Dr Chris Tuck A recurring question in the war in Ukraine has been ‘who is winning?’ At the moment, it is clear that, despite the large-scale failure of his initial invasion, Putin still hopes that that a clear-cut military victory can be obtained. But the question of whether further gains or losses on the ground might… Read More ‘Losing as Winning:’ Putin’s Developing Narrative of Victory
DR GERAINT HUGHES On the night of the 20th-21st August 1968, Soviet paratroopers and spetsnaz soldiers seized Ruzyne airport outside Prague, proceeding subsequently to take over key points in the Czechoslovak capital. The following day, 22 Soviet Army divisions – augmented by contingents from four other ‘fraternal’ Warsaw Pact states (Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic,… Read More The End of the Prague Spring – Fifty Years On
DR GERAINT HUGHES At the end of last month The Economist published a special report on ‘The Future of War’ by Matthew Symonds. Symonds’ report is well-researched and addresses a wide array of contemporary issues and conceptual challenges, ranging from the renewed relevance of Article 5 for NATO to the likely implications of introducing AI… Read More Predicting future trends in warfare
DR DEBORAH SANDERS One of the key challenges of military reform for any military organisation is the question ‘are we preparing for the right war?’ In my article ‘”The War We Want; The War That We Get”: Ukraine’s Military Reform and the Conflict in the East’, I examine this issue in the context of Ukrainian… Read More Ukraine’s Military Reform and the Conflict in the East
DR EMMANUEL KARAGIANNIS and DR TRACEY GERMAN The conflict in eastern Ukraine has entered its fourth year with little sign of a negotiated resolution. Crimea has been absorbed into the Russian Federation and celebrated the third anniversary of its ‘integration’ in March 2017. To date, most scholarly analyses of the conflict have focused on the… Read More The Ukrainian Crisis: The Role of, and Implications for, Sub-State and Non-State Actors
DR EMMANUEL KARAGIANNIS Following the Russian annexation of Crimea and the ongoing hostilities in eastern Ukraine, the Poroshenko government has struggled to revive the country’s economy. In 2015, the country’s economy was reduced by 12 percent and inflation reached 48.7 percent. IMF loans and EU financial packages have saved Ukraine from financial collapse. More importantly, Ukraine… Read More Is Russia turning Ukraine into a Fragile State?
ROBERT SEELY Over 18 months into Russia’s not-so-very-proxy, proxy war in Ukraine, there remains a thriving and fascinating debate over the tools of conflict that Russia uses, how one describes those tools and where Russia’s next ‘target’ may be. I was asked to respond to Rod Thornton’s recent blog on Russia. In his excellent piece,… Read More RUSSIA HYBRID WAR – A RESPONSE
by Dr ROD THORNTON There has been much sabre-rattling by Moscow recently. Russian military activity has increased markedly since the Maidan events in Ukraine in early 2014. Russian troops initially massed on Ukraine’s borders in what was ostensibly a scheduled military exercise, but which was also clearly a means of applying psychological pressure on Kiev.… Read More ‘The Russians are coming!’ Well, not just yet…
This is the fifth in a series of posts from members of the Defence Studies Department’s Regional Security Research Centre, focusing on Russia and the implications of its increasingly assertive posture on the international stage. This post builds on a previous post to examine the prospects for conventional arms control in the wake of the… Read More Conventional Arms Control After Ukraine
This is the fourth in a series of posts from members of the Defence Studies Department’s Regional Security Research Centre, focusing on Russia and the implications of its increasingly assertive posture on the international stage. This post examines the implications of the crisis in Ukraine for EU-Russian relations. Later posts will explore implications for conventional… Read More From Brussels with love? The European Union in conflict with Russia
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