Hi everyone,

The Saratoga Foundation is pleased to announce the publication of a new report by Pavel Luzin: Learning from Failure: Russian Space Lessons Learned from Operational Setbacks in the Ukraine War.

Russia entered the full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022 with significant weaknesses in its military space capabilities, particularly in satellite communications and reconnaissance. Four years of war have exposed these shortcomings and forced Moscow to adapt its approach to military space operations. Rather than simply attempting to rebuild Russia’s former status as a space power, Moscow is increasingly pursuing a more flexible, opportunistic, and asymmetric strategy.

Luzin identifies nine important lessons that Russia has drawn from its operational experience in Ukraine:

1. Russia’s military satellite communications were inadequate for high-intensity warfare.

The war demonstrated that Russia’s existing military and dual-use communications constellations could not support operations across a vast battlefield. Moscow has consequently been forced to seek foreign assistance, commercial space services, and alternative technologies—including efforts to develop its own Starlink-like capabilities.

2. Small satellites cannot completely replace large, traditional reconnaissance satellites.

Micro- and small satellites can provide high-resolution imagery and rapid revisit rates, making them valuable for tactical operations. But their narrow swath widths prevent them from providing the broad theater-wide picture required for large-scale military operations.

3. Russia’s shortage of reconnaissance satellites limits its ability to conduct precision strikes.

Without near-real-time intelligence, Moscow has struggled to track highly mobile Ukrainian forces and update targeting information. This has contributed to a greater reliance on attacks against known stationary targets and civilian infrastructure rather than on precision-guided strikes.

4. The boundaries between military, civilian, and commercial space systems are disappearing.

Russia is increasingly integrating military, government, civilian, commercial, and foreign space capabilities. Its recent experience with Starlink demonstrated both the importance of commercial space services and the vulnerabilities created by Moscow’s dependence upon foreign providers. Moreover, Russian military thinking is consequently moving toward an architecture that fuses information from multiple sources rather than relying exclusively on dedicated military satellites.

5. Space vulnerabilities are driving Russia toward terrestrial and atmospheric alternatives.

Moscow is pursuing ground-based navigation, mesh networks, relay UAVs, tropospheric communications, high-altitude balloons, and high-altitude pseudo-satellites as backups to vulnerable orbital systems. These alternatives cannot fully replace satellites, but they can offer additional resilience and support asymmetric approaches to space warfare.

6. Launch capacity may matter more than satellite production.

The ability to rapidly replace destroyed or degraded satellites depends not only on manufacturing but also on rockets, launch pads, and launch infrastructure. The war has exposed how susceptible Russian infrastructure is to drones, sabotage, and asymmetric attacks.

7. Electronic warfare is far less effective when employed in isolation.

Russia’s experience demonstrates that ground-based systems designed to jam satellite communications and navigation cannot by themselves neutralize modern space capabilities. Moscow is therefore moving toward integrating electronic warfare with space-based intelligence, communications intelligence, and other capabilities to improve the precision of counter-space operations.

8. Russia is likely to rely increasingly on gray-zone and deniable counter-space operations.

Luzin argues that Moscow can exploit on-orbit concealment and ambiguity to conduct counter-satellite activities while maintaining plausible deniability. The objective may be less the physical destruction of satellites than the degradation of an adversary’s communications, navigation, command-and-control, and reconnaissance capabilities.

9. Russia’s relative dependence on space may make it more willing to accept extreme risks.

Because Russia is less dependent on space-based systems than the United States and its allies, Moscow may calculate that it can tolerate greater disruption and take greater risks. This has contributed to Russian military discussions of increasingly radical counter-space options, including the possibility of using nuclear weapons against large commercial satellite constellations.

Taken together, these nine lessons suggest that Russia’s future military space strategy will be less about restoring uncontested great-power status and more about taking risks, learning to adapt, deepening Russian resilience, maintaining dependence on foreign systems, commercially integrating, while leaning more on asymmetric disruption. In sum, Luzin concludes that Russia’s approach has become considerably more flexible and opportunistic than during the period from 1992 to 2021—and that this approach is likely to continue into the 2030s.

Please download the full report 👉 here:

Enjoy the report!

Glen E. Howard
President
The Saratoga Foundation

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By Vasif Huseynov

👉The Azerbaijan-Türkiye energy partnership is entering a new phase, moving from oil and gas toward electricity and renewable power. Three projects under development could extend their energy network to Europe, while a Nakhchivan connection could provide the Azerbaijan-Armenia peace corridor with a new economic and strategic dimension.

By Vasif Huseynov

Baku hosted the fifth Azerbaijan-Türkiye Energy Forum on September 11, bringing together Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov and Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar for a review of hydrocarbons, energy efficiency, the electricity market, renewables and mining under the two countries’ Joint Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation, a format that was launched in 2021. It was on the margins of that forum that Bayraktar confirmed what regional energy officials have been signaling for months: after three decades of building oil and gas infrastructure together, Azerbaijan and Türkiye are now planning to move electricity across the same network of relationships. Bayraktar noted that the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) has carried a cumulative 100 billion cubic meters of gas since entering service, calling it a major contributor to Europe’s energy security.

He then set out, for the first time in detail, three electricity projects the two countries are pursuing in parallel.

The hydrocarbon foundation beneath that announcement remains substantial in its own right. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline is currently carrying about 600,000 barrels a day against a capacity closer to a million, headroom Bayraktar said Ankara wants filled with Central Asian volumes moving through the same corridor. On the gas side, Türkiye’s state pipeline operator BOTAŞ signed a 15-year agreement with SOCAR, TotalEnergies and ADNOC in June for 33 billion cubic meters of gas tied to the second phase of Azerbaijan’s Absheron field, with production due to begin in 2029, according to the Turkish Energy Ministry’s statement on the signing.

Electricity is the addition to that picture. “We are working specifically on three projects,” Bayraktar told the reporters. The first is a transmission line bringing electricity from Azerbaijan to Türkiye via Nakhchivan; the second is a four-country “green energy corridor” linking Türkiye, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Bulgaria; and the third is a high-voltage line running under the Black Sea to Europe. He described the Türkiye-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Bulgaria project in particular as “the TANAP of electricity,” and said the two governments hope to move it to the next stage soon, potentially through an intergovernmental agreement signed by the two presidents at the COP31 climate conference in Antalya.

The most geopolitically sensitive of the three is the Nakhchivan line, because Azerbaijan’s exclave has no land connection to the rest of the country, except through Armenian and Iranian territory.

Any electricity link that reaches both Nakhchivan and Türkiye points toward the same corridor now being rebuilt for rail traffic under the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), the transit framework that the United States, Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed to in their August 8, 2025 Joint Declaration at the White House. President Ilham Aliyev gave a detailed public account yet of that corridor’s physical progress while in Tashkent on August 23, informing the third meeting of the Azerbaijani-Uzbek Supreme Interstate Council that the Horadiz-Aghband railroad on Azerbaijan’s mainland side is already largely complete and is set for completion next year, that construction inside Nakhchivan itself is already underway, and that on the Armenian side, work is expected to begin by early next year. He also said Baku is assembling an international consortium to help finance the Nakhchivan section.

None of that construction is designed to carry electricity. But it establishes, quite literally, the corridor along which the Nakhchivan-Türkiye transmission line would run. It also means that the project would be one of the first pieces of TRIPP-adjacent infrastructure whose purpose is neither symbolic nor purely commercial, but operational: to interconnect the two national power grids. A corridor negotiated in Washington specifically to end a conflict would in all likelihood become the route that keeps electricity flowing between Azerbaijan and one of its own regions. That is a different, and arguably stronger, form of American stake in the peace process than a declaration alone provides.

The other two projects carry less political weight but have more direct relevance on Europe.

The Türkiye-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Bulgaria corridor is explicitly designed to carry renewable generation rather than fossil-fuel electricity, positioning Baku as a producer of green power rather than only oil and gas. The Black Sea subsea cable is the most technically ambitious of the three, delivering Caspian-basin electricity directly into the European market, the electricity equivalent of what TANAP and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline already do for gas, and a hedge against the same overland chokepoints that have periodically complicated Middle Corridor freight traffic.

According to Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov, the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Türkiye-Bulgaria corridor is also significant for linking into Europe’s energy system, and that work on a technical-economic feasibility study and a joint venture for the project is already under way. He has also said that Türkiye’s participation in a separate Caspian-Black Sea-Europe Green Energy Corridor, planned to be phased into operation starting in 2032, would be a natural extension of the two countries’ energy partnership.

Electricity also serves Baku and Ankara differently than oil or gas ever could. Hydrocarbon pipelines lock in a commodity that Europe’s own climate targets are designed to phase down; transmission lines let Azerbaijan monetize the wind, solar and hydro capacity it has been courting foreign investment to build, without depending on European gas demand staying high indefinitely. For Türkiye, it extends the hub ambitions already visible in Middle Corridor freight and TANAP transit into the power sector. Shahbazov also noted that Turkish companies' participation in Azerbaijan’s green energy projects has been growing, and said that artificial intelligence and digitalization in the energy transition should become one of the new priority areas of Azerbaijan-Türkiye energy cooperation.

Whether that ambition attracts financing is an important question in bilateral discussions. President Aliyev told German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government during his July 21 visit to Berlin that with TANAP and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline already running at full capacity, any further gas deliveries to Germany depend on new interconnectors, and that financing for them from the European Investment Bank has largely dried up under the institution’s own green-transition mandates. A renewable-carrying electricity corridor, unlike a hydrocarbon pipeline, sits more comfortably inside the mandate European lenders have used to justify walking away from oil and gas projects.

Outlook

The emerging electricity architecture therefore suggests that the Middle Corridor is becoming more than a route for moving goods between Asia and Europe. Azerbaijan and Türkiye are gradually adding an energy layer to the corridor, moving from oil and gas to electricity and from conventional hydrocarbons to renewable power. For Brussels, this emerging architecture could provide additional momentum for diversifying Europe’s energy supplies and strengthening its energy security through the Caspian region. If the three projects now under discussion are brought to completion, the result would be a network in which Caspian energy resources reach Türkiye and Europe through multiple channels, while the Nakhchivan connection could give the Azerbaijan-Armenia peace framework a tangible economic and infrastructural dimension.

Author’s Bio:

Dr. Vasif Huseynov is the head of the Western Studies department at the Center for Analysis of International Relations and Multiculturalism (AIR Center) in Baku, Azerbaijan.

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By Sergey Sukhankin

The establishment of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) in Shanghai on July 16, 2026, provides Russia and China with a new institutional framework for technological cooperation. The organization brings together 29 founding members—mostly non-democratic regimes from the Global South—to provide Beijing with another institutional platform for shaping an alternative to Western AI cooperation and governance.

The more consequential question for Moscow, however, is not participation in another multilateral technology forum, but whether AI can become a new pillar of bilateral economic interdependence with an economically and technologically stronger, and demographically larger, neighbor. Russian commentary points toward a prospective ‘division of labor’ intended to compensate for Moscow’s disadvantages vis-à-vis China. Namely, MTS Web Services CEO Pavel Voronin argued that in the scope of this “AI Alliance” Russia could provide Russian-language and sector-specific training data and expertise in industry, energy, finance, science, education, and public administration, while China can offer model architectures, computing resources, equipment, and training technologies.

Leverage Through Infrastructure

This proposition reflects Russia’s technological limitations vis-à-vis China: for instance, InfoWatch President Natalya Kasperskaya has argued that Russia is unlikely to catch the United States or China in large foundational models and should concentrate its scarce resources on applied AI instead. In other words, Moscow has an incentive to seek leverage in the physical infrastructure underlying AI, and this asymmetry helps explain the growing Russian focus on Siberia and the Far East, where Moscow’s potential contribution to an “AI alliance” could take the form of physical inputs on which large-scale computing increasingly depends: electricity, land, cooling, fiber connectivity, and geographically distributed data-center capacity. Indeed, Siberia and the Far East offer substantial hydroelectric resources and a cold climate that can reduce cooling costs. Russia is effectively seeking to convert these factors into a higher-value export (computational capacity) and bind part of Chinese demand to Russian territory and power systems, creating a new form of infrastructure interdependence.

Additionally, for Moscow, locating compute capacity east of the Urals supports a broader effort to redirect infrastructure and investment toward its Asian-facing regions that have historically suffered from geographic distance, thin markets, and population outflow. Clearly, data centers alone will not reverse those structural problems, but they can anchor power, telecommunications, engineering, and cloud-service investment around existing industrial centers. This makes AI infrastructure attractive as an instrument of territorial development as well as foreign economic policy. For Moscow, AI infrastructure could therefore serve three objectives simultaneously: developing Russia’s eastern regions, strengthening their economic integration with Asian markets, and fostering interdependence with China.

This operational model has clear precedents: the first steps in this direction occurred well before the current AI boom. For example, in 2015, Russia’s En+ Group discussed Siberian data-center cooperation with Huawei, targeting approximately $5 billion in Chinese investment over five years. By September 2015, En+, Huawei, LANIT, Centrin Data Systems, and Irkutsk regional authorities signed a framework agreement in Beijing for a major Irkutsk Oblast data center. In May 2017, En+ launched the first module of its “Clouds of Siberia” (Oblaka Sibiri) network at the Novo-Irkutsk CHP plant. En+ said the facility would serve Russian and Chinese customers and highlighted two advantages: company-supplied electricity and year-round natural cooling. It estimated that electricity accounts for 50–70 percent of cloud-processing costs and noted it was considering additional projects with Russian and Chinese partners.

The significance of these earlier projects lies less in their scale than in the model they anticipated: converting Siberia’s inexpensive electricity and climatic advantages into data-processing capacity partly oriented toward meeting Chinese demand. What is new in 2026 is the convergence of this older infrastructure logic with rapidly expanding AI-related compute demand. MTS and China Mobile International signed a memorandum to establish a new cross-border internet route – as of now the route is planned rather than already completed – at Pogranichny–Suifenhe using DWDM equipment capable of 48 channels at 200 Gbit/s each. If completed, the project would strengthen the digital backbone required for cross-border cloud and compute services.

Seeking AI Capacity in the East

Russia is simultaneously building domestic AI capacity in the east, which (as of now) should not be treated as direct evidence of Chinese participation. Rather, it should be interpreted as a sign that Moscow was preparing the necessary infrastructure for the purpose of attracting Chinese interest. The specific steps include:

· On August 19, Sakha (Yakutia) disclosed plans for a Far Eastern AI cluster based on a new data center.

· On August 31, it was reported that En+ affiliate Cloud X is constructing a 154-megawatt AI/cloud data center near the Ust-Ilimsk hydroelectric plant, targeted for launch in May 2029 and envisioned as the first of three facilities totaling roughly 462 MW.

Importantly, a recent study by the Stolypin Institute argues that Eastern Siberia could support 150–200 MW-class facilities and potentially develop data infrastructure into an export industry. Taken together, these developments suggest that Russia is expanding the supply side of a prospective AI-compute relationship before corresponding Chinese demand has been publicly demonstrated. Political signaling is also intensifying. At a recent Russia–China session in Beijing (August 12), officials and companies discussed cooperation in AI, e-commerce, and the green economy; the following day, a Chinese delegation visited the Russky Innovation Science and Technology Center in Vladivostok to discuss links with Chinese technology clusters.

