This weekend, Russian drones and scouts surveilling the front line just west of the ruins of Avdiivka, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, observed something strange. Ukrainian trenches just east of the village of Ocheretyne, previously manned by soldiers from the Ukrainian army’s elite 47th Mechanized Brigade, were empty.

The village was undefended

Seizing the opportunity, the Russian army’s 30th Motor Rifle Brigade raced several miles along the railroad threading west from Avdiivka and captured most of Ocheretyne—and potentially also Novobakhmutivka, the village south of Ocheretyne.

It’s the fastest penetration into Ukrainian territory by Russian forces in months—and it threatens to collapse Ukraine’s defensive line west of Avdiivka. A line that has held for months, but now has a deep and widening gap in it. “Pandora’s box is open,” Ukrainian analysis group Deep State commented.

To get a sense of how frightened Ukrainian commanders are right now, consider the brigade they rushed into the breach north and west of Ocheretyne: the 100th Mechanized Brigade. The brigade is one of the newest and most lightly-equipped brigades in the Ukrainian army—and seemingly unsuited for the kind of front-line triage commanders are asking of it.

The collapse in Ocheretyne reportedly isn’t the 47th Mechanized Brigade’s fault. That brigade—the main operator of Ukraine’s American-made armored vehicles—was following orders to withdraw from Ocheretyne in order to redeploy to the rear for a much-needed period of rest after spending nearly a year in combat.

The 115th Mechanized Brigade was supposed to take the 47th Mechanized Brigade’s place in Ocheretyne, seamlessly filling the same fighting positions with enough troops to maintain the integrity of the defensive line west of Avdiivka.

But something went wrong. According to Mykola Melnyk, the famed 47th Mechanized Brigade company commander who lost a leg during Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year, “certain units just fucked off.”

The 115th Mechanized Brigade’s failure to hold the line practically invited the Russian 30th Motor Rifle Brigade into Ocheretyne—and triggered a panicky response in Ukrainian headquarters. Commanders ordered the battle-weary 47th Mechanized Brigade to turn around and return to the front line. They also ordered the 100th Mechanized Brigade to counterattack.

The 100th Mechanized Brigade is a former territorial brigade—the equivalent of a U.S. Army National Guard unit—that the defense ministry in Kyiv upgraded to the active army in late March.

The 100th Mechanized Brigade isn’t inexperienced: its 2,000 or so troopers have seen action many times in Russia’s 26-month wider war on Ukraine. But the brigade lacks the heavy equipment—Western-made tanks, fighting vehicles and artillery—that gives more elite units such as the 47th Mechanized Brigade much of their combat power.

The 100th Mechanized Brigade fought hard, anyway, intercepting the Russian 30th Motor Rifle Brigade and other units from the Russian 41st Combined Arms Army as they attempted to advance toward the village of Prohres, another seven miles to the west along the same railroad linking Avdiivka to Ocheretyne. “The attempt to advance towards Prohres was stopped by a successful counterattack by the 100th Mechanized Brigade,” Deep State reported.

It’s unclear what might happen next in and around Ocheretyne. For now, Ukrainian troops “hold positions in the western part of the village and maintain fire control over its southern part,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted.

That the Ukrainians had to rush into a combat a comparatively weak brigade speaks to the paucity of Ukraine’s reserves west of Avdiivka, however. The Russians, for their part, are keeping an entire tank division, the 90th, in reserve around Avdiivka.

If the 90th Tank Division rolls into Ocheretyne before the Ukrainian eastern command mobilizes additional reinforcements, the Russian penetration could widen into a full-fledged breakthrough—one that could force tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops to retreat west to their next line of defenses.

For the Ukrainians, the best reason to be hopeful is the $1 billion in fresh munitions the United States rushed to Ukraine in the hours after the U.S Congress finally, after six months of delay, approved additional U.S. aid to Ukraine on Tuesday.

The Ukrainian brigades around Ocheretyne will need every bullet, shell and missile they can get. Especially the lightly-equipped 100th Mechanized Brigade.

Source: Forbes

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Polls show that a large percentage of Israeli citizens have lost faith in the future of their nation

Major General (Reserve) in the Israeli Army, and former ombudsman for the occupation forces, Yitzhak Brick, has sounded an alarm over the growing inefficacy of the country’s army to win a possible war.

Warning that the Israeli occupation forces have turned into an “air force army,” Brick criticized the leadership in Tel Aviv for their “sensitivity” towards human losses on the ground.

“Whoever wants to completely avoid losing on the battlefield, completely loses the deterrence of the army and the ability to win the war. This way of thinking and managing the security echelons will eventually lead to much heavier losses in the war,” the former official said in a column published on 10 May by Channel 12.

Brick went on to add that Israel’s land army and reserve system have been continuously ignored: “We lost the inter-arm combat capability and became a one-dimensional Air Force army that alone could not win a war.”

