“Ukrainian forces have begun “shaping” operations for counteroffensive, senior US military official says”
“Ukrainian forces have begun “shaping” operations in advance of a highly-anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces, a senior US military official and senior Western official tell CNN.
Shaping involves striking targets such as weapons depots, command centers and armor and artillery systems to prepare the battlefield for advancing forces. It’s a standard tactic made prior to major combined operations.
When Ukraine launched a counteroffensive late last summer in the southern and northeastern parts of the country, it was similarly preceded by air attacks to shape the battlefield. These shaping operations could continue for many days before the bulk of any planned Ukrainian offensive, according to the senior US military official.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country still needs “a bit more time” before it launches the counteroffensive, in order to allow some more of the promised Western military aid to arrive in the country.
“With [what we have] we can go forward and be successful,” Zelensky told European public service broadcasters in an interview published on Thursday. “But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable.”
“So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time,” he said.
Among the supplies Ukraine is still waiting for are armored vehicles — including tanks —which Zelensky said were “arriving in batches.”
Shaping operations can also be designed to confuse the enemy.
Last summer, Kharkiv had very little in the way of softening up; it was a lightning ground offensive. Most of the shaping came in Kherson, through long-range attacks on bridges, ammo stores and command centers. Most of these were carried out by HIMARS. There were some, but not many, airstrikes.”
“The Snake, The FBI, And Center 16: Why The Takedown Of A ‘Most Sophisticated Cyber-Espionage Tool’ Is Important”
“For more than a decade, a unique bit of malicious computer code was burrowed in the deepest corners of Internet servers in more than 50 countries, secretly gathering data and even records of what a person might be typing on a keyboard. Important information was extracted and covertly sent via a network of other infected computers, hiding its tracks from easy detection, back to the code’s creators.
Called various names — Snake, Uroburos, Venomous Bear — the malware was suspected in a damaging hack of Germany’s Foreign Ministry in 2017. NATO computers were reportedly compromised. The personal computer of a journalist who worked for a U.S. news organization and reported on the Russian government was reportedly targeted.
This week, authorities in the United States, Britain, Canada, and two other countries announced they had effectively unplugged the malware, disrupting a powerful surveillance tool that, they said, had been developed by Center 16, a cutting-edge cyber-unit of Russia’s main intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB).”
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-fsb-malware-snake-takedown/32407612.html