2014-06-30 The Russians have re-entered Iraq with the delivery of Sukhois to assist the current Iraq government to fight back against insurgents. This move is limited, but allows them to play a card linking them more effectively with the current Iraq regime, Syria and Iran. According to the Moscow Times:…
2014-06-30 The French Air Force has replaced the Mirage 2000 that crashed in Niger earlier this month with another aircraft, bringing its fighter aircraft detachment for Mali up to full strength again. The new Mirage 2000, from Escadron de Chasse 1/33 ‘Navarre’, arrived at Base Aerienne 172 at N’Djamena International…
2014-06-24 Last week, one of our SLD colleagues received this message from an American in Iraq about the situation at that time. Huge stockpiles of US armor, weapons, heavy artillery, mortars, armored vehicles, tanks, the entire main weapons depot and the main helicopter base, have been captured, mostly intact, by…
2014-06-23 By Stephen Blank On June 3 Moscow announced that it was lifting its earlier embargo on arms sales to Pakistan and negotiating with Islamabad to supply the Pakistanis with Mi-35 Hind attack helicopters (a helicopter already being used in Afghanistan by the US with its Afghan allies as well).…
2014-06-19 With the first Russian Mistral completed and with the second ship on its way, the key moment has arrived to train the Russians to operate the ship. Training is crucial because the ship is so different from any ship the Russians have operated in the past. The Mistral is…
2014-06-22 by Robbin Laird The crisis in Iraq is the latest chapter in the post-Arab spring narrative. But Iraq is not an-itself crisis but part of a wider context starting with Benghazi, to Egypt, to Syria, to Iran and back again. Actions across any one part of the region reverberate…
2014-06-20 By Stephen Blank It appears that we are reaching an inflection, if not a decisive, point in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Even as Presidents Putin and Poroshenko are directly communicating with each other about Poroshenko’s proposed peace plan, the level and intensity of fighting has escalated. On June 18-19…
2014-06-16 By Stephen Blank Bismarck famously observed that Europe as such represented merely a geographical notion, certainly not a unified political entity. The Western reaction to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea has again validated this acerbic insight. And amid the absence of any Western or European…
