Islamic State Congo Steps up Attacks in Bid to Become its own Province Jacob Zenn The Congo branch of the Islamic State in Central Africa Province (ISCAP) is increasingly following the footsteps of the most prolific Islamic State (IS) affiliate, Islamic State in West Africa... MORE

On April 16, a multi-party delegation of the Georgian parliament, on a visit to Ukraine, traveled to the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where, according to multiple Western governments and representatives of the International Criminal Court, the Russian occupying forces committed war crimes against the civilian... MORE

Since the beginning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s large-scale and brutal re-invasion of Ukraine, the South Caucasus has inevitably received much less international attention. But tensions in the latter region have increased on three key levels: between Russia and the West, between Azerbaijan and Armenia,... MORE

The Kremlin’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine, launched on February 24, became a game changer for the Russian space program. Western sanctions, adopted in response to the war, have thrown Russia’s space industry into turmoil: previous rounds of sanctions were painful, but they only limited Russia’s... MORE

By the time news of the Russian re-invasion of Ukraine became known in Moscow in the early morning of February 24, 2022, it was already afternoon in Siberia and the Urals. Residents of cities such as Irkutsk, Omsk and Yekaterinburg were the first to take... MORE

On February 24, without officially declaring war, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine (Dpsu.gov.ua, February 24). The aggressor attacked Ukraine by land, air and sea. But alongside those military operations, Russia continued to wage its warfare in the cyber and information domains. The Kremlin’s... MORE

Moscow has long counted on young males from the North Caucasus to ensure that each seasonal Russian military draft is filled. Men from that region typically view military service as a social lift out of the extreme poverty most find themselves in, a way of... MORE

The Russo-Ukraine war, the extensive Western sanctions against Russia, and the growing possibility that European border states will block east-west transit corridors traversing Russian territory into Europe are having far-reaching implications for the landlocked countries of Central Asia, which have historically relied on road and... MORE

In a store at one of Minsk’s shopping malls that sells Russian-made t-shirts decorated with a “Z,” the symbol of the Russian military offensive against Ukraine, the shop owner admitted to a journalist that she wholeheartedly backed Russia’s President Vladimir Putin but “we support the... MORE

Triumphalist rhetoric coming out of Moscow notwithstanding, Russia’s war in Ukraine is not progressing according to plan (see EDM, April 11). Nevertheless, President Vladimir Putin repeated yet again last week (April 12) that the central objective of the massive re-invasion of Ukrainian territory starting on... MORE