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]]> <![CDATA[Full Video: China’s 2025 V-Day Military Parade]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=12491 Sat, 06 Sep 2025 09:48:03 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=12491 ]]> ]]> <![CDATA[Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin arrive in Alaska for high-stakes summit on Ukraine]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=12396 Sun, 17 Aug 2025 09:29:14 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=12396


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]]> <![CDATA[Russia's Victory Day Parade 2019]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=10885 Sun, 21 Jul 2024 11:37:02 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=10885 Russia's Victory Day Parade 2019: Best Moments - Parada do Dia da Vitória 2019 Melhores Momentos HD







]]> Russia's Victory Day Parade 2019: Best Moments - Parada do Dia da Vitória 2019 Melhores Momentos HD







]]> <![CDATA[Class VIII on the Battlefield: Enabling a Responsive Supply Chain]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=10013 Sat, 19 Aug 2023 11:34:09 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=10013
Class VIII on the Battlefield: Enabling a Responsive Supply Chain

By Maj. Gen. Rodney Fogg and Col. Sydney SmithOctober 21, 2020
[صورة: size0-full.jpg]
The Army’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated a very real shortfall in the Army’s ability to track medical supply visibility and readiness. The lack of end-to-end capability for Class VIII (medical) supply requisition, materiel management, distribution, and medical maintenance poses an unmitigated risk to the Army’s ability to meet the demand of large-scale combat operations (LSCO). Additionally, our inability to see, anticipate, and understand Class VIII requirements across formations masks critical vulnerabilities, choke points, and shortfalls that cause us to be reactive rather than responsive. We must address these challenges to enable future success during LSCO and in future disaster response events in our nation.
Over the past few decades, medical logistics (MEDLOG) has operated from a just-in-time demand planning model in which medical professionals had access to the national catalog of medical supplies and equipment at all levels. This model worked extremely well in counterinsurgency operations that had semi-permissive environments with mature operating bases, steady operational tempo, and established contracts that enabled customized Soldier treatment. The demands of LSCO with a near-peer competitor in a multi-domain environment will fundamentally change the way we conduct decisive action tasks. This change will also test the Army’s ability to synchronize and integrate sustainment to keep pace with corps and division formations. While we have previously been able to rely on a top-down enterprise approach, the depth, breadth, lethality, and tempo of the battlefield will necessitate empowering commanders at echelon to synchronize all warfighting capabilities to position themselves to win against our adversaries. Embracing the changes required for LSCO will also improve the Army’s ability to respond to our humanitarian
and homeland defense missions.
What is changing? Synchronization and integration are key aspects of Army doctrine and concepts, to include the Army’s Field Manual 3-0, Operations; Army Doctrine Publication 4-0, Sustainment; and U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Pamphlet 525-3-1, The U.S. Army Multi-Domain Operations 2028 concept. The Army must move from stove-piped functional commodity management systems to ones that integrate, manage, and share critical information from the tactical unit to the industrial base and from the medical professional to the logistics personnel charged with distributing the critical supplies on the battlefield. This shift requires a holistic approach to supply chain management which includes developing readiness drivers for tactical medical equipment sets, implementing demand-planning factors, tracking and maintaining Class VIII in the standard sustainment resource management system, Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS- Army). As some medical supplies have unique characteristics and special handling requirements, institutions will need to train personnel with the agility to manage specific medical supplies while also being able to harness the materiel and distribution management cap-abilities that reside in sustainment systems. This approach will give strategic planners, combat medics, and leaders a common operating picture and a shared ability to anticipate, track, and deliver critical medical supplies to enable the Army Health System to save lives, support lethality, and prevent fewer deaths on the battlefield.

In late 2019, Army senior leaders made the decision to move tactical medical logistics management, including Class VIII and medical maintenance management, into GCSS-Army. This will be implemented through a phased approach. This will prepare the medical logistics community to deliver a health service capability that is responsive, capable, and efficient in meeting patient needs in LSCO. Moving to GCSS-Army will set the conditions to conduct medical supply chain management, medical asset management, medical readiness, and medical property accountability within the operating force environment.
While the integration of Class VIII into GCSS-Army may simply seem like a way to improve the ‘business’ of medical logistics, in reality, this move will enable outsized battlefield effects. It will provide a single system to enable leaders on the battlefield to anticipate, allocate, and synchronize the flow of resources in support of commanders’ requirements thereby allowing leaders to quickly make better decisions. It will simplify information requirements and co-ordination lines to bring a clear and rapid understanding of what is required, when it is required, where it is required, and why it is required. It sets the stage for future improvements under the enterprise umbrella to keep combatant commanders and subordinate leaders at every echelon set for mission success. Ultimately, integration of MEDLOG into GCSS-Army ensures Class VIII is effectively delivered on the battlefield and enables providers to deliver life saving care to Soldiers in combat.
As we modernize the Army, we must deliver an integrated MEDLOG supply chain from fort to foxhole that enables freedom of action and endurance. It must be responsive to a broad spectrum of missions, from strategic to tactical and humanitarian to LSCO. Integrating MEDLOG into GCSS-Army is the first step to modernizing our supply chain.
--------------------
Maj. Gen. Rodney Fogg, commanding general of Combined Arms Support Command, is a graduate of Quartermaster Basic and Advanced Officer Leadership Courses, Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College. He has a master's degree in logistics management from Florida Institute of Technology and a master's degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.

Col. Sydney Smith currently serves as director of Fielded Forces Integration Directorate, U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Command. Smith is a graduate of Quartermaster Officer Basic Course, Combined Logistics Officer Advanced Course, Command and General Staff College, School for Advanced Military Studies, and Senior Service College. She holds a Master in Military Arts and Science from the Command and General Staff College and a Master in Resource Strategy from The Eisenhower School (formerly the Industrial College of the Armed Forces).
--------------------
This article was published in the October-December 2020 issue of Army Sustainment.
]]>
Class VIII on the Battlefield: Enabling a Responsive Supply Chain

By Maj. Gen. Rodney Fogg and Col. Sydney SmithOctober 21, 2020
[صورة: size0-full.jpg]
The Army’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated a very real shortfall in the Army’s ability to track medical supply visibility and readiness. The lack of end-to-end capability for Class VIII (medical) supply requisition, materiel management, distribution, and medical maintenance poses an unmitigated risk to the Army’s ability to meet the demand of large-scale combat operations (LSCO). Additionally, our inability to see, anticipate, and understand Class VIII requirements across formations masks critical vulnerabilities, choke points, and shortfalls that cause us to be reactive rather than responsive. We must address these challenges to enable future success during LSCO and in future disaster response events in our nation.
Over the past few decades, medical logistics (MEDLOG) has operated from a just-in-time demand planning model in which medical professionals had access to the national catalog of medical supplies and equipment at all levels. This model worked extremely well in counterinsurgency operations that had semi-permissive environments with mature operating bases, steady operational tempo, and established contracts that enabled customized Soldier treatment. The demands of LSCO with a near-peer competitor in a multi-domain environment will fundamentally change the way we conduct decisive action tasks. This change will also test the Army’s ability to synchronize and integrate sustainment to keep pace with corps and division formations. While we have previously been able to rely on a top-down enterprise approach, the depth, breadth, lethality, and tempo of the battlefield will necessitate empowering commanders at echelon to synchronize all warfighting capabilities to position themselves to win against our adversaries. Embracing the changes required for LSCO will also improve the Army’s ability to respond to our humanitarian
and homeland defense missions.
What is changing? Synchronization and integration are key aspects of Army doctrine and concepts, to include the Army’s Field Manual 3-0, Operations; Army Doctrine Publication 4-0, Sustainment; and U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Pamphlet 525-3-1, The U.S. Army Multi-Domain Operations 2028 concept. The Army must move from stove-piped functional commodity management systems to ones that integrate, manage, and share critical information from the tactical unit to the industrial base and from the medical professional to the logistics personnel charged with distributing the critical supplies on the battlefield. This shift requires a holistic approach to supply chain management which includes developing readiness drivers for tactical medical equipment sets, implementing demand-planning factors, tracking and maintaining Class VIII in the standard sustainment resource management system, Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS- Army). As some medical supplies have unique characteristics and special handling requirements, institutions will need to train personnel with the agility to manage specific medical supplies while also being able to harness the materiel and distribution management cap-abilities that reside in sustainment systems. This approach will give strategic planners, combat medics, and leaders a common operating picture and a shared ability to anticipate, track, and deliver critical medical supplies to enable the Army Health System to save lives, support lethality, and prevent fewer deaths on the battlefield.

In late 2019, Army senior leaders made the decision to move tactical medical logistics management, including Class VIII and medical maintenance management, into GCSS-Army. This will be implemented through a phased approach. This will prepare the medical logistics community to deliver a health service capability that is responsive, capable, and efficient in meeting patient needs in LSCO. Moving to GCSS-Army will set the conditions to conduct medical supply chain management, medical asset management, medical readiness, and medical property accountability within the operating force environment.
While the integration of Class VIII into GCSS-Army may simply seem like a way to improve the ‘business’ of medical logistics, in reality, this move will enable outsized battlefield effects. It will provide a single system to enable leaders on the battlefield to anticipate, allocate, and synchronize the flow of resources in support of commanders’ requirements thereby allowing leaders to quickly make better decisions. It will simplify information requirements and co-ordination lines to bring a clear and rapid understanding of what is required, when it is required, where it is required, and why it is required. It sets the stage for future improvements under the enterprise umbrella to keep combatant commanders and subordinate leaders at every echelon set for mission success. Ultimately, integration of MEDLOG into GCSS-Army ensures Class VIII is effectively delivered on the battlefield and enables providers to deliver life saving care to Soldiers in combat.
As we modernize the Army, we must deliver an integrated MEDLOG supply chain from fort to foxhole that enables freedom of action and endurance. It must be responsive to a broad spectrum of missions, from strategic to tactical and humanitarian to LSCO. Integrating MEDLOG into GCSS-Army is the first step to modernizing our supply chain.
--------------------
Maj. Gen. Rodney Fogg, commanding general of Combined Arms Support Command, is a graduate of Quartermaster Basic and Advanced Officer Leadership Courses, Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College. He has a master's degree in logistics management from Florida Institute of Technology and a master's degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.

Col. Sydney Smith currently serves as director of Fielded Forces Integration Directorate, U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Command. Smith is a graduate of Quartermaster Officer Basic Course, Combined Logistics Officer Advanced Course, Command and General Staff College, School for Advanced Military Studies, and Senior Service College. She holds a Master in Military Arts and Science from the Command and General Staff College and a Master in Resource Strategy from The Eisenhower School (formerly the Industrial College of the Armed Forces).
--------------------
This article was published in the October-December 2020 issue of Army Sustainment.
]]> <![CDATA[?How suicide became the hidden toll of the war in Ukraine]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=7598 Fri, 11 Feb 2022 18:12:00 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=7598 ?How suicide became the hidden toll of the war in Ukraine

By Joel Gunter
BBC News in Kyiv, Ukraine
10/02/2022


[صورة: _123195153_dscf0759-5.jpg]
Image caption, Father Sergiy Dmitriev is a military chaplain. 'I have always buried the suicide victims," he said. "I never refused."
Back in April 2018, when the war in eastern Ukraine was a little over four years in, Father Sergiy Dmitriev was standing behind the front lines near the city of Maryinka telling a joke. It was Easter Sunday - a calm day in a calm stretch of weeks along that part of the front - and the mood was good. The priest was planning to lead a service for the troops.
But as Father Dmitriev was finishing his joke, the calm was broken by a gunshot - too loud and too close to be a bullet whistling over from the separatist side of the lines. In the building next to where the priest was standing, a young engineer had taken his gun and turned it on himself.
According to Father Dmitriev, and Andriy Kozinchuk, a military psychologist who was also there that day, a group of officers came over at the sound of the shot and, seeing the dead man, mocked him ruthlessly.
"The officers came and they said, 'What a moron, he shot himself,'" the priest recalled.
"I said, 'We have a psychologist, maybe other fighters should talk to him?'.
"They said 'No, why?' They treated it casually, as if nothing happened. The guy was a drunk, they said, there's nothing more to it."
Father Dmitriev travels to the front lines in the east from Kyiv every few weeks, to act as a military chaplain to the troops. He is not necessarily the person you imagine when you think of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine - he has a pierced ear, swears a lot, wears jeans and a hoodie and has a passion for cars.
He has heard about so many military suicides now that the story of the engineer in Maryinka no longer really stands out from the rest. But he was reminded of the man this past December when he received a message saying the officer who had mocked him was dead.

