This week’s big news of a major new US aid package has boosted Ukrainian morale considerably and sparked fresh optimism over the country’s military prospects. Indeed, the change in tone across Ukraine and among the country’s partners in recent days has been tangible. During the previous six months, coverage of the war had grown increasingly gloomy as declining Western support forced Ukraine’s outgunned front line troops and air defense crews to ration dwindling supplies of ammunition. With the first deliveries of US weapons expected to reach the front almost immediately, there is now renewed t ..read more

“Israel Alone,” blared the Economist’s cover story in late March. This sentiment resonated deeply with Israelis. Since Hamas’s devastating attack on October 7, the fight to free hostages and defend itself from vicious terrorism feels like a solitary battle. Six months into the conflict, 133 Israeli hostages still languish in Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have perished, and the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip worsens by the day. Hamas has suffered major setbacks but remains entrenched. Iran’s unprecedented April 13 attack on Israel, which included more than three hundred dron ..read more

This summer, elections for the Syrian People’s Assembly will be held in the areas controlled by the government under Bashar al-Assad. As the electoral process unfolds, a series of articles will deconstruct the key elements of Syrian elections and their role in legitimizing Baath Party rule. It will also conduct a deep dive into the challenges of moving ahead with electoral reform in the United Nations (UN)-facilitated political process. The political environment in Syria has remained unchanged since the 2020 elections. Thus, the polls will be held again against a backdrop of massive displ ..read more

Original Source On April 23, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Marc Polymeropoulos wrote a book review for The Cipher Brief of Hala Gorani’s “But You Don’t Look Arab and Other Tales of Unbelonging.” The review covers the story of Emmy Award-winning international journalist Hala Gorani, from her time as a globe-trotting correspondent and anchor with her own lifelong search for identity as the daughter of Syrian immigrants. Fellow Marc Polymeropoulos Nonresident Senior Fellow Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Afghanistan Europe & Eurasia Forward Defens ..read more

In recent months, Russia has launched a major new bombing campaign targeting Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. Building on key lessons learned from an earlier air offensive conducted during the first winter of the war, the current wave of Russian airstrikes has concentrated on Ukraine’s largest power plants with devastating results. Since the beginning of 2024, a large part of Ukraine’s thermal and hydro power generation capacity has been damaged or destroyed. “Rather than continuing to focus their attacks on Ukraine’s transmission systems, from late March Russia began launching massiv ..read more

In Season 2, Episode 1 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by the award-winning BBC investigative journalist Nawal Al-Maghafi to talk about her film exposing American mercenaries in Yemen. One of the few journalists to report from Yemen first-hand, Nawal discusses the Delaware-registered private military company (PMC) contracted by the UAE to kill “terrorists”, her meetings with two of the Americans involved, and the PMC’s training of Yemeni units – including former al-Qaeda operatives – to conduct targeted assassinations. She also describes how so many of those kil ..read more

The post Wechsler joins Scripps News to discuss Iranian and Israeli strikes appeared first on Atlantic Council ..read more

Russia has launched its third major mobilization wave in anticipation of its upcoming spring/summer campaign to take more land in Ukraine. On March 31, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to begin the next conscription drive, setting the target at 150,000 new inductees slated for military service. This came after a decision in July of last year by the Russian Duma to raise the maximum age of conscription from twenty-seven to thirty, significantly increasing the pool of available recruits. Ukrainian estimates put the number of new soldiers that could be inducted in the third Russia ..read more

In October 2022, the Kremlin launched what was then the most comprehensive bombing campaign of the war. For the next five months, waves of Russian missiles and drones struck Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure on an almost daily basis. The attacks aimed to break Ukraine’s resistance by making life as unbearable as possible for tens of millions of Ukrainian civilians. At the time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov openly stated that Ukraine could “end the suffering” of the civilian population by fulfilling Russia’s demands. Instead, the Ukrainian authorities worked with the country’s partner ..read more

Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel on April 14, in retaliation for an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria, represented the most dangerous round of conflict between the two countries in decades. This attack involved more than 350 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. The killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi at the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus on April 1 was the final straw. Zahedi joined a long list of Iranian officers killed in Syria by Israel since December 2023, including Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a senior IRGC officer assassinate ..read more