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Britain’s Defense Ministry said Saturday in its daily update on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson, announced this week, “is a public recognition of the difficulties faced by Russian forces on the west bank of the Dnipro river.”

In the intelligence update posted on Twitter, the ministry said that while the withdrawal came only two days after its announcement, “it is likely that the withdrawal process had already started as early as 22 October 2022 when Russian-installed figures in Kherson urged civilians to leave the city.”

The British report said it is a “realistic possibility” that “Russian military equipment and forces in civilian attire had been evacuating in conjunction with the 80,000 stated evacuated civilians in recent weeks.”

“It is likely that Ukraine has retaken large areas of Kherson oblast on the west bank of the Dnipro River, and that its forces are now largely in control of Kherson city itself,” the report said. “It is likely that Russia is still attempting to evacuate forces from other areas of the oblast across the river to defensible positions on the east bank.”

Ukrainian forces entered the city of Kherson on Friday as Russian forces retreated in haste. Villagers came out of hiding to welcome the Ukrainian troops and recounted horror stories of Russian soldiers killing civilians and looting homes.

According to Serhiy Khlan, deputy for the Kherson Regional Council, the city was almost fully under the control of Ukrainian forces. Multiple videos circulating on social media show Ukrainian soldiers planting yellow and blue flags in the city while local residents celebrated.

“Today is a historic day. We are getting the south of the country back, we are getting Kherson back,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Friday evening video address.

Zelenskyy said Russian forces had placed what he called a large number of landmines in the city and said Ukrainian forces would start working as soon as possible to remove them.

Russia said Friday that it had finished pulling out its troops from the west bank of the Dnipro River and that no soldiers or equipment had been left behind.

Retreating Russian soldiers painted a different picture, however. A Russian soldier described how he and his fellow soldiers were asked to hastily change into civilian clothing so they would not be detected. Also, some of the retreating soldiers reportedly drowned in the river while trying to escape.

For those Russian troops who did not make it out of the city, “the only chance to avoid death is to immediately surrender,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Intelligence Directorate said.

Kherson, a strategic port city on the Dnipro River, was captured within days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. On Wednesday, Moscow announced it had made the “difficult decision” to withdraw from the west bank of the river that includes Kherson.

The reports of a swift Russian withdrawal from Kherson came sooner than Western officials had predicted. U.S. Army General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated earlier this week that the retreat would take “days and maybe even weeks.”

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov had also expressed skepticism that Russia could withdraw so quickly, fearing a potential trap by Russia to lure Ukrainian forces into brutal urban combat.

For Russia, Kherson has been a significant strategic region forming a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014. Kherson is one of the four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed in September, a move the United States and other countries have condemned as illegal.

Meanwhile, Reznikov told Reuters that Ukraine was planning on building up a powerful military and defense industry, and this week’s state takeovers of privately held stakes in strategic companies are part of that drive, he noted.

Ukraine is building an “army of drones” to resist Russia’s invasion, Reznikov said. In recent weeks, Moscow has aimed waves of Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones at vital Ukrainian infrastructure.

“We are trying to be like Israel — more independent during the next years,” he said in an interview in Kyiv on Thursday. “I think the best answer [can be seen] in Israel … developing their national industry for their armed forces. It made them independent,” he said.

Black Sea grain initiative

Rebeca Grynspan, the secretary-general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, and Martin Griffiths, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, met with a Russian delegation Friday in Geneva to discuss Moscow’s grievances about the Black Sea grains export initiative and to address the need for unimpeded food and fertilizer exports, a U.N. spokesperson said.

The negotiations come eight days before the deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July is due to be renewed. The accord has helped stave off a global food crisis, allowing the export of food and fertilizers from several of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

The first shipment of donated fertilizers is expected to head to Malawi in the coming week, U.N. officials said Friday, following a meeting with a Russian delegation in Geneva.

“The world cannot afford to let global fertilizer accessibility problems become a global food shortage; therefore the U.N. calls on all actors to expedite the removal of any remaining impediments to the export and transportation of fertilizers to countries most in need,” the U.N. said.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters before the meeting that “work is underway” to resolve a number of issues related to the grain deal that concern Russia.

Moscow has indicated that it could pull out of the deal, set to expire on Nov. 19, if there is no progress addressing its concerns.

