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From the SitRoom to the E-Ring, the inside scoop on defense, national security and foreign policy. | | | | |  | | By Alexander Ward | | 
A convoy of Russian armored vehicles moves along a highway in Crimea, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. | AP Photo/File | With help from Bryan Bender, Maggie Miller, Quint Forgey, Cristina Gallardo, David M. Herszenhorn and Daniel Lippman Programming Note: We’ll be off this Monday for Presidents Day but will be back in your inboxes on Tuesday. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Quint "As of this moment, I am convinced he has made the decision" to invade Ukraine. That's what President JOE BIDEN just said about his Russia counterpart VLADIMIR PUTIN , asserting that Russia aims to target the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in the coming days. Speaking at the White House, Biden said he was sure of Putin's intentions because of America's "significant intelligence capability," and noted the uptick in violence and provocations in recent days. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reported that as of 10 p.m. local time, Russia violated the cease-fire 61 times on the line of contact, alleging a spike in attacks as shells rang out along the Donbas. Leaders in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, known as the DNR and LNR, urged an immediate evacuation of potentially more than 3 million people to Russia over unproven claims that Ukrainian forces planned to attack, an accusation Kyiv firmly denies. Savvy journalists, however, found the metadata attached to the videos ordering civilians to urgently flee to the safety of Mother Russia were recorded two days ago . Russian state-run media also reported that a large explosion occurred in the center of separatist-controlled Donetsk, posting unverified photos of the scene. Residents in Donetsk are confused by the evacuation since they don’t see any reason to leave their homes, BuzzFeed’s CHRISTOPHER MILLER reported. “ What you see is staged,” he wrote. Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency tweeted : “These measures are aimed at destabilizing the situation in the temporarily occupied territories of our state and creating grounds for accusing Ukraine of terrorist acts.” The Defence Intelligence of the State Security Service of Ukraine “urges Donetsk residents not to leave their homes and not to use public transport.” Alongside these reported bombings, fake videos, and real shelling was a barrage of Western leaders shouting that these provocations could very well be the “false flag” operation that Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN would use as an invasion justtification. Experts concur. “This is the pretext we’ve been watching for,” said JEFFREY EDMONDS, who served as the Russia director on former President BARACK OBAMA’s National Security Council. A State Department spokesperson agreed, calling the events a “type of false flag operation.” And the foreign ministers of Germany and France released a joint statement indicating “We are concerned that staged incidents could be misused as a pretext for possible military escalation.” Top Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, insist Russia’s build-up isn’t for an imminent war but rather to apply pressure during diplomatic negotiations. “This is a traditional tactic of the Russian side,” Ukrainian Defense Minister OLEKSII REZNIKOV told his parliament today. “Every time before a meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group, Normandy format meetings, before any important international events related to the Russian-Ukrainian war, some kind of incidents are arranged to create a background that Russia considers beneficial,” he said. It remains possible the spike in attacks is just a flare-up of persistent violence in Ukraine’s east during these particularly tense times. To be fair, Russian troops haven’t rolled into Ukraine following past explosions in Donetsk. But standing alongside Belarusian President ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO today, Putin said “we are seeing an escalation in the Donbas” — the region where the Kremlin boss falsely accuses Ukraine of waging “genocide.” He did, however, once again deny Russia planned to invade. Lukashenko, who welcomed thousands of Russian troops into his country for the largest military exercise since the Cold War, was more forceful. “We are on the verge of a conflict that will involve the whole continent,” he said. “We see that the irresponsibility of a number of Western leaders has led to the situation and we see that this irresponsible or irrational behavior of our neighbors has led to this situation.” And in an interview with Russia 24, the DNR’s Moscow-backed chief was asked if the situation was headed to a full-scale war. “Unfortunately, yes,” DENIS PUSHILIN replied. Every expert NatSec Daily spoke to said it’s now fair to assume we’re in the first stage of the Russia-Ukraine war’s next phase, or at least that Putin has given his operatives and forces the green light. That means in the coming days we could see Russian “ jet fighters, tanks, ballistic missiles and cyberattacks” targeting Ukrainian positions, per The Wall Street Journal today. Which begs the question: If “stop a war” is no longer a viable goal, what should the U.S. do now? I asked experts this exact question during an Atlantic Council event I moderated this morning. The Council’s EMMA ASHFORD had two objectives in mind: 1) “stem the fallout” by handling the outflow of refugees from Ukraine and building up forces on NATO’s eastern flank; and 2) “acknowledging that there is a new reality on the ground” by “trying to think again about these bigger questions of Europe’s security architecture.” “We have to go back to some of those Cold War lessons about ways to mitigate the threat that can come from having so much military equipment and buildup in one place,” she continued, such as seeking to strike conventional arms control agreements. The RAND Corporation’s SAMUEL CHARAP agreed with Ashford, though he also suggested avoiding an “escalation spiral” with Russia while “minimizing human suffering” and “ensuring the credibility of [NATO’s] Article 5.” If what we all fear proceeds, the world could look a lot different on Tuesday, when you next read NatSec Daily. “This would be the big breakaway from the sour deal Russia thinks it got at the end of the Cold War,” said Edmonds, who’s now at the Center for a New American Security think tank. “This is their attempt to break the security architecture in Europe.”
