Kremlin or put broken glass in Mrs Brezhnev’s bath,” Le Carré had written.

This was one of the CIA’s lowest points since its establishment in 1947 (my new book marks the agency’s 75th anniversary). It was created with two key goals in mind: thwarting Soviet expansionism, and preventing another surprise attack like that carried out by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour during the second world war. While Moynihan’s campaign to shut down the CIA did not ultimately prevail, there was certainly a widespread perception that the agency was no longer fit for purpose and should be curtailed.

Throughout the cold war, many had regarded fighting communism as the CIA’s raison d’être. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the agency’s role was less clear, and it came under heavy criticism for having distorted intelligence and “blatantly pandered” to one ideological viewpoint: blind anti-communism. Without the cold war, Moynihan predicted, the CIA would become “a kind of retirement programme for a cadre of cold warriors not really needed any longer”.

Three decades on, however, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has put Russia’s threat to the stability of the world back at the top of the US foreign agenda. With a formidable Kremlinologist now in charge of the CIA and Donald Trump out of the presidential picture (for the moment, at least), the agency might be expected to be an influential player in the US response to this “new cold war”. But how much does Washington trust the CIA these days – and how much influence does it really have on events in Ukraine? To shed light on these questions, we need to go back to the early days of the Ronald Reagan presidency.

‘Stay the f-ck out of my business’

As US president from 1981 to 1989, the neoconservative Reagan unleashed the CIA from restrictions that had been imposed on it during the reforming post-Vietnam 1970s.

Like other anti-communists, Reagan saw the agency as a prime weapon in weakening the Soviet Union, which he famously denounced as the “evil empire”, and preventing the worldwide spread of communism. The new US president was convinced that in opposing an unethical foe, one could not afford to be too scrupulous. He chose as his CIA director Bill Casey, a veteran of intelligence in the second world war – a time when it had been “gloves off” for dirty tricksters.

An outright cold warrior, Casey resuscitated old CIA habits, running covert operations against the left-leaning – but democratically elected – Sandinista government in Nicaragua from December 1981 to the ceasefire of March 1988. Even the veteran conservative senator Barry Goldwater admitted he was “pissed off” when, in 1984, the CIA mined Nicaragua’s harbours without informing Congress. Accosted with this oversight, the uncompromising Casey replied: “The business of Congress is to stay the fuck out of my business.”

The CIA worked closely with the Contras, right-wing terrorists who sought to overthrow the Sandinista government. The agency trained these guerrillas in secret camps in adjacent countries and organised munition drops from planes stationed in clandestine bases. In one initiative, a contracted CIA operative wrote a manual for the Contras explaining how to assassinate individuals on one’s own side – skulls had to be fractured in just the right way – and then blame the enemy.

A disapproving US Congress banned these weapons drops and cut off the necessary funds. To get around this, arms were illegally supplied to Iran (then at war with Iraq) via Israel – paid for by covert Iranian financial assistance to the Contras. However, fearing the wrath of Congress should this ruse be discovered (as it later was), the Reagan administration bypassed the CIA in administering the Iran-Contra scam. While the president had not lost confidence in the agency, this was a sign that the CIA was becoming increasingly toxic in the eyes of Congress – making it too risky to deploy its spooks in the customary manner.

On the threat posed by the Soviet Union, though, there was far greater accord. CIA director Casey lined up with the secretary of defence, Caspar Weinberger, and the majority of Reagan’s cabinet in adopting an intransigent stance towards Moscow. They were supported by the CIA’s senior Russia expert, Bob Gates, who having gained his PhD in Russian affairs without ever visiting the country, proclaimed that the Soviet Union was an example of “oriental despotism”.

A keen boy scout in his youth, Gates – whether out of conviction or career calculation – glued himself to the American flag and offered no challenge to any president who wanted to play up the Moscow menace. Under Reagan, Casey and Gates, the CIA worked tirelessly to undermine the Soviet Union – secretly supporting Poland’s opposition movement Solidarity, and engaging in acts of economic sabotage against the Soviet economy.

Indeed, according to Republican partisans who argued that President Reagan won the cold war (the “victory thesis”), the US launched its Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or “Star Wars”) with the aim of forcing Moscow to respond, thus ruining the Soviet economy and bringing about the collapse of communism. SDI was a multi-billion-dollar space defence system designed to intercept and destroy incoming enemy missiles. According to the victory thesis, Gates’ exaggerated estimates of Soviet military might were not an instance of unthinking anti-communism but rather, a cunning ploy designed to persuade Congress to fund the Star Wars bluff.

Gates would go on to lead the CIA from 1991-93, the years when Senator Moynihan was campaigning for its abolition. The Senate confirmation hearings that preceded Gates’ tenure would be the occasion for some bitter denunciations from erstwhile colleagues. Gates later recalled that these charges of 1980s intelligence distortion “truly imperilled my confirmation”.

Jennifer Lynn Gaudemans, who in 1989 had left the CIA’s Office of Soviet Analysis (Sova) in a disillusioned state of mind, accused Gates of seeing Soviet conspiracies around every corner, and of “blatantly pandering to one ideological viewpoint”.

At the Senate hearings, Gaudemans testified that Sova analysts were deeply upset when Gates suppressed their findings that the Soviet Union was not, in fact, orchestrating mischief in Iran, Libya and Syria. She claimed he had denied them even the opportunity to publish dissenting footnotes. Sova division chiefs were, she said, routinely dismissed for being “too soft” on issues such as Soviet policy in the developing world, and arms control.

But while the agency’s analysts had problems with Gates, more powerful individuals – not least, the US secretary of state George Shultz – were prepared to listen. Sova-generated data and findings made their way on to the desks of US negotiators.

On November 18 1985, the eve of Reagan’s summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, the president and his negotiators received an intelligence assessment to the effect that, while Gorbachev was repairing the economic damage of the Brezhnev era, he would not meet his growth targets. Because of this and the acute nationalist discontent in Poland, CIA analysts told Reagan that Gorbachev was ready to deal with the US.