He goes on to highlight that the occupation forces in general, and the land army in particular, “are not ready for war.”

The warning comes on the heels of a number of polls showing that a large portion of Israeli citizens have lost faith in the future of their nation.

A poll published by the Pnima Movement at the start of the month showed that 40 percent of Israelis were not optimistic about the country’s future. It also showed that 33 percent of Israeli youth are seriously considering emigrating out of the occupied territory.

Meanwhile, at least 75 percent of Israeli Arabs believe Jews have no right to sovereignty in occupied Palestine, according to a survey by Habithonistim–Protectors of Israel published on 9 May.

In an article published in Yedioth Ahronoth on 7 May, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak expressed fears of the imminent demise of Israel before the 80th anniversary of its founding.

“Throughout Jewish history, the Jews did not rule for more than eighty years, except in the two kingdoms of David and the Hasmonean dynasty, and in both periods, their disintegration began in the eighth decade,” Barak said.

Earlier this year, former Air Force chief Amikam Norkin said Israel no longer enjoys superiority and freedom over the skies of Lebanon, highlighting that this reality was apparent to the Israeli military establishment after Hezbollah began manufacturing its own drones.

In the weeks after this statement by the Israeli official, Iran notified Tel Aviv that the army of the Islamic Republic has missiles pointed at all of their nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons sites.

Source: The Cradle

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Russian propagandists have published a recording of a “conversation between four senior German officers”. In it, they discuss the possible supply of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. The recording is authentic, the Bundeswehr has since confirmed. “This is a very serious matter and that is why it is now the subject of a very meticulous, in-depth and rapid investigation,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.

On Friday afternoon, a half-hour recording of the conversation, which reportedly dates to Monday, Feb. 19, circulated on Russian propaganda channels. Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russia’s state broadcaster RT, then published the recording. She did not say how she obtained it.

It concerns a meeting that was held between Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz and three officers using the platform Webex for videoconferencing (!), writes ‘Die Welt’. During the conversation in Singapore, the four senior officers could be heard discussing the theoretical possibilities of deploying German Taurus missiles, apparently in preparation for a briefing to the German government. They talk about the challenges that a delivery of such missiles to Ukraine entails.

Scholz

The four officers do not assume that German soldiers should necessarily be sent to Ukraine for this. However, this is exactly what Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly used as a reason for not supplying Taurus missiles to Ukraine. According to him, Germany would thus be dragged into the conflict.

The officers also talk about the training of Ukrainian pilots and share technical details about missile systems. They also discuss several targets that the Ukrainians could attack with the Taurus – including ammunition depots and the Kerch Bridge (or Crimean Bridge), a key supply route for Russia-occupied Crimea.

What would make the publication of the recording even more painful for Berlin is that the participants in the call also discuss details about deliveries of Scalp long-range missiles by France and the United Kingdom.

“If this story is true, then this would be a highly problematic incident,” Konstanin van Notz, chairman of the parliamentary committee that monitors the secret services, told the newspapers of the RND group.

Singapore

It’s unclear how the Russians got the shot. One of the officers taking part in the interview is staying in a hotel in Singapore at the time. It is conceivable that he was bugged there, that his phone was compromised or that he dialed in via an unsecured Wi-Fi network.

Given that it was Russian propagandists who sent the audio recording into the ether, it seems obvious that Russian secret services are behind it.

German Chancellor Scholz promises quick clarification on the Russian publication of a recording of a conversation among German air force officers about support for Ukraine. “This is a very serious matter and that is why it is now the subject of a very meticulous, in-depth and rapid investigation,” he said after an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican.

Damage Mitigation

The Bundeswehr tried to limit the damage on Friday by blocking accounts on X that distributed the recording in Germany.

The German Ministry of Defense is investigating whether the communications of the air force are being tapped by the Russians. “The German Military Counterintelligence Service (BAMAD) has initiated all necessary measures,” a ministry spokesman said.

The question of how secure the Bundeswehr’s internal communications are via unencrypted platforms such as Webex may be raised now that the audio recording has been found to be authentic. It is also possible that other communications were intercepted by the Russians.

The Russian Foreign Ministry had requested a statement from the German government, following the reports about the conversation. “Attempts to avoid answers will be interpreted as an admission of guilt,” said Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian ministry.

Source : DPG Media

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Frankfurt, Paris (14/4 – 40)

Relations between Russia and NATO have reached boiling point due the recent event: the claim that Serbia and Russia want to refight Kosovo; the closure of the border by Finland; and the statement by the President of France, Emanuel Macron, on March, 14. 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, in a series of posts on social media, claimed that NATO, the EU, and the US government were targeting Kosovo and Serbia and destroying the relationship. Never mind a coalition with Italy and Russia, this is just another pipedream of Radio Moscow.

In recent days, rumours of an impending Balkan war have become more widespread, but experienced Balkan parties are calling for a cool head to prevail. Radio Moscow plays up the usual rubbish of war drums. “People forget that this alliance does not like to use force, but…,” a NATO Air Command spokesman warned.