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Subscribe now. | | | | | | | | RUSSIA PLANS POST-INVASION ARREST AND KILLING CAMPAIGN: Bone-chilling from Foreign Policy’s AMY MACKINNON, ROBBIE GRAMER and JACK DETSCH: “The United States has obtained intelligence that Russia may target prominent political opponents, anti-corruption activists, and Belarusian and Russian dissidents living in exile should it move forward with plans to invade Ukraine.” Per four people familiar with the intelligence, “Russia has drafted lists of Ukrainian political figures and other prominent individuals to be targeted for either arrest or assassination in the event of a Russian assault on Ukraine,” they wrote. The U.S. has shared the intelligence with other countries about the threat to certain groups, such as Russian and Belarusian dissidents in exile or LGBTQI+ people. “The Biden administration has also been startled by how formalized the lists are, which appear to target anyone who could challenge the Russian agenda,” per the three reporters. At the U.N. Security Council Thursday, Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN said “conventional attacks are not all that Russia plans to inflict upon the people of Ukraine. We have information that indicates Russia will target specific groups of Ukrainians. We’ve been warning the Ukrainian Government of all that is coming.” ‘THE KITCHEN SINK’: As if the news wasn’t bad enough that Russian troop concentrations have increased along the border with Ukraine, Moscow on Friday announced the start of a nuclear exercise — replete with missile launches and other tests of its nuclear command and control system. Officials said Putin will personally oversee the drills, which also involve ships and submarinescapable of delivering atomic weapons in the Black Sea, a growing flashpointin the Ukraine crisis. “This is not unexpected,” former Amb. MARSHALL BILLINGSLEA, who spearheaded arms control negotiations with the Russians in the DONALD TRUMP and GEORGE W. BUSH administrations, told our own BRYAN BENDER. “This has been in the works for a while.” “But these things are not by happenstance,” added Billingslea, who said he believes Putin has already decided to occupy Ukraine. “It’s signaling. The Russian negotiating style is to bull rush you. Any sign of weakness they just go for the jugular. This is the kitchen sink they are throwing in, ahead of an invasion.” Others expressed alarm that the timing of the war games — an annual event that usually takes place in the fall — increases the risk of a blunder with catastrophic consequences. DARYL KIMBALL, executive director of the Arms Control Association, called the move a “gratuitous threat of the potential for the use of the nuclear weapons that increases the potential for accident or miscalculation in the midst of the current crisis.” “Running this exercise now, even if the required pre-notifications for test launches are given, will only increase tensions and the chances of misinterpretation,” said STEPHEN SCHWARTZ, a senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “Of course, Russia,” he added, “will probably respond that [U.S. Strategic Command] carried out one of its own annual nuclear war exercises less than a month ago.” Navy Capt. RON FLANDERS, the chief spokesperson for STRATCOM, said the nuclear command "will be monitoring the Russian strategic forces exercise." JCPOA RETURN ‘WITHIN DAYS’?: A senior State Department official told the AFP that if Tehran shows “seriousness,” the U.S., Iran and world powers “ should reach an understanding on mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA within days.” The administration insists “substantial progress” has been made on securing America’s reentry to