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Impact of Ukrainian Drone Attacks in Russia?
Impact of Ukrainian Drone Attacks in Russia?
Explainer-What we know about North Korean forces joining Russia's war against Ukraine
Explainer-What we know about North Korean forces joining Russia's war against Ukraine SEOUL, Aug 6 - North Korea has deployed troops, weapons and now, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official, a missile unit to support Russia's war against Ukraine, marking Pyongyang's most significant involvement in a war since the 1950s. Here is what is known about the growing military ties: WHAT ARE THE LATEST REPORTS? A North Korean missile unit has begun deploying to western Russia and could be equipped with up to 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers for attacks on Ukraine, an official at Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency said. The unit comprises about 90 North Korean personnel and is expected to be based in Russia's Voronezh region, the official said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in July that Russia wanted to bring in another 30,000 North Korean troops and was preparing facilities in Voronezh to receive them. Reuters could not independently verify the claims. HOW MANY NORTH KOREAN TROOPS HAVE BEEN SENT? Ukrainian, U.S. and South Korean assessments initially put the deployment at 10,000 to 12,000 troops in late 2024. In January 2025, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations said more than 12,000 North Korean soldiers were in Russia. Later Ukrainian and South Korean estimates put the number of troops in Russia's Kursk region at about 14,000 to 15,000. The Ukrainian official said this month that around 9,500 North Korean troops remained in Kursk, but were not then directly involved in operations against Ukraine. Russia and North Korea confirmed in April 2025 that North Korean troops had fought Ukrainian forces in Kursk. Russia's top military commander praised their role after Moscow said it had retaken Kursk territory, while Pyongyang said the deployment was ordered by leader Kim Jong Un. WHAT OTHER PERSONNEL HAS NORTH KOREA SAID IT WILL PROVIDE? In June 2025, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu said North Korea would send 1,000 sappers and 5,000 military construction workers to Kursk to clear mines and help rebuild infrastructure damaged in the fighting. That same month, South Korean lawmakers, citing a briefing by the National Intelligence Service, said that North Korea appeared to have begun recruiting personnel for an additional deployment to Russia, while continuing to supply Russia with artillery ammunition and missiles in exchange for economic cooperation and technical assistance. It remains unclear how many engineers, deminers or additional troops have arrived in Russia, or whether they have been used in combat roles. WHAT WEAPONS HAS NORTH KOREA PROVIDED? North Korea has supplied Russia with millions of artillery and mortar rounds, ballistic missiles, long-range artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, according to Ukrainian and independent assessments. A Reuters analysis with the UK-based Open Source Centre found four Russian-flagged cargo ships made 64 voyages to North Korea's Rajin port between September 2023 and March 2025, transporting nearly 16,000 containers of ammunition to Russian ports. Ukrainian officials said North Korea was supplying about half of the munitions Russia needed on the front lines. Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency said that North Korea had delivered 4 million artillery shells from mid-2023, excluding mortar rounds. It said North Korea had supplied 148 KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles by the start of 2025. WHY IS NORTH KOREA HELPING RUSSIA? Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim signed a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty during Putin's June 2024 visit to Pyongyang. The pact includes a mutual assistance provision if either country faces external aggression. North Korea has cast its deployment as assistance to a treaty partner. Kim said in May 2025 that participation in the war was justified as an exercise of North Korea's sovereign rights in defence of a "brother nation." Analysts say Pyongyang stands to gain hard currency, oil and other economic support, as well as access to Russian military technology and battlefield experience for its forces and weapons. North Korean soldiers have gained combat exposure to drones, electronic warfare, artillery coordination and modern battlefield tactics, while its missile and ammunition makers have been able to assess their equipment in wartime conditions. WHAT HAS THE INTERNATIONAL REACTION BEEN? The United States and its allies have said the troop deployments and arms transfers violate U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea. Pyongyang has been subject to U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. The sanctions prohibit countries from hosting North Korean trainers, advisers or other officials for military, paramilitary or police training. Washington imposed additional sanctions in December 2024 on North Korean and Russian entities connected to Pyongyang's military and financial support for Moscow. South Korea also blacklisted individuals and entities linked to illicit military cooperation between the two countries. NATO has said Russia's growing military and economic ties with North Korea, China and Iran pose a threat beyond Europe, extending to the Indo-Pacific and North America. REUTERS
