Why is Martin Brest confident that society now has no demand for victory,

who should tell Ukrainians the truth now, why the government is now “in splits”,

will total mobilization be effective, how the government has pitted civilians and military against each other.

Turn on subtitles and select English translation.

Using electromagnetic waves to flummox and follow smarter weapons has become a critical part of the cat-and-mouse game between Ukraine and Russia. The United States, China and others have taken note.

Full text:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/19/technology/russia-ukraine-electronic-warfare-drone-signals.html

The era of total US submarine dominance over China is ending - WSJ

For decades, the United States did not have to worry much about Chinese submarines. However, China is now closing the gap as it makes strides in its underwater technology and underwater detection capabilities. According to The Wall Street Journal, this has serious implications for American military planning regarding a potential conflict over Taiwan.

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/us-submarine-dominance-shift-china-8db10a0d?mod=hp_lead_pos8

As the publication notes, previously Chinese submarines were noisy and easy to track. At the same time, the Chinese military was struggling to detect America's ultra-quiet submarines. Recently, however, China has been working hard on noise reduction technologies for its submarines, as well as expanding production.

Of course, the next generation of Chinese nuclear submarines is still several years away, and significant progress in the program is not guaranteed. Submarines often go through several stages of prototyping over many years before final designs are achieved.

It is also unlikely that China will catch up with the United States in submarine technology any time soon. America's newest Virginia-class attack submarines and planned Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines are a generation ahead of China's capabilities in noise reduction technology, propulsion, weapons systems and other areas, defense analysts say.

But China doesn't necessarily need to match U.S. capabilities. By creating submarines that are much harder to detect and producing them at scale, the company can expand the resources the U.S. military uses to track them. And any war would likely be fought on China's backyard. , in the area he knows best,” writes the WSJ.

China's recent successes have also highlighted the submarine fleet shortage facing the United States. The US has 67 nuclear submarines, but only 49 of them are attack submarines, the result of a decline in their construction since the end of the Cold War.

Its attack submarine fleet is projected to decline to 46 boats by 2030 as older submarines are retired, before recovering to 50 in 2036 if the annual pace of construction is achieved. In the most optimistic scenario, the Navy in 2049 will have 66 attack submarines.

China currently has six nuclear submarines, and experts say that once China gets its head around new designs, it could triple current US annual production. The Pentagon projects that China will have a total of 80 attack and ballistic missile submarines by 2035, up from 60 at the end of last year.

China's development of more advanced submarines increases the likelihood of a military confrontation with the United States this decade, experts say.

The total combat losses of the enemy from 24.02.22 to 20.11.23 were approximately:

“Today’s Europe is strong because of Ukraine - as it may be with an outpost,” - Oksana Zabuzhko, specially for DW.

- Where are you from? - a Turkish taxi driver asks me in quiet university Paderborn.
- From Ukraine.
- And where are you going now?
- Back, home.
- To Ukraine? - he asks.
- Yes, to Ukraine.
- Why? - he wonders.
- Because I live there.
- But there is a war! - he explains to me like a small child: don't go to the forest, there is a wolf there.
- And what? (Well, what?)
- Do you like war?...

Cholera, what an interesting twist of thought. All the same, all of us - both Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians - do not realize the extent to which our image of a "warring country" has been shaped by the television of recent decades (as Stephen Fry, who blurted out in Kyiv on the press: oh, what a city you have , and I thought everything was destroyed here!) - Sarajevo, Grozny, Aleppo... In Frankfurt, during the fair, I had to explain to my Balkan colleagues that the banking system works perfectly in Ukraine - in contrast to the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, where the whole life collapsed after all, thirty years of freedom have armed our country with a level of civilizational resistance that neither Afghanistan nor Syria could boast of: this is a different, "European" war. And the fact that in it the Russians are killing us in the same way as they practiced on the Afghans and Syrians, and that our fighters have to dig in on the front line just as they did a hundred years ago, and the border towns and villages (which are "easy to get to") the enemy really wipes us off the face of the earth, does not at all contradict the fact that in general the fabric national life, although badly damaged (and in some places burned to the point of holes!), remains intact. Premieres take place in theaters (with the risk of spending half the evening in a bomb shelter, but will it pass?...), in hospitals "medical tourists" from the EU are accepted for treatment (where you have to wait three months for the examination itself, and in our country at that time you can already complete a course of radiotherapy!), and restaurants serve oysters (which surprised the foreign guests of the Lviv Forum no less than the Westphalian taxi driver - my intention is to go home: how come, the war - and oysters?... but where are the grocery ones? cards, empty shelves, acorn coffee, oil from the black market, everything that is usually associated in the Western imagination with war, old people remember, Hemingway and Annie Ernot described, Hollywood filmed?..).