"That officer was the most ardent critic of the engineer," Father Dmitriev said. "And he shot himself too."
[صورة: _123195157_dscf0680.jpg]
Image caption, Andriy Kozinchuk, a military psychologist who serves at the front, points to a tattoo that means 'I've got your back'
As the grinding war in eastern Ukraine enters its ninth year, and Russia masses invasion-size forces along its borders, the country is yet to reckon with the toll of suicide on its troops and veterans. Suicides are filed under so-called "non-combat" deaths, but the Ministry of Defence has previously refused to make the numbers public. Families of the victims cannot claim the honour of a combat death, nor the financial support.
In 2018, then-chief military prosecutor Anatoliy Matios said 554 active service members had taken their own lives in the first four years of war, but the number was not corroborated by the Ministry of Defence. Another anecdotal figure from 2018 put the number at over 1,000. Military sources told the BBC that any official numbers were almost certainly undercounts because many suicides were simply not recorded as such. The total number of combat dead among the Ukrainian armed forces, as of November last year, was 4,619.
"As long as the war lasts, they will never publish those numbers," said Volodymyr Voloshin, a military psychologist in Kyiv. "They fear the Russians will use them to damage our morale."
The Ministry of Defence did not reply directly to a request for the statistics. A spokesman for the Ukrainian army told the BBC the numbers had never been hidden, but it would take at least week to produce them.
The Deputy Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Inna Darahanchuk, said their records showed about 700 veterans had died by suicide since 2014. But she said it was difficult to know the real number because it was not always clear who was a veteran or how someone had died.
A veteran's family is only entitled to financial and social support if they can prove the suicide was related to the war, Ms Darahanchuk said. But "knowing that it is impossible to prove that suicide is related to the hostilities, relatives try to hide the fact that the veteran committed suicide because of their religious beliefs", she said - a striking admission that loved ones are left caught between an unforgiving government bureaucracy and an unforgiving faith.
Suicide remains a crime in Ukraine, and the Orthodox Church - the predominant faith - generally opposes the use of consecrated ground and the presence of priests for the burials of those who take their own lives.
"A priest cannot read the funeral service for somebody who committed suicide, he cannot even attend the funeral," said Father Dmitriev. "Especially if it is a small town. The family simply refuses to bury them."
Father Dmitiriev does not share this view. Before the war, he worked in a hospital and he insisted on funeral rites for anyone who took their own life, he said. "I never refused, not a single time, to bury them." Because he was attached to the brigade of the engineer who shot himself and the officer who followed, both men were afforded a proper burial attended by fellow soldiers and marked by prayers.
[صورة: _123196727_mediaitem123196726.jpg]
IMAGE SOURCE, EPA
Image caption, A Ukrainian serviceman on a front line near the city of Donetsk last month. About 14,000 people have died in the war 2014
Ukraine has among the world's worst suicide rates by population, and there is a deep stigma associated with the act. None of the many relatives of military personnel who died by suicide approached for this story agreed to talk in any form.
"In Ukraine, the son or daughter who committed suicide is never mentioned in the same breath as the one who died in combat, and their families become very isolated," said Oksana Ivantsiiv, a Ukrainian director working on a ********ary on the issue.
The stigma is part of a much wider lack of progress on mental health care in Ukraine that has roots in the Soviet era, when psychology was cited only in the course of detaining and punishing dissidents.
"Psychology or psychiatry was purely punitive," said Dr Ulana Suprun, a former acting health minister of Ukraine. "Dissidents were put in psychiatric hospitals, and if you had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital you could never take a job in government, or even work as a teller in a bank."
According to Dr Suprun, mental health care remained virtually "non-existent" in Ukraine until 2014, when protesters overthrew the country's Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovytch and volunteer psychologists set up a tent on the Maidan square in Kyiv to encourage them to talk about the trauma of the uprising. The psychologists discovered that people weren't willing to approach the tent in public, and so relocated to a nearby trade union building. When the building was burned down, the local McDonald's stepped in to offer free coffee and a temporary home.
[صورة: _123196731_dscf0673.jpg]
Image caption, Paul Niland runs Ukraine's first suicide helpline. Ukraine's government is yet to donate any funds
Dr Suprun took up the cause of this fledgling mental health movement and in 2018 helped establish the country's first ever suicide helpline - five or six decades after similar phone lines were set up in the US and UK. Dr Suprun deputised a Dublin-born Kyiv publisher named Paul Niland to run it.
Lifeline Ukraine works from a small office in an industrial area of Kyiv above a car dealership that donates the space for free. It employs a staff of 26 to field calls in shifts around the clock, paying their wages with donations from the UK, US, EU, Australia, and some private businesses. Notably, the total donation from the Ukrainian government to date is zero, though a congratulatory letter from the defence minister hangs on the office wall.
The line is staffed by a number of veterans of the recent war with Russia, who in turn take lots of calls from fellow veterans, particularly in the early hours of the weekend when drunkenness is most common. The staff often try to connect with veterans having suicidal thoughts by asking them to recall a time and place before 2014 when they were happy - a kind of reset to a less stressful life. Sometimes they suggest the caller finds an object that reminds them of that time.
Svetlana, a veteran who later trained in psychology and who was on shift at the office earlier this week, said she gave her husband an embroidered handkerchief when he went to the front in 2014, in the hope he would allow it to transport him if those sorts of thoughts ever came to mind.
"What helped a fighter cope before the war will help him cope in the future," she said.
[صورة: _123195149_dscf0642-2.jpg]
Image caption, Svetlana answers the phone at Ukraine's first suicide helpline. Behind her are the badges of the veterans who work there

But many veterans aren't coping. They call in with advanced PTSD, Svetlana said, "often trying to mute their pain with alcohol". The number of calls to Lifeline Ukraine hasn't spiked with the escalation of threat from Russia, but the log book charting what callers talk about has shifted markedly towards the looming threat.
"They are anxious about this uncertainty, it is dragging on," Svetlana said. It was causing rifts among people who were previously close, she said. "No one knows any longer who is your enemy and who is your friend."
This estrangement, like suicides, alcoholism, and domestic violence, is among the less visible scars of the war. It has divided friends and families and even branches of the church, and stressed the population.
"This is what Putin wants - a Ukraine that is constantly under stress, unable to make long term plans, unable to invest in a future," said Dr Suprun, the former health minister.
The war has affected Ukraine's ability to make progress on mental health care but the country's cultural taboos long predated the conflict, Andriy Kozinchuk, the military psychologist who works with Father Dmitriev, pointed out.
"It has been like this for centuries," he said. "In our culture, men would rather die than ask for help. We say that when a soldier is singing his heart is bleeding. So if he says, 'I am fine', he is not good."
[صورة: _123195151_dscf0779.jpg]
Image caption, Olexa Sokil is a veteran of the first years of the war in eastern Ukraine. He is now training to become a priest
Olexa Sokil, a taciturn veteran who walks with the aid of a stick, and who experienced some of the worst the war had to offer in 2014, used to say 'I am fine', and he came close to killing himself several times, he said.
It wasn't until he travelled to Lithuania to see a military psychologist there that he felt he could really talk. "I opened up to him," Mr Sokil said. "And he saved me."
But in Ukraine, he said, every veteran was being failed. "It is not just about stigma towards suicide, it is about stigma towards veterans," he said. "Ukraine is killing her veterans. We have the ministry, where millions are spent on showing off on sports competitions, while in small villages and towns veterans are dying because they don't even have a basic social worker to come to them and ask them how they are."
Mr Sokil just had a son, and he and his wife saw a psychologist throughout their pregnancy. "That psychologist put us back in one piece," he said. "We overcame our fear of loss."
Inna Darahanchuk, the deputy veterans' minister, told the BBC that improved mental health support was the ministry's priority for the coming year.
[صورة: _123195155_dscf0704.jpg]
Image caption, Father Dmitriev stands at the portrait wall for those who died, pointing to the first man from the priest's brigade to lose his life in the war.
In the centre of Kyiv, along one wall that borders Father Dmitriev's church, there are portraits of most of the Ukrainian combat dead. Missing from the wall are the men and women, active troops and veterans, who killed themselves. Father Dmitriev would like their portraits to be there too, but even though the wall was his idea, it was simply not possible, he said. "We could not take on that fight."
Some years before the war, Father Dmitriev discovered that there was a kind of loophole in the church's rules around suicide that allowed a priest to attend a funeral in order to support the dead person's family, as long as the priest did not lead the service.
This is how he gets round the system. And when he can, he encourages other Orthodox priests to do the same. There are not many who agree, he said, and those who do are still barred from reading the real funeral rites.
"I ask them simply, 'Will you go?'" Father Dmitriev said. "Go there and pray and say a few good words. Read the Lord's Prayer. The family will not know whether it is the full burial service or not."
]]> ?How suicide became the hidden toll of the war in Ukraine

By Joel Gunter
BBC News in Kyiv, Ukraine
10/02/2022


[صورة: _123195153_dscf0759-5.jpg]
Image caption, Father Sergiy Dmitriev is a military chaplain. 'I have always buried the suicide victims," he said. "I never refused."
Back in April 2018, when the war in eastern Ukraine was a little over four years in, Father Sergiy Dmitriev was standing behind the front lines near the city of Maryinka telling a joke. It was Easter Sunday - a calm day in a calm stretch of weeks along that part of the front - and the mood was good. The priest was planning to lead a service for the troops.
But as Father Dmitriev was finishing his joke, the calm was broken by a gunshot - too loud and too close to be a bullet whistling over from the separatist side of the lines. In the building next to where the priest was standing, a young engineer had taken his gun and turned it on himself.
According to Father Dmitriev, and Andriy Kozinchuk, a military psychologist who was also there that day, a group of officers came over at the sound of the shot and, seeing the dead man, mocked him ruthlessly.
"The officers came and they said, 'What a moron, he shot himself,'" the priest recalled.
"I said, 'We have a psychologist, maybe other fighters should talk to him?'.
"They said 'No, why?' They treated it casually, as if nothing happened. The guy was a drunk, they said, there's nothing more to it."
Father Dmitriev travels to the front lines in the east from Kyiv every few weeks, to act as a military chaplain to the troops. He is not necessarily the person you imagine when you think of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine - he has a pierced ear, swears a lot, wears jeans and a hoodie and has a passion for cars.
He has heard about so many military suicides now that the story of the engineer in Maryinka no longer really stands out from the rest. But he was reminded of the man this past December when he received a message saying the officer who had mocked him was dead.

"That officer was the most ardent critic of the engineer," Father Dmitriev said. "And he shot himself too."
[صورة: _123195157_dscf0680.jpg]
Image caption, Andriy Kozinchuk, a military psychologist who serves at the front, points to a tattoo that means 'I've got your back'
As the grinding war in eastern Ukraine enters its ninth year, and Russia masses invasion-size forces along its borders, the country is yet to reckon with the toll of suicide on its troops and veterans. Suicides are filed under so-called "non-combat" deaths, but the Ministry of Defence has previously refused to make the numbers public. Families of the victims cannot claim the honour of a combat death, nor the financial support.
In 2018, then-chief military prosecutor Anatoliy Matios said 554 active service members had taken their own lives in the first four years of war, but the number was not corroborated by the Ministry of Defence. Another anecdotal figure from 2018 put the number at over 1,000. Military sources told the BBC that any official numbers were almost certainly undercounts because many suicides were simply not recorded as such. The total number of combat dead among the Ukrainian armed forces, as of November last year, was 4,619.
"As long as the war lasts, they will never publish those numbers," said Volodymyr Voloshin, a military psychologist in Kyiv. "They fear the Russians will use them to damage our morale."
The Ministry of Defence did not reply directly to a request for the statistics. A spokesman for the Ukrainian army told the BBC the numbers had never been hidden, but it would take at least week to produce them.
The Deputy Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Inna Darahanchuk, said their records showed about 700 veterans had died by suicide since 2014. But she said it was difficult to know the real number because it was not always clear who was a veteran or how someone had died.
A veteran's family is only entitled to financial and social support if they can prove the suicide was related to the war, Ms Darahanchuk said. But "knowing that it is impossible to prove that suicide is related to the hostilities, relatives try to hide the fact that the veteran committed suicide because of their religious beliefs", she said - a striking admission that loved ones are left caught between an unforgiving government bureaucracy and an unforgiving faith.
Suicide remains a crime in Ukraine, and the Orthodox Church - the predominant faith - generally opposes the use of consecrated ground and the presence of priests for the burials of those who take their own lives.
"A priest cannot read the funeral service for somebody who committed suicide, he cannot even attend the funeral," said Father Dmitriev. "Especially if it is a small town. The family simply refuses to bury them."
Father Dmitiriev does not share this view. Before the war, he worked in a hospital and he insisted on funeral rites for anyone who took their own life, he said. "I never refused, not a single time, to bury them." Because he was attached to the brigade of the engineer who shot himself and the officer who followed, both men were afforded a proper burial attended by fellow soldiers and marked by prayers.
[صورة: _123196727_mediaitem123196726.jpg]
IMAGE SOURCE, EPA
Image caption, A Ukrainian serviceman on a front line near the city of Donetsk last month. About 14,000 people have died in the war 2014
Ukraine has among the world's worst suicide rates by population, and there is a deep stigma associated with the act. None of the many relatives of military personnel who died by suicide approached for this story agreed to talk in any form.
"In Ukraine, the son or daughter who committed suicide is never mentioned in the same breath as the one who died in combat, and their families become very isolated," said Oksana Ivantsiiv, a Ukrainian director working on a ********ary on the issue.
The stigma is part of a much wider lack of progress on mental health care in Ukraine that has roots in the Soviet era, when psychology was cited only in the course of detaining and punishing dissidents.
"Psychology or psychiatry was purely punitive," said Dr Ulana Suprun, a former acting health minister of Ukraine. "Dissidents were put in psychiatric hospitals, and if you had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital you could never take a job in government, or even work as a teller in a bank."
According to Dr Suprun, mental health care remained virtually "non-existent" in Ukraine until 2014, when protesters overthrew the country's Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovytch and volunteer psychologists set up a tent on the Maidan square in Kyiv to encourage them to talk about the trauma of the uprising. The psychologists discovered that people weren't willing to approach the tent in public, and so relocated to a nearby trade union building. When the building was burned down, the local McDonald's stepped in to offer free coffee and a temporary home.
[صورة: _123196731_dscf0673.jpg]
Image caption, Paul Niland runs Ukraine's first suicide helpline. Ukraine's government is yet to donate any funds
Dr Suprun took up the cause of this fledgling mental health movement and in 2018 helped establish the country's first ever suicide helpline - five or six decades after similar phone lines were set up in the US and UK. Dr Suprun deputised a Dublin-born Kyiv publisher named Paul Niland to run it.
Lifeline Ukraine works from a small office in an industrial area of Kyiv above a car dealership that donates the space for free. It employs a staff of 26 to field calls in shifts around the clock, paying their wages with donations from the UK, US, EU, Australia, and some private businesses. Notably, the total donation from the Ukrainian government to date is zero, though a congratulatory letter from the defence minister hangs on the office wall.
The line is staffed by a number of veterans of the recent war with Russia, who in turn take lots of calls from fellow veterans, particularly in the early hours of the weekend when drunkenness is most common. The staff often try to connect with veterans having suicidal thoughts by asking them to recall a time and place before 2014 when they were happy - a kind of reset to a less stressful life. Sometimes they suggest the caller finds an object that reminds them of that time.
Svetlana, a veteran who later trained in psychology and who was on shift at the office earlier this week, said she gave her husband an embroidered handkerchief when he went to the front in 2014, in the hope he would allow it to transport him if those sorts of thoughts ever came to mind.
"What helped a fighter cope before the war will help him cope in the future," she said.
[صورة: _123195149_dscf0642-2.jpg]
Image caption, Svetlana answers the phone at Ukraine's first suicide helpline. Behind her are the badges of the veterans who work there

