The Frontlines

Michael Wasiura

Russia and Ukraine Correspondent

Russian Propaganda Fooled Elon Musk, Just Like It Fooled Many Others

Earlier this month, excerpts from Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk revealed that the billionaire tech founder had thwarted a planned Ukrainian attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet. The incident in question, which occurred in September 2022, involved Musk denying Starlink internet access to a fleet of Ukrainian unmanned waterborne vehicles that had been deployed to strike the Russian naval base at Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea.

Musk was purportedly motivated by fears that the operation might prompt Moscow to "escalate" its war against Ukraine by offering up a nuclear response.

Musk was wrong about the location of this particular Kremlin "red line." In October 2022, one month after its explosive-laden watercraft washed up harmlessly on the shores of Crimea due to the lack of a Starlink connection, Ukraine managed to execute a successful strike, damaging as many as four Russian warships in the process. Then, just last week, yet another attack on the naval base caused still further damage to the Russian fleet.

Unsurprisingly, Moscow's response has not been to wipe Kyiv—let alone London or Washington—off the face of the Earth. Instead, just as it has done every time one of its purported "red lines" has been crossed, Moscow has proven that its nuclear bluster is just that: a bluff.

But it is important to note that these repeated bluffs should not be considered as proof that Russia has no nuclear "red line," only that each and every point-of-no-return hinted at so far in the conflict has proven to be a Kremlin deception.

Yes, Elon Musk fell for a false Kremlin propaganda narrative. However, he has a lot of company around the world. At various points in time, countless citizens of civilized countries have fallen for one or another of the Kremlin's deceptions, which include, among many, these claims: that the United States had surrounded Russia with a ring of biological and chemical weapons facilities acting in the guise of public health institutes; that Putin was so informationally isolated on February 24, 2022 that he genuinely believed Ukrainian IT workers would greet Russian tank crews as liberators on the streets of Kyiv.

Let he who has never been taken in by a false Kremlin propaganda narrative cast the first rhetorical stone at Elon.

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Ukraine's Biggest Attack on Crimea

Ukraine has carried out a large-scale drone attack across the Black Sea and Crimea that comes after Kyiv claimed success in hitting a Russian military headquarters on the occupied peninsula.

Ukraine intends to recapture Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and the peninsula hosts many military installations that have come under increasing attack as Kyiv seeks to degrade Russian logistics and equipment.

The Russian defense ministry said on Thursday that it had shot down 19 drones and that explosions were heard in the Crimean settlements of Novofedorivka, Saky, Yevpatoriya, Dzhankoi and Balaklava.

Russian troops and prominent milibloggers are saying that the Kremlin is giving out "ill-conceived and unsupported" orders to urgently regain territory south of Bakhmut that was recently captured by Ukraine.

In a video published to social media, members of Russia's 1442nd Regiment, a mobilized group from the Altai Krai region, said that they chose to abandon their military equipment near the village of Klishchiivka—a town roughly four miles southwest of Bakhmut that was reclaimed by Kyiv earlier this week—after being told to attack in the direction of the Dontesk city to reclaim lost territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Moscow's grueling war in Ukraine to end "as soon as possible," Turkey's leader said, as the almost 19-month-old conflict shows no signs of finishing.

"It's quite obvious that this war is going to last a long time," Recep Tayyip Erdo?an told PBS News.

Ankara has acted as a negotiator between Moscow and Kyiv since the outbreak of all-out war in Ukraine in February 2022. Turkey was heavily involved in the United Nations-brokered Black Sea grain deal, which had allowed Ukraine to export grain from its southern ports and stave off fears of a global food shortage. Russia refused to renew this deal in July.

Ramzan Kadyrov's Telegram channel has released a video showing the Chechen leader in a hospital, as speculation continues to mount over his health.

The Telegram post sought to dispel rumors that Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is seriously ill or even dead. Speculation about his health intensified last week when Ukrainian military intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov said that the Chechen leader had been unwell for a long time with systemic health problems.

Fear of Russian Nuclear Escalation Still Impeding Military Aid to Ukraine

BY MICHAEL WASIURA IN ODESA, UKRAINE

Since Russia launched its invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukraine's Western partners have pledged to provide Kyiv with more than over $100 billion in military aid. But the fears in some capitals that the shipment of certain armaments might prove to represent a Kremlin 'red line' that could lead to nuclear war has delayed the delivery of certain weapons systems past the point at which they could have been put to their most effective possible use.

"Starting even before February 24, 2022, the Russians placed a major bet on nuclear deterrence," Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine's National Institute for Strategic Studies, told Newsweek.

On February 19, 2022, five days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was publicly shown personally overseeing strategic nuclear weapons exercises that involved two ballistic missiles flying thousands of miles to their targets on the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula. Then, on February 27, the fourth day of the invasion, Putin was shown again on domestic television, this time ordering Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov to "transfer the deterrence capabilities of the Russian army to a special mode of combat readiness."

The message appeared not to be lost on Washington, or on several of its European allies.

"American policymakers were raised on Cold War theories of escalation management, and it was very easy for the Russians to manipulate them," Bielieskov explained. "The threat of nuclear escalation proved to be the most powerful instrument in Russia's military toolkit."

The effects of that threat were visible from the start. Bielieskov referenced overall Western hesitancy in early March 2022 to provide Soviet legacy fighter aircraft to Ukraine–this despite Warsaw's willingness to transfer several of its Mig-29 aircraft eastward. After that plan fell through, Polish ambassador to the United States Marek Magierowski went on CNN to voice his frustrations.

"Our American partners rejected this proposal," Magierowski said on March 5, 2022, in an interview with CNN, "because they have come to the conclusion that it was too escalatory."

While the Western coalition supporting Ukraine decided this past summer that it would begin preparing to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, the planes themselves are not expected to be in the skies over the battlefield until at least the start of 2024. Throughout the war, similar delays have held back Ukrainian efforts.

"It took one-and-a-half months to debate HIMARS," Bielieskov said of the spring 2022 decision to supply Ukraine with the multiple-launch rocket system that has since compelled Russia to reorganize its logistical chains. "As a result, for an extra six weeks Russia was able to utilize its artillery advantage to level Popasna, to destroy Severodonetsk, and by doing that, they inflicted major damage on Ukraine's professional military."

"If HIMARS had been provided earlier," he added, "we not only would have arrested this artillery offensive earlier by striking warehouses and by striking command and control nodes. We also would have been able to preserve many more of our best trained, most experienced troops."

As a result of those personnel losses, the training and integration of Ukrainian soldiers mobilized after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion has also been less effective than it otherwise might have been.

"The task of the professional army is not only to repel the initial attack and buy time, but also to transfer its skills to newly mobilized troops," Bielieskov explained. "Due to the West's prioritization of escalation management, the Ukrainian army was not able to do this."

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