Researchers observed the RansomHub ransomware group using the TDSSKiller tool to disable endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems.
The RansomHub ransomware gang is using the TDSSKiller toolto disable endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems, Malwarebytes ThreatDown Managed Detection and Response (MDR) team observed.
TDSSKiller a legitimate tool developed by the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky to remove rootkits, the software could also disable EDR solutions through a command line script or batch file.
The experts noticed that the ransomware group also used the LaZagne tool to harvest credentials. During the case investigated by MDR, experts observed that LaZagne generated 60 file writes, likely logging extracted credentials, and performed 1 file deletion, likely to hide traces of the credential-harvesting activity.
“Although both TDSSKiller and LaZagne have been used by attackers for years, this is the first record of RansomHub using them in its operations, with the TTPs not listed in CISA’s recently published advisory on RansomHub.” reads the Malwarebytes MDR’s report. “The tools were deployed following initial reconnaissance and network probing through admin group enumeration, such as net1 group "Enterprise Admins" /do. “
RansomHub used TDSSKiller with the -dcsvc flag to try disabling critical security services, specifically targeting Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Service (MBAMService). The command aimed to disrupt security defenses by disabling this service.
Command line: tdsskiller.exe -dcsvc MBAMService where the -dcsvc flag was used to target specific services. In this instance, attackers attempted to disable MBAMService.
RansomHub is a ransomware as a service (RaaS) that was employed in the operations of multiple threat actors. Microsoft reported that RansomHub was observed being deployed in post-compromise activity by the threat actor tracked as Manatee Tempest following initial access by Mustard Tempest via FakeUpdates/Socgholish infections.
Experts believe RansomHub is a rebrand of the Knight ransomware. Knight, also known as Cyclops 2.0, appeared in the threat landscape in May 2023. The malware targets multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, macOS, ESXi, and Android. The operators used a double extortion model for their RaaS operation.
This isn’t the first time that security experts documented the use of the tool developed by Kaspersky.
The Sangfor Cyber Guardian Incident Response team reported that the LockBit ransomware gang used the -dcsvc parameter of TDSSKiller as part of their attack chain.
Attackers use legitimate tools because are not blocked by security solutions.
Malwarebytes shared indicators of compromise (IoCs) for these attacks and recommends:
Isolate critical systems through network segmentation to limit lateral movement.
Restrict Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) exploits by implementing controls to monitor and restrict vulnerable drivers like TDSSKiller, especially when executed with suspicious command-line flags such as -dcsvc. Quarantining or blocking known misuse patterns while allowing legitimate uses can prevent BYOVD attacks.
As America’s 2024 presidential campaign enters its stretch run after last night’s debate, it is tempting to believe that electing one ticket or the other will solve all our problems. Have no doubt: this is a hugely consequential election, and the slate the U.S. people elect will have enormous power to shape the future of America’s foreign and national security policy. But we must not ignore that the United States’ deepest constitutional and national security challenge involves not personalities, but structure.
Consider two hypotheticals. First, upon resuming office, could Donald Trump by tweet unilaterally withdraw the United States from every treaty, agreement, and international institution to which the United States is a party? If not, what legally could stop him? Alternatively, if Kamala Harris should become president, would current law allow her unilaterally to back into a wider war in the Middle East, out of a desire to help Israel fight Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Iran-backed militias in the Red Sea? If that would be illegal, what is to stop her?
In both cases, the sobering answer is: probably nothing. Our 21st century history teaches that in both cases, the president could likely do it and claim it is lawful, Congress would likely defer, and the courts would either decline to adjudicate or rubber-stamp the president’s actions on the merits. So the problem is bigger than personalities. The president currently has too much discretion to take acts that seem both unwise and illegal without legal check or consequence. The deeper question is: how have nearly 250 years of American history so distorted structural features of our national security system to transform the chief defender of our national security, the president, into today’s biggest potential national security threat?
My new book The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century explains the confluence of interactive institutional incentives that has brought us to this precarious state of affairs. The book culminates nearly five decades of studying the constitutional conduct of America’s foreign policy, from both inside and outside the government. When I first studied this topic during the Iran-Contra Affair, nearly four decades ago, I argued that a subset of constitutional norms, precedents, and framework laws best understood as “The National Security Constitution” govern the making of U.S. foreign policy. I further argued that two divergent constitutional visions have competed for dominance over our nation’s history: the Framers’ founding vision of balanced institutional participation, captured in Justice Robert Jackson’s landmark concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, versus the unilateralist vision of the president as “the sole organ of our Nation in foreign affairs” trumpeted by Justice George Sutherland in United States v. Curtiss Wright Export Corp. (which, when I first joined the Justice Department was called, only half-jokingly, “the Curtiss-Wright, so I’m right cite.”).
As my book chronicles, the Founders sought above all to avoid installing a new American king. But the Curtiss-Wright vision found adherents even at the Founding and has since asserted itself repeatedly over the nearly 250 years of American foreign policy; each time, the Youngstown vision has persistently clawed back. As recently as the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the Youngstown vision continued to hold sway. But with the successive 21st century presidencies of George W. Bush (“Bush 43”), Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, the Curtiss-Wright vision has taken hold with increasing ferocity. Bush 43 and Trump seized unilateral power proactively, and in Trump’s case, with naked disdain for the rule of law. Obama and Biden, saddled with weak legislative majorities, grasped unilateralism reactively. But whether proactive or reactive, the presidential grab for unilateral power has continued, with successive presidents becoming victims as much as villains in a national security process in which they bear all of the public expectations, all of the responsibility, and ultimately, all of the blame. So with each presidency this century, the constitutional pendulum has swung further and further toward executive unilateralism, climaxing in Trump’s breathtaking assertion that Article II “gives me the right to do whatever I want,” his post-defeat call for “the termination of all rules…even those found in the Constitution,” and his Supreme Court’s jaw-dropping decision in Trump v. United States apparently immunizing him for any foreign policy or national security actions so long as they can be dubbed “official.”
Many factors, both external and internal, have contributed to the rise of executive unilateralism. External factors include the end of the Cold War and the rise of a multipolar world; the growing power of nonstate actors; and pervasive threats triggered by the September 11th attacks, the Covid pandemic, and the rising threat of climate change. Internal factors include the wildly disproportionate growth of the national security bureaucracy; the collapse of the bipartisan legislative process; the decentralization of congressional foreign policy decision-making and legal advice; and the federal judiciary’s increasing proclivity to avoid adjudicating or to rubber-stamp dubious executive actions based on what Justice Sonia Sotomayor has dubbed “national security masquerades.” But indispensable actors in this process have been executive branch lawyers. (I have served as one for many years of my career, but for reasons detailed in the book, I stand by the advice I gave). Understandably, the president’s lawyers address each sequential crisis by trying to maximize the president’s ability flexibly to contain and counteract national security threats. But ironically their accumulated precedents, each written to help neutralize the particular urgent national security challenge at hand, now collectively enable the very real prospect that the president will become the greatest national security threat of all.
If this diagnosis is correct, what is to be done? If the problem is structural, the answer cannot simply be stopping Donald Trump’s re-election, although his return to power would surely push the U.S. constitutional system to the breaking point. As dangerous—and as last night’s debate showed, increasingly unhinged—as Trump is, we can easily envision even more unilateralist and dangerous presidents than Trump: populist autocrats inclined to invade foreign countries, shatter alliances, and undermine checks and balances more systematically and competently. We cannot simply rely on elections to throw the rascals out, when there will always be other rascals more adept at stealing elections and grabbing unilateral power.
