Isolated from the international community and in urgent need of weapons and ammunition to continue its fight in Ukraine, Russia has chosen to double down on its alliance with North Korea. Although Moscow and Pyongyang have been allies for decades, recent developments point to deepening military cooperation, which may prolong the war in Ukraine and increase provocations on the Korean peninsula.
At all costs, America believes that it must do whatever’s necessary to prevent the Israeli state from exercising its sovereign right under Bibi’s restored leadership to balance between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the Sino-Russo Entente in the New Cold War instead of decisively take the former’s side against the latter. Most immediately, its “deep state” wants Israel to arm Kiev, which Bibi himself warned earlier this month could abruptly catalyze a crisis with Russia in Syria, thus opening a “second front” in the US’ Eurasian-wide “containment” campaign.
Russia’s dispatch of S-300s to Syria was meant to distract from last September’s tragedy and wasn’t intended to be a “game-changing” military development by any means, but the systems have since taken on a cult-like following all across Alt-Media because there are plenty of people afflicted with a “savior complex” who project their political fantasies onto these “status symbols”.
Footage of apartment buildings in the Gaza Strip crumbling under Israeli airstrikes and suffering Palestinian civilians has filled Russian political talk shows and newscasts for weeks.
“They are razing Gaza to the ground,” state television anchor and propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said during a recent show. “We [the Russian army] don’t fight like that, not even close.”
The South Caucasus poses a serious problem for Russia. However, like all neighboring countries, with the exception of Belarus. Only with Minsk are relations fundamental and reliable. Everything else is highly problematic.
It’s all about the lack of a clear strategy. Over the past 30 years, Russia has been moving simultaneously in three directions:
Since the Soviet days, Russia has tried to sell the story that the country is a “family of nations.” President Vladimir Putin still tires to export this narrative, as shown when an indigenous Tuvan musician represented Russia during a performance at the recent G20 summit in India. But this multicultural image does not reflect the reality faced by Russia’s ethnic minorities at home.
Syria has not only failed to become a secure base for Russian forces in the Middle East, but is increasingly generating its own crises.
For several years, Russia has set itself the joint mission with Iran of pushing the United States out of Syria—and ideally out of the entire Middle East. Yet Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and subsequent growing alignment with Tehran have actually had the opposite effect: the U.S. presence in the region is growing.
Bulent Kenes, a Turkish journalist who was editor-in-chief of the English-language newspaper Today’s Zaman, was arrested in October 2015 for insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison for criticizing the president on Twitter. In 2016, an arrest warrant released by Erdogan regime for Kenes along with 46 other prominent journalists and writers, who were caught in a wave of repressions when Erdogan arrested about 100,000 people (including hundreds of journalists) ostensibly linked to the military that had been plotting a coup. Turkey and President Erdogan personally seek Kenes’ extradition from Sweden, where he has been living for the past 6,5 years. In a meeting with the Swedish prime minister, Erdogan presented giving up the journalist as a condition for Ankara’s ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership.
A month after Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death in a plane crash, Russian authorities are attempting to assert control over the parallel military structure.
“Prigozhin is alive.” The phrase remains among the most popular queries in Russia’s Yandex search engine a month after the crash of the Embraer Legacy jet on Aug. 23 that killed Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the removal of Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on September 3 in what was the biggest change among the country’s political leaders since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion more than eighteen months ago. Reznikov’s departure comes following weeks of speculation over allegations of financial improprieties at the Ministry of Defense, and reflects Ukraine’s desire to demonstrate a zero tolerance approach toward allegations of corruption.