And Russia's plan to "bomb" our infrastructure in the stone age, leaving us in winter in hunger and cold, without heat and light (a traditional Russian horror story that in the modern age has been indelibly conjured in their minds with the image of their main military victories, the frozen French and Germans near Moscow and Stalingrad...), also did not foresee at the place of the attack a highly developed country in which a damaged power grid can be repaired in half a day, and a train in the wake of a missile strike on the track will be delayed by an hour at most (in the same Germany, this regularly happens with trains and without missile strikes, and even the British have already noticed, at my speeches there, from time to time someone in the audience is there to share a discovery - "do you know that your Ukrainian railway works better than ours?..."). I suspect that this is probably the main reason why all those Western experts who gave us "72 hours" at the beginning of the Russian invasion were so epically confused: they also imagined Ukraine to be something like Syria or Bosnia.

All of us have a "colonial war" in the basic firmware - this is when the stronger attacks the weaker, including the more technologically advanced - the more backward (USA - Vietnam, USSR - Afghanistan, Russia - Georgia...). Instead, precedents for what a modern war might look like in a European country repelling a barbarian invasion simply did not exist in the cultural arsenal of humanity until now - only Israel can give some rough analogy here (I assume that this is primarily the reason for the current hot surge of Ukrainian solidarity with it , because in everything else our wars are still very different and parallel poorly). Unfortunately, our war with Russia is still not seen in the West in such categories - civilization versus barbarism: until February 24, 2022, we were considered "barbarians" in this combination. So my taxi driver's question is more than logical: since I'm going there, to "my Aleppo", it means that I must love the war itself, because what else is there to love?

And a whole army of European intellectuals thinks roughly the same way. From the mayor of a Swiss town, who insulted for three hours at a meeting with Ukrainian refugees, why some of them arrived in such expensive cars (although it seems clear that the bombs fall on everyone indiscriminately, without distinguishing the brand of cars, but the glue between "running away from the war " and "running away from the poor" in the European consciousness is still not broken, by default "war=poor", because the rich - read, "us" - are not attacked!) - and up to, with all due respect, my beloved Agnieszka Holland, who in her latest film, "The Green Border", accused Polish society of racism and xenophobia for being completely indifferent to the tragedy of "colored" refugees on the Belarusian border, but massively rushing to the aid of the flow of "white" refugees from of Ukraine (this is not the place to analyze this film, the director had other artistic and non-artistic tasks there, refugees were interesting to her exclusively as ideological stereotypes that must be fought, but it is all the more telling that Holland did not even notice how in her polemical zeal she contributed to the same European, in essence also colonial, stereotyping of the refugee as a collective object of care of social services without much insight into who these people are and what, in fact, they are fleeing from: in her film, all the cataclysms from which they are fleeing are the same - they are about "is united by the fact that they are happening with others, not "with us", and in this perspective, the Ukrainian war is the same as the Syrian war, only "white").