Russia suspended its participation for four days last month in response to a drone attack on Moscow’s fleet in Crimea that it blamed on Ukraine. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility and denies using the grain program’s security corridor for military purposes.

Meanwhile, the Joint Coordination Center reports that four vessels left Ukrainian ports Friday carrying a total of 120,150 metric tons of grain and other food products under the Black Sea Grain Initiative while five inbound vessels transited the maritime humanitarian corridor toward Ukrainian ports.

War’s toll

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the conflict has killed thousands of people, displaced millions and destroyed Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

In mid-October, the U.N. refugee agency said there were more than 7.6 million Ukrainian refugees across Europe, including 2.85 million in Russia. It said another 7 million people have been uprooted within Ukraine.

Since February, “aid workers have provided critical aid and protection services to some 13.5 million people across all regions of Ukraine,” Stephanie Tremblay, an associate U.N. spokesperson, told reporters Thursday in New York.

Late Wednesday, Milley estimated that about 200,000 soldiers — 100,000 Russian troops and 100,000 Ukrainian troops — had been killed in the fighting so far, Reuters reported. Milley said about 40,000 civilians caught up in the fighting have also been killed.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Britain’s House of Lords shares some characteristics with the Chinese National People’s Congress: their signature colors are red, and neither is elected by popular vote.

They are also the world’s two largest legislatures.

After the rapid-fire departures this year of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss from 10 Downing Street, the House of Lords is set to grow even bigger, despite demands for a reduction.

With around 800 members, the upper chamber of the U.K. parliament lags behind the nearly 3,000 delegates that make up China’s unicameral Congress.

But the House of Lords is comfortably larger than any other chamber in a democracy. India, with a population of 1.4 billion, caps the membership of its upper house at 250.

The House of Lords has long been subject to demands for reform to make it more representative and less “a chamber festering with grotesques and has beens,” in the words of a parliamentary writer in The Times newspaper.

However, by convention, departing prime ministers are entitled to nominate a “resignation honor’s list” -– typically allies, aides and associates who are elevated to peerages.

Johnson’s 20-strong resignation list is being reviewed by a vetting committee, and some of his picks are likely to prove controversial.

Truss has the same entitlement to reward her followers, despite serving only 49 days.

Her successor, Rishi Sunak, will respect the convention and not meddle in their selections, his official spokesperson told reporters Tuesday.

Baron of Siberia

Before resigning, Johnson had already elevated about 90 peers during his three years in office, including his brother Jo, flouting an official recommendation to scale back the chamber.

In 2020, Johnson installed his Moscow-born friend Evgeny Lebedev as “Baron Lebedev of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation,” despite the reported objections of U.K. intelligence chiefs to the newspaper tycoon.

Once dominated by hereditary peers, the chamber today is composed of lifetime political appointees along with people nominated after serving in prominent public or private-sector roles, and Church of England clerics.

Many have been donors to the ruling Conservatives, including Peter Cruddas, who was made a peer by Johnson against the advice of the Lords’ vetting body following a “cash for access” political scandal.

A reform commission including senior Tory Lords recommended in 2017 that the chamber be reduced to 600 members, only allowing one entrant for every two departures.

The report has languished since, with successive governments proving reluctant to dispense with their powers of patronage, especially when the House of Lords is busy frustrating their legislative agenda.

But all sides pay lip service to the idea of change. Only 29% of the Lords are women. And its membership is hardly national, with just under half coming from London and southeast England.

The opposition Labour Party has vowed to resurrect a reform drive begun by Tony Blair’s government in the late 1990s.

One idea would see the House of Lords replaced by an indirectly elected assembly of regions and U.K. nations, with the power to refer the government to the Supreme Court in the case of constitutional breaches.

‘Democratically unacceptable’

“The system is the problem — it’s not just the recent turmoil of changing prime ministers,” said Jess Garland, director of policy at the Electoral Reform Society.

“The blueprint for reform is there. There’s a real democratic need for the lords to be appointed by the people who are ultimately affected by their laws,” she told Agence France-Presse.

“We might see a list of lords from Liz Truss at some point. But to have no say in who sits there is democratically unacceptable.”

As it stands, the upper chamber cannot override legislation sent from the popularly elected House of Commons. But it can amend and delay bills.