Our alternatives, quite simply, are acceptance, apathy, despair, or reform: now or later. In an era of legislative deadlock and political polarization, comprehensive national security legislative reform would undeniably be difficult if not impossible to obtain. Instead, the solution must be a mosaic of reforms—some executive, some legislative, and some judicial—implemented over time, and designed individually and collectively to counteract current institutional incentives. Our goal should be to dampen the dysfunctional institutional interaction that keeps driving presidents to act or react unilaterally, Congress to do nothing, and the courts to rubber-stamp and defer. If we are serious about reform, those efforts must extend to all three branches of government.
My book suggests executive restructuring by creating mechanisms to promote better national security legal advice, law enforcement independence, to reduce conflicts of interest, restrain military adventurism, and reform the bureaucracy. It suggests that Congress reform itself by creating a Joint Committee for National Security, a Congressional Legal Adviser, and better congressional tools to restrain executive unilateralism. The courts, I argue, should reduce unnecessary barriers to justiciability (as the Supreme Court began to do by rigorizing the political question doctrine in Zivotofsky v. Clinton) and modify judicial doctrines—such as the presumption against extraterritoriality and the recent Court’s unwillingness to look to foreign law in constitutional interpretation—that are ill-suited to an age of globalization. And over time, proponents of reform must empower other counterweights to executive power, including states and localities, the media, U.S. allies, private actors, and black-letter Restatements of Foreign Relations Law. The penultimate chapter explains how meaningful reform could be achieved in various areas of national security law: warmaking, international lawmaking and agreement breaking, intelligence oversight, information control, and protection of the democratic electoral process.
I harbor no illusions that such reforms will come quickly, but beginning the process is not just necessary, but a useful goal in itself; just starting a decades-long national security reform process will likely spur further reforms. Skeptics may scoff that our current extreme polarization makes even modest reform unobtainable. But in just the last few months, both U.S. presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer made unequivocal commitments to country over party. As the 21st century unfolds, I refuse to believe that there will not come a time when we can return to a shared national commitment not to “America First,” but rather, to being “Americans First.”
Nor do I have any serious concerns that such reforms would hamstring the presidency. Serving under four presidents has taught me that in genuine emergencies, executive power always finds a way. But under our current system, the president goes it alone, and the courts and Congress wash their hands of responsibility. Structural reform is sorely needed to ensure a strong president within a strong constitutional system of checks and balances. In the end, the Framers understood an important and enduring truth: that our national security is best protected if the power to conduct America’s foreign policy remains a power shared.
IMAGE: An image of the White House (via Getty Images).
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A curated weekday guide to major news and developments over the past 24 hours. Here’s today’s news:
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
An Israeli airstrike in the West Bank early today killed five Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The Israeli military said it targeted a group of militants in the city of Tubas. AP News reports.
Israeli airstrikes on a designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza yesterday killed 19 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The reported death toll is lower than what had been provided by the Gaza Civil Defense, which earlier said their services had recovered 40 bodies from the site of the strike. Meanwhile, weapons experts and an analysis by the New York Times found strong evidence that Israel used 2,000-pound bombs in the strike. Ephrat Livni, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, and Abu Bakr Bashir report for the New York Times.
The IDF released a video of a Gaza tunnel where it says six hostages were held in “horrific conditions” before they were murdered by Hamas. The video was filmed by the military last Friday and made public yesterday. Maayan Lubell reports for Reuters.
An Israeli official has floated the option of offering Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar safe passage out of Gaza once all remaining hostages in the Palestinian territory are released. Meanwhile, Israel’s Defense Minister said yesterday that its forces are close to completing their Gaza mission and their focus will turn to the country’s northern border with Lebanon. Hira Humayan and Tara John report for CNN and Reuters reports.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR — U.S. RESPONSE
The Israeli military yesterday said it was “highly likely” it “unintentionally” killed a U.S. citizen near a demonstration last week in the West Bank. Responding to the comments, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for “fundamental changes” in the way the IDF operates in the West Bank, “including changes to their rules of engagement.” Blinken’s comments seemed to contrast with President Biden’s remarks hours later. “Apparently it was an accident, ricocheted off the ground and just got hit by accident. I’m working that out now,” Biden said. Karen DeYoung, Michael Birnbaum, and Loveday Morris report for the Washington Post.
Blinken asked British Foreign Secretary David Lammy last month what it would take for the U.K. to reconsider its Israeli weapons suspension, according to two U.S. officials. Lammy reportedly replied that it would involve a cease-fire and access by international human rights organizations to Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Erin Banco, Nahal Toosi, and Robbie Gramer report for POLITICO.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR — REGIONAL RESPONSE
In his first statement as Hamas’s overall leader, Yahya Sinwar yesterday congratulated Algeria’s President on his reelection and thanked the country for its support to the Palestinian cause. AP News reports.
ISRAEL-HEZBOLLAH CONFLICT
Israel launched several strikes on southern Lebanon over the past day, including one that killed a senior Hezbollah commander. Hezbollah confirmed the killing and said it responded by launching “dozens” of rockets and several drones toward northern Israel. No casualties were reported, according to the IDF. Mohammed Tawfeeq, Irene Nasser, and Kareem Khadder report for CNN.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
President Biden has hinted at lifting restrictions on Ukraine using U.S. long-range missiles against Russia, saying the U.S. administration was “working that out now.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously warned such action could lead to “very serious problems.” Meanwhile, Sec. Blinken and U.K. Foreign Secretary Lammy are in Kyiv to discuss the issue with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy. Thomas Mackintosh reports for BBC News.
Beijing is giving Moscow “very substantial” help to strengthen its war machine, and in exchange, China is receiving top secret Russian military technology, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said yesterday. Stuart Lau reports for POLITICO.
The West is pushing Ukraine to think about a credible plan and realistic goals for what it can achieve in the next year of war, European diplomats say. Max Colchester and Laurence Norman report for the Wall Street Journal.
Ukraine is using “dragon drones” to spew fiery substances on Russia’s front lines, according to videos that have emerged online. Yuliya Talmazan reports for NBC News.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS
The United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany will impose sanctions on key Russian and Iranian entities after Russia sent “dozens” of troops to Iran to train on ballistic missiles, a Pentagon spokesperson said yesterday. The measures include restrictions on Iran Air’s ability to fly to the U.K. and Europe, and travel bans and asset freezes on several Iranians. Patrick Tucker reports for Defense One; Matt Murphy reports for BBC News.
Russia is close to signing a new bilateral treaty with Iran soon, state media quoted top security official Sergei Shoigu as saying today. Reuters reports.
Iran’s new reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian traveled to Iraq today on his first visit abroad, hoping to solidify Tehran’s ties to Baghdad. Qassim Abdul-Zahra reports for AP News.
Around 1,200 protesters clashed with police today at a major defense expo in Australia. Some demonstrators set trash cans alight and targeted police horses, according to local media. Police say 33 people have been arrested, as tensions sparked by global conflicts deepen anger toward the arms industry. Lex Harvey reports for CNN.
