In early April 2023, the authorities in a few Russian regions bordering Ukraine—Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk—decided to refuse to hold the regular military parade in honor of Victory Day on May 9 (Svoboda, April 10). Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov stated that he did not want to “provoke the enemy with …

Stalemate as Strategy One thing is certain: Vladimir Putin’s generals did not plan for this. In their optimistic pre-war strategy sessions, they envisioned Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) seizing the Antonov Airport before pouring into Kyiv, the Russian military assuming control of the capital as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his cabinet …

The changes in the global balance of power, and in particular, the challenges posed by a rising China, have made it necessary for Washington to shift more diplomatic and economic resources from the Atlantic to the Pacific. America’s allies in Europe have to assume that under any projected scenario in …

Despite western sanctions, there is more Russian fuel being exported around the world than before the Ukraine crisis. It’s just coming via Saudi Arabia, India, China, and other trading states – with steep commissions. Despite western sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, some Asian and specifically West Asian …

A long time back I was visiting some remote villages where the murder of a youth who had raised his voice against corruption of a powerful local contractor and politician had attracted a lot of attention. There was an undercurrent of simmering anger among people but no one was willing …

Perhaps the recent media hype about artificial intelligence (AI) and “not-really-so” OpenAI’s program called ChatGPT, made many people worried about AI. Some – even inside AI – are convinced that, we can’t afford an AI-shima – a Fukushima-like atomic accident inside our computers and the Internet. Like another nuclear accident …

This piece doesn’t explain itself much, nor argue effectively (with citations and footnotes), but speaks to those who have already come to understand the situation in — at least — the basic shape I have. To do otherwise would require months of work, if not years. So this is a …

The recent emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT (part of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer family of language models) has attracted a lot of attention throughout the world. It is a chatbot released in November 2022, and, according to OpenAI’s website, its “dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, …

Iranian workers… have launched a series of strikes and sit-ins to protest what they regard as “systemic exploitation.” By the time of this writing, over 100,000 workers were on strike in 122 businesses in 35 cities, relatively small numbers yet significant for two reasons: the protests seem to be spreading …

Recent documents published by the Dossier Center, an investigative project set up by Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, demonstrate unequivocally that the Wagner Group is funded and run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in turn answers directly to Putin. In recent years, the Wagner Group has been particularly busy in the Middle …