PM calls for drone, AI, cyber attacks in Ulchi exercise scenarios - The Korea Times
PM calls for drone, AI, cyber attacks in Ulchi exercise scenarios - The Korea Times
PM calls for drone, AI, cyber attacks in Ulchi exercise scenarios - The Korea Times
This year's Ulchi civil defense exercise should reflect scenarios for drone and cyber attacks and other new types of threats as well as compound disasters amid a rapidly changing security environment, Prime Minister Han Seong-sook said Thursday. The annual nationwide exercise will kick off on Aug. 18 for a four-day run, involving some 580,000 officials from about 4,000 central and local government agencies and public institutions, to check and enhance readiness for war and other contingencies. A nationwide air raid evacuation drill is set for Aug. 20. "Recently, the security environment has been changing rapidly," Han said during a meeting convened to check preparations for the upcoming exercise. "The war Russia-Ukraine war and armed conflicts in the Middle East show that modern warfare goes beyond military conflicts and can directly threaten the people's daily lives." "New types of threats, such as artificial intelligence, drones and cyber attacks, are also becoming a reality," she said. Participating agencies should actively reflect AI, drone and cyber attacks, and compound threats in exercise scenarios to make the drill more realistic and practical, Han said. "Under the current security environment, the government's response capabilities should encompass not only military operations support, but the maintenance of daily lives and the continuation of state functions," she said.
Why is Russia in favour of maintaining Swiss neutrality?
Switzerland has been neutral since 1815, having stayed out of all international conflicts, including both World Wars. Under its terms, the country should also not get involved in any military alliances (like NATO, for example) and not impose sanctions on rogue nations. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, however, Switzerland has ‘softened’ its neutrality stance for, as the government said at the time, its own protection and security. It got closer to NATO (without actually joining it) and imposed EU’s sanctions against Moscow. READ MORE: NATO in, neutrality out: How the Ukraine invasion impacted Switzerland In response, the sovereigntist organisation Pro Schweiz – an offshoot of the populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) - has collected more than enough signatures to launch a vote aimed at better anchoring Swiss neutrality in the country's Constitution. “It cannot be modified easily and at will on the basis of current events,” Pro Schweiz states. The organisation is also opposed to closer ties with NATO and wants the Constitution to expressly prohibit joining this (or any other) military alliances, except in the event of a direct attack against the country. Additionally, Pro Schweiz seeks to restrict Swiss government’s right to impose sanctions on other nations. The issue will play out at the ballot box – as all political matters do in Switzerland – but in the meantime, Russia has put its own two rubles (in a manner of speaking, of course) into the strictly Swiss debate. What is Moscow saying? The Russian Foreign Ministry is openly campaigning for a ‘yes’ vote on the neutrality initiative. In a lengthy Telegram post, Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, wrote that Swiss voters should approve the bid by the right-wingers to strengthen Switzerland’s neutrality. The reason is simple: among the demands of the initiative’s instigators is one that would forbid Bern to impose sanctions on other nations – including on Russia. What are Swiss politicians saying about Moscow’s stance? It depends on who you ask. For Gerhard Pfister, a deputy from the Centre Party, which is against the bid, “Russia's position shows that the neutrality initiative is, in effect, a pro-Putin initiative.” As for the initiative’s supporters, SVP’s deputy Walter Wobmann simply said that the party "has never had any contact with Russian political officials,” adding, however, that “the imposition of sanctions [against Moscow] was a mistake." A nest of spies Obviously, Russia has no say in Swiss politics, and it is doubtful that voters will be swayed by its stance one way or another. This is not to say, however, that Moscow is totally… neutral about Switzerland. In fact, the country is a hub for Russian spies: in 2023 it was revealed that around a fifth of the total number of Moscow’s agents in Europe were based in Switzerland. In all, some 80 agents, who operate under the guise of diplomats, were known to be in Switzerland, particularly in capital Bern, as well as Geneva, where most international organisations are located. READ MORE: Switzerland's security 'threatened by Russian spies'
Why is Russia in favour of maintaining Swiss neutrality?
