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With the US summit behind it, China is squaring up for the next defining trade battle. It’s very confident that it will win. Source: Unspash Europe and China may be heading for a trade war. The European Commission said on May 29 that its economic and security interests will require “a more robust and coherent response” to a surge in Chinese exports to the bloc. The current situation is “not sustainable,” it said. For its part, China accused the Commission of seeking a scapego

Europe will struggle to defend itself against Russia without the aid of Ukraine’s battle-tested legions. Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Russia’s recent missile and drone strikes and follow-on attacks against Ukraine represent a cruel exercise in signaling. Following a brief ceasefire, Russia revealed that it can breach Ukraine’s aerial defenses. By deploying an unparalleled barrage, Putin arguably sent a veiled warning to Europe that their cities and fac

Dating apps promise connection, chemistry, and maybe even love. For Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services, they also offer something else: data, emotional vulnerability, and a private channel to manipulate targets. When Russia launched its full-scale illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the front lines extended beyond the physical battlefield into the digital space. Among many other sites, dating platforms such as Tinder and its local equivalents became operati

Drones are powerful — and can cause chaos. Remedies are urgent to deploy them safely. Source: Jessica Tisemann / Neue Deister-Zeitung A busy commercial airport cancels all flights twice in quick succession. The trigger? Small, remote-controlled, low-flying objects. Safety concerns over drone activity and the defensive measures in place to deal with drones caused chaos this year at El Paso’s international airport. Cheap, expendable drones also dominate modern battlefields. Th

Ukraine’s mid-range strike capacity is growing and smashing Russian supply lines, with autonomous systems taking the lead. Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine At the turn of 2026, Russia appeared to pose the greater mid-range threat. Its forces were striking Ukraine’s rear with drones at will, using satellite links, including Starlink, to bypass electronic warfare. It had also increased its use of cheap Molniya medium-range strike drones, with varied control

Source: NATO Multinational Battlegroup Estonia Washington—As Ukrainian and Russian delegates take stock of resuming peace talks—temporarily on a “situational” hold amid the US conflict with Iran—there is growing agreement among Kyiv’s partners that, after an agreement is reached, Western troops will be needed in Ukraine to monitor and enforce it. Several Western states have already committed to contribute forces, with the United Kingdom and France recently announcing their wi

The dead of World War II are now conscripts for the Putin’s regime’s battle to own 20th century history. The Immortal Regiment march in Montpellier, France / Source polk.press On May 8 and 9, so-called Immortal Regiment marches were staged across dozens of countries, with crowds carrying portraits of Russian relatives who died in World War II. The significance is far greater than mere commemoration; however, the Kremlin-aided parades represent a key regime propaganda event.

‘We didn’t kidnap anyone’, Russia’s then-ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, insisted in 2023. ‘We saved these children’. The ambassador was not simply denying the systematic deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children by Russian occupation forces in Ukraine, a crime for which there is a growing body of evidence from international organisations, researchers, and human rights groups. He was using a well-known playbook – an information campaign seeking to paint t

The EU's new defense industry program has the right architecture. The factories, the workers, and the political will are another matter. Rheinmetall AG artillery ammunition factory in Lithuania / A. Pliadis / Lithuanian MOD Europe’s new €1.5bn ($1.8bn) defense industry program has a line item nobody expected. Factories built to produce counter-drone weapons can now claim EU money to protect themselves from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Commission adopted the work progr

An exercise testing NATO responses to hybrid attacks revealed a need for the West to be more nimble, and willing to mimic enemy tactics to defend itself. Source: NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) At Lithuania’s Šiauliai International Airport, a delegation receives reports of sudden signal degradation and communications disruption across Ukraine. The news is an early indicator of spillover from an enhanced Russian jamming operation and raises serious quest

One of the features that makes propaganda effective is that it reshapes how people understand the world around them, turning war into ‘peace’ and lies into ‘truth’. Propaganda, disinformation, and information manipulation more generally do not work like an order from a commander which makes a person take up arms; its influence is more gradual and more insidious. The non-governmental group LingvaLexa, with the support of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and the

Ukraine’s women are central to sustaining the state, supporting the front and holding society together under the extreme pressure of Russian aggression. Photo: Daniel Kosoy / UNITED24 The country offers a striking case study of the way war reshapes the roles of women and men, not only on the battlefield, but across society, the economy, and national recovery. Approximately 100,000 women are serving in Ukraine’s armed forces out of a total of one million personnel. Around 5,50

Western nations can do more to stop criminal gangs forcing Ukrainians into sexual slavery. By Luca Iaconelli / Unsplash Amid widespread suffering and more than 180,000 documented war crimes committed by Russia during its war on Ukraine, the heightened risk of sex trafficking of Ukrainians has been largely absent from US and European policy discussions. Millions of forcibly displaced people, in particular women and children, have become increasingly vulnerable to transnationa

A crashed Russian Shahed-136 drone (The National Guard of Ukraine) Bottom lines up front The Islamic Republic of Iran should be held accountable for its role in supplying Russia with the means to carry out international crimes against civilians in Ukraine. Researchers have collected evidence indicating that Iranian officials could be held legally liable for supplying its drones to Russia to be used in Ukraine. There are several international and domestic legal mechanisms tha

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approached the four-year mark in early 2026, the international media widely reported that the war had now lasted longer than the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany during World War II. This historical comparison made for attention-grabbing headlines, but it was not entirely accurate. In fact, the Russia-Ukraine War did not begin in 2022; it started eight years earlier in 2014. Efforts to end the war must reflect this reality. Despite

For decades, Western defense strategy assumed that technological superiority ensured victory. That assumption proves false in modern conflict. Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Conflict is being shaped less by the performance of advanced systems than by the ability to produce, sustain, and regenerate them at scale. Mass is the new buzzword, along with non-admiring references to “exquisite” high-end systems There is now a realization of a growing gap between

Kyiv is disrupting Russia’s African networks. That reduces Moscow’s ability to raise money and to pressure Europe’s most vulnerable frontier. By EUvsDisinfo Russia’s war against Ukraine is increasingly being contested in Africa, where Ukraine has begun targeting Russian networks far beyond the European battlefield. The operations are limited in scale but strategically focused, aimed at disrupting the infrastructure Moscow relies on to sustain its war effort and pressure NATO’

Russia’s shadow war in Europe is escalating. Allies need a new strategy before it’s too late. Prime Minister Tusk confirmed the incident on Warsaw–Lublin railway line was an act of sabotage. Source: Donald Tusk / X/ Press materials An unidentified object crosses into Lithuanian airspace from Kaliningrad and is quickly picked up by NATO radar systems. It’s small, fast, and unregistered. Shortly thereafter, three more similar objects joined in formation. NATO aircraft are scram

Changes at the top of the defense hierarchy reveal old-style graft and pressure to raise military spending efficiency. Photo: Vardan Papykian / Unsplash Russia’s Ministry of Defense has a spending problem. That’s not just because the country started a war of choice against Ukraine, at a staggering human and economic cost; it’s also because the military system is riddled with corruption, and no one has been able to get a grip on it. Of course, it’s true that Vladimir Putin’s

Source: Kremlin.ru The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine recently entered a fifth year and has now been underway for longer than the entire cataclysmic conflict between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during World War II. This historical comparison does not flatter Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has turned veneration of the fight against Hitler into an unofficial state religion. While Red Army troops played a key role in the Nazi defeat and managed to advance th