The House of Lords enjoys far more influence than the ornamental National People’s Congress, which is set in March to rubber-stamp the Communist Party’s decision last month to grant a historic third term to President Xi Jinping.

Since Xi took control of China in 2012, Britain is on its fifth prime minister.

The latest, Sunak, believes the upper house plays a “vitally important role” in U.K. democracy, according to his spokeseperson.

But he said constitutional reform was not an “immediate priority,” as the new prime minister tackles an economic crisis inherited from Truss — some of whose authors could now be rewarded with titles.
…

The place goes dark at 6 p.m. as scheduled, but customers at this upscale Kyiv restaurant are unfazed, happy to continue their meal and conversations.

Guided by her phone’s flashlight, the waitress brings out dishes and distributes candles. She smiles as she waits for the generator to start.

The atmosphere in the central Supra restaurant, bathed in the gentle glow of candlelight, is cozy, not sinister.

As winter approaches darkness descends on Kyiv at 4 p.m. Places like Supra offer their customers access to some light and heat — as well as Wi-Fi.

Alina Germash, a 36-year-old IT expert, has compiled a list of cafes where she can sit down with her laptop.

“You need to migrate all over the city and find a place where you can start your work,” she said.

For much of the past month, Russian strikes have severely damaged Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

To ease the strain on the grid, the national energy operator has imposed controlled power cuts across the war-torn country.

In Kyiv, power cuts have been imposed daily for the past two weeks.

At Supra, the menu has been reorganized to take the new constraints into account.

Patrons are now offered cold entrees that do not require the use of electricity, dishes that can be reheated with the help of the generator, and drinks.

Filter coffee, kept warm on the stove, is especially popular with clients while it is 3 degrees Celsius outside.

Manager Valeria Mamysheva said little luxuries like filtered coffee matter and can brighten up the day.

“We are constantly trying to find a way out of any situation and to make people happy because times are very tough,” Mamysheva told AFP.

Open, power cuts or not

Kyiv is under an 11 p.m. curfew, but most restaurants close at 9 p.m. to give employees the time to clean up and catch public transport home.

Many supermarkets have had to adapt to maintain the proper storage temperatures for foods during power disruptions.

Small street stalls, equipped with candles or headlamps, have popped up to help residents with emergency shopping.

But some restaurants find generators too noisy or cannot afford the high fuel prices.

Power cuts are especially bad for business at Kyiv’s 1708 pizzeria, which does not have a generator.

“A pizza oven runs on electricity, not on firewood, so we cannot work,” lamented the owner, Ilona, speaking under the light of an LED lamp as staff waited for power to be restored.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has warned of a “worst-case” scenario this winter with “no electricity, water or heating” if Russia keeps up its attacks on the country’s infrastructure.

Roman Khandys hopes to keep his cocktail bar open, power cuts or not.

“If a power cut coincides with the start of our work, we shift our opening hours,” Khandys said, whiskey bottles glinting in the candlelight behind him.

“If it’s in the middle of the day, then we prepare food and clean.”
…

Ukrainian forces have entered the city of Kherson as Russian forces retreat in haste. Villagers came out of hiding to welcome the Ukrainian troops and recounted horror stories of Russian soldiers killing civilians and looting homes.

According to Serhiy Khlan, a deputy for the Kherson Regional Council, the city was almost fully under the control of Ukrainian forces. Multiple videos circulating on social media show Ukrainian soldiers planting yellow-and-blue flags in the city while local residents celebrated.

Russia said Friday it finished pulling out its troops from the west bank of the Dnipro River, claiming that no soldiers or equipment had been left behind. Videos of retreating Russian soldiers, however, paint a different picture. One of the Russian soldiers describes how he and his fellow soldiers were asked to hastily change into civilian clothing so they would not be detected. Also, some of the retreating soldiers reportedly drowned in the river while trying to escape.

For those Russian troops who did not make it out of the city, “the only chance to avoid death is to immediately surrender,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Intelligence Directorate said.

Ukrainian forces have recaptured more than 40 towns in southern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday, as Russia announced it was pulling its troops from Kherson.

“The number of Ukrainian flags returning to their rightful place in the framework of the ongoing defense operation is already dozens, 41 settlements were liberated,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

Kherson, a strategic port city on the Dnipro River, was captured days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24. On Wednesday, Moscow announced it had made the “difficult decision” to withdraw from the west bank of the river that includes Kherson.