Why is Russia in favour of maintaining Swiss neutrality?
Russia and Azerbaijan: From Balancing to Confrontation – Riddle Russia
For years after independence, Azerbaijan carefully balanced between regional powers—chiefly Russia and Turkey—avoiding any unambiguous alignment and steering clear of military alliances. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine weakened Moscow’s position in the South Caucasus and enabled Baku to resolve the Karabakh conflict decisively in its own favor, a conflict the Kremlin had long treated as a lever of influence. After restoring full control over Karabakh and securing the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers, Baku initially sought to preserve close ties with Moscow. The December 2024 disaster involving an Azerbaijani passenger aircraft, shot down by Russian air defenses near Grozny, produced a sharp cooling in bilateral relations and then an unprecedented confrontation. Both sides still have interests in one another, yet unresolved disputes and the broader erosion of Kremlin authority have accelerated a process of “separation.” Azerbaijan now acts with growing independence and no longer feels compelled to maintain the old equilibrium. The Sovereignty Question On 22 February 2022, two days before Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. The talks were far from routine. The two leaders signed a Declaration on Allied Interaction designed to deepen cooperation across the board. For Baku the document was another exercise in careful balancing: six months earlier Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had signed the Shusha Declaration on allied relations with Turkey. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine initially left the Moscow-Baku balance largely intact. Azerbaijani officials avoided direct condemnation of the Russian army’s criminal conduct while consistently upholding Ukraine’s territorial integrity—a matter of principle for a country that had itself long battled separatism. Unlike Turkey, Baku recognizes neither Kosovo nor the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Azerbaijan’s delegation was absent from the UN General Assembly vote on 2 March 2022 condemning the aggression against Ukraine and from the 7 April vote suspending Russia’s membership of the Human Rights Council. Baku preferred not to be associated with open criticism of the Kremlin on the international stage. Its stance on the legal status of occupied Ukrainian territory was firmer. In October 2022 Baku offered Kyiv unconditional support after the so-called referendums; in September 2023 the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry condemned Moscow’s regional “elections” in the four occupied oblasts. Ilham Aliyev remained for a long time the only CIS head of state to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after 24 February 2022. Azerbaijan also made no secret of supplying transformers and generators to Ukraine as humanitarian aid—and regularly drew Moscow’s criticism for doing so. “It Was Armenia, Not Russia, That Abandoned Karabakh” When the leaders of Azerbaijan, Russia and Armenia signed the trilateral statement on the night of 10 November 2020 that ended the 44-day war, the Kremlin appeared the principal beneficiary. Russia reaffirmed its role as the key arbiter of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and of the South Caucasus more broadly. The deployment of Russian peacekeepers to the Lachin corridor gave Moscow a military foothold. The mandate ran for five years with the option of renewal; Russian planners clearly expected a long-term presence. The war in Ukraine forced a reassessment. The constant drain of resources—diplomatic as well as material—on the Ukrainian front weakened Moscow’s regional position and allowed Azerbaijan to settle the Karabakh question on its own terms. In April 2023 Baku established its own checkpoint on the Lachin corridor, the sole road linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh. Aliyev repeatedly told Karabakh residents they faced only two choices: accept Azerbaijani citizenship or leave. Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military operation to reclaim the remaining territories met no Russian opposition. Against the background of growing friction with Yerevan, the Kremlin may even have viewed the outcome with quiet approval. Nikol Pashinyan had come to power in Armenia in spring 2018 through street protests and a “velvet revolution.” Putin’s well-known hostility to “color revolutions” made relations difficult from the outset. Tensions peaked in 2023. In January Armenia refused to host CSTO exercises; in May Pashinyan threatened to leave the organization if it proved “incapable.” A particular affront to Putin was the Armenian government’s early-September draft ratification of the Rome Statute, obliging Yerevan to implement International Criminal Court decisions—and therefore to arrest and surrender Putin should he set foot in the country. Moscow was also angered by Armenia’s October 2022 decision, brokered by the European Union, to recognize Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity within the 1991 borders and thereby renounce claims to Karabakh. “It