US, DPRK meet in Finland; Gulf carrier ops are changing; Turks take Afrin; UAE troops train in Somalia; and just a bit more...
U.S. and North Korean reps will meet in Finland for “second-tier” talks on denuclearization, CNN reports this morning. Just don’t ask for “the meeting's date, time, location or participants,” because that info is not available yet, according to the host country’s foreign ministry.
Where some of these whispers came from: The sighting of “a top North Korean official...apparently boarding a plane to Finland on Sunday,” CNN reported.
That official: “Choe Kang Il, the deputy director general for North American affairs at North Korea's foreign ministry.”
Oh, by the way: “Separately, Sweden is meeting with North Korean officials about three Americans [Kim Sang Duk, Kim Hak-Song, and Kim Dong Chul] held captive by the Asian nation.”
Other diplomatic moves: South Korean President Moon Jae-in is considering "face-to-face talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the coming weeks to coordinate a strategy on North Korea," Seoul’s Yonhap News agency reported Sunday.
As well, "The national security advisers of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan had an unannounced meeting in San Francisco at the weekend to discuss ways for 'complete denuclearization' of Korea," an official from Moon's office said this morning in Seoul.
Coming tomorrow: A schedule of upcoming exercises between the U.S. and South Korean militaries, according to Yonhap.
On the docket: the Foal Eagle field exercise, beginning April 1 and running through the end of the month; a Marine-centric "Ssangyong (double dragon) exercise," and a "Key Resolve command-post" drill, a two-week simulation beginning April 23. A bit more, here.
U.S. Forces-Korea commander stepping down? That’s the word from JoongAng Daily again, which reported Thursday evening, “Gen. Vincent Brooks will leave his post as commander of United States Forces Korea (USFK) as early as this summer,” citing “various Korean government sources.”
Surprise move? “The Korean Ministry of National Defense and military officials expected Brooks to stay in his post longer and are perplexed, especially as he is considered a commander who understands Korea very well.”
Brooks will have been in the position for two years on April 30, but South Korean sources said he plans to quit in July or August. Adds the JoongAng Daily, “Past USFK commanders who served for just two years were generally transferred to another four-star general post. It has been customary for chiefs of the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command who served a three-year term to retire from the military afterward.” Read on, here.
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Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Email us. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free. OTD1989: First flight of the V-22 Osprey. Here’s a video.
The Turks and its rebel allies have taken the Kurdish stronghold of Afrin in northwest Syria. “Gun-toting rebels backed by Turkish troops and tanks swept through the city of Afrin early Sunday, with the fighters posting photos and videos from outside municipal buildings and in public squares,” the Washington Post reported from across the border in Turkey. “The apparent victory for Turkey on Sunday was a stunning blow to the [U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters of the] YPG, which has sought to consolidate control over Kurdish areas of Syria in the hopes of forging an autonomous state.”
From the Kurdish POV, things could hardly be much worse. "In a telephone interview from outside the city, [senior Kurdish official from Afrin, Hevi Mustafa] said the YPG withdrew 'to begin a new stage of resistance...Our military forces will continue to fight.' Another Kurdish official, Othman Sheikh Issa, said Kurdish fighters would resort to guerrilla warfare to target Turkish troops and their proxies." More here.
Gulf carrier ops are changing. Down: airstrikes on ISIS target in Iraq and Syria, harassment from Iranian fast attack craft. Up: air support for coalition forces in the region, strikes on Taliban targets, concerns about Iranian UAVs. That and more from USNI News’ Megan Eckstein, reporting from the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Persian Gulf. Read, here.
