The war in Ukraine has confirmed the validity of some European countries’ approach to Russia and their own defence. Poland can now feel vindicated in its longstanding distrust of Russia, as well as its insistence on the crucial role of the United States for European security. Meanwhile, Germany’s pre-2022 hope to convert …

The Turkish ministry of defense claims to have killed 471 Kurdish militants in 271 separate attacks in Syria and Iraq since the start of the operation The Turkish Minister of Defense, Hulusi Akar, visited the Turkish troops on the border with Iraq on 27 November to inspect the ongoing operations …

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on 26 November that large reinforcements of US military troops and equipment made their way into northern and eastern Syria, coming in from the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) through the illegal Al-Waleed border crossing.

Colonel Davoud Jafari, a senior official of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division, was assassinated in Syria on 22 November. The IRGC claimed that Israel was responsible for the attack.

The US Department of Defense has, for the fifth straight year, failed to pass a financial audit, with only seven out of the Pentagon’s 27 military agencies receiving a passing grade. “We failed to get an ‘A’,” Mike McCord, the Pentagon’s comptroller and chief financial officer, told reporters last week, …

On 24 November, the Iraqi government announced its decision to redeploy troops to the borders with Iran and Turkey, following recent attacks by Tehran and Ankara against Kurdish positions in the Iraqi Kurdistan semi-autonomous region, Al-Awsat news reported.

On 19 August, 2014, ISIS released a video of the beheading of American journalist James Foley who was kidnapped by the terrorist organization in 2012 while reporting on the conflict in Syria. Foley’s shocking execution became one of the most widely followed news stories of the Syrian war. Foley’s killer, …

French MAMBA Surface-Based Air and Missile Defence system repelled Wednesday a simulated air attack by Allied fighter aircraft in an exercise, according to NATO’s Allied Air Command Public Affairs Office. Deployed in Romania since May 2022, the MAMBA has been augmenting NATO’s Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) system. Allied …

China is expanding its multilateral diplomacy, and one of its targets is Central and South Asia. Indeed, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is clearly in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s sights, given that many Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects are situated in SCO member countries. Before Xi attended the G20 …

Introduction Moldova’s new reformist government came to power in August 2021 under President Maia Sandu, promising to clean up Moldova after years of corruption and deepen relations with the European Union. Since that time, it has faced a succession of crises, all of which are connected to Russia. Within weeks …