According to Lavrov, the Kosovo police have long discredited themselves through systematic punitive measures against the Serb community. “They have tried to push the Serbs out of Kosovo through the deployment of heavily armed special forces in non-Albanian areas. There is an immediate threat of a return to the ethnic cleansing carried out by Kosovo Albanian extremists.”

Meanwhile, President Macron said that Europe must be ready for war if it wants peace. He called President Putin would not stop at Ukraine if he succeeded in defeating Kyiv forces in the conflict that has been going on for two years.

President Macron sparked controversy last month after saying he could not link the possibility of ground troops to Ukraine in the future. Many state leaders avoided this, while several other leaders, especially in the Eastern European region, supported the statement. “If Russia wins this war, Europe’s credibility will be destroyed,” Macron said in a television interview.

However, President Putin stated that anything is possible in the modern world. “I have said and it is clear to everyone that this (possible direct conflict with NATO) would be one more step towards a full-scale third world war. I think almost no one is interested in this increasing chaos.” 

He added that French troops would perform secondary functions, training military personnel in Ukraine, explaining how to use heavy equipment, and performing several other similar functions. “Today, it is not much different from what was done by the mercenaries and later armed military personnel of the NATO countries present there,” President Putin said in speech after winning the election. 

Meanwhile, President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia’s relations with NATO had reached the level of direct confrontation. “The relationship has now descended to the level of direct confrontation. NATO not only continues to escalate but is also directly involved in the conflict around Ukraine. NATO continues its advance towards our borders,” he said.

Even so, President Putin is open to dialogue with NATO. According to Peskov, President Putin often holds international dialogue with countries that show interest in developing relations with Russia, “President Putin is open to dialogue to solve complex global and regional problems.”

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They might as well have been sitting ducks.

They are the tatzpitaniyot, mostly female soldiers stationed on the IDF bases near the Gaza Strip, their eyes glued to security cameras and other feeds of the border. Last Saturday morning, the Hamas terrorists who entered some of those bases with hang gliders shot at cameras and jammed some communications systems. They shot at the combat soldiers who were stationed at those bases, as well as at the tatzpitaniyot.

“Yes, they surprised us, and we weren’t ready for it,” said a female soldier at one of the bases who shared her harrowing story on social media. “Half of the force was home for Sukkot…and we had no intelligence about this…I took care of the injured while terrorists walked around my base, my second home, and murdered my friends. I prepared for this moment for two years, but nothing can prepare you for the moment of truth.” 

As Israel readies for a possible ground invasion of the Gaza Strip following the massive surprise attack last Saturday that killed some 900 Israelis and left the country reeling, Israelis are grappling with how the soldiers in the south were left so unprotected, and how the intelligence lapse — one that carries an eerie echo of the Yom Kippur War surprise attack almost 50 years ago to the day that Hamas brazenly struck southern Israel — was so glaring.

Some details of the initial cabinet meeting on Saturday night have leaked, and ministers were reportedly blindsided, having not been given any indication that an invasion or war was on the way in their weekly briefings with the prime minister’s military secretary. Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis asked flat-out in the meeting: “What happened to Israel’s intelligence?” 

The full picture will likely become clearer when the fog of war dissipates and a commission of inquiry investigates, as has become the custom in Israel after wars in the past 50 years. In the short term, as Israelis ask themselves, “How did this happen?” several possible explanations have already come to light.

The Conceptzia

“We were apparently dependent on a conceptzia that Hamas wanted money from Qatar and was deterred,” former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate head Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin told JI. “For every surprise, the surprisers come up with a distraction, and that is what we saw.”

After the Yom Kippur War, one of the answers to how Israel was surprised by an attack from Egypt and Syria was the “conceptzia.” The word literally translates to “preconception,” and it refers to groupthink or an idea that captivated the whole cabinet, without consideration of the alternatives.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu combatted reports on Monday that the extent of the conceptzia was such that he did not heed a warning that war was coming. According to AP, Egypt had warned Israel that “something big” was coming from Gaza, but the IDF was too busy with terrorism in the West Bank. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said he had not received any warnings and had not spoken with Egyptian Intelligence Minister Abbas Kamel since returning to office this year. 

“We were apparently dependent on a conceptzia that Hamas wanted money from Qatar and was deterred,” former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate head Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin told JI. “For every surprise, the surprisers come up with a distraction, and that is what we saw.”

Israel built its defense plans “on the idea that Hamas was not interested in a war. They distracted us and kept us busy with other violations on the [border] fence,” Yadlin said.

“It’s clear that there was a tactical and conceptual surprise that led to a strategic failing — though it can be turned around,” he added.

Hamas “duped” Israel intentionally over the past two years, by pretending that economic incentives such as aid from Doha and increased permits for Gazans to work in Israel were working, Reuters reported. In the meantime, Hamas trained 1,000 terrorists for the invasion, reportedly without telling them exactly what they were preparing to do.