Through such insights, the agency played an important role in ending the “old” cold war, culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day, 1991. But in the process, it also unwittingly contributed to the idea that the CIA might no longer be needed by the now-globally dominant US.

Intelligence to please

A decade later, the US’s confident post-cold war demeanour changed at a stroke when two hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And the CIA would be the fall guy.

The attack masterminded by Osama bin Laden glaringly exposed the CIA’s inability to uphold its founding mission of preventing another Pearl Harbour-style attack on the US. Under renewed pressure to justify its existence, the agency succumbed to the demands of the George W. Bush administration in the “war on terror” that arose from the ashes of 9/11.

As the US government desperately sought a rationale for invading Iraq, a deal was struck. Senior leaders of the agency may squirm at the charge, but the CIA supplied intelligence to please in exchange for the right to survive. Its leadership endorsed the mythical charge that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). And when the ensuing war was a disaster, the CIA took the hit for having delivered that faulty intelligence.

Even in the early days of the Iraq war, however, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 had already stripped the agency of its central role in evaluating intelligence, handing the job to a new and independent director of national intelligence, John Negroponte.

With the role of the CIA thus diminished, the US intelligence community became an unresolved puzzle. Demoralised CIA personnel threw up their hands in despair. CIA veteran Art Hulnick, now teaching intelligence studies at Boston University, was at a loss to explain to his students the new arrangements for analysing intelligence. Hulnick complained of an overreaction to what he termed the “threat du jour”.

Resources were being poured into the huge and unwieldy Department of Homeland Security; the Department of Defence was poaching assets from the CIA; and the agency had even lost its monopoly on preparing the president’s daily briefing (the first item on the president’s desk each morning, memorably described by Michelle Obama as the “death, destruction and horrible things book”.)

By the mid-2000s, intelligence work was being heavily outsourced to private businesses in accordance with the ideology of the George W Bush administration. Private recruiters such as Blackwater were appearing at the CIA HQ’s cafeteria in Langley, Virginia, hiring personnel with promises of big salary increases before sometimes subcontracting them back to the agency at inflated rates.

The CIA had never been a fainting lily but now, in the interests of its own survival, its directors agreed to engage in unsavoury practices including torture, illegal kidnapping, and execution-by-drone without trial. Waterboarding, whereby water is poured over a cloth on the victim’s face to produce a sensation of drowning, was a common practice in the agency’s “dark sites” – secret interrogation centres in Poland, Egypt and other countries around the world where kidnapped suspects were held.

Investigative journalism and persistently curious congressional committees are staples of American democracy, and these dubious practices were bound to come to light – with the aid of whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden. Snowden had worked for the CIA as a highly regarded computer security expert before moving to a private subcontractor engaged by the US foreign signals intelligence organisation, the National Security Agency (NSA).

In 2013, Snowden leaked numerous files to the Guardian and Washington Post before fleeing to Russia in order to evade rendition by the CIA. His revelations about US internal surveillance practices infuriated the guardians of America’s secrets, and fed the fears of those who deplored the use of dirty tricks abroad – and the development of a “secret state” at home. Snowden was accused of having revealed the identities of CIA personnel on active duty to the possible detriment of their safety – a form of treason (should it be proved) that was a deeply sensitive matter within CIA headquarters. It was fortunate for the agency, though, that the main thrust of Snowden’s revelations was about the NSA’s role in global surveillance.

An end to CIA ‘groupthink’

By 2007, while the Iraq war grew mired, the Bush administration was talking loudly about another familiar Middle Eastern foe: Iran.

In 1953, the CIA had conspired to overthrow the country’s democratically elected but mildly leftist government headed by Mohammad Mossadegh. There followed a period of despotic royal rule by the last shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. His overthrow in 1979 saw a period of priestly mullah rule and of alienation, mitigated only briefly by the Iran-Contra deal.

While the Iraq war continued, the US shared the concerns of Israel, its fellow nuclear power and Iran’s regional rival, that Tehran was developing the wherewithal to produce an atomic bomb. The hawks in the Bush administration issued strident warnings on the subject, but had to contend with a rising force in the intelligence community: the US National Intelligence Council (also known as “Nick”).

By this time, Nick was generating national security estimates that informed US security and foreign policy. While it traced its origins to pre-CIA days, once the agency was founded Nick became reliant on the data and analysis it provided – an arrangement that increasingly caused resentment on the part of state department officials.

After 2004, however, things changed: Nick could now call in other experts to help formulate its analyses and conclusions. And in 2007, Nick determined that Iran, contrary to claims made by the vociferous hawks in the Bush administration, was not developing nuclear weapons. This was an outstanding example of “intelligence to displease” – of speaking truth to power. The CIA was still supplying Nick with data and with some skilled analysts. But according to Thomas Fingar, who presided over Nick at the time of the 2007 Iran estimate, CIA “groupthink” no longer prevailed.

As Nick drew on a wider base of experts, it could not be accused, as the CIA had been, of gnawing at the same bone over and over again. Fingar’s colleagues backed his firm stance on Iran. Overcompliance was avoided in a manner that had not been possible in earlier cases such as the WMD scandal, when the CIA had enjoyed unalloyed supremacy.

Perhaps because of this, many CIA analysts appear to have been at ease with the new arrangement – a point stressed by Peter A Clement, who was in charge of Russian analysis at the point of transition to the new system. Elsewhere in the intelligence bureaucracy, however, there was discontent. The CIA’s counterterrorism unit’s absorption into a new National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) elicited this comment from former agency employee and sociologist Bridget Rose Nolan:

There is a general sense that NCTC was almost a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 – a way for the government to treat the symptoms, but not the cause, of the perceived problem.

Compared with others within the agency, the CIA’s analysts could think themselves fortunate. Though some of them had transitioned to other units, their own team of Russian experts remained intact and unrivalled within the US intelligence community.

