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

The global race for hypersonic weapons, or at least for technologies to reach hypersonic velocity, undoubtedly goes on. Russia is paying close attention to the research, development and testing of hypersonic missiles in the United States (TASS, September 27, 2021), China (RIA Novosti, October 21,... MORE

Like any other relationship, the partnership between Turkey and Russia has had its ups and downs, twists and turns. The downing by Turkey, in November 2015, of a Russian Sukhoi military jet predictably led to a cooling in relations (see EDM, December 3, 2015). Since... MORE

Recent publications in the Western media about the Russian military buildup along the border with Ukraine (Kyiv Post, October 31) provoked a new round of discussions about whether Moscow intends to resolve the Ukrainian issue by force. This worry was based on satellite images of... MORE

The Iranian Foreign Ministry warned on October 4 that its “strategic patience” with what it described as anti-Iranian terrorist groups operating in the Iraqi Kurdistan region had come to an end (Pars Today, October 5). The remarks followed threats by both Iran’s top military commander,... MORE

Ethiopia’s Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) are carrying out yet another successful counter-offensive against the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and its allies. The current counter-offensive, which is coordinated with the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), may result in the fall of the government of Ethiopian Prime... MORE

Since signing the 2010 Strategic Partnership Treaty, Turkey and Azerbaijan have transformed their rhetorically close ties, encapsulated in the oft-repeated slogan “one nation, two states,” into a real military alliance with a casus foederis clause, resembling Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO)... MORE

At the end of October, the Russian Armed Forces staged a military exercise in Crimea to rehearse the defense of the occupied peninsula. The military deployed forces from the Southern Military District/Joint Strategic Command (Obyedinennyye Strategicheskoye Komandovanie—OSK) to the Opuk training ground in Crimea, where... MORE