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Job openings, quits rate fell slightly in May

Job openings fell slightly in May as demand for workers remained near record highs, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department.

The number of open jobs listed in the U.S. on the final business day of May totaled 11.3 million, dropping from 11.7 million in April after seasonal adjustments. Though job openings fell in May, hires, layoffs and quits stayed roughly even with their April numbers, according to the May Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report.

The JOLTS report showed a labor market still stacked strongly for workers in May, a month when the U.S. added 390,000 jobs and saw the jobless rate hold strong at 3.6 percent. Despite the decline in job openings, there were still almost two open gigs for each unemployed American.

That mismatch can give workers many opportunities to find new jobs with better compensation and career opportunities than their current ones.

Businesses hired roughly 6.5 million workers and lost 6 million in May, both in line with April totals. The percentage of the workers who quit their jobs in May fell to 2.8 percent, just 0.1 percentage points from a record high of 2.9 percent set earlier this year.

With ample jobs available and people still eager to leave in search of better work, businesses have avoided laying off employees over fears they could be hard to replace. Roughly 1.4 million workers were laid off in May, slightly higher than April’s total of 1.3 million. But the percentage of the workforce laid off by their employers held even at 0.9 percent, which is below pre-pandemic levels.

The steady strength of the U.S. job market helped propel a rapid recovery from the depths of the COVID-19 recession through much of 2020 and 2021. The U.S. is fewer than 1 million new jobs away from replacing the 21 million jobs lost to the onset of the pandemic, and the speed of the pandemic recovery has helped fuel rapid wage growth, particularly for low-earning workers.

Even so, many economists — including Federal Reserve officials — fear the strength of the job market could add further fuel to inflation already at four-decade highs. While steady job gains are good for the economy, the intense competition for workers has made it difficult for many firms to stay adequately staffed and keep up with both higher wage demands and rising prices.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and many economists are hopeful that higher interest rates and the fading effects of fiscal stimulus can help reduce job openings — and the pressure they put on wages — without wiping out job gains. Even so, he has acknowledged it will be difficult for the Fed to avoid slowing down the labor market into a standstill as the central bank boosts interest rates to fight inflation.

Source: TEST FEED1

Overdosing on Vitamin D supplements is possible and harmful, doctors say

Doctors are warning consumers overdosing on vitamin D supplements is possible and can lead to an array of health issues, after treating a man who was hospitalized for eight days.  

A man who had a variety of health problems, including tuberculosis, an inner ear tumor, meningitis and chronic sinusitis began experiencing symptoms around a month after beginning a vitamin regimen advised by a nutritional therapist.  

The man was taking high doses of more than 20 over the counter supplements, which included 50,000 milligrams of Vitamin D – the recommended daily dosage 600 milligrams. His regimen also included higher than recommended doses of Vitamin B-6, Omega 3 and Vitamin B 9.  

Doctors said the man’s symptoms – vomiting, nausea, abdominal pain, leg cramps, ringing in the ear and diarrhea – lasted three months. The man stopped taking the vitamins once the symptoms began, but they did not go away.  

The patient’s Vitamin D level was still unusually high two months after he was discharged from the hospital, although Calcium level was normal.  

The authors of the report published in BMJ Case Reports said although cases are increasing, hypervitaminosis D is still relatively rare.  

Some common symptoms of hypervitaminosis, caused by excess calcium in the blood, are drowsiness, confusion, apathy, depression, abdominal pain, vomiting, constipation, high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythm, and kidney abnormalities, including renal failure.   

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The recommended daily amount of vitamin D, which is vital for maintaining healthy bones, is 400 international units (IU) for children up to age 12 months, 600 IU for people ages 1 to 70, and 800 IU for people over 70. 

Vitamin D can be found in fortified milk, fortified cereal, and fatty fish, like salmon, mackerel and sardines.  

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Beer CEOs to Biden: Can Trump's aluminum tariffs

The heads of four top beer breweries on Tuesday called on President Biden to slash tariffs on aluminum imports as a measure to fight inflation.