The reports of a swift Russian withdrawal from Kherson came sooner than Western officials had predicted. U.S. Army General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated earlier this week that the retreat would take “days and maybe even weeks.”

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov also had expressed skepticism that Russia could withdraw so quickly, fearing a potential trap by Russia to lure Ukrainian forces into brutal urban combat.

For Russia, Kherson has been a significant strategic region forming a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014. Kherson is one of the four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed in September, a move the United States and other countries have condemned as illegal.

Additional aid

The victory in Kherson comes after the Pentagon’s announcement Tuesday to provide air defense systems and surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine as part of a new $400 million security assistance package.

The Pentagon said the package, which brings the total U.S. security assistance to Ukraine to more than $18.6 billion, would include four short-range, highly mobile Avenger air defense systems — the first time they have been provided to Ukraine — as well as the Stinger missiles they fire.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, told Reuters that Ukraine is planning on building up a powerful military and defense industry, and this week’s state takeovers of privately held stakes in strategic companies are part of that drive, he noted.

Ukraine, he said, was already in the process of making an “army of drones” to resist Russia’s invasion, which has included Moscow unleashing waves of Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones to hit vital Ukrainian infrastructure in recent weeks.

“We are trying to be like Israel — more independent during the next years,” he said in the interview in Kyiv Thursday. “I think the best answer (can be seen) in Israel … developing their national industry for their armed forces. It made them independent.”

Zelenskyy thanked U.S. President Joe Biden and the American people for the assistance, tweeting: “Together we’re building an air shield to protect [Ukrainian] civilians. We’re bringing victory over the aggressor closer!”

Heavy toll on both sides

The toll of war since Moscow invaded Ukraine has been heavy. On Armistice Day Friday, while the world paid respect to the fallen during World War I, it reverberated with the rumblings of Russia’s war with Ukraine reminding all of the fragility of peace.

The conflict has killed thousands of people, displaced millions, and destroyed Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

In mid-October, the U.N. refugee agency said there were more than 7.6 million Ukrainian refugees across Europe, including 2.85 million in Russia. It said another 7 million people have been uprooted within Ukraine.

Since February, “aid workers have provided critical aid and protection services to some 13.5 million people across all regions of Ukraine,” Stephanie Tremblay, an associate U.N. spokesperson, told reporters Thursday in New York.

Late Wednesday, U.S. General Milley estimated that about 200,000 soldiers — 100,000 each of Russian and Ukrainian troops — have been killed in the fighting so far, Reuters reported. He said about 40,000 civilians caught up in the fighting have also been killed.

Grain deal

The United Nations said senior U.N. and Russian officials were meeting Friday in Geneva for discussions to extend a deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to return to world markets and was supposed to eliminate obstacles for Russian exports of grain and fertilizer.

The agreement expires November 19, and Ukraine and Western nations are pressing for it to be extended. Russia’s government has said it is undecided, however, and it has expressed dissatisfaction with how the deal has worked for its side.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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“Mariupol. Unlost Hope” is a new documentary focusing on the war in Ukraine. It premiered in the U.S. in early November and shows the war through the eyes of ordinary people who managed to survive. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Max Avloshenko, Dmitrii Vershinin, Vladimir Badikov.
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Officials in Brussels said Friday the suspect in a stabbing attack on two police officers Thursday — killing one, wounding the other — had been on a terrorism watch list.

Prosecutors’ spokesperson Eric van der Sypt told a news conference the two officers were attacked in their squad car as they sat at a red light on the northside of Brussels.  Van der Sypt said the suspect shouted “Allahu akbar,” the Arabic phrase for “God is great,” as he attacked.  

The officer driving the car was stabbed in the neck and died of his injuries after being taken the hospital. The officer in the passenger seat was stabbed in the arm but was able to call for help on the radio. Another police officer who responded to the call, shot and wounded the suspect, when he arrived.

Van der Sypt said the 23-year-old suspect was a Belgian national on the list of radicalized Muslims held by the national security agency OCAD/OCAM. The spokesperson said the suspect will be questioned once he has recovered.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the suspect had gone to a Brussels police station earlier Thursday and appeared to be in what they described as a “mentally disturbed” state and asked for help. They said he was taken to a psychiatric hospital for examination which he left a short time later.

