Emerging Risks

Russia has failed to understand the importance of airpower.

archived 7 May 2022 14:44:35 UTC

Putin might declare a war on Ukraine, thus allowing the Kremlin to mobilize the country and leverage the millions of reservists it has.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was correct when he said that the West would now like to see a ‘weakened Russia.’

Russia plans a rare flight of the Ilyushin Il-80, which is designed to accommodate top officials in the event of a nuclear war, during its coming "Victory Day" march.

Some military analysts believe that harping on Russia’s nuclear capability is a mistake, one that emphasizes history over present-day reality.

Explosions in the Russian-aligned breakaway region of Transnistria have raised the threat of a broader war. While Russia's limited strength and difficulties in Ukraine make an invasion of Moldova unli

In early March, defense officials avoided even confirming the first Stinger missiles were being sent to Ukraine amid concerns of escalating the conflict as Russian troops marched toward Kyiv, and defense analysts counted the days until Russian President Vladimir Putin would likely control the government of his next-door neighbor.  But over the last two months, as Ukraine has made a stand and fought back against the invasion, the aid has ballooned to billions of dollars' worth of helicopters, armored vehicles, newly developed drones and artillery.

Speculation is rife about whether President Vladimir Putin will use Russia's Victory Day parade on May 9 to show the world just how powerful Russia really is.

A search by Newsweek on a local recruiting website found more than a dozen job adverts hiring recruits in mobilization training.

The war in Ukraine is proving extraordinarily lethal for Russian generals, the gray men bedecked in service medals, who are being aggressively targeted by Uk...

Russian combat losses in Ukraine, problems with this year’s spring draft, trouble recruiting volunteers, and difficulties in forcing soldiers to fight abroad in the absence of a declaration of war are prompting ever more questions about how sustainable Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine is at its current level of manning and resourcing (Online.ua, March 2; LBC, April 28). …

Russian news programs discussing the war in Ukraine are ramping up talks of nuclear Armageddon.

Russia's envoy told Newsweek Moscow is "compelled to warn of the emerging risks associated with the intervention of NATO states into the Russian special military operation."

Targeting assistance is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine.

Hundreds of Hezbollah supporters carried out a demonstration along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

As hostilities escalate out of the public eye, the likelihood of a direct Iranian attack on Israel has increased greatly

The Il-80 exhibited on Wednesday, May 4, in the rehearsal for the May 9 Victory Parade was designed as a

On Russia’s Victory Day, we might find out whether Putin intends to extend his war to the rest of the planet.

Following the start of Russia’s large-scale military re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, concerns arose about the role that the Transnistrian region of Moldova could play in the Kremlin’s war plans. The territory has been under Russian military occupation since 1992, with Moscow’s military, security and civilian officials directing, assisting and funding its administration. It has de facto been run …

Few people in the West are aware of how close Russia now is to escalating the war in Ukraine into an all-out nuclear conflict with the West. President Vladimir Putin is backed into a corner. A loss in the war in Ukraine, which is likely if it drags on in a conventional manner, will cause him serious political damage at home. To support him, the Russian media is now openly contemplating the benefits of a nuclear strike against the West. How will this end? It’s difficult to know. But the West needs to start realising that the threat is possible and even likely.

So, there’s a risk now emerging that in the face of military defeat at the conventional level, Russia will use nuclear weapons and plunge the world into a new and uncertain future. It’s a future in which low-yield nuclear weapons become usable in conflicts, certainly in terms of implicit and explicit coercive threats against military intervention—as China might do in a Taiwan crisis. In the worst case, a different perception of the operational utility of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons emerges in comparison to strategic nuclear forces. The nuclear genie is out of the bottle, and the question is whether it can ever be put back in.

The official warns that from Putin's vantage point, though, deep dissatisfaction with the situation in Ukraine and fear of the west turning the tide might actually provoke a nuclear display of some sort—one intended to shock the west and bring a halt to the war. The supply of western arms is also now a serious game changer, resupplying Ukraine while Russia is increasingly constrained. "Escalation is now a true danger," says the senior official.

The Russian president has threatened retaliation if NATO crosses "red lines" in Ukraine. Some experts say those lines have already been crossed.

The tone and tempo of threats from the Kremlin has escalated amid claims that Russia is fighting a wider war. It [nuclear war] still seems monstrously unlikely, but no longer unthinkable.

Moscow is recasting its fight with Ukraine as a broader war between Russia and the West, as Kremlin leaders and state propaganda outlets warn Russians that the conflict with its smaller neighbor could spill over into a global clash. The Kremlin and state-controlled media have warned in recent days that the West ultimately seeks to contain—or even destroy—Russia and have threatened retaliation, including the possibility of nuclear strikes.

US political scientist Graham Allison on Vladimir Putin and his friendship with Xi Jinping I think if you tried to put it in a single sentence, it is that if Putin is forced to choose between losing on the one hand in Ukraine and escalating the level of destruction, there’s every reason to believe he’ll escalate the level of destruction.

archived 1 May 2022 17:17:28 UTC

The deadlocked war with Ukraine has pushed Russia into an irreconcilable dilemma: it can neither accept reality nor keep denying it. This contradiction can be seen both in the official discourse on the unfolding disaster and the societal response to it. As one example, rampant patriotic mobilization persists alongside the pretense that normal life continues undisturbed. Likewise, there is the …

Joe Biden has chosen a high-risk strategy against Russia in Ukraine without managing, explaining, or perhaps comprehending the dangers.