In a letter to Biden, Gavin Hattersley, president and CEO of the Molson Coors Beverage Company; Brendan Whitworth, CEO of Anheuser-Busch; Jim Sabia, president of the beer division of Constellation Brands; and Maggie Timoney, CEO of Heineken USA, praised the administration’s openness to combatting inflation by curbing tariffs, but warned aluminum tariffs are still increasing consumer prices.

“While our industry is more dynamic and competitive than ever, aluminum tariffs continue to burden breweries of all sizes,” the brewers wrote under the banner of the Beer Institute, the industry’s national trade association.

Hattersley currently serves as the chairman and acting president of the Beer Institute. 

“Eliminating the tariffs will alleviate pressure and allow us to continue our vital role as strong contributors to this nation’s economy,” added the executives.

According to a Peterson Institute study cited in the letter, the cumulative effect of cutting Trump-imposed tariffs on China could shave a percentage point off inflation in the United States.

While tariffs on Canadian and European aluminum have either been eliminated or reduced, U.S. tariffs on other sources of the metal are still significant enough to distort prices, the letter said.

According to the British Geological Survey, China produced more than half the world’s aluminum in 2018.

“We applaud your Administration’s efforts to negotiate lifting tariffs off individual countries. However, those efforts to provide economic relief to American consumers have no effect if end-users — such as U.S. brewers — are charged a tariff-burdened price regardless of whether the metal should be tariffed based on its content or origin,” wrote the brewers.

And the brewers added that the industry has paid more than $1.4 billion in aluminum tariffs since former President Trump imposed Section 232 tariffs in 2018.

“Just as concerning is that of the $1.4 billion ostensibly paid in tariffs, 92% did not go to the U.S. Treasury,” they added.

The brewers added that they consider tariffs a regressive tax that more heavily burdens the poor by raising consumer prices.

“These tariffs reverberate throughout the supply chain, raising production costs for aluminum end-users and ultimately impacting consumer prices,” the brewers wrote.

Source: TEST FEED1

Restore, fund and reconcile abortion: the case for a new anti-Hyde Amendment

Access to abortion is no longer a constitutional right in the United States. But it remains a human right. And it is time for Congress to step up and protect this right — through budget measures guaranteeing legal and affordable access to abortion.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) must also step up and support the passage of these measures.

The White House is reportedly still working through the process of budget reconciliation to save at least some of its social infrastructure agenda before the November midterms. It must now add federal permission and funding for abortion to its list of items requiring urgent approval through the reconciliation process. 

Abortion rights were in trouble in many states even prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. They were often subject to a range of legislative obstacles. Some of these were minor barriers to access, and hence constitutional under the undue burden test in Casey v. Planned Parenthood.

Others were major obstacles designed to give the court the opportunity to reconsider Casey, in just the way it did in Dobbs.

An even bigger obstacle for some women was economic in nature — i.e., the so-called “Hyde amendment,” or the legislative ban preventing the use of federal funds to support access to abortion.

Initially, the ban included exceptions only for abortions necessary to save the life of the mother. But in 1994, exceptions were added for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, which federal law required states to cover through Medicaid.

But, even with top ups to Medicaid funding from many states, this has still left millions of poor women without access to abortion in the decades since.

The Biden administration has announced its intention to end its support for the Hyde Amendment. But after Dobbs, this needs to be made an urgent priority.

The White House – and most importantly Sens. Manchin, Sinema, Collins and Murkowski – should support a budget reconciliation bill that includes a guarantee of safe, legal and affordable access to medically necessary abortions.

A bill of this kind would face a range of hurdles: first, a reluctance by many pro-choice Americans to support the use of government funds for choices they respect but don’t want to pay for.   

Second, a desire on the part of certain Democrats to keep the abortion issue alive well into November — to remind voters just how much is at stake when Republicans take control of Congress.

Third, a law of this kind would need to pass the scrutiny of the Senate parliamentarian, who has taken a strict view of the Byrd rule and its requirements of budget neutrality and a close nexus between spending and regulations passed via the reconciliation process.

But none of these hurdles are insurmountable. Many other countries have struggled with these issues and devised similar compromises — including compromises that involve a willingness to fund medically necessary abortions and to adopt a broad definition of physical and mental health for these purposes.

This, for example, was the result of a decades long battle over abortion in Germany. Germany has also long held that constitutional protection must be given to the fetus under the Basic Law, but that this does not prevent the state from funding abortions necessary to preserve women’s physical and psychological health.