was not Russia that abandoned Karabakh, but Armenia itself—proactively and without informing Moscow,” Putin later emphasized. The exodus of tens of thousands of Karabakh Armenians in autumn 2023 might have destabilized Armenia—an outcome the Kremlin appears to have anticipated. It did not materialize. Recent parliamentary elections confirmed that Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party, with roughly 50 percent of the vote, remains the country’s dominant political force. With Turkish support, Azerbaijan secured the departure of the last Russian peacekeepers in June 2024. By then the war in Ukraine was in its third year, and the shift in the South Caucasus balance no longer carried the same urgency for Moscow that it once would have done. Special Relations Under Western sanctions Azerbaijan has become one of Russia’s most important economic partners. Trade turnover rose nearly 25 percent in 2022 to $ 3.7 billion. Joint projects include the International North-South Transport Corridor, intended to link the Baltic to the Indian Ocean. Personal ties between Putin and Aliyev have always mattered. Both have ruled for more than two decades (Putin since 2000, Aliyev since 2003) and share similar authoritarian instincts; neither lectures the other on democracy, human rights or free speech. Elite connections run deeper still: Heydar Aliyev, like Putin, emerged from the KGB, and the personal contacts of the early 2000s helped cement the relationship. That trust enabled Putin’s August 2024 visit to Baku—an event of some significance for a cautious Russian president facing an ICC arrest warrant, even though Azerbaijan is not a party to the Rome Statute. “This visit is of historic importance and will make a major contribution to strengthening friendly partnership relations,” Aliyev declared afterwards. SOCAR and Gazprom signed an agreement deepening strategic cooperation. Within four months the relationship had been transformed beyond recognition. The Battle of the Towers On 25 December 2024 an Azerbaijan Airlines flight from Baku to Grozny crashed near Aktau in Kazakhstan after being hit by Russian air-defense systems. Thirty-eight people died. The drama was heightened by the fact that Aliyev’s own aircraft, en route to a CIS summit in St Petersburg, experienced GPS disruptions; the president ordered it to turn back to Baku. Baku responded firmly, demanding that Moscow admit responsibility and apologies, pay compensation to the victims’ families, and punish those responsible. Putin confined himself to an apology that the “tragic incident had occurred in Russian airspace.” Gestures such as a Heydar Aliyev monument in Moscow and the Order of Friendship for parliamentary speaker Sahiba Gafarova proved insufficient. Relations cooled sharply. In February 2025 the Russian House in Baku was closed, ostensibly for lack of proper legal registration. Aliyev cancelled his participation in the Victory Day parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War at the last moment. In Baku the prevailing view is that one of the Kremlin’s hardline “towers” seized on the incident to escalate pressure. In June 2025 roughly fifty Azerbaijanis were demonstratively detained in Yekaterinburg; two died from police violence. Similar incidents had occurred before, but never before had Baku reacted so forcefully. Azerbaijan cancelled all major Russia-related cultural events, detained two Sputnik employees on suspicion of FSB links, and arrested eleven Russian citizens on charges of drug smuggling from Iran. Tensions eased only when Aliyev and Putin met on the sidelines of the CIS summit in Dushanbe in October 2025. For the first time Putin acknowledged that a Russian air-defense missile had damaged the aircraft, though he still blamed a Ukrainian drone as the principal cause. Baku treated the partial admission as a diplomatic victory after months of strain—yet an incomplete one. At a year-end press conference Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov noted that Russia had closed the criminal investigation. “Such a step naturally raises very serious questions for us,” he said. Baku was especially angered that charges against the main suspect had been dropped in September—before Putin’s Dushanbe statements. An international technical report is still awaited, but the Kremlin shows no willingness to prosecute those responsible. Moscow’s stance is influenced by the precedent of September 2023, when six Russian peacekeepers were killed by Azerbaijani fire in Karabakh: Baku accepted responsibility and dismissed the officers involved yet never put them on trial. Russia appears determined to reserve the same latitude for itself. Moscow and Baku’s Ukrainian Front The diplomatic conflict between Azerbaijan and Russia remains far from resolved. A clear indicator came in March 2026 with the sentences handed down to leaders of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Yekaterinburg: seven defendants, charged with murders and attempted murders committed in 2001, received prison terms ranging from 10 to 22 years. Baku responded in kind in May and June, when 11 Russian citizens were sentenced to three to four years for drug trafficking and distribution