What Will Happen at NATO’s Summit in Vilnius?

Q1: Will Ukraine join NATO in Vilnius?

Although Ukraine formally applied to join NATO last year, all parties have now admitted that Ukraine will not join the NATO alliance before the war in Ukraine ends.

Q2: Will Ukraine receive security guarantees in Vilnius?

However, no clear consensus has yet appeared on what assurances Ukraine’s allies might be willing to offer outside of NATO.

Q3: Have the commitments allies made in Madrid been met?

However, implementation has been mixed and it now seems unlikely these three commitments will be fully met by the Vilnius summit.

Q4: When will Sweden join NATO?

In the short term, however, very little can be done to force Erdoğan’s hand, despite Congress’ attempt to condition the sale of F-16 fighter jets on the ratification of Sweden’s NATO bid.

Q5: What’s happening with NATO defense spending?

The war in Ukraine accelerated the rise in defense spending across NATO, including among European allies who have invested a third more on defense since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Q6: Will NATO get a new secretary general in Vilnius?

The most likely outcome at Vilnius—or before the summit—is that current secretary general Stoltenberg will be asked by allies to extend for a second year, until NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington next July.

ISW posted their latest update on the way in Ukraine

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-1-2023

Key Takeaways:

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in at least four sectors of the frontline on July 1.

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley acknowledged that Ukrainian counteroffensive operations will take longer than some Western observers had expected.

Russian officials and sources celebrated claims that Russian forces defeated small-scale Ukrainian landings in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on July 1 as if they had won a major victory.

The exaggerated Russian praise for defeating a small Ukrainian landing suggests either that the Russian military command sincerely fears a Ukrainian attack on east bank Kherson Oblast or that it is desperate for an informational victory following the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion or both.

Russian forces are likely responding to Ukrainian operations around Bakhmut by pulling forces from elsewhere in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the Russians might initiate an intentional radioactive leak at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) as part of a potential Russian strategy to freeze the war.

Russian propagandists are likely conducting an information campaign to destroy the Wagner Group’s reputation as a uniquely effective fighting force in support of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) effort to dismantle the Wagner Group and integrate former Wagner fighters into MoD structures.

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.

Ukrainian forces continued to conduct ground attacks around Bakhmut.

Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks in and transfer airborne (VDV) elements to the Bakhmut area.

Russian forces continued to conduct limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.

Russian forces continued to counterattack recently-liberated Ukrainian positions on the administrative border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast.

Russian security procedures on the Kerch Strait bridge are likely slowing down Russian logistics from Russia to occupied Crimea.

Iran may be sending materiel and personnel to Russia to help construct a factory in the Republic of Tatarstan that will reportedly make Iranian combat drones.

Ukrainian and Western sources continue to report on the abductions of Ukrainian children and adults in the occupied territories.

Edit: formatting

Wagner Uprising Highlights China’s Risks With Russia

Xi Jinping needs Vladimir Putin to remain in power, and Russia to maintain stability, to help uphold the countries’ shared interests and to keep challenging the United States.

This is a gifted article, you shouldn’t need a subscription to read it.

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1675541176403861512

PMC “Wagner” has suspended the recruitment of mercenaries for a month “in connection with the temporary non-participation of the Wagner PMC in a special military operation and relocation to the Republic of Belarus.”

Looks like the dismantling of Wagner continues.

100 subscribers. Oh man, that’s pretty crazy. Thanks guys!

Biden approves cluster munition supply to Ukraine

President Biden has approved the provision of U.S. cluster munitions for Ukraine, with drawdown of the weapons from Defense Department stocks due to be announced Friday.

The move, which will bypass U.S. law prohibiting the production, use or transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than 1 percent, comes amid concerns about Kyiv’s lagging counteroffensive against entrenched Russian troops and dwindling Western stocks of conventional artillery.

https://twitter.com/HoansSolo/status/1676314547936804864

“Russia has lost nearly half the combat effectiveness of its army,” 🇬🇧’s Radakin said. “Last year it fired 10mn artillery shells but at best can produce 1mn shells a year. It has lost 2,500 tanks and at best can produce 200 [new] tanks a year,” he said.

The most credible estimates I’ve seen yet and probably my new go-to when people ask about Russian military production.

https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1675113549704699904

Great thread pushing back against the idea that the era of great power politics is over.

In Ukraine, They’re Doctors; in Britain, They’re Unemployed

Gifted Link.

Often jobless or languishing in low-skilled posts, doctors who fled Russia’s invasion are forced to confront a difficult dilemma: see their skills go unused, or return to a country at war.

With many Ukrainian hospitals operating with skeleton crews, some doctors who fled the conflict are considering returning and putting their skills to use again. But for those with families, the question is complicated by the fear of putting their loved ones back in harm’s way.

https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1677435161514737665

Michael Kofman’s take on DPICM:

A few thoughts on DPICM. Providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, at this stage, could have a significant impact beyond what other capabilities might achieve. Despite the drawbacks, unlocking this stockpile has important implications for the course of Ukraine’s offensive.