the accord it left in 2018. On Thursday, Reuters exclusively reported on a draft agreement which laid out mutual steps to bring both the U.S. and Iran back into compliance with the terms of the deal. “The draft text of the agreement, which is more than 20 pages long, stipulates a sequence of steps to be implemented once it has been approved by the remaining parties to the deal, starting with a phase including Iran suspending enrichment above 5% purity,” FRANCOIS MURPHY, PARISA HAFEZI and JOHN IRISH wrote. “The text also alludes to other measures that diplomats say include unfreezing about $7 billion in Iranian funds stuck in South Korean banks under U.S. sanctions, as well as the release of Western prisoners held in Iran, which U.S. lead negotiator ROBERT MALLEY has suggested is a requirement for a deal.” “Only once that initial wave of measures has been taken and confirmed would the main phase of sanctions-lifting begin, culminating in what many diplomats call Re-Implementation Day — a nod to the original deal's Implementation Day, when the last nuclear and sanctions-related measures fell into place,” per Reuters. European nuclear negotiators will keep talks going at the Munich Security Conference. DRINKS WITH NATSEC DAILY: At the end of every long, hard week, we like to highlight how a prominent member of Washington’s national security scene prefers to unwind with a drink. Today, we’re featuring Sen. TODD YOUNG (R-Ind.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. When the former Marine intelligence officer isn’t seeking ways to repeal AUMFs, you can find Young at the Taxman Brewing Co. in Bargersville, Indiana, sipping on “the Gold Standard.” We looked into it: That beer is an abbey blonde that, per Taxman, “airs dynamic Belgian esters, subtle malt flavors and delicate grassy hops to craft this clean and crisp Belgian-style single.” Cheers, senator!
| | A message from Lockheed Martin: LMXT: America’s next strategic tanker.
Lockheed Martin’s LMXT is built in America by Americans for Americans. The LMXT leverages 60 years of experience producing tanker aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, and multiple operators around the world. Learn more. | | | IT’S FRIDAY. WELCOME TO THE LONG WEEKEND: Thanks for tuning in to NatSec Daily. This space is reserved for the top U.S. and foreign officials, the lawmakers, the lobbyists, the experts and the people like you who care about how the natsec sausage gets made. Aim your tips and comments at award@politico.com and qforgey@politico.com, and follow us on Twitter at @alexbward and @QuintForgey. While you’re at it, follow the rest of POLITICO’s national security team: @nahaltoosi, @woodruffbets, @politicoryan, @PhelimKine, @BryanDBender, @laraseligman, @connorobrienNH, @paulmccleary, @leehudson and @AndrewDesiderio.
| | | MALI WANTS FRENCH FORCES OUT: Mali’s ruling junta demanded that French troops depart the country “without delay,” even as French President EMMANUEL MACRON promised Friday that his forces will leave “in an orderly fashion.” France’s decadelong counterterrorism operation in Mali is coming to an unceremonious end after the junta, which came to power in a May coup, hired Russia’s Wagner Group to fend off the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. That prompted Macron to announce last week that France’s roughly 3,000 troops would return home. Meanwhile, Nigerien President MOHAMED BAZOUM announced today he’s accepted that French and European special forces will enter his country to fight jihadists. "Our goal is for our border with Mali to be secure," Bazoum said. "This area will be even more infested and the terrorist groups will strengthen. We know that they are destined to extend their influence."
