Tag Archive for: tepid

Pentagon dismisses Donbas offensive as ‘anemic, tepid, uneven, and risk averse,’ as Russia prepares to annex the region

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‘ANEMIC, TEPID, UNEVEN, RISK AVERSE’: The Pentagon is describing Russia’s halting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas provinces as making “minimal progress at best,” with “minor gains” east of the northern cities of Izyum and Popasna, only to give ground back in the face of fierce Ukrainian counterattacks.

“What we saw there in Popasna is not unlike what we’ve seen in other hamlets in the Donbas. They’ll move in and then declare victory, and then withdraw their troops, only to let the Ukrainians take it back,” a senior defense official told reporters yesterday. “So, very, very cautious, very tepid, very uneven work by them on the ground, and in some cases, quite frankly, the best word to describe it would be ‘anemic.’”

In the past few days, Ukrainian forces succeeded in pushing Russian troops farther away from the northern city of Kharkiv, once Ukraine’s second largest. “They have managed to push the Russians out about 40 kilometers to the east of Kharkiv,” the official said, which is beyond the range of many artillery systems. “They’re pushing them back, so back into areas of the northern Donbas region, but away from Kharkiv, so an incredible effort there.”

“They’re still suffering from poor command-and-control, low morale in many units, less-than-ideal logistics,” the official said. “They still have not solved all their logistics problems, and quite frankly, there’s a casualty aversion, a risk and casualty aversion that we continue to see by the Russians now, not just in the air, but on the ground.”

RUSSIAN MILITARY’S ‘CASUALTY AVERSION’ LEADING TO ‘ANEMIC’ GAINS, PENTAGON SAYS

RUSSIA TO ANNEX TERRITORY AS FIGHTING STILL RAGES: Desperate to declare success before next Monday’s World War II Victory Day celebration in Moscow, Russia is planning to declare domain over all the Donbas, based on what the U.S. says would be sham elections.

“We believe that the Kremlin may try to hold sham referenda to try to add a veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy, and this is straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook,” said Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the…

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Biden’s response to China hack seen as tepid due to US economic ties with Beijing | Washington Examiner

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When the White House announced President Joe Biden rallied American allies to condemn China’s state-sponsored hacking, many in Washington were perplexed as he bypassed more punitive measures.

China’s Ministry of State Security, which U.S. intelligence officials accused of cyber spying and hacking for profit, was behind multiple “zero-day” exploits that breached the Microsoft Exchange Server, prompting Biden’s response. The attacks take advantage of security holes in widely used software, such as the Microsoft Exchange email service, and can operate undetected until the hole is patched.

WHITE HOUSE DEFENDS BIDEN’S ‘COORDINATED’ RESPONSE TO CHINESE GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED HACKERS

Asked this week why Biden seemed to hold off on a stronger condemnation of China, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “That was not the intention he was trying to project.”

The effort to coordinate multilateral partners from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and NATO “was under [Biden’s] direction,” Psaki said. “He continues to feel its important to lead from a position of strength in close coordination with our partners and allies around the world, and he takes the malicious cyber activity — whether it’s from Russia or China, whomever the actors may be — quite seriously.”

She said economic ties with China wouldn’t stop further U.S. retaliation if deemed necessary.

Dmitri Alperovitch, who leads the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington, D.C.-based cybersecurity think tank, questioned Biden’s inconsistent response in a blog post in light of a forceful retaliation to the SolarWinds breach that U.S. intelligence linked to Russia earlier this year.

“Having drawn a red line in the case of the SolarWinds breach … the United States ought to calibrate its responses to subsequent attacks relative to that line,” he wrote. “By every conceivable technical standard, the Exchange hacks were the more damaging and more reckless of the two actions. For the sake of both strategic and normative consistency, the administration should be prepared to impose more serious consequences.”

It is hard to say why the Biden administration has refrained from using…

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