CHACRDIGEST
JANUARY 25th, 2023
#15
Destination Donbas?: Challenger 2 and Leopard 2 tanks could soon be among Ukraine’s growing arsenal or armour
EDITORIAL LEADER This late-January issue of the CHACR digest provides us with a timely reminder that the world, as we enter 2023, remains a very volatile and insecure place. If you doubt this, then it’s worth switching your attention from the headlines and glancing at the bottom of this report, just to get a feel for the range of instability, conflict and potential conflict that continues to bubble away across the globe. Europe may, for example, have taken their eyes off Libya, or Taiwan, or, closer to home, Syria, or, closer still, Serbia and Kosovo, but for the people of all of those places the conflict in Ukraine is distant and secondary. Meanwhile, Europe squabbles over end-user certificates and permissions for Leopard 2 tanks as the Ukrainian President and Army become increasingly urgent in their calls for tide-turning Land capabilities. As the snow melts in Ukraine, and the subsequent mud solidifies, the late spring is likely to offer both sides the opportunity for the much-heralded counter and counter-counter offensives. For security and Defence professionals 2023 is likely to offer, as the Chinese curse would have it, ‘interesting times’. – Maj Gen (Retd) Dr A R D Sharpe CBE, Director CHACR
WILL THE US REMAIN COMMITTED TO UKRAINE? As the Biden administration has signed off yet another aid package for Ukraine, this time including Bradley Fighting Vehicles, there have been increasingly worried questions among some in Europe about how long the US will continue paying this much attention to the war in Europe, particularly as the balance of power in the Congress has shifted. Raphael Cohen and Gian Gentile, writing for RAND, argue that there is less reason for concern than sometimes suggested. They note that the war in Ukraine is fundamentally different for Americans than recent wars in Afghanistan, for example, and that any suggestion of Ukraine fatigue in the US should ultimately be regarded as little more than a myth. Separately, Cohen has penned an article (published by War on the Rocks and RAND) that describes the US’ emerging ‘two war construct’, and outlines what Washington needs to do to be able to remain committed to both the current war in Europe, and a potential future conflagration with China.
UNMASKING RUSSIAN ESPIONAGE IN THE EU It is well known that Russia has worked hard over the past decade to infiltrate NATO members. So great was the scale of human intelligence work that the number of Russian state officials expelled from EU member nations has grown to 490 since February 2022. While the EU in particular has worked hard to expose Russian espionage activities, the disjointed policies of its various member states have led to an inconsistent approach, which has allowed Russian spy agencies to capitalise. In this article, the Polish security think tank PRISM advocates for a more joined-up approach, in which states of the EU share information through the European External Action Service, which would then consolidate all relevant information resulting from incidences of Russian espionage inside the EU’s respective member countries. This would enhance resilience among Europe’s nations and build a more effective response mechanism to counter Russian covert activity.
1 // WAR IN UKRAINE // CHACR DIGEST
Picture: UK MOD © Crown copyright
The views expressed in this Digest are not those of the British Army or UK Government. This document cannot be reproduced or used in part or whole without the permission of the CHACR. www.chacr.org.uk