Month: August 2024

Understanding Nasrallah’s speech: How will Hezbollah avenge Shukr?

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah spoke for the second time in seven days on August 6, commemorating one week since the assassination of the group’s military commander Fuad Shukr by Israel on July 30. Uncharacteristically calm, Nasrallah devoted much of his speech to covering the Lebanese group’s weaknesses exposed by the assassination and promising to avenge

Russia is destroying monuments as part of war on Ukrainian identity

Throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine, efforts continue to systematically erase all traces of Ukrainian national memory. This campaign against monuments and memorials is chilling proof that Russia’s invasion goes far beyond mere border revisions and ultimately aims to wipe Ukraine off the map entirely. The modern history of a single park in east Ukrainian city Luhansk offers

Can northeast Syria delink from the PKK?

A decade since the start of armed US intervention in the Syrian crisis, Turkey and the United States remain locked in a disagreement that impedes cooperation on the entire Syria file. Ankara demands that Washington halt its support for its chosen partners in northeast Syria, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed People’s Defense

Russia’s Black Sea defeats get flushed down Vladimir Putin’s memory hole

There was much pomp and pageantry on display recently in former Russian imperial capital Saint Petersburg as Vladimir Putin presided over the country’s annual Navy Day festivities. In truth, however, Putin and his assembled admirals had very little to celebrate. Over the past year, Russia’s once-vaunted Black Sea Fleet has been decimated by Ukrainian drones