Mexico’s Senate voted 86-41 early today for a judicial overhaul. The amendment would abolish the current judicial system and give citizens the power to choose nearly all judges. Diplomats, business leaders, and legal scholars have expressed alarm over the measure, with U.S. officials saying the overhaul could pose “a major risk” to the democracy of its top trading partner. Mary Beth Sheridan reports for the Washington Post.
Pakistani police yesterday freed the president of the opposition party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, a day after he was detained for allegedly inciting violence, his party said. AP News reports.
The Islamist candidate who lost Algeria’s presidential election three days ago filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court yesterday, citing “false figures” and contesting turnout rates. AFP reports via Le Monde.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister yesterday announced that his government will send an initial deployment of 24 security personnel to Haiti to bolster an international security mission aimed at helping battle gang violence. Reuters reports.
Nicaragua said yesterday “it was revoking the citizenship and seizing the property of 135 people who were expelled from the country last week after serving prison sentences in a government crackdown on dissent.” The Supreme Court of Justice announced the action in a press release. Gabriela Selser reports for AP News.
U.S. FOREIGN RELATIONS
The United States is gradually moving aircraft and commandos into coastal West Africa in a fight against Islamist militants. U.S. forces were evicted this summer from their regional stronghold in Niger, and now the Pentagon is aiming to adopt a smaller military footprint, including refurbishing an airfield in Benin, and stationing forces in Ivory Coast and Chad. Michael M. Phillips and Benoit Faucon report for the Wall Street Journal.
Iraqi security officials said an explosion targeted a U.S. military facility next to Baghdad airport late yesterday. The statement said Iraqi forces were unable to determine the “type or causes of the explosion, and no party has claimed responsibility for it.” No damage or casualties have been reported. Qassim Abdul-Zahra reports for AP News.
U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS
The 13 U.S. service members killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul in 2021 were honored posthumously yesterday in a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony at the Capitol. Kaia Hubbard and Melissa Quinn report for CBS News.
An alleged attack on a New York City store owner over a poster of Vice President Kamala Harris displayed in her window is being treated as a hate crime, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said yesterday. Bill Hutchinson reports for ABC News.
The Pentagon is urging the Senate to confirm Lt. Gen. Ronald Clark to a senior Army role after Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) announced he is blocking the promotion. Tuberville’s spokesperson said the senator “has concerns about Lt. Gen. Clark’s actions” during Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization, which had initially been clouded in secrecy. Rebecca Falconer reports for Axios.
A former CIA officer and contract linguist for the FBI who spied for China in exchange for bribes faces a decade in prison if a U.S. judge approves his plea agreement today. Jennifer Sinco Kelleher reports for AP News.
A jury has been selected and opening statements are expected today in the federal trial of three former Memphis police officers charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols. Two officers have already pleaded guilty to federal charges, with the remaining three officers facing life sentences if convicted. Robert Klemko reports for the Washington Post.
Jury deliberation is underway today in Florida in the trial of four activists accused of illegally acting as Russian agents to help the Kremlin sow political disharmony and meddle in U.S. elections.AP News reports.
During the fall of 2022, Western support for defending Ukraine was achieving results that few had thought possible. A successful Ukrainian counteroffensive had pushed Russia out of Kharkiv, and it was on the verge of being forced out of Kherson too.
The successes were so rousing that President Joe Biden began to worry about Russia getting desperate and the potential risk of a nuclear escalation. In private remarks at a fundraiser, Biden reportedly said that the risk of nuclear “armageddon” was the highest it had been since the Cuban missile crisis.
After news of the comments broke, 30 progressive Democrats issued a letter echoing Biden’s concerns and urging the administration to pair support for Ukraine’s successes with a “proactive diplomatic push” to seek a ceasefire. The signatories were unequivocal that they supported Biden’s commitment to Ukraine. A draft of the letter had even come in for criticism from the grassroots supports of diplomacy for its staunch support of sending billions in arms to Ukraine.
It all seemed very reasonable, especially amid talk of nuclear war.
The lawmakers were torn to shreds.
The mild-mannered letter from the Congressional Progressive Caucus provoked wild political attacks, recriminations, and resignations. Factions of progressives, liberals, and Democrats feuded on Twitter. Headlines and talk shows took up the issue. The anti-diplomacy voices won the day: The letter would eventually be retracted, with its supporters taking a huge political hit.
Today, however, the war is stuck. The momentum has shifted. And tens of thousands more Ukrainians and Russians have lost their lives. And even members of the foreign policy establishment are coming to realize it.
“I think it’s safe to say that Ukraine is unable to generate the combat capability needed to achieve military victory, and right now the momentum on the battlefield, despite Ukraine’s push into the Kursk region of Russia, favors Russia,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and international affairs professor at Georgetown University. “Because of that reality, I think that the Ukrainians themselves and Ukraine’s supporters in the West need to have truthful, even if painful, conversations about how to end this war sooner rather than later.”
In 2022, the progressives had been pilloried and cowed. Today, they look more prescient than ever.
The Backlash
At the time of its release, the CPC’s letter provoked a furious backlash. Washington’s foreign policy establishment, and even members of the progressives’ own party, melted down.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., went as far as to accuse his fellow House Democrats of offering an “olive branch to a war criminal who’s losing his war.”
Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official, said that progressives had just given “Republicans, the Kremlin and Russian propaganda networks an absolute gift with this letter.”
Joe Cirincione, a Washington national security analyst and figure in the progressive foreign policy world, called the letter an “incoherent mishmash of contradictory positions based on an outdated analysis of the war.”
“It was written when the war was stalemated, released when Ukraine is winning,” said Cirincione, who resigned from the Quincy Institute over the think tank’s call for diplomatic talks. “Of course the positions don’t make sense.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 5, 2024. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Within 24 hours, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the caucus chair, withdrew the letter and issued a “clarification statement.” Other signatories acted like they were walking the letter back, though they were merely reiterating the unequivocal support for Ukraine’s defense that the letter itself had made clear. (Many of the lawmakers involved did not respond to my requests for comment.)
In a nearly 900-word statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., blamed “unfortunate timing” and doubled down on the idea that the U.S. should help Ukraine fight until the end. “All champions of democracy over autocracy — whether they call themselves progressives, conservatives or liberals — should be doing whatever we can to ensure that Ukraine wins this just war as quickly as possible,” he said.
A few voices of reason emerged, as a few members of Congress held fast. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y, were among the few who publicly defended their call for diplomacy. “History shows that silencing debate in Congress about matters of war and peace never ends well,” Khanna said at the time.
Even some former Obama officials were shocked by the response. Ben Rhodes criticized the “circular firing squad” against pro-diplomacy advocates on the left, saying there was “nothing objectionable in this letter whatsoever.”
Far from being an “outdated analysis,” as critics like Cirincione claimed, the letter’s strategy of using war successes to get a ceasefire seems today like it was far-sighted.
“Cycle of Persistent Violence”
Since the ill-fated letter, the war has ground on — with devastating results for the people of Ukraine. Ukraine is not in a position to win the war, nor does it have a stronger bargaining position in talks than it did in late 2022 when the CPC letter came out.
A New York Times report in August cited U.S. officials estimating the Ukrainian death toll at close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. Ukraine has lost a fifth of its population to migration, and many able-bodied men have been killed, severely injured, or are currently fighting and out of the workforce. CNN reported this week that desertion is a major problem for Ukraine.
