Commentary

According to Politico, seven NATO member countries remain hesitant to extend a membership invitation to Ukraine. Citing four anonymous U.S. and NATO officials and diplomats, Politico names the United States, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia, Hungary, and Slovakia as the primary holdouts. Each of these countries has its own reasons for caution, yet the key to NATO’s decision-making lies in its rule of consensus. While some countries contribute more to NATO’s mission, each member has an equal say in inviting new members. Thus, every objection must be taken into account, regardless of military might or strategic value. The influence of the United States is paramount, yet even it cannot move forward without the cooperation of these smaller nations...

The Federal relations expert Harun (Vadim) Sidorov believes that the BRICS summit held in Kazan is directly related to the decolonization agenda and is “an illustration of the different attitudes of the Kremlin and its opponents towards it.” According to the Idel.Realii columnist, “The Kremlin, which is already facing official accusations of colonialism from the West, is actively trying to shift the blame to the West’s relations with the so-called “global South.” The Russian Foreign Ministry tried to present the adoption of the...

"The New York Times” reported that Russia has been providing small arms to the Houthis. American officials including Secretary Austin during his recent visit to Ukraine indicated that according to American military intelligence Russia is considering providing the Houthis with missiles should the West escalate the war in Ukraine. Apparently, recently released in a prisoner exchange with the West, Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is negotiating the sale of advanced missiles. This information was given to the Ukrainians to justify Western reluctance to allow Ukraine's use of Western weapons deeper into Russia. I suppose that any excuse is as...

Moscow seems to have pressed pause on its plans to arm the Houthis with missiles, but the threat of it gives the Kremlin leverage elsewhere in the world. What all this amounts to is what a Leninist maxim calls probing with bayonets. The next line: "If you find mush, you push." Mush was George W. Bush's feeble response to Russia's invasion of Georgia, followed by Barack Obama's equally feeble one to Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014, It was Donald Trump's threats to withdraw from NATO, his attempt (foiled by his own advisers) to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, his pathetic hopes for a deal with the...

Go back to 24 February 2022, the most fateful day in Europe this century: the day when Vladimir Putin sent his armies into Ukraine. The least discussed aspect of the revival of Russian imperialism was the miserable failure of Western intelligence. It wasn't that Western analysts missed the invasion—they didn’t. The Biden administration and its allies did an admirable job. They warned Ukraine and Europe, and pre-empted Russian propaganda efforts to create a false pretext for the invasion. But their success ended there. They vastly overestimated Russia’s military prowess while grossly underestimating Ukraine’s resolve—a misjudgement that persists today, with devastating consequences. Intelligence sources briefed journalists, who then shared these faulty assumptions...

A Kremlin cyber operations unit has been embedded in RT since last year and has gone to global lengths to spread Russian propaganda, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The State Department on Friday said Russia’s state-owned RT news agency has expanded operations to become a sophisticated, mainstay arm of the Kremlin’s military intelligence nexus, and helped deploy a covert fundraising operation for body armor, radios, rifles and other military equipment for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Canada and the United Kingdom joined the ...

The first night in Lviv was replete with sirens of various categories and lengths This had been preceded several days earlier by an unprecedented missile attack resulting in serious fatalities including that of a family of four with the remaining father hospitalized. Once again this target bore no proximity to any military targets, energy grid, or anything remotely connected with the war and Ukrainian resistance. It was simply a grotesque message from the Russians to Ukrainians: we will wipe you off the face of the earth. Today, Friday, September 6, 2024, the people of Lviv paid their...

Ukraine's surprise offensive into Kursk has not only caught Russia off guard but also shocked its allies, exposing the contrast between Ukrainian boldness and the West's timidity. The Ukrainian attack into Kursk in Russia, now into its third week, was a tactical and operational surprise for the Russians. There are many reasons for this, including Russia not assembling all the available pieces of intelligence to anticipate the Ukrainian attack, the Ukrainian deception plan, and a failure of humility on the part of Putin’s regime and military. The Ukrainians have also surprised their supporters in the West. This was in large part because Ukraine deliberately withheld details of the Kursk attack to preserve operational security, maximise its chances of achieving surprise and shock against the Russians, guard against the inflated expectations of the failed 2023 counteroffensive and avoid second guessing by talkative, risk-adverse bureaucrats in the West. Ukraine has shown that, fortunately, strategic audacity is not entirely...

The NATO Summit in Washington had two purposes: to recognize the 75 years of NATO and strengthen the defensive alliance and to substantively help Ukraine. The first was fanfare although its purpose was to encourage the remaining one third of NATO nations to spend on military more than 2% of its GDP. The remaining one third includes some serious members such as France and Germany, but also less serious members such as Canada, Slovenia, Spain, Belgium and extremely wealthy Luxembourg. Granted that Canada has an ocean as a buffer. Nevertheless, with the Trump assassination attempt NATO must take into account that the United States will be missing in action as to Europe's defence against Russia. Senator J.D. Vance, now the Vice President under Trump posted about two hours after the incident: "Today is not...