‘I’m a smart person’

Perhaps surprisingly, the CIA’s fortunes really began to revive with the election of Donald Trump as the 45th US president on November 8, 2016.

At first glance, Trump’s election looked like more bad news for the CIA. In keeping with its mission, the agency was alert to any threat to American interests and security posed by the Kremlin. Trump, on the other hand, was keen to achieve an era of renewed Russian-American friendship – an ambition fuelled by his appetite for deal-making, his acquaintance with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, and perhaps even his ambitions to make a memorable contribution to world peace.

The indications were that Trump, once in office, would not wish to bolster the role played by the ever-suspicious CIA in Russo-American relations. Yet in the immediate aftermath of his election, the outgoing Barack Obama administration effected a policy shift which saw a significant strengthening of the CIA’s Russia capability. This shift arose from the specific circumstance of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election – but in the process, promised a wider and timely refocusing of the US intelligence effort.

In the words of the subsequent US Senate inquiry, a St Petersburg entity called the Internet Research Agency had “sought to influence the 2016 US presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin”. It was an attempt to subvert American democracy, and the ease with which the Russians obtained Clinton’s confidential emails confirmed there was a wider threat to national security.

Trump gave the CIA little support during his presidency (2017-2021) and treated its personnel with contempt. He accused the agency of being elitist and of conspiring against him in the 2016 election. He dispensed with the daily intelligence briefing to which the CIA still contributed, telling Fox News: “You know, I’m, like, a smart person … I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years.”

But President Obama’s boost to Kremlinology has endured beyond the Trump presidency, and now looks fortuitous in light of current circumstances. Experts on the Kremlin need informers-in-place, and they are scarce assets.

We know, for example, that the CIA had to exfiltrate a key Kremlin mole in 2016, in case they were identified as the source of the agency’s information on Russian smear tactics against Hillary Clinton. The mole had alerted the agency that in June 2016, Russian cyberwarfare personnel had released thousands of hacked emails from Clinton’s Democratic campaign and from the computers of the Democratic National Committee. Time will tell what else this mole was telling the CIA about Kremlin tactics and intentions, up until their hasty departure from Russia.

A formidable Kremlinologist

In 2021, newly elected US president Joe Biden nominated his longstanding friend William J. Burns as the CIA’s new director. Unlike some of his recent predecessors, Burns was no pushover.

When Biden declared his intention of continuing the Trump policy of withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan, Burns made it known he was unhappy with the intelligence implications. The Taliban who took over in the wake of American withdrawal had a history of shielding terrorists. So when the CIA pinpointed the location in Kabul of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, leading to his assassination by a drone-dispatched Stinger missile on July 31 2022, the event satisfied both men – even if it smacked of gunslinger diplomacy.

But the new CIA director also brings more subtle skills to the role. Crucially, Burns has many years’ experience of Russo-American relations, making him exceptionally well qualified to help shape America’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Certainly, he is a very different character from Casey, his predecessor from the Reagan era. Burns is a formidable Kremlinologist with an impressive negotiating pedigree. His father, Major-General William F Burns, engaged in arms control negotiations and, in the final year of the Reagan administration, was director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

The younger William Burns served in the Moscow embassy in the 1990s and as US ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008, describing it as his “dream job”. During that period of engagement with Moscow, he repeatedly warned that Nato expansion was anathema to Putin, a leader who back then appeared potentially open to an accommodation with the US.

Burns was capable of empathising with Moscow while appreciating its threat to mankind. He was a devotee of behind-the-scenes diplomacy well before he became CIA director (the title of his 2021 autobiographical study of modern US diplomacy is The Back Channel). According to the Hoar Amendment adopted by the US Senate in 1893, secret agents are not supposed to engage in official diplomacy, but it is a rule that has been much honoured in the breach. As ambassador to Russia, Burns reached agreement with the Kremlin on how to inhibit nuclear-weapon proliferation – but he was under no illusions about Putin.

Burns had accompanied Biden, then the US vice-president, on a mission to Moscow to discuss instability in Libya at the time of the Arab Spring in 2011. In his memoir, Burns wrote that Russia’s then-president, Dmitri Medvedev, was a reasonable man who cared about humanitarian issues and admired President Obama. In contrast, Putin was “dyspeptic about American policy in the Middle East” – especially when it aimed at toppling autocrats.

In November 2021, Burns led a discreet delegation to Moscow that signalled, according to the New York Times, “heightened engagement between two global adversaries”. On this occasion, he met Putin’s adviser Nikolai Patrushev. Their conversation ranged over nuclear disarmament, cyberspace rivalry, Russians’ hacking activities and climate policy, as well as problems of mutual interest affecting Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan.

Burns’ efforts did not, however, signify CIA complacency over Russian intentions regarding Ukraine. Together with British intelligence (but meeting with incredulity elsewhere in Europe, except for Scandinavia), the agency’s Kremlinologists were convinced that Putin intended to invade Russia’s neighbour.

Banned by Putin

Burns is under no illusion about the threat posed by the Russian leader. Having previously likened him to the Romanov czars, he has warned that Putin may resort to using nuclear weapons. When Russia’s president retaliated against western sanctions by issuing travel bans on selected individuals, Burns was on his list.

From Putin’s perspective, the US and its CIA preach civilised values but do not observe them. He wrote in 2012 that they had spent decades upholding dictatorships in Latin America, regimes that routinely tortured to death thousands of their own citizens. To Putin, it was all part of a pattern:

“The development of the American continent began with large-scale ethnic cleansing that has no equal in the history of mankind. The indigenous people were destroyed. After that [came] slavery … That remains until now in the souls and hearts of the people.”

The CIA is doubtless operating within Russia, but autocracies are difficult to penetrate – and the agency does not have a great record of success in this regard. The extent of its covert actions will likely also be limited because the US remains reluctant to risk being seen as directly involved in the conflict.