Despite the heavy toll, Ukraine lost territory to Russia over the course of 2023, and Russian advances have only gained steam since then.
Former CIA Russia analyst George Beebe said that the conflict has become a war of attrition, so Ukrainians are losing bargaining leverage by the day. “They’re going to need Western help” to strike a compromise settlement with Russia, he said, adding that it would take robust U.S. involvement.
Has it benefited Ukraine to keep fighting? “No, I don’t think so,” Beebe told me. “Actually, Ukraine has lost a lot more people. It is on a path toward becoming a failed state.”
Despite the criticisms, despite many of its members caving, the CPC letter had been on to something. Now, Washington is playing catch-up, with Ukraine bearing the brunt of the lack of U.S. foresight and no one standing to gain as much as empowered Vladimir Putin.
Though the controversy around the CPC letter was almost immediately memory-holed, it would only be a few weeks before it started to look like pro-diplomacy advocates would eventually be vindicated.
A Washington Post report revealed that the Biden administration was privately encouraging Ukraine to show that it’s open to negotiations. Gen. Mark Milley, the since-retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined the growing group of people advocating for diplomacy to end the war. Citing the lesson of World War I, where the failure to negotiate led to millions of unnecessary deaths, Milley called on Russia and Ukraine to “seize the moment” and consider peace talks that winter.
For all the purportedly pro-Ukraine motivations behind the meltdown over the ceasefire letter, it is Ukrainians themselves who have most acutely felt the pain of continued war.
Many Ukrainians seem to understand this better than backers in Washington: Ukraine’s government reportedly charged nearly 19,000 soldiers with abandoning their positions in just the first four months of 2024. The same could be said for conscripted Russians forced to serve under Putin’s authoritarian drive to win the war.
“There are no protections for conscientious objectors in Ukraine or in Russia through this war,” said Bridget Moix, the general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a progressive group that supports diplomacy. “We have to look at how we can support other ways to end this war, other ways to protect civilians, other ways to find a solution out of the violence now. We’re in a cycle of persistent violence that’s costing tremendous lives on both sides.”
Reduced Leverage
Though Ukrainian and American leaders have come to terms with Ukraine’s reduced negotiating leverage, Washington national security elites have not reckoned with the stances they took earlier in the war. After experiencing what former State Department official-turned-commentator Tommy Vietor called a “strangely vicious controversy,” former proponents of diplomacy are now steering clear of the topic.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., one of the CPC members who signed the initial 2022 letter, disavowed it in October of that year.
“Timing in diplomacy is everything. I signed this letter on June 30, but a lot has changed since then. I wouldn’t sign it today,” Jacobs wrote on X. “We have to continue supporting Ukraine economically and militarily to give them the leverage they need to end this war.”
Today, asked if Jacobs stands by her decision to withdraw support for the letter, her office replied, “Decisions about if and when to negotiate an end to this war are up to Ukraine. I have and will continue to support Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.”
For some experts, there was a missed opportunity to stand firm behind the letter.
“We always say that it’s for the Ukrainians to decide, but really we make Ukrainian decisions possible by our support.”
“That was the moment to just sort of say, ‘OK, let’s split the baby here, and you’re going to be able to get this, and we’re going to be able to walk away and not have our infrastructure destroyed,’” said Keith Darden, a comparative politics professor at American University and Russia–Ukraine expert. “If you think about the destruction that’s been visited on Ukraine, both just sheer death toll and in the destruction of the power grid and infrastructure since that time, the fall of 2022, it’s just really tragic that there wasn’t more of a push made then.”
The negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow in the early weeks of the Russian invasion — which were held predominantly in Turkey — were another chance to end the war, Darden said. In April 2022, Russia and Ukraine had agreed on the outlines of a tentative agreement to halt the conflict. The U.S. and U.K. governments, however, worked to sabotage the deal and prolong the war, according to multiple reports.
By May 2022, Ukrainska Pravda, a pro-Western Ukrainian outlet, reported that former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the West would not support a peace deal even if Ukraine was ready to sign one. The West, Johnson said, preferred to fight Putin because he was less powerful than they thought.
“We always say that it’s for the Ukrainians to decide, but really we make Ukrainian decisions possible by our support,” Darden said. “Without our support, Ukrainians wouldn’t be in a position to make decisions — these things would be forced on them by Russian victory.”
Ivanti fixed a maximum severity flaw in its Endpoint Management software (EPM) that can let attackers achieve remote code execution on the core server
Ivanti Endpoint Management (EPM) software is a comprehensive solution designed to help organizations manage and secure their endpoint devices across various platforms, including Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, and IoT systems.
The software firm released security updates to address a maximum security vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-29847, in its Endpoint Management software (EPM).
The vulnerability is a deserialization of untrusted data issue that resides in the agent portal, attackers can exploit the flaw to achieve remote code execution on the core server.
“Deserialization of untrusted data in the agent portal of Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution.” reads the advisory published by the company.
Ivanti also fixed multiple critical, medium and high-severity vulnerabilities that can be exploited to achieve unauthorized access to the EPM core server.
Critical SQL injection vulnerabilities CVE-2024-32840, CVE-2024-32842, CVE-2024-32843, CVE-2024-32845, CVE-2024-32846, CVE-2024-32848, CVE-2024-34779, CVE-2024-34783, CVE-2024-34785 (CVSS scores of 9.1) could allow a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to execute arbitrary code on the core server.
CVE Number
Description
CVSS Score (Severity)
CVSS Vector
CWE
CVE-2024-37397
An External XML Entity (XXE) vulnerability in the provisioning web service of Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to leak API secrets.
8.2 (High)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N
CWE-611
CVE-2024-8191
SQL injection in the management console of Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution.
7.8 (High)
CVSS:3.0AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-32840
An unspecified SQL injection in Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to achieve remote code execution.
9.1 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-32842
An unspecified SQL injection in Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to achieve remote code execution.
9.1 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-32843
An unspecified SQL injection in Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to achieve remote code execution.
9.1 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-32845
An unspecified SQL injection in Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to achieve remote code execution.
9.1 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-32846
An unspecified SQL injection in Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to achieve remote code execution. .
9.1 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-32848
An unspecified SQL injection in Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to achieve remote code execution.
9.1 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-34779
An unspecified SQL injection in Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to achieve remote code execution.
9.1 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-34783
An unspecified SQL injection in Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to achieve remote code execution. .
9.1 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-34785
An unspecified SQL injection in Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker with admin privileges to achieve remote code execution.
9.1 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-89
CVE-2024-8320
Missing authentication in Network Isolation of Ivanti EPM before {fix version} allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to spoof Network Isolation status of managed devices.
5.3 (Medium)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
CWE-306
CVE-2024-8321
Missing authentication in Network Isolation of Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to isolate managed devices from the network.
5.8 (Medium)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:L
CWE-306
CVE-2024-8322
Weak authentication in Patch Management of Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote authenticated attacker to access restricted functionality.
4.3 (Medium)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
CWE-1390
CVE-2024-29847
Deserialization of untrusted data in the agent portal of Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution.
10.0 (Critical)
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-502
CVE-2024-8441
An uncontrolled search path in the agent of Ivanti EPM before 2022 SU6, or the 2024 September update allows a local authenticated attacker with admin privileges to escalate their privileges to SYSTEM.
