The extrajudicial murder of a local Pamiri activist by state security police in the mountainous and impoverished Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast of Tajikistan has sparked violent protests in that region’s capital, Khorog. The mass demonstrations have so far claimed at least three other lives and left... MORE

On November 1, supporters of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) abandoned their two-week long protests and marched to the Pakistani capital Islamabad after the group signed a deal with the government, whose details were initially kept secret. The deal was facilitated by several religious scholars and leaders of... MORE

A loud explosion was heard in the early hours of November 7 in the fortified area in Baghdad known as the “Green Zone.” This was followed by heavy gunfire in the Green Zone, which hosts government offices and U.S. and other Western diplomatic missions. The... MORE

On November 15, the Russian military successfully tested a dual-use missile-defense/anti-satellite interceptor to destroy in orbit an old, dysfunctional Tselina-D intelligence-gathering satellite dubbed “Kosmos-1408.” The “dead” target satellite was flying at some 500 kilometers above the ground and had been launched during the Cold War,... MORE

Belarus and Moscow have signed a new Union State Military Doctrine, though the document remains unpublished. This comes within the context of the Belarus crisis that began with President Alyaksandr Lukashenko’s disputed reelection on August 9, 2020, and recently worsened due to the migrant issues... MORE

On November 8, the Blue Ridge–class command-and-control ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) and the Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) arrived in Batumi, Georgia (1tv.ge November 8). According to a statement released by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), “The port visit... MORE

According to Dmitry Shugaev, the head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC), Russia may export its most advanced S-500 Prometheus air-defense weaponry to China and India after its own Armed Forces receive their allocations of the systems. Shugaev said, “When the [Russian] Armed... MORE

On November 8, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda held consultations in Warsaw with the government, military and border guard service regarding the artificial migration crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border (Prezydent.pl, November 8). The situation there has intensified, with 3,000–4,000 migrants gathered in the direct vicinity of... MORE

A new point of acute East-West tension has emerged on the Polish-Belarusian border. Minsk and the West have been at loggerheads since August 2020, when Belarus’s strongman, Alyaksandr Lukashenka (ruling since 1994) declared himself reelected for a sixth consecutive presidential term in office. Massive protests... MORE

On October 26, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) for the first time used the Turkish-produced Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) to strike at forces of the so-called Donetsk “People’s Republic” (DPR) militia in Donbas. According to the official statement of the AFU... MORE