While US armed forces are responsible for passing on military intelligence such as that which enabled the sinking of Russia’s flagship the Moskva, the New York Times reported in June 2022 that CIA personnel were “directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the US is sharing with Ukrainian forces”. Though few other concrete details have emerged, the report stated that the CIA’s presence “hints at the scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine”.

If precedents are a guide, the CIA will be engaged in intelligence gathering and dissemination as well as “black” propaganda – psychological warfare aimed at Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and the wider world. Through undeclared strategies including the secret funding of both Ukrainian and international front organisations, it will attempt to bend world opinion to favour the Ukrainian cause and isolate the Russians.

But there is also no reason why Burns cannot revive back channel diplomacy, should the opportunity arise. Whether or not undertaken by the CIA, diplomatic engagement with Russia depends on good intelligence on both sides. It is reliant on Putin getting reliable analysis from his own people, and being prepared to act in light of that analysis.

In early February 2022, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) collected opinion data in Ukraine which found that 40% of those polled would not fight to defend their country. Peter Clement, who worked for the CIA until 2017, observed to me that Putin and his advisers should have noted this meant that 60% were either willing to fight or undecided. The Russian leadership paid insufficient heed to such analysis.

The future of the CIA

How strong is the CIA’s team of Russian analysts today? Hundreds of analysts were recruited after 9/11, largely in response to Muslim radicalism – Hulnick’s “threat du jour”. Yet the agency’s Russian affairs division suffered a relative setback.

It was obliged to ask for volunteers among its analysts to quit Kremlinology and work instead on counterterrorism. According to a senior official who oversaw these sensitive changes, an effort was made to hang on to linguistic and area specialists, but the division had to give up gifted individuals who had transferable skills.

A reorganisation of the CIA in 2015 led to the formation of a Directorate for Digital Innovation, which gave the agency potentially greater capability of assessing Moscow’s disinformation via social media. This was on the initiative of John Brennan, President Obama’s admired pick to lead the CIA from 2013 to 2017. But for civil liberties reasons, the 1947 National Security Act which established the CIA also banned the agency from operating domestically. So it is still not capable of tracking Moscow’s use of US-based, but Russian-controlled, digital media sources in stirring up divisions in American society.

Nonetheless, the standing of the agency’s Kremlinologists received a boost under Obama – and have again under Biden. Meanwhile, the “distractions” of recent decades such as the debate over torture are receding. We still get periodic reminders of CIA ruthlessness, such as the recent assassination without trial of al-Qaeda’s al-Zawahri. But the leadership of CIA directors Brennan and Burns has set the agency on a path that bodes well for its role in seeking a resolution to the current Ukraine crisis.

The CIA, being the instrument of a democracy, is a broad church and there will always be conflicting voices. One senior source tells me the agency opposed the expansion of Nato that Moscow finds so abhorrent. Another, a veteran of Reagan’s Office of Soviet Analysis, insists its Kremlinologists are too apolitical for that kind of judgement to be upheld – and does not believe today’s analysts will be able to contribute to intelligence successes such as those achieved during the 1980s cold war era.

But these competing views reflect a healthy struggle within the CIA to get at the truth. While the agency still has vocal critics and always will do, no one is calling for its dissolution today.

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Professor Emeritus of American History, University of Edinburgh.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fifty years later, there are still many unanswered questions about the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. There is also much pain among the relatives of the victims, who continue to wonder how so many errors could have occurred in the attempt to rescue the 11 Olympic athletes that a Palestinian terrorist group named Black September took hostage and ended up killing.

One chapter is now closed after Germany acknowledged its responsibilities as the host of those “Cheerful Games” that ended in the worst tragedy in Olympic history. For the first time, German authorities have apologized and recognized their failures.

“I am ashamed,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in front of a grieving Israeli President Isaac Herzog during the commemoration event in Munich. “As head of state of this country and on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, I ask your forgiveness for failing to protect Israeli athletes and for the subsequent failure to seek explanations,” he added, addressing relatives present at the event.

Some 70 family members finally showed up at Fürstenfeldbruck air base, on the outskirts of Munich and the scene of the bloodbath that resulted from a disastrous police operation to try to rescue the hostages. “I am glad that the authorities have finally recognized their responsibility and openly talked about the mistakes. It has been a great relief,” Shlomit Romano, daughter of weightlifter Yossef Romano, told public television.

Portraits of the victims during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Munich massacre, this Monday at Fürstenfeldbruck airbase.THOMAS KIENZLE (AFP)

After extensive discussions – and under the threat of a boycott by relatives of the victims – an agreement was reached last week. Berlin will pay €28 million (around €1.2 million for each of the 23 families entitled to compensation) for its responsibility in the attack. For the first time, the German state has acknowledged that serious mistakes were made that led to the death of the 11 Israeli athletes.

The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, assured that Germany has taken too long to recognize its responsibility and to act accordingly. It is “shameful,” he admitted, that five decades had to pass to reach a compensation agreement with the families. “For too long, we have not wanted to recognize that we also have a share of responsibility. Our task was to ensure the safety of Israeli athletes,” he added.

Herzog lamented that for years “it seemed like one simple truth had been forgotten: this was not a uniquely Jewish and Israeli tragedy – this was a global tragedy! A tragedy that must be recalled and commemorated at every Olympic Games; a tragedy whose lessons must be taught, from generation to generation.”

“It desecrated the unifying and cohesive sanctity of the Olympics, the ultimate symbol of sports, and smeared its flag with blood. The Olympic flag, with its five rings, would never again be what it was before,” said Herzog, who on Tuesday was scheduled to visit the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, liberated by his father Jaim in 1945 with the British army, which then administered Palestine.

The Israeli delegation to the Munich Olympics, upon returning to their country.

Munich 72 was the great opportunity for Germany to present itself to the world as a modern, friendly and cosmopolitan country, and to erase from the collective imagination the memories of the last Olympic Games that Berlin had organized in the middle of the Nazi regime. The atmosphere was jovial and relaxed, so much so that the Bavarian police were dressed in plainclothes and unarmed. Munich was for 10 days a kind of festival of concord, which also experienced memorable athletic feats, such as the seven gold medals won by the American (and Jewish) swimmer Mark Spitz.

