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James Marson is the Ukraine Bureau Chief, for The Wall Street Journal. He has covered Ukraine for 15 years, chronicling its efforts to establish itself as an independent European democracy through a revolution and a war with Russia. He writes: “U.S. officials are warning that Russia could be about to attack Ukraine. For many citizens in this embattled country, even before the invasion of February 24, 2022, the assault had already begun.

Russian forces and their proxies already control portions of Ukraine and frequently skirmish with government forces. The aim of Moscow’s intensifying hybrid campaign, Ukrainian officials said, is to weaken their country and sow panic, potentially provoking discontent and protests of the kind Russia fomented in eastern Ukraine in 2014 to justify its interventions there. U.S. and U.K. officials said last month they uncovered coup plots intended to install a puppet pro-Russian government.

The tactics illustrate how President Vladimir Putin of Russia can maintain pressure on Ukraine without escalating to a shooting war that could provoke sanctions from the West. Ukrainian officials said a destabilization campaign is more likely than a large-scale invasion.

“The No. 1 task for Russia is to undermine us from inside,” Oleksiy Danilov, the top national security adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, said in a recent interview.

Since Russia invaded parts of Ukraine in 2014, it has employed a variety of tactics to try to sap the country’s resources and will to fight. The Kremlin can dial up the level of fighting in Ukraine’s east through the separatists it controls there, killing Ukrainian soldiers and wrecking everyday lives near the front line. An increase in fighting there could provide the Kremlin with a pretext to send its army deeper into Ukraine, as it did in Georgia in 2008.

Russian destabilization efforts since 2014 have had mixed results. Ukrainian support for membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union has grown to more than half the population. Ukraine’s economy hasn’t collapsed, and trade has shifted from Russia to the EU and elsewhere. The Ukrainian government has bolstered cyber defenses and closed TV stations it called propaganda channels.

However, weak points remain, and Russia is probing.

Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in Europe and has a vulnerable economy. The Russian military buildup has led investors to freeze projects and pull money out of the country. The national currency, the hryvnia, has weakened but not seen a full-blown panic.

Russia announced Thursday naval drills in the Black Sea that would close off swaths of water along Ukraine’s south- ern coast, inhibiting traffic to key ports for exports. Ukraine’s foreign ministry complained about the economic consequences of the closures, calling them part of Russia’s “ hybrid warfare.”

“Russia’s economic warfare against Ukraine continues,” the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv wrote on Twitter.

Russia has long limited sea traffic into the Azov Sea via the Kerch Strait, forming what Ukraine has said amounts to a partial blockade of ports including the industrial hub Mariupol.

Ukraine has girded against some of Moscow’s tactics. Kyiv turned off Russian state channels in 2014, saying they were spreading disinformation aimed at fomenting discord. Last year, Mr. Zelensky extended a ban on Russian websites to include social network Vkontakte.

Mr. Zelensky also sanctioned last year the closure of three television channels owned by a close friend of Mr. Putin. The station had lambasted Ukraine’s leadership and promoted closer ties with Russia. Ukrainian officials said it was covertly financed by Moscow and was yet another source of Kremlin disinformation.

“We closed Russian propaganda channels financed by the aggressor country,” said Mr. Danilov, the presidential security adviser. “That isn’t about freedom of speech. It’s about the information war Russia was pursuing.”

After the U.K. identified a Ukrainian lawmaker and television channel owner, Yevhen Murayev, as a potential puppet ruler who could be installed by the Russians, Ukrainian protesters demonstrated outside his channel’s offices in Kyiv and called for its closure. Mr. Murayev denied involvement in any such plot.

Some Ukrainians are taking measures beyond protesting. Myroslav Hai, a military veteran and film producer, set up powerful radio equipment near the front line in the eastern Luhansk region to broadcast Army FM, a Ukrainian radio station, with such a strong signal that it replaced a separatist station in Russia-allied territory.

“It’s important to show that someone is doing something small every day,” he said. Kyiv has bolstered its cyber defenses after a string of attacks, including with training at “ hackathons” organized by the EU and NATO.

Cyberattacks in 2015 and 2016 temporarily took down power grids in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine and Kyiv, the capital. A mal-recognized ware attack in 2017 affected one in 10 businesses nationwide and was designed to cripple the economy, according to Viktor Zhora, deputy chief of Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection.

