Tag: missile strike
Latest Strikes On Civilian Targets In Ukraine Show Russia Is A Terrorist State

Latest Strikes On Civilian Targets In Ukraine Show Russia Is A Terrorist State

With news breaking on Tuesday afternoon that two Russian missiles may have struck a grain processing plant in Poland near its border with Ukraine, killing two Polish civilians, one question immediately arises: Why would Russia be firing missiles at targets within Ukraine that are close enough to the Polish border that a misfired, or off course, missile might land within the territory of Poland, a NATO ally?

All the facts are not in yet, but military experts interviewed on MSNBC, including General Barry McCaffrey and Admiral James Stavridis, the former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, seem confident that two Russian missiles apparently struck Polish soil. The town where the grain processing facility is located, Przewodow, is four miles from the border with Ukraine and is about 60 miles north of the Ukrainian city of Lviv, which was the target of a major Russian missile attack today.

Both Lviv and Przewodow are within the range of a Russian Iskander SS-26 missile fired from within the territory of Belarus, directly north of both Lviv and Eastern Poland. The Iskander missile, launched from a mobile platform on a truck chassis, has been used repeatedly by Russia against civilian and military targets inside Ukraine. It is thought to be one of the missiles being used to target Ukrainian energy facilities which are within its reach if fired from either Russian or Belarussian soil.


Everyone, including former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, agrees that the Russian missile strikes on Monday night and early Tuesday against civilian targets in Ukraine were made in retaliation for Ukraine’s recent victory in Kherson, when several days ago they ran Russian forces out of the important Ukrainian port on the Black Sea.

But, wait a minute! If you are a great power with a large army, a strong navy, and a powerful air force that has long range bombers and the latest up-to-date fighter jets, aren’t you supposed to respond to an enemy assault on the ground militarily? Shouldn’t Russia be marshaling its forces in the south of Ukraine for a major counterattack with the aim of re-taking the territory it lost around Kherson?

That would be the case if Russia was indeed a great power with a powerful army, navy, and air force, including, it must be noted, nuclear weapons. But nine months after its abortive invasion of Ukraine, Russia has shown itself to be a second or even third-rate military power that has suffered defeat after defeat since its invasion of Ukraine in February.

Russia’s forces are holding onto a sliver of territory taken in the early months of the war along Ukraine’s eastern border, and in its south along the Sea of Azoz and the Black Sea, at least until Ukraine re-took Kherson last week. Instead of assembling a military force in the south capable of re-taking Kherson and launching a counterattack, Vladimir Putin has struck back at Ukrainian civilians and its energy infrastructure.

This is what terrorist states and terrorist actors do when they perceive that they are weaker than their enemies. It’s what al Qaeda did in 2001, when lacking an air force and a well-equipped army, they launched their now infamous attack on America by hijacking airliners and flying them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

Putin isn’t that weak. He didn’t have to resort to hijackings and hostage taking. Instead, he launched missiles against civilians in Ukraine, and it now appears, in Poland as well. It is not known at this time which missiles were launched against Ukraine, although reports from Ukraine say a “mass launch of KH-101 cruise missiles” took place from the Vologograd-Astrakhan Region in Russia earlier today.

It is thought that the Iskander SS-26 missile could also have been used against targets in Ukraine, as it was earlier in the war. It is a short-range semi -ballistic missile, which is to say, after launch, the missile is unpowered, following a trajectory programmed by the ground launch system. The missile is maneuverable with small fins and has a relatively flat trajectory, staying within the earth’s atmosphere. The Iskander is equipped with an optical guidance system which is employed as the missile nears its target. Aerial photographs of a target can be programmed into the missile which the missile is supposed to lock onto in flight and follow as its trajectory descends toward the target. The KH-101 cruise missiles also have an optical guidance system used as the missile nears its target.

But the Russian missile is “guided” only in a very basic sense, and it is not very accurate. Its optical homing system used by both the Iskander and the KH-101 is vulnerable to low-lying clouds, heavy rain, and other bad weather. The Russian missiles which apparently struck the grain facility in Poland may have been set to hit targets in and around Lviv, which took a heavy missile barrage around the time of the strikes in Poland. The Russian missiles may have been caused to go off-target by either weather or anti-missile battery fire. All of this is, at this point, unknown.

What is known by the strikes on Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other population centers earlier today, is that the missiles were sent to hit civilian targets. Several civilian apartment buildings were hit in Kyiv and Lviv. Ukrainian energy infrastructure also came under missile attack.

