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Mass Russian attack damages Ukraine energy grid, leaving six regions without power
Large-scale overnight missile and drone attack damages power infrastructure, forcing blackouts and supply restrictions across much of the country. Parts of six Ukrainian regions were left without electricity on Thursday, 26 February, after what Kyiv described as a combined large-scale…
Secret Tunnels and Hybrid Pressure: How Belarus and Russia Are Testing Europe’s Eastern Border
Belarus’s use of migration pressure against the European Union is no longer confined to flights, forest crossings and organised pushes at the frontier. According to reporting by The Telegraph, citing Polish officials, border guards discovered four underground tunnels under the…
Four Years Since the Invasion: The War’s Strategic Lessons for Ukraine, Russia and Europe
Four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the central expectation that shaped much of the early commentary has not materialised: Moscow has not achieved its declared war aims. On the fourth anniversary, the…
Zelenskyy’s warning to Trump: peace without guarantees will fail Ukraine
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plea to Donald Trump — “stay on our side” — should be read as more than an appeal for sympathy. It is a warning about strategy. At the centre of the current diplomacy is a question that sounds…
Blasts Targeting Ukrainian Police Raise Fears of a New Kremlin Destabilisation Campaign
A series of explosions targeting or affecting Ukrainian police facilities in Lviv, Mykolaiv and Dnipro within a matter of days has prompted renewed concern in Kyiv over a possible campaign of destabilisation aimed at law enforcement. On Monday, 23 February,…
Moscow and Tehran: Alleged Verba Missile Agreement Adds New Pressure on Washington
A reported secret Russian-Iranian air defence deal has added a new layer of risk to an already volatile stand-off between Washington and Tehran, while raising wider questions about the strategic alignment linking Russia, Iran and, indirectly, China. According to a…
Putin doubles down on militarisation while Geneva talks yield no breakthrough
Vladimir Putin used Russia’s Defender of the Fatherland Day on 23 February to call for further military expansion and to urge national unity around the war, in remarks that provided no indication of a shift towards ending hostilities, as US-mediated…
Drone strike reported in Russia’s Udmurtia as missile plant in Votkinsk named as possible target
Explosions were reported overnight in Russia’s Udmurt Republic after what regional officials described as a Ukrainian drone attack, with Russian and Ukrainian-linked monitoring channels suggesting the target was the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, a major missile manufacturing site roughly 1,400–1,500…
NORAD Scrambles Jets After Russian Aircraft Tracked Off Alaska
On Thursday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) detected and tracked a formation of Russian military aircraft operating off the coast of Alaska, prompting a significant response from U.S. and Canadian air defence forces. According to a NORAD statement,…
Major General Wolf-Jürgen Stahl’s Trump Broadside Exposes Europe’s Strategic Anxiety
It is not often that a serving German general publicly dissects the character of an American president. That taboo has now been shattered. Major General Wolf-Jürgen Stahl, head of Berlin’s Federal Academy for Security Policy, has delivered a diagnosis of…