Former National Security Adviser Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said in a briefing to reporters that Israel’s allies had claimed Hamas had “more responsibility,” and was busier managing the Gaza Strip than preparing to fight Israel.

“We stupidly began to believe that it was true, so we made a mistake,” Amidror said. “We won’t make this mistake again and we will destroy Hamas, slowly but surely.”

A senior defense official who left his post this year spoke on condition of anonymity because he only wanted to support the war effort on the record. 

“At some point in recent months, Hamas changed their strategy from supporting stability and quiet, as it did in Operation Shield and Arrow” — in May, when only Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacked Israel — “to an all-out war. They are giving their maximum,” he said.

The ex-official speculated that the “change in policy is connected to trying to destroy Israel’s ability to make peace with Saudi Arabia, which is a clear Iranian goal.”

While he said his former colleagues indicated to him this week that there was an inkling of Hamas’ plans, the official said the intelligence gap “disturbs me, because it goes deep.”

In addition, he argued that the IDF should have been able to defend the towns close to the Gaza border even if they were totally surprised.

“I don’t know why there were not enough soldiers in the towns. It could be that they were in the West Bank, but we should have been prepared regardless of the intelligence,” he said.

After an Egyptian police officer crossed into Israel and shot three IDF soldiers in June, “we should have known that our front positions were not working as they should.”

Blinded lookouts

Another element of Hamas’ attack that delayed Israel’s ability to respond effectively was its targeting of bases in the south where tatzpitaniyot, who watch cameras and other feeds of the border, are stationed.

“In my worst dreams, I could not have imagined something like this,” one tatzpitanit wrote. “I woke up for a 4 a.m. shift that turned out to be a nightmare. I never thought I’d see something like this from my lookout point in my life. I did the best I can, until a sniper shot my camera.”

One tatzpitanit who finished her service earlier this year told JI that she was going back to her old base, because there was no one left who knew how to do the lookouts’ job.

Some of the tatzpitanyiot on bases attacked by Hamas told harrowing stories on social media.

“In my worst dreams, I could not have imagined something like this,” one wrote. “I woke up for a 4 a.m. shift that turned out to be a nightmare. I never thought I’d see something like this from my lookout point in my life. I did the best I can, until a sniper shot my camera.”

She described “crazy noise, blood everywhere,” while she spent “16 hours locked in a small war room with a lot of hope and prayers.”The Hottest Place in Hell, an Israeli independent investigative journalism site, published a message it received from another tatzpitanit, who had only finished her training four days before the war began.

“We received a message that there was an invasion, that terrorists entered Israel…all along the line there were large numbers of terrorists and the forces weren’t making it in time to stop them, it was a psychotic number of terrorists. They started shooting at our cameras, until we weren’t able to look out. They told us the only thing to do is to run to the war room, while we heard rocket sirens and rockets fell by us. I ran like I had never run before,” she said.

All of the tatzpitaniyot were told to leave their positions and hide behind their large computer systems, as combat soldiers came to protect them.

“There was a Golani unit and they were all erased, very quickly, killed one after the other. They started bringing the injured to our war room. I started helping take care of them as much as possible because I was afraid to get out from behind the computer[.] I feared for my life.” 

The soldiers, according to the accounts in Hottest Place in Hell, did not eat for 26 hours and did not have enough water, were in a hot room with no air conditioning because of the power outage and had to use cups and trash cans because there was no toilet.

At one point, the terrorists tried to light the building on fire, and the soldiers had to decide whether to stay in a building on fire or run out to where they would be shot or captured, but soldiers managed to put out the fire quickly. Terrorists shot at the doors, and the soldiers saw that they were stealing IDF uniforms.

“There were so many terrorists and so many killed and injured. No one knew what to do, and we were all crying and hysterical. I don’t know how I survived,” she said.

Eventually, they were evacuated under fire: “We saw corpses on the way to the bus,” she recalled.

The retired officer who predicted it all

From the start of the war, an interview with Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brick on an Israeli Jewish-interest cable news channel Hidabrut went viral. In the video from July, the former IDF ombudsman seemed to predict exactly what happened on Sunday.

Brick, 76, was an Israeli general who fought in the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War, officially retiring from the army in 1999. He then became the IDF ombudsman in 2008-2018, after which he began publicly criticizing the IDF for its lack of preparedness. 

A series of newspaper op-eds, as well as a lengthy article in the journal Hashiloach that Brick wrote in 2020, drew significant attention in Israel for its warning that the IDF, especially its highest-ranking officers, has lost its fighting spirit.

In the last month, Brick wrote articles warning that Israel is not prepared. In Haaretz, he wrote: “Netanyahu, the next war is near. Declare a national state of emergency.” In Maariv: “Though the political leadership abandoned our security, I will continue to fight without fear.” In Israel Hayom the headline was: “Residents of the north, prepare to defend yourselves ahead of the next war: No one else will do it.” 

