Today's D Brief: Difficult years ahead for Europe; Rain slows Ukraine fight; Pentagon’s strategy trio; US Army’s new training center; And a bit more.

“Rough years are coming” for Europe, Germany’s president predicted Friday, saying Russia’s Ukraine invasion has “plunged” the continent “into an insecurity we thought we had overcome: a time marked by war, violence and flight, by concerns about the expansion of war into a wildfire in Europe.” 

More than a million Ukrainian refugees have fled to Germany, where citizens are facing “possible energy shortages this winter after cuts in Russian gas supplies,” Reuters reported Friday. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier made the above remarks in his annual “state of the union” address, which came just days after he visited Kyiv for the first time since Russia invaded eight months ago.  

“One thing is clear: we will have to accept some financial constraints over the next few years,” Steinmeier said Friday, and admonished his countrymen, “This crisis demands that we learn to be modest again.” German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has more from his remarks Friday. 

New: Ukraine’s military is bracing for a flood of new Russian troops sometime in the next 10 to 14 days, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday after comments from Kyiv’s General Staff Deputy Chief Oleksii Hromov. And that’s welcome news for Moscow, whose top army officer in Ukraine reportedly had to put a gun to recruits heads to get them to stop retreating near the occupied Luhansk city of Svatovo, according to The Insider, reporting Thursday. 

The conflict is tilting toward stalemate again as autumn rains muck up the battlefield. That’s according to the New York Times, reporting Friday as well, and citing conflicts across two centuries. “Both armies are now dealing with the challenges posed by the thick clay sludge that hindered Napoleon’s army in 1812, slowed Hitler’s advance on the eastern front in 1941 and wreaked havoc on Russia’s plans for a lightning advance into Ukraine in the spring of this year,” Marc Santora of the Times writes. 

“This is the rainy season, and it’s very difficult to use fighting carrier vehicles with wheels,” Ukraine’s military chief, Oleksii Reznikov told reporters earlier this week. Meantime, Ukrainian troops are trying to hold off Russian forces approaching the eastern city of Bakhmut. “Taking Bakhmut would rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and open a route for Russian forces to press on toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk province,” the Associated Press reported Friday from the city.   

The tactical big picture: “In the last six weeks there has been a clear move from Russian ground forces to transition to a long-term, defensive posture on most areas of the front line in Ukraine,” the British military said Friday. But “Even if Russia succeeds in consolidating long-term defensive lines in Ukraine, its operational design will remain vulnerable.” And that all suggests, according to British military intelligence, that for Moscow, “To regain the initiative, it will need to regenerate higher quality, mobile forces which are capable of dynamically countering Ukrainian breakthroughs and conducting their own large-scale offensive operations.”

The even bigger picture: Gain a better understanding of why many nations in the developing world have avoided condemning Russia’s Ukraine invasion, via a new essay from Yaroslav Trofimov of the Wall Street Journal. In short, “Tolerance for Russia’s actions across the developing world stems from a historical resentment of the West that now taints the Ukrainian cause by association, as well as from a practical need to remain on Moscow’s good side and an often genuine lack of understanding of the conflict’s nature,” he writes. Read that essay in full, here

Coverage continues below…


From Defense One

Drones, Cruise Missiles Are Rising Threats to US Troops and Territory, Pentagon Says // Marcus Weisgerber: The Missile Defense Review also calls for building a missile shield to protect Guam.

China’s Nuclear Arsenal Will Become an Existential Threat to US, Biden Administration Declares // Marcus Weisgerber: New nuclear strategy deletes one new U.S. weapon, keeps the rest.

That’s it? Biden’s Overdue Pentagon Strategy Underwhelms // Kevin Baron: After nearly two years, experts were hoping for more.

Army’s New Training Center Keeps Forces Available in Indo-Pacific // Elizabeth Howe: Service leaders say the first regional center in 50 years will improve training and save time and effort.

Defense Companies Should Start Investing In NATO’s Eastern Flank, Says Romanian Land Forces Chief // Patrick Tucker: As the U.S. and NATO footprint on Ukraine and Russia’s border grows, so do their industrial base needs.

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. If you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. And check out other Defense One newsletters here. On this day in 1922, Benito Mussolini led a protest march on Italy's capital city of Rome, paving the way for the rapid ascent of his Fascist party, which would run the country until Il Duce was ousted in the summer of 1943. 


Russian leader Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he “doesn’t need” a nuclear strike on Ukraine because “there would be no military or political sense.”
However, Putin still seems quite intent on “destroy[ing] the Ukrainian state and eras[ing] the notion of a Ukrainian people,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote Thursday after Putin’s annual address on foreign policy in Moscow. In that address, the former KGB spy repeated his pre-invasion “narrative that Ukraine and Russia are a single people separated into different states by arbitrary historical circumstance,” according to ISW, which warns, “These statements, along with many Russian actions, must cause serious reflection on the question of whether Russia’s war against Ukraine is a genocidal action.”
New: Ukraine began importing electricity from Slovakia on Thursday, officials in Kyiv announced. Ukraine’s electricity grid has been under fierce attack for the past several weeks as Russia has launched Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones on at least 45 key facilities across Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, often overwhelming local air defenses as the country’s lost nearly half of its output capacity.
Update: Bellingcat sleuths located the building Russia’s cruise missile targeting troops used. A unit photo taken there helped Bellingcat identify the unit that marked playgrounds in Kyiv and other Ukrainian infrastructure for strikes. Aric Toler explained on Twitter, here.
Moscow’s Medvedev trolls media mogul Musk on his new platform. Elon Musk appears to have finally bought Twitter in a deal that was expected to be finalized Friday. Russia’s Dmetry Medvedev wasted no time asking Musk to “quit that Starlink in Ukraine business,” which was a tweet additionally publicized by Russian state-run TASS on Friday.
Related reading: 

And lastly this week: The classic 1929 antiwar novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” is now a new major motion picture, and it’s streaming on Netflix starting Friday, Oct. 28. The German-centric story, which addressed combat fatigue and post-conflict depression, was among the books banned by the Nazi party after it rose to power in 1930s postwar Berlin.
Germany is submitting the film as its Oscar entry in the international film category for this year’s Academy Awards. The Hollywood Reporter has more, here. Catch the trailer on YouTube, here.  

Have a safe weekend, everyone. And we’ll catch you again on Monday!

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.