Ukraine News & Analysis

Russia has re-invented its long-range strike capabilities over the course of the Ukraine war, moving from import dependency and exhausted stockpiles to a domestic production capacity that is now eclipsing NATO.

Russia’s support for its Iranian ally imperils years of economic and diplomatic engagement with Gulf states. Ukraine has taken advantage of this contradiction, offering Gulf states no-strings-attached operational expertise against a weapon that Kyiv knows too well. The resulting erosion of Russia’s footprint in the Middle East will resonate for years, if not decades to come.

EU governments are racing to develop drone warfare capabilities with the help of Ukraine. These efforts will help boost European strategic autonomy in the short term, but from a deterrence standpoint, drones are only half the answer.

Faced with mounting battlefield stagnation, economic pressure, and technological adaptation, time is increasingly not on Russia’s side.

Examining the latest developments in the Iran war, the bottom falling out of US-EU relations, and how an expanding insurgency threatens state collapse in Mali.

Recent history shows that durable security arrangements depend less on formal promises than on a combination of dense verification, credible sponsorship, and pre-agreed enforcement – all of which are proving elusive in the Ukraine war.

Domestic and external setbacks are mounting for the Kremlin, causing longtime supporters to jump ship. Putin is not performing strength. He is managing fear.

The war between Iran and the United States has placed Russia in a classic strategic trap — a zugzwang, the chess term for a position in which every available move makes a player’s situation worse.

Instead of competing in a race-to-the-bottom where adversaries enjoy an advantage in low-end mass manufacturing, the West could play to its strengths by forcing drone warfare to a higher frequency band. Here is a thought experiment on what that might look like.

Accusations that Ukraine is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons from France and the UK are simultaneously absurd and – in light of recent historical precedent – extremely alarming.

The Poseidon is an underwater unmanned vehicle and one of Russia’s ‘unparalleled’ next-generation weapon systems. The state authorities would have us believe that it can defy the laws of physics. No wonder it has never been seen in the field.

This week we examine a suspicious Russian tanker under military escort in Libya, a brazen attack by Islamist insurgents in Niger, an Iran ‘armada’ that seems all for show, and the implications of a high-level leadership purge in China.

Despite the outward optics of negotiation, there’s only one direction that Putin will go: toward a full mobilization.

The Ukraine war illustrates how the existing rules-based order must adapt to a world where no one country or bloc can dictate policy to the rest, or face collapse.

For the United States and Europe, the disintegration of Russia looks like a catastrophe. For China, it could be a historical opportunity.