6.7 (Medium)
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-427
The flaws impact Ivanti Endpoint Manager versions 2024 and 2022 SU5 and earlier, the versions 2024 with Security Patch, (Need to apply both July and September)2024 SU1 (To be released) and 2022 SU6 fixed the problems
The company is not aware of attacks in the wild exploiting the vulnerabilities in the advisory.
“We are not aware of any customers being exploited by these vulnerabilities at the time of disclosure.” concludes the advisory.
Vice President Kamala Harris at the presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
On the presidential debate stage Tuesday, former President Donald Trump spewed reliably racist and lie-riddled diatribes about towns being taken over by “millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, for her part, didn’t bother to counter the sentiment, the central ideological violence at the heart of Trump’s message. Harris, albeit in the predictably moderated tones of a Democratic border authoritarian, upheld the right-wing lie that immigration — the migration of poor people, that is — should be stopped.
Both candidates purported to offer diametrically opposed visions for the country’s future. When it came to immigration and the U.S. border, however, only one narrative was available throughout the night: Immigration is a social ill, if not a criminal endeavor, to be deterred as much as possible.
Harris upheld the right-wing lie that immigration — the migration of poor people, that is — should be stopped.
David Muir, the ABC news anchor and debate moderator, set the bleak, hyper-nationalist tone. He opened the discussion on immigration with a lengthy question posed to Harris.
“We know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden administration,” he said, noting that, since President Joe Biden “imposed tough asylum restrictions” last June, the numbers are down.
“Why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act?” he asked Harris. “And would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this?”
This narrative of a “border crisis” was taken for granted from the jump — specifically, that it is a “crisis” for the U.S., not the desperate people who have fled their homes and must face brutal, unforgiving barriers to seek refuge here. Harris answered Muir accordingly, treating migration as a problem of criminality to be policed and fought.
“I’m the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings,” she said. “The United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported.” The bill, she noted, “would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border” and “allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl.”
The border bill in question was indeed one of the most draconian in recent memory. Harris’s only problem with the legislation, she said on Tuesday, was that Trump hadallies in Congress kill it. Meanwhile, Biden’s executive order, cited approvingly by Muir, lowered crossing numbers because it effectively shuttered the southern border, even to asylum-seekers — an affront to international humanitarian law and, more to the point, an echo of Trump’s ban on asylum.
The only characters in current migration narratives mentioned by the cable news host and the Democratic nominee were gang members, traffickers, fentanyl pushers, and “illegal” border crossers. Obscured totally from view: the hundreds of thousands of people risking their lives to cross the border to find safety and better lives in the wealthiest nation on Earth — a nation that bears significant historic responsibility for much of the political turmoil that has driven millions of people to flee violence, repression, economic devastation, and climate catastrophe in Northern Triangle countries, Haiti, and elsewhere in the first place.
Even typical liberal shibboleths about our “nation of immigrants” were absent on Tuesday night. So, too, was any reckoning with the deadly consequences of hardened border policy. As many as 80,000 people have reportedly died trying to cross into the U.S. through the Southern border in the last decade.
The reality in which a Democratic candidate would advocate for opening borders is, of course, a distant cry from our current cruel and nationalist political quagmire. Harris, the centrist Democratic candidate, does not even mention the economic and social interests served by welcoming migrant workers into the U.S., as the existing population ages and the need for workers, particularly in the care sector, only grows.
From an electoral point of view, too, centrists bending rightward — appealing to white resentment — has in the last decade only served to strengthen far-right leaders and parties, from Italy to France to Germany.
Immigrants, of course, should be welcomed as a point of ethical and humanitarian necessity — of global justice — not only in service of the U.S. economy or electoral maneuvering. As Tuesday’s debate made clear, however, that when it comes to border politics, inhumanity is a point of bipartisan agreement.
Border Rule Race to the Bottom
This race to the bottom on “law and order” border rule is not new. As I’ve previously noted, the Biden–Harris administration is not simply borrowing Republican talking points to appeal to disaffected conservatives. Harsh border policies have been the standard of Democratic administrations for three decades, dating back at least to Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House.
Clinton’s 1996 immigration laws significantly expanded the United States’ ability to detain and deport migrants with even minor criminal convictions. President Barak Obamarelied, like Harris since, on the racist, classist narrative of only targeting “criminal” migrants and deported some 3 million people — earning the moniker “deporter in chief.”
Biden’s administration followed suit, shuttering the border this year; introducing a policy in early 2023 to immediately eject asylum-seekers from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua who cross the border without having previously applied for asylum in a third country; and overseeing the increased use of solitary confinement for thousands of detained migrants.
Former President Donald Trump during the second presidential debate in Philadelphia on Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
While Democrats will participate in this bigoted race to the bottom, it should not be lost on us that Republicans — especially Trump and his allies — will always win. Harris’s grim picture of gangs and trafficking was met by Trump’s obscene, unfounded repetition of the lie that immigrants from Haiti are stealing and eating people’s pets.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said, parroting a lie posted by vice presidential candidate JD Vance and other right-wing online grifters like Elon Musk about immigrants in Ohio. On the debate stage, Trump grew ever more outlandish: “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
The racist myth sits within a legacy of vile slander faced by Haitians in the West, ever since Haitians liberated themselves from the yoke of French colonialism in the world’s most renown successful revolt by enslaved people. Trump and his followers need not know the specific history of racist backlash to play into its violent afterlives.
Muir, the host, did note — in one of only a few mealy-mouthed fact checks — that, no, there were no credible reports of any such incident in Springfield. Yet when the stage is set to treat Black and other migrants of color as de facto criminals, neither Muir nor Harris, nor anyone involved in Tuesday’s performance — or in this entire election — is a bulwark to the dehumanization to which immigrants are subjected.
The rhetoric around the “border crisis,” from the far right to the liberal center, suggests that the pressure of global migration is bearing down on the U.S. This is hardly the case.
The overwhelming majority of displaced people in the world are internally displaced or in refugee camps near their countries of origin. By comparison to the United States’ so-called crisis, around 1.5 million Syrian refugees currently reside in Lebanon, where the total population is only 5.5 million.
I’m not suggesting that, even for a global superpower, it does not take resources and work to settle millions of newcomers into a country, but these are questions of resource distribution priorities. Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the federal government has spent an estimated $409 billion on immigration enforcement agencies alone, and tens of billions more on deterrence strategies like barriers and walls.
Prioritizing the economic security of our collective lives, and the lives of those who enter the country, rather than “securing the border” through militarized violence, would see such sums better spent.
Correction: September 11, 2024, 11:57 a.m. ET An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of ABC news anchor and moderator David Muir.
Today, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed that Iran has delivered close range ballistic missiles (CRBMs) to Russia, which he expects Russian forces will use against Ukraine within a matter of weeks.
At the same time, the US Department of the Treasury announced the imposition of additional sanctions on Iranian and Russian individuals and entities, including Iran Air. These moves can hardly come as a surprise to Moscow and Tehran and will not serve to get either to change course. The real question is how the Iranian transfer of CRBMs to Russia will affect the Russia-Iran relationship. Specifically: Does Russia’s dependence on Iran, first for armed drones and now for CRBMs, give Tehran a degree of leverage over Moscow? And what would Tehran want to get from Moscow with that leverage?