Outlook

For the time being no publicly confirmed Chinese company has committed capital or long-term compute demand to the new Russian-backed Siberian AI projects. However, the absence of commitments points to a deeper structural problem for Moscow. From a purely economic and technological perspective, China does not need Russian territory to expand its domestic AI-compute capacity. Beijing’s nationwide “East Data, West Computing” (东数西算) program, formally launched in February 2022, already shifts suitable workloads toward western and northern regions with abundant land, massive renewable energy, favorable climate, and extensive domestic fiber. Regions such as Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia, Sichuan, Guizhou already offer many of the same advantages while remaining inside Chinese jurisdiction and purview. Consequently, China already possesses domestic substitutes for most of the physical advantages Russia is offering. It also maintains a detailed regulatory regime for cross-border transfers of personal and important data, adding compliance friction to any model that relies on moving sensitive datasets into Russia which could become a matter of vulnerability for China should relations between Moscow and Beijing change their current vector.

This creates a tactical contradiction for Moscow. If Chinese companies eventually commit substantial AI workloads to Siberia, their participation would validate Russian efforts to convert energy and geography into digital leverage. Paradoxically, it could also deepen Russia’s technological dependence on China. Russian companies could provide electricity, land, cooling, and physical infrastructure while Chinese partners supply advanced computing hardware, networking equipment, model architectures, cloud technologies, and potentially the anchor demand determining the facilities’ commercial viability. Russia could therefore capture part of the infrastructure rent while remaining dependent on China for higher-value technological inputs and customers. This also raises the question as to why Beijing would place substantial compute capacity in Russia when comparable domestic locations are already available. Any eventual Chinese investment would therefore merit scrutiny for actual Chinese motivations—such as expanding its data and technological footprint in Russia—extending well beyond basic economic considerations

In sum, the energy constraint ultimately limits Moscow’s leverage. Siberian electricity consumption rose 4.7 percent in 2024, with data centers, mining, and industry contributing to demand growth. If no additional electricity production powers enter into the picture, AI facilities would start competing with (and potentially cannibalizing) aluminum production, cryptocurrency mining, electrification, and other industrial loads for low-cost power. The strategic question is therefore not whether Siberia can host AI data centers – it almost certainly can – but who would control the hardware, demand, data, and economic rents generated by them. The emerging pattern is best understood as a Russian attempt to convert Siberia’s traditional resource geography into digital leverage. Ultimately, the decisive indicator will be a prominent Chinese firm committing capital, equipment, or contracted compute capacity to Russian facilities. Until then, Moscow continues to build the infrastructure for strategic interdependence faster than Beijing can demonstrate it requires it.

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Roger N. McDermott

20 August 20267 Minute Read

More than a century ago, Aleksandr Svechin warned against mistaking formations that still existed on paper for units that retained real fighting power. Ukraine shows why that distinction still matters.

War is full of formations that exist more convincingly on organisational charts than on the battlefield. Ukraine’s struggle to regenerate brigades, Russia’s repeated rebuilding of depleted units and both armies’ dependence on replacement personnel have revived an old military problem: when does a unit cease to be a genuinely effective fighting organisation even though it continues to exist administratively?

The question has become particularly relevant for Ukraine. A recent RUSI assessment by Jack Watling described an audit of the country’s roughly 120 brigades in which around one-sixth were judged to be suffering disproportionately from poor leadership and sustained underperformance. One proposal was to consolidate weaker formations and transfer their personnel to better-performing brigades rather than continually replenishing organisations that remained ineffective. The same assessment highlighted another corrosive factor: units unable to rotate personnel adequately, leaving some soldiers in combat areas for periods of up to 200 days.

Svechin’s Command of the 6th Finnish Rifle Regiment

This sounds like an intensely contemporary military-management problem. Yet Aleksandr Svechin confronted its essentials more than a century ago. While commanding the 6th Finnish Rifle Regiment during Russia’s Great Retreat of 1915, Svechin became fascinated by the difference between the nominal existence of a military formation and its actual ability to fight. His remarkable account of that experience, now available in English as The Art of Regimental Command: Lessons from World War I, is not simply a memoir of frontline service. It is an anatomy of what prolonged war does to military organisations.

Svechin organised part of his account under the striking heading ‘Extinct Volcanoes’. The phrase was not a decorative metaphor. It drew on Clausewitz’s image of battle as something that gradually burns itself out, leaving commanders to discover which forces still retain effective fighting energy. Svechin applied the image to formations that might continue to exist in orders of battle, personnel returns and headquarters calculations while having been hollowed out by casualties, exhaustion, weakened leadership, declining morale and prolonged friction. The volcano remains visible on the landscape. The fire inside it has gone out.

Treating what is easy to count as more important than what is difficult to measure is precisely how extinct volcanoes remain hidden inside an order of battle

That distinction is worth recovering because modern militaries have become exceptionally good at counting forces and not always equally good at determining what those forces can actually do. When Svechin assumed command of the 6th Finnish Rifle Regiment in August 1915, its official returns provided impressively precise numbers. There were officers, more than 1,600 bayonets, hundreds of unarmed personnel, non-commissioned officers, telephone operators, scouts, machine-gun personnel, medical staff and supporting troops. The apparent precision concealed the real problem.

The regiment had been subjected to prolonged fighting and retreat. Its original machine guns had been lost. Its replacement weapons depended on ammunition for which there was no assured future supply. Personnel numbers alone could not capture the accumulated effects of exhaustion, losses, uneven replacements, disrupted organisation and declining morale. Svechin described taking over a very exhausted regiment while observing that many other Russian formations were in little better condition.

His insight was simple but important: strength is not the same as combat power.

This has direct relevance to assessments of the war in Ukraine. Analysts understandably track personnel numbers, brigades, battalions, vehicles, artillery systems, drones and ammunition. These are indispensable measures. But they can create an illusion of precision if detached from the quality and condition of the organisations in which those resources are employed. Two brigades of similar nominal size may possess radically different military value. One may retain experienced commanders and non-commissioned officers, functioning communications, cohesive sub-units, confidence and the ability to integrate fires and unmanned systems. Another may contain comparable numbers of personnel but lack the accumulated competence necessary to employ them effectively.

A Repository of Relationships

Recent Ukrainian experience illustrates this variation. Watling’s account of the debate over consolidating underperforming brigades matters precisely because it recognises that adding replacement personnel to a weak organisation does not necessarily repair that organisation. Modern armies often discuss regeneration through the language of replacement: replacing casualties, replacing equipment, restoring authorised strength and rebuilding stocks. These things are necessary. They are not sufficient.

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A military formation is also a repository of relationships, experience and accumulated knowledge. Soldiers learn the habits of their commanders. Commanders learn the limits and strengths of their subordinates. Staffs develop procedures. Units acquire confidence from previous success or anxiety from previous failure. Informal networks emerge that enable organisations to continue functioning when formal mechanisms break down. Casualties consume this capital as well as manpower. Svechin’s writing repeatedly returns to precisely these human and organisational variables. His concern with officers, non-commissioned officers, morale, discipline, training and exhaustion was not an excursion away from tactics. It was his explanation of what made tactics possible.

This is also why prolonged exposure to combat matters so much. RUSI’s recent reporting on Ukrainian force-management problems notes the difficulty of rotating formations and the extremely long periods some personnel have consequently spent in combat areas. More broadly, the war has become one in which manpower challenges and prolonged attrition remain central pressures on both sides. Replacing losses may restore a figure in a personnel return. It does not instantly reproduce the knowledge of a veteran platoon commander, the confidence within a company, or the capacity of a battalion staff to interpret fragmentary information under pressure.

There is therefore a point at which repeatedly filling a damaged formation with replacements can become less effective than reorganising, consolidating or rebuilding it. Svechin’s extinct volcano is useful precisely because it forces commanders and analysts to ask when that threshold has been crossed. Svechin believed this could not be understood from headquarters returns alone. When his regiment was in position, he made a practice of moving among its companies and talking to the soldiers. He wrote that he concentrated on studying the men as much as the ground. The purpose was not paternalism. He needed to understand the instrument he was being asked to employ.

To read the original article published by RUSI please visit:

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/extinct-volcanoes-problem-why-unit-strength-not-combat-power

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By Andrew McGregor

A growing dispute in the eastern Mediterranean over control of significant and recently discovered offshore energy reserves is aggravating already-tense relations between Türkiye and Israel and creating divisions within NATO while simultaneously assisting the unification of Libya’s rival governments. At the center of these developments is the pending implementation of the 2019 Turkish-Libyan Eastern Mediterranean maritime boundary memorandum.

After the fall of Mu’ammar Qaddafi in 2011, Libya became divided between the internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) of Prime Minister ‘Abd al-Hamid Dbeibah in the west (supported by the GNU’s Libyan Army) and the administration of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar (a long-time CIA asset), his so-called Libyan National Army (LNA) and the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR) in the east and south. The greatest obstacle to unification is the 82-year-old Haftar’s desire to establish a ruling family dynasty with his son Saddam next-in-line to rule Libya. In the meantime, Türkiye and the US continue to encourage a pathway to full Libyan military and economic integration. A unified Libya would easily become an attractive and embargo-free market for Türkiye’s rapidly expanding arms industry, estimated to be worth nearly $11 billion.

Ankara’s principal aim in shifting its sole support from the Tripoli-based GNU to a broader embrace of both the GNU and its LNA/HoR rivals in Benghazi and Tobruk is to encourage HoR ratification of the 2019 Türkiye -Libya Maritime Agreement. Despite having the largest oil reserves in Africa, Libya’s divided rule has inhibited attempts to increase foreign investment and raise daily production of oil from 1.4 million barrels per day to 2 million barrels per day within the next four years. Most of the oil fields and export terminals in Libya remain under the control of the Haftar family, which has received support from the UAE, Egypt and Russia.

The maritime agreement would see most of the offshore energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean split between Libya and Türkiye, to the immense discomfort of Greece, Cyprus and Israel, all of whom have their own economic interests in the region.

Israel and Türkiye

Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler informed Türkiye’s parliament on August 10 that the military was preparing for “possible crisis, tension and war” with regard to the growing military alignment of Israel and traditional rival Greece in a Mediterranean region Ankara increasingly views as its own.

Allegedly acting on intelligence that suggested Türkiye’s army was preparing to station troops and weapons at Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase (70 km from the Turkish border), Israeli jets bombed the dormant base on August 18.

After the strike, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu told an army podcast: “”We will not tolerate a Turkish military entrenchment moving southward, because it threatens us,” adding that an earlier warning against a Turkish military presence at the mostly empty base was ignored: “Apparently they didn’t hear it, so we made sure they understood it more clearly.” Israel opposes any move that could restrict the ability of Israeli warplanes to operate freely in Syrian airspace. According to Syrian foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani, the base had been visited by a delegation of Turkish military officers several days before the strike, but this was only in the context of “training and an exchange of expertise.” Other officials claimed that only a Turkish technical team was present at the base, charged with repairs to a runway and the control tower.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested the strikes were linked to upcoming elections in Israel but would not deter Ankara’s cooperation with Damascus: “We will not stop supporting our neighbours in getting back on their feet merely because it unsettles murderous networks with the blood of innocent people on their hands.” Netanyahu in turn has accused President Erdoğan of accommodating “Iran’s terror regime and its proxies” as well as “massacring his own Kurdish citizens.” The Israeli attack, carried out without prior US notification, was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on Syria since the overthrow of former Syrian president Bashar al-Asad.

Turkish Involvement in Libya

Türkiye’s connection to Libya stretches back to 1551, when Libya was added to the Ottoman Empire. It remained so (with an interlude of independent rule by the Karamanli Turks, 1711-1835) until the 1911-1912 Italo-Ottoman war led to the territory coming under Italian control. Over a century would pass before Turks would once more make their presence felt in their former African colony.

Khalifa Haftar’s Egyptian-backed 2019 LNA offensive on Tripoli came to a shuddering halt when Türkiye intervened on Tripoli’s side. Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones inflicted terrible damage on LNA formations while LNA Russian air-defense systems were jammed by Turkish electronic counter-measures. Ankara’s commitment increased with the deployment of troops and trainers, eventually leading to a Turkish naval presence at Misrata and an airbase at al-Watiya. Türkiye’s military support of Tripoli has also been followed by hundreds of projects in the energy, construction and infrastructure sectors.

Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan visited Khalifa and Saddam Haftar (deputy commander of the LNA) in Benghazi on August 12, the latest in a series of moves establishing closer ties between Türkiye and the Benghazi-based Haftar regime that began in the spring of 2025. Fidan noted Türkiye’s “One Libya policy,” which “makes no distinction between Libya’s west, east and south.”

To avoid accusations of favoring one side over the other, Fidan first visited GNU prime minister ‘Abd al-Hamid Dbeibah in Tripoli before visiting the Libya Mission Group Command of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). Saddam had earlier been Fidan’s guest in Ankara on July 24, his third visit in a year. The latest discussions appear to have been aimed in part at addressing eastern Libya’s concerns about its prior exclusion from revenue streams and other financial benefits of enhanced oil exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.

*Image above: Hakan Fidan visiting the mausoleum of ‘Umar al-Mukhtar.

On August 12, Fidan visited the mausoleum of Libyan independence hero ‘Umar al-Mukhtar, who at one point in his long career fought in Libya alongside Ottoman volunteers including the Ottoman officer Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk, founder of modern-day Türkiye), after the official Ottoman surrender in the Italo-Ottoman war of 1911-1912 (al-Mukhtar was captured and executed by Italian forces in 1931).

In a sign of the growing military cooperation between Türkiye and Libya, Turkish chief of staff General Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu hosted his Libyan counterpart, Lieutenant General Salah al-Namroush, in Ankara on August 30. The meeting focused on air force and special forces operations as well as means of improving Libyan military performance. Ibrahim Kalin, head of the Turkish Millî İstihbarat Teşkilati (MIT - National Intelligence Organization), also met Saddam Haftar in Benghazi in late August.

Ankara pursues a “One Army, One Libya” approach to Libya’s divided military. To this end, Türkiye facilitated the April-May Efes-2026 military exercise involving the cooperative participation of troops from both sides of the Libyan divide. Türkiye has also begun training of troops from both the GNU’s Libyan Army and the LNA inside Türkiye.

Ankara’s shift to more equitable dealing with both Libyan factions is a sensitive undertaking; the Haftar clan is only onside so long as they see unification leading to their domination of a restructured Libya, while Dbeibah and the GNU watch closely for signs of Turkish backsliding.

The Mediterranean Energy Scheme

Türkiye’s assertive approach to the eastern Mediterranean has its roots in the Mavi Vatan (Blue Homeland) maritime doctrine, which was developed in 2006 by senior commanders of the Turkish navy. The doctrine enables claims to roughly 178,000 square miles of maritime territory and its hydrocarbon resources, including large parts of the Black Sea, the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, all without regard to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), never ratified by Türkiye, the United States or Israel.