A cyberattack last month, which authorities blamed on Russia and its close ally Belarus, defaced several dozen government websites and installed malware. Mr. Zhora said Ukrainian authorities thwarted a graver attack that was aimed at accessing the state register, a data set on companies and entrepreneurs.

Another new tactic, according to Ukrainian authorities, is bomb threats. Ukrainian police said there were nearly 1,000 anonymous messages in January, mostly by email, falsely claiming bomb threats against nearly 10,000 locations.”

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Peter Aitken is a Fox News Digital reporter with a focus on national and global news, observes that AI controlled drone swarms show military might, but the question of who controls the incoming date makes interoperability tricky. 

He writes: “Retired Brig. Gen. Uri Engelhard, an AI and cyber expert, member of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, told Fox News Digital:

“Just like coordination is needed to conduct classic, joint and coalition maneuvers and military operations, similar clear definitions of boundaries, tasks, responsibility and authority are needed to control and de-conflict drone swarms. If planned and conducted properly, the deployment of drone swarms should not be more challenging than other military activities.”

The joint AUKUS – Australia, United Kingdom and U.S. – military drill last week included the deployment of an AI-controlled swarm of drones that detected and tracked military targets “in a real-time representative environment,” according to a British government press release.

The test, conducted in southwest England, included a Challenger 2 tank, Warrior armored vehicle and Viking unmanned ground vehicle. The U.K. Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) said the test helped the three allies reduce duplication efforts and ensure interoperability.

“Accelerating technological advances will deliver the operational advantages necessary to defeat current and future threats across the battlespace,” U.K. Deputy Chief of Defense Staff Lt. Gen. Rob Magowan said in a press release about the trial. 

“We are committed to collaborating with partners to ensure that we achieve this while also promoting the responsible development and deployment of AI,” he added.

The swarm displayed impressive capabilities, and it raised significant questions about control – both the main AI that operates the swarm and the data that the swarm absorbs and disseminates.

“Obviously, he who controls the AI holds an advantage over other participants,” Engelhard said. “But similar to other complex systems, like the Iron Dome, only if all components operate in harmony can the system succeed.”

“No system is void of errors,” he noted. “Using AI will decrease errors. The task of remote controlling a swarm of drones is complex, and in order to minimize errors, a combination of AI and remote control should be employed.”

“The clearest advantage of AI-controlled drone swarms is that if programmed well in advance, the swarm can execute its tasks exceedingly well without the need for remote controlling,” Engelhard said.

The new trial shows the U.S. making great strides in areas that some countries have already explored, including Israel, but also rivals such as China, according to Matt McInnis, a senior fellow for the Institute for the Study of War’s China Program, told Fox News Digital.

“This is one of the areas that … with all the things that I saw that drone swarms could potentially bring to warfare, this type of very fast response to a changing situation during a conflict and being able to process many, many targets quickly is something that I think all major militaries are trying to get a handle on,” McInnis said.

“I think using drones for this intelligence surveillance reconnaissance mission that the August test is looking at is, in many ways, trying to ensure that we are keeping up with where China and Israel and others are going and, frankly, to maintain and hopefully to establish and maintain a leading edge in this capability.”

The focus for AI and drone technology thus far remains purely strategic, with little plans evident to give AI control of weapons or combat vehicles otherwise. The public’s reaction to such a choice became clear with the response to a report last week that the Air Force had run a simulation in which the AI drone allegedly tried to kill its operator and a communications tower because it deemed them as obstacles to fulfilling its goals.

The Air Force had to clarify they did not actually hand over control of a weapon to an AI and no one actually died or was harmed during the test. Instead, the Air Force insisted that the comments had been taken out of context and “were meant to be anecdotal.”

McInnis said the Chinese are aiming to do something along similar lines – in effect speeding up the “targeting cycle,” from observation, targeting, firing and then repeating the cycle. 

“Process in a war can become very quick, and it is something that I think most states are going to try to find ways to do because this is the key to maintaining a decision superiority in warfare,” he said. “It’s certainly where the Chinese are trying to go, what they believe they can achieve [with] this type of decision superiority by bringing in artificial intelligence and machine learning into its entire intelligence and targeting process.”

On the issue of who controls the AI and incoming data remains a chief concern that McInnis worries has escaped serious consideration so far, adding that there will remain “enormous pressure” to find a common operating platform, especially in organizations like NATO.

“My expectation is that, at least for our core allies certainly to press on all of NATO but maybe certain key players like France or Japan … those are all things that I expect we’re going to try to make as interoperable as possible,” he said.”

