Putin’s Pyrrhic Victory

Brian Milakovsky

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On March 25, the deputy chief of the Russian military declared that the main emphasis of Russia’s brutal one-month-old Ukraine invasion would now be in the east, where it would seek “the liberation” of the Donbas. To many Western observers, the aim of the statement was clear: with the Russian offensives around Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other major Ukrainian cities virtually stalled and Russian forces absorbing heavy losses, Moscow needed a way to reclaim the mission. Focusing on the Donbas—where it has long been commanding, arming, and reinforcing separatists in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces—was a convenient way to do so.

One Of Russia’s Newest Air Defense Systems Has Been Captured In Ukraine

JOSEPH TREVITHICK

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Ukrainian forces continue to capture, or at least stumble across, examples of some of Russia's most sophisticated ground combat hardware as the conflict in the country rages on. Just this past weekend, pictures emerged online showing a Russian radar-equipped air defense command post vehicle, part of a larger system known as Barnaul-T, that Ukrainian troops found during a counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region. The fact that this vehicle is intended to serve as a sensor, command and control, and communications node all rolled into one could make it a particularly invaluable source of intelligence for Ukrainian and foreign governments, as well as be a significant operational loss for Russian forces.

Ukrainian Mi-24 Attack Helicopters Fly Daring Cross-Border Strike On Russia: Reports

TYLER ROGOWAY

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Details are very limited at this time and are likely going to change as more information comes available, but reports indicate that a pair of Ukrainian Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters crossed low over the border into Russia early Friday morning and struck an oil storage facility in Belgorod. If these details stick, the pre-dawn strike is the riskiest direct attack on Russian interests outside Ukraine by Ukrainian forces since the war began five weeks ago — it would also seemingly be the first strike launched by manned aircraft against Russian territory since at least the Korean War.

A Country of Their Own

Francis Fukuyama

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Liberalism is in peril. The fundamentals of liberal societies are tolerance of difference, respect for individual rights, and the rule of law, and all are under threat as the world suffers what can be called a democratic recession or even a depression. According to Freedom House, political rights and civil liberties around the world have fallen each year for the last 16 years. Liberalism’s decline is evident in the growing strength of autocracies such as China and Russia, the erosion of liberal—or nominally liberal—institutions in countries such as Hungary and Turkey, and the backsliding of liberal democracies such as India and the United States.

Space Technologies – Key to the Modern Battlefield

Grant Anderson

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The volume of information and video footage – both from perspectives on the ground and from high in the sky – coming out of the war in Ukraine is simply astounding. Certainly, the world has been exposed to detailed and wrenching combat footage – live and near-live – in wars past, starting really in Vietnam, leaping into real-time in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and becoming more intimate with every conflict since the September 11th terrorist attacks. But the bird's eye view into combat has never been like this.