But many veterans aren't coping. They call in with advanced PTSD, Svetlana said, "often trying to mute their pain with alcohol". The number of calls to Lifeline Ukraine hasn't spiked with the escalation of threat from Russia, but the log book charting what callers talk about has shifted markedly towards the looming threat.
"They are anxious about this uncertainty, it is dragging on," Svetlana said. It was causing rifts among people who were previously close, she said. "No one knows any longer who is your enemy and who is your friend."
This estrangement, like suicides, alcoholism, and domestic violence, is among the less visible scars of the war. It has divided friends and families and even branches of the church, and stressed the population.
"This is what Putin wants - a Ukraine that is constantly under stress, unable to make long term plans, unable to invest in a future," said Dr Suprun, the former health minister.
The war has affected Ukraine's ability to make progress on mental health care but the country's cultural taboos long predated the conflict, Andriy Kozinchuk, the military psychologist who works with Father Dmitriev, pointed out.
"It has been like this for centuries," he said. "In our culture, men would rather die than ask for help. We say that when a soldier is singing his heart is bleeding. So if he says, 'I am fine', he is not good."
[صورة: _123195151_dscf0779.jpg]
Image caption, Olexa Sokil is a veteran of the first years of the war in eastern Ukraine. He is now training to become a priest
Olexa Sokil, a taciturn veteran who walks with the aid of a stick, and who experienced some of the worst the war had to offer in 2014, used to say 'I am fine', and he came close to killing himself several times, he said.
It wasn't until he travelled to Lithuania to see a military psychologist there that he felt he could really talk. "I opened up to him," Mr Sokil said. "And he saved me."
But in Ukraine, he said, every veteran was being failed. "It is not just about stigma towards suicide, it is about stigma towards veterans," he said. "Ukraine is killing her veterans. We have the ministry, where millions are spent on showing off on sports competitions, while in small villages and towns veterans are dying because they don't even have a basic social worker to come to them and ask them how they are."
Mr Sokil just had a son, and he and his wife saw a psychologist throughout their pregnancy. "That psychologist put us back in one piece," he said. "We overcame our fear of loss."
Inna Darahanchuk, the deputy veterans' minister, told the BBC that improved mental health support was the ministry's priority for the coming year.
[صورة: _123195155_dscf0704.jpg]
Image caption, Father Dmitriev stands at the portrait wall for those who died, pointing to the first man from the priest's brigade to lose his life in the war.
In the centre of Kyiv, along one wall that borders Father Dmitriev's church, there are portraits of most of the Ukrainian combat dead. Missing from the wall are the men and women, active troops and veterans, who killed themselves. Father Dmitriev would like their portraits to be there too, but even though the wall was his idea, it was simply not possible, he said. "We could not take on that fight."
Some years before the war, Father Dmitriev discovered that there was a kind of loophole in the church's rules around suicide that allowed a priest to attend a funeral in order to support the dead person's family, as long as the priest did not lead the service.
This is how he gets round the system. And when he can, he encourages other Orthodox priests to do the same. There are not many who agree, he said, and those who do are still barred from reading the real funeral rites.
"I ask them simply, 'Will you go?'" Father Dmitriev said. "Go there and pray and say a few good words. Read the Lord's Prayer. The family will not know whether it is the full burial service or not."
]]> <![CDATA[Ukraine tensions: Russia accused of sea blockade]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=7597 Fri, 11 Feb 2022 18:02:24 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=7597 Ukraine tensions: Russia accused of sea blockade
10/02/2022

[صورة: _123215401_russiaboat.jpg]
SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES

Image caption, Russian navy ships passed through the Bosphorus from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea

Ukraine has accused Russia of blocking its access to the sea as Russia prepares for naval exercises next week amid spiralling tension in the region.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the Sea of Azov was completely blocked and the Black Sea almost fully cut off by Russian forces.

Russia has repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine despite massing more than 100,000 troops at the border.

But it has just begun massive military drills with neighbouring Belarus.
Belarus is a close ally of Russia and has a long border with Ukraine.


France called the drills - believed to be Russia's biggest deployment to Belarus since the Cold War - a "violent gesture". Ukraine says they amount to "psychological pressure".


The US on Thursday urged Americans in Ukraine to leave immediately due to the "increased threats of Russian military action".


"Those in Ukraine should depart now via commercial or private means," the state department said in an advisory.


Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Europe faced its biggest security crisis in decades amid the tensions.


Russia's naval exercises will take place next week in the two seas to the south of Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Russia has issued coastal warnings citing missile and gunnery firing exercises.


Ukraine's foreign ministry said the "unprecedentedly vast area where the manoeuvres will be conducted makes navigation in both seas practically impossible", and Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov tweeted that the international waters of the two seas had been blocked by Russia.


Meanwhile, the US embassy in Ukraine, tweeted that that "under the pre**** of military exercises, Russia restricts Ukraine's maritime sovereignty, limits freedom of navigation in the Black Sea/Sea of Azov, & impedes maritime traffic essential to Ukraine's economy".


[صورة: _123215407_russia_troop_positions_10feb_...zov-nc.png][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]Tensions have been high between Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov regions since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. In 2018, Russia seized three Ukrainian naval vessels.


The naval exercises off Ukraine's southern flank are in addition to the 10 days of military exercises currently underway in Belarus, to the north of Ukraine.


Russia has also amassed tanks, artillery and tens of thousands of troops close to its own border with Ukraine, but denies planning to invade. The US and other Western countries have warned that an attack could come at any time.


'Psychological pressure'


The military exercises in Belarus - known as Allied Resolve 2022 - are taking place close to the Belarusian border with Ukraine, which is a little over 1,000km (620 miles) long. Some 30,000 Russian troops are thought to be involved.


There are fears that if Russia tries to invade Ukraine, the exercises put the Russian military close to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, making an attack on the city easier.


Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko is a firm ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the two countries have created a so-called "Union State" which includes economic and military integration.


[صورة: _123208504_a36b5a1d-cbe2-4a8c-8cad-7d49c76bbdde.jpg][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]Russia says its troops will return to their permanent bases after the drills end, but Ukraine and its Western allies have expressed concern.


"The accumulation of forces at the border is psychological pressure from our neighbours," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.


French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Inter radio that it was a "very violent gesture", and the US has called the exercises an "escalatory" move.

[صورة: _123208513_russiaairforce.jpg]
SOURCE, RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY
Image caption, Russian fighter jets are also taking part in the military exercises in Belarus


'Dangerous moment'


The military exercises come as world leaders continue their frenzied diplomacy in an attempt to defuse the current crisis over Ukraine.


In a joint news conference with Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he did not think a decision about a Russian invasion of Ukraine had been made yet, but warned that "this is probably the most dangerous moment... in what is the biggest security crisis that Europe has faced for decades".


Meanwhile, the UK's Foreign Secretary Liz Truss met her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Thursday. She said Russia should move its troops away from the Ukrainian border if it was serious about using diplomacy to defuse the crisis.


Mr Lavrov said he was disappointed with the talks, accusing Ms Truss of not listening to Russia's concerns.

[صورة: _123213246_mediaitem123213245.jpg]
SOURCE, REUTERS
Image caption, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he was disappointed with Thursday's discussions with his UK counterpart, Liz Truss


Moscow says it cannot accept that Ukraine - a former Soviet republic with deep social and cultural ties with Russia - could one day join the Western defence alliance Nato and has demanded that this be ruled out.


Russia has been backing a bloody armed rebellion in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region since 2014. Some 14,000 people - including many civilians - have died in fighting since then.


There is some suggestion that a renewed focus on the so-called Minsk agreements - which sought to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine - could be used as a basis to defuse the current crisis.


Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany backed the accords in 2014-2015.


BBC
]]> Ukraine tensions: Russia accused of sea blockade
10/02/2022

[صورة: _123215401_russiaboat.jpg]
SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES

Image caption, Russian navy ships passed through the Bosphorus from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea

Ukraine has accused Russia of blocking its access to the sea as Russia prepares for naval exercises next week amid spiralling tension in the region.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the Sea of Azov was completely blocked and the Black Sea almost fully cut off by Russian forces.

Russia has repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine despite massing more than 100,000 troops at the border.

But it has just begun massive military drills with neighbouring Belarus.
Belarus is a close ally of Russia and has a long border with Ukraine.


France called the drills - believed to be Russia's biggest deployment to Belarus since the Cold War - a "violent gesture". Ukraine says they amount to "psychological pressure".


The US on Thursday urged Americans in Ukraine to leave immediately due to the "increased threats of Russian military action".


"Those in Ukraine should depart now via commercial or private means," the state department said in an advisory.


Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Europe faced its biggest security crisis in decades amid the tensions.


Russia's naval exercises will take place next week in the two seas to the south of Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Russia has issued coastal warnings citing missile and gunnery firing exercises.


Ukraine's foreign ministry said the "unprecedentedly vast area where the manoeuvres will be conducted makes navigation in both seas practically impossible", and Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov tweeted that the international waters of the two seas had been blocked by Russia.


Meanwhile, the US embassy in Ukraine, tweeted that that "under the pre**** of military exercises, Russia restricts Ukraine's maritime sovereignty, limits freedom of navigation in the Black Sea/Sea of Azov, & impedes maritime traffic essential to Ukraine's economy".


[صورة: _123215407_russia_troop_positions_10feb_...zov-nc.png][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]Tensions have been high between Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov regions since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. In 2018, Russia seized three Ukrainian naval vessels.


The naval exercises off Ukraine's southern flank are in addition to the 10 days of military exercises currently underway in Belarus, to the north of Ukraine.


Russia has also amassed tanks, artillery and tens of thousands of troops close to its own border with Ukraine, but denies planning to invade. The US and other Western countries have warned that an attack could come at any time.


'Psychological pressure'


The military exercises in Belarus - known as Allied Resolve 2022 - are taking place close to the Belarusian border with Ukraine, which is a little over 1,000km (620 miles) long. Some 30,000 Russian troops are thought to be involved.


There are fears that if Russia tries to invade Ukraine, the exercises put the Russian military close to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, making an attack on the city easier.


Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko is a firm ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the two countries have created a so-called "Union State" which includes economic and military integration.


[صورة: _123208504_a36b5a1d-cbe2-4a8c-8cad-7d49c76bbdde.jpg][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]Russia says its troops will return to their permanent bases after the drills end, but Ukraine and its Western allies have expressed concern.


"The accumulation of forces at the border is psychological pressure from our neighbours," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.