Responding to the attack from his Twitter account, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo wrote, “Our police officers risk their lives every day to ensure the safety of our citizens. Today’s drama demonstrates this once again. My thoughts are with the family and friends of the deceased officer.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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“Russian strikes on power generation and transmission are having a disproportionate effect upon civilians in Ukraine, indiscriminately impacting critical functions such as health care and heating,” according to the British Defense Ministry’s daily report on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The continued prioritization of critical national infrastructure over military targets strongly implies Russian intent to strike at civilian morale.”

“Since 10 October, Russia has attacked Ukraine with a campaign of strikes targeting electric power infrastructure. … The most recent intense strikes were on 31 October, which involved targeting hydroelectric dam facilities for the first time,” the report post on Twitter said. “The strikes have resulted in widespread damage to transmission stations and power plants. Scheduled and emergency blackouts have become routine in parts of Ukraine, with Kyiv notably impacted.”

Ukrainian forces have recaptured more than 40 towns in southern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday, as Russia announced it was pulling its troops from Kherson.

“The number of Ukrainian flags returning to their rightful place in the framework of the ongoing defense operation is already dozens, 41 settlements were liberated,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

Kherson, a strategic port city on the Dnipro River, was captured within days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

On Wednesday, Moscow announced that it had made the “difficult decision” to withdraw from the west bank of the Dnipro, which includes Kherson.

By Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its units were leaving the area, Reuters reported.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told Reuters that it would take a week for Russian troops to leave the city. He added that Moscow still has 40,000 troops in the region and its intelligence showed Russian forces remained in and around the city.

The rest of the Kherson region forms a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014, Agence France-Presse reported. Kherson also is one of the four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed in September, a move the United States and other countries have condemned as illegal.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced on Thursday the United States will provide air defense systems and surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine as part of a new $400 million security assistance package.

With “Russia’s unrelenting and brutal air attacks on Ukrainian civilian and critical infrastructure, additional air defense capabilities are critical,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists, according to The Associated Press.

The Pentagon said the package would include four short-range, highly mobile Avenger air defense systems — the first time they have been provided to Ukraine — as well as the Stinger missiles they fire.

Zelenskyy thanked U.S. President Joe Biden and the American people for the assistance, tweeting: “Together we’re building an air shield to protect (Ukrainian) civilians. We’re bringing victory over the aggressor closer!”

The package brings to more than $18.6 billion the total U.S. security assistance to Ukraine since Russian forces invaded in February.

Ukrainian forces are pushing toward Kherson.

Yaroslav Yanushevych, Ukraine’s appointed governor for the region, said on Telegram that Russian troops had “taken away public equipment, damaged power lines and wanted to leave a trap behind them,” Reuters reported.

Russia has denied deliberately targeting civilians.

However, since Moscow invaded Ukraine, the conflict has killed thousands of people, displaced millions and destroyed Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

In mid-October, the U.N. refugee agency said there were more than 7.6 million Ukrainian refugees across Europe, including 2.85 million in Russia. It said another 7 million people have been uprooted within Ukraine.

Since February, “aid workers have provided critical aid and protection services to some 13.5 million people across all regions of Ukraine,” Stephanie Tremblay, an associate U.N. spokesperson, told reporters Thursday in New York.

Late Wednesday, U.S. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated that about 200,000 soldiers – 100,000 each of Russian and Ukrainian troops – have been killed in the fighting so far, Reuters reported. He said about 40,000 civilians caught up in the fighting have also been killed.

On Friday, the United Nations said senior U.N. and Russian officials are to meet in Geneva for discussions to extend a deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to return to world markets and was supposed to eliminate obstacles for Russian exports of grain and fertilizer.

The agreement expires Nov. 19, and Ukraine and Western nations are pressing for it to be extended, AP reported. However, Russia’s government has said it is undecided, expressing dissatisfaction with how the deal has worked for its side.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Ukraine’s prosecutor general says the country is not considering negotiations with Russia to bring an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

In a BBC interview in Kyiv, Andriy Kostin said Moscow must be held responsible for its actions in Ukraine. 

Kostin, who wants to set up a special international tribunal, said he wants reparations that would be obtained through the seizure of Russian assets. 

