Here’s what F-16s will (and will not) mean for Ukraine’s fight against Russia 

After months of deliberation over supplying advanced fighter aircraft to Ukraine, Denmark and the Netherlands jointly agreed earlier this week to send Ukraine F-16 fighter jets after the United States signaled it would support the transfer. The timeline for Ukraine receiving these supersonic jets is predicated on Ukrainian pilots and ground crew completing training on

Russian War Report: Russian media pins Prigozhin crash on all except Putin

This article was updated on August 24 at 2:21 p.m. to reflect unfolding events. As Russia continues its assault on Ukraine, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) is keeping a close eye on Russia’s movements across the military, cyber, and information domains. With more than seven years of experience monitoring the situation in

Semtex teddy bear: The mercenary build-up in Libya

In Season 1, Episode 6 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by her Atlantic Council colleague Emadeddin Badi. They discuss the surge of African, Syrian and Russian mercenaries in Libya since 2019, the major value-add of Wagner Group contractors in terms of mortar and sniping capabilities, and how mercenary recruitment

Putin’s Russia is trapped in genocidal denial over Ukrainian independence

The first line of the Ukrainian national anthem is perhaps best translated as “Ukraine’s glory has not yet perished.” Written in the middle of the nineteenth century at a time when the Russian imperial authorities were attempting to suppress all expressions of Ukrainian national identity, the anthem remains highly relevant and perfectly captures the determination

What Prigozhin’s plane crash tells us about Putin’s Russia

JUST IN The plane was flying northwest, then events went south quickly. On Wednesday, Wagner Group founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin and nine other people were reportedly killed when their aircraft, en route from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, crashed under mysterious circumstances. In late June, Prigozhin led a short-lived mutiny in Russia that involved a convoy of

Dispatches from Taiwan: Expert perspectives from an Atlantic Council visit to Taipei

As the world confronts Russia’s continued war against Ukraine, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) increasing maritime aggressions, and an ever-growing North Korean nuclear arsenal, the Indo-Pacific region appears to be at an inflection point that will shape Taiwan’s status both regionally and internationally. All these issues and more have kept a spotlight on Taiwan,

Putin weaponizes history with new textbook justifying Ukraine invasion

Russian society has never undertaken an introspection of Czarist colonialism or Soviet crimes against humanity because the post-Soviet Russian Federation did not evolve into a genuinely post-imperial nation state. Instead, during Vladimir Putin’s nearly quarter of a century in power, a new generation of Russians have actively embraced the country’s imperial identity. This unreconstructed imperialism