A well-designed law of this kind could provide for universal federal funding for medically necessary abortions but require the claw-back of those funds from private insurers in a range of circumstances. This would go a long way toward ensuring budget neutrality.

And by requiring funded access to abortion, as well as the logical corollary that access be treated as legal under federal and state law, such a law would meet with most sensible interpretations of the requirements of the Byrd rule, at least as it was understood and applied by previous officeholders in the context of measures such as the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. 

A law of this kind would not be perfect. It would undoubtedly encounter opposition on both the left and right. For centrist Democrats and Republicans, funding abortion may seem like a step too far. But the only way forward for abortion rights now lies beyond Casey, and in a much more realpolitik approach to guaranteeing access to abortion under federal law.

A couple of months back, it was understandable that Sen. Manchin might oppose attempts to legislate in ways that expanded abortion rights, beyond existing constitutional understandings. It likewise made sense for Sen. Collins and Murkowski to propose legislation attempting to codify the Supreme Court’s decision in Casey.

No longer. In Dobbs, the court ended 50 years of jurisprudence guaranteeing access to abortion under the Constitution. And it poured a large bucket of cold water on the “undue burden” test the court established in Casey, and that Sen. Collins and Murkowski had proposed enshrining into federal law.

On the left, a shift towards a health-based abortion paradigm may be seen as a retreat from the language of reproductive choice. Because of this, a law of this kind could be seen as a placeholder: It could be supplemented by efforts to restore the constitutional protection of abortion rights, under the 14th Amendment, and by a range of state law enshrining rights to abortion on demand.

But it could also be embraced as heralding a broader shift in the U.S. towards understanding abortion as a basic human right to reproductive health care. 

The Biden administration has already taken valuable steps in this direction, by ensuring that federal regulations protect the distribution of pharmaceutical abortion drugs, even in the face of contrary state law. (Though watch this space for further legal challenges to these steps.)

Moreover, health was an important but under-developed part of the court’s decision in Casey and its guarantee of life- and health-preserving abortion in the later stages of pregnancy.

Most other constitutional democracies also see access to abortion in squarely health-based terms. Many give some weight to women’s choices and decisional freedoms, especially in the early stages of pregnancy. But even more give priority to women’s physical and psychological health, including the mental health effects that flow from an unwanted pregnancy.

The language of health and human dignity also explains why no decent society can afford wholly to ban abortion even at quite late stages of pregnancy.

Many religious conservatives want American law to protect and promote the dignity of human life — and fair enough, given their sincere beliefs on the issue. But respect for the dignity of the fetus cannot end the abortion debate. Abortion also involves women’s dignity — including their dignity of choice and physical and psychological dignity and wellbeing. And women are just as, if not more, entitled to respect for their dignity as the fetus they are carrying.

A health-based paradigm also points to the importance of affordable access to abortion, and regulations of the abortion process that promote women’s health, rather than undermine it.

The Supreme Court has made one thing clear: It is Congress, not the court, that must act if access to abortion is to be preserved for American women. And the best way for it to do so, given current political constraints, is through broad funding and urgent efforts at reconciliation.

Rosalind Dixon is a professor of law at The University of New South Wales Sydney and a former assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Her forthcoming book,” Responsive Judicial Review:  Democracy and Dysfunction in the Modern Age (OUP 2022)” examines Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood in comparative perspective.

Source: TEST FEED1

Here's what we know about the Highland Park victims

A mass shooting on Monday in Highland Park, Ill., left seven people dead and around two dozen others injured after a gunman opened fire at a Fourth of July parade in the northern Chicago suburb.

The victims of the tragedy include the parents of a 2-year-old toddler and a stockbroker who was also a good joke-teller.

Details are still forthcoming on the seventh victim of the shooting. Here’s what we know about the victims who were identified by the Lake County Coroner’s Office on Tuesday.

Irina and Kevin McCarthy

Irina, 35, and Kevin, 37, of Highland Park, left behind a 2-year-old toddler, who was pinned underneath his father after he was shot. The toddler was rescued by a woman and her friends.