A few hours after that feat, tragedy struck. In the early hours of September 5, 1972, a commando from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September broke into an apartment occupied by the Israeli team in the Olympic village. Eight men who jumped over a fence in the compound, dressed in tracksuits and hiding their weapons in sports bags. They killed a coach and an athlete and took nine other team members hostage, demanding the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners, as well as the leaders of the far-left German terrorist group Red Army Faction (RAF), Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.

Beginner’s mistakes

The response by the Police of the Federal Republic – the reunification of the two Germanys would not take place until 1990 – consisted of a rescue operation plagued by incompetence and beginner’s errors in which the nine Israeli hostages, an agent and five of the eight kidnappers ended up dead. Israel offered to send a specialized unit, but the German government rejected it. The Army, which had trained snipers, did not participate in the operation because the German Constitution prohibited its intervention in peacetime.

The Bavarian Police were neither well equipped nor adequately trained to deal with a hostage situation. They made a disastrous attempt to break into the Olympic village apartment that had to be aborted because the kidnappers realized their intentions. The Munich attack was the first to be covered live by the media and the assailants could see the officers, dressed in brightly colored tracksuits, approaching their door on their TV screens.

German policemen, in the Munich building where the Israeli athletes were held captive.Bettmann (Bettmann Archive)

The calamitous German police operation, which ended with a shootout at the airport, drew criticism around the world and strained diplomatic relations with Israel, where it caused a shock that still lingers half a century later. The following day, on September 6, a memorial was held for the victims in which the then president of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, said that the Games must go on and not yield to terror.

The relatives of the victims have been asking since then for an official apology from Germany, reasonable compensation and the declassification of documents about the tragedy. They achieved their first victory two decades ago, when as a gesture of goodwill – while making it clear that it was not an admission of responsibility – German authorities agreed to pay six million marks. The figure did not go unnoticed in Israel, coinciding with the number of Jews murdered by Nazi Germany and its allies during the Holocaust. The families then asked to be paid in dollars and received $90,000 each, while Israeli and German lawyers pocketed $2 million, as the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

Commission of historians

The new agreement with the victims includes the release of documents and the creation of a commission of German and Israeli historians that will draft a report on the greatest tragedy in Olympic history.

During the negotiations, the German government had offered the victims €10 million, minus the €4.6 million it had already paid in 1972 and 2002. Some considered it “an insult” and a “terrible joke,” including Ankie Spitzer, widow of André Spitzer, the fencing coach of the Israeli team, who acts as spokesperson for the families.

Germany is deliberately intensifying the war in Ukraine in order to weld Europe together under its hegemony and militarise the continent so it can become a world power. This was the central message contained in the keynote speech by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Charles University in Prague on Monday.

Against the backdrop of the venerable Czech university founded in 1348, Scholz wasted little time with the usual phrases about peace, freedom and democracy that the European Union supposedly embodies. He then got to the point of his remarks.

“In recent years, many have rightly called for a stronger, more sovereign, geopolitical European Union,” he said. “For a Union that knows its place in the history and geography of the continent and acts strongly and united in the world. The historic decisions of the past few months have brought us closer to this goal.”

By “historic decisions,” Scholz meant the “determination and speed” with which the EU imposed sanctions on Russia and exacerbated the war in Ukraine through NATO’s intervention. He did not even hint at the suggestion that the German government or the EU might be interested in an early ceasefire or a negotiated solution to the conflict.

Instead, he boasted of the economic, financial, political and, above all, military support—“here Germany has fundamentally changed course in recent months”—being provided to Ukraine. “We will maintain this support, reliably and above all: for as long as necessary!”

In the coming weeks and months, Ukraine will receive from Germany “new, state-of-the-art weapons—air defense and radar systems, for example, or reconnaissance drones,” stated the chancellor. The last package of arms supplies alone had a value of over €600 million. “Our goal is a modern Ukrainian armed forces that can permanently defend their country,” he declared. He could imagine that “Germany would take special responsibility for building Ukrainian artillery and air defense.”

Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) promised Ukraine on Sunday that she would continue to indefinitely support Ukraine with heavy weaponry. One must “expect that this war could last for years to come,” she told the Bild am Sonntag. Like Scholz, Baerbock explicitly declared her support for the goal of recapturing the Crimean peninsula by military force and thereby inflict a total military defeat on Russia, a nuclear-armed power.

The German government already supported the right-wing coup in Ukraine in 2014, which brought a pro-Western puppet regime to power and sowed the seeds for the current war. But it hesitated for a long time to completely break off economic relations with Russia, which had been supplying Germany with cheap and secure energy since Soviet times.

Despite significant pressure, Chancellor Angela Merkel refused throughout her time in office to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which would have doubled the capacity of the existing pipeline. The Scholz government only took this step after the outbreak of the war.  Even then, his government came under sustained fire for allegedly acting too hesitantly and delaying promised arms deliveries.

This has changed radically. After the United States, Germany is the driving force in the proxy war with Russia. In order to dismember Russia and seize control of its rich natural resources, the German government is prepared to let its own population freeze and inflation rise uninterruptedly,  and is risking a world war fought with nuclear weapons.

Already three days after the outbreak of war, Scholz announced in the Bundestag (parliament) a “new epoch,” massive arms deliveries to Ukraine and a tripling of the defence budget in order to make Germany the leading military power in Europe once again. His Prague speech was directly linked to his “new epoch” speech. The demand for a “geopolitical Europe capable of world politics” that “can assert its values and interests worldwide” is a constant theme throughout the one-hour text.

“In a world of 8, probably 10 billion people in the future, every single one of our European nation states is far too small to assert its interests and values alone. This makes a united European Union all the more important for us,” Scholz stressed.

He was careful not to say a critical word about the US and praised the “indispensable value of the transatlantic partnership.” Nevertheless, he made it clear that Germany’s geopolitical ambitions are also directed against the US.