French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Inter radio that it was a "very violent gesture", and the US has called the exercises an "escalatory" move.

[صورة: _123208513_russiaairforce.jpg]
SOURCE, RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY
Image caption, Russian fighter jets are also taking part in the military exercises in Belarus


'Dangerous moment'


The military exercises come as world leaders continue their frenzied diplomacy in an attempt to defuse the current crisis over Ukraine.


In a joint news conference with Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he did not think a decision about a Russian invasion of Ukraine had been made yet, but warned that "this is probably the most dangerous moment... in what is the biggest security crisis that Europe has faced for decades".


Meanwhile, the UK's Foreign Secretary Liz Truss met her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Thursday. She said Russia should move its troops away from the Ukrainian border if it was serious about using diplomacy to defuse the crisis.


Mr Lavrov said he was disappointed with the talks, accusing Ms Truss of not listening to Russia's concerns.

[صورة: _123213246_mediaitem123213245.jpg]
SOURCE, REUTERS
Image caption, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he was disappointed with Thursday's discussions with his UK counterpart, Liz Truss


Moscow says it cannot accept that Ukraine - a former Soviet republic with deep social and cultural ties with Russia - could one day join the Western defence alliance Nato and has demanded that this be ruled out.


Russia has been backing a bloody armed rebellion in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region since 2014. Some 14,000 people - including many civilians - have died in fighting since then.


There is some suggestion that a renewed focus on the so-called Minsk agreements - which sought to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine - could be used as a basis to defuse the current crisis.


Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany backed the accords in 2014-2015.


BBC
]]> <![CDATA[Ukraine tensions: Can diplomacy prevent war?]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=7596 Fri, 11 Feb 2022 17:52:12 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=7596 ? Ukraine tensions: Can diplomacy prevent war

By James Landale
Diplomatic correspondent
Published14 hours ago

[صورة: _123217495_0141b33b-9e1d-4222-93e8-9459c2f6aba8.jpg]
SOURCE, REUTERS


Image caption, Territorial defence reservists across Ukraine have been preparing for a possible Russian invasion

The prospect of a wider war in Ukraine is dreadful to contemplate. If Russia were to invade, thousands could die. Many more might flee.

The economic cost would be severe, the humanitarian cost devastating.

Yet Russia continues to build up its forces around Ukraine, and the West continues to threaten dire consequences if they were to step one foot over the border.
So is there a diplomatic way out, an exit from this confrontation that is peaceful and durable?

Diplomats talk of an "off ramp", a way that all sides can get off the road to war. But finding such a path is not easy.

Any compromise would come at a price. Here, though, are some potential routes that do not involve a military and thus bloody outcome.

The West could persuade President Putin to back down

Under this scenario, Western powers would effectively deter any invasion by convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin the costs would outweigh the benefits.

He would be persuaded that the human casualties, the economic sanctions and the diplomatic blowback would be so great that he would come off worst even if he made military gains on the battlefield.

He would have to fear the West might support a military insurgency in Ukraine, thus bogging him down in a costly war for years.

Mr Putin would have to believe these costs would reduce his domestic support and thus threaten his leadership.

Under this narrative, the West would also have to allow Mr Putin to claim a diplomatic victory, portraying himself as a peaceful protagonist who had been unwilling to respond militarily to Nato provocations.

Mr Putin could claim he had finally got the West's attention and its leaders were addressing what they called his "legitimate security concerns". Russia would have reminded the world it was a great power and deepened its presence in Belarus.

The difficulty with this narrative is that it would be just as easy to argue Mr Putin had failed. His actions would have united the West; led Nato to move forces closer to Russia's borders; and encouraged Sweden and Finland to consider joining Nato.

The problem is that if Mr Putin wishes to control Ukraine and undermine Nato, there are few reasons why he might back down now.

Nato and Russia could agree a new security deal

Western powers have made clear they will not compromise on core principles, such as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine; its right to seek membership of Nato; which must have an "open door" to any country that wishes to join.

But the US and Nato have, nonetheless, accepted that common ground could be found on wider European security issues.

This could include a revival of lapsed arms control agreements to reduce the numbers of missiles on both sides; the beefing up of confidence building measures between Russian and Nato forces; greater transparency over military exercises and the location of missiles; and co-operation on anti-satellite weapon testing.

Russia has already made clear these issues would not be enough to satisfy its core concern that allowing Ukraine to join Nato would come at a cost to Russian security.
[صورة: _123215407_russia_troop_positions_10feb_...zov-nc.png][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]But if, say, Nato missile deployments were significantly reduced, that could address at least some Russian concerns.

In some ways, Putin has already made gains here: Europe is newly engaged in a security dialogue on Russia's terms.

Ukraine and Russia could revive the Minsk agreements

This was a package of deals negotiated in 2014 and 2015 in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, that was designed to end the war between government forces and Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.

It obviously failed - the fighting continues. But it at least set out a path towards a ceasefire and a political settlement based on a more federal constitution.
[صورة: _123192734_tanks.jpg]
SOURCE, RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY

Image caption, Thousands of Russian troops have arrived in Belarus for joint military drills

Western politicians have suggested reviving the Minsk accords could now be a solution to this crisis.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Minsk was "the only path allowing us to build peace".

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the BBC Today Programme that restoring Minsk would be "a strong way forward to de-escalate".

The problem is that the provisions of the agreement are convoluted and disputed.

The Kremlin demands that Ukraine must hold local elections to empower pro-Russian politicians. Kyiv wants Moscow first to disarm and remove Russian fighters.

The biggest dispute is over how much autonomy Minsk would give to breakaway enclaves in the Donbas. Kyiv says modest self-government. Moscow disagrees and says Donetsk and Luhansk should have a say over Ukraine's foreign policy and thus a veto over Nato membership.

And that is the big fear in Kyiv: that reviving Minsk is shorthand for ruling out Ukraine ever joining Nato without Nato members explicitly having to say so. Thus agreement and popular support in Ukraine is unlikely.

Ukraine could become neutral, like Finland

? Could Ukraine be persuaded to adopt some kind of neutrality

There have been reports - subsequently denied - that French officials suggested Ukraine could take Finland as a model.

Finland adopted formal neutrality during the Cold War. It was an independent, sovereign and democratic state. It remained - and remains - outside Nato.

Could this be attractive to Kyiv? It would avoid a military outcome. It might, in theory, satisfy Mr Putin's desire for Ukraine never to join Nato.

And the alliance would not have to compromise on its "open door" policy: Ukraine would have made its sovereign choice not to join.

But would Ukraine support this? Probably not because neutrality would effectively leave Ukraine open to Russian influence.

It can be hard to enforce neutrality, and would Russia abide by its terms? Neutrality would be a major concession by Kyiv which would have to abandon its Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

Neutrality might also make membership of the European Union even more distant.

The current stand-off could become the status quo

?Might it be possible for the current confrontation just to linger on - but diminish in intensity over time

Russia could slowly pull its troops back to barracks, declaring their exercises over. But at the same time a lot of military equipment could be left behind, just in case.

Moscow could continue supporting rebel forces in the Donbas. And all the while, Ukraine's politics and economy would continue to be destabilised by the constant threat from Russia.

In turn, the West would maintain a strengthened Nato presence in Eastern Europe. Its politicians and diplomats would continue to engage sporadically with Russian counterparts, where talks continued - but little substantive progress was made.

Ukraine would struggle on. But at least there would be no full-scale war.

And slowly the confrontation would fade from the headlines and re-join the long list of frozen conflicts that disappear from public attention.

None of these options is easy or likely. They all involve compromise.

The fear in Kyiv is that Ukraine might be the country that has to compromise the most. The calculation, though, is whether the threat of devastating conflict is real and if so, what could be done to avoid it.

The one vestige of hope right now is that all sides still seem willing to talk, however fruitlessly. And the longer people keep talking, the longer the diplomatic door to a solution remains open, even if it be just ajar.

BBC]]> ? Ukraine tensions: Can diplomacy prevent war

By James Landale
Diplomatic correspondent
Published14 hours ago

[صورة: _123217495_0141b33b-9e1d-4222-93e8-9459c2f6aba8.jpg]
SOURCE, REUTERS


Image caption, Territorial defence reservists across Ukraine have been preparing for a possible Russian invasion

The prospect of a wider war in Ukraine is dreadful to contemplate. If Russia were to invade, thousands could die. Many more might flee.

The economic cost would be severe, the humanitarian cost devastating.

Yet Russia continues to build up its forces around Ukraine, and the West continues to threaten dire consequences if they were to step one foot over the border.
So is there a diplomatic way out, an exit from this confrontation that is peaceful and durable?

Diplomats talk of an "off ramp", a way that all sides can get off the road to war. But finding such a path is not easy.

Any compromise would come at a price. Here, though, are some potential routes that do not involve a military and thus bloody outcome.

The West could persuade President Putin to back down

Under this scenario, Western powers would effectively deter any invasion by convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin the costs would outweigh the benefits.

He would be persuaded that the human casualties, the economic sanctions and the diplomatic blowback would be so great that he would come off worst even if he made military gains on the battlefield.

He would have to fear the West might support a military insurgency in Ukraine, thus bogging him down in a costly war for years.

Mr Putin would have to believe these costs would reduce his domestic support and thus threaten his leadership.

Under this narrative, the West would also have to allow Mr Putin to claim a diplomatic victory, portraying himself as a peaceful protagonist who had been unwilling to respond militarily to Nato provocations.

Mr Putin could claim he had finally got the West's attention and its leaders were addressing what they called his "legitimate security concerns". Russia would have reminded the world it was a great power and deepened its presence in Belarus.

The difficulty with this narrative is that it would be just as easy to argue Mr Putin had failed. His actions would have united the West; led Nato to move forces closer to Russia's borders; and encouraged Sweden and Finland to consider joining Nato.

The problem is that if Mr Putin wishes to control Ukraine and undermine Nato, there are few reasons why he might back down now.

Nato and Russia could agree a new security deal

Western powers have made clear they will not compromise on core principles, such as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine; its right to seek membership of Nato; which must have an "open door" to any country that wishes to join.

But the US and Nato have, nonetheless, accepted that common ground could be found on wider European security issues.

This could include a revival of lapsed arms control agreements to reduce the numbers of missiles on both sides; the beefing up of confidence building measures between Russian and Nato forces; greater transparency over military exercises and the location of missiles; and co-operation on anti-satellite weapon testing.

Russia has already made clear these issues would not be enough to satisfy its core concern that allowing Ukraine to join Nato would come at a cost to Russian security.
[صورة: _123215407_russia_troop_positions_10feb_...zov-nc.png][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]But if, say, Nato missile deployments were significantly reduced, that could address at least some Russian concerns.

In some ways, Putin has already made gains here: Europe is newly engaged in a security dialogue on Russia's terms.

Ukraine and Russia could revive the Minsk agreements

This was a package of deals negotiated in 2014 and 2015 in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, that was designed to end the war between government forces and Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.

It obviously failed - the fighting continues. But it at least set out a path towards a ceasefire and a political settlement based on a more federal constitution.
[صورة: _123192734_tanks.jpg]
SOURCE, RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY

Image caption, Thousands of Russian troops have arrived in Belarus for joint military drills

Western politicians have suggested reviving the Minsk accords could now be a solution to this crisis.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Minsk was "the only path allowing us to build peace".

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the BBC Today Programme that restoring Minsk would be "a strong way forward to de-escalate".

The problem is that the provisions of the agreement are convoluted and disputed.

The Kremlin demands that Ukraine must hold local elections to empower pro-Russian politicians. Kyiv wants Moscow first to disarm and remove Russian fighters.

The biggest dispute is over how much autonomy Minsk would give to breakaway enclaves in the Donbas. Kyiv says modest self-government. Moscow disagrees and says Donetsk and Luhansk should have a say over Ukraine's foreign policy and thus a veto over Nato membership.

And that is the big fear in Kyiv: that reviving Minsk is shorthand for ruling out Ukraine ever joining Nato without Nato members explicitly having to say so. Thus agreement and popular support in Ukraine is unlikely.

Ukraine could become neutral, like Finland

? Could Ukraine be persuaded to adopt some kind of neutrality

There have been reports - subsequently denied - that French officials suggested Ukraine could take Finland as a model.

Finland adopted formal neutrality during the Cold War. It was an independent, sovereign and democratic state. It remained - and remains - outside Nato.

Could this be attractive to Kyiv? It would avoid a military outcome. It might, in theory, satisfy Mr Putin's desire for Ukraine never to join Nato.

And the alliance would not have to compromise on its "open door" policy: Ukraine would have made its sovereign choice not to join.

But would Ukraine support this? Probably not because neutrality would effectively leave Ukraine open to Russian influence.

It can be hard to enforce neutrality, and would Russia abide by its terms? Neutrality would be a major concession by Kyiv which would have to abandon its Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

Neutrality might also make membership of the European Union even more distant.

