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The cessation of hostilities in the Gulf on 25 June was as surprising for Moscow as Israel’s strike on Iran on 13 June. Russia’s attempts to assess the consequences of the surge of the air war have to take into account apparent analytical miscalcu...

The fever of diplomatic battles around Russia’s war against Ukraine in the first three weeks of May has broken, leaving few meaningful results.

On April 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a three-day ceasefire in his war against Ukraine in the lead-up to the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Second World War (President of Russia, April 28). The ceasefire is due to b...

Russia is not directly affected by the new U.S. trade tariffs. The effects on its economy are profound, while the political effects are open to interpretation.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches its 33rd month, no drastic changes are expected on the battlefield. Ukraine has intensified its behind-the-scenes multilateral political maneuvering, as evidenced by Ukrainian President Volodym...

The tragic battles around Donetsk and Luhansk (collectively known as the Donbas region) have taken a pause, and as civilians try to rebuild a semblance of normal life, leaders are figuring out how to now move forward. In his first 100 days, Ukrain...

Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military philosopher, was rarely studied in Soviet military academies, but the Ukrainian high command — seeking to “win first and start fighting after” — appears to be taking a page out of his treatise, The Art of War. N...

As the one-year mark of President Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war against Ukraine neared, the Russian army failed to score anything resembling even a minor victory to provide the Russian leader with a talking point for his public performances. In ...

The G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, scheduled for November 15–16, certainly presents attractive prospects for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who needs to re-assert his place among the world’s most influential leaders. However, he has yet to conf...

Samarkand didn’t go well for President Vladimir Putin. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit hosted by Uzbekistan in this ancient city gathered many leaders of various Eurasian states, from Belarus to Mongolia, but it was the meeting ...

In early September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin spelled out his intention to punish Europe for resisting Russia’s assault on the world order and supporting Ukraine louder and clearer than ever before. Speaking at the keynote session of a...

Predictions of a decisive offensive in Donbass and speculations about peace talks have gained new intensity in both Russian propaganda and Western commentary last week – and neither makes much sense. Artillery and air strikes on the solid Ukrainia...

Russia’s all-out aggression against Ukraine, which will pass the 18-month mark next week, is indirectly but strongly connected to the Russo-Georgian war of 15 years ago. In the first week of August 2008, Georgian villages in South Ossetia, a separ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s absence at the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9 and 10 was not all that surprising and seemed hardly registered by any of the two dozen world leaders who attended. Putin also missed the previous summit in B...

On Friday, February 2, the United States conducted a massive airstrike, targeting terrorist militia bases in Iraq and Syria but reverberating across Russian geopolitical designs. In Russia’s grand strategy, the escalation of tensions in the broade...

This year’s Munich Security Conference recently took place on February 16 but was soon overshadowed by other events, which is becoming a tradition for the annual conference. In early February 2022, most high-level participants did not believe a Ru...