At the core of the regional dispute is Türkiye’s establishment of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), defined under UNCLOS as maritime regions extending as far as 188 nautical miles beyond the traditional 12-mile national territorial limit. An EEZ does not grant full sovereignty, but allows for sovereign rights over economic resources below the surface. This includes the exploitation of oil and gas resources. The eastern Mediterranean is believed to host significant offshore reserves of natural gas.

The 2019 Turkish-Libyan maritime agreement ignores certain Greek and Greek Cypriot claims in the Mediterranean. Cyprus has been divided since 1974 following a coup by Greek Cypriot nationalists and a subsequent Turkish military intervention in the northern half of the island.^[1] Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel all reject the Turkish-Libyan maritime agreement as a violation of their own maritime claims in the region. Also in play is the proposed, but now stalled, East Med Pipeline that would ship natural gas from Israel’s offshore fields through Cyprus to Greece and Italy.

Greek opposition to the maritime agreement is focused on its failure to recognize the EEZ boundaries of Crete and the Greek Island of Kastellorizo, which lies one mile off the southern coast of Türkiye. Questions have been raised in the Turkish parliament regarding the alleged militarization of Greek islands in the eastern Aegean close to Türkiye, including the deployment of Israeli anti-aircraft systems, including Patriot missile batteries. Türkiye maintains that under the 1923 Lausanne Agreement (Article 4 and Article 13), these islands should be demilitarized due to their proximity to the Turkish mainland to prevent them from being used for potential military action against Türkiye. On the other hand, Athens claims the right to self-defense in the militarization of the islands, particularly in regard to “Turkish threats.”

In July, Greece approved the purchase of a €3.5 billion ($4 billion) AI-based radar and missile air defense system from Israel to form the core component of the so-called “Achilles Shield” system. The Israeli technology is already proven through use in Israel’s “Iron Dome” aerial defense system. The deal, which breaks from a larger European reticence to interact with Israel following its devastation of Gaza, was signed in Tel Aviv on August 31. As part of a broader military modernization (with one eye on Turkish military improvements), Greece is also preparing to buy as many as 40 American-built F-35 fighter jets as well as frigates from Italy and France. Popular opposition to Israeli operations in Gaza and the West Bank is strong in Greece , making Israel an unlikely ally in Greece’s long-standing rivalry with Türkiye, its NATO ally; former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis described the deal as part of “the transformation of Greece into an Israeli satellite.”

Containing Israel

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has encouraged President Trump to prevent Türkiye’s return to the Lockheed Martin F-35 development program on the grounds that Türkiye is “a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood, an extreme movement that hates America and chants ‘Death to America.’” Left unsaid is that a fleet of Turkish F-35s could challenge Israel’s aerial dominance in the region, a necessary component of Israeli defense and expansion efforts.

Having so far failed in its ongoing effort to crush the Iranian threat or even to eliminate the menace of Hezbollah along its northern border, Israel is particularly sensitive to the danger posed by a Syrian-Turkish alliance against Israel. The promise of the Abraham Accords, once so favorable to Israel’s long-term security, has been shattered by regional opposition to Israeli methods in Gaza. Further challenges to Israel’s economic prosperity posed by the Turkish-Libyan maritime agreement have created alarm in the Israeli media, which has accused Ankara of seeking “to delegitimize the Israel Defense Forces, isolate Israeli officials, and erode Israel’s sovereign right to self-defense” while serving as “a political, logistical, and financial sanctuary for senior Hamas leadership.”

A report by Israel’s Dor Moria think tank described Türkiye’s moves in the region (including its activities in Libya) as a “strategic encirclement” of Israel, confining its operational space and its development of an independent energy sector. In the interim, Türkiye claims its chief motivation in Syria is to assist in rebuilding the country—a goal supported by the United States and the wider international community—and ultimately to bring an end to the Syrian civil war that has devastated the region for more than a decade.

Conclusion

Türkiye is a challenge to Israel’s plan to become the dominant regional power in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. In the last three decades, Türkiye’s post-WWI embrace of the secular, Western-oriented ideology of Mustafa Kemal has been steadily challenged by neo-Ottomanism and a revival of Türkiye’s Islamic identity under President Erdoğan leadership. These trends, endorsed by Türkiye’s ruling party, recall that Palestine, Libya, Egypt and Syria were all once part of the Turkish-dominated Ottoman Empire. While a return to imperial status is out of the question for a host of reasons, Ankara sees these nations as potential partners for a post-Iran War regional realignment independent of superpower dominance. The Mecca Joint Deterrence Agreement, signed on August 7 by Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, is a major step in this strategic realignment.

Working in Ankara’s favor is Washington’s growing interest in Libyan unification and stability; Chevron and Exxon Mobil have obtained contracts this year to extract oil in both offshore blocks and in the Sirte Basin. Washington is nonetheless finding itself trapped in an uneasy situation as Israel’s principal ally and a NATO ally of both Greece and Türkiye, the latter still fielding the second-largest military in the alliance. The Erdoğan government may see opportunities in the US administration’s increasing disinterest in the NATO partnership that would allow Ankara to abandon its long and fruitless attempts at European integration in favor of a return to regional leadership in a community of Islamic nations rather than its ongoing role as the West’s perennially spurned suitor.

^[1] The island has been divided since 1974 following a military coup in Cyprus backed by a military junta in Greece, which sparked a Turkish military intervention in northern Cyprus to protect the rights of its Turkish minority under Article IV because it is a guarantor power under the Treaty of Guarantee signed in 1960 with Greece, and the United Kingdom.

About the Author:

Dr. Andrew McGregor is director of Aberfoyle International Security, a Toronto-based consultancy specializing in the security issues of Africa and the Islamic world.

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September 10, 2026 at 6:15 a.m. EDT Today at 6:15 a.m. EDT

By Glen E. Howard

Glen E. Howard is president and chairman of the Saratoga Foundation.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine enters its fifth year, North Korea’s involvement has reached an unprecedented scale — marking Pyongyang’s largest foreign military deployment in its 78-year history.

Under a 2024 mutual defense pact, North Korea sent over 10,000 troops from its elite 11th “Storm” Corps to Russia’s Kursk province to help repel a Ukrainian offensive in the fall of that year. They have been there ever since. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kim Jong Un plans to significantly deepen this commitment by dispatching as many as 40,000 additional troops to the Ukrainian theater in time for Putin’s rumored mobilization drive.

Ukrainian intelligence estimates that more than 25,000 North Korean soldiers have rotated through Kursk since 2024, turning the conflict into a high-tech battle lab that offers Pyongyang invaluable exposure to modern combined-arms warfare. The former head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, highlighted the gravity of this development, noting that “there are currently only three countries in the world with the experience of waging a modern war on a very long front line using virtually all available conventional means — Ukraine, Russia and North Korea”

North Korean units are deployed primarily to secure rear echelons and free up frontline Russian units for offensive operations elsewhere in Ukraine. A recent BBC analysis, estimating the size of a freshly erected public monument in Pyongyang, found that North Korea may have lost as many as 2,300 soldiers. South Korean intelligence estimates the number of wounded and dead to be as high as 6,000.

Meanwhile, Russian technology transfers are modernizing Pyongyang’s defense industrial base, improving the targeting accuracy of its KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles while advancing its air defense systems, nuclear submarines and satellite launch capabilities. And earlier this year, North Korean units also started to become operationally integratedinto Russian formations, firing tube artillery, coordinating multiple launch rocket systems and conducting aerial reconnaissance.

North Korea is leveraging battlefield lessons to mass-produce short- and medium-range attack drones. Specialized forces, including 400 drone operators and a 90 missile operators, have been deployed to rear staging grounds in Voronezh and Kursk to execute strikes against the Ukrainian cities of Sumy and Kharkiv. Pyongyang can apply this tactical experience to the Korean Peninsula. The Seoul-Kharkiv analogy is glaringly obvious: Sitting roughly 30 miles from the DMZ, the South Korean capital shares Kharkiv’s exact geographic vulnerability to cross-border strikes.

North Korea is contributing its industrial capacity to Putin’s war effort. It has supplied, by some recent estimates, as many as 15 million artillery shells. According to Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, North Korea’s contribution accounts for up to 50 to 70 percent of all ammunition fired by Russian forces in key frontline sectors of the Ukraine war. Moscow plans to bring 12,000 North Korean drone assemblers to the Alabuga drone plant in Tatarstan to mass-produce the next generation of Iranian-designed Shahed strike drones at a rate of 3,000 a month. In total, the Ukrainian military estimates 20,000 North Korean laborers are deployed across Russian industrial sites to sustain Moscow’s war effort. In exchange, Moscow provides critical energy supplies and delivers 600,000 to 700,000 tons of rice annually, single-handedly offsetting more than half of North Korea’s chronic food deficit.

Moscow and Pyongyang are also expanding border infrastructure, completing a two-lane road bridge over the Tumen River capable of transiting 300 heavy vehicles daily. They are also modernizing the neighboring Korea-Russia Friendship Bridge rail link. These improvements connect to Russia’s own vast transcontinental railway system, providing a logistical corridor largely impervious to Western sea power.

The Russia-North Korea alliance is evolving into a permanent operational axis, and Pyongyang likely expects direct Russian assistance in any future conflict on the Korean Peninsula. This emerging reality exposes the failures of the Asia First doctrine, championed by a faction of Republican foreign policy experts and government officials who urged the United States to deprioritize Europe and focus exclusively on countering China. While these proponents sought to compartmentalize the two theaters, Kim Jong Un had other plans and executed his own pivot toward Europe.

At this summer’s NATO summit in Ankara, leaders from Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand urged the creation of a “Korea-NATO Defense Industry Partnership 2.0,” which could anchor a new Eurasian security framework to counter the Moscow-Pyongyang axis. The U.S. should embrace such initiatives. And it should stop undermining its existing alliances in the region. Recommitting to exercises with South Korea would be a good first step.

As then-U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned when North Korean troops first arrived in Kursk, co-belligerency in Europe “will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific.” Indeed, the front lines of both theaters are now one and the same: For both Kim and Putin, the Indo-Pacific begins in Ukraine.

Glen E. Howard is president and chairman of the Saratoga Foundation.

Full text found here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/09/10/how-north-korea-is-using-ukraine-prepare-war/

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Hi Everyone!

We are delighted to announce the release of a new special report by Senior Fellow Roger N. McDermott: “The Last Mile of Adaptation: How the Russian Military Is Turning Combat Experience into Reproducible Capability,“ which examines how the Russian military is attempting to institutionalize lessons learned from the war in Ukraine to bridge the “last mile of adaptation.”

Ten takeaways from the report include:

• Reproducibility is a separate strategic variable. Innovation, diffusion, and codification are intermediate states; the decisive test is whether new people and formations can regenerate the military effect without the original innovators.

• Russia is building four overlapping mechanisms of force reproduction. Procedural, human, organizational, and material pathways connect battlefield experience to guidance, education, permanent structures, industry, maintenance, and force generation.

• The Russian lessons system is a network, not a single pipeline. Redundant links among command bodies, scientific committees, research institutes, universities, training organs, and industry can make learning uneven but resilient and difficult to suppress at one node.

• Human transmission remains the critical bottleneck. Combat-experienced instructors, mentors, specialists, and commanders carry tacit knowledge that documents cannot fully preserve, while casualties, rotation, and rapid technological change continually erode it.

• The “Last Mile of Adaptation:” Combat experience alone does not equal durable power. The central strategic challenge for Moscow is whether it can detach wartime knowledge from individual commanders and reproduce those military effects across new personnel, doctrine, and force generation.

• Reproducibility as a Strategic Variable: A military achieves true institutional capability only when it can regenerate battlefield innovations following heavy casualties, rotation, and organizational turnover. Without this, even sophisticated tactical advances remain institutionally fragile.

• Institutional Architecture for Learning: Russian General Staff leadership—led by Colonel General Vasiliy Trushin—is using military-scientific committees as “transmission belts” to systematically collect, study, and convert frontline experience into force-wide guidance and updated military science.

• Massive Scale of Adaptation Efforts: Since February 2022, Moscow has issued over 450 methodological recommendations and amendments to combat regulations, conducted more than 400 military-technical experiments under combat conditions, and analyzed roughly 500 weapon types to modernize over 190 systems.

• Force Generation & Education as the Critical Test: Following directives from Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Russia is mandating combat experience across all officer training programs, doubling faculty battlefield placements, and introducing new military specialties to shorten the gap between frontline lessons and institutional training.

• NATO should develop force-generation intelligence. The most useful warning indicators increasingly lie in schools, training centers, curricula, instructor pipelines, qualifications, organizational standards, and the performance of newly generated formations: the institutions that determine what Russia can reproduce after the war.

You can download the full report here 👉 here.

Enjoy!

Glen E. Howard

President, Saratoga Foundation

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By Paul Goble

The Crimean Tatar underground organization, Atesh – “spark” in that national language -- is playing an increasingly important role in providing intelligence to Kyiv about Russian aggression and carrying out sabotage against Russian targets not only in Crimea but inside the Russian Federation as well. Because of the nature of its work, most of the actions Atesh has claimed or been blamed for cannot be independently corroborated and thus are often dismissed either as self-promotion in the first case or disinformation in the second.

As it enters the fifth year of its existence, Atesh and its role are becoming clearer, especially in the wake of Ukrainian attacks on targets within the Russian Federation. These developments justify the conclusion that this Crimean Tatar underground organization is a serious ally of Kyiv, and suggest that no discussion of Ukraine’s order of battle or its ability to inflict harm on Russian targets should take place without reference to Atesh and its actions.

After Putin seized Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, more than 50,000 Crimean Tatars fled their homeland but others formed a series of small underground groups inside Russian occupied Crimea to harass Russian forces there. They had some success in the following years but did not come together to form a unified command until after Putin launched his expanded war against Ukraine in February 2022. Then, in the fall of that year, many in these groups united and formed Atesh both to continue their campaign inside the Crimean homeland and to assist Ukrainian forces elsewhere, something they viewed as central to the achievement of their own goals.

The group’s actions in 2022 through 2023 attracted relatively little attention because they were concentrated in Crimea and seldom could be independently confirmed; but by the start of 2024, its attacks had increased to the point that they attracted more attention, a trend that intensified as the group provided intelligence to Kyiv that allowed Ukrainian forces to sink Russian ships on the Black Sea and attack Russian positions in Ukraine itself. (For more information on the organization in that period, see CEPA. Feb 8, 2024 and the files for those years of Atesh’s own telegram channel, ATESH UA, one that now has almost 50,000 subscribers.)

Operations Inside Crimea

Over the last year and especially this summer as Kyiv has pounded Russian targets with drone attacks, however, far more information about Atesh has come out about its role acting in support of what the Ukrainian military is doing inside Crimea and also inside Russia, such as in Kursk both by its own attacks and by providing intelligence that a fuller picture of Atesh has emerged.

Among the most important features of this picture, some but not all of which have been picked up by Western outlets media outlets, are the following:

· First, Atesh operates on the basis of its leaders’ understanding that in the current war, there is no chance that Ukraine will disappear but there is a very real risk that Russia could succeed in destroying the Crimean Tatars in their homeland, a possibility that compels the Crimean Tatars to form their own organization of self-defense.

