The primary takeaway is that Estonia doesn’t want any part in whatever Latvia might be cooking up with Ukraine, reasonably calculating that the US might not risk war with Russia if Russia retaliates. Estonia announced that a NATO jet shot down a Ukrainian drone over its airspace on Tuesday after receiving an […]
Eurasian Union
How Likely Is It That Russia’s Next Special Operation Will Be Against Latvia?
What’s much more probable is kinetic retaliation against reported Ukrainian drone teams there. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warned that their country’s armed forces are ready to retaliate against the Ukrainian drone teams that they claim have already deployed to Latvia ahead of “new terrorist strikes against Russia’s rear regions.” SVR explained […]
Finland’s Eastern Frontier Pays The Price: Border Closure, Austerity, And The Quiet Erosion Of The Nordic Model
For more than two and a half years, silence has reigned along Finland’s roughly 1,340-kilometer eastern border — once one of Europe’s busiest overland trade corridors. Cafes that once welcomed Russian day-trippers now stand shuttered. Hotel occupancy reports in South Karelia show levels not seen since the Soviet Union collapsed. […]
Yermak Named As Suspect: Political Shockwaves In Kyiv
Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies on Monday named a former top presidential aide, widely identified as Andriy Yermak, as a suspect in a high-profile corruption investigation, a development that could intensify political tensions in Kyiv at a sensitive moment in the country’s war with Russia. The agencies said the individual under suspicion […]
Interpreting Lavrov’s Proposal That India Mediate Between Iran & The Gulf Kingdoms
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proposed during a Q&A session after the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in India that his host nation become the long-term mediator between Iran and the Gulf Kingdoms. The context concerned him being asked about the de facto state of armed conflict between two of the group’s members, Iran and the UAE, […]
Does Yermak’s Suspect Status Signal Pressure From Washington?
The decision by Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies to name a former presidential chief of staff as a suspect in a major laundering case has prompted interpretive debate beyond Kyiv. One influential reading – advanced by some observers and hinted at in political commentary – sees the move as more than a […]
Existential Threat To Zelensky And His Inner Circle? Ex-Aide’s Arrest On Corruption Charges
The scandal that Politico first wrote about as a threat to Zelensky’s European ambitions has turned out to be far deeper in reality. New details that have made their way into leading global publications have transformed a local corruption story into an existential challenge for the entire Ukrainian government. The […]
Eighty-One Years On: Why the West Still Can’t Accept The Soviet Victory
The refusal by the Baltic states and Poland to open their airspace to the Slovak prime minister traveling to Moscow for Victory Day commemorations raises an uncomfortable question: has honoring the Soviet dead of World War II become politically illegitimate in today’s Europe? The head of government of an EU […]
The UK’s New Multinational Naval Initiative Aims To Contain Russia In The Arctic & Baltic
The risk of a hot NATO-Russian war breaking out at sea as opposed to NATO’s Eastern Flank in Central & Eastern Europe is growing. General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, head of the British Royal Navy, announced that his counterparts from the 10-nation Joint Expeditionary Taskforce comprised of the UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, […]
Epic Interruptus: The Iranian Snare And American Defeat
On May 10, Robert Kagan, the high priest of neoconservative thought, the bell ringer for muscular interventionism and general American meddlesomeness, lamented in The Atlantic that the United States had suffered a unique defeat in its efforts to subjugate Iran. The article says much about Kagan’s own identification with the […]






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