The current stand-off could become the status quo

?Might it be possible for the current confrontation just to linger on - but diminish in intensity over time

Russia could slowly pull its troops back to barracks, declaring their exercises over. But at the same time a lot of military equipment could be left behind, just in case.

Moscow could continue supporting rebel forces in the Donbas. And all the while, Ukraine's politics and economy would continue to be destabilised by the constant threat from Russia.

In turn, the West would maintain a strengthened Nato presence in Eastern Europe. Its politicians and diplomats would continue to engage sporadically with Russian counterparts, where talks continued - but little substantive progress was made.

Ukraine would struggle on. But at least there would be no full-scale war.

And slowly the confrontation would fade from the headlines and re-join the long list of frozen conflicts that disappear from public attention.

None of these options is easy or likely. They all involve compromise.

The fear in Kyiv is that Ukraine might be the country that has to compromise the most. The calculation, though, is whether the threat of devastating conflict is real and if so, what could be done to avoid it.

The one vestige of hope right now is that all sides still seem willing to talk, however fruitlessly. And the longer people keep talking, the longer the diplomatic door to a solution remains open, even if it be just ajar.

BBC]]> <![CDATA[Ukraine tensions: Joe Biden says US citizens should leave Ukraine now]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=7595 Fri, 11 Feb 2022 17:44:30 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=7595
Ukraine tensions: Joe Biden says US citizens should leave Ukraine now
[صورة: _123218052_mediaitem123218051.jpg]
IMAGE SOURCE, AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Image caption, Ukrainian forces have been carrying out exercises amid concerns of a Russian invasion

US President Joe Biden has called on all American citizens remaining in Ukraine to leave the country immediately, citing increased threats of Russian military action.


Mr Biden said he would not send troops to rescue Americans if Moscow invades Ukraine.


He warned that "things could go crazy quickly" in the region.


Russia has repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine despite massing more than 100,000 troops near the border.
But it has just begun massive military drills with neighbouring Belarus, and Ukraine has accused Russia of blocking its access to the sea.


The Kremlin says it wants to enforce "red lines" to make sure that its former Soviet neighbour does not join Nato.


UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday that Europe faced its biggest security crisis in decades amid the tensions.


The US State Department urged Americans in Ukraine to leave immediately.


"American citizens should leave now," Mr Biden told NBC News.


"We're dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It's a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly."


Asked whether there was a scenario that could prompt him to send troops to rescue fleeing Americans, Mr Biden replied: "There's not. That's a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another. We're in a very different world than we've ever been."


World leaders, meanwhile, continued their frenzied diplomacy to defuse the current crisis over Ukraine.


Russia and Ukraine announced late on Thursday that they had failed to reach any breakthrough after nine hours of talks with French and German officials aimed at ending the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian envoy Andriy Yermak said while there were disagreements "there is a will to continue and there is a will to negotiate".


The current tensions come eight years after Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula. Since then, Ukraine's military has been locked in a war with Russian-backed rebels in eastern areas near Russia's borders.


Earlier, the UK prime minister said he hoped "strong deterrence" and "patient diplomacy" could find a way through the crisis but the stakes were "very high".


In a joint news conference in Brussels with Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, Mr Johnson said he did not believe Russia had yet taken a decision on whether to invade Ukraine but the UK's intelligence "remains grim".

Media caption, Watch: UN ambassador: Russia ‘escalate instead of de-escalate’

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was due to meet Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Friday, a day after a frosty encounter between Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Britain's Liz Truss.


Mr Lavrov said relations between the UK and Russia "leave much to be desired" and are at the "lowest point over the past few years". Ms Truss accused Russia of "Cold War rhetoric".


Before flying to Moscow, Mr Wallace confirmed the UK was providing more defensive equipment - including body armour, helmets and combat boots - to the Ukrainian government. He also said it was important to show that Nato countries "won't let threats push us around".


Meanwhile, Ukraine accused Russia of blocking its access to the sea as Russia prepares for naval exercises.


Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the Sea of Azov was completely blocked and the Black Sea almost fully cut off by Russian forces.


Russia's naval exercises were due to take place next week in the two seas to the south of Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.


However, Ukraine's Border Guard Service said on Friday that Russia had told them it had cancelled its drill in the Sea of Azov, an internal sea bordered by both Russia and Ukraine. Two areas of the Black Sea will still be closed off for six days from Sunday.
[صورة: _123223598_black_sea_navigation_warnings...640-nc.png][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]Russian naval drills were already taking place in Crimea on Friday, while 10 days of military exercises continued in Belarus, to the north of Ukraine.


There are fears that if Russia tries to invade Ukraine, the exercises put the Russian military close to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, making an attack on the city easier. Russia says its troops will return to their permanent bases after the drills end.


Ukraine has launched its own 10-day military exercises, though officials have given few details.




[صورة: _123221114_russia_troop_positions_11feb_...-2x-nc.png][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]Moscow says it cannot accept that Ukraine - a former Soviet republic with deep social and cultural ties with Russia - could one day join the Western defence alliance Nato and has demanded that this be ruled out.


Russia has been backing a bloody armed rebellion in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region since 2014. Some 14,000 people - including many civilians - have died in fighting since then.


There is some suggestion that a renewed focus on the so-called Minsk agreements - which sought to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine - could be used as a basis to defuse the current crisis.


Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany backed the accords in 2014-2015.


BBC
]]>
Ukraine tensions: Joe Biden says US citizens should leave Ukraine now
[صورة: _123218052_mediaitem123218051.jpg]
IMAGE SOURCE, AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Image caption, Ukrainian forces have been carrying out exercises amid concerns of a Russian invasion

US President Joe Biden has called on all American citizens remaining in Ukraine to leave the country immediately, citing increased threats of Russian military action.


Mr Biden said he would not send troops to rescue Americans if Moscow invades Ukraine.


He warned that "things could go crazy quickly" in the region.


Russia has repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine despite massing more than 100,000 troops near the border.
But it has just begun massive military drills with neighbouring Belarus, and Ukraine has accused Russia of blocking its access to the sea.


The Kremlin says it wants to enforce "red lines" to make sure that its former Soviet neighbour does not join Nato.


UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday that Europe faced its biggest security crisis in decades amid the tensions.


The US State Department urged Americans in Ukraine to leave immediately.


"American citizens should leave now," Mr Biden told NBC News.


"We're dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It's a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly."


Asked whether there was a scenario that could prompt him to send troops to rescue fleeing Americans, Mr Biden replied: "There's not. That's a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another. We're in a very different world than we've ever been."


World leaders, meanwhile, continued their frenzied diplomacy to defuse the current crisis over Ukraine.


Russia and Ukraine announced late on Thursday that they had failed to reach any breakthrough after nine hours of talks with French and German officials aimed at ending the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian envoy Andriy Yermak said while there were disagreements "there is a will to continue and there is a will to negotiate".


The current tensions come eight years after Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula. Since then, Ukraine's military has been locked in a war with Russian-backed rebels in eastern areas near Russia's borders.


Earlier, the UK prime minister said he hoped "strong deterrence" and "patient diplomacy" could find a way through the crisis but the stakes were "very high".


In a joint news conference in Brussels with Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, Mr Johnson said he did not believe Russia had yet taken a decision on whether to invade Ukraine but the UK's intelligence "remains grim".

Media caption, Watch: UN ambassador: Russia ‘escalate instead of de-escalate’

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was due to meet Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Friday, a day after a frosty encounter between Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Britain's Liz Truss.


Mr Lavrov said relations between the UK and Russia "leave much to be desired" and are at the "lowest point over the past few years". Ms Truss accused Russia of "Cold War rhetoric".


Before flying to Moscow, Mr Wallace confirmed the UK was providing more defensive equipment - including body armour, helmets and combat boots - to the Ukrainian government. He also said it was important to show that Nato countries "won't let threats push us around".


Meanwhile, Ukraine accused Russia of blocking its access to the sea as Russia prepares for naval exercises.


Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the Sea of Azov was completely blocked and the Black Sea almost fully cut off by Russian forces.


Russia's naval exercises were due to take place next week in the two seas to the south of Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.


However, Ukraine's Border Guard Service said on Friday that Russia had told them it had cancelled its drill in the Sea of Azov, an internal sea bordered by both Russia and Ukraine. Two areas of the Black Sea will still be closed off for six days from Sunday.
[صورة: _123223598_black_sea_navigation_warnings...640-nc.png][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]Russian naval drills were already taking place in Crimea on Friday, while 10 days of military exercises continued in Belarus, to the north of Ukraine.


There are fears that if Russia tries to invade Ukraine, the exercises put the Russian military close to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, making an attack on the city easier. Russia says its troops will return to their permanent bases after the drills end.


Ukraine has launched its own 10-day military exercises, though officials have given few details.




[صورة: _123221114_russia_troop_positions_11feb_...-2x-nc.png][صورة: _112953491__108802839_624_transparent-nc.png]Moscow says it cannot accept that Ukraine - a former Soviet republic with deep social and cultural ties with Russia - could one day join the Western defence alliance Nato and has demanded that this be ruled out.


Russia has been backing a bloody armed rebellion in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region since 2014. Some 14,000 people - including many civilians - have died in fighting since then.


There is some suggestion that a renewed focus on the so-called Minsk agreements - which sought to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine - could be used as a basis to defuse the current crisis.


Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany backed the accords in 2014-2015.


BBC
]]> <![CDATA[F-35 Lightning Jet 25mm Cannon Firing! GAU-22 Equalizer]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=5080 Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:02:40 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=5080 ]]> ]]> <![CDATA[View from B-52 Bomber: Russian Jets Dangerously Buzz & NATO-Ukrainian Jets Escort (Aug-Sept 2020)]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=5078 Thu, 03 Dec 2020 11:52:32 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=5078 View from B-52 Bomber: Russian Jets Dangerously Buzz & NATO-Ukrainian Jets Escort (Aug-Sept 2020)


]]> View from B-52 Bomber: Russian Jets Dangerously Buzz & NATO-Ukrainian Jets Escort (Aug-Sept 2020)


]]> <![CDATA[Somalia’s Army Told Her to Sew a Skirt. Now She’s One of Its Top Officers.]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=4711 Fri, 04 Sep 2020 10:45:13 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=4711
[b]Somalia’s Army Told Her to Sew a Skirt. Now She’s One of Its Top Officers.[/b]
[b]Lt. Col. Iman Elman, who was born in Somalia but raised in Canada in a family of peace activists, sees herself as continuing that tradition from a different platform.[/b]
By Abdi Latif Dahir
Aug. 14, 2020
[صورة: iman-elman-1024x768-1.jpg?resize=770%2C513]NAIROBI, Kenya — When Iman Elman decided to enlist in the Somali National Army in 2011, the officer distributing uniforms gave her one shirt and two pairs of pants. Puzzled, Ms. Elman asked about the missing shirt. There was none, he said. The extra set of pants was provided for her to sew into a skirt.
Ms. Elman, who was born into a family of prominent peace and human rights activists in the Somali capital of Mogadishu but grew up in Canada, was 19 at the time and wanted to join the front lines in the country’s fight against the terror group Al Shabab. A skirt was not going to do, she thought, and politely declined the second pair of pants.
The incident, she said, served as a reminder not only of the challenges awaiting her in the patriarchal world of the Somali military but also of the traditional, conservative norms she would have to overcome.
“We still have a long way to go,” Ms. Elman remembered thinking at the time.
Almost a decade later, she is now Lt. Col. Elman, having risen from foot soldier and captain, and is in charge of the army’s planning and strategy — the only female department head and one of the highest ranking women in the Somali military.


As one of just 900 women in an army of 25,000, she is helping push for accountability and efficiency in a force that’s battling one of the deadliest terror outfits in the African continent. In a country where women remain marginalizedpolitically, economically and socially, Colonel Elman is also working to deepen their role and help move them beyond the menial jobs many are confined to within the armed forces.
For decades, Somalia was mired in conflict and chaos, rived by clan warlords competing for power and saddled with a series of weak transitional governments. But Colonel Elman’s journey into the military began as the country’s civil war ebbed and a United Nations-backed government took control of the capital.
In 2011, as waves of Somalis from the diaspora returned home, she visited Mogadishu and hatched the idea of joining the army. In discussions with soldiers, however, she was surprised by how quickly the male officers tried to discourage her, saying that she would be assigned only domestic roles like *****ng and cleaning.
Their resistance only steeled her determination. “That was my driving force,” she said in a recent telephone interview from Mogadishu.
“A lot of it was me feeling the need in that moment to prove a point as to what a female can and cannot do,” she said. “Not only do I know that I shouldn’t be limited because of my gender, but I feel like I can do just as much if not more than any of the men.”