And in the Pacific, the Telegraph has a brief interview with Rear Adm. John Fuller aboard the USS Carl Vinson. Fresh from a historic port visit to Vietnam, Fuller’s Carrier Strike Group I conducted exercises with Japan’s naval...er, self-defense forces off Okinawa. “Our focus is now on a successful team-building exercise with the Japanese MSDF,” Fuller told the Telegraph, which adds, “It is hard to downplay, however, the message that a strike group sends out to governments in a region that is experiencing an upswing in geopolitical uncertainties.” Read (after registering), here.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives today to the U.S., where he’ll hit up at least six different locations during his two and a half week visit, The National’s Joyce Karam reported Sunday working off “a tentative itinerary confirmed by US sources.”
Up first: MBS “will arrive in the US capital late on Monday, where he will spend three days in official meetings, including with Mr Trump at the Oval Office on Tuesday and with Congressional leaders from both parties.”
While in Washington, “Mr Trump’s team is preparing to unveil a new peace plan to resume negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Not expected: Any resolution to Riyadh’s dispute with Qatar.
After that, it’s off to New York on Friday. Then possibly on “to Boston, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Houston.”
Some of the stop-offs include: MIT and Harvard, as well as visits with “the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates; Apple chief executive Tim Cook; and business leaders from Uber, Google, Facebook and other companies.” Much more, here.
The UAE military will begin training local troops in Somaliland, the autonomous region of northwest Somalia, Reuters reported Friday while the Saudi- and UAE-backed war in Yemen rages on across the Mandeb Strait.
In case you’re curious, Somaliland “broke away from Somalia in 1991 and has acted as a de-facto state since then,” Reuters reminds us.
The moves are part of construction plans begun last year for “a base on a site at the airport of the Somaliland port city Berbera,” just 190 miles from Yemen. According to that deal — which is set to be finalized in the two next months — the UAE “will be allowed to maintain a presence [in Somaliland] for 30 years.”
The UAE joins the U.S., China, Japan, France and Turkey as nations with "military bases along the Horn of Africa coastline."
Look what you just made me do. Russia expelled 23 British diplomats in response to the alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter, the New York Times reported this weekend — adding this bit of color to the story: “At a going-away party in Moscow for the expelled Britons, the ‘James Bond’ theme music played on a loop.”
British PM Theresa May’s reax: “Russia’s response doesn’t change the facts of the matter: the attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable.” A bit more, here.
Moscow’s defense chief says Russia will begin mass production of ground and aerial drones later this year, state-run Interfax news reported late last week. “Whereas a few years ago the army had 160 unmanned aerial vehicles, today the number is almost 1,800,” Interfax reported Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told reporters at a Thursday forum titled "Russia: the land of opportunities."
At least six types of “combat robots” were mentioned, including the Nerekhta robotic system, the Kungas multirole robotic system, one called the Uran-9 robot, Kalashnikov Concern’s Soratnik robot, as well as the Argo and Platforma-M robots.
For what it’s worth: Russia would seem to have about 3,000 formal military troops in Syria, if the number of vote-casting defense ministry personnel is accurate, NPR’s Luican Kim tweeted this morning. (The official total of ballots cast in Syria is 2,954.)
And among the mercenaries not officially in Russia’s military, but still fighting in Syria — the view at least three of them have of what they’re doing in Syria is incredibly bleak, according to this deep dive into the Wagner private military contractors by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Said one of the mercenary commanders to RFE/RL: Syrians “can’t stand Assad. Really. Only a tiny percentage of the population there supports him and the rest oppose him. Only [Russian President Vladimir] Putin supports him. Russia supports him — no one else."
Perhaps more telling: his take on an alleged broader effort to confront U.S. interests: "There is no Syrian war. There is no Ukrainian war. There is only a war between the Russian Federation and the United States." Worth the click, here.
And finally today: Magic counterterrorism ops in Pakistan. A day after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence urged Pakistan’s prime minister to step up its fight against Taliban and Haqqani sanctuaries, Pakistan’s army announced that the job is complete.
The official: Major General Asif Ghafoor, Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) — the media wing of the Pakistan Armed Forces, Gulf News reported this weekend. Dive into that Q&A, here.