· Second, the group has succeeded in attracting what its leaders claim are 1800 to 2,000 members, although it acknowledges that only a fraction of these is actively engaged in sabotage or intelligence operations. Most, its leaders say, actively support the goals of Atesh but aren’t taking actions that could bring Russian retribution.

· Third, Atesh has always identified itself as a Crimean Tatar operation; but it includes within its membership and supporters may ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians opposed to Putin’s aggressive war in Ukraine. That multi-national composition gives it advantages it would not have had if it had remained purely Crimean Tatar.

· Fourth, as the war has evolved, Atesh has assumed an ever-larger role as a source of intelligence about Russian positions that Kyiv can use for targeting and about Russian plans in Crimea and the Black Sea where Crimean Tatars have the ability to gather information.

· And fifth, as Moscow has stepped up repression in Crimea and forced other groups which have spoken out for the Crimean Tatars to disband, Atesh is thus likely to assume an ever more important role as far as the future of the Crimean Tatars are concerned.

Outlook

Like other Crimean Tatar organizations, Atesh seeks international recognition that the 1944 Soviet deportation of Crimean Tatars was an act of genocide—a step over the last decade that seven countries have done. Furthermore, Atesh shares the commitment of other Crimean Tatar leaders and groups and is committed to the expulsion of Russian forces from Ukraine and ensuring Crimea remains within the restored borders of the Ukrainian republic.

Atesh’s contribution to the Ukrainian cause now almost certainly in the future will give the Crimean Tatars a greater voice in what the role of Crimean Tatars within Ukraine will be, something that along with its current military contribution makes it a group to watch rather than to dismiss out of hand as something marginal.

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By Vasif Huseynov

Trade volumes along the Middle Corridor — the rail and sea route linking China to Europe via Central Asia and the South Caucasus — have roughly quadrupled since 2022. Transit times have been reduced from 53 days to between 18 and 23 days, as shippers are being forced to reroute their products around a sanctioned Russia and a volatile Red Sea, where up to 90 percent of shipping has been diverted since 2024. Beijing and Brussels are now competing openly for a stake in that realignment. China committed some $23 billion to Kazakhstan’s side of the route in 2025 alone, while the EU has answered with €12 billion ($13.94 billion) in the form of the Global Gateway package and a dedicated coordination platform meant to keep European financing in the race.

Azerbaijan is currently routing nearly all of that corridor traffic through Georgia. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, which entered full-scale operation in June following years of upgrades, remains the corridor’s only functioning rail link to Türkiye and the Black Sea coast, bypassing Armenia entirely while a parallel line through Armenian territory has remained dormant since 1993.

A second route is taking shape further south, functioning as an alternative rather than a substitute to the Georgian passage: the Zangezur corridor. Framed under TRIPP—the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, a U.S.-brokered initiative designed to restore transport links between mainland Azerbaijan to Türkiye via Armenia and the Nakhchivan exclave. Ongoing railway reconstruction in Nakhchivan will effectively extend TRIPP onto Azerbaijani soil as corridor construction transitions from a declaration to project physical implementation.

Narrowing the Rail Gap in Zangezur

The clearest recent progress report on that project came from President Ilham Aliyev himself. Speaking in Tashkent on August 23, at the third meeting of the Azerbaijani-Uzbek Supreme Interstate Council, he gave a clear public accounting of where the Zangezur Corridor stands: on the Azerbaijani mainland side, the 110-kilometer Horadiz-Aghband railroad is already roughly three-quarters complete and due for full completion next year. Across Armenia, under that same TRIPP framework, only 42 kilometers of track are required, with construction expected to begin by early next year. Meanwhile, inside Azerbaijan’s own Nakhchivan exclave, reconstruction covers 194 kilometers of main line — 264 kilometers counting sidings, where the sections nearest the border are already under construction.

While in Tashkent, Aliyev noted that Baku is now assembling an international consortium of companies and states willing to invest in the Nakhchivan section in exchange for guaranteed transport volumes and returns. He also noted that work on the Armenian side is proceeding as well, as American partners are keeping Baku regularly informed about progress on the project. Once joined, the three sections are projected to carry 5.5 million passengers and 15 million tons of cargo a year, threading together east-west and north-south transport routes in a way that has not been physically possible since the railways of the South Caucasus suspended operating in the early 1990s.

The Zangezur corridor sits inside a much larger contest for the Middle Corridor’s future capacity, and disruption elsewhere has done as much as construction crews to raise its standing. For example, the near-collapse of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz this past March turned a route once seen as a niche alternative into what one recent assessment described as “a vital insurance policy for the European economy.” Against that backdrop, the EU’s recent outreach to Baku appears less like Brussels conferring a favor and more like a deliberate move to secure a footprint in a corridor defined by Azerbaijan and its partners.

Earlier this year the EU and the EBRD agreed to fund a feasibility study for the Nakhchivan railway, a step that followed a January visit to Baku by the European Commission’s Gert Jan Koopman and reflects the Commission’s own stated goal of reducing transit times between Europe and Central Asia to roughly 15 days — a target that depends on exactly the link Baku is building. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, applied that same logic during her July 1-2 visit to Baku and Yerevan, unveiling a €200 million ($232 million) Global Gateway package to establish greater South Caucasus connectivity. While modest relative to the total capital the corridor demands, the commitment signals Brussels’ determination to claim a seat at a table it did not build.

German engagement follows the same pattern, and came just weeks after the EU visits. President Aliyev traveled to Berlin on July 20-21, producing the most institutionalized bilateral step in the relationship to date which included a Joint Declaration on a Strategic Partnership Agenda and the creation of a new German-Azerbaijani Economic Council. Moreover, Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the South Caucasus as an increasingly vital connective hub between Europe and Asia, framing emerging transport and trade corridors as a shared source of economic potential. This wording positioned Berlin less as a patron granting Baku access to European markets and more as an equal partner seeking to integrate German capital, engineering, and manufacturing expertise into a corridor strategy Azerbaijan has already set in motion. It also comes at a crucial time for Germany, whose export-dependent economy—accounting for roughly 41 percent of GDP—requires precisely the type of supply-chain diversification promised by the Middle Corridor.

The same capital gap runs through Azerbaijan’s energy relationship with the EU, where the need for investment has grown considerably more urgent. Under a 2022 memorandum with the European Commission, Azerbaijan committed to doubling gas exports to the bloc to 20 billion cubic meters a year by 2027. Azerbaijan’s total exports reached 25.2 billion cubic meters in 2025, with more than half flowing into the EU and gas now reaching sixteen countries, up from twelve the year before. Meeting the 2027 target, however, depends on projects still working their way through construction and financing — the second stage of the BP-operated Shah Deniz field, full-scale development of Absheron, the Umid Phase 2 and Babek gas projects targeted for the end of the decade, and an expansion of Trans-Adriatic Pipeline capacity beyond its current 11.2 bcm/year.

Aliyev Calls for Europe to Back Words with Action

President Aliyev has grown increasingly blunt about where the constraint lies. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, he told business representatives that Europe is showing little investment interest in either of Azerbaijan’s energy sectors, noting that the country’s main partners in fossil fuels and renewables alike are American, British, Gulf and Chinese firms rather than European ones. In Berlin six months later, he was even more specific: with TANAP and TAP already running at full capacity, any increase in gas deliveries to Germany and the rest of Europe depends on new interconnectors — and financing for them that European banks, chief among them the European Investment Bank, have largely withdrawn from oil and gas projects under their green-transition mandates.

Azerbaijan brings real assets to that conversation. It is the only post-Soviet nation in the South Caucasus with no Russian military presence on its soil. Moscow completed the withdrawal of its peacekeeping contingent from the Karabakh region in June 2024, some seventeen months ahead of the original November 2025 mandate. Azerbaijani gas began flowing directly into Germany and Austria via the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline for the first time this past January, and its transit relevance has only grown as both the Red Sea and the northern route through Russia have become less reliable. It is also spreading its bets well beyond Europe by extending its activities to Central Asia. SOCAR recently signed an exploration agreement with Uzbekistan’s state energy company and an offshore cooperation deal with Israel’s NewMed Energy near the Leviathan field in March 2025.

Outlook

Taken together, these developments suggest that Azerbaijan is increasingly positioning itself not simply as a transit country or energy supplier, but as a strategic platform linking Europe with the wider Eurasian space. If the EU wants the Middle Corridor and Azerbaijani energy to deliver their full potential, Baku’s message is clear: political recognition must now be matched by more tangible European investment, financing and long-term commercial engagement in the region.

Dr. Vasif Huseynov is the head of the Western Studies department at the Center for Analysis of International Relations and Multiculturalism (AIR Center) in Baku, Azerbaijan.

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By Alexander Melikishvili

Following Ukraine’s pledge not to target the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) infrastructure, which is vital for Kazakhstan’s oil exports (see: Kazakhstan’s Novorossiysk Crisis), or non-Russian oil tankers in the Black Sea, the Ukrainian military has demonstrated precise target differentiation in its recent attacks. On August 17, the Greek-owned, Liberian-flagged Suezmax-class tanker Skiros (capable of carrying up to one million tons of oil) came under attack after loading Russian crude at the CPC terminal in Novorossiysk. Although the CPC terminal primarily handles Kazakh oil, Russian crude still accounts for 5–10% of its total export volume.

The attack caused no oil leakage, and the tanker continued on its journey, but the selective targeting of the vessel indicated that the Ukrainian military possessed key intelligence that allowed it to identify vessels carrying specifically Russian oil. This is likely attributed to the creation of new communication channels set up by Ukrainian authorities to interact with commercial shippers and selectively ensure safe passage. It should be noted that the attack on the Skiros took place only a day after the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Andrii Sybiha, held a phone call with his Greek counterpart. The official readout suggests that most of the call was devoted to discussing Black Sea security.

*Image above: The Sheskharis Oil Terminal near Novorossiysk

On the same day, another Greek-owned vessel, the dry bulk carrier ANNA S (sailing under the Liberian flag), was hit five times by UAVs that almost destroyed it, forcing the evacuation of the crew, including a Romanian captain and 20 Filipino sailors. The vessel was attacked when it was 20 nautical miles off the coast of Novorossiysk, where it was supposed to load barley. It is noteworthy that the crew of ANNA S was rescued by another Greek-owned ship, Elina B (sailing under the Maltese flag), which itself came under attack but continued its journey toward the Bosporus with 56,000 tons of wheat it had received while at the port of Novorossiysk.

On August 18, three additional dry bulk carriers were attacked while carrying or en route to load Russian grain: the Russian-flagged Victoria V, struck while docked at Novorossiysk before loading; the Marshall Islands-flagged Fehu, hit while departing Novorossiysk with wheat but able to continue sailing; and the San Marino-flagged Necibe, attacked at the port of Tuapse after loading 20,000 tons of wheat.

Image above: The Strategic Sheskharis Tunnel (Source Transneft)

Sheskharis in the Crosshairs

On August 12, Ukraine launched its largest combined attack against Novorossiysk since the war began. According to President Zelensky, the strike involved Palianytsia jet-powered attack UAVs, Neptune missiles, and seaborne USVs. As a result, Russia’s Transneft-owned Sheskharis terminal in Novorossiysk temporarily suspended operations on August 14. It remains unclear what specific damage Sheskharis sustained, but the attack damaged the highly strategic tunnel (see above) connecting the terminal to the Grushovaya oil depot, which is located inland, 6 kilometers from the port. Sheskharis is a strategically important facility, as it accounts for roughly 15-20% of Russia’s total oil exports. It is also important for Kazakhstan, as about 6 million tons of Kazakh oil (KEBCO blend) pass through the terminal for export annually. However, Sheskharis is far less significant for Kazakhstan than CPC, which transported 63 million tons of Kazakh oil (CPC blend) in 2025.

Although Sheskharis resumed operations on August 16, the relentless pace of Ukrainian attacks targeting tankers carrying Russian crude has forced Türkiye to reduce its imports of Russian oil via the Black Sea, which was previously the primary conduit for Russian oil exports. Türkiye remains heavily dependent on Russian oil — in 2025, for example, Russia accounted for almost half (15 million tons) of Türkiye’s total oil imports (32 million tons). With the northern part of the Black Sea under a de facto Ukrainian blockade, Türkiye can only hope to receive Kazakh oil from both CPC and Sheskharis, since tankers carrying it will not be targeted, but the volumes will be insignificant, as most of the Kazakh oil is already committed to European markets (Italy in particular).

*Image above: World Bank Map of Novorossiysk

This leaves Türkiye in a difficult position, which explains why, on 8 August, the Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, proposed to Russia and Ukraine that they introduce a moratorium on attacks against commercial navigation in the Black Sea. On August 14, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, rejected the Turkish proposal, stating that there were “no grounds” for a mutual truce. Ukraine, on the other hand, itself offered Russia a similar proposal, and its ambassador in Turkiye, Nariman Dzhelyal, voiced support for the Turkish initiative on August 24.

Outlook

The tit-for-tat attacks in the Black Sea are hurting both Russia and Ukraine economically, but to different degrees, given the disparity between the two respective economies. For Ukraine, agricultural exports make up 60% of its export revenues, 90% of which are usually transported via the Black Sea. Ukraine’s central bank projects that disruption of seaborne export routes could cost the Ukrainian economy $2.5 billion in losses in 2026.

For Russia, the situation is much different, as the share of agricultural products in Russia’s total exports reached 12% in 2025. Russia is also heavily dependent on Black Sea ports to export its farm products, especially grain. As of August 17, because of the Ukrainian attacks, 90% of Russia’s grain export capacity in the Black Sea was taken offline.

The double blockade of the Black Sea threatens this year’s harvest in both countries, as silos are either filled or nearing capacity, while alternative routes to transport grain simply cannot accommodate such large additional volumes. Against this backdrop, the Russian agriculture minister, Oksana Lut, even suggested using excess grain as animal feed to mitigate the crisis.

Concerning oil exports, the Black Sea’s importance for Russia is somewhat limited. According to Bloomberg, as of early June, Russia’s daily oil exports averaged 3.46 million barrels per day (bpd), which is a record level since the war started in 2022. In June, Reuters reported that Russian oil exports from Novorossiysk, including KEBCO blend but excluding CPC, were on the order of 800,000 bpd, or roughly 23% of Russia’s total oil exports. As for Ukraine, since 2022, it has imported oil by land and not by sea.

Under these circumstances, Russia and Ukraine can potentially continue their standoff in the Black Sea despite mounting economic costs. Ukraine will probably offset them by tapping into the €90 billion ($105 billion) support loan from the EU. The Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy estimates the initial package of compensation to farmers suffering from the Russian naval blockade to be €220 million ($256 million), as this was the estimated figure with which it approached the EU for a grant, which was denied because it is already included in the aforementioned support loan.