Colonel Elman was born in Mogadishu on Dec. 10, 1991, when Somalia was beginning to disintegrate. Midway to the hospital for delivery, her mother, Fartuun Adan, and her father, Elman Ali Ahmed, decided it was too dangerous in their neighborhood to leave her two older sisters, Almaas and Ilwad, in the house. They went back and fetched the girls, not knowing that they would never be able to return.
[صورة: merlin_173316447_9ebbf904-b894-4913-a52e...le=upscale]
Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in 1991, after battles between army troops and rebels from the United Somali Congress.Sayyid Azim/Associated Press
As the war and the perils intensified, Ms. Adan and Mr. Elman decided the wisest course was to split: She would seek refuge abroad with their daughters while he stayed behind to continue their humanitarian work.
It was a brave decision, but ultimately a tragic one. On Mar. 9, 1996, Mr. Elman, who had popularized the slogan “Drop the gun, pick up the pen,” and who had set up an institute to rehabilitate former child soldiers, was fatally shot in Mogadishu.
By then, Ms. Adan had received refugee status in Canada and was raising their daughters in Ottawa. Colonel Elman said her mother not only reminded them of their roots but ingrained in them the notion that their gender should not limit their ambitions.
In 2006, with violence continuing in Somalia, Ms. Adan returned to Mogadishu to head the Elman Peace and Human Rights Center, an organization that is continuing the rights work of her husband. In 2010, she was joined by her daughter Ilwad, and the two have focused much of their efforts on women, children and vulnerable members of Somali society.
When in 2011, Colonel Elman, then a general arts student at University of Ottawa, opted to join the military, many were surprised that she was not following in her father’s footsteps. But she did not see a military career as contradictory to her father’s values and aspirations, she said.


“When people look at it, they do see the irony,” she said. “But the reality is that my father and I are both striving for the same thing. We are both working for peace.”
Her sister Ilwad — who was shortlisted for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize — agrees, saying that while there’s “intentional division” between military solutions and civilian approaches, there’s “a lot of complementarity in the work that we do.”
Sometimes, when her sister comes back from the front lines, she said, she brings back child soldiers whom the center helps reintegrate into society.
Last November, the Elman family’s faith in rebuilding Somalia was shaken after Almaas was killed by an unknown assailant. Colonel Elman, who has lost close colleagues in the war and has survived three roadside bomb explosions and countless encounters with the Shabab, said she “broke down” after the shooting.
But after taking two weeks to mourn, “we realized that there was no turning back for us,” Colonel Elman said. “We don’t have that option because we have already sacrificed so much.”
The sisters said they were back at their jobs by the end of December.


[صورة: merlin_164845308_4fdb2d19-a2ec-4837-ac6f...&auto=webp]
Ilwad Elman, Iman’s sister, center, attending the funeral service for their sister Almaas in November.Farah Abdi Warsameh/Associated Press
For now, Colonel Elman is working on instituting and strengthening reforms aimed at creating an army that represents the true interests of the state instead of clan allegiances. She has also begun an effort to train army officers on human rights and sexual assault — something, she said, that was seen as “nearly impossible” to implement when she first suggested it to her superiors.


As the army’s chief planner, Colonel Elman is also working to improve the conditions of women in the army by instituting quotas in recruitment and training programs and creating an environment to encourage more women to sign up, including separate washing facilities and places to change clothes.
Colonel Elman said there is still a long way to go “in terms of changing the mind-set” of people in Somalia around women serving, or holding key positions, in the army.
“You are not exactly sure if the country is ready to have a female general,” she said. But no matter what, she said, “I am very proud of how far we’ve come, and even the small milestones that we have reached have been quite significant.”


]]>
[b]Somalia’s Army Told Her to Sew a Skirt. Now She’s One of Its Top Officers.[/b]
[b]Lt. Col. Iman Elman, who was born in Somalia but raised in Canada in a family of peace activists, sees herself as continuing that tradition from a different platform.[/b]
By Abdi Latif Dahir
Aug. 14, 2020
[صورة: iman-elman-1024x768-1.jpg?resize=770%2C513]NAIROBI, Kenya — When Iman Elman decided to enlist in the Somali National Army in 2011, the officer distributing uniforms gave her one shirt and two pairs of pants. Puzzled, Ms. Elman asked about the missing shirt. There was none, he said. The extra set of pants was provided for her to sew into a skirt.
Ms. Elman, who was born into a family of prominent peace and human rights activists in the Somali capital of Mogadishu but grew up in Canada, was 19 at the time and wanted to join the front lines in the country’s fight against the terror group Al Shabab. A skirt was not going to do, she thought, and politely declined the second pair of pants.
The incident, she said, served as a reminder not only of the challenges awaiting her in the patriarchal world of the Somali military but also of the traditional, conservative norms she would have to overcome.
“We still have a long way to go,” Ms. Elman remembered thinking at the time.
Almost a decade later, she is now Lt. Col. Elman, having risen from foot soldier and captain, and is in charge of the army’s planning and strategy — the only female department head and one of the highest ranking women in the Somali military.


As one of just 900 women in an army of 25,000, she is helping push for accountability and efficiency in a force that’s battling one of the deadliest terror outfits in the African continent. In a country where women remain marginalizedpolitically, economically and socially, Colonel Elman is also working to deepen their role and help move them beyond the menial jobs many are confined to within the armed forces.
For decades, Somalia was mired in conflict and chaos, rived by clan warlords competing for power and saddled with a series of weak transitional governments. But Colonel Elman’s journey into the military began as the country’s civil war ebbed and a United Nations-backed government took control of the capital.
In 2011, as waves of Somalis from the diaspora returned home, she visited Mogadishu and hatched the idea of joining the army. In discussions with soldiers, however, she was surprised by how quickly the male officers tried to discourage her, saying that she would be assigned only domestic roles like *****ng and cleaning.
Their resistance only steeled her determination. “That was my driving force,” she said in a recent telephone interview from Mogadishu.
“A lot of it was me feeling the need in that moment to prove a point as to what a female can and cannot do,” she said. “Not only do I know that I shouldn’t be limited because of my gender, but I feel like I can do just as much if not more than any of the men.”


Colonel Elman was born in Mogadishu on Dec. 10, 1991, when Somalia was beginning to disintegrate. Midway to the hospital for delivery, her mother, Fartuun Adan, and her father, Elman Ali Ahmed, decided it was too dangerous in their neighborhood to leave her two older sisters, Almaas and Ilwad, in the house. They went back and fetched the girls, not knowing that they would never be able to return.
[صورة: merlin_173316447_9ebbf904-b894-4913-a52e...le=upscale]
Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in 1991, after battles between army troops and rebels from the United Somali Congress.Sayyid Azim/Associated Press
As the war and the perils intensified, Ms. Adan and Mr. Elman decided the wisest course was to split: She would seek refuge abroad with their daughters while he stayed behind to continue their humanitarian work.
It was a brave decision, but ultimately a tragic one. On Mar. 9, 1996, Mr. Elman, who had popularized the slogan “Drop the gun, pick up the pen,” and who had set up an institute to rehabilitate former child soldiers, was fatally shot in Mogadishu.
By then, Ms. Adan had received refugee status in Canada and was raising their daughters in Ottawa. Colonel Elman said her mother not only reminded them of their roots but ingrained in them the notion that their gender should not limit their ambitions.
In 2006, with violence continuing in Somalia, Ms. Adan returned to Mogadishu to head the Elman Peace and Human Rights Center, an organization that is continuing the rights work of her husband. In 2010, she was joined by her daughter Ilwad, and the two have focused much of their efforts on women, children and vulnerable members of Somali society.
When in 2011, Colonel Elman, then a general arts student at University of Ottawa, opted to join the military, many were surprised that she was not following in her father’s footsteps. But she did not see a military career as contradictory to her father’s values and aspirations, she said.


“When people look at it, they do see the irony,” she said. “But the reality is that my father and I are both striving for the same thing. We are both working for peace.”
Her sister Ilwad — who was shortlisted for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize — agrees, saying that while there’s “intentional division” between military solutions and civilian approaches, there’s “a lot of complementarity in the work that we do.”
Sometimes, when her sister comes back from the front lines, she said, she brings back child soldiers whom the center helps reintegrate into society.
Last November, the Elman family’s faith in rebuilding Somalia was shaken after Almaas was killed by an unknown assailant. Colonel Elman, who has lost close colleagues in the war and has survived three roadside bomb explosions and countless encounters with the Shabab, said she “broke down” after the shooting.
But after taking two weeks to mourn, “we realized that there was no turning back for us,” Colonel Elman said. “We don’t have that option because we have already sacrificed so much.”
The sisters said they were back at their jobs by the end of December.


[صورة: merlin_164845308_4fdb2d19-a2ec-4837-ac6f...&auto=webp]
Ilwad Elman, Iman’s sister, center, attending the funeral service for their sister Almaas in November.Farah Abdi Warsameh/Associated Press
For now, Colonel Elman is working on instituting and strengthening reforms aimed at creating an army that represents the true interests of the state instead of clan allegiances. She has also begun an effort to train army officers on human rights and sexual assault — something, she said, that was seen as “nearly impossible” to implement when she first suggested it to her superiors.


As the army’s chief planner, Colonel Elman is also working to improve the conditions of women in the army by instituting quotas in recruitment and training programs and creating an environment to encourage more women to sign up, including separate washing facilities and places to change clothes.
Colonel Elman said there is still a long way to go “in terms of changing the mind-set” of people in Somalia around women serving, or holding key positions, in the army.
“You are not exactly sure if the country is ready to have a female general,” she said. But no matter what, she said, “I am very proud of how far we’ve come, and even the small milestones that we have reached have been quite significant.”


]]> <![CDATA[The Invisible U.S.-Iran Cyber War]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=4630 Tue, 14 Jul 2020 21:20:08 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=4630
[b]The Invisible U.S.-Iran Cyber War[/b]
June 4, 2020
By 2020, tensions between the United States and Iran increasingly played out in invisible cyberspace. Both governments acknowledged that cyberattacks were central to their strategies. The scope was unknown, but cyberspace has turned into a near-unrestricted war zone. Cyber offered an alternative to kinetic military action that could lead to full-scale war – which both Washington and Tehran sought to avoid.

Iranian ******* targeted U.S. citizens in the lead up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In October 2019, Microsoft warned that an Iranian-government hacker group had tried to breach e-mail accounts associated with journalists, current and former U.S. government officials and a U.S. presidential campaign. And in June 2020, Google said that Iran tried and failed to breach e-mail accounts associated with President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

[b]U.S. cyberwarfare specialists training at the Warfield Air National Guard Base in Maryland
[/b]
Sustained U.S. cyber activities against Iran are widely traced to a covert campaign code-named Operation Olympic Games. Started in 2006 under the Bush administration, the program targeted Iranian nuclear capabilities. President Obama expanded Olympic Games to include the use of offensive cyber weapons against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. In 2010, the Stuxnet virus, allegedly designed by the United States and Israel, seriously damaged the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
In June 2019, the Trump administration retaliated against Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone with a cyberattack on a Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) database used to plan attacks on tankers. The United States struck again in September 2019 after Iran allegedly launched drones and cruise missiles on two Saudi oil facilities. Iran, in turn, has ramped up its efforts to penetrate U.S. “soft” targets and email accounts.
Iranian cyberattacks against the United States date back to 2009, when the so-called “Iranian Cyber Army” defaced Twitter’s homepage in response to the Green Revolution protests over alleged fraud in the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [صورة: Pic%202B.jpg]
[b]Screenshot of the Twitter homepage in December 2009
[/b]
[b][b]Iranian cyber activities against the U.S.[/b]
[/b]
Since 2009, Iran’s cyber capabilities have since grown in sophistication and scope. Iran has primarily targeted the private sector rather than U.S. government systems. In September 2012, Iranian ******* directed a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against U.S. banks. The campaign, nicknamed Operation Ababil, blocked access to the websites of major financial institutions by overwhelming their servers with web traffic. The attacks cost Western firms millions in lost business, according to a Department of Justice indictment.
Tehran appeared to accelerate its cyber operations against the United States government and its regional partners after the election of President Donald Trump. In August 2017, a cyberattack tied to Iran nearly triggered an explosion at a Saudi petrochemical plant. In December 2018, the Department of Justice indicted two Iranian ******* for a ransomware attack that had crippled Atlanta’s city government in March of that year. The attack locked the files of 8,000 municipal employees and took offline local government operations for nearly a week.
These attacks have coincided with increased Iranian online espionage. In May 2018, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike warned its clients about a “notable” increase in Iranian phishing activity a day after President Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA nuclear deal. Before Israel’s election in March 2019, Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White party, reportedly had his phone ****** by Iranian intelligence.
On January 4, 2020, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned of a potential Iranian cyberattack in the aftermath of the death of Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani. The agency said a retaliatory cyberattack by Iran or its proxies could “come with little to no warning” in a bulletin posted to its website. Although DHS said it had “no information indicating a specific, credible threat to the Homeland,” Iran and Hezbollah had the “intent and capability” to conduct a cyberattack within the United States. Later that day, cyber vandals claiming affiliation with Iran defaced the website of the Federal Depository Library Program and threatened further attacks.
[b]U.S. cyber activities against Iran
[/b]
[b]U.S. sailors at the Fleet Operations Center at U.S. Fleet Cyber Command
[/b]
Since 2006, the United States has ramped up its cyber offensive operations against Iranian government computer systems. The most famous cyberattack was the unleashing of the Stuxnet virus on Natanz, which damaged nearly 1,000 centrifuges and infected 30,000 computers. Iran was forced to take tens of thousands of computers offline. Other cyberattacks—including the Flame and Wiper, viruses reportedly part of Operation Olympic Games-- targeted Iran’s oil infrastructure.
The Trump administration accelerated cyber operations in response to Iranian attacks in the Persian Gulf. In June 2019, United States conducted a cyberattack on Iran after it downed a U.S. drone near the Strait of Hormuz. The attack wiped clean an IRGC database used to plan attacks against tankers in the Persian Gulf. Netblocks, a cyber monitoring firm, also reported widespread internet disruption in Iran after the drone attack.
In September 2019, the United States carried out a cyberattack against unspecified Iranian “physical hardware” – equipment used to disseminate propaganda – after Iran’s attacks on two Saudi oil facilities. The unusual U.S. confirmation of its attacks in October suggested the goal was deter Iran without resorting to kinetic strikes.