After the tragedy, young Aiden McCarthy was taken to his grandparents. A GoFundMe fundraiser to support the child has raised nearly $2 million, from more than 37,000 donations, as of Wednesday morning.

Irina Colon wrote on the fundraiser page that the “North Shore community rallied to help a boy who we knew nothing about.”

“He will have a long road ahead to heal, find stability, and ultimately navigate life as an orphan,” Colon said, but he “is surrounded by a community of friends and extended family that will embrace him with love, and any means available to ensure he has everything he needs as he grows.”

Irina was born in Russia but settled in the Chicago area with her parents, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. She met Kevin, who worked for a gene therapy startup company, after she landed a job as a digital marketer in the pharmaceutical industry.

Michael Levberg, the grandfather of Irina, told the Chicago newspaper his daughter was the “love of my life.”

Irina and Kevin were “crazy about” their son Aiden, Levberg said, and they were planning to have another child.

Jacquelyn Sundheim

Sundheim, 63, was a member, teacher and organizer at her local synagogue, North Shore Congregation Israel (NSCI) in Glencoe, Ill.

In a statement to the Jewish Chronicle, the synagogue said “Jacki was a lifelong congregant of NSCI and a cherished member of NSCI’s staff team for decades.”

“There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jacki’s death and sympathy for her family and loved ones,” officials wrote.

Katherine Goldstein 

Goldstein, 64, of Highland Park, had recently lost her mother and went to the parade to spend time with her daughter, Cassie Goldstein.

Cassie Goldstein told NBC News‘s Lester Holt she “got to have 22 years with the best mom in the world.”  

Katie Goldstein leaves behind two daughters and a husband. 

Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza

Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, was from Mexico and traveled to Highland Park to visit relatives.

His granddaughter, Xochil Toledo, wrote on a GoFundMe fundraiser page that her grandfather was a father of eight children.

Toledo said her grandfather was a “loving man, creative, adventurous and funny.”

“Today Nicolas is our guardian angel,” she added.

Stephen Straus

At 88, Straus was an avid reader, exceptional joke-teller and an arts lover who loved the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Tribune reported. He worked five days a week as a stockbroker, commuting to work everyday during the work week.

His son, Jonathan Straus, told the Tribune his father grew up in Chicago but was a longtime Highland Park resident who “loved his city.”

He is survived by his wife, two sons and four grandchildren.

Source: TEST FEED1

Pope says he'll name women to committee that helps select bishops

Pope Francis says he plans to appoint women to the governing body that is involved in the process of selecting new bishops for the first time ever.  

In an exclusive interview with Reuters, the Pope emphasized that he is open “to giving (women) an opportunity” to hold high-level positions in the Holy See, the universal government of the Catholic Church. 

He disclosed that he intends to nominate two women to the Discastery for Bishops, which is an all-male committee made up of cardinals, bishops and priests. 

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“Two women will be appointed for the first time in the committee to elect bishops in the Congregation for Bishops,” he said. 

“This way, things are opening up a bit,” he said during the July 2 interview. 

The 85-year-old pontiff did not identify the women or say when their appointment would occur. 

The move comes after a new constitution reorganizing the Holy See’s central government was implemented last month. The new document makes any lay man or woman eligible to lead Vatican departments. 

Pope Francis has appointed several nuns and laywomen to Vatican departments. Last year, the Pope appointed Italian nun Sister Alessandra Smerilli as secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the number two position in the department that handles issues related to social justice and peace. 

Source: TEST FEED1

75 years for CIA, and one for William Burns

The Central Intelligence Agency marks its 75th anniversary on July 26, its most recent year a rather eventful one under the leadership of former diplomat William J. Burns. The 139 stars etched in anonymity on its Memorial Wall bear witness to the agency’s complicated and poorly understood history, one of triumphs known by few and disasters known by all. If the Cold War’s end pushed the CIA into the wilderness searching for relevance and 9/11 took it to an existential crossroads for survival, then Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine provides it a path to redemption and influence that its current director appears to be navigating well.

The 1947 National Security Act created the CIA as a compact and agile organization deliberately void of policymaking responsibilities and assigned to public obscurity. The culture was intended to capture the words carved into its entrance, “And Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free.”

