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☆ Nigeria Election: Vote Counting Amid Reports of Attacks and Delays
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Smartphones Emerge as Key Tool for War in UkraineRussia’s invasion of Ukraine is already the most intensely documented war in history, thanks to smartphones. The devices are also playing a role in military strategy. And the country’s tech sector is still coping despite the fallout from the war. Host Zoe Thomas checks back with one Ukraine tech founder and is later joined by WSJ's bureau chief at large Stephen Fidler. Photo by Ingus/Storyblocks

☆ As China Calls for Peace, U.S. Believes Beijing Is Mulling Artillery and Drone Deliveries to Moscow
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Michael R. Gordon | Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

U.S. officials say China is considering delivering artillery and drones to Russian forces that could prolong the war, even as Beijing called for peace talks to end the fighting on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The officials said no weapons deliveries have yet taken place. But, if China were to go ahead and deliver lethal aid to Russia, the resulting tensions could shape Western relations with Beijing for years and potentially have profound consequences on the battlefield in Ukraine, at a point when both sides are gearing up for a spring offensive.

☆ As China Calls for Peace, U.S. Believes Beijing Is Considering Artillery and Drone Deliveries to Moscow
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Michael R. Gordon | Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ ‘Everything Is Fine’: Chinese Star Fan Bingbing Debuts Film After Tax Scandal
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ The Conflict in Ukraine Offers Old—and New—Lessons in 21st-Century Warfare
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The war in Ukraine, now reaching the one-year mark, has reinforced some old lessons and suggested some new ones about what makes for battlefield success in the 21st century. Among its innovations, drones, some adapted from cheap commercial platforms, have been used for surveillance and delivering munitions more than in any previous conflict. They have contributed to a highly visible battlefield and shown how inexpensive technologies can sometimes thwart more expensive custom-built ones.

☆ Russia, China Challenge U.S.-Led World Order
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Stephen Fidler | Michael R. Gordon | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A series of high-profile events on the international stage has laid bare the perilous state of great-power relations as Russia and China challenge the U.S.-led global order and raised the prospect that they could deteriorate further. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia would suspend its participation in the last remaining nuclear-arms treaty between Moscow and Washington, a vestige of the security architecture that has helped keep the peace for decades.

☆ Russia’s War in Ukraine Revives the West—for Now
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-18 | by ( Stephen Fidler | Marcus Walker | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

One unexpected outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine has been the resurgence of the West as a strong security alliance. For how long is still in doubt. The skepticism common in Western capitals in recent years about the unity of the trans-Atlantic alliance may have encouraged Moscow’s decision to challenge Europe’s post-Cold War order. If so, that Russian calculation backfired. The invasion of Ukraine rapidly welded the U.S. and its European allies back together, with Washington resuming its old leadership role in the continent.

☆ Smartphones Are Changing the War in Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Stephen Fidler | Thomas Grove | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Cellphones have been a crucial tool for civilians as the fighting has raged in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine. Smartphones are making the war in Ukraine the most intensively documented in history, changing the shape of the conflict and transforming the world’s understanding of it. Each of the millions of devices in and around Ukraine are sensors that can provide data located to place and time. Their microphones and cameras can record and transmit sounds and images that depict the facts of war or provide tools for propaganda. These records are allowing investigators to build extensive visual archives of the conflict that could eventually provide a reckoning for war crimes.

☆ Russia Likely Lost More Than Half of Its Tanks in Ukraine, Estimates Show
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

LONDON—Russia has likely lost more than 2,000 tanks in its war in Ukraine, more than half of its operational tank fleet, according to estimates released Wednesday from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The London-based think tank said the loss of the weapons is forcing Russia to rely on its stores of older weapons even as it seeks to increase industrial production.

Behind the decision to sharply step up Western military aid to Ukraine lies a worry in some Western capitals that time might be on Russia’s side. That concern suggests the window for Ukraine isn’t indefinite and it needs powerful Western weapons—main battle tanks, other armored vehicles and more air-defense systems—soon to reinforce the momentum it achieved in offensive successes around Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson last year.

☆ Persistent Price Pressures Seen as Top Global Risk in 2025
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

An annual survey carried out by the World Economic Forum shows policy makers, industry leaders and experts on risk expect high inflation and pressure on energy and food prices to persist and pose the most serious of a growing list of risks to global stability in 2025. The survey of more than 1,200 experts and leaders, released on Wednesday ahead of the WEF annual meeting in Davos next week, presents a picture of new risks combined with the re-emergence of older threats that many current policy makers and business leaders are unfamiliar with. These older risks include inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars, social unrest, outflows of capital from emerging markets, geopolitical confrontation and the specter of nuclear war

The U.S. will soon send Ukraine their first Bradley Fighting Vehicles, such as these deployed in Latvia. The arrival of armored vehicles from the U.S. and allies on the battlefield in Ukraine is designed to bolster Kyiv’s momentum in the war as well shore up defenses, as U.S. officials anticipate another Russian offensive when the ground thaws. The latest aid package, announced Friday, is the largest yet. It includes for the first time dozens of Bradley Fighting Vehicles that can carry troops and new artillery pieces that don’t need to be towed.