[b][b]Known Iranian Hacker Groups[/b]
[/b]
[b]Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters – This group claimed responsibility for the DDoS cyberattacks against U.S. financial institutions in September 2012. The same month, Sen. Joe Lieberman claimed that the group was connected to the IRGC’s elite Qods Force.
APT33 (aka Elfin, Refined Kitten, Holmium) – This group carried out cyber espionage operations against aviation, military, and energy targets in the United States, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Cybersecurity firm FireEye linked APT33 to the Iranian government.
Phosphorous (aka APT35, Charming Kitten, Ajax Security) – This group attempted to breach the e-mail accounts of the Trump re-election campaign in 2019, as well as accounts of U.S. government officials, journalists, and Iranians living outside Iran. Microsoft linkedPhosphorous with the Iranian government.
OilRig – This group focused on private industry targets outside of Iran, most famously hacking ****don Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corporation in February 2014. The group was, in turn, ****** by Turla, a Russian FSB-associated group. The Russians used the hijacked group to hack targets in the Middle East and the United Kingdom, according to U.S. and British officials in October 2019.
Iranian Dark Coders Team – This hacking collective primarily focused on cyber-vandalism. It defaced American and Israeli websites with pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iran propaganda in 2012. The group has not been tied to the Iranian government and may consist of freelancers or criminal elements.[/b]
[b][b]Timeline of U.S.-Iran Cyberattacks[/b]
[/b]
[b]December 18, 2009 – Twitter’s homepage was ****** and defaced by a group claiming to be the “Iranian Cyber Army” in response to the Green Revolution protests.
July 2010 – The Stuxnet virus was identified by a Belorussian computer security company. Subsequent technical analysis showed the malware was likely created to target Iranian industrial facilities.
September 25, 2010 – Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said it was fighting malware that targeted its nuclear facilities. An Iranian official said 30,000 computers had been infected by Stuxnet.
April 25, 2011 – Iran’s cyber defense agency discovered a virus nicknamed “Stars” that was designed to infiltrate and damage its nuclear facilities.
April 23, 2012 – Cyberattacks forced Iran to take several oil terminals offline. The virus, nicknamed “Wiper,” spread through the Iranian Oil Ministry and National Iranian oil Company.
May 9, 2012 – Iran acknowledged that a virus dubbed “Flame” had infected government computers and was capable of stealing data.
June 19, 2012 – Western officials told The Washington Post that U.S. and Israel had deployed the Flame virus to collect intelligence on Iranian computer networks in order to prepare for a cyberwarfare campaign.
July 2012 – Iranian ******* targeted Israeli government officials with a cyber espionage tool nicknamed Madi. The malware logged keystrokes, recorded audio, and stole ********s.
August 2012 – The Shamoon virus erased three-quarters of all corporate computers owned by Saudi Aramco and replaced the data with an image of a burning American flag. U.S. officials blamed Iran for the cyberattack.
September 11, 2012 – A group called the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters directed a DDoS attack against U.S. banking infrastructure in a cyber campaign named Operation Ababil.
October 12, 2012 – U.S. official blamed Iranian ******* with ties to the government for attacks against U.S. banks and Saudi oil facilities.
January 8, 2013 – U.S. officials blamed Iran for the Operation Ababil banking cyberattacks.
September 27, 2013 – Iranian ******* compromised unclassified U.S. Navy computers in the midst of talks over Iran’s nuclear program.
February 2014 – Iranian ******* targeted ****don Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. The attack shut down communications systems and wiped hard drives clean.
November 2015 – IRGC ******* targeted State Department and other Obama administration officials.
March 24, 2016 – The Department of Justice indicted seven Iranian ******* for cyberattacks against U.S. banks and a New York dam. It claimed the ******* worked on behalf of the Iranian government and the IRGC.
November 11, 2016 – The Shamoon virus resurfaced in Saudi Arabia, according to Symantec.
January 2017 – An updated Shamoon virus targeted Saudi government computer systems at petrochemical plants.
August 2017 – A failed cyberattack attempted to trigger an explosion at a Saudi petrochemical company.
March 22, 2018 – A ransomware attack known as SamSam crippledAtlanta’s city government.
May 9, 2018 – Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike warned about a “notable” increase in Iranian cyberactivity within 24 hours of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA.
July 20, 2018 – U.S. senior officials warned Iran had prepared for extensive cyberattacks against the United States and European infrastructure.
October 28, 2018 – The head of Iran’s civil defense agency claimed it had neutralized a “new generation of Stuxnet” attempting to enter the country’s communications infrastructure. Iranian officials blamed Israel for the attack.
December 5, 2018 – The Department of Justice indicted two Iranian nationals for the SamSam ransomware attack against the city of Atlanta.
January 2019 – Cybersecurity firm FireEye detailed a two-year campaign by Iran to steal login credentials and business details in the Middle East, Europe and North America.
March 6, 2019 – Microsoft said Iranian cyberattacks had targeted over 200 companies in the past two years.
April 2019 – A hack against Iranian data centers left a U.S. flag on Iranian computer screens along with a message not to interfere with American elections.
June 17, 2019 – Tehran claimed it dismantled a CIA-run cyber espionage network in Iran.
June 20, 2019 – The United States conducted a cyberattack after Iran’s attacks against oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and downing of a U.S. drone. U.S. officials later told The New York Times that the attacks wiped clean an IRGC database used to plan the tanker attacks.
June 22, 2019 – The Department of Homeland Security said Iran had increased its “malicious cyber activity” against U.S. government agencies and private industry.
June 26, 2019 – Netblocks reported widespread internet disruption in Iran.
July 17, 2019 – Microsoft said nearly 10,000 customers were targeted by state-sponsored cyberattacks from Iran, Russia, and North Korea
September 2019 – The United States conducted a cyberattack against Iran in retaliation for a drone and missile attack against Saudi oil facilities. U.S. officials told Reuters the operation targeted physical hardware related to Iran’s ability to disseminate propaganda.
October 4, 2019 – Microsoft said that Iranian hacker group Phosphorous tried to breach accounts associated with U.S. presidential campaigns. The ******* failed to breach accounts connected with President Trump’s re-election campaign as well as the accounts of journalists and U.S. officials.
October 22, 2019 – Court ********ed revealed that the FBI tracked Iranian ******* who had breached American satellite technology companies.
February 8, 2020 –Netblocks reported that national internet connectivity in Iran fell to 75 percent after Iran activated cyber countermeasures to a DDoS attack.
The head of Iran’s civil defense organization blamed the United States for a DDoS cyberattack that led to hours of service disruption.
April 2020 – ******* linked to Iran reportedly conducted a phishing attack against top executives at Gilead Sciences Inc, a U.S. drugmaker. Cybersecurity researchers at Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky traced the web domain and servers employed in the attack back to Iran.
June 4, 2020 – Google said that Iranian ******* with APT 35 conducted a phishing attack against President Trump’s reelection campaign. The ******* failed to gain access to any staffer email accounts.
Andrew Hanna, a research assistant at the U.S. Institute of Peace, assembled this report. [/b]
[b]Photo Credit: Air Force photo by J.M. Eddins Jr. via Department of Defense
[/b]
[b]Photo Credit: This Web Site Has Been ****** By Iranian Cyber Army via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
[/b]
[b]Photo Credit: U.S. Navy photo by Samuel Souvannason via
[/b]]]>
[b]The Invisible U.S.-Iran Cyber War[/b]
June 4, 2020
By 2020, tensions between the United States and Iran increasingly played out in invisible cyberspace. Both governments acknowledged that cyberattacks were central to their strategies. The scope was unknown, but cyberspace has turned into a near-unrestricted war zone. Cyber offered an alternative to kinetic military action that could lead to full-scale war – which both Washington and Tehran sought to avoid.

Iranian ******* targeted U.S. citizens in the lead up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In October 2019, Microsoft warned that an Iranian-government hacker group had tried to breach e-mail accounts associated with journalists, current and former U.S. government officials and a U.S. presidential campaign. And in June 2020, Google said that Iran tried and failed to breach e-mail accounts associated with President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

[b]U.S. cyberwarfare specialists training at the Warfield Air National Guard Base in Maryland
[/b]
Sustained U.S. cyber activities against Iran are widely traced to a covert campaign code-named Operation Olympic Games. Started in 2006 under the Bush administration, the program targeted Iranian nuclear capabilities. President Obama expanded Olympic Games to include the use of offensive cyber weapons against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. In 2010, the Stuxnet virus, allegedly designed by the United States and Israel, seriously damaged the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
In June 2019, the Trump administration retaliated against Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone with a cyberattack on a Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) database used to plan attacks on tankers. The United States struck again in September 2019 after Iran allegedly launched drones and cruise missiles on two Saudi oil facilities. Iran, in turn, has ramped up its efforts to penetrate U.S. “soft” targets and email accounts.
Iranian cyberattacks against the United States date back to 2009, when the so-called “Iranian Cyber Army” defaced Twitter’s homepage in response to the Green Revolution protests over alleged fraud in the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [صورة: Pic%202B.jpg]
[b]Screenshot of the Twitter homepage in December 2009
[/b]
[b][b]Iranian cyber activities against the U.S.[/b]
[/b]
Since 2009, Iran’s cyber capabilities have since grown in sophistication and scope. Iran has primarily targeted the private sector rather than U.S. government systems. In September 2012, Iranian ******* directed a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against U.S. banks. The campaign, nicknamed Operation Ababil, blocked access to the websites of major financial institutions by overwhelming their servers with web traffic. The attacks cost Western firms millions in lost business, according to a Department of Justice indictment.
Tehran appeared to accelerate its cyber operations against the United States government and its regional partners after the election of President Donald Trump. In August 2017, a cyberattack tied to Iran nearly triggered an explosion at a Saudi petrochemical plant. In December 2018, the Department of Justice indicted two Iranian ******* for a ransomware attack that had crippled Atlanta’s city government in March of that year. The attack locked the files of 8,000 municipal employees and took offline local government operations for nearly a week.
These attacks have coincided with increased Iranian online espionage. In May 2018, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike warned its clients about a “notable” increase in Iranian phishing activity a day after President Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA nuclear deal. Before Israel’s election in March 2019, Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White party, reportedly had his phone ****** by Iranian intelligence.
On January 4, 2020, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned of a potential Iranian cyberattack in the aftermath of the death of Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani. The agency said a retaliatory cyberattack by Iran or its proxies could “come with little to no warning” in a bulletin posted to its website. Although DHS said it had “no information indicating a specific, credible threat to the Homeland,” Iran and Hezbollah had the “intent and capability” to conduct a cyberattack within the United States. Later that day, cyber vandals claiming affiliation with Iran defaced the website of the Federal Depository Library Program and threatened further attacks.
[b]U.S. cyber activities against Iran
[/b]
[b]U.S. sailors at the Fleet Operations Center at U.S. Fleet Cyber Command
[/b]
Since 2006, the United States has ramped up its cyber offensive operations against Iranian government computer systems. The most famous cyberattack was the unleashing of the Stuxnet virus on Natanz, which damaged nearly 1,000 centrifuges and infected 30,000 computers. Iran was forced to take tens of thousands of computers offline. Other cyberattacks—including the Flame and Wiper, viruses reportedly part of Operation Olympic Games-- targeted Iran’s oil infrastructure.
The Trump administration accelerated cyber operations in response to Iranian attacks in the Persian Gulf. In June 2019, United States conducted a cyberattack on Iran after it downed a U.S. drone near the Strait of Hormuz. The attack wiped clean an IRGC database used to plan attacks against tankers in the Persian Gulf. Netblocks, a cyber monitoring firm, also reported widespread internet disruption in Iran after the drone attack.
In September 2019, the United States carried out a cyberattack against unspecified Iranian “physical hardware” – equipment used to disseminate propaganda – after Iran’s attacks on two Saudi oil facilities. The unusual U.S. confirmation of its attacks in October suggested the goal was deter Iran without resorting to kinetic strikes.