But the organization that Burns inherited more than a year ago was one that, as I argued in my book, had lost its way after 9/11. The CIA’s credibility suffered from politicization analytically, as reflected by its 2002 posture on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and operationally as it took on warfighting, prisoner detention and interrogation responsibilities that the Defense and Justice departments were neither capable nor legally authorized to handle, and perhaps simply wise enough to avoid. In the process, the CIA’s culture shifted from a dynamic and elite spy service into a paramilitary organization that prized fealty, conformity and, all too often, the right religion, race and gender.

The practical consequences of the agency’s focus on kinetic counterterrorism operations distracted it from emerging threats such as the Islamic State and an increasingly aggressive Russia and China, as well as the evolving technology revolutionizing the operational landscape. And in the years following 9/11, the CIA endured a series of devastating, self-inflicted wounds, most notably the Enhanced Interrogation Program and the deaths of seven of my colleagues on Dec. 30, 2009 in Khost, Afghanistan, when an agent under al Qaeda control blew himself up. CIA leaders chose to navigate many of these episodes by circling the wagons.

Like the rest of the U.S. Intelligence Community, the CIA was long resistant to diversity. A 2015 report commissioned by the CIA said the “underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority officers and officers with a disability at the senior ranks is not a recent problem and speaks to unresolved cultural, organizational, and unconscious bias issues.” And morale suffered further during the Trump administration years as intelligence became increasingly filtered to avoid antagonizing a commander in chief who became irate at news that did not conform to his personal agenda and predetermined conclusions.

But for all its troubles, Ambassador Burns was given the keys to an elite organization whose people had, time after time, accomplished the impossible. And Burns arguably got a lot right in his first year. Prioritizing China, technology and the workforce were hardly controversial choices, but he matched words with action. The CIA created a China Mission Center and the Technology and Transnational Mission Center, to better focus talent and align resources to take on today’s greatest intelligence challenges.

Burns named operations officer Dave Marlowe to run the agency’s clandestine service, installing a senior leader known for mentoring, operational acumen and fairness. And he showed the door to those CIA executives most responsible for the agency’s toxic environment and politicized diversions. In a rather low-key, bureaucratic maneuver, rather than fire them, he withheld the mandatory retirement waivers on which many of this crowd long had depended.  

Burns chose another well regarded senior officer to lead the Havana Syndrome Task Force but angered possible victims and their colleagues with the CIA’s opaque conclusions that most of the reported cases were “unlikely to have been caused by Russia or another foreign adversary.” After releasing the findings, Burns wrote to staffers and annuitants of his commitment to keep investigating roughly two dozen unexplained cases. Unlike his predecessors, Burns has been more communicative with the workforce and its retirees.

Faced with a complex, evolving operational landscape that includes ubiquitous technical surveillance, cyber and artificial intelligence, Burns appointed intelligence community veteran Nand Mulchandani as the CIA’’s first chief technology officer. The CIA in the meantime has become more open to private sector collaboration and to challenging old tradecraft methodology.

Under Burns, the CIA has ventured into unchartered operational territory. The agency was forward leaning in declassifying intelligence in a manner that weaponizes it, information that almost certainly included human source reporting. The CIA has even leveraged social media, posting Russian language instructions for those seeking secure contact. Burns appears to have provided top cover for operational risks by supporting the extraction of Americans and the CIA’s intelligence partners in Afghanistan.

While CIA executives for some time have been rated for their attention to diversity and inclusion, under Burns, such requirements are taken more seriously. The most recently reported class of senior executives was the most diverse in the agency’s history, with 47 percent women and 27 percent people from minority backgrounds, exceeding the percentages of women and minorities in the agency’s total workforce.

Burns promised a smart, holistic strategy for health and wellness to staffers long leery of the professional consequences in acknowledging physical or mental health issues. It’s a commitment that I hope will be more than words since, as reflected by a congressionally mandated medical oversight board, it probably will take more than a new gym to convince the workforce of a more accepting, supportive atmosphere.

Addressing transparency and accountability, Burns’s first public speech affirmed his belief that the CIA has “an obligation to help the citizens on whose trust we rely on to understand what we do and how we organize our priorities” and “an obligation to be straight not just about our accomplishments, but also about our mistakes.” Whether recruiting a foreign agent to risk their all or persuading a foreign government partner to chance the political consequences of their cooperation’s exposure, reliability and credibility is everything — a spy’s word must be their bond. Securing the public’s trust in such commitments, actions and risks the CIA’s takes depends on buy-in enabled only with accountability when things go askew.

