Today's D Brief: POTUS to Maui; Ukraine’s prospects; Russia’s purchases; New Army ads; And just a bit more.

President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden are expected to arrive on Maui this afternoon to see the devastation wrought by the wildfires there firsthand, and to meet with leaders, survivors, and first responders. “My heart, my prayers, and my focus are on the victims of the Maui wildfires and their families,” Biden said in a statement Sunday. “I will do everything in my power to help Maui recover and rebuild from this tragedy.” 

The Bidens’ visit comes as the death toll from the Maui wildfires sits at 114, as of Sunday evening. More than 1,800 people have been moved to hotel rooms on the island, leaving emergency shelters nearly vacant, and 85 percent of the impact zone has been searched, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said Sunday

Residents of the island have said they felt abandoned in the aftermath of the disaster, and Pentagon officials have made clear that more troops and assets are available and ready to go if asked. In a call with reporters Friday, Army National Guard Brig. Gen. Stephen Logan defended the federal government response, describing it as “nearly immediate,” but he also noted that the Joint Task Force he commands is not in the lead. 

“We’re not in command,” Logan said. “We’re in support of the county of Maui, and are working along the lines of effort that are prioritized by the elected mayor.” Biden also defended the federal government’s response in his statement Sunday, stressing that “from day one we immediately authorized three Fire Management Assistance Grants, and as soon as Gov. Green requested a major disaster declaration, I signed it.” 

More than 1,000 federal government personnel were on the ground in Maui by Sunday, according to the White House. During his visit Monday, Biden plans to announce a new chief federal response coordinator to oversee the federal government’s long-term recovery work on Maui, administration officials said. 

The Defense Department’s contribution to the effort includes six people from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to help identify remains of victims, Logan said. But the bulk of the Task Force’s effort is “to secure the impact zone” and “render the area as safe as possible, to prevent entrance by unauthorized personnel because of the hazardous nature of what the operational environment is like, and then to facilitate the dignified and proper recovery of the descendants and their remains,” said Logan. “And that process is ongoing,” he added.

Next? Missions the Pentagon may assist with in the future include removing debris, assessing damage, and rebuilding, U.S. Army Pacific told Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad.  

Related reading: 


Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Jennifer Hlad and Bradley Peniston. If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet, you can do that here. On this day in 1885, New York-born inventor William Seward Burroughs patented a “calculating machine,” which became nearly ubiquitous across the U.S. banking industry in just a matter of years. Fast-forward to today, and the U.S. military is now considering allowing potential recruits to use calculators on its entry-level screening test, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, because a growing number of would-be recruits aren’t scoring high enough to qualify for enlistment. Military.com has that story, here.

The Army has launched the second phase of its back-to-the-future “Be All You Can Be” recruiting campaign. The first batch, released in March, may have had some effect; Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said numbers to date have so far been better than last year.

The service’s recruiting crisis is balanced by the Army’s “generally high retention rate, but the shortfalls are nevertheless pushing the Army to consider reducing its number of units,” D1’s Sam Skove reports.

Denmark promised to transfer 19 F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, President Volodymir Zelenskyy said Sunday during a trip to Copenhagen. However, the first tranche, which includes six of the U.S.-made aircraft, won’t arrive until closer to the end of the calendar year. Eight more are expected in 2024, and five more are slated to arrive in 2025, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Sunday. 

The Danes also pledged to help Ukraine acquire more “air defense, artillery, munitions, coastal defense, Leopards [tanks], armored personnel carriers and demining vehicles,” Zelenskyy said, calling the two nations’ cooperation “important for global food security.” 

The Dutch confirmed they will eventually provide Ukraine with F-16s as well, though the precise number is still being worked out, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said while standing beside Zelenskyy in Eindhoven on Sunday. The Netherlands has 42 of these aircraft available, but it’s unlikely to transfer all of those up front.  

Developing: Ukrainian pilots are training to fly Sweden’s Gripen fighter aircraft, with plans to transfer some of them to Ukraine, Zelenskyy said after a visit with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on Saturday. 

The two countries also agreed to jointly produce Swedish CV-90 armored vehicles, Zelenskyy announced this weekend. “This is war: something breaks and needs to be repaired. To repair in other states, not on the territory of Ukraine. It is very hard. You lose time and initiative on the battlefield,” he said. “Therefore, today's step is a powerful step forward.”

According to Zelenskyy, “Russia has already used more than 6,500 missiles and more than 3,500 attack drones” against targets across Ukraine, the president said Sunday, emphasizing the persistent need for air defense systems to protect civilians. 

Frontline Ukrainian military officers are in brighter spirits lately, the New York Times reported Sunday. “Even if the counteroffensive has yielded only mixed results so far, with Ukrainian troops slowed by dense Russian minefields and sustained firepower, [those officers] describe previous periods as being tougher than this one,” Carlotta Gall writes. However, “Some commanders even talk of a permanent state of conflict” due to the apparent durability of Russian occupation forces. 

As it currently stands, Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine could drag on for years because Kyiv and its allies lack “political goals that are both clear and attainable,” Marcus Walker of the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing unnamed Western officials, scholars like Alina Polyakova of the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, and the long-dead Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz. 

Behind these anxieties lie essentially the same concerns articulated by Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times, who said less than a month into the invasion: “Putin is betting that the unity the democratic West is exhibiting will dissipate under the weight of refugees and high gas and food prices. The West is betting that sanctions and isolation will pressure the authoritarian Kremlin to buckle. This is a fight over which system will win.”

But perhaps the most dominant consideration for the White House remains avoiding an “uncontrolled escalation that leads to a direct war with Russia or to Putin using nuclear weapons,” as the Journal put it. That leaves a sort of Catch-22, Walker reports: “Without a battlefield breakthrough, Kyiv doesn’t want to negotiate peace—and Moscow doesn’t have to.” 

China sold Russia a lot more trench-digging excavators in the past year, particularly around August and September of 2022, when Russian forces first started losing occupied territory, the Journal reported separately Monday. Overall, Chinese companies “sold Russia nearly twice as many front-end shovel loaders and more than three times as many excavators in the first seven months of 2023 as it did over the same period a year prior."

“That’s not a coincidence,” said Joseph Webster, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “That’s when Russian forces really started to entrench themselves, when they started retreating.” Occupation officials in Donbass even publicized the Chinese construction equipment in June on social media. 

In addition, “Russia became the top importer of Chinese vehicles this year,” the Journal reports, noting that, “As of June, six of the top 10 car brands in Russia were Chinese, compared with none three years ago.” More, here.

Another nation making a pretty penny on Russia’s Ukraine invasion: the UAE. The Journal reported again on Monday how Abu Dhabi “is capitalizing on the Ukraine war’s economic opportunities like few other countries.” 

For a sense of the scale, “U.A.E. imports of Russian crude oil tripled in 2022 to a record 60 million barrels,” the Journal writes. And “Foreign currency flooded into the U.A.E. after Russia’s invasion, increasing about 20% each month since May 2022 compared with the year before.” What’s more, “The U.A.E. imported $4 billion worth of Russian gold between Feb. 24, 2022 and March 3 this year, up from $61 million during 2021,” the Journal reports. But that’s not all: “In the second quarter of 2023, Russians became the third-largest property buyers in Dubai, compared with the ninth biggest in 2021.” 

If this trend sounds familiar, it’s likely because there have been many different reports of the UAE’s opportunism over the past year, including at Reuters, the New York Times (also here and here), the Associated Press, CNN, and previously at the Wall Street Journal (here, too). 

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.