[b][b]Known Iranian Hacker Groups[/b]
[/b]
[b]Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters – This group claimed responsibility for the DDoS cyberattacks against U.S. financial institutions in September 2012. The same month, Sen. Joe Lieberman claimed that the group was connected to the IRGC’s elite Qods Force.
APT33 (aka Elfin, Refined Kitten, Holmium) – This group carried out cyber espionage operations against aviation, military, and energy targets in the United States, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Cybersecurity firm FireEye linked APT33 to the Iranian government.
Phosphorous (aka APT35, Charming Kitten, Ajax Security) – This group attempted to breach the e-mail accounts of the Trump re-election campaign in 2019, as well as accounts of U.S. government officials, journalists, and Iranians living outside Iran. Microsoft linkedPhosphorous with the Iranian government.
OilRig – This group focused on private industry targets outside of Iran, most famously hacking ****don Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corporation in February 2014. The group was, in turn, ****** by Turla, a Russian FSB-associated group. The Russians used the hijacked group to hack targets in the Middle East and the United Kingdom, according to U.S. and British officials in October 2019.
Iranian Dark Coders Team – This hacking collective primarily focused on cyber-vandalism. It defaced American and Israeli websites with pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iran propaganda in 2012. The group has not been tied to the Iranian government and may consist of freelancers or criminal elements.[/b]
[b][b]Timeline of U.S.-Iran Cyberattacks[/b]
[/b]
[b]December 18, 2009 – Twitter’s homepage was ****** and defaced by a group claiming to be the “Iranian Cyber Army” in response to the Green Revolution protests.
July 2010 – The Stuxnet virus was identified by a Belorussian computer security company. Subsequent technical analysis showed the malware was likely created to target Iranian industrial facilities.
September 25, 2010 – Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said it was fighting malware that targeted its nuclear facilities. An Iranian official said 30,000 computers had been infected by Stuxnet.
April 25, 2011 – Iran’s cyber defense agency discovered a virus nicknamed “Stars” that was designed to infiltrate and damage its nuclear facilities.
April 23, 2012 – Cyberattacks forced Iran to take several oil terminals offline. The virus, nicknamed “Wiper,” spread through the Iranian Oil Ministry and National Iranian oil Company.
May 9, 2012 – Iran acknowledged that a virus dubbed “Flame” had infected government computers and was capable of stealing data.
June 19, 2012 – Western officials told The Washington Post that U.S. and Israel had deployed the Flame virus to collect intelligence on Iranian computer networks in order to prepare for a cyberwarfare campaign.
July 2012 – Iranian ******* targeted Israeli government officials with a cyber espionage tool nicknamed Madi. The malware logged keystrokes, recorded audio, and stole ********s.
August 2012 – The Shamoon virus erased three-quarters of all corporate computers owned by Saudi Aramco and replaced the data with an image of a burning American flag. U.S. officials blamed Iran for the cyberattack.
September 11, 2012 – A group called the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters directed a DDoS attack against U.S. banking infrastructure in a cyber campaign named Operation Ababil.
October 12, 2012 – U.S. official blamed Iranian ******* with ties to the government for attacks against U.S. banks and Saudi oil facilities.
January 8, 2013 – U.S. officials blamed Iran for the Operation Ababil banking cyberattacks.
September 27, 2013 – Iranian ******* compromised unclassified U.S. Navy computers in the midst of talks over Iran’s nuclear program.
February 2014 – Iranian ******* targeted ****don Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. The attack shut down communications systems and wiped hard drives clean.
November 2015 – IRGC ******* targeted State Department and other Obama administration officials.
March 24, 2016 – The Department of Justice indicted seven Iranian ******* for cyberattacks against U.S. banks and a New York dam. It claimed the ******* worked on behalf of the Iranian government and the IRGC.
November 11, 2016 – The Shamoon virus resurfaced in Saudi Arabia, according to Symantec.
January 2017 – An updated Shamoon virus targeted Saudi government computer systems at petrochemical plants.
August 2017 – A failed cyberattack attempted to trigger an explosion at a Saudi petrochemical company.
March 22, 2018 – A ransomware attack known as SamSam crippledAtlanta’s city government.
May 9, 2018 – Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike warned about a “notable” increase in Iranian cyberactivity within 24 hours of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA.
July 20, 2018 – U.S. senior officials warned Iran had prepared for extensive cyberattacks against the United States and European infrastructure.
October 28, 2018 – The head of Iran’s civil defense agency claimed it had neutralized a “new generation of Stuxnet” attempting to enter the country’s communications infrastructure. Iranian officials blamed Israel for the attack.
December 5, 2018 – The Department of Justice indicted two Iranian nationals for the SamSam ransomware attack against the city of Atlanta.
January 2019 – Cybersecurity firm FireEye detailed a two-year campaign by Iran to steal login credentials and business details in the Middle East, Europe and North America.
March 6, 2019 – Microsoft said Iranian cyberattacks had targeted over 200 companies in the past two years.
April 2019 – A hack against Iranian data centers left a U.S. flag on Iranian computer screens along with a message not to interfere with American elections.
June 17, 2019 – Tehran claimed it dismantled a CIA-run cyber espionage network in Iran.
June 20, 2019 – The United States conducted a cyberattack after Iran’s attacks against oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and downing of a U.S. drone. U.S. officials later told The New York Times that the attacks wiped clean an IRGC database used to plan the tanker attacks.
June 22, 2019 – The Department of Homeland Security said Iran had increased its “malicious cyber activity” against U.S. government agencies and private industry.
June 26, 2019 – Netblocks reported widespread internet disruption in Iran.
July 17, 2019 – Microsoft said nearly 10,000 customers were targeted by state-sponsored cyberattacks from Iran, Russia, and North Korea
September 2019 – The United States conducted a cyberattack against Iran in retaliation for a drone and missile attack against Saudi oil facilities. U.S. officials told Reuters the operation targeted physical hardware related to Iran’s ability to disseminate propaganda.
October 4, 2019 – Microsoft said that Iranian hacker group Phosphorous tried to breach accounts associated with U.S. presidential campaigns. The ******* failed to breach accounts connected with President Trump’s re-election campaign as well as the accounts of journalists and U.S. officials.
October 22, 2019 – Court ********ed revealed that the FBI tracked Iranian ******* who had breached American satellite technology companies.
February 8, 2020 –Netblocks reported that national internet connectivity in Iran fell to 75 percent after Iran activated cyber countermeasures to a DDoS attack.
The head of Iran’s civil defense organization blamed the United States for a DDoS cyberattack that led to hours of service disruption.
April 2020 – ******* linked to Iran reportedly conducted a phishing attack against top executives at Gilead Sciences Inc, a U.S. drugmaker. Cybersecurity researchers at Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky traced the web domain and servers employed in the attack back to Iran.
June 4, 2020 – Google said that Iranian ******* with APT 35 conducted a phishing attack against President Trump’s reelection campaign. The ******* failed to gain access to any staffer email accounts.
Andrew Hanna, a research assistant at the U.S. Institute of Peace, assembled this report. [/b]
[b]Photo Credit: Air Force photo by J.M. Eddins Jr. via Department of Defense
[/b]
[b]Photo Credit: This Web Site Has Been ****** By Iranian Cyber Army via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
[/b]
[b]Photo Credit: U.S. Navy photo by Samuel Souvannason via
[/b]]]> <![CDATA[Russia accused of global net hack attacks]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=4629 Tue, 14 Jul 2020 21:11:32 +0300 الباسل]]> https://www.albasalh.com/showthread.php?tid=4629 Russia accused of global net hack attacks

[صورة: _100901043_046083424-1.jpg]
Russia has been accused of carrying out cyber-attacks across the globe
State-sponsored Russian ******* are actively seeking to hijack essential internet hardware, US and UK intelligence agencies say.

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security issued a joint alert warning of a global campaign.
The alert details methods used to compromise the networking equipment used to move traffic across the net.
This could be used to mount a future offensive, it warned.

[b]Basic weakness
[/b]

In a press conference about the alert, White House cyber-security co-ordinator Rob Joyce said the US and its allies had "high confidence" that Russia was behind the "broad campaign".
Intelligence gathered by the US and UK suggested that millions of machines directing data around the net were being targeted, he said.
Compromised devices were used to look at data passing through them, added Mr Joyce. Attackers also sought to undermine the firewalls and intrusion detection systems
organisations used to spot malicious traffic before it reached users.

[b]Analysis
[/b]
[b]By Gordon Corera, Security correspondent
[/b]

It is possible that Russian intrusions may be increasing. But it is too early to know for sure if this is the case, since it takes time to spot this - if it is spotted at all - and to be sure it is Russian.
The crucial thing is whether Russia actually employs its offensive capability to actually do something destructive.
So far, there has been relatively little sign of this in the US or UK, although Russia is accused of launching destructive attacks against Ukraine.
It is worth saying that Britain and the US will be carrying out almost identical activities in Russia, pre-positioning in Russian networks to be able to respond.
What no-one is quite sure of is whether this creates a deterrent a bit like mutually assured nuclear destruction in the Cold War.
Read Gordon's full blog

In addition, Mr Joyce said, many different organisations had come under attack for months at a time in a bid to scoop up valuable intellectual property, business information or to get at their customers.
"When we see malicious cyber-activity, whether Kremlin or other nation state actors, we are going to push back," said Mr Joyce.
Ciaran Martin, head of the UK's NCSC, said the issuing of the alert marked a "significant moment" as the two powers had never before given joint advice on how to deal with attacks.
"Many of the techniques used by Russia exploit basic weaknesses in network systems," said Mr Martin.
The principal targets of the global campaign were internet service providers, firms running critical infrastructure, government departments and large companies, the alert stated.
And it contained detailed information about attack methods, the signs left when hardware has been compromised, and how networks change when they have been breached.
The advice given to firms has included ways to configure their systems correctly and how to apply patches to address hardware vulnerabilities.
Mr Martin said GCHQ, NCSC's parent organisation, had tracked the threat posed by Russian cyber-gangs for more than 20 years. Further intelligence about the attacks had been added by "multiple" cyber-security organisations and companies, he added.
The UK was working with America, its other allies and the technology industry to "expose Russia's unacceptable cyber-behaviour, so they are held accountable for their actions", said Mr Martin.
]]> Russia accused of global net hack attacks

[صورة: _100901043_046083424-1.jpg]
Russia has been accused of carrying out cyber-attacks across the globe
State-sponsored Russian ******* are actively seeking to hijack essential internet hardware, US and UK intelligence agencies say.

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security issued a joint alert warning of a global campaign.
The alert details methods used to compromise the networking equipment used to move traffic across the net.
This could be used to mount a future offensive, it warned.

[b]Basic weakness
[/b]

In a press conference about the alert, White House cyber-security co-ordinator Rob Joyce said the US and its allies had "high confidence" that Russia was behind the "broad campaign".
Intelligence gathered by the US and UK suggested that millions of machines directing data around the net were being targeted, he said.
Compromised devices were used to look at data passing through them, added Mr Joyce. Attackers also sought to undermine the firewalls and intrusion detection systems
organisations used to spot malicious traffic before it reached users.

[b]Analysis
[/b]
[b]By Gordon Corera, Security correspondent
[/b]

It is possible that Russian intrusions may be increasing. But it is too early to know for sure if this is the case, since it takes time to spot this - if it is spotted at all - and to be sure it is Russian.
The crucial thing is whether Russia actually employs its offensive capability to actually do something destructive.
So far, there has been relatively little sign of this in the US or UK, although Russia is accused of launching destructive attacks against Ukraine.
It is worth saying that Britain and the US will be carrying out almost identical activities in Russia, pre-positioning in Russian networks to be able to respond.
What no-one is quite sure of is whether this creates a deterrent a bit like mutually assured nuclear destruction in the Cold War.
Read Gordon's full blog

In addition, Mr Joyce said, many different organisations had come under attack for months at a time in a bid to scoop up valuable intellectual property, business information or to get at their customers.
"When we see malicious cyber-activity, whether Kremlin or other nation state actors, we are going to push back," said Mr Joyce.
Ciaran Martin, head of the UK's NCSC, said the issuing of the alert marked a "significant moment" as the two powers had never before given joint advice on how to deal with attacks.
"Many of the techniques used by Russia exploit basic weaknesses in network systems," said Mr Martin.
The principal targets of the global campaign were internet service providers, firms running critical infrastructure, government departments and large companies, the alert stated.
And it contained detailed information about attack methods, the signs left when hardware has been compromised, and how networks change when they have been breached.
The advice given to firms has included ways to configure their systems correctly and how to apply patches to address hardware vulnerabilities.
Mr Martin said GCHQ, NCSC's parent organisation, had tracked the threat posed by Russian cyber-gangs for more than 20 years. Further intelligence about the attacks had been added by "multiple" cyber-security organisations and companies, he added.
The UK was working with America, its other allies and the technology industry to "expose Russia's unacceptable cyber-behaviour, so they are held accountable for their actions", said Mr Martin.
]]>