This is not the military behavior of a great power that has gone to war against a weaker enemy. It is the behavior of a desperate dictator striking out wildly against a country he has made his enemy by fiat and against which he is losing the war he launched. Ukraine didn’t perceive itself to be an enemy of Russia before it was invaded. The perception of Ukraine as an enemy of Russia was entirely Vladimir Putin’s, just as the perception of the U.S. as an enemy was entirely Osama bin Laden’s. Ukraine didn’t ask for the Russian attack on its soil any more than the U.S. asked for the attack by al Qaeda against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Terrorists carried out those attacks, and terrorists carried out the attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine today and every other day since the war was started by Russia on February 24. Poland being struck by Russian missiles was avoidable by Putin any time before he launched his invasion of Ukraine nine months ago.

Military leaders of NATO nations are meeting under Article Four of the NATO treaty. This is the article NATO follows before engaging Article Five, which famously pledges that an attack on any NATO nation is an attack against all of them.

The situation now,, after the Russian missiles apparently landed on Polish soil, is unstable. By attacking Ukraine, Putin thought he could keep his neighbor country out of NATO. Now he has driven Ukraine into an even tighter military alliance with NATO than existed before February 24. Ukraine has become a NATO member country in all but name. It is Putin’s nightmare. Whether it will turn into Europe’s nightmare as well, only time and careful military analysis will tell.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter

In Syria, Trump May Have To Learn The Hard Way

In Syria, Trump May Have To Learn The Hard Way

In the worldview Donald Trump brought to the White House, all problems are easy. Fix the economy by getting tough with China. End illegal immigration by building a wall. “Totally obliterate” the Islamic State.

Even after the humiliating failure of an effort in the House to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump declared: “I know that we’re all going to make a deal on health care. That’s such an easy one.”

Trump apparently thinks the same thing about one of the knottiest questions he has encountered — Syria. After a chemical weapons attack blamed on President Bashar Assad, Trump didn’t spend much time agonizing before using cruise missiles against a Syrian air base. It’s a response that creates new dangers without solving old problems.

He obviously never read up on Dwight Eisenhower, who said: “No easy problems ever come to the president of the United States. If they are easy to solve, someone else has solved them.”

Syria is one of those no one has solved, mainly because it is virtually impossible. The country has been a charnel house since 2011, when an armed uprising elicited savage responses from Assad — bombing hospitals, torturing opponents and starving civilians.

In 2012, Barack Obama threatened U.S. retaliation if Assad used chemical weapons. When he used them anyway, Obama changed his mind, recognizing that major military measures had scant prospect of success but an excellent chance of catastrophe.

The options in Syria did not become more viable merely because Trump finally took note of what’s happening. In fact, they have gotten worse. Russia now has ground and air forces in Syria, fighting on the side of the regime.

Hawks accused Obama of facilitating Assad’s brutality by standing aside. But it was not until Trump arrived that this nerve gas attack occurred. Maybe Assad felt emboldened after the administration indicated his regime is “a political reality that we have to accept,” as press secretary Sean Spicer said March 31. In that case, Trump is not compensating for Obama’s mistakes so much as his own.

It’s hard to have any confidence that this decision was made in a careful way, with a clear sense of purpose and a full understanding of the risks. The suddenness of Trump’s shift indicates he gave no more thought to his new position than he did to his previous, opposite one.

The important questions are: What will the strike accomplish, and where will it lead? One taste of the lash isn’t likely to shake Assad’s grip on power or deter him from killing his own people on a large scale — possibly even with chemical weapons.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster admitted Friday that the dictator “will maintain the certain capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons, we think, beyond this particular airfield.” The administration is trying to thread a very small needle. “This was not a small strike,” McMaster insisted, while noting that it was also “not of a scope or a scale that it (went) after all such related facilities.”

The exquisite calibration suggests Trump and his advisers want to reassure both the American people (“I’m tough!”) and the Russians (“Really, it’s nothing”). It indicates he has no intention of bringing down Assad. Maybe someone told him that without Assad, the chaos and bloodshed in Syria would not abate but expand and intensify.

Apparently, Trump is averse to full-scale intervention, which would carry the risk of direct combat with Russians in the air or on the ground. But as the signs on ski slopes say, hazards exist that are not marked. Once the U.S. inserts itself into the fight against Assad, the chance of a misstep increases. With a little bad luck, we could find ourselves at war not only with the Syrian government but with a nuclear superpower.

Why take the risk? Even if conflict with Russia could be avoided, making any real difference in the war would require a large number of U.S. ground troops for a long time. And the outcome would probably be a costly failure, kind of like Iraq and Afghanistan.

As every president learns, matters of war and peace look much simpler before you get to the White House. Obama came to understand that if we went to war in Syria, our adversaries might lose, but we would not win. Trump will learn that, too, but he may have to learn the hard way.

IMAGE: Children play near rubble of damaged buildings in al-Rai town, northern Aleppo countryside, Syria December 25, 2016. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi