Iran and Russia have reportedly agreed to a deal which will allow Russia to produce Iran-designed armed drones for use Ukraine.
Iranian leaders assess Russia’s direct production of armed drones will enable Tehran to skirt the imposition of further U.S. and European sanctions on Iran’s drone production infrastructure.
As Russia continues its assault on Ukraine, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) is keeping a close eye on Russia’s movements across the military, cyber, and information domains. With more than seven years of experience monitoring the situation in Ukraine—as well as Russia’s use of propaganda and disinformation to undermine the United States, NATO, and the European Union—the DFRLab’s global team presents the latest installment of the Russian War Report.
A peaceful dissolution of the USSR according to the agreement between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1988 in Reykjavik brought a new dimension of global geopolitics in which up to 2008 Russia, as a legal successor state of the USSR, was playing an inferior role in global politics when an American Neocon concept of Pax Americana became the fundamental framework in international relations.
While Europe remains transfixed on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the migration crisis in the Mediterranean that has shaped much of the continent’s politics for the past 10 years remains in full swing.
Reports last month that Ramzan Kadyrov was organizing a military force based on the Batal-Haji wird of a Sufi order for use in Ukraine were disturbing enough given that the Chechen leader was doing so on under the terms of Putin’s mobilization order (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/russian-officials-accuse-influential.html).
Why Ukraine Should Not Rush to Retake the Peninsula
Ukraine’s liberation of the city of Kherson at the beginning of November was more than just a dramatic military victory. In its battlefield win, Ukraine called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bluff. Just two months earlier, Putin had publicly declared Kherson and other Ukrainian territories to be a part of Russia, implicitly placing them under Russia’s nuclear protection. Putin had hoped that the fear of nuclear attack would compel Ukraine to tread lightly and make its supporters back off. His plan did not work.
The top Turkish diplomat aired a rare complaint over the Russian stalling of constitutional talks between the warring Syrian actors, calling on Moscow to allow the process to resume.
A high-level Russian diplomatic delegation is heading to Turkey on Thursday for talks amid repeated Turkish threats of a new ground offensive against the Kurdish groups in northern Syria.
The delegation led by Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin will hold talks with their Turkish counterparts headed by Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.
The visit comes as Ankara threatens to launch a new ground operation against the Syrian Kurdish groups in northern Syria. “Someone comes out and says: ‘You can’t do this in Kobani, you can’t do that in Kobani.’ Kobani is finished,” Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday in reference to the Syrian Kurdish town that remains under Russian military influence. “We’ve been taking the necessary measures both in Idlib and Kobani and we will continue to do so,” he added.
Turkey, which backtracked from its ground operation plans in July amid strong Russian and Iranian objections, brought the matter back onto its agenda after the bomb attack in Istanbul last month. Ankara has accused the Syrian Kurdish groups of being behind the attack and launched a massive air campaign against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) positions. The US-allied SDF flatly denied any involvement in the attack.
The visit also comes as Erdogan has been expressing fresh interest in a meeting with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, citing two Turkish sources, Reuters reported on Dec. 2 that Damascus was resisting the Russian efforts to broker a summit between the two leaders.
Asked about the Russian delegation’s visit on Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stopped short of repeating Ankara’s threats, but aired a rare complaint over the Russian stalling of the constitutional talks between the warring Syrian actors.
“We know that Russia does not want to go to Geneva, Switzerland, by citing visa problems. We are also working on alternatives,” Cavusoglu said during a joint presser with his Moldovan counterpart. “But the political process must be accelerated. We’ve been stressing how important this is for the sake of permanent stability.”
He added that the war in Ukraine, Libya and bilateral issues would also be discussed during the talks. “We have clearly not been on the same side with Russia on these issues, but our engagements are proceeding and we have seen its benefits.”
The eighth round of the Syrian talks, held in May, aimed to draft a new constitution in a bid to find a political settlement to the civil war. Since then, Russia has refused to send a delegation to the talks between the rebel groups and the Syrian government held under the auspices of the UN in Geneva, Switzerland. Syrian Kurdish groups controlling a large chunk of territory in northern Syria have been excluded from the talks by Ankara’s veto.
Russia’s special envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said in June that Switzerland lost its neutral status after the country joined the Russian sanctions slapped on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, in turn, said Nov. 29 that the Russian concerns over the venue “were comprehensively addressed” by the Swiss authorities, but that “a further issue has now been raised which is not in Swiss hands,” without elaborating.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday in Abuja urged more vigilance and tightening of security around borders, drawing attention to the increased number of arms, ammunition, and other weapons from the Russia and Ukraine war in the Lake Chad Basin.
Hungary didn’t qualify for the Qatar World Cup, but that hasn’t stopped Prime Minister Victor Orban from exploiting the world’s current focus on soccer to signal his Putinesque definition of central European borders as defined by civilization and ethnicity rather than internationally recognized frontiers.
“[Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] soldiers are firing Grads at civilians, hitting residential areas, orphanages, maternity hospitals with ballistic and cruise missiles. Ukraine is our home!”
This is the last social media post by 28-year-old Valeria Hlodan from Odesa.