as well as cyber fraud. Officials in Baku acknowledge that a prisoner exchange is among the more likely paths to de-escalation. For now, however, both sides are moving in the opposite direction—escalating while carefully avoiding a direct collision and operating through proxies. One of the indirect arenas of this confrontation has become Ukraine. Unlike in the early years of the Russia-Ukraine war, Ilham Aliyev now openly voices support for Kyiv. In July last year he accepted Ukrainian Armed Forces chevrons from a Ukrainian journalist and repeatedly urged Ukrainians “never to accept occupation.” In September it emerged that Azerbaijan had supplied Ukraine with MiG-29 fighters. Moscow, visibly displeased by Baku’s pro-Ukrainian gestures, has answered by striking Azerbaijani assets on Ukrainian soil. During a Russian bombardment of Kyiv last November, a missile landed directly on the territory of the Azerbaijani embassy. In early July the Russian ambassador in Baku was summoned to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry after a Russian drone attacked a SOCAR petrol station in Mykolaiv region. No longer looking over its shoulder at Moscow Another new instrument Azerbaijan has begun wielding against Russia is anti-colonial rhetoric—something previously absent from official Baku discourse. In August 2025 Aliyev described Azerbaijan’s incorporation into the Soviet Union as an occupation. In July of this year a conference was held whose participants demanded that Russia “stop forcibly sending representatives of ethnic minorities to the front in Ukraine” and to recognize the Circassian genocide. The continuing confrontation has narrowed Russia’s room for maneuver as a mediator and as a key external player in the South Caucasus more broadly. The declaration on establishing peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, signed in Washington in August 2025 under the mediation of Donald Trump, inter alia opened the way to the unblocking of communications between the two countries. The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), which will cross southern Armenia (Syunik province) and link mainland Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave, excludes any Russian role. Should the project materialize, Turkey will gain direct access to Azerbaijan and, beyond it, to the Caspian and the markets of Central Asia—an outcome that will clearly diminish Moscow’s economic influence in the region. Yet relations between Russia and Azerbaijan are still far from a complete rupture. The two countries remain economically interdependent and retain an interest in previously agreed projects. A telling indicator of mutual interest is the volume of bilateral trade: in 2025, despite the conflict, it did not contract but grew by roughly 2.5 percent. In any event, over the past four years Baku has clearly concluded that it can now deal with Moscow as an equal—and, when necessary, dictate terms.
Russia and Azerbaijan: From Balancing to Confrontation – Riddle Russia
Russia and Azerbaijan: From Balancing to Confrontation – Riddle Russia
The Blood Price: In Israel, Military Sacrifice Is Becoming Political Power
Join War on the Rocks and gain access to content trusted by policymakers, military leaders, and strategic thinkers worldwide. In late June, cadets at the Israeli military’s officer training school sat through a lecture by Ofer Winter, a retired brigadier general and a polarizing figure in the Israel Defense Forces. According to Haaretz, Winter told the future officers that “there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza” and accused two former chiefs of staff of politically blocking his career. Regulations prohibit political activity in training programs, and the Israeli military later called the episode a failure. The cadets who spoke to Haaretz, however, described this politically charged lecture as part of a pattern of guest speakers drawn overwhelmingly from the right-wing ideological camp associated with religious Zionism. Three months earlier, a CNN crew filmed Israeli settlers establishing an illegal outpost in a West Bank village and assaulting some of its Palestinian residents. The Israeli soldiers who were present guarded the settlers, rather than the villagers, and subsequently detained and assaulted the journalists. Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the army’s chief of staff, promptly suspended the entire battalion, Netzah Yehuda, whose reservists are deeply committed to the settlement movement. One of the soldiers, acknowledging on camera that the outpost was illegal under Israeli law, expressed confidence that eventually “this will be a legal settlement.” These incidents reflect a deep structural transformation two decades in the making that the Gaza War has accelerated. The heavy casualties borne by religious Zionists since Oct. 7, 2023, have given the community a moral standing that makes criticism of its conduct politically costly. No one can say how the army would respond to an order to evacuate West Bank settlements. Israeli politicians, however, increasingly behave as though such an order would fracture the army, an expectation that has narrowed the range of territorial outcomes they are willing to consider. Netzah Yehuda sits at the seam between two religious communities with opposite relationships to military service. