TIG Post

Tag: Mark Milley

  • ‘Chinese spy balloon’: US suspects three unidentified objects it shot down were ‘benign’

    ‘Chinese spy balloon’: US suspects three unidentified objects it shot down were ‘benign’

    The White House has reported that there is no proof that the three flying objects that the US military shot out of the sky over the weekend were connected to alleged Chinese espionage.


    According to spokesman John Kirby, the objects “may be tied to commercial or research entities and therefore benign.”

    The three downed aircraft’s wreckage has not yet been found or recovered by US or Canadian authorities.

    Beijing previously charged the US with having “a trigger-happy overreaction.”

    China has denied that one of its balloons, which was destroyed by a US fighter jet earlier this month off South Carolina, was being used for espionage, saying it was merely a weather-monitoring airship that had blown off course.

    At Tuesday’s daily news conference, Mr Kirby said it will be difficult to determine the purpose or origin of the three other objects that were destroyed over Alaska, Canada, and Michigan until the debris is found and analysed.

    “We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] spying programme,” the White House National Security Council told reporters, “or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts.”

    A “leading explanation” being considered by US intelligence, he added, was that “these could be balloons that were simply tied to commercial or research entities and therefore benign”.

    But he noted that no company, organisation, or government had yet laid claim to the objects.

    In the most recent strike – over Lake Huron – the first Sidewinder missile fired by a US F-16 warplane missed its target, the top US general has confirmed.

    “First shot missed.” “Second shot hit,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley during a visit to Brussels on Tuesday.

    “We go to great lengths to make sure that the airspace is clear and the backdrop is clear up to the max effective range of the missile. And in this case, the missiles land, or the missile landed, harmlessly in the water of Lake Huron.”

    A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, meanwhile, criticised the American response.

    “Many in the US have been asking, ‘what good can such costly action possibly bring to the US and its taxpayers?’” said Wang Wenbin on Tuesday.

    https://emp.bbc.com/emp/SMPj/2.47.2/iframe.htmlMedia caption,

    Watch: ‘What’s going on?’ The mind-boggling balloon mystery in 61 seconds

    Sensors from the alleged Chinese spy balloon shot down over the US on 4 February were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean on Monday, and are being analysed by the FBI.

    Search crews found “significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified” off the coast of South Carolina, said US Northern Command.

    The Chinese balloon was being tracked by US intelligence since its lift-off from a base on Hainan Island on the south coast of China earlier this month, US media report.

    Shortly after take-off the balloon drifted towards the US islands of Guam and Hawaii before moving north towards Alaska, American officials told CBS News, the BBC’s partner.

    The unnamed officials say that its path indicates that it could have been blown off course by weather, but that it was back under the Chinese control again by the time it reached the continental US.

    The entire US Senate received a classified briefing on Tuesday about the matter from military leaders.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber would launch an inquiry into why the aircraft were not detected earlier.

    “It’s a good question,” Mr Schumer told reporters. “We need to answer it.”

    Meanwhile, Romania scrambled fighter jets on Tuesday to investigate an aerial object entering European airspace.

    But the country’s defence ministry said the pilots were unable to locate it and abandoned the mission after half an hour.

    Navy divers helped recover the balloon from the Atlantic Ocean
    Image caption,Navy divers helped recover the balloon from the Atlantic Ocean

  • Ukraine war: Putin tells Russian soldiers’ mothers he shares their pain

    “We share your pain,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has told a group of mothers of Russian soldiers who have been fighting – and some of whom have been killed – in Ukraine.

    “Nothing can replace the loss of a son”, he said in his opening remarks, before the footage on state TV was cut.

    The Kremlin has not commented on reports that the mothers were carefully chosen for the meeting.

    Opposition has been growing to Mr Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

    Across Russia, groups of mothers of serving soldiers have been openly complaining that their sons are being sent into battle poorly trained and without adequate weapons and clothing, especially as the winter sets in.

    Some have also accused the Russian military of turning those forcefully mobilised into “cannon fodder”, following a string of heavy military defeats in recent months.

    In a rare admission, the Kremlin said in September that mistakes had been made in its drive to mobilise army reservists.

    Earlier this month, Mark Milley, the most senior US general, estimated that about 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or injured since the war began on 24 February.

    At Friday’s meeting at his state residence near Moscow, Mr Putin was shown sitting at a large table with a group of 17 mothers. Some of them wore dark headscarves – a symbol of mourning.

    “I want you to know that I personally, and all the leadership of the country, we share this pain,” the president said.

    “We’ll be doing everything so you won’t be feeling forgotten,” he added, urging them not to believe “fakes” and “lies” about the raging war showing on TV or the internet.

    Soon after Mr Putin launched the full-scale invasion, Russian authorities brought in tough censorship laws against the media, criminalising “dissemination of false information” about its armed forces.

    Media outlets face fines or even closure for calling it a war – the Kremlin describes the invasion as a “special military operation”.

    That means balanced news can be difficult to get in Russia, leading some people to use virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass the biased state-run media coverage.

    On Friday, President Putin also said he had wanted to meet the mothers to hear from them first-hand about the situation on the ground.

    And he revealed that from time to time he was speaking directly to Russian soldiers on the battlefield, describing them as “heroes”.

    In recent weeks mothers and wives of Russians drafted into the army have been posting collective video messages complaining about how their sons and husbands have been sent off to war untrained and ill-equipped. Some women have been appealing directly to President Putin, the commander-in-chief, to sort things out.

    The “Putin meets mothers” event seems to be an attempt by the Kremlin to convince Russians that their president cares about the soldiers he’s sending into battle, as well as their families.

    “We understand nothing can replace the loss of a son, a child,” Mr Putin said. “Especially for a mother, to whom we are all indebted for bringing this child into the world.”

    Considering the scale of death and destruction in Ukraine from Russia’s invasion, these words are certain to infuriate Ukrainians.

    Mr Putin tried to come across as a caring Kremlin leader. But keep in mind: it was his decision to invade Ukraine. The “special military operation” is his idea.

    And in public at least he has no regrets.

    He told one mother: “Some people die of vodka, and their lives go unnoticed. But your son really lived and achieved his goal. He didn’t die in vain.”

    On Friday, President Putin declared that “life is more complicated than what they show on TV or even on the internet”.

    I’d agree with him, about television in Russia, which continues to portray the Kremlin’s parallel reality of events in Ukraine.

    Wives and mothers of Russian reservists cry at a gathering point in Omsk, Russia. Photo: October 2022
    IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS Image caption, In September, President Putin ordered the mobilisation of 300,000 reservists, triggering public outcry in Russia

    Source: BBC.com 

  • Senior US general says Russian attacks on civilians constitute war crimes

    The top United States general has condemned Russian missile strikes on Ukraine that killed civilians, suggesting they met the definition of war crimes under the international rules of war.

    “Russia has deliberately struck civilian infrastructure with the purpose of harming civilians,” Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

    “They have targeted the elderly, the women, and the children of Ukraine,” he said. “Indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on civilian targets is a war crime in the international rules of war.”