He took exception to the notion that people around the world are suffering because of Ukraine.  “They don’t hear missiles. They don’t know what is bombing,” he said.  “They don’t know what is killing, rape, looting.”

While the prosecutor agreed that Europeans are paying more for food and fuel since the invasion, he said Ukrainians are “paying with their lives.”

Kostin said evidence of torture and indiscriminate killings is emerging “in practically every village and every town,” as well as evidence of sexual violence against women and children.
…

The U.S. Air Force chief of staff is warning that the U.S. military must “change” if it wants to stay ahead of China and Russia.

“Our adversaries have continued to advance their capabilities at the same time we’ve been using some of the same capabilities we’ve been using for the past 30 years,” Gen. C.Q. Brown Jr. told VOA in an exclusive interview this week.

“The threat we were up against is not the threat we’ll see in the future,” he said. “And that’s why we’ve got to, we’ve got to change.”

One Air Force change will be front and center next month, when the United States unveils its new B-21 stealth bomber on December 2. The B-21 is set to replace the Air Force’s B-1 and B-2 bombers, which have been around since the 1980s.

Due to classification concerns, Brown did not provide the availability rates for the Air Force’s aircraft, which give leaders a clearer picture of what aircraft would be at their disposal in the event of a crisis.

“One thing I will say is that this is why I’m going to modernize, because we have some aircraft that are, from a maintenance standpoint, are a little harder, more difficult to maintain [with] diminishing resources for parts,” Brown said. “And that’s the aspect of being able to modernize — so we increase the aircraft availability and ensure we have a ready force.”

Russia described as ‘acute threat’

The Biden administration released its national defense strategy this year that labels Russia, which started a war in February after invading its neighbor Ukraine, an “acute threat.”

China is the United States’ “pacing challenge” and greatest threat to national security, according to the unclassified document released last month.

China has more active duty military personnel than the United States and spent decades advancing its weapons. In the last few years, the Chinese military has built new aircraft carriers, new fighter jets and a massive missile arsenal.

Melanie Sisson, a defense analyst with the Brookings Institution, says it’s “fair” to acknowledge the progress of potential adversaries like China, “but that fact alone shouldn’t induce any panic in the United States.”

“We are still relatively very, very capable; the best military force in the world,” she told VOA.

‘I continue to see China sprinting’

China spent about $250 billion on its military in fiscal year 2022; the U.S. spent nearly eight times that amount.

Army veteran and defense analyst Bradley Bowman says overall military supremacy does not guarantee victory. He points out that China has “methodically and deliberately” chosen modernizations specifically designed to defeat the United States in East Asia, the most likely battlefield should war break out over Taiwan.

And that could make American ports and military bases in the region vulnerable to Chinese attacks.

“The Chinese have developed capabilities that are as good, in some cases better than ours,” Bowman told VOA. “America’s military edge in the Pacific has absolutely eroded, and I continue to see China sprinting, while it often seems like we in Washington are slumbering.”

U.S. officials say China wants the ability to invade and hold Taiwan by 2027, and China has said it aims to be a world-class military capable of “fighting and winning wars” by 2049. China views Taiwan as a wayward province.

Brown said he’s seen Russian and Chinese efforts to expand their influence outside of the European and Indo-Pacific theaters, as well, including in the Middle East and Africa.

“I was there when the Russians came into Syria, and they’re still there. You’ve also seen inroads of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) with their base in Djibouti,” said Brown, who was the commander of U.S. Air Force’s Central Command from 2015-2016.

Maintaining strong relationships vital

As the United States’ military has shifted resources out of the Middle East to focus on China and Russia, Brown told VOA maintaining a strong relationship with allies in the region and leveraging growing U.S. capabilities, such as space-based systems, will be key.

He plans to visit allies Jordan, Qatar and the UAE later this month to meet with partners and spend time with U.S. airmen.

Last month, Brown visited partners in Ecuador, Peru and Colombia, where he discussed each country’s military modernization efforts.

In Colombia, he highlighted the U.S. delivery of additional C-130 transport aircraft.

Even in the Western Hemisphere, China and Russia seek to gain influence in places ranging from Venezuela, which has no formal ties with the U.S., to major non-NATO ally Argentina, where Buenos Aires is currently looking to spend hundreds of millions for new fighter jets.

