The past few months have been a particularly challenging period for Ukraine’s overstretched air defense units. With the country suffering from mounting shortages of interceptor missiles, Russia has exploited growing gaps in Ukraine’s defenses to bomb cities and vital civilian infrastructure with deadly frequency. These escalating attacks have led to renewed calls from Ukrainian President
Vladimir Putin has appointed technocrat economist Andrei Belousov as Russia’s new defense minister in a shake-up that underlines his determination to wage a long war of attrition against Ukraine. The relatively unknown Belousov replaces long-serving Sergei Shoigu, who will now take up a new post as Secretary of Russia’s National Security Council. Shoigu had led
Russia launched a cross-border offensive into northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on May 10, opening a new front in its ongoing invasion. The attack had been widely anticipated, but the apparent ease with which Russian forces were able to penetrate the Ukrainian border sparked considerable alarm and allegations of security blunders. The debate over Ukraine’s apparent
At the heart of the Biden administration’s growing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is what the White House considers his failure to articulate and execute a strategy that will make Israel more secure, while engaging in tactics that are making it less so. Two individuals familiar with the administration’s thinking recently spoke to
On Thursday, April 25, the Atlantic Council’s WIn Fellowship hosted a panel discussion on the vital role Arab women ambassadors play in shaping the field of diplomacy, both in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and globally. The conversation was moderated by Lynn Monzer, Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council’s WIn Fellowship and
The United States is under pressure to leave the Middle East for good. US forces are increasingly attacked in Iraq and Syria as anti-US criticism grows. However, US troops are a long way from returning home, especially amid the tit-for-tat between Iran and Israel, the lack of a ceasefire in the war in Gaza, and
Recent efforts by the Georgian government to adopt a Kremlin-style law imposing restrictions on civil society have laid bare the geopolitical struggle currently underway to define the country’s future. The escalating crisis in the southern Caucasus nation also offers some indications of the end game Russia may have in mind if it succeeds in defeating
For the second year running, Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 9 featured just one solitary tank. Throughout his twenty-four year reign, Russian ruler Vladimir Putin has used the annual Victory Day holiday to showcase his country’s resurgence as a military superpower. However, the underwhelming spectacle of a single World War II-era T-34
“The idea struck me to introduce the concept of a fatwa [during the 2004 nuclear] negotiations. There was no coordination [in advance],” Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator at the time recounted eight years after the incident. This was nothing short of a stroke of genius in shaping a false narrative about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program,
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was set to visit Washington in May after a long period of coldness between him and US President Joe Biden. While the cancellation officially occurred due to scheduling issues, disagreements over the Gaza conflict appear to have played a role in this decision. Despite recent momentum in US-Turkish relations, this