Russia, too, can absorb the costs, as it is considering a slew of measures to mitigate the crisis, including state purchases of excess grain, preferential loans, and subsidies. Despite significantly drawing down its gold reserves in January-July to their lowest level since 2020, the Russian government’s financial position remains robust, with the central bank reporting that, as of August 14, Russia’s aggregate sovereign reserves stood at $755.6 billion. This allows Russia to continue its brinkmanship in the Black Sea, even as doing so will exacerbate food insecurity for poor countries that rely on grain imports. The World Food Programme has warned that at least 45 countries will be in particularly dire straits this year due to the harmful impact of the cyclical El Niño climatic anomaly.

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About the Author:

Alex Melikishvili is a senior country risk analyst with more than a decade of experience working in the private sector (S&P Global, IHS Markit) with a focus on Eurasian security. Alex holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

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*Image above: Khalid Qaraf and his son Nurdin shortly before his conscription into the Russian army

By Paul Goble

Moscow has launched a major conscription effort in the North Caucasus to recruit more soldiers there in the hopes of refilling the rapidly depleting ranks of its invasion force in Ukraine to avoid declaring a general mobilization or involving more ethnic Russians in the fighting. This represents a major change in Kremlin policy, not only because it focuses on the North Caucasus, a region that has largely escaped Putin’s disproportionate use of non-Russians since he launched his expanded war against Ukraine, but also because Moscow is using the military itself to carry out this impressment campaign rather than rely upon local officials to enforce this drive. That combination is now at risk because of the death of Nurdin Qaraf, a Circassian repatriant who died after being forced to serve in the Russian army—a development whose impact has been exacerbated by the threatening behavior of Russian security services against his family.

As a result, Moscow may be forced to double down or quit—either sending more Russian troops to the North Caucasus at the expense of pulling some units out of Ukraine, or scaling back this campaign entirely. Otherwise, what might have appeared in the Kremlin to be a natural extension of existing policies could spark a violent explosion in the North Caucasus and lead to the undermining of Russian influence across the Middle East, where millions of Circassians live and are extremely well-organized, particularly in Türkiye.

Since Putin launched his expanded war against Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin leader has disproportionately used troops drawn from poorer ethnic Russian regions and non-Russian republics. That has been widely reported, but what is much less well-known, although it has definitely been documented, is that this policy has adversely affected the North Caucasus, which in fact has sent far fewer troops to Ukraine and suffered far fewer deaths there than most have assumed.

Moscow’s Manpower Dilemma in the North Caucasus

Multiple factors explain this trend. First, Russian commanders long have been opposed to using North Caucasians as troops, worried that providing them with military training could give the North Caucasians the skills needed to one-day challenge Moscow. Indeed, from the end of Soviet times to 2014, the Russian government refused to draft North Caucasians; and it has continued to have fewer of them in the military than their share in the prime military-service age cohorts would suggest. Second, more than in any other non-Russian section of the Russian Federation, the North Caucasus has been the site of anti-war demonstrations since the beginning of the expanded conflict four years ago, an indication that people there harbor opposition to Putin’s war and reject serving in it. And third, there are today growing indications that even the most Kremlin-loyal leaders in the region, including Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov, do not want to see their young men fighting in what they increasingly view as “Russia’s war.”

*Image: Kadyrov units serving in the Russian Army

But now, as Putin’s war in Ukraine grinds into its fifth year and Russian forces are suffering ever greater losses, the Kremlin appears to have concluded that it has little choice but to find new ways to raise more men for its army. Going after North Caucasians who had escaped such service more frequently per capita than other non-Russians in the past is an obvious choice, and the one the Kremlin has made. But clearly aware of the problems such a recruitment campaign would face, Moscow decided to use its own military forces rather than rely upon the normal military recruitment system, which often lies in the hands of local people, to ensure that its campaign would be more effective.

To that end, earlier this year, Moscow began sending more predominantly ethnic Russian troops into the North Caucasus from which it had pulled units earlier to fight in Ukraine. In addition, Russian authorities appear to have focused their efforts on groups like the Circassians, a nation Moscow has worked to divide and which it would like to keep from uniting, given that there are currently 700,000 ethnic Circassians across the North Caucasus and more than seven million abroad, many of whom are interested in returning. Those two choices, using the Russian military and focusing particularly on the Circassians, have combined to generate severe difficulties that may jeopardize the entire Russian effort.

This assessment arises from a single incident—one largely overlooked in Moscow and the West, yet is drawing significant attention from Circassians both in their North Caucasus homeland and abroad. Earlier this year, Nurdin Qaraf, a Circassian who had returned to the North Caucasus from Syria, was compelled to join the Russian military. His family did not know of his fate and thought he was living with friends or relatives in Moscow. But when his father attempted to find his son after not hearing from him for more than six months and even appealed to Russian officials for assistance, the family was finally told that Nurdin had been killed. The officials provided no details or access to the body and at the same time warned his father Khalid that if he did not stop his efforts to learn about his deceased son, he would suffer the same fate. In addition, Russian propagandists launched a campaign to claim that Nurdin had fought proudly for his recovered country just as have many other Circassian repatriants.

Not surprisingly, neither Nurdin’s family nor Circassians more generally accept the Russian version of events. Instead, they believe, Moscow’s new effort to recruit Circassian returnees into the Russian army has three main goals. First, it seeks to reduce the number of Circassians in the North Caucasus both by having some of them killed in the war and by discouraging others from trying to come. Second, it helps Moscow with its war by providing the Russian army with cannon fodder. And third, and this may be especially important in Moscow’s calculations now, it is intended to sow discord between the Circassians and the Ukrainians who have increasingly shown greater interest in the fate of the Circassians and support for the effort of that nation to gain international recognition of the Russian genocide against their nation.

Outlook

The Qaraf case will greatly compound Moscow's problems among Circassians, not just in the North Caucasus but also in its vast overseas diaspora, where ever more people are paying attention to the recent development. However, the impact of this tragedy is not limited to these two groups. Instead, it is affecting other nations in the North Caucasus, like the Chechens, who can easily see that what the Russian government is imposing on the Circassians is a prelude to what it is likely to inflict on them. As a consequence, both Circassians and other non-Russians in the North Caucasus are becoming radicalized in their opposition to Moscow, something that could spark new violence there and jeopardize Russian control.

To avoid such outcomes, Moscow will likely deploy more military units into the North Caucasus to maintain stability there, something it is loath to do given the scarcity of Russian manpower to fight in Ukraine, or it will altogether have to scrap this project. Putin may prefer the former course to the latter, but either option is fraught with difficulties for the autocratic leader given that both highlight the weakness of the center brought on by the war in Ukraine, something cooler heads in the Russian capital might have recognized in advance but that Putin failed clearly to foresee.

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By Glen E Howard

Published 12 August 2026 10:38 pm BST

Russia has quietly established a new strategic supply route to Iran across the Caspian Sea. Called by some the Caspian Express, this logistics corridor has become the backbone of Vladimir Putin’s effort to arm Tehran while allowing both countries to circumvent US maritime pressure in the Persian Gulf.

Moscow applied this model during the Syrian civil war when it sustained the regime of Bashar al-Assad through a maritime supply route sometimes termed the Syrian Express.

Operating for nearly a decade between occupied Crimea and the Syrian port of Tartus, the supply corridor allowed Moscow to reinforce its expeditionary forces despite Western sanctions and diplomatic pressure. Turkey closed the Bosphorus to warships following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, squeezing the route, before the lifeline was cut by the end of the Syrian regime in 2024.

Today, Russia has replicated that approach in the Caspian, transforming the inland sea into its logistical backbone for its military partnership with Iran. The strategic consequences are becoming increasingly visible as “Gulf War III” expands to the region.

Earlier this year Israel carried out air strikes against Iran’s Caspian naval base at Bandar Anzali, destroying port facilities and several boats in the first ever use of Israeli air power in the Caspian region. At the end of July, Ukraine carried out a drone strike on an Iranian commercial vessel, killing one sailor in the Caspian, which prompted Tehran to consider retaliatory strikes against the Ukrainian port of Odesa. Since Putin extended Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2022, Iran has become a vital Russian ally – supplying Moscow with $2.7bn in ballistic and air-defence missiles, including hundreds of Fath-360 short-range ballistic missiles and 200 surface-to-air missiles, while Russia has spent more than $4bn on Iranian military equipment since late 2021.

Iran provided the key components and technology for Putin’s fleet of Shahed drones and helped Moscow establish production facilities at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone to manufacture up to 6,000 units a year. As many as four Iranian Caspian ports are working around the clock to import wheat, feed and oil as Tehran reroutes essential trade through the inland sea due to the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, in the northern Caspian, the Russian port of Olya has become Moscow’s primary transit hub for importing Iranian drone components and ammunition. Consequently, both Russia and Iran rely on the landlocked Caspian as an indispensable supply line for their respective war efforts.

In a striking historical irony, this same “Persian Corridor” across the Caspian once served as a vital lifeline during World War II, when massive quantities of American Lend-Lease assistance flowed through Persia to sustain the Soviet war effort against Nazi Germany.

Today, Moscow is once again relying on this historic corridor, confident that the Caspian remains an untouchable sanctuary. For decades, Russia has treated the Caspian Sea as a protected “bastion” beyond Western reach, where its naval forces launched Kalibr cruise missiles against Syria in 2015, and more recently against Ukraine from its missile range at Kapustin Yar using Putin’s new Wunderwaffe weapon – the Oreshnik ballistic missile.

Because the Caspian is landlocked, the United States can do nothing as a maritime power to prevent Russia from shipping Iran supplies that would otherwise pass through the Strait of Hormuz, now blockaded by the US Navy.

This geographic reality plays directly into Moscow’s broader geopolitical ambitions as the Caspian becomes the centrepiece of a North-South transport corridor linking Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and ultimately India while bypassing maritime chokepoints controlled by the West. In doing so, Moscow and Tehran are operationalising Sir Halford Mackinder’s Heartland theory by creating a landlocked Eurasian logistics network that blunts Western sea power.

Interdicting these supply lines has therefore taken on greater urgency as Moscow has actively rebuilt Iran’s offensive capabilities during recent pauses in fighting with the US in the Gulf. American officials told The New York Times that Russia helped Iran restock after it lost 60 per cent of its drone arsenal during the war.

As the regional dimension of the Iran-US conflict expands, the Trump administration must decide whether to contest the Caspian Express before it becomes the permanent logistical spine of the Russia-Iran partnership.

The White House has already laid the diplomatic foundation by supporting an Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement and by launching the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. It should now build on that success by developing a regional strategy that leverages Azerbaijan’s emergence as a rising middle power in the South Caucasus while enabling Ukraine to sustain military pressure on the Caspian Express without risk of direct US involvement.

History shows that wars are often decided not only on the battlefield but along the supply routes that sustain them. The Syrian Express prolonged one war for years. The Caspian Express now underpins the Russia-Iran strategic partnership and Tehran’s effort to outlast the United States in a war that is now going into its sixth month.

Whether the Caspian Express remains Moscow’s strategic lifeline to Iran – or ultimately fails – will depend on if Washington adopts a regional strategy capable of contesting the emergence of a new Persian Corridor and stymieing Russian efforts to arm Iran.

Glen E. Howard is president of The Saratoga Foundation, a US non-profit organisation researching Russia, China, Iran and North Korea and the countries’ interests in the rest of the world.

Full text found here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2026/08/12/putin-lifeline-iran-threat-trump-blockade/

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by George Vișan

In the early hours of June 5, 2026, a Ukrainian Sargan-3000 USV was discovered inside the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanța. The USV became entangled in a protection barrier on Pier 78 (Dana 78) in close proximity to facilities operated by the National Agency for Saving Human Life at Sea (ARSOVM), Romania’s maritime search and rescue service. The Ukrainian USV was likely part of a swarm of four sea drones en route to attack the Russian naval base at Novorossiysk from their home base in Odesa. The Ukrainian sea drone likely lost course as a result of Russian Electronic Warfare (EW) countermeasures, which disabled the USV. Following the Constanța drone incident, it should be noted that the Ukrainians hit Novorossiysk again using a similar Sargan-3000 USV after the June 5 incident, failing in their first attempt to sink a Russian patrol boat but later succeeding on July 14.

Romanian authorities attempted to disarm the Ukrainian drone in Constanța’s harbor after quickly establishing contact with their Ukrainian counterparts. However, around 10:30 am the drone exploded inside the harbor. Fortunately, the Ukrainian authorities warned their Romanian counterparts in time that the USV would self-destruct, and the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team tasked with the drone’s neutralization had enough time to evacuate. The subsequent explosion destroyed an ARSVOM facility and lightly damaged the pier, and as a result, no one was injured.

*Image above: Ukrainian drone explosion at Port of Constanța on June 5

The Importance of Constanța

Despite the positive outcome, the incident was extremely serious. The Port of Constanța is Romania’s biggest Black Sea port and handles, on a regular basis, oil and energy-related products, as well as chemical fertilizers, including a major oil terminal. One of Romania’s recently announced new naval priorities is to extend its military port facilities at Constanța by creating a new naval base to replace the outdated facility located deep inside the harbor. These plans are linked with Romania’s ongoing process of modernizing its naval forces and securing its maritime interests in the Black Sea. Efforts to create a new naval base are a welcome long-term development that would increase the capabilities of the Romanian Naval Forces. However, steps should be taken immediately to improve harbor security in the Port of Constanța due to the harbor’s vulnerability to the threat of unmanned systems.

Constanța is also the main operating base for the Forțele Navale Române (Romanian Naval Forces). Vessels with weapons systems on board are frequently moored at the main naval pier as ships regularly enter and leave the port. The risk of a large explosion remains high. The recent incident with the Ukrainian Sargan USV demonstrates the vulnerability of ports and harbors to unmanned systems. Both Ukraine and Russia have used unmanned naval systems to regularly infiltrate and strike targets within ports and naval bases up and down the Black Sea coast.

The Lack of Anti-USV Defenses

What is particularly concerning about the protection of the port of Constanța is that, at the time of the June 5 incident, it lacked an adequate system for detecting USVs. However, it did have an operational system for detecting and jamming UAVs, but it proved ineffective against USVs. Romania’s coastal surveillance system, SCOMAR, is not designed to detect sea drones. Its mission is optimized for law enforcement, to detect smugglers or vessels that fish illegally in Romanian waters. The system cannot detect surface targets smaller than 6 meters in length, and given their low profile and hulls built mostly of composites, USVs are practically invisible. SCOMAR is operated by the Ministry of the Interior and not by the Ministry of Defense.

A further consequence of the June 5 incident is that it revealed a complex - if not convoluted - decision-making process among different Romanian governmental agencies and ministries that deal with Constanța’s port security. For example, following the incident, the Romanian Ministry of Defense issued a statement claiming that the navy cannot protect maritime infrastructure during peacetime and that no legislation is in place that would authorize the military to intervene to resolve similar incidents or deal with potential grey zone activities.

Naval Basing Options & Constraints

Romanian Naval Forces are small and mostly obsolete despite past and current efforts to bring them into the 21^st century. Currently, the Romanian Navy is divided between the ports of Constanța and Mangalia, which have dedicated military port facilities, while the nascent naval air arm is based at Tuzla, a small locality situated between the two ports.