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Haredim, have historically kept their distance from state institutions and from the army in particular, and the battalion was created in 1999 specifically to bring ultra-Orthodox men into uniform. The national religious camp treats army service as a religious obligation and sends its sons into combat units at rates far above its share of the population. Netzah Yehuda draws heavily from the hardal — a portmanteau for Haredi Le’umi — sector, a minority within religious Zionism that combines strict religious observance with fervent nationalism. Though small, the hardal camp wields disproportionate influence in the pre-military academies and aspires to reshape the military itself. The Israeli military was long dominated by Israel’s secular, largely Ashkenazi middle class, the social base of Labor Zionism. As Israeli military sociologist Yagil Levy has shown, that began to change after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the traditional elite increasingly pursued careers in the private sector, especially high-technology industries. Today, roughly 40 percent of infantry officer school graduates come from the national religious community, which makes up just 12 to 14 percent of Jewish Israeli society. The proportion of religious settler officers has grown at every level, from platoon commanders to generals. Two processes produced this demographic shift. As the secular middle class left the combat track, the ranks were filled by those from marginalized communities, in particular the burgeoning and highly motivated religious Zionist community. Their leaders also worked deliberately to steer their youth into those ranks, primarily through two institutions. Hesder yeshivot, five-year programs combining Torah study with 18 months of military service, send roughly 85 percent of their students into combat units. The mechinot, pre-army academies founded to produce religious officers, send graduates into the officers’ course at three times the national rate. A study published in Maarachot, the Israeli Defense Ministry’s journal, found a tenfold increase in the share of national-religious infantry officer cadets between 1990 and 2008. Many of these institutions transmit hardline nationalist ideology alongside religious instruction, rooted in the messianic teachings of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook — the settlement movement’s ideological godfather, who viewed territorial compromise as violating God’s promise. The turning point came in August 2005, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon evacuated all 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza. For religious Zionists, only 15 percent of whom supported the plan, the disengagement was experienced as a betrayal by the state itself. The army carried out the evacuation smoothly, in part by deliberately excluding units with high concentrations of religious conscripts, and only about 60 soldiers refused orders. The community drew a strategic lesson from its defeat. Rabbi Eli Sadan, founder of the most influential pre-army academy, Bnei David, declared that religious Zionists needed to “enter the existing systems of the military, the Israel Security Agency, Mossad, and police” to exert influence from within. Over the next two decades, it did. When past defense ministers tried to rein in such institutions, they failed. One removed a yeshiva from the hesder program after its head rabbi endorsed insubordination, only to see his successor reinstate it. Oct. 7 greatly enhanced the community’s political influence. “People are afraid to confront these incidents because they’d be labeled as leftists and attacked in social media,” Tamir Hayman, the former head of Israeli military intelligence, told me. “In the context of Oct. 7, they’re being supported by the mass feelings of hatred and revenge.” Beyond the political mood surrounding the war, Hayman was describing a broader shift in the relationship between military service and political influence. Although the Israeli military does not officially track casualties by religious affiliation, the disproportionate number of national-religious soldiers among the fallen is widely recognized in Israel. As reserve call-ups exhausted the country, turnout among religious Zionists remained high while secular participation declined. That sacrifice has become a form of moral authority, and criticism of the community’s conduct or its political agenda now carries a political price. This theme surfaced repeatedly in interviews I conducted in late 2025 and early 2026 with former security officials and scholars. Elisheva Rosman-Stollman, a scholar of religion and the military at Bar-Ilan University, traced it back to the 2005 Gaza disengagement. Religious Zionists believed they had “made the ultimate sacrifice” by complying with the evacuation, she told me, only to see that sacrifice “completely brushed aside” by Israel’s political leadership. The Gaza War, she said, “reinforced everything that the right-wing in Israel holds dear.” Military