| | | RUSSIA BEHIND DDOS ATTACK ON UKRAINE, U.S. SAYS: A top Biden administration official on Friday blamed the Russian government for cyberattacks against Ukrainian government websites and banking systems earlier this week, our own MAGGIE MILLER reported. The Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attacks temporarily took down the website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and froze customers out of online access to two Ukrainian banks. Ukrainian officials said Wednesday that the incident was the worst DDoS cyberattack in the nation’s history. “We believe that the Russian government is responsible for wide-scale cyberattacks on Ukrainian banks this week,” ANNE NEUBERGER, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, told reporters at the White House on Friday. “We have technical information that links the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, as known GRU infrastructure was seen transmitting high volumes of communication to Ukraine-based IP addresses and domains.” Speedy attribution: Neuberger said that the intelligence had been shared with Ukraine and other European nations, and emphasized that the attribution was being made to disrupt and call out Russian malicious cyber efforts against Ukraine. “Russia likes to move in the shadows, and counts on a long process of attribution so it can continue its malicious behavior against Ukraine in cyberspace, including prepositioning for its potential invasion,” Neuberger said. “In light of that, we are moving quickly to attribute the DDoS attacks.” The U.K. also attributed the attack to Russia. BANKS PREP FOR CYBERATTACKS: U.S. officials met Thursday with executives from large American banks to discuss potential responses to Russian cyberattacks, CNN’s SEAN LYNGAAS and PHIL MATTINGLY reported. “Officials from the White House, Treasury Department, FBI and US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) attended the cybersecurity meeting Thursday, the people familiar with the meeting said. Executives from JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, which is the only US bank currently operating in Ukraine, were invited,” they wrote. "We have good insight into Russian capabilities, or those of aligned actors, based on past actions, so we've approached this [process] with those in mind," one U.S. official told CNN. The administration has long considered destructive cyberattacks a real possibility in tabletop exercises over the last few months, CNN reported and NatSec Daily can confirm. "We have created a process for agencies to quickly assess the impact of cyber [and] physical incidents and to inform the White House of the same," an unnamed official told Lyngaas and Mattingly.
| | | |   | | | | | | $6B TANK DEAL FOR POLAND: The U.S. authorized the sale of 250 Abrams tanks to Poland, our own PAUL McLEARY reported, right as U.S. troops and equipment arrived in the NATO country to assure the ally and deter further aggression by Russia. Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN announced the deal in Warsaw alongside his Polish counterpart MARIUSZ BLASZCZAK. “What Mr. Putin did not want was a stronger NATO on his flank, and that’s exactly what he has today,” Austin said. The eventual delivery “will also strengthen our interoperability with the Polish armed forces, boosting the credibility of our combined deterrence efforts and those of our other NATO Allies.” The package is another piece in Poland’s sweeping military modernization effort, coming on top of a $6.5 billion deal Poland forged in 2019 to buy 32 F-35 fighter planes, and other agreements to buy mobile rocket artillery systems from the United States. ‘WE NEED MORE’: Our friends at Morning Defense (for Pros!) reported on how Pacific Fleet commander Adm. SAM PAPARO on Thursday called for more long-range strike assets, littoral combat ships and hypersonic weapons. The Navy “must have an immediate, targetable picture of the space that we're operating in, and the ability to bring to bear lethal, accurate, long-range fires and effects against those elements” he told the AFCEA West conference in San Diego. Paparo said he needs more “long range fires — specifically, maritime strike Tomahawk [missiles], hypersonics, conventional prompt strike.… We need them, we need more of them and we need them faster.” The Littoral Combat Ship, the platform that’s been in search of a job for over a decade, can be very useful in the Pacific to carry out the Marine Corps’ concept of fighting light and fast among island chains. “It's going to be in that PT boat-type role that we saw in the Second World War,” the admiral said, “moving Marines from point-to-point shooting, moving, communicating when paired with the Marine littoral regiments.”
| | | KHANNA CALLS FROM MSC: Rep. RO KHANNA (D-Calif.), a House Armed Services Committee member joining the congressional delegation at the Munich Security Conference, called NatSec Daily to provide an update on what’s happening at the annual transatlantic conference. Lawmakers met with Blinken and expressed bipartisan support for standing firm against Russian aggression. The secretary of State said the U.S. is “trying to exhaust every diplomatic option,” per Khanna, while noting the situation remains “concerning.” Khanna and others also met with VITALI KLITSCHKO, Kyiv’s mayor, who asserted he has a civilian defense corps at his disposal to protect the Ukrainian capital against Russian forces. “He’s willing to stand up for Ukraine’s freedom,” Khanna said. Khanna will continue to meet with European officials while in Germany, including foreign ministers of allied countries. But after meeting with some already, the lawmaker told NatSec Daily the West is aligned on how to punish Putin should the invasion escalate. “We’d be left with no options but to be firm and put swift and stark sanctions on them, including on the oligarchs, suspend [Nord Stream 2], and tough financial sanctions,” he said. “I’m always hopeful that there can be a breakthrough” on the diplomatic front, Khanna continued, “but I think that the window is a small one.”