Ukraine’s offensive is limited by the artillery ammunition available. The US, and other countries, provided a significant amount for this operation. Much of this was borrowed from South Korea. Without this ammunition it is difficult to imagine this offensive taking place.

Progress has been slow, difficult, and without sustained breakthroughs thus far. While UA retains the bulk of its combat power, artillery use rate is likely higher than anticipated, especially as the past weeks have seen a largely attritional approach.

Consequently, Ukraine’s hardest limit is proably not manpower, or equipment, but arty ammunition. This is foremost about the numbers. Providing DPICM gives access to a sizable stockpile of artillery ammo that can alleviate the time pressure on UA operations.

With DPICM the US is also in a much better position to sustain Ukraine’s war effort into next year, which requires significant amounts of artillery ammunition on a monthly basis. While other capabilities may be great to have, providing DPICM may prove more impactful.

While UA retains options, the offensive may culminate whenever the ammunition runs low. Extending that timeline is critical. I wont get into the debate on effectiveness vs the risks, dud rates, etc. My view is these considerations are ultimately best left for Ukraine to weigh.

New Perun, includes a brief overview of coup dynamics and a discussion of the Wagner mutiny specifically

Cracking Down on Dissent, Russia Seeds a Surveillance Supply Chain

As the war in Ukraine unfolded last year, Russia’s best digital spies turned to new tools to fight an enemy on another front: those inside its own borders who opposed the war.

To aid an internal crackdown, Russian authorities had amassed an arsenal of technologies to track the online lives of citizens. After it invaded Ukraine, its demand grew for more surveillance tools. That helped stoke a cottage industry of tech contractors, which built products that have become a powerful — and novel — means of digital surveillance.

The technologies have given the police and Russia’s Federal Security Service, better known as the F.S.B., access to a buffet of snooping capabilities focused on the day-to-day use of phones and websites. The tools offer ways to track certain kinds of activity on encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal, monitor the locations of phones, identify anonymous social media users and break into people’s accounts, according to documents from Russian surveillance providers obtained by The New York Times, as well as security experts, digital activists and a person involved with the country’s digital surveillance operations.

This is a gifted link, so there shouldn’t be any problems with the paywall.

Putin’s Corporate Takeover of Wagner Has Begun

Not since the British crown began liquidating the East India Company in 1858 and assumed direct rule over its far-flung colonies, has the world seen a government try to swallow a corporate empire comparable to Wagner.

The Wagner Group helped the Kremlin amass international influence and collect revenues, all managed by Prigozhin’s main holding company Concord. Putin is now trying to take control of a corporate monster he helped create, according to Western, Middle East and African officials alongside Russian defectors and documents detailing more than 100 Wagner-controlled companies.

https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1675845525524938752

Shashank Joshi has shared the source list for the article set he just published in the Economist. Serves as a great set of references if you want to learn more about a specific topic on the war. The articles themselves are all uniformly great, too. They’re linked in the tweet above, and I also plan on submitting them here eventually™️.

Also, am a bit tickled to know that the “big guys” are looking at the same sources as the rest of us when it comes to Ukraine updates. At least we’re on the right track.

Exclusive: Wagner fighters neared Russian nuclear base during revolt

As rebellious Wagner forces drove north toward Moscow on June 24, a contingent of military vehicles diverted east on a highway in the direction of a fortified Russian army base that holds nuclear weapons, according to videos posted online and interviews with local residents.

Once the Wagner fighters reach more rural regions, the surveillance trail goes cold – about 100 km from the nuclear base, Voronezh-45. Reuters could not confirm what happened next, and Western officials have repeatedly said that Russia’s nuclear stockpile was never in danger during the uprising, which ended quickly and mysteriously later that day.

But in an exclusive interview, Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said that the Wagner fighters went far further. He said that they reached the nuclear base and that their intention was to acquire small Soviet-era nuclear devices in order to “raise the stakes” in their mutiny. “Because if you are prepared to fight until the last man standing, this is one of the facilities that significantly raises the stakes,” Budanov said.

The only barrier between the Wagner fighters and nuclear weapons, Budanov said, were the doors to the nuclear storage facility. “The doors of the storage were closed and they didn’t get into the technical section,” he said.

Reuters was not able to independently determine if Wagner fighters made it to Voronezh-45. Budanov did not provide evidence for his assertion and he declined to say what discussions, if any, had taken place with the United States and other allies about the incident. He also didn’t say why the fighters subsequently withdrew.

A source close to the Kremlin with military ties corroborated parts of Budanov’s account. A Wagner contingent “managed to get into a zone of special interest, as a result of which the Americans got agitated because nuclear munitions are stored there,” this person said, without elaborating further.