For years, the Kremlin has marketed itself as a dependable security patron for embattled regimes by offering military support, mercenaries, and diplomatic cover without Western-style political conditions. However, recent setbacks in Mali, alongside immense pressure on Russian partners in Syria, Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba reveal that Moscow fares much better at preventing immediate collapse rather than delivering long-term stability. It is not that the Russians necessarily aban

Transnistria's secessionist project is in structural decline. Russian patronage has thinned and public services have deteriorated. The Sheriff conglomerate, the dominant economic force in the region, has reoriented toward European markets in ways that sit uneasily alongside Moscow's strategic preferences. Chișinău, meanwhile, has been methodically exploiting this opening, using customs duties, tax harmonisation, and a nascent reintegration blueprint to draw Transnistria incre

Long gone are the days of muskets, bayonets, and line infantry. Throughout history, the nature of conflict has consistently evolved. Both World Wars drove major advances and a growing reliance on radio communications, aircraft, and tanks, and ultimately culminated in the birth of the nuclear bomb. The Cold War era saw an increased use of precision guided missiles (PGMs), satellite GPS, and surveillance. Today, artificial intelligence, especially drones, is reshaping moder

Orbán spent 16 years making himself the EU’s biggest problem. His legacy, it turns out, is an opposition equipped with a supermajority to dismantle everything that he built – if they choose to. Last Sunday, Péter Magyar 's insurgent Tisza party got the mandate to re-wire the state Viktor Orbán had consolidated around himself. For the EU, the implications of this election are immediate, and for once are in Brussels’ favour. The most relevant and urgent consequence is that the

‘For any government official or despot, power over his own people takes precedence over everything else’- Jean Baudrillard In Terry Gilliam’s Kafkaesque black comedy Brazil (1985), Sam Lowry, a low-ranking bureaucrat, joins his affluent, ostentatious mother, Ida, in a restaurant. Their meal is served - at which point - sudden explosions blast shrapnel across the room, saturating the air with shouting, screams, and smoke. The restaurant has been subject to a terrorist attack

While the United States and much of the world was focused on the fallout from the Epstein files, the second phase of the Gaza peace plan began . If the current Trump administration manages to deliver a breakthrough in the Middle East, it would be by far the president’s most significant achievement on the world stage so far. Talk of a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump may have died down, but his own desire for it remains obvious, as shown by his angry messages to the Norwegian prime

Northern Europe’s security centre of gravity has moved north and east since 2022: the Baltic Sea, the GIUK gap , the Norwegian Sea, and Arctic approaches now define the front edge of deterrence and reinforcement. In this setting, Ukraine should be analysed less as the object of Northern policy and more as the catalyst that is reshaping it. Two overlapping mini-laterals, NB8 and JEF , offer a pragmatic architecture, one optimised for political alignment and signalling, the ot

International sanctions often hurl target states into a form of survival mode. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has faced increasing isolation from Western nations . This isolation has extended beyond politics and economics into the world of international sport. Russian teams and officials have been expelled or suspended from numerous international sporting federations, significantly reducing the country’s presence on the global sporting stage. The 2024 Paris Olympic Games saw

From a distance it is hard to see why Vladimir Putin did not accept December’s peace plan for the Ukraine war, to prevent it entering its fourth year. The deal would have forced Ukraine to secede far more territory to Russia than the actual inroads made. Ukraine would have to hold elections, be forbidden from joining NATO, and reduce the size of its army. These were all crucial war aims for Russia before the beginning of the ‘special military operation,’ so it is mystifying

How many Ukrainian soldiers have died in the last three years of war? You probably haven’t heard because, newsworthy as the figure should be, western media outlets rarely report it. The latest authoritative calculation suggests that both sides have lost roughly the same number of men: that is, approximately 200,000 to 220,000 dead. Staggeringly, this is more soldiers than the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa combined lost in the First World War. The sad tr

When a conflict is in its twilight hours, its final death throes often manifest as an exponentially rapid alteration in at least one of its combatant’s positions, be they military or diplomatic. In the case of the largest and bloodiest war continental Europe has seen since the Second World War, we can now see clear evidence of the latter - and not from the Ukrainian camp. The culminating peace proposals from a weekend of breakneck cross-Atlantic detente-by-press-communique wi

Two peace proposals now frame the future of Ukraine . Washington's draft plan focuses on concessions and neutrality, while Brussels has unveiled a new framework built around the principle that "borders cannot be changed by force" . At first glance, they seem to represent different strategies. In reality, they reflect two competing ways the world has thought about security for nearly a century. The first is universalism, the idea that every state, large or small, enjoys the sa

Finland and Lithuania are about to send a young man to his death. The 21-year-old in question is Daniil Mukhametov , who has fled Russia to avoid forced military service. Pursued by Russian police, he bought a ticket on the Kaliningrad train that transits Lithuania, used keys purchased online to open a carriage, and jumped from a moving train. He then travelled via Tallinn to Finland, where he sought asylum. Now he is at risk of deportation. It is almost impossible to believ

In the heat of Summer 2023, as tourists swarmed Crete’s postcard-perfect beaches, Greek police raided a fertility clinic in the port town of Chania. What they uncovered was a sophisticated operation involving illegal surrogacy and human trafficking. I first heard about the case through the Greek community in Melbourne. Some of the commissioning parents involved were known within those circles and word of the investigation in Crete circulated quickly. At first, the details w

In the shadows, Putin’s intelligence services have been leaving civilian casualties, sabotaged infrastructure, burnt out buildings and downed planes in their wake for over three years. A ravaged Europe lies almost completely unresponsive. For sixty heartstopping minutes, a full-to-capacity Falcon 900LX jet circles above Bulgaria in a state of panic. The pilots and security detail are frantically scrambling over paper maps and charts, desperate to plot a safe route to the grou

Articles four and five of the North Atlantic Treaty have been on every European leader’s lips this past week, as Russian drones were...

A peaceful sky is worth fighting for, and while Ukrainian air defence has been duelling Russian and Iranian drones since the beginning of...

Mid-August was filled with discussions on the Russia-Ukraine situation. On the 15 th , Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin in...

As China's grandest military parade approaches, Russian President Vladimir Putin has confirmed his attendance at this commemoration of...

The persistence of the West’s continuing gluttony for Russian hydrocarbons doesn’t just counteract our aid but is utterly shameful. Why...