Vladimir Putin has this week proposed changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine that would significantly lower the threshold for the country’s use of nuclear weapons. Addressing a September 25 meeting of senior Kremlin officials, he presented a series of draft amendments aimed at expanding the scope for possible nuclear strikes. Putin emphasized that if these revisions
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due to present his widely anticipated Victory Plan to United States President Joe Biden later this week. While the details of Zelenskyy’s plan have yet to be made public, it should already be obvious that any serious peace proposal must include a significant boost in current military support for Ukraine,
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
It is often said that armies always prepare to fight the previous war. This rings particularly true in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The sheer scale of the war unleashed by Vladimir Putin in February 2022 has exposed a lack of preparedness among the Western defense establishment, which has spent the past few
Vladimir Putin attempted to draw yet another red line on September 12, warning Western leaders that any decision to let Ukraine use long-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean that NATO countries are “at war” with Russia. Speaking to the Kremlin media, Putin said that allowing Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory using Western-produced missiles
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine first began more than two and a half years ago, talk of Russian red lines has been a major feature of the international debate surrounding the war. Throughout this period, the Kremlin has relentlessly exploited this preoccupation with Russian red lines to fuel Western fears of escalation and limit
The United States has recently detected indications of increased Russian military activity around key undersea cables, CNN reports. The news is adding to existing concerns over the vulnerability of critical undersea communications infrastructure at a time when the Kremlin is accused of waging an escalating hybrid war against the West in parallel to its ongoing
Although it is currently common to talk about the West as a unitary actor in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian War, the stakes actually differ significantly on the two opposite sides of the Atlantic. Most obviously, if Russia succeeds in Ukraine and goes further, Europe will become a battlefield. With this in mind, it makes
During their recent visit to Kyiv, United States Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made news with pledges to bolster US support for Ukraine, including by telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “we’re going to fight for another supplemental [aid package] before the end of the calendar year.” After the last slog for
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has evolved into the largest European war since World War II, but two and a half years on, many are still struggling to grasp exactly what is at stake. Instead, we continue to hear calls for some kind of compromise with the Kremlin, while the international community refuses to hold