While Burns is receiving praise as an envoy, there has been muted criticism. All CIA directors undertake a somewhat back-channel diplomatic role in their routine foreign travels, but the White House might be tapping the well too often. Besides potentially usurping Secretary of State Antony Blinken abroad, Burns’s presence at home is key for advancing reforms and exerting the CIA’s influence with other key principals, namely at Defense, State and FBI.

Still, perhaps the question is, how long will Burns remain CIA director with midterm elections around the corner? Speculation at the agency is that Burns was, in any case, only an interim fill to allow his deputy, David Cohen, the opportunity to secure greater confidence from the Democratic political faithful and the CIA’s workforce.

Burns appears to be relishing his job, however, and remains one of the most liked senior officials in Washington. But he’s hardly a revolutionary and there’s much that still needs fixing at the CIA, such as closure in accounting for the sins of its past and those responsible. Still, the CIA is better for Burns’s leadership and on the right trajectory, at least for as long as it lasts.

Douglas London teaches intelligence studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and is a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute. A Russian-speaking operations officer, he served in the CIA’s Clandestine Service for over 34 years, including three assignments as a chief of station, one in a former Soviet state. He is the author of “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence.” Follow him on Twitter @DouglasLondon5.

Source: TEST FEED1

Harris calls for tighter gun restrictions 'to end this horror'

Vice President Harris is renewing her call for stricter gun control in the wake of a deadly mass shooting on the Fourth of July in Highland Park, Illinois.

“As we all know, yesterday should have been a day to come together with family and friends to celebrate our nation’s independence.  And instead, that community suffered a violent tragedy.  Children, parents, grandparents — victims to a senseless act of gun violence,” the vice president said Tuesday at the National Education Association’s annual meeting in Chicago, just miles away from Highland Park. 

“We need to end this horror.  We need to stop this violence,” Harris said, calling for an “assault weapons ban.”

“So, let’s talk about what an assault weapon is designed to do.  An assault weapon is designed to kill a lot of human beings quickly.  There is no reason that we have weapons of war on the streets of America.  We need reasonable gun safety laws!” she added. 

Harris on Tuesday evening visited the site of the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park, which killed six people and left more than two dozen others injured. 

A 21-year-old man, who authorities say was planning the attack for months, was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder. 

Officials say he fired more than 70 bullets into the crowd and escaped by wearing women’s clothing to hide his identity. 

Police have not determined a motivation for the shooting. 

The shooting came weeks after President Biden signed bipartisan gun safety legislation gives states more money to implement red flag laws and strengthens background checks.

Source: TEST FEED1

Guarding against Russia’s October surprise

As the fighting grinds on in Ukraine, the United States should be preparing diplomatic strategies to prevent Russia from unexpectedly ending the war on its own terms. Russian President Vladimir Putin could engineer such an outcome in various ways, but each would involve declaring unilaterally that Moscow had achieved its objectives and was therefore halting further offensive military action and insisting that Kyiv accept a cease fire.

How would Ukraine, the U.S. and NATO respond? If Russia times its initiative correctly, and the West is unprepared, Russia could well conclude the current phase of reabsorbing its former empire controlling over 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, with little immediate prospect of Kyiv reversing the then-existing military reality.

Such a Kremlin diplomatic coup rests on several variables. First, Putin must find a way to say with a straight face, whether true or not, that Russia has achieved its objectives in this “special military operation.” Moscow wants to turn the page on the profound military and political humiliations it has suffered since its unprovoked February aggression, but it requires at least a patina of tangible accomplishments its propagandists can emphasize. 

The fall of Luhansk province is one such readily identifiable success, and the fall of Donetsk province (as of today, still problematic) would be another. Whatever the pretext, it must be sufficiently salable, at least in Putin’s mind, to camouflage Russia’s enormous human and material losses.

