Dmitry Gorenburg, an occasional WOTR contributor and expert on Russian military affairs at the CNA Corporation, sat down with Ryan Evans to chat about the state of Russia’s armed forces, its campaigns in Ukraine and Syria, Putin as a strategist, and how one becomes an expert on Russian military affairs. Have a listen!    

Editor’s Note: This is adapted from a longer article in the latest issue of International Affairs.   As the war in eastern Ukraine simmers, one of its first casualties is still discussed with regret and frustration: the Budapest Memorandum. In 1994, on the margins of the Budapest Summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation …

Editor’s note: In the New York Times, War on the Rocks editor-in-chief Ryan Evans comments on the U.S. response to Vladimir Putin’s adventurism in Ukraine. Bottom line: calls to provide arms to Ukraine miss a key point–the current approach is actually serving U.S. interests.   No doubt the war in Ukraine, which has claimed more than 6,000 …

Colby Howard and Ruslan Pukhov, eds. Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine (East View Press, 2014).   Over the last few months, the crisis in Ukraine has led to a fundamental reassessment of the state of U.S.-Russia relations. The crisis began with Russia’s almost completely non-violent military takeover of Crimea in February-March …

A prevalent strain of Western commentary suggests that Russian President Vladimir Putin is outfoxing a hapless and disunited West. If one evaluates the current round of Russia’s revanchist campaign — beginning with its annexation of Crimea — on its persistence in face of Western pressure, it has indeed been a success. Many observers fear, accordingly, …

With Russia conducting exercises on its border with Ukraine and a Russian proposal for “humanitarian” intervention on the UN Security Council table, an expansion of this war looks increasingly likely. How would America react? Late last month, we ran two polls here at War on the Rocks about the crisis in Ukraine that revealed as much about …

Two polls on Ukraine for you, dear readers. Please answer them both. We do not yet know if Russian President Vladimir Putin will escalate or deescalate Russia’s involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, in the aftermath of the MH17 shoot down. It is possible that Putin will direct Russian military forces to openly invade eastern Ukraine. …

Fears of further escalation in Ukraine seem to be going away. President Vladimir Putin has moved his military back from the Ukrainian border, to the satisfaction of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Ukraine’s presidential elections took place more or less without incident and produced the expected result. Financial markets don’t seem to be too worried about …

The Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, the continued destabilization of southern and eastern parts of Ukraine by separatists, and the Russian special operation forces and the approximately 40,000 Russian “peacekeepers” poised on the Russian-Ukrainian border raise the question of what, if anything, Ukrainians can do to effectively resist and defend themselves and their territory. …

My retirement from government service in 1999 brought to a close more than three decades as an “objective and non-partisan” analyst, first at the CIA and then at the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Since that time, unfettered by formal constraints, I nonetheless find myself in the habit of trying to keep an open mind and …

In the course of good old fashioned American politicking, our elected officials are routinely confronted with peers with whom they disagree vehemently. A pro-life member of Congress is seated across the table from a pro-choice member. A senator views the estate tax as an unjust “death tax,” while his colleague think it is a reasonable …

This is the latest edition of our Five Questions series. Each week, we feature an expert, practitioner, or leader answering five questions on a topic of current relevance in the world of defense, security, and foreign policy.Well, four of the questions are topical.  The fifth is about booze. We are War on the Rocks, after all. This …

Recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote a lengthy article that attempts to give a historical background for — as well as justification of — Russian actions, from a wider civilizational context. Lavrov, a veteran of word wizardry, is at his best here, driving us through carefully selected phases of Russian history, including the Mongolian …

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, hybrid warfare has become conversational short form in the West for describing Moscow’s sneaky ways of fighting war. If there’s one thing you’ve learned over the past two years about Russia, it’s that it uses hybrid warfare, a dangerous Kremlin innovation the West must learn to grapple with. In two …

The Iraqi Army defenders of Ramadi had held their dusty, stony ground for over a year and become familiar with the increasing adeptness of their opponents waving black flags. At first, these Iraqi Army units simply faced sprayed rifle fire, but then it was well-placed sniper rounds that forced these weary units to keep under …