sacrifice has translated into a form of political legitimacy that increasingly shapes what Israeli politicians believe is possible. The obvious objection is that Israel’s ultra-Orthodox wield enormous political influence despite largely avoiding military service. But that influence comes from coalition politics, not the battlefield. The disproportionate role of religious Zionists in the fighting and the casualties, by contrast, has given them a moral standing that politicians are increasingly reluctant to challenge. In the battle over the Haredi draft exemption, some of the strongest criticism of the ultra-Orthodox demands has come from the religious Zionist community, which believes it has borne the greatest burden of the war. Two appointments made in the summer of 2024 illustrated this shift in practice. Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, a Bnei David graduate, took command of the division controlling Gaza’s Netzarim corridor. A Haaretz investigation found that Vach opposed facilitating humanitarian aid, declared that “there are no innocents in Gaza,” and moved on his own initiative to clear northern Gaza, leading Haaretz to describe his command as “a kind of army within an army.” Tomer Persico, a scholar of religion who has studied the movement closely, told me that religious Zionist-led units enjoyed unusual autonomy and that commanders “would basically do whatever they wanted.” Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, another Bnei David alumnus, became head of Central Command in the West Bank, where he established formal coordination with settlers building illegal outposts, the very activity his troops nominally police. Lower down the ranks, the war produced a steady stream of documented misconduct with an unmistakable religious-nationalist inflection. Soldiers erected makeshift synagogues in Palestinian homes, broadcast Jewish prayers from a Jenin mosque, and burned Palestinian houses on their commanders’ orders. When nine soldiers were detained over allegations of severe detainee abuse at the Sde Teiman detention facility, far-right activists stormed the base, joined by a cabinet minister and members of Knesset. One accused guard defended himself in a video by quoting that week’s Torah portion, invoking Jewish religious law rather than military regulations. Reuven Gal, a former Israeli military chief psychologist, told me that many religious soldiers saw the Gaza campaign as a “holy war.” The Spirit of the Israel Defense Forces, the army’s ethical code, has become a battleground between rabbinic and military authority. Its “Purity of Arms” tenet, which requires soldiers to use force only as necessary and to protect civilians and prisoners, was once described by a former Israeli military chief of staff as “the compass and the conscience of the Israeli military.” Today it is under open assault. Prominent rabbis have circulated the claim that there are no innocents in Gaza, and dozens signed a letter declaring no religious barrier to bombing hospitals where the enemy shelters. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, 65 percent of Israelis now believe the Purity of Arms doctrine prevents the army from fulfilling its mission, roughly double the share of a decade ago. The New York Times reported that hours after the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel’s military leadership authorized officers to strike low-ranking Hamas fighters even where doing so risked killing up to 20 civilians, a threshold previously reserved for high-value targets, and the military tightened those rules the following month. To be sure, the high command has not given up on the code. Zamir suspended an entire battalion over the outpost incident. The army labeled the Winter lecture a failure and pledged to keep politics out of its training programs. Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi, Zamir’s predecessor, defended disciplining soldiers over the Jenin mosque episode against attacks from the far right. Whether those efforts will ultimately succeed remains an open question. Two factors point in the opposite direction. First, the generals now enforcing these norms were shaped by an earlier Israeli military, while the cadets now sitting through lectures like Winter’s will be commanding brigades within the next decade. As a growing share of combat officers comes to question the military’s traditional doctrine, those future commanders are likely to carry different assumptions into senior leadership. Second, when the military has disciplined soldiers for crossing the line, cabinet members have repeatedly sided with the disciplined rather than with the commanders who imposed the discipline. Within weeks of Oct. 7, settler organizations began campaigning to rebuild the Gush Katif settlements dismantled in 2005, holding conferences that drew cabinet ministers as speakers. At one gathering in Jerusalem in January 2024, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared, “God willing, together we will settle and be victorious,” and the assembled speakers signed a “Victory Pact” committing to Gaza’s resettlement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the idea as unrealistic, yet pressure