That Ukraine is not only "not Russia", but also "not Syria" - such a book (only a serious, research one!) should also be written someday: from the point of view of military affairs, it turned out to be a colossal difference - trying to destroy Ukraine/Israel, on the one hand, or Syria/Afghanistan, on the other. It suddenly turned out that war is won not only by the amount of deadly iron (who would have thought!), and not only by moral (ideally, bordering on religious) fervor - but also by the degree of freedom, which includes the level of education and even political culture countries - civil society, free initiative, communications (and so on up to the fiber optic Internet and Novaya Poshta inclusively, because every market is preceded by readiness for it, i.e. what is in people's heads!) - things that at one time was not written by Clausewitz and which none of the experts would have predicted and in any good will, because how do you predict a schoolboy who invents how to "see" mines buried deep in the ground from a drone?.. For such a schoolboy (and for all the successes of the Ukrainian army!) stands, the underwater part of the iceberg, something that cannot be asked for and cannot be bought for any money - a civilizational advantage over the enemy, or a certain level of culture historically acquired by the nation, in the broadest sense of the word, which makes it possible to qualify this nation as European. Today's Europe is strong with Ukraine - as it should be with an outpost.

And by the time we ourselves manage to understand this about ourselves and speak for others, the generation for which 20 months of war is already, to be considered, a sixth part of a conscious life, intuitively catches it out of thin air. After one of my German speeches, I sign a book for a 19-year-old student from Australia, who manages to brag to me that he knows the Ukrainian national anthem: he learned it here in Munich, at anti-war rallies. Because for a teenager who comes across half a planet to study in Europe, this is her, Europe's face today, and "Glory to Ukraine!" - universal password of European understanding.

And so it is, by and large, even if the vast majority of us are not yet aware of it.

It's time to realize it.

Raisins. Night.
The silence is so unusual that it even rings in the ears. Usually in private sectors you can hear dogs barking, roosters crowing, various birds, but here the silence is like in a cemetery.
The house I'm staying in survived the occupation. Rather, the residents of the building experienced all the horrors of the occupation. Why didn't they leave on time, because at that time there were already 12 people living there, whose houses were bombed by aviation. And no one really knew where to leave, because the front was moving from different directions.
The occupiers were led through the forest by a local forester, otherwise they would have spent a long time looking for an opportunity to cross the river.
Buryats, Chechens, and Roshvardya came. They looted wickedly. Trucks took away everything they could lift from the ground. Anything that was too heavy, such as a woodworking machine or an expensive car that could not be started, was pulled by cables to the helicopter.
Helicopters made ten flights a day. Bohdan had a Honda Gold Wind motorcycle taken away, which they also couldn't start, and to this day it is sold somewhere near Kaluga on the Avito website, with the inscription "don't ask stupid questions."
In general, a lot of looted goods in Ukraine are sold throughout Moscow. On the edge of Izyum, there were trucks loaded with all the loot, and the caravans moved unhindered towards Moscow.
The occupiers behaved like a horde. They swelled up and shot for fun at the windows of houses, where they saw that a candle was burning in the window. There was no water, gas, or electricity. Those who had a wood-fired boiler in their house survived. 20-30 people lived in such houses.
Collaborators turned in everyone in a row - pro-Ukrainian, wealthy, those whom they simply disliked. All those killed were taken to the forest and buried in a common grave.
Raisin, Mariupol, Bucha... common handwriting of occupation.
Today, Ryzyum is slowly coming to his senses after six months of occupation. There is light, the gas was turned on the other day. But the front is nearby, and it can be heard under certain weather conditions.
Let's have breakfast. The hosts are pleasant and intelligent people. It can be seen that before the war they were cheerful, cheerful, and energetic. Now something appeared in their eyes, which Milan Kundera called "the unbearable lightness of being."
They hugged each other in a special way. This is how they hug before something unknown.
Izyum night silence continues to ring in the memory.

