Russian President Vladimir Putin has landed in an unenviable position. His country has the resources to inflict damage on Ukraine in perpetuity. But because the first phase of the war has been so costly for Russia and because Ukraine’s military is mounting such stiff resistance, Russia faces serious difficulty achieving anything meaningful on the battlefield without committing much more manpower than it currently has available.
What’s new? In October 2020, Baghdad and Erbil signed an agreement intended to build stability in Iraq’s Sinjar district through a new administration and security structure that would let displaced people return. The deal is only partly fulfilled, however. Turkey is intensifying bombardment of the PKK and its affiliates in the area.
We were handcuffed, and a bandage was placed over our eyes so we could not see anything. Then the buses moved towards Palestine. Next to me was sitting an Egyptian named Gamal. He had nothing on his eyes, perhaps being Egyptian and a kind of courtesy to Egypt, which had signed a peace treaty with the Zionist state in 1979.
Anyone who grew up in my generation of 1980s kids remembers G.I. Joe action figures — those green-uniformed plastic soldiers you could use to stage battles in the sandbox in your backyard or, for that matter, your bedroom. In those days, when imagery of bombed-out homes, bloodied civilians, and police violence wasn’t accessible on TV screens or in video games like Call of Duty, war in children’s play took place only between soldiers. No civilians were caught up in it as “collateral damage.”
Russia’s war in Ukraine has prompted one of the world’s largest cooperation efforts in recent history. The West donated a lot of financial and military aid to help Ukraine with its defensive efforts against Russia. Just recently, Lithuanian citizens have come together and donated whatever money they could to help buy Ukraine a Bayraktar TB2 drone, a UAV that has been instrumental in their war against Russia.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s pledge to carry out a new military operation on Turkey’s southern border sparked speculations as to the possible targets, which could include towns such as Tel Rifaat, Manbij and Kobani.
Kobani, Manbij and Tel Rifaat stand out as the main targets in a prospective new Turkish operation in northern Syria, but Erdogan might narrow his objectives to avoid tensions with the United States.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has raised the prospect of a fresh military operation in Syria, trying his hand once again at creating a safe zone with a depth of about 30 kilometers (19 miles) along the border — a plan he had to shelve in October 2021 after failing to get a green light from Russia and the United States.
One might well wonder if the CNAS study is a “trial balloon” from the Biden Administration to begin preparing the nation and world psychologically for the advent of Iran’s “Islamic bomb.”
One might also wonder if the CNAS study is an attempt to justify consequent U.S. retreat from the Middle East, not as another humiliating defeat, but as a prudent and wise reprioritization of resources to meet the threat from China.
Attempts to negotiate an eleventh-hour compromise to get Hungary to back a full Russian oil ban before an EU emergency summit later on Monday (30 May) have made no progress. Reportedly, leaders don’t want to squabble and will look at “the bigger picture”.
Iran’s most senior military commander visits one of the Army’s secret underground bases, which houses a huge fleet of cutting-edge Iranian drones.
During his visit on Saturday, Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri got a first-hand account of the Iranian Army’s capabilities in the development of different types of military, combat and long-range drones.