Iran has long sought Su-35 fighter aircraft and S-400 air defense missile systems from Russia, according to reports, but Moscow has not yet delivered them. As Hanna Notte and Jim Lamson noted in a study published in August, there are many other Russian weapons systems and technologies that Tehran would like to receive. If any of these turn up in Iran, this will be seen as evidence that the transfer of CRBMs to Moscow is indeed a sign of increased Iranian leverage over Russia.
Tehran, then, may see Russia not so much as a great power but as another proxy . . .
Moscow, though, will be loath to transfer weapons to Iran that would upset its ability to maintain good relations with Iran’s rivals, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which could in turn result in their turning closer to the United States and even Israel for support. Indeed, Iran itself might not want this to happen. Saudi-Russian cooperation in the OPEC+ format, which keeps world oil prices relatively higher, serves Iranian interests too. Both Russia and Iran have to sell their oil at a discount due to Western sanctions, but if the Saudis conclude that Russia has become Iran’s firm ally and so decide to increase oil production, the resulting lower oil prices would hurt both Moscow and Tehran. And they know that Riyadh has in the past been willing to flood the market and accept lower oil prices in order to hurt its rivals.
Further, while Tehran may want Moscow to transfer Su-35s, S-400s, and other weapons systems and technologies, receiving them immediately may not be the Iranian leadership’s primary goal. The Islamic Republic often does not take direct military action itself, but prefers to act through proxies, such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi and other Shia militia forces.
Tehran, then, may see Russia not so much as a great power but as another proxy, whose willingness to fight against a common enemy benefits Iran but allows it to avoid the costs of fighting that common enemy itself. Ukraine, of course, does not pose a threat to Iran. But to the extent that the United States and other Western countries devote attention and resources to supporting Ukraine, then they have less of these available for dealing with Iran.
Indeed, Tehran’s one great worry might be that Russia will lose its war with Ukraine, thus allowing the United States and its Western allies (as Tehran might fear) to concentrate on Iran. Transferring first armed drones and now CRBMs to Russia, then, may be seen as a good investment by Tehran whether it receives Russian weapons systems in return or not. This attitude would also be very much in keeping with how Iran prefers to support proxies that are fighting a common adversary rather than take on the fight itself.
Mark N. Katz is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and professor emeritus of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presided over his government’s largest wartime reshuffle in early September, with nine ministries getting new permanent leadership. As the news filtered into Western capitals, media and experts alike scrambled to make sense of the changes. Back in Kyiv, many lawmakers and analysts appeared relatively unmoved by the announcements, in contrast to the cheers and jeers that have come with previous shifts in Zelenskyy’s government.
Perhaps the most notable figure to resign was Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who had been a steady, passionate voice as Ukraine’s top diplomat for the last four years. Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Olha Stefanishyna, another longtime minister, resigned from her post only to be quickly named as the new Justice Minister, replacing Denys Maliuska.
Oleksandr Kamyshin’s swift rise in government looks set to continue as he takes up a post as presidential advisor for strategic issues after resigning as Minister of Strategic Industries. He joins former Deputy Prime Minister for the Reintegration of Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk, who will be a new deputy in the Office of the President.
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As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.
The somewhat muted reaction in Ukraine to such a significant government shakeup reflects a number of factors. First, none of the cabinet changes came in the wake of a scandal or amid whispers of corruption. They appear to be purely a shift in personnel.
Second, Zelenskyy had long telegraphed plans for a major government shakeup. Speaking to Italian media in February 2024, he said “a reset” was necessary. “I have something serious in mind, which is not about a single person but about the direction of the country’s leadership,” he commented. At the time, observers fixated on the “single person” reference, assuming he was talking about Ukraine’s highly regarded military commander Valeriy Zaluzhny, who was subsequently removed and appointed Ukrainian ambassador to Great Britain.
Crucially, none of the changes in the recent reshuffle directly involve the military or the economy. Replacing the minister of defense or economy would have set off alarm bells among Ukraine’s Western partners, but those positions look stable. The closest person to the battlefield was Kamyshin, who leaves Ukraine’s Ministry of Strategic Industries with a revamped and highly effective drone program in place.
The new blood leading these ministries is not all that new, either. Instead, Zelenskyy appears to be promoting trusted cadres, assigning others new or enhanced portfolios, offering acting ministers permanent gigs, and, in the case of former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, giving some a deserved break after years of strenuous work.
Publicly at least, Ukraine’s Western partners took the personnel changes in stride. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and manyother foreign ministers thanked Kuleba for his work and dedication. The European Union offered a suitably bland reaction, calling the shakeup Ukraine’s “internal matter” and expressing hopes to “continue very good cooperation” with Kyiv.
The two most interesting newcomers are new Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha and Oleksiy Kuleba, the incoming Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine and Minister for Communities and Territories Development.
Sybiha moves from the Office of the President back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he has spent much of his government career. He previously served as Ukraine’s ambassador to Türkiye and at the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland, both senior diplomatic posts working with two of Ukraine’s most important neighbors. Zelenskyy will be hoping Sybiha’s experience and strong relationship with presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak make him an efficient liaison between Kyiv and its many partners.
Kuleba takes over a large ministry formed by the merger of the Ministry for the Reintegration of Occupied Territories and the Ministry of Community Development, Territories, and Infrastructure, which had been led by Oleksandr Kubrakov until his dismissal in May. Some outlets reported that Kuleba’s ministry will soon be split in two, with one ministry set to focus on reconstruction and development, while the other concentrates on infrastructure. That may be a sensible move ahead of what could be another harsh winter of Russian assaults on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. Kuleba’s previous job was head of regional policy in the Office of the President, working closely with Yermak.
The most controversial personnel decision to emerge from the recent flurry of changes in Kyiv was the firing of Ukrenergo CEO Volodymyr Kudrytskyi. He is widely credited with having worked miracles as head of Ukraine’s state-owned electrical grid operator, most significantly leading the country’s disconnection from the Russian grid in February 2022, months ahead of schedule. Kudrytskyi was seen as a real reformer in Western capitals, leading to significant alarm over his dismissal. Two members of Ukrenergo’s supervisory board resigned in protest, calling Kudrytskyi’s firing “politically motivated.”
Overall, Zelenskyy appears to be shuffling the deck rather than choosing a new set of cards. It is unlikely the nine new ministers will produce dramatic changes in government policy, but they may offer new impetus as Ukraine heads toward its third winter of full-scale war. Kyiv’s whole-of-government approach to the country’s defense has been largely effective so far; Zelenskyy may be betting these tweaks will maintain Ukraine’s edge.
Andrew D’Anieri is a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
Further reading
UkraineAlert Sep 5, 2024
Too many still view Ukraine through the prism of Russian imperialism
By Olesya Khromeychuk
Far too many Western newspaper editors, academics, and cultural commentators continue to view Ukraine through the distorting lens of Russian imperialism, writes Olesya Khromeychuk.
Key Ukrainian front line city evacuates as Russian offensive gains pace
By Maria Avdeeva
Evacuation efforts are accelerating in Pokrovsk as Russian troops draw closer amid fears the city will soon become the latest in a growing list of Ukrainian urban centers reduced to rubble by Putin’s invading army, writes Maria Avdeeva.