(c) Reb Yesod
...
Fewer Americans believe in the institution of marriage and the traditional family, and many do not consider having children a necessary element of a happy life, according to a new Pew Research Center study on the future of the family. For most, the most important thing in life is to have a good job and friends.
Over 5,000 adult US citizens took part in the survey. It is quite large and includes a number of sections: from attitudes towards different types of families to opinions on the future of traditional relationships. We can talk about each question separately; I was most interested in what people think plays the biggest role in life.
For more than two-thirds of respondents (71%) this is a job from which they enjoy or have a successful career. For a slightly smaller percentage (61%), having close friends is no less important. Only a quarter of people (26%) define their lives solely through material interest: how much money you need to be happy. For about the same number of respondents, it is important to have children or get married (24-23%).
At the same time, 40% of reviewers are pessimistic about the future of the nuclear family, about a third have no opinion on this matter, and only 26% remain optimistic. Such trends are characteristic not only of the “decaying West,” but also of any other country moving along the modern path of development.
Unfortunately, there is no ideal society, and even increased wealth and education have side effects. Let's not forget that the current almost complete freedom to search for a permanent partner is a very recent phenomenon. Just two or three generations ago, the vast majority of people entered into arranged marriages in one form or another, and the concept of romantic (usually unhappy) love existed only in novels.
As we see, this can lead to a transformation of human relationships. Someone will follow the path of polyamory - building relationships with several people at once. This, by the way, is a bond and a return to tradition: primitive people lived polyamorously in large, friendly families.
Another part of the population, I suspect, will return to a more strict - probably religious - attitude towards marriage. We saw the example of Poland, which almost completely banned abortion. I wouldn’t be surprised if sooner or later some country with a conservative majority bans divorce (with rare exceptions).
Whether this is good or bad - decide for yourself. I believe that only the idea of friendship will not change. With rare exceptions, only relatives and friends will selflessly support you in difficult times. This prevents us from losing faith in humanity, no matter how our ideas about family, relationships and love change.

DESTROYED 29 IMPACT UAVS
On the night of November 18, 2023, the Russian invaders attacked Ukraine from the northern and southeastern directions (Kursk region, Primorsko-Akhtarsk) with "Shahed" type UAVs.
A total of 38 "Shahed-136/131" attack drones were launched.
"Shakhed" attacked in several waves, in groups, in different regions of Ukraine, in the areas of responsibility of all air commands of the Air Force.
  Aviation, anti-aircraft missile troops, mobile fire groups of the Air Force and the Defense Forces of Ukraine were involved in repelling the air attack.
As a result of anti-aircraft combat, 29 attack UAVs "Shahed-136/131" were destroyed.

The total combat losses of the enemy from 24.02.22 to 18.11.23 were approximately:

9 enemy "martyrs" destroyed
On the night of November 17, 2023, the enemy attacked with ten attack UAVs of the "Shahed" type from the direction of Primorsko-Akhtarsk (Russian Federation).
Fighters, anti-aircraft missile units and mobile fire groups are involved in repelling an air attack.
As a result of combat work, nine enemy attack UAVs were destroyed within Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi regions.
In addition, the enemy used several S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles in the Donetsk direction. No losses beforehand.

The total combat losses of the enemy from 24.02.22 to 17.11.23 were approximately:

The total combat losses of the enemy from 24.02.22 to 16.11.23 were approximately:

The total combat losses of the enemy from 24.02.22 to 15.11.23 were approximately:

A planet for two. Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will determine what the world will be like in 2024

For the first time in six years, Xi Jinping personally flew to the United States. His meeting with US President Joe Biden was called fateful for the fate of the world long before its date was determined. Both politicians talk about the need for a new world order and settlement of differences. The focus was on what to expect from the meeting of the American and Chinese leaders and what consequences it will have for the war in Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold talks in San Francisco today. The event will take place within the framework of the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which is being held in the USA this year. The level of these talks and the expectations for them are underlined by the fact that Xi will visit the United States for the first time since 2017. It will also be only his second meeting with Biden since his election as president. The politicians met for the first time on the sidelines of the G20 summit on the island of Bali in November 2022.

"In 2022, there was an attempt to outline the minimum framework for relations between the two countries for the next year. But then nothing came of it, a whole complex of events, including the incident with the Chinese hot air balloon in the USA and Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, had an impact," the president of the public of the organization "Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine", East Asian specialist Artur Kharitonov.

