Author: TheGuardian

Viewed purely in terms of the size of their formations and equipment, Russian ground forces in Ukraine still pose a serious threat on a number of axes. In practice, however, it is highly unlikely the Russian military can recover from its increasingly terminal trajectory on the battlefield, though its defeat will take time and bitter fighting. To understand why, it is necessary to examine the force beyond its equipment and personnel. The U.S. assesses military capability through the abbreviation DOTMLPF. That senior U.S. officers regularly try to roll this off the tongue as an acronym may exemplify military absurdity,...

The Ukrainians have (again) done what nobody believed they could. They have (again) defeated the supposedly mighty Russia on the battlefield, shown up the underlying incompetence and moral rot of the Putin system. It took them just six days to take back whole swaths of territory in north-eastern Ukraine that it took Russia six months to conquer. The Russian military, political and propaganda elites are all blaming each other: rifts that usually rumble under the surface are now visible to all. Putin looks shaken. Now it is time for us to act as well. Not just by increasing help...

If it is too cold in the garage, Vadim sleeps in his old car. He lived on the third floor of an apartment block by Borodianka’s central street, but it was destroyed by Russian grad missiles in March. There is barely anything here for him now, beyond the section of basement he could call his own. Every day he spends hours inside it sifting through the rubble, picking out fragments of his family’s belongings. It keeps him busy, he said. The walk out of town to his garage is long and dispiriting but Vadim has few options. He does...

North Korea could send workers to two Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine, according to Russia’s ambassador in Pyongyang. The move would pose a challenge to international sanctions against the North’s nuclear weapons program. According to NK News, a Seoul-based website, ambassador Alexander Matsegora said North Korean workers could help rebuild the war-shattered infrastructure in the self-proclaimed people’s republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. Matsegora said there were potentially “a lot of opportunities” for economic cooperation between the North and the self-proclaimed republics in Ukraine’s Donbas region, despite UN sanctions. He told the Russian newspaper Izvestia in an interview, according to...