Russia Contemplates The Price Of Its Ukraine Policy

Having decided first to recognize the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and then mount a special operation to reverse the pro-Western Maidan revolution of 2014, Russia’s leadership realized that there would be consequences to these actions. As the West made it clear from the outset that its response would take the form of imposing severe sanctions rather than a military, the issue of the economic damage that Russia would sustain naturally surfaced. President Vladimir Putin in his address announcing the special operation conceded that Russia’s economy would be affected but claimed that the government had taken measures to cushion the blow.

Live updates: How Russia’s assault on Ukraine affects MidEast

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have an impact beyond Europe. Follow along for the latest updates affecting the Mideast region.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could develop into the largest state-on-state conflict Europe has seen since World War II. But the war’s effects will not be limited to the continent.

The U.N. Refugee Convention Is Under Pressure—and Showing Its Age

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Refugee Convention, one of the signal moral advances in human history. Negotiated in the wake of World War II and initially limited to Europe, the treaty established the first binding legal protections for individuals forced to flee their countries. These rights and responsibilities, which were made universal in the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1967, remain a cornerstone of the global humanitarian regime. The convention is, however, showing its age. Many governments are failing to fulfil their legal obligations under it, and the convention does little to address the plight of internally displaced persons as well as those driven from their nations by more complex dynamics, including criminal violence and climate change.

A Prison Attack and the Death of its Leader: Weighing Up the Islamic State’s Trajectory in Syria

Abstract: On January 20, 2022, the Islamic State launched a complex assault on Hasakah’s Ghwayran prison, a place in which thousands of its fighters had been held since the ‘defeat’ of its territorial caliphate in March 2019. The attack was the first time that the group had directly targeted a major detention facility in Syria since losing its last significant territorial toehold in Syria, notwithstanding the consistent calls for prison breaks that have been uttered by its leaders during the last three years.

Trends in Iranian External Assassination, Surveillance, and Abduction Plots

Abstract: Over the past 40-plus years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has targeted dissidents, Western opponents, Israelis, and Jews in assassination plots, abduction plots, and surveillance operations that facilitate both. Iran has carried out such external operations around the world, in countries with both strong and weak law enforcement agencies, border crossings, and intelligence services. It has done so consistently over the years, including at times and in places where carrying out such operations could undermine key Iranian diplomatic efforts, such as negotiations over the country’s nuclear program. This study, based on a dataset of 98 Iranian plots from 1979 through 2021, maps out key trends in Iranian external operations plotting.

China Has More to Lose Than to Gain by Supporting Russia on Ukraine

Countries around the world are watching intensely to see if Russia will further escalate its ongoing standoff with Ukraine, after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Monday recognizing the independence of the breakaway Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and subsequently deployed Russian troops to both to carry out what he referred to as a “peacekeeping mission.”

Putin’s War in Ukraine Will Not Stay in Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine this morning ends several months of doubt and debate over the purpose of Moscow’s military buildup at the two countries’ border. Washington’s repeated warnings of an imminent military operation proved not to be the hysteria that Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed them as. In the end, Putin’s manufactured crisis was not an attempt at coercive diplomacy, or if it was, it was a failed one.

WWII Redux: The Endpoint of U.S. Policy, from Ukraine to Taiwan

The Threatened Peoples of East Asia and Europe Can Stop the U.S. Drive to Restore its Global Domination.

“This is not going to be a war of Ukraine and Russia. This is going to be a European war, a full-fledged war.” So spoke Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky just days after berating the U.S. for beating the drums of war.