Invasion? What invasion? Putin is downplaying Ukraine’s Kursk offensive
By Peter Dickinson
Vladimir Putin’s efforts to downplay Ukraine’s invasion of Russia have severely dented his strongman image and make a mockery of the West’s escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.
The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.
When Vladimir Putin first began the invasion of Ukraine with the seizure of Crimea, he did so using troops without identifying insignia and was careful to hide his attack behind a veil of deniability, however implausible. Ten years later, the Russian dictator now routinely threatens Western leaders with nuclear apocalypse if they dare to disrupt his methodical destruction of Europe’s largest nation. This dramatic escalation in Russian aggression is the bitter fruit of a decade spent trying to avoid provoking Putin rather than confronting the Kremlin.
In 2014, the West chose not to impose any significant costs on Russia for the occupation of Crimea and the subsequent invasion of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. At the time, many preferred to pursue a business as usual approach, strengthening trade ties with Moscow and constructing new gas pipelines to deepen Europe’s energy dependence on the Kremlin. Unsurprisingly, Putin interpreted this timidity as a tacit green light to continue, safe in the knowledge that performative Western outrage was unlikely to translate into action. The stage was thus set for the largest European invasion since World War II.
Since February 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has transformed the geopolitical landscape, but it has so far failed to convince Western leaders of the need to abandon their failed policies of escalation management. Instead, the international response to Russia’s invasion has been hampered at every turn by delays and indecisiveness, with Kyiv’s partners denying the country vital weapons and imposing absurd restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. As a result, the Ukrainian military currently finds itself forced to fight an existential war with one hand tied behind its back.
Stay updated
As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.
We have been here before, of course. In the 1930s, Western leaders responded to the challenge of an increasingly aggressive Nazi Germany by seeking to appease Adolf Hitler with a series of concessions. The architects of appeasement have come to be viewed as fools and cowards, but in fact they were mostly honorable men who believed it was their sacred duty to prevent another world war. The majority of today’s escalation managers are doubtless driven by similarly noble intentions. However, it should be painfully clear to them by now that escalation management is the appeasement of the modern era and is steadily creating the conditions for the global conflict they aim to avert.
Like Hitler before him, Putin makes no secret of his expansionist goals and imperial ambitions. Indeed, the Kremlin dictator likes nothing better than discussing his sense of historical mission. He is notorious for delivering rambling lectures on Russian history, and has often delved into the distant past to justify his contemporary geopolitical grievances. Ukraine is a favorite topic, with Putin frequently questioning the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood and referring to entire regions of Ukraine as “historically Russian lands.” Few were surprised in summer 2022 when he compared the current invasion of Ukraine to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great.
Nor is Putin’s historical revisionism limited to the reconquest of Ukraine. He has often lamented modern Russia’s retreat from empire and has referred to the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union as the “disintegration of historical Russia.” At its greatest extent, the Russian Empire stretched far beyond today’s Ukrainian borders and featured a long list of additional countries including Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the whole of Central Asia. Many of these states could be at risk of suffering Ukraine’s fate if the current invasion is allowed to succeed.
While there can be little doubt regarding the scale of Putin’s revisionist ambitions, some skeptics still question whether he possesses the military capabilities to achieve his goals. This is shortsighted. The invasion of Ukraine may have exposed the limitations of the Russian army, but it has also revealed the weakness of the West. This disastrous lack of Western resolve is visibly emboldening the Kremlin and may yet persuade Putin that he can risk going further without triggering an overwhelming Western response.
In recent months, Putin has begun testing NATO with occasional drone incursions across the border into Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states. So far, he has received minimal push back. This gray zone aggression is just one small part of an escalating Russian hybrid war being waged throughout the Western world that includes a dizzying array of disinformation operations, cyber attacks, weaponized corruption, sabotage, and support for extremist political movements of all kinds. Although many policymakers in Western capitals are still reluctant to admit it, Russia evidently believes it is already at war with the West and is acting accordingly.
Back in the Russian Federation itself, there are ample indications that Putin is preparing the domestic front for a long war. He has placed the entire Russian economy on a wartime footing, and has instructed his vast propaganda apparatus to preach holy war against the West. On the international stage, he is consolidating an authoritarian axis of like-minded nations such as China, Iran, and North Korea, all of whom share his stated goal of overturning the current world order. While it is impossible to anticipate exactly what Putin might do next if he succeeds in Ukraine, the idea that he will simply stop is dangerously delusional.
There was a time when such delusions regarding the revanchist nature of Putin’s Russia could be excused. Not anymore. Since 2022, the Kremlin has embarked on a path of open hostility toward the entire Western world, with each successive attempt to appease Putin merely serving to encourage bolder acts of aggression. In this climate of confrontation, compromising with the Kremlin will not bring peace. On the contrary, any territorial concessions in Ukraine would be viewed by Moscow as a victory and used to justify more war.
Before it is too late, the West must recognize the necessity of speaking to Putin in the only language he understands: The language of strength. This means committing fully and unambiguously to Ukrainian victory. More specifically, it means lifting the restrictions that currently protect Russia from attack, and supplying Ukraine with enough weapons to actually win. Putin sees international relations as a zero sum game and believes he has the upper hand over opponents who have revealed their fundamental weakness. By continuing to signal their fear of escalation, Western leaders now risk repeating the mistakes of the 1930s and provoking the wider war they so desperately seek to prevent.
Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.
Further reading
UkraineAlert Sep 1, 2024
Key Ukrainian front line city evacuates as Russian offensive gains pace
By Maria Avdeeva
Evacuation efforts are accelerating in Pokrovsk as Russian troops draw closer amid fears the city will soon become the latest in a growing list of Ukrainian urban centers reduced to rubble by Putin’s invading army, writes Maria Avdeeva.
Invasion? What invasion? Putin is downplaying Ukraine’s Kursk offensive
By Peter Dickinson
Vladimir Putin’s efforts to downplay Ukraine’s invasion of Russia have severely dented his strongman image and make a mockery of the West’s escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.
Too many still view Ukraine through the prism of Russian imperialism
By Olesya Khromeychuk
Far too many Western newspaper editors, academics, and cultural commentators continue to view Ukraine through the distorting lens of Russian imperialism, writes Olesya Khromeychuk.
The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.
When Kamala Harrissat down with CNN’s Dana Bash last month, Bash asked a question: “Would you withhold some U.S. weapons shipments to Israel? That’s what a lot of people on the progressive left want you to do.”
Harris sidestepped the question, talked about a ceasefire, and ultimately said that she would not change course from the Biden administration’s policy of arming Israel as its war on Gaza enters its 11th month.
But polls of the American voting population show that she’s ignoring more than just the “progressive left”: A majority of voters support ending arms transfers to Israel, and support for an arms embargo is growing.
“The reality is that the public is far more in favor of stopping arms sales to Israel than opposed,” Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at Arab Center Washington D.C., told The Intercept. He pointed to a June poll from CBS that showed 61 percent of all Americans said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats and nearly 40 percent of Republicans.
Poll results have been consistent for months.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, a majority of Americans have expressed support for some form of restrictions on the U.S. sending weapons to Israel in repeated public surveys. Americans are even more overwhelmingly in favor of a ceasefire.
Among the most consistent string of polls on the issue of weapons transfers to Israel has come from CBS News, which partnered with YouGov to carry out its survey. About two weeks after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, as Israel’s bombardment had already killed more than 2,000 civilians in Gaza, a CBS poll of more than 1,800 Americans found that 52 percent of American adults said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel. The totals included large majorities among both Democrats and independents, and 43 percent of Republicans.