In the viral video, Brick chillingly describes the nightmare scenario that came true this week.

“A massacre can happen here and the State of Israel doesn’t understand it,” he said.

Hamas is preparing “to enter a number of towns on foot. The likelihood it will happen is very high, whether they come in the thousands or hundreds,” he said.

“If you’re a resident sitting in a shelter, they’ll come to the shelter, throw a grenade and you’re dead. Not just you, everyone, they’ll sit there and be slaughtered,” Brick warned.

He called on Israelis to prepare to defend their towns.

“No one else will be there,” Brick continued in the video. “The army won’t be there. The army is small today, and the things it wants to send won’t arrive because of roadblocks…You have to be able to fight with your own body to defend your town, and in order to be able to do that you have to prepare the town to fight.”

“The army won’t be there for you in a war,” he emphasized. “In the first hours, you will be in the shelters because of the rockets, but the moment that word gets out that [terrorists] are on the ground, get into position and fight for your lives.”

Brick said that towns near the Gaza border should dig trenches and set up positions, have backup water and medical supplies, and more.

He criticized the IDF for taking local security teams’ weapons, a decision the military made two years ago because of theft. Brick said that “everyone under 70, most of whom were in the army and know how to shoot,” should have access to a weapon and should be trained.

“No one is saying this, and we’re in a lawless situation,” Brick lamented. “[The security establishment] is just telling people ‘hide,’ but not what to do if a terrorist arrives. Who will stop the terrorists? The army can’t do it today.”

“All kinds of details are coming out about all of [Hamas’] preparations, distractions by holding demonstrations by the border fence, shooting at cameras, taking over the Southern Command base and disrupting its ability to command the whole area,” Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University said.

Brick is a controversial figure. Some of the responses to his video claim that he is attempting to deflect blame from Netanyahu, since Brick said the problems began when National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz and MK Gadi Eisencot, also of National Union, were IDF chiefs of staff.

One former senior defense official who spoke with JI said “Brick says so much nonsense that sometimes some of it ends up being right.”

Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said in a conversation with JI that, while Brick correctly predicted part of what happened, much of it still remains unexplained.

“The security in the towns is really problematic and not developed enough,” he said. “In places with more guns and people who were better trained, they were able to kill terrorists. But the things Brick spoke about are more about the local level of supplies and fighting. It doesn’t explain what happened here.”

“All kinds of details are coming out about all of [Hamas’] preparations, distractions by holding demonstrations by the border fence, shooting at cameras, taking over the Southern Command base and disrupting its ability to command the whole area,” Michael said, “but I still don’t understand how an event like this can happen, how they can shut down the whole border fence and why it took three hours for more forces to arrive. I have no answers. So many senior officers were killed.”

Michael and Yadlin both said that an investigation is likely.

“I think a lot of heads will roll,” Michael said.

Now, the government must set “totally different goals” to the fighting between Israel and Hamas since 2009, Michael said.

“The reaction will be totally different and the result must be totally different. It can be that some good can come out of all of this bad. We can create a reality where we improve the army. Now, we understand the army is too small and we need a bigger IDF for our missions, just like the Ukrainians understood in their war,” he said. 

Michaeli warned that Israel is “heading into a long campaign that will exact a price. There are no free lunches. We need a lot of patience and unity and wisdom from our leaders – military and political – and I want to believe that we will find it and in the end, from this whole mess, we can hope for something good.”

Source: Jewish Insider

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Most dismissed retired IDF general Yitzhak Brick’s warning earlier this year of a Hamas invasion. Now Netanyahu wants his advice on how to win.

Yitzhak Brick might be the only Israeli military official to see what was coming. And he’s been warning of it for some time. He also does not see a ground invasion of Gaza as the only option. And Israel must prepare for a multi-front war given the situation in the north. Brick cautioned, among other things, of problems with the competence of ground forces and made it clear that the ground invasion does not have to be a mandatory step. But according to Brick, Israel urgently needs to “change its hard disk,” i.e. make fundamental changes.

General Brick has been warning for years about the horror we saw in southern Israel on that accursed Shabbat morning a week ago. But his assessment was dismissed by the defense establishment and the political leadership. Brick was even called delusional by many.

“There could be a massacre, the State of Israel has not yet recognized the danger,” Brick warned. “We feel among the people that everything is fine and there is no threat, but the public is not told that powers (Hamas) are preparing. These are equipped, trained fighters who will cross the border on foot and attack and occupy our settlements in the south. The likelihood of this happening is very high. Hamas will conquer settlements, throw grenades into bunkers and shelters and cause a massacre. The local residents, you and me, must defend these communities because the army will not be there.” Brick said these words months ago, but no one wanted to listen to him. After the massacre in the south, everyone now has an ear for retired general, even Bibi.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Brick spoke this week about the continuation of the war against terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, as well as developments on the Lebanese border. The general made it clear to Netanyahu that his position was to continue the surgical strikes, divide the armed forces and find a solution through a hermetic siege of the Gaza Strip. His view contrasts with the attitude of the military staff, which assumes that no success in the Gaza Strip is possible without an Israeli ground invasion.