☆ Russia’s Repeated Errors Jeopardize Its Ukraine Forces, Military Analysts Say
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-03 | by ( Stephen Fidler | Daniel Michaels | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Russian forces are repeating basic errors that are compromising the security and safety of their own soldiers in occupied Ukraine, according to military analysts, including failing to shut down cellphone use in areas within range of Ukrainian artillery where troops are concentrated. In the latest example that suggests poor Russian operational security, Ukrainian forces destroyed a facility used as a base for mobilized troops in the city of Makiivka, in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine.

☆ Six Factors That Will Shape Russia’s Winter War in Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Stephen Fidler | Photographs Manu Brabo For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

As Russia’s war in Ukraine moves into another year, the next few months will provide critical clues as to whether Moscow’s forces will be able to halt or even reverse the momentum gained by Ukrainian troops on the battlefield. With the end of the campaign still looking a long way off, here are six big factors that will influence the trajectory of the war in the early months of 2023. The WeatherIt is still the season of mud in Ukraine. Temperatures have dropped below freezing but haven’t stayed low for long enough to harden the ground. Across much of the front line dividing Russian and Ukrainian forces, the tempo of the conflict has slowed.

After a string of battlefield losses in Ukraine in recent months, President Vladimir Putin faces a big test at home: mobilizing Russia’s economy to feed the war effort. Russian officials have crisscrossed the country to increase production and replenish dwindling stockpiles of missiles and other munitions. State budget data from the Russian Ministry of Finance shows defense expenditures rising this year by around 30% compared with 2021 to around $78 billion and increasing further next year to around $82.5 billion.

☆ Vladimir Putin’s Red Lines, War Aims Shift in Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-27 | by ( Laurence Norman | Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

President Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine has been punctuated by frequent Russian threats to escalate the war. Many have been later dialed down or ignored, leaving the U.S. and its allies guessing what the Russian leader’s real red lines are. Russia’s repeated ultimatums and U-turns, along with its ever-shifting war aims, have reinforced the belief among Western government officials that Mr. Putin is being forced to improvise in a war that has slipped out of his control.

☆ Russia’s Munitions Shortages Raise Questions Over How Long It Can Continue Ukraine War
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Stephen Fidler | Ann M. Simmons | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Russia has been burning through equipment, ammunition and weaponry at rates that have raised questions about how effectively and for how long it can continue to prosecute its war against Ukraine. The challenge of sustaining the military effort isn’t unique to Russia, which after making significant territorial gains early in the war has been yielding territory back to Ukraine in phases.

☆ Winter’s Onset Will Change Russia’s War in Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Matthew Luxmoore | Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

KYIV, Ukraine—Winter is approaching on the Ukrainian steppe. As temperatures fall, waves of chilling rain follow, dissolving roads and fields, turning them to mud that mires men and equipment. Then comes the deep freeze and snow, hardening the ground but making it tougher to fight. Armies on both sides of the war in Ukraine are girding for the unforgiving weather and shorter days of winter, which will affect the health and morale of troops, diminish the effectiveness of weapons and intelligence-gathering sensors and multiply the logistical difficulties of keeping soldiers in the field.

Eight months into Ukraine’s war with Russia, its emerging strategy is combining classic military operations with opportunism on the battlefield to exploit the incompetence of Russian forces—and is changing the course of the battle. Ukraine’s command structure encourages junior officers to make in-the-moment battlefield decisions, an authority that they have used to seize opportunities and quickly take advantage of enemy weaknesses.

☆ Russia’s Air Attacks in Ukraine Have Little Strategic Value
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-10 | by ( Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Russia’s assault Monday with dozens of missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and their electricity infrastructure showed Moscow’s ability to hit targets across the entire country. But it also made clear the limits of such tactics in advancing Russia’s war aims. Ukraine said its air defenses had intercepted roughly half of the 83 missiles that Russia fired in salvoes, a number that couldn’t be independently verified. Authorities said 11 people were killed in the strikes and more than 80 injured as missiles hit apartment blocks, power stations and other targets.

☆ Vladimir Putin’s Nuclear Threats Work, but Using the Weapons Probably Wouldn’t
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-22 | by ( Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

With the possible exception of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, no global leader throws around nuclear threats more freely than Russian President Vladimir Putin. The world heard more of the same this week. The reason he issues such threats is that they work. Fears of Russian escalation have limited the involvement of the U.S. and its allies in the war in Ukraine. While supplying Kyiv with arms that have been critical in turning the tide of the war, Western governments have ruled out steps, including the imposition of a no-fly zone, that would lead to a direct confrontation between forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia.

☆ Vladimir Putin’s Energy War With Europe Seems to Falter
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-18 | by ( Stephen Fidler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Vladimir Putin’s economic campaign to force European governments to abandon support for Ukraine by sharply curbing their natural-gas supplies looks to be faltering as gas prices fall, Russian government finances deteriorate and the continent sets plans to ease the pressure on households and businesses. Russia’s long-term success in the economic fight with Europe is seen as critical by both sides in deciding the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine. But signs that Mr. Putin’s economic strategy is struggling are coinciding with serious reverses on the battlefield as Ukrainian forces regain swaths of Russian-occupied territory and as the Russian president has been forced to acknowledge the concerns of the Chinese and Indian leaders about the invasion.

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