The Financial Times has this week reported that Ukraine and Russia are engaged in preliminary talks over a possible mutual pause in air strikes against energy infrastructure. The news has sparked a degree of guarded optimism, with some speculating that a limited agreement protecting energy assets in both countries could pave the way for broader
Russia bombed and partially destroyed one of Ukraine’s most recognizable national landmarks on Monday evening in the heart of the country’s second city. The targeted bombing of the iconic Derzhprom building in central Kharkiv was the latest in a series of attacks on Ukrainian heritage sites that many regard as evidence of a deliberate Kremlin
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is often depicted in the Western media as a bloody stalemate with neither side able to achieve a decisive military breakthrough. While this has been the case for much of the war, there are growing indications that Russia may now be creating the conditions for victory in Ukraine. For more
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused North Korea of preparing to send thousands of soldiers to join the Russian invasion of his country, and is calling for a “strong response” from the international community. “In fact, another state is joining the war against Ukraine,” Zelenskyy commented during his traditional daily video address on Sunday evening.
History sometimes gets stuck on a bad outcome, without any hope of altering it at acceptable risk and over a reasonable time frame. For more than thirty years, that has been the case with Iran’s destabilization of the Middle East alongside its proxy network, which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis
One year into the Gaza war, the conflict has left deep political, security, and societal scars that reverberate across the Middle East and North Africa. The war, ignited by an unprecedented terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, saw militants kill some 1,200 and take 251 hostages—97 of whom are still being
With international attention firmly fixed on the Russian army’s advances in eastern Ukraine and the Ukrainian invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, it is easy to overlook important developments taking place further south in Crimea. During 2024, Ukraine has achieved a number of strategic successes in and around the Russian-occupied peninsula that are worthy of closer
As the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches its third winter, the biggest topic of debate is the reluctance among Kyiv’s key partners to sanction long-range attacks inside Russia using Western weapons. According to skeptics in Washington DC and elsewhere, deep strikes would pose an unacceptable risk and could spark a far wider war. In
On September 15, the Iranian-supported Houthi rebels launched a ballistic missile at Israel—the group’s longest-range attack on Israeli territory to date. The projectile, which fell in an open area near Ben Gurion International Airport, caused no casualties and only material damage. In the hours after the attack, Houthi leadership made some outlandish claims about the strike,
Ukraine conducted one of the largest and most effective drone attacks of the entire war in the early hours of September 18, causing a blast at a weapons depot deep inside Russia that was large enough to be picked up by earthquake monitoring stations. According to Ukrainian sources, the attack involved more than one hundred