Brick warned that the Israel Defense Forces have turned into a primarily air-based military, and criticized the army leadership for its sensitivity to human losses on the ground. “The current situation of the land forces is tragic, they are not ready for war. Emergency supplies are not available, exercises have stopped and the battalions have not trained in years. There is also no weapons training and education, and the army is not capable of carrying out an attack.” The former ombudsman added that technology alone is not enough to win wars. “The truth is that an imaginary reality has been created by the general staff and spread throughout the army. The soldiers have lost their motivation and fighting spirit in recent years, and many are not ready to go into battle.”

“To completely avoid losses on the battlefield is to hinder the army’s ability to win the war. This type of thinking will ultimately lead to heavier casualties in war,” Brick told Channel 12 back in May.

Brick added that Israel’s ground forces and reserve system have been constantly ignored: “We have lost the ability to field an effective army and have become a one-dimensional aerial power that cannot win a war on its own.” In his view, Israel’s ground forces are not ready for war. The warning follows a series of polls showing that a large portion of Israeli citizens have lost faith in their country’s future. This was particularly evident over the last year, when the people were divided over political and judicial issues.

“In my role as general, I have visited more than 1,400 units and spoken to tens of thousands of commanders and soldiers, three to four times a week, four hours in each unit. I know the army on the ground better than anyone in the Israel Defense Forces,” Brick said years ago. “I have seen soldiers who do not take care of their weapons before leaving the base. No army in the world behaves like this. The soldiers carry their smartphones with them everywhere. Commands are sent via WhatsApp groups. These phones are being tracked by the enemy.”

Not only that, but commands are said to have been sent via email and then deleted, meaning no follow-up action is possible. “Our system has lost all control. Have we gone crazy? I cannot sleep at night. Our ground forces and armored corps are not ready for war,” Brick continually warned.

“What I present to you here is something you will not hear from the top IDF officials. Not only do many of the commanders not know anything, but even those who do know are afraid to speak out lest they be punished,” he wrote, calling on members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to speak to the rank-and-file soldiers and address the issue. “Let them show you what is going on, share with them their problems and difficulties. It will not be the division, brigade and battalion commanders from whom you will learn about the reality that exists in the field. You should learn it from those for whom it is the routine of their life… Their statements are the truth.”

Israel’s entire security apparatus has failed and relied too heavily on technology, with an unhealthy dash of arrogance. But as is typically the case, those who don’t go with the flow and call out the glaring problems are dismissed as lunatics, like General Brick, who saw the danger before anyone else.

Source

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Sri Lanka has told hundreds of thousands of Russians and some Ukrainians staying in the country to escape the war that they must leave in the next two weeks, immigration officers said.

The immigration controller issued a notice to the tourism ministry asking Russian and Ukrainian people staying on extended tourist visas to leave Sri Lanka within two weeks from 23 February.

Just over 288,000 Russians and nearly 20,000 Ukrainians have traveled to Sri Lanka in the last two years since the war began, according to official data.

Commissioner-General of Immigration said the “government is not granting further visa extensions” as the “flight situation has now normalised”.

However, the office of president Ranil Wickremesinghe ordered an investigation of the notice to the tourism ministry in an apparent bid to prevent diplomatic tensions.

The president’s office said that the notice had been issued without prior cabinet approval and the government had not officially decided to revoke the visa extensions, reported the Sri Lankan newspaper Daily Mirror.

The exact number of visitors who extended their stay beyond the typical 30-day tourist visa duration remains unclear.

However, concerns have been raised over thousands of Russians and a smaller number of Ukrainians staying in the country for an extended period of time and even setting up their own restaurants and nightclubs.

Tourism minister Harin Fernando told Daily Mirror that the ministry has been receiving complaints of some Russian tourists running unregistered and illegal businesses in the southern part of the country.

Raids were conducted by the authorities following discussions with the Immigration Department, he said.

It comes amid a furious social media backlash over Russian-run businesses with a “whites only” policy that strictly bars locals. These businesses include bars, restaurants, water sports and vehicle hiring services.

In a bid to boost tourism and recover from its worst economic crisis since 2022, Sri Lanka began granting 30-days visas on arrival and extensions for up to six months.

In April 2022, the nation defaulted on its $46bn (£36 bn) foreign debt. The economic crisis triggered violent street protests for several months and ultimately culminated in the resignation of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa three months later.

Source: Independent

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At the beginning of the ceremony, a minute’s silence was observed to pay respect to the memory of all the martyrs of the Great War of Liberation and to express sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the tragic terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow on March 22.

Twenty-six freedom fighters from different districts of Bangladesh were felicitated with commemorative gifts and certificates in the programme.