It is “fortunate for all of us” that “today, with President Biden, a convinced transatlanticist is sitting in the White House,” he said. But in spite of everything Biden has done for the partnership, “we know at the same time that Washington’s view is more focused on competition with China and the Asia-Pacific region. This will also apply to future American governments—perhaps even more.”

According to Scholz, in the multi-polar world of the 21st century, “it is therefore not enough to cultivate existing partnerships only as valuable as they are. We will invest in new partnerships—in Asia, Africa and Latin America.” The united Europe also has to “emphasise its weight even more vis-à-vis China.”

In order to strengthen the EU accordingly, Scholz advocates its further expansion to the east: “The fact that the EU continues to grow to the east is a win-win situation for all of us!” he declared. In addition to the countries of the Western Balkans, Ukraine and Moldova, he also wants to “prospectively” welcome Georgia into the EU. The EU would thus grow from the current 27 to up to 36 members.

Scholz also hopes that this will strengthen Germany’s position in Europe. “Germany, as a country in the middle of the continent, will do everything in its power to bring East and West, North and South together in Europe,” he said.

In order to make the EU more effective and to strengthen Germany’s leadership role, Scholz intends to centralise its institutions and largely disempower smaller members. In the Council of the EU, in which the heads of government or the ministers responsible for the various countries are represented, the unanimity principle is to be replaced by the majority principle, so that individual members can no longer veto proposals. 

Scholz wants to reduce the European Parliament’s size, “in compliance with the democratic principle that every vote should have approximately the same weight.” So far, smaller countries have been favoured because they have more deputies per head of population than other states.

With an ambitious technological and economic development programme, Europe should “fight back to the top of the world” and join the trade war against China and the US. Scholz cited the production of chips and semiconductors, the mobility of the future and the “ecological and digital transformation of our economy” as central fields. 

Scholz also plans to include space: “Independent access to space, modern satellites and megaconstellations—this is not only crucial for our security, but also for environmental protection, agriculture and, last but not least, for digitalisation.”

To realise these plans, Scholz intends to arm the EU as a military world power under German leadership so it is capable of waging war around the globe.

“The past uncoordinated shrinking of European armies and defence budgets should now be followed by a coordinated growth of European capabilities,” he said.

In addition to joint arms projects, the unification of European defence structures and a well-equipped EU military headquarters, he intends to accelerate decision-making processes and form “coalitions of the determined” from individual member states for military operations.

Germany will also “ensure that the planned EU Rapid Reaction Force is operational in 2025—and then also provide its core,” Scholz promised. It was decided that Germany would support Lithuania with a rapidly deployable brigade and Slovakia in air defense, as well as compensate the Czech Republic and other countries for the delivery of Soviet tanks to Ukraine with tanks of German design.

Europe needs to catch up considerably in order to counter threats from the air and from space, he continued. Therefore, Germany will invest very significantly in an air defense system and design it in such a way that European neighbours can also participate. A commonly built air defense system in Europe is “a safety asset for the whole of Europe,” he stated.

The fact that the German government bases its European programme on the prospect of a long war against Russia, which costs hundreds of lives every day in Ukraine, ruins the living standards of the European working class and threatens to escalate into a nuclear war, shows its reactionary character. The federal government is thus returning to the worst traditions of German imperialism and is supported by all parties represented in the Bundestag.

At the end of the 19th century, capitalist Germany developed the most advanced industry in Europe, but at a time when the world was already divided among its capitalist rivals. With the First World War, it tried to change that by redividing the world. The control of Eastern Europe—or “Central Europe” (Mitteleuropa) as it was then called—including Ukraine was one of the central goals of the German war.

After the defeat in World War I, Hitler made another attempt to redivide the world in the interests of German imperialism 20 years later. “To convert united Germany into a base for European domination; to convert united Europe into a base for the struggle for world domination, consequently for confining, weakening, and reducing America—this task remains unchanged for Hitler,” wrote Leon Trotsky in December 1939, shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War.

Scholz’s European strategy follows the same trajectory. His attempt to subordinate the EU to German interests and to transform it into a basis for the struggle for world domination will inevitably lead to a catastrophe. It will not only lead to violent conflicts between the European powers, but will also intensify the class struggle.

This contains the key to the development of a response to the danger of war. The working class must combine the struggle to defend its social achievements and democratic rights with the struggle against war and militarism. It must reject the European Union, an instrument of the European imperialist powers, and take up the fight for the United Socialist States of Europe—for a united socialist Europe in which social interests dominate, not the profit interests of the capitalists.

By Stephen Hall, University of Bath | –

It’s not the first time that Jews have felt it necessary to flee Russia, but the invasion of Ukraine has resulted in the fourth wave of exiles in the past hundred years.

Since Vladimir Putin became president for the second time in 2012, the authorities have become increasingly repressive towards minorities, as well as cracking down on freedom of speech and getting rid of any opposition figures. But it was the 2022 invasion of Ukraine that was the final straw for many Jewish people.

With anti-Jewish crackdowns between 1880 and 1906, about 2 million people left the Russian empire for the US; many were Jews. From 1970-88 around 291,000 Jews left the Soviet Union and in the 1990s a further 128,000 left for Germany. The new Jewish exodus has been sudden, and many are still trying to leave. Out of 165,000 Jews in Russia at the beginning of the war, reports suggest that 20,500 have left in the past six months.

Since the war began in February 2022, the authorities have doubled down on repression, changing it from a targeted practice to mass repression. An example is the arrest of children for placing flowers outside the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow in March. This is something that the Russian authorities have not done before. At the same time, the economy appears to be spiralling beyond the control of the authorities.

Historically, when economies tank, governments often look for minorities to blame – and Russian Jews know this could be the case again.

Data from the International Monetary Fund in early August 2022 suggested that the Russian economy would only contract by 6% in 2022, rather than the predicted 8.5%. Although the economy has not collapsed – as predicted by many western specialists – businesses are leaving or have curtailed operations in Russia, and sanctions are beginning to cripple the economy.