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Ian Lovett is foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal covering the war in Ukraine. He joined the Journal in 2016 and spent five years covering religion in the United States before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. 

He writes: “From a bunker on the southeastern front, it is easy to hear how Ukraine’s supply of artillery ammunition has dwindled. For every five or six incoming Russian shells, the Ukrainians fire back once or twice.

As the war approaches its third year, Russia is on the offensive, backed by an economy on a war footing. Ukraine, meanwhile, is short on ammunition as additional aid from its main backer, the U.S., remains blocked in Congress.

With artillery shells running low, Ukrainian troops on the front lines are improvising and using explosive drones to try to hold the Russians back.

“We’re increasingly using FPV drones because we have a lack of shells,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation. But, he added, “drones can’t replace artillery completely.”

Ukraine’s growing reliance on FPV, or first-person-view, drones offers a preview of what the war might look like if the flow of Western weapons to Kyiv were severely curtailed.

With additional aid packages from the U.S. and the European Union stalled, Ukrainian forces are running short on ammunition, money and manpower. Many brigades are depleted from the summer counteroffensive, which failed to make a significant breakthrough.

Now, the Ukrainians are trying to make do until more resources arrive. As in the first weeks of the war—before Western weapons flooded into the country—that short-handedness has led to unorthodox tactics to plug holes, such as substituting FPV drones for artillery fire.

The drones can’t fly as far or fast as artillery. They can’t carry as much explosive, or blast through a concrete wall. But at just a few hundred dollars each, the drones cost far less than artillery shells and are much easier to produce.

Both sides have made increasing use of FPV drones over the past six months as they have shown their usefulness on Ukraine’s flat, open fields. They are far more accurate than artillery, allowing the drone pilots to chase down moving vehicles and troops on foot. While artillery usually needs several shots to hit a target, FPV drones hit almost every time.

So far, they are just about holding back Russian advances around Robotyne village to the south of the town of Orikhiv, since some artillery units in the area were sent to other parts of the front.

“They’re putting more and more hopes on us,” said a 33year-old commander of an FPV drone squad, who goes by the call sign Tulayne, meaning “Seal.”

The Wall Street Journal observed Tulayne’s team on a recent mission in the Robotyne area, where Russian forces have been trying to win back the territory Ukraine seized during the counteroffensive. The four-man team brought 20 propeller drones, each about the size of a dinner plate, to a bunker a few miles from the front line.

The engineer attached different kinds of munitions to a few of the drones—one for hitting infantry, another designed to penetrate armored vehicles. Then he ran outside to set up an antenna, with wires running into the bunker to connect to the pilot.

A surveillance team spotted at least a dozen Russians in a network of foxholes not far away. Tulayne, who was acting as pilot, slipped on goggles that let him see what the drone’s camera sees and grabbed a controller. Then the drone whirred into the air.

Tulayne maneuvered toward the entrance to a foxhole, then slammed the drone into it. He and his colleagues watched a live feed from a surveillance drone as smoke rose from the foxhole, waiting for Russians to run out. “They’ll come out,” Tulayne said of the Russians.

The deputy commander told an engineer to get another drone, armed with a different kind of munition, ready to take off and hit them again: “He’s bandaging him,” he surmised. “We need to fly there fast.”

Although the Ukrainians are relying on FPV drones out of necessity, soldiers operating around Robotyne said the devices are transforming the front line. Because large, armored vehicles are valuable, easy-to-spot targets, both sides limited their use on the front line and instead began to rely on vans, or even motorbikes.

But using the FPV drones, the Ukrainians are now hitting even small vehicles, and chasing down soldiers on foot. The result is that the gray zone—between enemy trenches that neither side controls—has grown wider, soldiers in the area said, making it tougher to advance.”

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Andy Kessler is the author of Inside View, a column he writes for The Wall Street Journal on technology and markets and where they intersect with culture. He won the 2019 Gerald Loeb Award for commentary. He is the author of several books. He writes: “Reports from Ukraine are filled with stories of Javelin antitank missiles and Turkish Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles taking out Russian tanks and armored vehicles.

The Biden administration has announced $800 million in defensive weapons for Ukraine, including Javelins, Stinger antiaircraft weapons and Switch-blade drones. More amazing is what Ukraine has also been doing on the cheap. And I don’t mean Molotov cocktails.