Argentinian officials told lawmakers they are considering China and Pakistan’s JF-17, the United States’ F-16s, India’s Tejas, and the Russian-made MiG-35.

A retired senior military official told VOA Argentina wants American-made fighter jets, but any deal could face problems should Britain seek to block it. Britain, which makes some components of the F-16, has effectively maintained an arms embargo on Argentina since the 1982 Falklands War.

The official expressed concern that the British embargo could prompt Argentina to go to China for its defense needs.

Asked about this concern, Brown told VOA the U.S. “was going to pay attention to it.”

“My real focus is to ensure that we remain interoperable to the best of our abilities with our partners and have them understand that the United States and the United States Air Force is committed to working very closely with him,” he said.
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China watchers are applauding the German embassy in Beijing for a subtle dig on social media that drew attention to China’s strict control over political messaging in the days before a high-profile visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

On Oct. 11, Patricia Flor, the first woman to lead Germany’s diplomatic mission in Beijing since the two nations established diplomatic relations in 1972, posted on her Twitter page: “Starting from today, we will look back on 50 events from those 50 years” on the embassy’s official Weibo channel.

In the ensuing days, the embassy posted vignettes on China’s Twitter-like platform about events like the establishment of Volkswagen’s first plant in Shanghai in 1983. To mark the year 1988, the embassy posted a note about the opening in Beijing of the Goethe Institute, which today hosts cultural activities in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

The next year, 1989, however, was profiled differently.

In a split-screen posting, the left-hand panel displayed a large crowd gathering at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin with a caption that read: “In East Germany … more and more people are staging protests for democracy and citizens’ rights, which led to the peaceful revolution of November 1989, and prompted the fall of the Berlin Wall that separated the two Germanys.”

The right-hand panel was completely blacked out, as was what appeared to be a six-line caption. But the point was obvious to anyone who has followed Chinese political affairs: That was the year of the student protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which was brutally crushed with likely thousands of young people killed.

Asked by VOA what message the embassy was trying to convey, a spokesperson declined to elaborate, saying only that “it’s all in the eyes of the beholder, people can find their own interpretation and try to make sense of it.”

But many Chinese Weibo readers clearly got the point. The post received nearly 4,000 ‘likes,’ compared to 200 to 300 for most other posts in the series.

Flor spoke of the subtleties of linguistic diplomacy in an interview last month with China.Table, an influential German digital media outlet dedicated to China watching.

“As a diplomat, you have to weigh carefully how to deal with the instrument of language — because that is our strongest weapon,” she was quoted as saying.

She vowed in the interview to increase the embassy’s presence on social media, to communicate frankly to Chinese audiences about German policies toward their country and maintained that aside from meeting government officials, her job entailed meeting with, and voicing concerns for, Chinese human rights defenders.

Janne Leino, who lived and worked in China from 2015-21 for a European think tank, described the posting as a “clever move” that enabled the embassy to evade China’s strict censorship of the Weibo platform while delivering a message about the very different handling of the 1989 protests in the two countries.

“Hat off to the guy in Beijing for that,” said Leino, who recalled some of the ways he saw Chinese netizens work to evade the censors, including the use of alternative names to address events and of language that would only be understood by people with a deep knowledge of events.

Leino, now an analyst at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, said in a phone interview from Brussels that most Europeans are unaware that Western social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are blocked or subjected to strict regulation in China, although some Chinese manage to access these platforms using VPN.

He lamented the advantage that gives to China’s diplomatic “wolf warriors” who are free to use Western social media platforms such as Twitter to “pretty much post anything they want and spread information or false information or disinformation.”

The German embassy’s noir post was also admired by China.Table, whose interview with the German ambassador was conducted just a few weeks earlier.

“For more than 30 years, the Chinese government has worked hard to banish the state-ordered bloodshed of June 1989 from the population’s collective memory. To this end, it strictly censors direct as well as indirect references to the tragedy and punishes any form of commemoration,” an article published on China.Table read.

“With the post, the embassy holds a mirror up to the Chinese government just days before the visit of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz,” the article noted. Scholz’s visit to Beijing with a group of businessmen on Nov. 4 was criticized for favoring business relations at the expense of human rights and democracy.
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