Tag Archives: Featured

by Susan Katz Keating The Kremlin faked a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, in order to show that the gravely ill warlord is in good health, according to a Ukrainian official. Kadyrov fell into a coma last month, Ukrainian SBU Security Service officials said. “Yes, …

A ‘silent’ short-range mortar system, the 2B25 Spigot, has been spotted being used by Russian forces in Ukraine. Unlike other mortars, the weapon is said to be only as loud as a suppressed 7.62x39mm round being fired from a Kalashnikov rifle. And, according to a promotional video, the 2B25 was …

by Heath Hansen It was 0530 hours the morning our first sergeant kicked open the door to our tent, and told us to “get the fuck outside and form it up!” Late the previous night, we returned to base from a 10-day mission in Afghanistan. I could see through a …

Belgrade has launched an “unprecedented staging of advanced Serbian artillery, tanks, and mechanized infantry units” at the border with Kosovo, a senior U.S. official told reporters on Friday. The White House urged Serbia to pull back what it said is a large military deployment from its border with Kosovo amid …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The next time U.S. intelligence gatekeepers convene to address Chinese espionage against the United States, lawmakers should be given a cache of memory assistance devices. Perhaps that will stop them from succumbing anew to the amnesia that has plagued our China-watchers for decades.   I first …

RFE/RL Balkan Service Kosovar police have searched homes and buildings in a northern, ethnic-Serb-dominated district where an attack on an Orthodox monastery left four people dead, including a police officer. Roads into the village of Banjska, where the monastery is located, remained blocked by police on September 26, and authorities …

ANALYSIS by John “Wolf” Wagner Mold, raw sewage, broken windows, and fire systems that don’t work. The Government Accountability Office recently highlighted these and other severe problems plaguing military barracks across the services. The problems also include non-existent maintenance and repairs, poor cleaning services, a lack of accountability, and more. …

ANALYSIS by John “Wolf” Wagner If others also begin to ground the aircraft, we may be looking at a much more serious problem with our platform. Now that investigators have found a debris field for the Marine Corps F-35B that was ‘lost’ Sunday after the pilot ejected, the questions are …

by Rick Kiernan, The War Horse On Oct. 28, 1991, I settled into an hours-long commercial flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Moscow. By year’s end, the iconic Soviet flag would fly over the Kremlin for the final time, silently signaling the collapse of the USSR after nearly seven decades. I …

by Michael Scollon and Fereshteh Ghazi Sharmin Habibi recalls the circumstances of her husband’s killing at the hands of Iran’s security forces. But she could be talking about any number of the protesters who died across the country during a brutal state crackdown on dissent over the past year. “I was …