In April, CBS News/YouGov asked the same question in a new poll and found that an even larger number of Americans (60 percent), including 68 percent of Democrats, said they felt the U.S. should not send arms to Israel. The poll was conducted days after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers in a clearly marked World Central Kitchen convoy.
And in June, when more than 30,000 Palestinians were killed and as Israel continued its operations in Rafah where many of Gaza civilians had been sheltering, spurring the “All Eyes on Rafah” social media campaign, a third CBS News poll seemingly solidified Americans’ opposition to military aid to Israel with 61 percent of American adults calling for a halt on weapons transfers to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats.
Stopping arms transfers also polls highly in key swing states, according to recent polls.
A poll published this week by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute found that the majority of likely voters in some Rust Belt swing states are in favor of conditioning military aid to Israel or are against sending aid altogether. The tallies showed 61 percent in Wisconsin expressing support, along with 56 percent in Michigan and 51 percent in Pennsylvania.
Another poll from August, commissioned by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project and conducted by YouGov, showed that a majority of voters in Pennsylvania (57 percent), and a significant share of voters in swing states Arizona (44 percent) and Georgia (34 percent), said they would more likely vote for Harris if the U.S. withholds arms to Israel.
An additional swing-state focused poll earlier this year, commissioned by Americans for Justice in Palestine Action and conducted by YouGov in May, also found 2 in 5 Democrats and independents in Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota said that an immediate and permanent ceasefire and conditioning of aid to Israel would make them more likely to vote for then-candidate Joe Biden.
“This is not a ‘progressive left’ issue — the vast majority of Democrats support ending arms sales to Israel,” Munayyer said. “This is a mainstream position, as I think it should be for any sensible person watching what is happening in Gaza, that we should not continue funding this, we should not continue supporting this.”
Despite the popularity of cutting Israel off from American weapons, the Biden administration has continued to pump billions in military aid, including thousands of 2,000-pound bombs, to Israel, approving a $20 billion weapons package just last month. His administration has ignored calls from Democratic senators to halt aid, as well as credible evidence of human rights violations committed by the Israeli military. Biden briefly halted transfer of munitions in May as Israel prepared for an offensive in Rafah where 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge, but later reversed his position after pressure from the pro-Israel lobby within the party. At the Democratic National Convention, party officials denied a main-stage speaker slot from more than 200 “Uncommitted” delegates and ceasefire delegates committed to Harris who are in favor of an arms embargo. Harris’s CNN interview seemingly dampened the cautious optimism of those who hoped for her to depart from her boss’s policies.
Even with the renewed energy from across the Democratic party since Biden dropped out of the race, Harris continues to be in a dead heat with former President Donald Trump. This week’s New York Times and Siena College national poll had 47 percent of likely voters supporting Harris, with Trump garnering 48. Both candidates are expected to be asked about their approach on the war in Gaza during Tuesday’s highly anticipated debate on ABC.
The most commonly cited U.S. law by proponents of an arms embargo has been the Leahy law, enacted in 1997, which prohibits the State Department from sending military aid to any foreign security force that is found to violate human rights law. Also, in March, a group of Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., cited the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which prohibits military aid to countries that block humanitarian aid. They were responding to evidence and allegations that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet had been interrupting U.S. humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
The polling data has accumulated for many months. A poll from left-wing think tank Data for Progress, showed in December that 63 percent of voters agreed that military aid should be conditioned on whether Israel meets the U.S. standard for human rights. In March, 52 percent of Americans said that Biden should halt weapons transfers to Israel, according to a poll by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
In June, another Data for Progress poll found that a majority of Americans (53 percent) supported withdrawing military aid from Israel if the country does not accept a ceasefire deal. Seventy percent of Democrats and 53 percent of swing voters supported the measure. The poll was conducted about one month after Netanyahu had rejected a ceasefire deal, even after Hamas had accepted its terms.
A poll of more than 2,000 Americans taken by the Arab American Institute in the period between the Republican and Democratic national conventions in late July and early August showed that support for Harris would grow from 44 to 49 percent if she were to suspend arms shipments and withhold diplomatic support for Israel until there was a ceasefire and withdrawal of forces from Gaza.
More recently, an August poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that a majority (53 percent) of Americans, including 68 percent of Democrats, believe the U.S. should restrict military aid to Israel so it cannot use the aid in military operations against Palestinians. An earlier July poll from the Chicago-based think tank found that such support for restricting military aid was more favorable among people of color, including respondents who were Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. The August poll did however find that 60 percent of Americans would support military aid to Israel until the hostages taken by Hamas are freed.
Support for a ceasefire was considered a controversial demand among U.S. lawmakers for months but has now become a regular talking point among Democratic leaders, though critics say it’s often used to deflect from U.S. responsibility for the ongoing war on Gaza. Since the beginning of the year, it has also been consistently popular among Americans. As early as January, an Associated Press poll found that half of Americans felt Israel had gone too far in its war, including 63 percent of Democrats.
The June Data for Progress poll showed the majority of Americans (64 percent) supported a permanent ceasefire deal and an Economist/YouGov poll in May found that same number in support of a ceasefire. The August Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll said the majority of Americans should pressure Israel into a ceasefire deal, with a plurality of respondents saying the U.S. should reduce arms shipments to do so.
A series of Gallup polls that showed Americans’ attitudes toward Israel’s military operations in Gaza also show a gradual progression toward disapproval for the war. While in November, 50 percent of Americans said they support Israel’s war in Gaza, among that total were 63 percent of Democrats who expressed disapproval. About four months later, Americans had shifted with the majority (55 percent) saying they disapproved of Israel’s operations, according to a March Gallup poll. Although a June Gallup poll showed disapproval dropping to 48 percent, opposition to the war stood firm among Democrats (77 percent) and independents (66 percent).
An outlier among polls that asked Americans about sending arms to Israel was a March survey from the Pew Research Center, which found that only 35 percent of Americans were opposed to military aid. However, the poll also showed a plurality of Democrats (44 percent) opposed military aid to Israel and a majority of liberals (54 percent).
Earlier this month, the United Kingdom broke from the U.S. and announced it would ban some of its weapons transfers to Israel. However, the number is minimal, suspending 30 of its 350 arms licenses. Other countries to suspend military support to Israel include Italy, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain, which also banned ships from carrying weapons to Israel from docking in its ports.
After Harris’s CNN interview, Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser for Sanders, told The Intercept that the issue of restricting arms to Israel did not begin with October 7 but has been a popular move within the party for much longer.
“This is not new, this is not a radical departure — this is a consistent trend we’ve seen for years among Democratic voters,” Duss said.
And on the 2020 election night, J Street, a liberal Jewish lobbyist group, conducted a poll that showed 57 percent of American Jews would want to restrict military aid to ensure it cannot be spent on annexation. In 2021, J Street also backed a Democrat-backed bill that would have prevented aid to Israel to be used on human rights abuses of Palestinians, destruction of Palestinian property, or displacement of Palestinians from their land.
“I’m not saying everyone should just make their policy decisions based on what the polling says on any given date,” Duss said. “But this is a consistent trend, this is what Democrats clearly think.”