Shortly before the meeting between Xi and Biden, the press service of the White House said that the issue of bilateral relations between the United States and China, the importance of maintaining open channels of communication, and a number of regional and global issues will be discussed. Subsequently, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan specified that Biden would insist on the restoration of communication channels between the two countries' militaries.

According to Kharitonov, China severed military ties with the United States, although formally they never existed. For understanding, such military ties have existed between Washington and Moscow since 1962, during the Caribbean crisis.

"That is, the head of the Pentagon can contact the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation at any time if there is a threat of direct military confrontation. This has never happened with China," the expert explains.

Chinese diplomacy, traditionally for itself, did not issue any statements regarding future negotiations.

The total combat losses of the enemy from 24.02.22 to 14.11.23 were approximately:

China and Russia are helping North Korea build up its military potential, - Pentagon

China and the Russian Federation are helping North Korea build up its military capabilities and circumvent UN sanctions.

“We are deeply concerned that China and Russia are helping the DPRK expand its capabilities and allowing it to evade UN Security Council sanctions,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, as quoted by Reuters.

According to him, the United States and other United Nations countries are concerned about the recent increase in military cooperation between Russia and the DPRK, as well as North Korea's transfer of weapons to the Russian Federation, which are used in the war against Ukraine.

The Japanese Ambassador revealed why China is “uncomfortable” because of the war in Ukraine

Prolonging a full-scale war in Ukraine is not in China’s interests and weakens its economy. At the same time, Beijing, as a territorial neighbor of the Russian Federation and one of the UN Security Council countries, is not taking serious measures to stop Putin.

This was stated by the Ambassador of Japan to Ukraine Matsuda Kuninori in an interview with RBC-Ukraine. According to him, a “long” war poses difficult conditions for China and does not allow it to focus on economic development.

     "China, like many countries, benefits from a stable international environment in which China can primarily focus on economic development and prosperity," he said.

According to the diplomat, during communication with some Chinese leaders, he developed an understanding that Beijing wants the war to end quickly

Last year, the Chinese authorities presented their “peace” plan for Ukraine, but did not take into account the main thing: Russia must withdraw its troops and leave territorial rights to Crimea to Ukraine. The importance of these points was once emphasized by the leader of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky.

Japan agrees with this point of view, emphasized Matsuda Kuninori. He blamed China for its inaction. In his opinion, Beijing is not taking enough measures against Putin: “It could take more responsible measures in this war.”

It's hard on the battlefield, Ukraine needs more help from NATO - Stoltenberg

The NATO Secretary General said that Ukraine needs to retain its status as an independent state in Europe.

Ukraine needs more help from NATO and other allies as the situation on the battlefield is dire.

Kyiv must retain its status as a sovereign state in Europe, therefore it is in the interests of the Alliance to support Ukraine properly, noted NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg today in Brussels.

He made a corresponding statement before participating in a business breakfast organized within the framework of the Council of Ministers of the EU on External Relations on Defense Issues.

     "I expect that during the meeting we will review the situation in Ukraine, where intense fighting continues. The situation on the battlefield is dire, and this makes it even more important that we continue and increase our support for Ukraine," he said.

He emphasized that the world cannot allow Putin to win. “Ukraine must remain as a sovereign independent state in Europe, and it is in our interests to support Ukraine,” Stoltenberg emphasized.

White House: Lack of funding has already undermined Ukraine's combat capability at the front

The US Congress must quickly approve the White House's request for assistance to Ukraine to prevent serious consequences for its defense.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said this at a briefing.

A Biden adviser said the lack of U.S. funding has already impacted Ukraine's ability to defend itself against a full-scale Russian invasion. While Washington is still able to provide the military assistance Kyiv is asking for, full funding will ensure the consistency and effectiveness of that support.

     “The window (of opportunity) is closing for us... This is already impacting our ability to provide what Ukraine needs, and over time this impact will only increase,” Sullivan said.