on him remains sustained and comes from inside his own coalition, and increasingly from inside the army. In one widely circulated video, a soldier in Gaza addressed the prime minister directly: “We are occupying, deporting and settling. Do you hear that, Bibi?” Polls now show nearly 40 percent of Israelis supporting Gaza’s annexation, three times the size of the religious Zionist community that traditionally championed it. The stakes are higher in the West Bank, where any future territorial agreement would require evacuating settlements. The settler population there exceeds half a million, living on land religious Zionists regard as the biblical heartland. The officer corps has grown more religious since 2005, and the army can no longer simply assign such a mission to secular units, because its combat core is now drawn disproportionately from the very community that would be evacuated. The rhetoric of refusal, meanwhile, has become increasingly normalized. An officer quoted in an International Crisis Group report vowed to resist any withdrawal order “by all legitimate means, and if that isn’t enough, by illegitimate means.” Whether the Israeli military would fracture under such an order is unknowable. Yet the possibility alone has changed Israeli politics. Any leader contemplating territorial concessions must now reckon with a military whose combat core may be unwilling to carry them out and with a community that has buried its sons in Gaza and would be asked to surrender the cause for which they fell. The Israeli military has long been Israel’s chief integrating institution, bringing together citizens from every corner of society in service of a common state. As the composition of its combat ranks changes, military service is becoming a source of political authority. Whether that authority is ever tested by an actual evacuation order matters less than the fact that Israeli politicians already treat it as a constraint. Guy Ziv is an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Policy and Global Security at American University’s School of International Service and associate director of American University’s Meltzer Schwartzberg Center for Israel Studies, where he studies Israeli civil-military relations. He is the author of Netanyahu vs The Generals: The Battle for Israel’s Future (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Image: ISM Palestine via Wikimedia Commons
The Blood Price: In Israel, Military Sacrifice Is Becoming Political Power
The Blood Price: In Israel, Military Sacrifice Is Becoming Political Power
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected cyberattacks – ABC News Hackers have targeted water and wastewater utilities in at least a dozen US states, ABC News has reported, citing multiple sources. The American authorities believe that Iran, which has been in conflict with the US since being attacked in late February, is the main suspect behind the cyberattacks, although its involvement hasn’t been officially confirmed, the broadcaster said on Tuesday. Tehran hasn’t commented on the claims. Over the years, the US has accused Iran of attempting to hack its banks, infrastructure, and communications of high-ranking officials, with the Islamic Republic consistently denying the allegations. Last Thursday, the FBI said “malicious cyber actors” had targeted water and wastewater utility systems in seven states in late July. Their actions resulted in the “loss of monitoring and control functionality” of key infrastructure, it said. At least five more states have since faced similar attacks, according to ABC News. The cyberattacks can blind utility operators by changing passwords or disabling alarms, the sources said. However, so far they have not caused any widespread disruptions to water supplies, they added. US media mentioned Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Georgia as among the states affected. Michigan State Police said that after the hack “all systems continued to operate safely, issues were addressed by local operators, and there are no known impacts that posed a public health concern.” The FBI urged the operators to disconnect their systems from the internet where possible, use secure software, and prepare to switch to manual controls if necessary. Experts have sounded the alarm over insufficient cybersecurity at water treatment facilities across the US, saying that it makes them vulnerable to attacks. Last week, US President Donald Trump ruled out Iranian involvement in the hacking of the infrastructure. “They blamed it on Iran. I don’t think so. I think I blame it on Minnesota because they’re grossly incompetent… Iran’s got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota,” he said during a cabinet meeting. Trump also attacked the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, calling him “corrupt.” Walz responded in a post on X, saying: “Trump knows exactly who is responsible for this attack, and knows that other states were hit too. This is what modern warfare looks like, and it further illustrates there’s no plan to win a war with Iran.”
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News
Water systems across US hit by suspected Iranian cyberattacks – ABC News