Wars are increasingly asymmetric— the lesser-armed side can put up a strong fight. The U.S. learned this in Iraq with insurgent use of improvised explosive devices, basically roadside bombs triggered with cellphones. Similarly, Ukraine has been deploying inexpensive, almost homemade weapons and using technology to its advantage.

The Times of London reports that Ukraine is using $2,000 commercial octocopter drones, modified with thermal imagers and antitank grenades, to find and attack Russian tanks hiding between homes in villages at night. Ukraine’s Aerorozvidka, its aerial reconnaissance team, has 50 squads of drone pilots who need solid internet connections to operate.

When the internet was cut in Syria in 2013, enterprising techies set up point-to-point Wi-Fi connections to bring internet access from across the border in Turkey. You can do this with Pringles potato-chip cans and $50 off-the-shelf Wi-Fi routers. Ukraine may be spared this ad hoc setup as Elon Musk and his firm Star-link have donated thousands of satellite internet-access terminals to Ukraine, including to the Aerorozvidka squads, which come with warnings to camouflage the antennas. They typically cost $499 each and $99 a month for service.

Ukraine also effectively jammed Russia’s long-in-the-tooth wireless military-communication technology, which apparently uses a single-frequency channel to operate. Former Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus told CNN that Russians were then forced to use cellphones to communicate until Ukraine blocked the +7 country code for Russia and eventually took down 3G services that Russia uses for secure connections.

Russian soldiers were forced to steal Ukrainian cellphones to communicate with one another. That’s no way to fight a war.

Ukraine also has taken advantage of crowd-sourcing. The Journal told the story of Russian tanks that would fire on the city of Voznesensk and then back up a few hundred yards to avoid return fire. Civilians and Territorial Defense volunteers would then message the tanks’ new coordinates via the Viber social-messaging app.

The propaganda war is also being fought on the cheap, from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Zoom call with the U.S. Congress to Ukraine’s work spreading news inside Russia. The Russians have blocked Facebook and Twitter, independent media has been shut down, and on Russian television no one is allowed to say “invasion” or “war.”

But no country can completely filter and firewall real news. The Telegram and Whats-App messaging apps encrypt their communications. Ukraine has begun using facial recognition to identify killed and captured Russian soldiers, even contacting their families, and posting their photos on Telegram channels. For a time, Twitter was using a service to disguise its origin and restore service to Russian users.

Most surprisingly, after much hype and many warnings, Russian cyberwarfare has been deemed fairly ineffective. Hours before the invasion, someone, presumably the Russians, launched a Trojan. Killdisk attack, disk-wiping malware that hit Ukrainian government and financial system computers and took down Parliament’s website.

Cyberattack tracking firm Netscout  called the attack “modest.” A Ukrainian newspaper then released a [doxing] file with details on 120,000 Russian soldiers, including names, addresses, phone, and passport numbers. Where the information came from is unknown.

But we have a hint. Ukraine is filled with smart coders, and the government set up an “IT Army of Ukraine” Telegram channel to coordinate digital attacks on Russian military digital systems. As many as 400,000 have volunteered so far. An officer of the Ukraine State Service of Special Communications said they were engaged in “cyber-resistance.” This digital flash mob has taken down Russian websites, though I doubt we will ever fully know the damage it may have inflicted.

This is definitely a social-network-influenced conflict. In the fog of war, stories, and disinformation swirl. Most are impossible to verify. I’ve heard of foreign volunteers swarming to Ukraine who then post photos on Instagram. Both Facebook and Instagram strip GPS location coordinates from smart-phone photos, but they allow these volunteers to tag nearby locations, potentially giving away refugees’ hiding places. These could be targeted by Russian missiles and may have been the reason the Mariupol theater was destroyed.

New technology for use in commerce often emerges after the smoke of battle clears. World War I produced tanks, field radios and improved airplanes. World War II brought radar, penicillin, nuclear power, synthetic rubber, Jeeps and even duct tape. What we are seeing in Ukraine is the asymmetric power of pervasive inexpensive commercial technology, especially citizen-empowering social networks, and crowdsourcing. So far these tools have been altering the war’s outcome. Welcome to 21^st Century warfare.”

It cannot be ignored, that each of these uses of emerging Internet capabilities is applicable to any domestic security issue where non-state actors are exploiting conditions on the ground to undermine existing order—much like what exists at the U.S. Southern border and in the several States adversely impacted by the illegal migrant invasion of America. Ukrainian militia forces are thwarting the same circumstances that State Militia forces in America are also encountering every day.”

Next time: How allies can learn to help.