Wagner fractures in Syria, Libya amid conflict with Russia’s Defense Ministry

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.

Jewish president picks Muslim defense minister: Ukraine’s diverse leadership debunks Russia’s “Nazi” slurs

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.

Some Basic Remarks on the National Identities of the People Living in Ukraine with Short Historical Background

Ukraine is an East European territory which was originally forming a western part of the Russian Empire in the mid-17th century. That is a present-day independent state and separate ethnolinguistic nation as a typical example of Benedict Anderson’s theory-model of the “imagined community” – a self-constructed idea of the artificial ethnic and linguistic-cultural identity. Before 2014 Ukraine was a home of some 46 million inhabitants of whom, according to the official data, there were around 77 percent of those who declared themselves as the Ukrainians. Nevertheless, many Russians do not consider the Ukrainians or Belarus as “foreign” but rather as the regional branches of the Russian nationality. It is a matter of fact that, differently to the Russian case, the national identity of Belarus or the Ukrainians was never firmly fixed as it was always in the constant process of changing and evolving [on the Ukrainian self-identity construction, see: Karina V. Korostelina, Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power: Self-Imagination in a Young Ukrainian Nation, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014].

Ukraine’s Victory Over Russia Will Benefit Western Security

The slow rate of [Ukrainian] progress has also prompted politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to question whether it is worth continuing to support Ukraine’s military effort or instead concentrate their efforts on negotiating a peace settlement between the warring countries.

Inflection Point for Africa-Russia Relations after Prigozhin’s Death

The apparent assassination of Yevgeny Prigozhin from the crash of his private jet between Moscow and St. Petersburg represents an inflection point in Russia-Africa relations. Prigozhin, leader of the notorious Wagner Group, was the point man for Russia in Africa since Wagner first began operations on the continent in 2017. Its leaders have been sanctioned by 30 countries for the group’s destabilizing activities.

A YEAR OF LYING ABOUT NORD STREAM

The Biden administration has acknowledged neither its responsibility for the pipeline bombing nor the purpose of the sabotage

I do not know much about covert CIA operations—no outsider can—but I do understand that the essential component of all successful missions is total deniability. The American men and women who moved, under cover, in and out of Norway in the months it took to plan and carry out the destruction of three of the four Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea a year ago left no traces—not a hint of the team’s existence—other than the success of their mission.

It’s All About Them.

Discussing the faint mumblings in western capitals about “negotiations” over Ukraine last week, I pointed out how insecure and fragile the collective western strategic ego is, and how little opposition or criticism it can actually tolerate. It struck me that it might be worth expanding on that a bit, since it helps us to understand why the West has gets itself into such shambolic situations, Ukraine of course being the current one. I’ll also try to explain how both fervent admirers of western policy and its bitterest critics are actually part of the same incoherent strategic discourse. It all starts with ethnocentrism

The End of Nagorno-Karabakh

How Western Inaction Enabled Azerbaijan and Russia

The third war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the long-disputed Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, ended almost as soon as it began. At 1 PM on September 19, Azerbaijani forces began attacking the territory with artillery and drones in what it called an “antiterror” operation. Within 24 hours, the Karabakh Armenians, a population that has been pushed to the brink of famine by a months-long economic blockade, capitulated, leaving Azerbaijan in effective control of the territory.