Although Russia’s Jewish population is very small at 165,000, compared to the whole Russian population (145.2 million), it makes up a disproportionate number of the Russian middle class. This group has been in decline for a while, but the possibility of mass conscription, a failing economy and increased restrictions over the few independent areas of life have led to about 200,000 middle-class Russians leaving during the Ukraine war for Georgia, Turkey, Armenia and beyond.

Significantly, Moscow’s chief rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt, left Russia in July after the authorities put pressure on him to support the war in Ukraine. In late July, the ministry of justice of the Russian Federation announced it would shut down the Moscow office of the Jewish Agency, which organises migration to Israel, after Israeli prime minster, Yair Lapid, condemned the war.

Both of these actions put many Russian Jews on high alert. In an interview after he left Russia, Goldschmidt said that the sanctions and pressure to support the war changed Russia from a modern country back to one echoing the Soviet Union.

History of Jewish repression

Sadly, antisemitism has a long and painful history in Russia. The expansion of Muscovy – a name given to combine the Grand Duchy of Moscow (1263-1547) and the Tsardom of Russia (1547-1721) – to the east and west, culminating in the pronouncement of the Russian empire in 1721, saw Russia incorporate a large Jewish population.

The partitions of Poland between 1772 and 1795 and victory over the Ottomans in the 17th century gave Russia a large Jewish minority. The Pale of Settlement, an area where Jews were forced to live, was created in 1791 to keep most Jews in the newly annexed territories and away from inner Russia.

Throughout the period of the Russian empire (1721-1917) the Jewish population experienced numerous pogroms (organised massacres). In the late Tsarist period (1905-1917), famine and state support of nationalist groups, such as the Black Hundredsresulted in the need to locate an “enemy” to blame for Russia’s woes. The Jews served this purpose and pogroms, like the one in Kishinev in 1903 (present day Chișinău, capital of Moldova) were widespread across the empire.

The Tsarist regime was imbued with a deep antisemitism, epitomised by the deep fake publication the Elders of Zion. This document was created by the Tsarist secret police – Okhrana – to justify this antisemitism and create the conspiracy that the Jews were trying to control the world.

This antisemitism continued into the Soviet Union, which was anything but the egalitarian society it claimed to be. Jewish schools and cultural institutions were closed, Jewish leaders murdered and antisemitic plots were created by the Soviet system to justify crackdowns. The 1953 doctors plot, where Jewish doctors were accused of murdering Stalin is the most famous example of these fake creations.

This persecution, combined with Israel being a key ally of the US in the cold war, put Jews in a difficult position. Facing discrimination at school and in the workplace many Russian Jews chose to leave the Soviet Union. This led to the term refusenik, where many Soviet Jews had “refused” stamped in their visa applications.

Claims circulated that Soviet Jews were a fifth column, a set of organisations aiming to undermine the national interest, and in cahoots with the US. This led to further persecution, more Soviet Jews fleeing and further accusations.

Soviet similarities

While Russia is not the Soviet Union, the Putinist system is increasingly reactionary and autocratic – some would say fascist. Autocracies generally need an enemy to put the public on their side and show that they are fighting instability and protecting the population.

The phrase came up recently, during a state-sponsored rally in the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow in March 2022, when Putin spoke about a fifth column and national traitors. Authoritarian leaders often like to cite an internal enemy as well as an external enemy.

The fear of Russian history repeating itself doesn’t go away. Past and present Russian regimes have always blamed Jews for their problems. Many Russian Jews are not waiting around to find out if Russia is about to take this dark path, again.

Stephen Hall, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics, International Relations and Russia, University of Bath

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Vladimir Soldatkin

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (Reuters)—Russia’s biggest natural gas pipeline to Europe will not resume pumping until Siemens Energy repairs faulty equipment, Gazprom’s Deputy Chief Executive Vitaly Markelov told Reuters on Tuesday.

Europe is facing its worst gas supply crisis ever, with energy prices soaring and German importers even discussing possible rationing in the European Union’s biggest economy after Russia reduced flows westwards.

Gazprom on Friday said the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, Europe’s major supply route, would remain shut as a turbine at a compressor station had an engine oil leak, sending wholesale gas prices soaring.

When asked when Nord Stream 1 would start pumping gas again, Markelov told Reuters on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok: “You should ask Siemens. They have to repair equipment first.”

Siemens Energy said it was not currently commissioned by Gazprom to do maintenance work on the turbine with the suspected engine oil leak, but was on standby.

The company, headquartered in Munich, Germany, said on Tuesday that it did not comprehend Gazprom’s presentation of the situation.

It said an engine oil leak at the last remaining turbine in operation at the Portovaya compressor station did not constitute a reason to keep the pipeline closed.

“We cannot comprehend this new representation based on the information provided to us over the weekend,” Siemens Energy said in a written statement.

“Our assessment is that the finding communicated to us does not represent a technical reason for stopping operation. Such leaks do not normally affect the operation of a turbine and can be sealed on site,” it added.

ENERGY WAR?

The Kremlin blames the energy crisis on sanctions imposed on Russia by the West over what President Vladimir Putin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. European leaders say Moscow is using energy to blackmail the EU.

Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic Sea to Germany, is by far the biggest Russian gas pipeline to Europe, carrying up to 59.2 billion cubic metres of gas per year.

Once considered a symbol of the cooperation between one of the world’s biggest energy powers and the world’s fourth largest economy, Nord Stream has now become the subject of recriminations between Berlin and Moscow.

Germany, the biggest European purchaser of Russian energy, says Russia is no longer a reliable supplier. EU politicians say Putin is using his clout as the head of one of the world’s biggest energy powers to stoke discord in Europe over the conflict in Ukraine.

Germany dismisses Gazprom’s explanations about turbine issues as a pretext.