The 53^rd Frigate Flotilla and the 146^th Mine Warfare Squadron are homeported in Constanța, along with a number of auxiliaries (tugs, logistics ships, diver support ships and school ships). The 150^th Missile Squadron and the 50^th Corvette Squadron are homeported in the military harbor in Mangalia. Its ability to host large surface combatants is hampered by a road bridge that connects it to the rest of southern Dobruja and to the border crossing with Bulgaria. Mangalia is particularly important because it has a naval shipyard at Șantierul Naval 2 Mai that is used for maintenance and repair.

The Romanian Navy has always shared the port of Constanța with the merchant marine and the civilian operator of the port. However, the need to create a separate naval base from the civilian infrastructure was not considered a high priority. Historically, the navy has always been the smallest branch of the Romanian armed forces and is usually treated as an afterthought when it comes to funding. Usually, military vessels have been assigned to Pier O (Dana Zero) of the Port of Constanța. As the port was developed by the government and owned by the state, this situation never posed a problem.

In 1937, an attempt was made by the government to build a separate naval base for the navy and another commercial port on Lake Tașaul, which lies a few kilometers north of Constanța. The project did not progress beyond the groundbreaking ceremony due to a shortage of funding and the start of the Second World War. During World War II, the Royal Romanian Navy used the port of Constanța as its main base, and the Soviet Air Force and Soviet Navy repeatedly bombed the port, seeking to destroy both civilian and military shipping, in an effort to make the port’s infrastructure unusable. After the war, the project to build a separate naval base was abandoned and instead, in 1975, a refinery and oil terminal were built at the mouth of Lake Tașaul.

During the communist era, Romania’s small Black Sea fleet primarily used the ports of Constanța and Mangalia. As the state owned both the ports and the shipyards, the need for dedicated facilities for the maintenance of military vessels was not required. The Romanian Navy would simply use the civilian shipyard facilities for complex maintenance operations. Additionally, shipyards in both ports constructed new surface combatants for the Romanian Navy as commissioned by the communist regime.

The fall of communism changed all that. While the ports remain government-owned, the shipyards have been privatized. For maintenance operations that cannot be handled by the Navy’s logistics bases, a complex procurement process should be conducted, with a single shipyard ultimately selected to perform the work

Inaction on the New Naval Base

In 2025, the Romanian Ministry of Defense announced plans to expand the military port of Constanța. These plans include the development of a new military pier near the southern sea wall of the port. Selected for its accessibility and proximity to the strategically vital Danube-Black Sea Canal, this location offers significant operational advantages. The base’s connectivity streamlines logistical support, enabling seamless joint operations with the Romanian Land Forces alongside interagency cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior and the Lower Danube Authority. Moreover, the new military pier will facilitate docking operations for Romanian navy ships as well as allied vessels that plan to visit the port. It will also host new infrastructure to help improve naval operations for deployments to not just the Black Sea, but also the Danube as well.

Despite being announced in 2025, no additional information has been published about the project, and so far no acquisition procedure has been launched to begin development of the new naval base. If completed, the extension of the military facilities at the Port of Constanța would greatly assist in the modernization and development of the Romanian Naval Forces and enhance its ability to project power to protect the offshore Neptun gas field. The new base would move some units of the Romanian Navy from their current location deep inside the harbor to a central point near the entrance, significantly enhancing its response time to sea-borne threats emanating from the Black Sea.

In light of these developments, two important pieces are missing from the government plans announcing this project. As the project has initially been presented, it does not have repair facilities, dry docks and/or floating docks needed to perform maintenance operations on the ships of the fleet. Such infrastructure would obviate the need to procure maintenance services from civilian shipyards, with the exception of complex maintenance procedures.

*Image above: Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV)

The second key issue concerns port security. The port of Constanța is extremely vulnerable to sea drone attacks, not only USVs, as evidenced by the June 5 explosion. If a Ukrainian USV were jammed or hacked by Russian Electronic Warfare (EW) countermeasures, then it could easily end up in Romania’s biggest port. Any well-planned sea drone attack involving a swarm of USVs could do extensive damage to port facilities and the military vessels moored inside it. The port is even more vulnerable to Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) than to USVs, as UUVs can infiltrate undetected if a port lacks adequate defenses and subsurface sensors. The difference between a USV and a UUV is that a UUV operates entirely beneath the water's surface (like a submarine or submersible), while a USV navigates on top of the surface, similar to a jet ski.

The port’s vulnerability to underwater unmanned vehicles (UUVs) is even higher than that posed by USVs, because UUV’s would have the specific ability to infiltrate without being detected in any port that is not protected and lacks adequate sensors to deal with unmanned systems.

Countering the USV Threat

To prevent a similar breach from occurring again, a network of early-warning sensors should be installed. Following the drone incident, an interim solution was considered for early warning against further potential USV infiltration incidents. Two Ocean Aero Triton autonomous underwater and surface vehicles (AUSV) were acquired and are now being used by the Coast Guard for surveillance missions outside the Port of Constanța.

Romanian authorities have yet to offer any public solutions to how to counter the threat posed by USVs. On August 28, 2025, Russian sea drones launched a surprise attack inside the Danube sinking the Ukrainian intelligence ship Simferopol. Moscow will in all likelihood continue to search for ways to infiltrate Romanian port facilities due to its previous success. What Romania urgently needs, before implementing any plans of expanding its military port facilities in Constanța is the creation and deployment of a sensor network to detect unmanned systems.

Acoustic sensors, FLIR sensors, LIDAR, and radar should be deployed in proximity to the ports of Constanța, Mangalia, and at the Danube River distributaries (mouths). This sensor network should be under the command of the Romanian Naval Forces and complement the existing Integrated Maritime Surveillance System (SCOMAR). Destruction of the unmanned systems once detected should be achieved using drone interceptors, air assets (helicopters, Unmanned Aircraft System, or UAS), air defense systems and surface combatants. Without adequate means to protect maritime infrastructure, Romania risks losing access to the sea as well as its navy.

Outlook

Efforts to develop military facilities in the Port of Constanța will greatly contribute to the development and modernization of the Romanian navy. However, securing the current port facilities should be prioritized and strongly reinforced in the near term as a result of the emerging threat posed by USVs. The threat matrix in the Black Sea has evolved exponentially over the past 18 months as the array of sophisticated threats grows due to the widening use of sea drones in naval warfare. Losing access to the sea and to the global markets can be achieved not only through blockade but also by destroying port infrastructure and Romania’s efforts to create a new naval base in the Port of Constanța will need to keep this factor in mind.

About the Author:

George Vișan is an expert on Romania and Black Sea Security and works as an expert on issues of peace and war for the Romanian Diplomatic Institute. He holds both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Bucharest, and has published extensively on Romanian security and defense policy. From February 2022 to February 2024, he served as an advisor to the State Secretary for Strategic Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE). His opinions and research in this article are his own and do not reflect the official positions of the Romanian Diplomatic Institute nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania.

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Hi everyone!

As Russia prepares for the upcoming State Duma (parliament) elections from September 18–20, 2026, tremendous speculation exists as to whether Moscow will initiate a nationwide military mobilization to mount one final effort to defeat Ukraine in the fifth year of Putin’s war, while Russia moves closer to exhausting its manpower base.

In our new special report, “Russia’s Force-Generation Strategy After the Duma Elections,” Senior Fellow Roger N. McDermott evaluates the trajectory of Moscow’s military recruitment pipeline, the viability of a post-election call-up, and the long-term outlook for Russian force generation as Moscow struggles to find enough military personnel to offset its battlefield losses, now estimated to be 1.4 million, killed, wounded and missing through June 2026.

Key Takeaways & Findings

• Post-Election Mobilization Dynamics: While an immediate post-election announcement in September is politically sensitive, a post-ballot decision implemented during October or late autumn is far more credible. However, Moscow is more likely to intensify its current model of “mobilization by other means”—combining targeted compulsory measures, financial incentives, regional targets, and administrative pressure—rather than declaring an open nationwide draft of 300,000–500,000 men.

• Force-Generation System Under Strain: Russian volunteer recruitment saw a sharp drop in Q1 2026 (70,500–71,200 new contracts, or ~800/day) before recovering slightly to ~1,000/day (see graph below). While the system has not failed, its efficiency is rapidly declining. Municipalities, employers, bailiffs, and prison officials are constantly pressured to sustain manpower intake to replace battlefield losses rather than building substantial net force growth.

• Military Impact vs. Immediate Effect: A potential public target of 300,000–500,000 personnel should be understood as a phased program spanning several months aimed at rotational relief, filling rear-area roles, and building operational depth for 2027. Bottlenecks in training capacity, equipment, junior leadership, and Ukrainian interdiction risks prevent such a force from rapidly converting into immediate combat power before winter.

• Evaluating the Evidence: While digital registry reforms, administrative updates, and local decrees confirm that the Russian state has significantly enhanced its technical capacity for a call-up, there is currently no evidence confirming that President Vladimir Putin has authorized a final mobilization plan, quota, or official execution date.

It is critically important to understand the real mechanics of Russia’s force generation in terms of assessing the long-term sustainability of Moscow’s ongoing military operations and operational dynamics going into 2027, which will likely be a decisive year in the war. Please download the full report: 👉 here.

Sincerely,

Glen E. Howard

President, The Saratoga Foundation

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By Alexander Melikishvili

Speaking at the XXII Forum of Interregional Cooperation in Omsk on July 25, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for the first time suggested to his Russian counterpart that the war in Ukraine be frozen. He characterized the war as an “interstate conflict” and emphasized that its nature was “not entirely clear to many, including us.” Tokayev also categorically rejected the idea of Kazakhstan as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine. The Kazakh leader’s choice of venue could not have been better, as Russia has such a close level of cooperation at the regional level only with select countries in its “near abroad,” including Armenia, Belarus, and Uzbekistan.

The timing of Tokayev’s remarks reflects the urgency that Kazakhstan feels due to the adverse impact the war has on the operations of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) at Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Kazakhstan is vitally dependent on the uninterrupted operations of the CPC’s Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka terminal near Novorossiysk because roughly two thirds of its oil exports reach global energy markets (mainly Europe) through that chokepoint.

On July 17, a news report, citing the CPC’s Telegram channel, noted that the ExxonMobil-chartered tanker Nordic Zenith (sailing under the Liberian flag) was attacked by two drones en route to the CPC terminal, where it was scheduled to load Kazakh oil. The drones caused a fire aboard the vessel, leading to the partial evacuation of the crew, but the vessel remained afloat. On July 19–20, more tankers came under Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) attacks, according to two press releases issued by the CPC. On July 19, the Liberian-flagged ASIA and Marshall Islands-flagged NISSOS IOS were attacked by UAVs while they were loading from the CPC’s single point moorings (SPMs) 1 and 2. On July 20, the Cameroon-flagged tanker NELSA was attacked by UAVs as it was loading at SPM-1. None of these attacks resulted in any sunk vessels, oil spills, or damage to the CPC’s assets, including SPM-1 and SPM-2. Interestingly, neither the CPC press releases nor the press statement released by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on July 19 mention Ukraine by name.

Kazakhstan’s Black Sea Nightmare

The attacks prompted the CPC to temporarily suspend its operations. However, because Kazakhstan is so dependent on Novorossiysk for its oil exports, any disruptions at the CPC terminal imply that oil production at its three main oil fields—Kashagan, Karachaganak, and Tengiz—must be reduced. On July 23, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy announced that a “controlled adjustment” of production levels had been introduced without specifying its scale. Nonetheless, two anonymous industry sources told Reuters that, as of July 22, the extraction of oil and gas condensate in Kazakhstan had contracted to 1.63 million barrels a day (compared to the daily average of 2.07 million since the start of the month). Per these accounts, daily oil production at the Tengiz field had to be lowered to 406,000 barrels on July 22, instead of 925,000.

On July 27, Reuters reported that CPC interruptions resulted in oil production being halved in Kazakhstan. Chevron owns a 15% stake in the CPC and a 50% stake in the Tengizchevroil international consortium that is developing the Tengiz field, which explains why Chevron raised its concerns with the Trump administration, as reported by The Wall Street Journal on July 24.

Kazakhstan can certainly withstand short-term CPC interruptions, even if they stretch into weeks or months, because it has ample foreign currency and gold reserves, which, as of the end of June, stood at $127.31 billion, according to the National Bank of Kazakhstan. Commenting on the CPC interruptions on July 24, the Chairman of the National Bank, Timur Suleymenov, stated that Kazakhstan’s central bank was ready to stabilize the exchange rate, if necessary. It appears that the crisis has been averted, as Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy reported on July 27 that the offshore loading of tankers had resumed at the CPC’s SPM-1 and SPM-2. In particular, the Liberian-flagged tanker SEA MAJESTY and the Greek-flagged tanker Milos were receiving Kazakh oil (belonging to Tengizchevroil) without any interruptions. While Kazakhstan and US energy majors can breathe a sigh of relief, their critical dependence on the CPC remains unchanged.

No short- or even medium-term solutions exist to fix this problem, as Kazakhstan sends about 60 million tons of oil for export via the CPC on an annual basis. Given the existing pipeline topography in the region, namely that the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) and/or Atasu–Alashankou pipelines (to China) are limited in their export capabilities, it is simply not possible to reroute this much oil via these energy outlets. BTC capacity is 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd), while the CPC pipeline is 1 million bpd, and any effort to reroute additional oil from this overland pipeline to Azerbaijan via the Caspian is virtually impossible.

These logistical bottlenecks are further exacerbated by the surprising announcement of the Russian Ministry of Defense on July 22, according to which Russia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), extending 200 nautical miles from the coast, has been declared unsafe for commercial navigation due to attacks by Ukrainian UAVs and seaborne USVs (unmanned surface vehicles). Although this announcement is advisory and does not prohibit vessels from entering Russia’s EEZ in the Black Sea, it will definitely increase insurance premiums, making maritime transportation of all cargo, including oil, more expensive. It reflects the continuously deteriorating maritime security situation in the northern part of the Black Sea, where, according to the Ukrainian military, 124 vessels linked to Russia were attacked between July 8 and July 20, including 89 tankers, as quoted by Bloomberg on July 23.

Meanwhile, Russia is also not sitting idly by. It is regularly attacking vessels carrying cargo to and from Ukraine. On July 21, for example, it attacked a Liberian-flagged LPG tanker en route to the Ukrainian port of Reni, wounding three crew members, Agence France-Presse reports. On July 19, in the gravest maritime attack to date, Russia launched three Kh-59/Kh-69 cruise missiles against the Guinea-Bissau-flagged (and Turkish-owned) bulk carrier GOLDEN LEO (carrying grain) in close proximity to the port of Odesa, killing ten sailors, including four Indian nationals, and prompting the Indian government to summon the Russian Chargé d’Affaires, Mr Vladimir Ladanov, on July 21.

Outlook

Following the formal warning that Ukrainian authorities reportedly received from the Trump administration late last week not to attack CPC assets and non-Russian tankers in the Black Sea due to concerns expressed by the CEO of Chevron, Mike Wirth, it is very likely that Ukraine will comply. Officials in Ukraine are eager to capitalize on the US commitments made after the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7–8, including the license to manufacture interceptor missiles for Patriot air defense systems that are vital for shooting down Russian missiles. Thus, Kyiv would not want to jeopardize this positive momentum in its at times tumultuous relations with Washington.

