While Russia’s army is bogged down in Ukraine, its mercenaries are faring no better in Africa. In late July 2024, mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a Moscow-aligned private military company, accompanied the Malian army in what the Malian regime called a “stabilization operation” in the West African country’s northeastern town of Tinzaouaten, near the Algerian […]

The post Wagner rout in Mali puts Russia on an African backfoot appeared first on Asia Times.

Russia is introducing laws aimed at closing loopholes used by those wanting to avoid the draft. Evading the draft has been relatively easy in Russia until now. All those who wanted to avoid military service needed to do was avoid receiving a paper draft notice. One option was to move without letting the authorities know […]

The post Russia toughens draft law to bolster war’s lethal frontlines appeared first on Asia Times.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has spent two days in Pyongyang, meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and signing a “comprehensive strategic partnership.” Few details are being released about this deal and its expected ramifications for rearming Russian forces stretched by the Ukraine war. But the Kremlin said the agreement would mean each […]

The post There’s a history to Moscow-Pyongyang collaboration appeared first on Asia Times.

Russian energy giant Gazprom is reported to have been hit particularly hard by sanctions imposed as a result of the war with Ukraine. An internal report – obtained and published by the Financial Times – has forecast that the company is unlikely to recover gas sales lost as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine […]

The post How Putin projects as a modern-day Peter the Great appeared first on Asia Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing for a two-day trip on May 15, 2024, and was greeted with a red-carpet welcome by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders pledged a “new era” for the Russia-China relationship, building on their “no limits partnership” struck just before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As Putin’s first […]

The post Why Russians still embrace the war appeared first on Asia Times.

Vladimir Putin appears far stronger now than he did at any other time since Russia launched a full-scale invasion into Ukrainian territory in February 2022. On the ground, Russian troops are pushing hard into Ukrainian territory and have captured several villages in the past two weeks alone. Plenty of other indicators show Russia’s growing strength […]

The post Why Putin seems stronger now than a year ago appeared first on Asia Times.

The recent arrest of Timur Ivanov, Russia’s deputy defense minister and close ally of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, has rocked the country’s politics. Ivanov was an important part of a powerful group that included Shoigu as his direct patron but also includes the billionaire oligarch Gennady Timchenko – a close associate of Vladimir Putin – […]

The post Cats in a bag: Russia’s elite clans are at war with each other appeared first on Asia Times.

Armed troops in Niger overthrew the government in July 2023, seizing power for themselves. The following months were rife with speculation that the military government would align with Moscow and possibly form ties with the Russian military or its associates. This has now become a reality, to the detriment of Western interests in the country. […]

The post Russia riding US right out of West Africa appeared first on Asia Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “grain diplomacy” continues to cause headaches for the European Union while potentially reshaping global trade dynamics and markets more in Moscow’s favor. Significantly, the European Commission has recently proposed to increase tariffs on certain Russian and Belarusian agricultural goods, including cereals and oilseeds, to discourage the current level of EU imports. […]

The post Food fight: Russia’s ‘grain diplomacy’ reshaping global markets appeared first on Asia Times.

It has emerged that the four gunmen charged in the murder of at least 139 concert-goers at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall theater were all citizens of the small post-Soviet nation of Tajikistan in Central Asia. Does their nationality have anything to do with their alleged terrorism? Many Russians probably think so. Tajikistan, a landlocked country […]

The post Tajik terror shadow falls over Russia appeared first on Asia Times.

The attack on the Crocus City concert hall in the Moscow suburbs, which left 137 people dead, has again raised questions about the effectiveness of intelligence in identifying and preventing massive acts of terrorism. Intelligence about such events is rarely precise. Often it is made up of fragments of information or hearsay, spread across policing […]

The post Why Russia ignored the CIA’s terror attack warning appeared first on Asia Times.

It appears almost certain the brutal assault on a Russian crowd settling down to watch a rock concert in Moscow on Friday night was an Islamist terrorist attack. At least 133 people were left dead and scores more were injured after gunmen with automatic weapons stormed the Crocus City Hall in Moscow and opened fire, […]

The post Why ISIS-K has Russia in its terrorist sights appeared first on Asia Times.

The sudden death of Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny in a prison camp in Russia’s Arctic Circle on February 16 marked a significant moment in Russian public discourse. Navalny’s demise led to a substantial increase in online discussion about someone other than Vladimir Putin. There was a 14-fold rise in mentions of Navalny on social […]

The post What Russians talk about on social media appeared first on Asia Times.

Two things are certain concerning Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. First, he will be reelected as president in the rigged election scheduled to run from March 15 to 17, 2024, by a resounding – if fraudulent – margin. Second, he is not immortal. He will die one day, and he is likely to die in office […]

The post Putin by a landslide in another Potemkin election appeared first on Asia Times.

The still mysterious death of Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny was greeted by some Kremlin critics as proof that the era of democratic politics is over in Russia. That any change or reset back to democratic governance will henceforth not be due to the ballot box but will depend on a wave of popular protest […]

The post The shattered remains of Russian democracy appeared first on Asia Times.

Two years after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia is still facing an unprecedented number of economic sanctions. It has been excluded from major global financial services, and around 260 billion euros (US$281.4 billion) of its central bank assets have been frozen. Russian airspace is closed to most Western planes and Western ports are closed […]

The post Russia can’t afford to win or lose the Ukraine war appeared first on Asia Times.

It wasn’t enough that Russian courts had convicted dissident politician Alexei Navalny on bogus corruption charges, sentenced him to 19 years in jail and sent him to a penal colony 1,200 miles from Moscow near the Arctic Circle where he recently mysteriously died. Or that government agents tried to poison him with a nerve agent […]

The post Navalny’s death was grimly predictable appeared first on Asia Times.

In August 2023, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died after his private jet crashed about an hour after taking off in Moscow. He had been Russia’s point man in Africa since the Wagner Group began operating on the continent in 2017. The group is known for deploying paramilitary forces, running disinformation campaigns and propping up […]

The post Rebranding the Wagner Group in Africa appeared first on Asia Times.

In December, 2018 I wrote an article for Asia Times discussing Russia’s Avangard fractional orbiting nuclear weapon system. Today’s revelation suggesting that Russia intends to deploy a space based nuclear weapon has elicited demands that the Biden administration tell the American people what the intelligence reports say – and that the information should all be declassified. We […]

The post Is Russia planning to deploy a space-based nuke? appeared first on Asia Times.

Presidential elections will be held in Russia in March. It is inevitable that the incumbent president, Vladimir Putin, will win. Putin has been in power (whether as president or as prime minister) since 2000. If he wins again, and he serves his full six-year term, he will have been in power for 30 years, longer […]

The post Russian roulette for Putin at no-contest election appeared first on Asia Times.