But the Kremlin says that the West triggered the energy crisis by imposing the most severe sanctions in modern history, a step Putin says is akin to a declaration of economic war.

The Kremlin also warned that Russia would retaliate over a G7 proposal to impose a price cap on Russian oil, a step that is unlikely to hurt Russia unless China and India were to follow suit.

Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said on Tuesday in Vladivostok that Russia will respond to the price cap by shipping more oil to Asia. He said Russia and its partners were considering setting up an insurer to facilitate the oil trade.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Jan Harvey)

(CN) — Moscow is upping the stakes in the Ukraine war by indefinitely closing off the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline into Germany, a move that puts even more economic and political pressure on the European Union, where gas prices are soaring.

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Western sanctions had hindered work to repair the pipeline, which is a principal artery for Russian gas, and that forced its closure. The EU is now bracing for a winter of possible gas rationing and deep economic turmoil.

“Western sanctions have rendered the maintenance system for gas pumping units inoperable, the Nord Stream turbine is not being repaired,” Peskov said.

European leaders accuse Russia of weaponizing its gas supplies and seeking to “blackmail” them into lifting sanctions, which the EU is refusing to do as long as Moscow doesn’t retreat from Ukraine. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU got about 40% of its gas from Russia and some EU countries rely almost exclusively on Russia for gas.

Although the EU was a major market for Russia, the global surge in energy prices has allowed Russia to continue bringing in massive profits despite Western sanctions as it sells its gas and oil to India, China and other developing nations that have refused to condemn Russia for its invasion and chosen not to impose sanctions.

Russia’s retaliatory move over Nord Stream came shortly after the Group of Seven nations on Friday proposed capping the price for Russian crude oil.

In the EU, gas prices are 10 times higher than average and surged by more than 33% on Monday following the Nord Stream announcement.

The weekend also saw large demonstrations in several European capitals where protesters expressed anger over soaring prices. Protests and frustration over inflation are growing, posing a major challenge to European leaders, the majority of whom remain steadfast in their commitment to help Ukraine win.

As the economic war between Russia and the West intensifies, the fighting in Ukraine is getting fiercer too and seeing increased involvement by the United States and its NATO allies on behalf of Ukraine. Russia, meanwhile, is turning to its allies and has allegedly begun buying huge stockpiles of munitions from North Korea and war drones from Iran.

In recent days, a number of reports indicate that NATO is becoming more brazen in its support for Ukraine, which has launched a critical counteroffensive against Russian forces in a bid to recapture Black Sea territories it’s lost.

The Hill reported over the weekend that the U.S. has begun arming Ukraine “with weapons that can do serious damage to Russian forces, and, unlike early in the war, U.S. officials don’t appear worried about Moscow’s reaction.”

The Pentagon is sending Ukraine ScanEagle surveillance drones, heavily armored MaxxPro mine-resistant vehicles and guided anti-tank missile systems, the article said. The U.S. is also providing AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles and more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems. In addition, multiple reports indicate that Ukraine may soon receive Excalibur precision-guided artillery munitions, weapons that can travel up to about 43 miles.

William Taylor, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told The Hill that U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration have “recognized that they can provide larger, more capable, longer-distance, heavier weapons to the Ukrainians and the Russians have not reacted.”

“The Russians have kind of bluffed and blustered, but they haven’t been provoked. And there was concern [over this] in the administration early on – there still is to some degree – but the fear of provoking the Russians has gone down,” Taylor added.

A Ukrainian soldier takes a selfie as an artillery system fires in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Kostiantyn Liberov)

At the end of August, the Biden administration also announced that it plans to set up a military assistance mission in Ukraine and make it a new separate command with its own general, such as was done for other American military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. This move indicates the White House is planning for a long war in Ukraine.

American officials have also become quite open about U.S. tactics and aid to Ukraine. For example, General Richard Clarke, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command until his recent retirement, boasted to the Washington Post about a U.S. program to train Ukraine on how to conduct a “partisan campaign” to fight an occupying army.

Since the overthrow of a pro-Russian Ukrainian president during the violent Maidan Revolution in 2014, American Special Operations officials have helped Ukraine build up its own special operations forces, Clarke said.

“With our assistance, they built the capacity, so they grew and they grew in numbers, but more importantly, they built capability,” in both combat assaults and information operations, Clarke told the newspaper.

He said Ukrainian special forces created and trained “resistance companies” recruited from the local population to target Russians.

“If you’re a Russian soldier today, your head must be on a swivel because you don’t know where the threat is,” he said. “They can’t look at any Ukrainian and know if that person is an enemy.”

“This guerrilla war has produced a grim body count among pro-Russian officials in the occupied areas,” the Post said. “In the past few weeks, pro-Russian officials have been killed or injured by car bombs, roadside bombs, poison and shotguns.”

Meanwhile, British media is reporting that the United Kingdom will expand a military training program in Britain for Ukrainians. Since June, about 4,700 Ukrainians have gone through military courses set up at bases in Britain and now Britain says it wants to train tens of thousands of more Ukrainian citizens. Military instructors from eight other countries, including New Zealand, Sweden and the Netherlands, are also involved.

Ben Wallace, the British defense secretary, told Sky News that the training program “developed rapidly, and we are now extending it to five weeks to provide the best possible preparation for Ukrainian soldiers who will soon be in active combat operations.”

He added: “We must do everything we can to help them defend their homes against this illegal and unprovoked Russian invasion, and will continue to do so for as long as it takes. We stand with Ukraine.”

Ukrainians are taught how to handle weapons, perform battlefield first aid and conduct fieldcraft and patrol tactics. The extra two weeks will provide the new soldiers with more advanced training, such as trench and urban warfare, vehicle-mounted operations, and battlefield exercises in simulated combat environments, Sky News reported.

Details have also emerged about Western intelligence agencies providing Ukrainian forces with detailed information about Russian troop movements and actions. British strike and reconnaissance special forces personnel reportedly have been on the ground in Ukraine to help Kyiv strike at Russian targets far behind the front lines.

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.