| | | HFAC GOP CALLS BIDEN’S AFGHAN REPORT DISMISSAL ‘APPALLING’: In a letter to Biden, Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote that the president and White House press secretary JEN PSAKI’s recent dismissals of criticisms of the Afghanistan evacuation operation is “appalling.” “These soldiers, sailors, and Marines did everything humanly possible to carry out their mission despite the impossible situation your administration’s miscalculations and strategic blunders placed them in. We therefore find your efforts to denigrate and downplay their sworn statements regarding the lack of urgency and adequate planning they witnessed firsthand particularly shameful,” reads the letter signed by HFAC Chair MICHAEL McCAUL (R-Texas) and 18 other lawmakers. “These interviews make it abundantly clear that, despite your attempts to deny it, your administration failed to take the necessary steps to effectively prepare for the withdrawal or to realistically respond to the Taliban’s lightning-fast advance across Afghanistan,” they continued. “Your upcoming State of the Union provides an opportunity to talk directly to Congress and the American people; you should seize it. Biden told NBC News’ LESTER HOLT last week that he was “rejecting” what top U.S. military officials, including the head of the operation, told Army investigators in an after-action report. Republicans will continue to target Biden over the handling of Afghanistan, since they see it as a political liability for Democrats heading into the 2022 midterms.
| | A message from Lockheed Martin: LMXT: America’s next strategic tanker.
Improved range and fuel offload, INDOPACOM base flexibility, automatic air-to-air refueling, and enhanced defensive systems come together in our next strategic tanker. Learn more. | | | | | | — MACKENZIE MORALES is now a content manager at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Previously she was the communications director for Rep. MICHAEL TURNER (R-Ohio), the newly minted top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. — NATALIYA BUGAYOVA is now the director of strategic insights at Vertical Knowledge, a global collections platform for publicly available information. She most recently led the Russia research program at the Institute for the Study of War, where she remains a non-resident national security fellow focused on Russia.
| | | — ANTON TROIANOVSKI, The New York Times: “Vladimir Putin: Crafty Strategist or Aggrieved and Reckless Leader?” — JOSH ROGIN, The Washington Post: “To prevent war, the West must send Putin a clear message” — KATHERINE BLUNT, Wall Street Journal: “ America’s Power Grid is Increasingly Unreliable”
| | | — The Arms Control Association, 10 a.m.: “Ten Years of Chemical Weapons Use in Syria: A Look Back and a Look Ahead — with FERNANDO ARIAS, IZUMI NAKAMITZU, AHMET UZUMCU and JOBY WARRICK” — The Middle East Institute, 10 a.m.: “MEI Defense Leadership Series — with SAEID A. ALZAHRANI and BILAL Y. SAAB” — The McCain Institute, 11 a.m.: “ Conversations With Sec. MARK ESPER: Taiwanese Foreign Minister JOSEPH WU” — The Stimson Center, 12:30 p.m.: “ Acts of War: Accountability for Cyberattacks in Ukraine — with JUAN ANDRES GUERRERO-SAADE, MICHAEL TEODORI and LIIS VIHUL” — The Brookings Institution and The Wounded Warrior Project, 1 p.m.: “ Veterans’ Needs in 2022 — with TRACY FARRELL, MELANIE MOUSSEAU, MICHAEL O'HANLON and JEN SILVA”
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | Have a natsec-centric event coming up? Transitioning to a new defense-adjacent or foreign policy-focused gig? Shoot us an email at award@politico.com or qforgey@politico.com to be featured in the next edition of the newsletter. And thanks to our editor, Ben Pauker, who claims the metadata of this newsletter proves we wrote it two days ago. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