The freedom fighters expressed gratitude and thanks to the organizers for this honor.

In his welcome speech, the director of Russian House in Dhaka Pavel Dvoychenkov highlighted the historically friendly role of Russia in the great liberation war of Bangladesh and the overall development of post-war Bangladesh.

Land Minister Narayan Chandra Chand and the Director General of the Bangladesh National Museum Md. Kamruzzaman gratefully recalled the humanitarian and economic assistance in the reconstruction of war-torn Bangladesh, including the struggle for independence of Bangladesh.

They also said that the independence of Bangladesh would never have been possible without the cooperation of Russia.

Source: UNB

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Shares surged past $70 in early trade, giving the firm a market value of more than $9bn. They ended the day at about $58, still up more than 16%.

The long-awaited moment will inject more than $200m into Trump Media & Technology Group and hands the former president a stake worth more than $4bn.

Analysts say that is far more than the firm’s performance warrants.

Trump Media’s Truth Social, a Twitter-like service, brought in just $3.3m in revenue in the first nine months of last year and lost nearly $50m.

It says 8.9 million accounts have been created since the platform launched to the general public in 2022 as an alternative to mainstream sites such as Facebook, but it is not clear how many are active.

By comparison, the recently-listed Reddit currently has a market value of about $11bn. It boasts more than 70 million users and brought in $800m in revenue last year.

Kristi Marvin, chief executive of SPACInsider, compared Trump Media – which trades under the ticker DJT for Mr Trump’s initials – to a meme stock, in which prices are untethered from the business prospects.

Interest in Trump Media has also been fuelled by individual investors, as opposed to Wall Street firms, many of them apparently Trump supporters.

“Everybody expected to trade a little bit crazy today, which it has,” she said. “The real question is how does it trade a week from now, two weeks from now and nobody really knows.”

The deal to list Trump Media was first announced in 2021.

The move was accomplished via what is known as a SPAC, a merger with a publicly listed shell company, Digital World Acquisition Corp, which was expressly created to buy a company and take it public.

The deal was delayed by government investigations and other hurdles, but regulators cleared it earlier this year and Digital World shareholders voted in favour last week.

Ahead of the listing on the Nasdaq exchange, Trump Media officials called it a “pivotal moment” for the firm – and the wider media landscape.

“As a public company, we will passionately pursue our vision to build a movement to reclaim the Internet from Big Tech censors,” said Trump Media chief executive Devin Nunes, a former congressman.

“We will continue to fulfil our commitment to Americans to serve as a safe harbour for free expression and to stand up to the ever-growing army of speech suppressors.”

The debut comes at a critical moment for Mr Trump, who has been scrambling for cash to pay legal penalties and owns more than half of the firm’s shares.

He is currently barred from selling his holdings for about six months, making it difficult for him to tap the windfall immediately.

The company’s board, which is stocked with allies including one of his sons, could potentially change that rule, but analysts have said they think that would be unlikely to happen immediately.

If Mr Trump were to sell a significant chunk of his shares, it could hurt the share price.

Investors face other risks as well, tied to Mr Trump’s political fortunes and his 2024 presidential campaign.

A loss might be expected to hurt the share price, but a win could have the opposite effect, especially if it generated further demand from buyers hoping to curry favour with Mr Trump, said Michael Ohlrogge, a law professor at New York University.

However, Prof Ohlrogge said the current share price is “far, far elevated above what anyone would consider its fundamental value”.

Source: BBC

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The Czechs have never forgotten that allies handed over their Sudetenland Province to Hitler in 1938 after the German dictator promised it would be “the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe.”

Months later, Nazis occupied their country and waged war in Europe and around the world for seven more years, killing tens of millions.

To many today, Ukraine is the next Sudetenland as it fends off another war criminal with imperial ambitions who promises he will stop once it is occupied. The synchronicity is obvious and is why one of the most hawkish and driven leaders in Europe is Czech President Petr Pavel, a retired general and former NATO advisor.

He has been as outspoken and blunt about Putin’s ruthless intention to swallow Ukraine and Europe as was Winston Churchill in the 1930s. And he has also taken the lead by devising a scheme to prevent Ukraine from running out of needed munitions shortly due to US and EU delays. On March 7, he announced that Kyiv will receive between 800,000 and 1 million rounds of artillery ammunition in weeks.

Pavel quietly procured one year’s’ worth of ammo from arsenals around the world, on a no-names basis, in order to safeguard suppliers from Russian retaliation. He’s done so because “if Ukraine fails, so will we.”

President Pavel is blunt. He believes that once again Europe hurtles toward war, and that, if Kyiv falls, war in the rest of Europe is inevitable and troops must be ready for such a potential outcome. He’s a proponent of whatever it takes to halt Putin, and dismisses Putin’s claims that he has no interest in invading another NATO nation.

In the aftermath of the attack on Crocus City Hall near Moscow, for which Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility, fears of attacks by Islamist terrorists are growing in other countries.

