Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman visited Moscow, on May 31, for talks with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other Russian top brass. Lieberman was accompanied by several of his country’s top military officials, including the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) military intelligence chief, Major General Tamir... MORE

As an increasing number of Islamic State (IS) female militants have been captured and sentenced to death after the collapse of the so-called “caliphate,” gender roles within the group have been deconstructed once more. This process marks the fall of female militancy within the terrorist... MORE

Having once held domain over some eight million people and controlled territory reaching nearly to Baghdad, Islamic State (IS) has undergone a monumental decline. Where the group was once in control of massive swathes of northeastern Syria and western Iraq, its so-called caliphate has since... MORE

In summer 2017, leaders of the three main factions of the Syrian opposition with fighters from the Caucasus, Muslim al-Shishani, Abdul Hakim al-Shishani and Salahuddin al-Shishani, released a joint video message, where they reaffirmed neutrality in the confrontation between the Syrian rebel groups Akhrar al-Sham... MORE

Russia’s General Staff has a long-established interest in automatizing and enhancing command and control, which has shown remarkable advances since the reform of the Armed Forces was initiated in 2008. These changes, propelled forward by recent experience of combat operations in Ukraine and Syria, are... MORE

The end of April was extraordinarily rich in high-profile international events—and Russia was conspicuously absent from all these dynamics. The president of South Korea and the North Korean dictator planted a pine tree of peace just to the south of the ceasefire line that still... MORE

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) jets have been hitting Syria intermittently, primarily targeting Iranian-connected assets, but also attacking the air-defense installations of president Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA) (Haaretz, April 10). Officially, the Israelis proclaim neutrality in the seven-year-long Syrian civil war, but the IDF... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here.   On March 28, Russian media presented information that members of the Private Military Company (PMC) Wagner may have been spotted in the East Ghouta region (southwestern Syria), coordinating a “normalization of the post-war situation.” The same sources... MORE

On March 27, the Russian government watered down the Duma bill proposing to legalize Private Military Companies (Chastnye Voennie Company—PMC) (Interfax, March 27). The parliamentary initiative was unanimously rejected by the Ministry of Defense (MoD), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), the Russian National Guard... MORE