The United States and its allies are concerned about the informal but strong strategic alliance that has taken shape in recent years between China and Russia and which has become more evident after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Since then, Beijing has provided staunch diplomatic and economic support to Moscow but stopped short […]
Russia and the West after Navalny
The death of Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most influential opponent, is deepening the chasm between Russia and the West, with unfathomable consequences for the future. The penitentiary administration states that he died of natural causes. At the same time, his family and friends claim he was deliberately killed, possibly due to Putin’s sudden change […]
Putin’s broader war and his survival calculus
By September, it was clear that while the much-expected Ukrainian offensive didn’t create a breakthrough, neither did the ensuing Russian counteroffensive. Neither side has a decisive advantage over the other. Lawrence Freedman argued[1] convincingly that we must think about the definition of victory for Ukraine, as Kyiv is not set on marching on Moscow. The […]
War and Peace with Ukrainian Characteristics
Few in Washington seem overly worried about the apparent stalemate in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces can’t break through Russia’s fortified defenses. Meanwhile, America is entirely concentrated on the latest from China – complex malware reportedly able to cripple US cyber systems. According to The New York Times, which broke the story: “The discovery of the malware has […]
Putin out of the fog of war?
It is always tough to tell what’s what in the fog of war, and it has been even more challenging to forecast the results in a conflict where one side, Ukraine, is badly outnumbered by the other, Russia. Comparisons on paper told one story: Ukraine, without a real army 15 months ago, would be steamrolled […]