Phillips O’Brien is professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews.
I’m told that these days you can still buy pastries which look like Boris Johnson, or drink beers with Boris Johnson’s face on the label, in Kyiv. There is even a Boris Johnson street somewhere in southern Ukraine. Though it has been described as ‘nondescript’ it’s still a sign that Britain’s early support for Ukraine
Well it took two months, but the inevitable happened this week: Yevgeny Prigozhin, one time chef and later war-criminal extraordinaire for Vladimir Putin, was publicly executed in the most extraordinary way. While flying on his private jet with the upper echelon of his Wagner Group, he was shot down by a Russian military operated anti-air
In the last few weeks, words like ‘slow’, ‘grinding’ and even ‘failure’ have been used to describe the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive. The fact that Ukrainian forces have not broken through Russian lines and indeed have only liberated a relatively small amount of Ukraine’s occupied territory after seven weeks (though to be fair, they’ve taken about
What weapons will Ukraine get next? It’s a crucial question that matters perhaps more than anything else for understanding how the Russo-Ukraine war will end. For the last few months two different systems have received the most attention, systems that Ukraine has asked for almost daily. These are tanks, or MBTs (Main Battle Tanks), the
Ahead of Russia’s annual Victory Day celebration on 9 May – which marks the date the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany – the world is once again playing a will he, won’t he game with Vladimir Putin. It is inconceivable that Putin will be able to declare any kind of victory in the Donbas on
We face a serious dilemma as the Battle of the Donbas begins. The idea that the Russian army remains a powerful, effective force capable of breaking through Ukrainian lines and encircling forces in the Donbas remains widespread. It is regularly claimed that now the Russians have shortened their supply lines, concentrated and rebuilt their forces,
The sinking of the Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva is both a reminder of the past and a marker for the future. It harkens back to a lesson learned forty years ago. It was in 1982, in the waters around the Falkland Islands, that the ability of anti-ship missiles to destroy modern warships was brought home
So much had been written about the Russian armed forces’ modernisation and improvement over the last decade that that it was widely believed that the Russians possessed one of the largest and most powerful armies in the world until a few weeks ago. The army might not be on par with the US or China,