Kazakhstan greatly matters to the United States because it accounts for 2% of global oil production. Knocking Kazakhstan’s oil exports offline by destroying the CPC terminal (all three SPMs) would increase oil prices, which is something that the White House is keen to avoid, especially ahead of the contentious midterm elections in the United States in November. It is almost certain that the CPC and Novorossiysk are a priority issue to be discussed by Trump and Zelensky when they met in Washington earlier today.

As for Kazakhstan’s options, there is a trans-Caspian pipeline project that would leave Russia out, connecting Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan across the Caspian seabed, but here the biggest impediments will be Russia and Iran. The Caspian littoral states abide by the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which contains clauses that both Russia and Iran interpret as allowing them to veto any trans-Caspian projects under the pretext of environmental concerns.

Russia will do everything within its power to derail any pipeline project that would reduce Kazakhstan’s dependence on the CPC and Novorossiysk. This includes Kazakhstan’s oil pipeline to China, which has limited throughput capacity and would have to be significantly expanded, requiring considerable capital investment. More importantly, at present Russia uses the Atasu–Alashankou pipeline to export 10 million tons of oil annually to China via Kazakhstan. In fact, Kazakhstan and Russia signed an agreement only recently to increase this volume by 2.5 million tons.

Lastly, Kazakhstan’s predicament is the toxic legacy of Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s First President, who failed to see the wisdom of maintaining diverse oil export routes. Although Tokayev has consistently spoken of the need to diversify oil export routes since assuming the presidency in 2019, little has been done in practice apart from the modest volumes sent in transit via the Baku-Tbilisi Ceyhan pipeline.

About the Author:

Alex Melikishvili is a senior country risk analyst with more than a decade of experience working in the private sector (S&P Global, IHS Markit) with a focus on Eurasian security. Alex holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

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by Andrew McGregor

In the latest phase of an insurgency that began in 2012, the ability of Mali’s military regime to fend off a rebel insurgency has been sorely tested by a rebel offensive that began in April with coordinated attacks across Mali’s 479,000 square miles (by comparison, Texas covers a total area of 268,596 square miles).

The offensive is being carried out by an unlikely partnership of two Tuareg-dominated groups – the Salafi-Jihadist Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM, led by Iyad Ag Ghali) and the separatist Front de Libération de l’Azawad (FLA, led by Alghabass Ag Intalla). Though the latter seek the creation of Azawad, an independent state in northern Mali, Ag Ghali and his followers seek the transformation of Mali into an Islamic State based on Shari’a. For the purpose of operations, the two groups work closely together in northern Mali, while operations in the Central and Southern regions of Mali are often carried out by JNIM alone.

Mali’s military regime is defended by the Forces Armées Maliennes (FAMa, led by Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Élisée Jean Dao) and their Russian partners, the Africa Corps, which succeeded the Russian Wagner Group in June 2025. The Wagner “withdrawal” (many Wagner personnel in Mali simply switched over to the new Africa Corps) was accompanied by a significant uptick in JNIM and FLA attacks, most notably in regions of Mali where the militant groups had not previously operated. There is significant friction between FAMa and the Russians, who tend to operate independently while helping themselves to FAMa arms and equipment. The Russian military presence has been accompanied by a sharp increase in human rights abuses and civilian casualties, though all parties to the conflict have demonstrated little respect for civilian life.

The coordinated attacks in April (which included strikes in the capital itself) shook the Malian regime and led to the loss of a number of population centers in the north, including Kidal, Aguelhoc and Tessalit in the Kidal region, Ber in the Timbuktu region, and Tessit in the Gao region. The loss of Kidal came as a shock to the Africa Corps, which had proclaimed its role in taking the rebel stronghold in November 2023 by raising a Russian flag over the city. The insurgents also succeeded in killing FAMa commander Sadio Camara during an attack on the Kati military base outside Bamako.

Rebel Offensive – July 2026

On July 4, the FLA and JNIM launched coordinated attacks in Aguelhoc (retaken by government forces after April), Anéfis, and Gao in the north, Sévaré in the central region (home to a large army base and an airport), and at the prison at Kéniéroba in the south (46 miles from Bamako), where many opposition figures are held (the latter attack failed to free any prisoners). The dispersed July attacks followed similar the pattern used in April. Airstrikes were carried out against JNIM/FLA fighters concentrated at Aguelhoc in the northeast, where the latest insurgency began with the slaughter of the Aguelhoc FAMa garrison by jihadists under the command of Iyad Ag Ghali in 2012.

Anéfis has a small population of 8,000 residents, but is strategically located and home to a base used by both FAMa and the Africa Corps. Most of Anéfis was taken by the rebels on July 4, but parts of the Malian/Russian garrison continued to fight, with the Russians defending their position with drones. Intense fighting followed at Anéfis on the 5^th and 6^th as rebel reinforcements poured in on 4x4 trucks. By July 7, FAMa drones and fighter jets began taking a toll on attackers. As fighting continued on the 8^th, a Malian/Russian relief column of 60 vehicles left Gao for Anéfis, with air cover provided by helicopters and surveillance drones.

The militants inflicted a devastating July 9 attack on the relief convoy. Military assistance was required from Niger and Burkina Faso to relieve the attack on the Russian/Malian column. Nonetheless, FAMa issued a proclamation that declared the situation had stabilized. Before switching to regional sweeps, FAMa claimed the elimination of 330 “terrorists” and the re-occupation of Anéfis. During a ceremony in Bamako celebrating the FAMa/AC “victory” in Anéfis, an Africa Corps speaker declared “Terrorism is a scourge created by Western countries to divide and dominate.”

The FAMa Strategy

FAMa commander Elisée Jean Dao led Mali’s National Guard (the“Brown Berets”) in the January 2013 Battle of Konna (the first significant reverse for Iyad Ag Ghali and the jihadist coalition) and the retaking of Gao from the Islamists. After advanced military training in France in 2015, Dao supported Colonel-Major Assimi Goïta’s post-coup junta in 2020. Dao served as ambassador to Gabon and China before becoming Mali’s Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces in May 2026. His appointment in May came at a time of continuing purges of senior FAMa officers suspected of ties to opposition figures and would-be mutineers.

General Dao insisted on July 11 that FAMa and its Russian partners had delivered a severe blow to the insurgents by allowing them to “concentrate their forces” in Anéfis before launching a coordinated counter-offensive that inflicted heavy losses. According to Dao, this strategy allowed government forces to target rebel military assets rarely caught out in the open, including armored vehicles and heavy weapons, as well as large numbers of the usual motorcycles and “technicals” that provide mobility for the insurgents. According to the general, one thousand rebels were “neutralized” at a cost of 30 soldiers killed and 60 wounded in the relief operation.

In the jubilation that followed FAMa’s expulsion of the insurgents from Anéfis, General Dao also spoke at length about the strategy that enabled the “victory.” The general began by describing the government’s April loss of the cities of Kidal and Tessalit as “a ruse” that brought the insurgents “within range.” Anéfis, in a “truly flat terrain,” was held as “a kind of bait” to draw out the enemy’s armored vehicles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank guns and artillery for destruction, a method of bypassing the insurgents’ concealment skills: “Operation Anéfis was part of a comprehensive strategy for us that allowed us to gradually reduce the enemy’s capabilities, and well, they let themselves be caught, hoping to gain control…”

Financial incentives are another part of the regime’s strategy; a reward of 2 billion CFA francs ($3.5 million) was offered in June by Mali’s government for information leading to the “capture or neutralization” of JNIM leader Ag Ghali. Further rewards were offered for Ag Ghali’s Fulani deputy, Amadou Koufa, and Tuareg separatist leader Alghabass Ag Intalla.

*Image above: 50 Captured FAMa Soldiers After JNIM Convoy Attack

July 18 Ambush

Only days after General Dao proclaimed the success of the regime’s strategy, a FAMa convoy leaving Anéfis for Gao was ambushed near Tabankort by the jihadists and separatists on July 18, with over 50 soldiers and allies from pro-government militias killed and 24 taken prisoner. A convoy of Africa Corps personnel was reported to have left earlier for Gao; some reports claim no Russians were involved in the July 18 ambush, while others claim some Russians were with the FAMa convoy and among the known dead. Echoing the ruthless and demoralizing slaughter of bound FAMa prisoners at Aguelhoc by Ag Ghali’s Ansar al-Din movement in 2012, it appears that many of the prisoners taken in the latest ambush were massacred. Several armored vehicles were reported to have been taken intact, replacing earlier rebel losses.

The Role of Algeria

An Africa Corps statement claimed that that two leading Tuareg militants were eliminated during the fighting; FLA military leader Mbarek Ag Akli and JNIM military planner ‘Abd al-Rahman Zaza (Ag Akli was later seen alive on video discussing the battle). An unconfirmed local report alleged that Iyad Ag Ghali was seriously wounded in the battle and was transported with other wounded militants to an Algerian military hospital in the Saharan city of Tamanrasset. Malian authorities have frequently accused Algeria of harboring Tuareg militants over several decades, even though Algiers has a long record of acting as a mediator between Bamako and Tuareg rebel movements in northern Mali.

Mali’s relations with Algeria began to improve in July, a year after Algeria took down a Malian surveillance drone allegedly operating in its airspace. The sudden rapprochement is viewed as benefitting Algeria and Russia while further weakening French influence in the region and forestalling American efforts at a rapprochement with Mali. Russia favors the revival of the never fully implemented 2015 Algiers Accord as a means of restoring peace and security to the restless north after years of warfare and Russian military intervention has failed to provide a military solution.

Foreign Interference?

According to General Dao, the type of weapons FAMa is now encountering in the field are more suggestive of those held by a state rather than a rebel group, a situation the general believes is indicative of foreign support for the insurgents. Regime-friendly media in Mali attributes FAMa and Africa Corps difficulties to the entry of “battalions of mercenaries” into the conflict, including Algerians, Polisario fighters and Ukrainian instructors, all under the supervision of French legionnaires.

It was further claimed in the Malian press that the July 4 offensive was committed by “terrorists in the pay of Western powers” led by French president Emmanuel Macron “and some neighboring countries,” notably Algeria and Mauritania, who are alleged to be “awaiting the green light” from Paris before launching attacks against FAMa positions.

Ag Ghali, meanwhile, has called the cooperation of Mali’s ruling military council with “Russian proxies” traitorous, and has cited it as a reason to reject any negotiations with the state.

Outlook

The expansion of insurgent operations to Central and Southern Mali as well as the massive Northern province has forced FAMa to spread its forces across the nation rather than address the rebellion in the north alone, the traditional pattern. The joint insurgent strategy involves pulling Malian and Russian military resources in several directions at once, exposing convoys rushing to one hot-spot or another to ambushes in unfamiliar country.

Despite promoting a Salafist religious belief foreign to most Tuareg Muslims, Iyad Ag Ghali not only survives, but grows in power and influence every year. This is attributed to his strategic understanding of the Sahel conflict, one that has brought ideologically opposed Tuareg separatists under his leadership.

Does Ag Ghali seek the creation of a Chad-type situation, where a tiny desert minority (in Chad’s case, the Zaghawa) controls a large and diverse nation by force of arms and exclusion of other groups in the power structure? Given that the Tuareg are as divisive as the Zaghawa (both rebels and rulers in Chad hail from the same group), the main challenge to a Tuareg-led Islamist government in Mali would inevitably come primarily from rival armed Tuareg groups, including not only the separatists but also those (mostly from the vassal class) still loyal to Bamako. Unless Ag Ghali believes he can actually replace the existing government with that of an Islamic State, then it is likely that the growing number of attacks in the center and southern provinces and the blockade of fuel destined to Bamako are designed less to seize territory than to destabilize Mali’s military regime by exposing its weaknesses, internal rivalries and reliance upon an unpopular and erratic military partner, the Russian Africa Corps.

About the Author:

Dr. Andrew McGregor is director of Aberfoyle International Security, a Toronto-based consultancy specializing in the security issues of Africa and the Islamic world.

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By Vasif Huseynov

On July 16, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov arrived in Moscow for a two-day official visit, holding talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on July 17. The two ministries used the occasion to sign a Plan of Consultations for 2026–2027 and to review the full range of bilateral relations — political dialogue, trade, transport, the Caspian, and the South Caucasus. On paper, this was a scheduled diplomatic reset. In substance, it marked the closing chapter of a year-and-a-half-long standoff in which the pace and conditions of reconciliation were largely set by Baku.

A few days earlier, at the fourth Shusha Global Media Forum on July 13, President Ilham Aliyev had already previewed this outcome. When asked about the state of ties with Moscow, Aliyev said: “Relations between our countries are developing very positively. You mentioned the difficulties. Yes, we all know about them. But what is important is that this period is now behind us. I would say that our relations have been fully normalized.”

That formulation, however, was not left to stand on its own. In Moscow four days later, Bayramov used almost the same identical language, telling Lavrov’s press conference that the two states had overcome their difficult period and fully normalized the entire spectrum of bilateral relations. Lavrov, for his part, stopped short of using the phrase himself, merely noting that Moscow had taken note of Aliyev’s statement and shared Baku’s understanding of the current situation — a small but telling asymmetry in how each side chose to characterize the same reconciliation.

A Crisis Moscow Could Not Simply Talk Its Way Out Of

To understand why the sequencing of Russia-Azerbaijan rapprochement matters, it is worth recalling how deep the rupture had been. On December 25, 2024, an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 flying from Baku to Grozny was struck by Russian air defenses as Ukrainian drones entered Russian airspace, then diverted across the Caspian and crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people aboard. Moscow’s initial explanations — including theories about a bird strike or an onboard gas cylinder explosion — were dismissed by Aliyev at the time as absurd theories unbecoming of the response he expected from Moscow. Baku’s position was clear and sequential: acknowledgment of responsibility, an apology, accountability for those responsible, and compensation.

It took until October 9, 2025, when Putin met Aliyev in Dushanbe, for the Russian president to explicitly acknowledge that Russian air defense missiles had detonated near the aircraft, and to commit to compensation. Even then, it took another six months of technical negotiations before the two foreign ministries jointly confirmed, on April 15, 2026, that all outstanding issues — including the payment of compensation — had been resolved, with the crash attributed to an unintentional action of an air defense system in Russian airspace. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, asked shortly afterward to confirm the settlement, said only that all issues linked to the tragedy’s aftermath had been resolved, declining to discuss specifics out of consideration for the victims’ families. No compensation figures were ever disclosed. But the sequence itself is instructive: full normalization did not proceed until Baku’s conditions had been met.

Baku’s Balanced, Multi-Vector Foreign Policy

What followed the Moscow talks reinforced the fact that reconciliation was never intended as a return to dependency. Days later, Aliyev traveled to Germany for an official visit, where he and Chancellor Friedrich Merz signed a joint declaration establishing a strategic partnership spanning energy, transport, green hydrogen, digital transformation, and industrial modernization. Aliyev used the occasion to highlight Azerbaijani gas flowing to ten EU member states and recent visits by European Council President António Costa and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Baku. Restoring dialogue with Moscow and deepening ties with Berlin within the same week is a fairly clear illustration of what a genuinely multi-vector foreign policy looks like in practice: no single relationship is allowed to define the country’s options, and no single capital is treated as indispensable.