Second, Moscow’s lines of control inside Ukraine must be militarily defensible, utilizing favorable topography, geographic compactness and transportation and communications lines to its best advantage. Such lines of control can be drawn in innumerable ways, some more favorable than others. We can be certain Russian defense and economic planners are urgently considering the various alternatives.

Third, Putin is counting on expanding and exploiting internal NATO divisions to his advantage, and will judge the moods of European leaders, particularly French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, accordingly. The historical record unfortunately gives him cause to be optimistic that NATO unity is far more fragile than it appears publicly.

One can easily imagine the Kremlin spinning about how long the war has dragged on, how important it is to allow Europe’s economies to recover and how central a diplomatic resolution will be. Among those already eager to move on, this will, entirely predictably, significantly amplify Russia’s view in NATO capitals. Putin knows this well.

Fourth, the Kremlin must get its timing right. For now, Russia’s World War I-style offensive is still making slow progress in eastern Ukraine. In this attritional conflict, both sides have suffered significant casualties. Publicly available evidence of Russian military losses, supplied by Ukraine and NATO, shows they are substantial. We know less about Ukrainian military casualties, but the collateral civilian toll is certainly grim. As in the 1939-40 Soviet-Finnish “winter war,” both sides may be near exhaustion.

For now, Russia’s superior firepower is eroding Ukraine’s defenses, despite the massive quantities of intelligence NATO has supplied during the conflict, and the increasing levels of weapons and other war materiel. Even more advanced weapons await delivery to the front lines and training for Ukrainian forces to use them effectively. Volodomyr Zelensky’s government is counting on the increasing mass of this support to begin making a battlefield difference in the coming months, as Zelensky himself just asserted, after Lysychansk’s fall.

These estimates and conjectures are matters more of military art than science, and the pressure on the Kremlin to make the right judgment is enormous. While no Clausewitzian “culminating point of victory” is clearly evident, Putin certainly doesn’t want to halt hostilities prematurely. 

On the other hand, he does not want to see the current battlefield momentum reversed; for Moscow, the worst moment to announce a cease fire is while Russian forces are retreating. We cannot now predict Russia’s precise judgment on timing, but that it lies unilaterally in Putin’s hands is a significant concern. October may be as good a time as any from Russia’s perspective, given the potential military balance of forces, and the impending U.S. congressional elections. With Democrats in palpable political jeopardy in current polling, President Biden may be very reluctant to argue that hostilities should continue. 

This discouraging scenario can be prevented, but only if Washington and Kyiv start now to lay the necessary groundwork, which will require significant diplomatic efforts. NATO must immediately and unanimously make clear that no Russian “October surprise” is acceptable, whenever it might occur. Ukraine and its allies should state unequivocally that Russian aggressions, not only this year but also the 2014 version, remain unacceptable. 

Accordingly, no ceasefire is possible until Russian forces are leaving Ukraine, and Moscow accepts that the return of full Ukrainian sovereignty throughout its territory, including Crimea, is non-negotiable. Anything less would give Russia a significant political victory.

NATO must also stress that no sanctions will be eased or eliminated until after full withdrawal. In fact, sanctions should continue to escalate, more comprehensively drawn and more rigorously enforced than they have been to date. Lifting sanctions is plainly one of Moscow’s objectives, one unfortunately shared by many Europeans; it is critical to take the issue off the bargaining table as promptly as possible.

While establishing these political red lines, NATO must also accelerate its shipments of weapons and materiel to Ukraine, thereby making clear that Moscow’s pretense of seeking an equitable cessation of hostilities will fail. This will become especially important if it comes to pass that Russia’s significant territorial gains in eastern Ukraine are reversible, which is not now the case. NATO should be dictating any ceasefire terms, not Russia, and further military support for Ukraine is the alliance’s plainest evidence that it is ready for protracted conflict.

Moscow waited eight years after its 2014 invasion to renew military aggression this February. Its forces now need considerable time to recover before being able to strike again. How the West performs diplomatically and militarily in the next few months may well determine whether there is a third Ukraine war in our future, or whether we can establish sustainable deterrence.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and held senior State Department posts in 2001-2005 and 1985-1989. His most recent book is “The Room Where It Happened” (2020). He is the founder of John Bolton Super PAC, a political action committee supporting candidates who believe in a strong U.S. foreign policy.

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