Ukraine tries to prise out Russians as U.S. grudgingly explores détente in China

(Originally published June 20 in “What in the World“) As Ukrainian forces grind slowly forward, they are encountering deeply entrenched Russian invaders who’ve spent more than a year studying Ukraine’s imported Western weapons and tactics to hone their defense and improve strategies.

Having been burned by Ukraine’s lightning strike on Kharkiv last fall, Russia is going to make any gains slow and costly. Russia also continues to launch missiles in response to Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive across the Dnipro, with barrages hitting civilian populations well behind the lines.

Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States said at a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels that they were shipping hundreds more air-defense missiles to Ukraine to deflect Moscow’s barrages. The NATO defense chiefs gathered in Brussels pledged to arm Ukraine for as long as it takes to expel Russian forces.

Ukraine is learning that you get what you pay for. While modern U.S. weapons like the Himars helped it turn the tide, it’s finding many of the weapons from U.S. allies either haven’t arrived, or arrive in such a dilapidated condition they can only be used for scrap.

Russian nuclear weapons are now beginning to arrive in neighboring Belarus, according to Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the plan to move nuclear weapons into Belarus back in March in response to a British plan to supply Ukraine with armor-piercing artillery made from depleted uranium. Putin justified the move as akin to the United States’ longstanding nuclear weapons deployments at airbases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Even as Russia faces down a U.S.-armed counteroffensive in Ukraine, military tensions between it and Washington are rising in Syria. In response to what it suggested were taunts by Russian fighter jets over a U.S. base there, the U.S. Air Force said it had sent F-22 fighter jets from Virginia to the Middle East. The U.S. still maintains small bases in Syria to mop up remnants of Islamic State, but routinely has to respond to attacks by Iranian-backed militias.

One of the U.S. bases is at Mission Support Site Conoco, likely situated just north of the Conoco gas plant outside Khasham. Khasham was the site of a 2018 battle between U.S. and Kurdish militias against Russian-backed Syrian government forces using Russian tanks and possibly accompanied by the same Russian mercenaries now operating in Ukraine, the Wagner Group.

Not to be left out, North Korea launched two ballistic missiles from its east coast, ending a two-month hiatus and resuming its long-running attempt to annihilate the Sea of Japan.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Beijing for what promise to be inconclusive talks aimed at arresting a slide in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China. But as a sign of just how rigidly anti-China Washington has become, Republican lawmakers accused Blinken of undermining American security by even making the trip and demanded a more hard-line, retaliatory approach.