In August, at the 55th anniversary of the “Prague Spring” (or the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops that crushed its democratic movement) he remarked “Russia has not changed… The 1968 invasion was a time of lost dreams and lost dignity.

We should remember what it felt like. Because Ukraine only wants what we wanted at the time. They want to determine their own path. Russia hasn’t changed since then – the country has a different name, but its foreign policy, its values are the same.”

Pavel is the Czech Republic’s head of state, not an elected politician, a position that provides him with enhanced stature and influence that he uses to help bolster Europe’s resolve and strength. He describes Putin’s ambitions as Hitlerian and also has provided ammo and motivation for the fearful Euros: They are next on the conquest list and that America’s support falters and may disappear if Donald Trump wins.

While Joe Biden remains ahead in polls, even a small chance he will lose represents a gigantic existential threat to all Europeans and they know this. This is why the next two years are crucial, warned Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “We are living in the most critical moment since the end of the Second World War.”

Pavel and Tusk influenced France’s Emmanuel Macron to speak out publicly two weeks ago about the possibility that European “boots on the ground” may be necessary to help Ukraine and prevent all-out war across the continent. Macron’s comment, the leader of the European Union’s only nuclear power, immediately generated attention.

Putin mouthpieces responded that NATO troops in Ukraine would constitute a threat by NATO and warned about a possible nuclear response. In Berlin and Washington, the notion of European escalation caused a furor among its elite where war politics have become complicated and gridlocked.

But Macron was correct to raise the possibility and Pavel supported him. “From the point of view of international law and the UN Charter, there would be nothing to prevent NATO member states’ troops—as well as civilians, for example—from assisting in the work in Ukraine,” he said. For instance, NATO had training missions inside Ukraine after Russia’s first invasion in 2014 of Crimea and the Donbas region.

On March 20, a report by the once-removed, but credible, Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank also emphasized that Putin’s intention is to escalate beyond Ukraine. “Several Russian financial, economic, and military indicators suggest that Russia is preparing for a large-scale conventional conflict with NATO, not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline than what some Western analysts have initially posited.”

It added “Polish President Andrzej Duda told CNBC that Putin is intensifying efforts to shift Russia to a war economy with the intention of being able to attack NATO as early as 2026 or 2027, citing unspecified German research.

Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen stated on Feb. 9 that new intelligence indicates that Russia may attempt to attack a NATO country within three to five years, an accelerated timeline from NATO’s reported assessment in 2023.”

There’s also concern that the current frontline in Ukraine won’t hold, but Pavel’s delivery of ammunition soon will help greatly. Ukraine’s Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrsky said last week that Russia outguns Ukrainian forces sixfold on the front lines.

And after the latest civilian bombing attacks, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told the media that “we need help now.” Ukrainians prepare for another Russian offensive at the end of May or June.

If successful, Russia will keep going west and some speculate that Putin may try once more to capture Kharkiv then Kyiv. “For him, we are a satellite of Russian Federation,” said Zelensky. “At the moment, it’s us, then Kazakhstan, then Baltic states, then Poland, then Germany. At least half of Germany.”

Russia already threatens NATO members and a number of incidents have come close to direct attacks, which would invoke the Charter pledge that an assault on one is an assault on all 32 nation-state members.

On March 29, Poland stated that a Russian cruise missile, fired at Ukraine, entered Poland’s airspace. “I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past. It’s real, and it started over two years ago,” Polish President Tusk told the BBC. And Estonia’s foreign-intelligence service declared in a report last month that Russia was preparing for a “confrontation with the West.”

Pavel suggests that European nations mobilize and impose war measures now, by enhancing border and cybersecurity and by placing any Russian citizens living in their countries under “strict surveillance” by intelligence services.

“All Russians living in Western countries should be monitored much more than in the past because they are citizens of a nation that leads an aggressive war,” Pavel said in an interview with Radio Free Europe. “That’s simply a cost of war.”

Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, the current NATO military committee chief, said in Brussels that NATO will soon be launching the Steadfast Defender 2024 exercise, which will run through May and deploy 90,000 troops who will rehearse the alliance’s execution of its regional plans.

“This will show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometers, from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any condition,” the 31-nation organization said in a statement.

European leaders now openly discuss the seriousness of the situation, but Putin said this month that Moscow had “no aggressive intentions” towards NATO countries. He said it was “complete nonsense” that Russia would attack NATO members Poland, the Baltic states and the Czech Republic.

However, he warned that if Ukraine used Western F-16 warplanes from airfields in other countries, they would become “legitimate targets, wherever they might be located.”

President Pavel simply urges preparation, not panic. “We’ve all agreed that it is in our imminent interest that Ukraine succeed,” he said in an interview. “On the other hand, there are many variables in the calculation that could change the situation. It will really depend on the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine. All armies are preparing for the possibility of a high-intensity conflict.”

Source: Kyiv Post

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