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Pakistan Escalates Conflict with Strikes on Taliban Strongholds
Pakistan has confirmed that it carried out air strikes on the Afghan cities of Kabul and Kandahar in the early hours of Friday, in what officials described as retaliation for attacks by Taliban forces along the disputed frontier between the…
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…
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,…
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…
France-Germany rift over FCAS fighter jet raises new doubts over Europe’s flagship air combat project
A public dispute between France and Germany over the next generation of European fighter aircraft has renewed uncertainty around the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), one of the continent’s most expensive and politically significant defence programmes. The disagreement centres on…
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…
Poland’s Strategic Pivot: Mines on the Eastern Frontier and the End of an Era in Arms Control
In a major shift that could reverberate across Europe’s security landscape, Poland is poised to lay anti-personnel mines along its eastern border within 48 hours of formally exiting the Ottawa Convention, the international treaty that for nearly three decades has…
Zaluzhnyi breaks silence on 2023 counteroffensive as rift with Zelenskyy resurfaces
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief and now ambassador to the United Kingdom, has given an interview to the Associated Press that sets out, in unusual detail, his disagreements with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over both military decision-making and civil–military relations inside…