Ukraine Update…408 days into the Russian move on the Ukraine…The Leak….

Here’s the latest on the Ukraine war and its ripple effects across the globe.

• The documents include a U.S. intelligence assessment that predicts Ukraine will make only “modest territorial gains” in its spring counteroffensive. The assessment says Ukraine is grappling with low munitions and worn-out troops, and it warns of “force generation and sustainment shortfalls.” Another document cites looming weaknesses in Ukraine’s air defenses. Russia has begun analyzing the documents, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
• Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Secretary of State Antony Blinken “vehemently rejected any attempts to cast doubt on Ukraine’s capacity to win on the battlefield” in a call Tuesday. Blinken “reaffirmed the ironclad U.S. support,” his Ukrainian counterpart said.
• The U.S. intelligence community has deeply infiltrated the Russian military, the documents indicate — in some cases enabling Washington to warn Kyiv about upcoming attacks. Washington has been working with Kyiv to shape the anticipated counteroffensive, and U.S. officials have held tabletop exercises with Ukrainian military leaders, The Washington Post reported.
• The documents include an analysis of wide-ranging risks posed by China, including Beijing’s willingness to send lethal aid to Russia. One assessment published in the leak says that a Ukrainian attack on Russian soil using NATO weaponry could draw Beijing into the war. China is committed to “peace talks and a political settlement” in Ukraine and “has never supplied arms to either side of the conflict,” Hesong Shao, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said Tuesday.

• Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who faces up to 25 years in prison on treason charges for criticizing his country’s military, described his trial as reminiscent of the Stalinist repression of the 1930s. Prosecutors have asked for the maximum sentence. “I’m in jail for my political views. For speaking out against the war in Ukraine. For many years of struggle against Putin’s dictatorship,” Kara-Murza, a contributing opinion writer for The Washington Post, said in his last statement to a Russian court.
• When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a mobilization in the fall to commandeer reinforcements for the war, thousands of men fled Russia or went into hiding. But tough measures approved by Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday would will make it almost impossible for Russians to dodge conscription in the future.

• Moscow ordered military preparations in response to the NATO accession of Finland, which was formerly militarily nonaligned. “Russian air defense forces are working out issues of protecting the state border in the northwest of the country in accordance with the increased threat level,” said Lt. Gen. Andrey Demin, commander of Russia’s air defense forces, according to Reuters.
• Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva “will talk about the war in Ukraine” with Chinese President Xi Jinping during an official visit to China this week, Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira told journalists, according to Agence France-Presse. Lula has proposed forming a group of mediator countries that would work to end the war. But his suggestion that control of Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, could be up for negotiation was criticized in Kyiv, where officials maintain that Ukraine should not have to give up any of its land in exchange for peace.
• More than 11 million people have crossed the border between Ukraine and Poland since the start of the war, Poland’s delegation to the European Union said. Poland has taken in more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees. From there, some refugees have traveled to other European countries, while others have returned to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently visited Warsaw and said: “You have not abandoned Ukraine. You stood with us shoulder to shoulder, and we are grateful to you. We believe this is a historic relationship.”
• The leaked Pentagon documents suggest that the president of Egypt, a close U.S. ally and a major recipient of U.S. aid, asked his government to produce up to 40,000 rockets and quietly ship them to Russia. “We are not aware of any execution of that plan,” said one U.S. government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to address sensitive information. “We have not seen that happen.” Peskov called the report a “hoax.”
• WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was detained in Russia for 10 months last year, said she is writing a memoir recounting her imprisonment. The book will describe the “terrifying aspects of day-to-day life in a women’s penal colony” and “the difficulty of navigating the byzantine Russian legal system,” according to a Tuesday statement from publisher Alfred A. Knopf, which will publish the memoir in spring 2024. Griner had brought less than a gram of cannabis oil into Russia and was sentenced to 9½ years in prison before she returned home in a prisoner swap for arms dealer Viktor Bout.
• The European Parliament and Ukraine’s parliament will host a joint hybrid meeting Wednesday. Parliament members will discuss topics including Ukraine’s E.U. accession process and getting Ukrainian law to align with E.U. law.

• The airborne branch of Russia’s armed forces may have received a “highly destructive” multiple rocket launcher, Britain’s Defense Ministry said, citing Russian media reports. The TOS-1A thermobaric multiple launch rocket systems are usually operated by special Russian military forces that defend against the threat of biological and chemical weapons and have “not previously been formally associated with” the VDV, as Russian airborne forces are known, the ministry said. Its apparent transfer suggests “a future role” for the VDV “in offensive operations in Ukraine,” it said.
• A top Ukrainian commander accused Russia of using “scorched-earth” tactics in the embattled city of Bakhmut. “The enemy switched to so-called scorched-earth tactics from Syria. It is destroying buildings and positions with airstrikes and artillery fire,” Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said after a weekend visit to the front lines, Reuters reported. The Post was unable to independently verify his claims….

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Corruption issue in the Ukraine…

As Ukraine fights off Russian invaders, it is also waging an internal battle against corruption and Western perception, say analysts, inspectors, and some Ukrainians.

The country’s history and the massive amount of aid it continues to receive put U.S. inspectors in a difficult position—working to uncover corruption in a country without American boots on the ground, and doing so without fueling the idea that Ukraine is inherently undeserving of aid.

“They acknowledge that they are fighting a two-front battle,” one senior official in the office of the Defense Department Inspector General told Defense One. “They are fighting the Russians and they were fighting internal corruption,” And fighting on one front means pulling resources from the other. “Many of the people that, you know, would normally have helped fight the corruption battle on the frontlines are fighting the Russians.” ….

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NATO Special Ops in the Ukraine….