Recent Posts

Germany to end EU training mission in Mali

Germany will end its participation in the European Union training mission in Mali but is ready to continue with a U.N. peacekeeping mission in the country under certain conditions, Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht said on Wednesday. France and allies fighting Islamist militants in Mali earlier this year said they would …

Read More »

Jihadists kill seven villagers in northeast Nigeria

Jihadists attacked a village in northeast Nigeria, killing seven people and looting supplies, shortly after UN chief Antonio Guterres arrived in the troubled region for a visit, local sources said on Wednesday. Fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), arriving on motorbikes and in trucks fitted with machine …

Read More »

Russia’s gas blackmail: Putin is bringing a knife to a gun fight

By weaponising gas exports, Putin is digging the grave of Russia’s economy. On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin escalated the geo-economic war between his country and the West by suspending gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria, citing the two countries’ refusal to pay in Russian roubles. The move, decried by …

Read More »

Europe scrambles for long-term fix after Putin cuts off gas

European energy providers open Russian rouble accounts for gas, challenging bloc’s united front against Moscow. As Poles and Bulgarians worry their cookers and heaters will run dry, the rest of Europe is scrambling to respond after Vladimir Putin’s latest chess move over the Ukraine conflict – cutting off the gas …

Read More »

Will Vladimir Putin succeed in seizing southwestern Ukraine?

After failing to capture the capital Kyiv and northern Ukraine, Russia now focuses on completing its conquest of the south. It took several cruise missiles to destroy a bridge that linked southwestern Ukraine with Romania – and stood hundreds of kilometres away from the front lines of the Russian-Ukrainian war. …

Read More »

Turkey: NATO’s Pro-Putin Ally

Western leaders shrugged it off when, in 2016, Erdoğan said in plain language that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations. Erdoğan’s popularity, since he came to power …

Read More »

Finland’s New Frontier

Will Russia Seek to Disrupt Helsinki’s NATO Bid? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has destroyed the 30-year post-Cold War order in Europe. Among its most significant and unexpected geopolitical effects is that Finland, long a nonaligned country, will likely soon join NATO, probably followed by its similarly nonaligned neighbor, Sweden. Finland …

Read More »

The War Over Ukrainian Identity

Nationalism, Russian Imperialism, and the Quest to Define Ukraine’s History Europe’s first twenty-first-century war is very much about the past. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ventured on wild forays into the depths of history to insist that Russians and Ukrainians are a single people, that Ukraine never truly existed as …

Read More »