As the Wagner Group prepares to withdraw its fighters from Bakhmut after months of brutal conflict, there is growing speculation that its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is angling to have his forces redeployed to fragile states in the Middle East and Africa.
Daesh on Friday claimed responsibility for an explosion inside a mosque in northern Badakhshan province the day before.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) is an “implacable” enemy of Daesh and it continues to act against the group.
Speaking in a press conference with his Saudi counterpart in Riyadh, Blinken said that the US will prevent a resurgence of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan.
The Wagner chief’s furious attack on elites and the war could portend turmoil with potential to extend well beyond Moscow.
Is the post-Putin era in Russia at hand? Probably not yet, barring an unlikely collapse of Russian forces in Ukraine. But a furious public attack on Russia’s entire war effort and its elites by Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the private Russian militia group “Wagner,” is a sign that some Russian factions are beginning to position themselves for a struggle over who might succeed the Kremlin leader.
The Guantanamo Bay military prison or detention center is an integral part of the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The USA has had a naval base on the modern communist island since 1903, and it is the oldest American naval base abroad. Cuban authorities consider the Guantanamo base a classic relic of colonial history, and the socialist government in Havana has never recognized the agreements that led to the establishment of the naval-military base. The Cubans are right because the military base and prison (camp) there are relics of colonialism that remain in operation to this day like Guam, American Samoa, Malvinas, French Guiana.
Türkiye’s president has just won reelection, but events in northern Syria may prove more complicated than expected.
The general elections in Türkiye are now over, which is likely to provide more clarity with respect to how Ankara will deal with the situation in Syria in the coming months. While some have suggested that the reelection of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan may mean he will try to maintain a status quo in his foreign policy, one thing that is likely to change is Türkiye’s relationship with nonstate actors in northern Syria.
An impressive campaign by Hakan Fidan’s media team has made almost an entire nation worship him.
I received a text message from my Persian yoga teacher asking, “Is Hakan Fidan the new [Mohammad] Mossadegh for CIA and Mossad?” I was baffled by the comparison between the head of the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT) and the former Iranian prime minister toppled by a coup initiated by British MI6 and the CIA.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western governments implemented a suite of sanctions on Russian businesses, escalating the sanctions they implemented following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The goal in both cases was to inflict enough pain on Russian elites that they would pressure Vladimir Putin to reverse course and end the conflict.
For centuries, Russian authorities have modified their approach to managing the country’s large, diverse population, held together by an ethnic Russian core. The war in Ukraine has again altered the Kremlin’s strategy of managing its complex domestic demographics.
Russia’s Defense Ministry announced early Monday its forces had thwarted a large Ukrainian attack in the eastern province of Donetsk, though it’s unclear if this was the start of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The ministry, in a rare early morning video, said its forces pushed back a “large scale” Ukrainian assault on Sunday at five points in southern Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia illegally annexed last fall, Associated Press reported.