This is the frame through which the Russia file is best read — not as a standalone bilateral story, but as one strand in a foreign policy that has spent several years methodically diversifying. Azerbaijan has hosted senior European Union officials, expanded the Middle Corridor and Trans-Caspian energy links, deepened the Organization of Turkic States framework, forged closer ties with the United States, including a visit by the Vice President of the United States, and positioned itself as a facilitator during the U.S.-Iran war, all the while keeping its channel to Moscow open. Restoring ties with Russia does not reverse that trajectory so much as complete it, by resolving the one relationship that had been operating in crisis mode while every other vector continued to move forward.

Moscow’s Weakened Hand in the South Caucasus

Another development shaping Russian rapprochement with Azerbaijan is that in the past eighteen months since the crash Russia’s position in the South Caucasus has rapidly eroded, which went far beyond Moscow’s bilateral standing with Baku. The clearest marker came on August 8, 2025, when the United States brokered a peace framework between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House, under which Washington secured a long-term arrangement to develop the transit corridor through Armenia’s Syunik province linking mainland Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave. Branded the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), the arrangement gave the United States a direct operational role in a corridor that, for decades, Russia had assumed it alone would help secure this axis.

Analysts have described the deal as effectively pushing Russia out of key processes in the South Caucasus, noting that Moscow’s traditional role as the region’s principal security guarantor was, for the first time, taken up by an outside power operating on Armenian soil. Simultaneously, this shift coincides with a broader overall decline in Russia’s standing in Armenia itself, where Yerevan has pursued its own diversification away from Moscow-centered security arrangements in favor of Western - and US-facilitated frameworks. In Azerbaijan, the retrenchment of Russian influence has been visible in a different way. In the weeks following the plane crash, Baku moved to close the Russian House in Baku, the local representative office of Rossotrudnichestvo, Russia’s state cultural and soft-power agency, after Azerbaijani authorities said the center had failed to register as a legal entity and had breached local law.

Around the same time, Azerbaijan also shut the Baku bureau of Sputnik, part of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, permitting the outlet only a single accredited correspondent going forward. As of this year, Rossotrudnichestvo’s own leadership was still describing the situation as unresolved: in February 2026, agency head Yevgeny Primakov said Moscow was seeking acceptable options to resume the Russian House’s operation in Baku as soon as possible, noting that the 1997 intergovernmental agreement on cultural centers technically remained in force. Neither institution has reopened yet.

*Map: The International North-South Corridor (INSTC) Versus the Persian Gulf

Moscow’s Strategic Urgency: The North-South Corridor

Against this backdrop, it is worth noting where the balance of need now sits on infrastructure Russia itself greatly depends upon. At his joint press conference with Bayramov, Lavrov was notably direct about why the North-South Transport Corridor’s western branch — running through Azerbaijan and Iran — has become urgent for Moscow specifically. With the Strait of Hormuz crisis dragging on and disrupting global transport routes, Lavrov said the corridor’s importance had grown accordingly. He noted that Iran had finally completed land allocation for the long-delayed Rasht-Astara railway link, the corridor’s last missing segment, and that railway officials from Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran had already met to discuss the practical steps needed to begin construction, expressing confidence that progress was now within reach.

Read plainly, this is Russia describing a route it desperately needs, not one it is doing Azerbaijan a favor by using. With Western sanctions foreclosing most alternative paths to South and Southeast Asian markets, and a key maritime chokepoint in the Gulf now unreliable, the overland corridor through Azerbaijani and Iranian territory has become one of Moscow’s few dependable arteries southward. Azerbaijan’s own foreign minister noted that Baku has coordinated this project from its inception and is on schedule to raise freight volumes on its section to five million tons by 2028, a reminder that Azerbaijan is not merely a transit host but a central party whose cooperation the corridor’s Russian branch now desperately needs to preserve its relations with Iran.

Outlook

None of this suggests that Baku and Moscow have resolved every point of friction, or that the underlying grievances have fully receded. What the record shows instead is a reconciliation that was carefully calibrated and developed in stages as it restored political and diplomatic channels, while the institutions Russia once used to project cultural and media influence inside Azerbaijan remain closed. Moreover, Moscow’s broader position across the South Caucasus, particularly around the Zangezur corridor, has continued to recede even as bilateral ties with Baku improve. Azerbaijan’s return to dialogue with Russia has come without a return to the pre-2024 status quo, and largely on terms that Baku itself defined.

About the Author

Dr. Vasif Huseynov is the head of the Western Studies department at the Center for Analysis of International Relations (AIR Center) in Baku, Azerbaijan. He is a faculty member at Khazar University in Baku. Dr. Huseynov had previously worked for the Center for Strategic Studies (SAM) and the Public Administration Academy (DIA) in Baku.

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BRIEFS

China Blocks Putin’s Stalled Mega-Icebreaker Project Over Sanctions Fears

On July 16, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti ran an article about the critical and multifaceted crisis paralyzing President Vladimir Putin’s largest Arctic ambition: the transformation of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) into a premier global trade artery rivaling the Suez Canal.

Documents and expert testimony obtained by the Russian newspaper reveal that the defining element of this strategy, the creation of a massive, technologically advanced fleet of ice-class cargo vessels, has suffered a massive breakdown. As a result of this crisis, Moscow has been caught between its own technological deficiencies and Beijing’s refusal to provoke Western sanctions (more on this below by Paul Goble).

Whereas Putin’s initial 2018 shipbuilding goal for the NSR was 80 million tons by 2024, this aim was projected to rise to 200 million tons by 2030. In reality, however, the 2024 performance fell far short, managing only 37.9 million tons, leading to dramatic and lasting downward revisions in September 2024, first to 117 million tons by Rosatom, and then to a grim new assessment by President Putin himself, now predicting only 70–100 million tons by 2030.

Russia’s existing ice-breaker fleet is in a dismal state. According to an estimate from the Russian Central Research Institute of Finance (CRIF), Moscow will require a minimum of 23 large new ice-class Arc7 vessels (oil tankers, LNG carriers, bulkers) by 2030. Alexander Buyanov of CRIF confirms that Russian shipyards lack the capacity to build them, stating, “there is no Russian [equipment], the Western one is under sanctions.” The key to resolving Moscow’s problem is China. CRIF documents reveal that China is unwilling to provide essential propulsion complexes for Arc7 vessels out of a fear of Western sanctions and can do so only if “sanctions pressure is weakened.” This development places a clear red line on Arctic cooperation that effectively paralyzes Russia’s NSR strategy.

China Refueling Services Surge in Trans-Baikal Amid Petrol Shortages

Russian entrepreneurs in the Transbaikal region have created a “China Fuel Shuttle” to Chinese Manchuria to alleviate fuel shortages in the Russian Far East province caused by widespread Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries inside Russia. The ad-hoc border service has introduced a vital lifeline for residents in Trans-Baikal, trying to find a way to cope with an acute fuel crisis that began on June 25.

Regional Governor Alexander Osipov described the situation as “extremely tense,” with residents waiting days in queues so long that they are even visible from space. Authorities declared a high alert regime, capping gasoline sales to individuals at just 15 liters per day. Into this logistical void stepped independent entrepreneurs offering a “shuttle” service through local city chat rooms. For a fee, these agents drive Russian cars across the border to neighboring Manchuria, refuel them at Chinese pumps, and then return them to owners in Chita or Trans-Baikal.

The crisis in Trans-Baikal mirrors a national pattern. Ukrainian drone attacks on refineries have disrupted supplies across almost all of Russia, with restrictions in force in 41 of Russia’s regions. As domestic solutions falter, the improvised Chinese fuel shuttle is providing an essential, stabilizing connection for a distressed Russian market. At the same time, it also threatens to force Russian border regions into deeper economic dependence on China.

Beijing’s ‘Two-Track’ Arctic Strategy and the Limits of Alliance

By Paul Goble

China is carefully dosing out its sales of critical equipment to the Russian Federation, reflecting its own national interests rather than simply meeting the requests of its Russian partners. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Arctic. In recent weeks, Beijing has simultaneously refused to sell Arctic-capable ships which Moscow had counted on securing, but delivered LNG platforms both countries could use on the Northern Sea Route.

This two-track approach not only shows that the terms of the alliance are being set less by a commitment to cooperate than by what Beijing believes corresponds to its own national goals. These aims include dominant positioning without risking Western sanctions on Chinese industries as Beijing calculates what suits Chinese interests best. That pattern—which is all too often ignored—should serve as a warning to analysts and governments in Russia and beyond. Those who reach conclusions about the direction of Sino-Russian relations based on a single action will likely be proven wrong, as there is almost always more going on beneath the surface.

Beijing’s decision to turn down Moscow’s request for the production of Arctic-capable ships has drawn scrutiny, as it highlights the persistent problems plaguing Russia’s own shipbuilding sector, particularly its inability to build enough icebreakers. This development is further complicated by Vladimir Putin’s urgent call for a faster expansion of the Arctic fleet than domestic capacity allows, and by China’s proven success in constructing these specialized vessels far more quickly and cheaply than Russia has ever been able to do. For all these reasons, but especially because of cost savings and Russia’s need to build up its naval presence quickly, Russian commentators and officials have been urging Moscow to order Arctic-capable ships from China, including Chinese-built destroyers, noting that other countries, such as the United States, routinely buy ships built elsewhere. While others in Moscow strongly objected saying that Russian ships must be built in Russia, they remain confident that Beijing’s interest in exploiting the Northern Sea Route would result in a favorable decision and Murmansk would become the “hub” for Beijing’s ‘Icy Silk Road.’

That made the Chinese rejection of the Russian request on July 17, much more disturbing to officials in Moscow. Some in the Russian capital were alarmed by what they saw as Beijing’s decision to desert Russia and join the West by agreeing to act within the limits of Western sanctions. But now that China has agreed to fund the construction of LNG plants along the NSR, it is clear those conclusions were unjustified. The Sino-Russian relationship is far more complex than many thought—yet Beijing's actions are entirely consistent with how it has quietly advanced its interests in Russia for over a decade.

Outlook

China has long sought to expand its influence across the Russian Federation but has done so without sacrificing its interests not only with regard to other concerns, such as relations with the United States and the EU, but also in ways that do not undercut its longer-term goals of dominance in the pursuit of short-term mediagenic successes. Thus, Beijing has acted and continues to act as the dominant partner in relations with Moscow, one that will agree to what Russia wants but only if it is consistent with broader Chinese interests - both short and long term - and that it will combine any refusal to cooperate with Moscow in one area with evidence that it still wants cooperation by doing something Russia welcomes in another.

This calculated approach keeps Russia “on the hook,” as it were. After all, given Russia’s current multi-faceted weakness, Moscow has little choice but to continue seeking benefits from China, even when, as is happening now, Beijing turns it down on something critically important. This dynamic is uncomfortable for many in Moscow and is a reality some Western observers appear completely unaware of, leading commentators and officials in both places to lurch between judgments that the relationship is either thriving or that it is collapsing.

Neither of these views is justified by the facts; and it is striking that the Russian government, albeit the weaker partner in this relationship, is acting in a somewhat similar way regarding China when it can. Thus, while it has been stung by China’s refusal to build ships Russia needs and Beijing’s hardline negotiating position on a new pipeline to carry Russian gas to China, the Kremlin has announced that it is extending the period for visa-free travel by Chinese to Russia until the end of 2027, a low-cost action to be sure but one that signals that Russia wants the relationship to continue even though its junior partner status is ever more frequently confirmed.

Minerals, Infrastructure, and the Northern Sea Route: Why Chukotka Matters to Beijing

By Sergey Sukhankin

No region of the Russian Far East better illustrates the convergence of China’s long-term economic priorities in the Arctic than Chukotka. Analyses of Sino-Russian Arctic cooperation have largely focused on energy projects, while comparatively little attention has been paid to the Arctic littoral of the Russian Far East. Pre-2022 analyses of the region by Russian experts argue that Sino-Russian Arctic cooperation is driven primarily by complementary economic interests, including the development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), Arctic infrastructure, and access to natural resources. Chinese motivation is driven by investment and commercial cooperation rather than challenging Russian sovereignty. Chukotka represents an important case study through which these broader dynamics can be examined, as recent developments at both the regional and federal levels increasingly connect the region to China’s long-term economic priorities in the Arctic.^[1]

Recent developments at both the Russian regional and federal levels reinforce this trend. Regional authorities continue to prioritize the Baimskaya mineral district, transport infrastructure, and Arctic logistics. Federally, Moscow and Beijing have expanded institutional mechanisms linking the Russian Far East with Northeast China, emphasizing transport connectivity, investment, energy cooperation, and greater utilization of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), where Chukotka might play an important connecting role. Although Chinese investment in Chukotka remains limited, current ownership patterns alone understate the region’s strategic significance. Its large copper resources, location on the eastern segment of the NSR, and proximity to the Bering Strait increasingly align with China’s voracious demand for critical

Chukotka’s Three Pillars of Strategic Significance

Located at Russia’s northeastern extremity across the Bering Strait from Alaska, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug occupies a strategic position between the Arctic and Pacific. Indigenous peoples who reside in the area include the Chukchi, Siberian Yupik, Evens, Yukaghirs, and Chuvans. Traditionally, these groups have relied on reindeer herding, marine hunting, and fishing for their livelihood. With a population around 50,000, it is an enormous region covering over 737,000 square kilometers and is equal in size to the US state of Texas. Moreover, it has a population density of roughly 0.07 persons per square kilometer, making it the least densely populated region in Russia.

Russian expansion into the region first began in the 17th century, although the region’s extreme remoteness and fierce resistance by its indigenous groups delayed effective imposition of government control over the area. Chukotka became a national (later autonomous) okrug in 1930, marking its formal incorporation into the Soviet administrative system. During the Soviet period, the region acquired wider political, economic, and notably military-strategic significance. Moscow expanded its administrative control over the region by heavily investing in mining, transport, and energy infrastructure. It also developed strategic industries based on gold, tin, and tungsten deposits, while new settlements supported Arctic industrialization. At the same time, Chukotka’s proximity to Alaska made it a highly strategic Cold War frontier supporting Soviet border security, military planning, and surveillance in the Bering Strait region.

After the Soviet collapse, Chukotka experienced rapid economic decline, population loss, and deteriorating infrastructure. The region experienced a major revival during the governorship of Roman Abramovich from 2001–2008. Since the 2010s the region has become increasingly important within Russia’s Arctic strategy. Today, its significance rests on three interconnected pillars: abundant deposits of metals (gold, copper, silver, tin, tungsten, molybdenum). Central to that extraction strategy is the port of Pevek, which serves as a major logistical hub for the eastern portion of the Northern Sea Route (NSR). Its strategic location near the Bering Strait connects Arctic shipping directly with Asia-Pacific markets. These advantages collectively position Chukotka as a vital component in the development of the eastern littoral of Russia’s Arctic borderline and a pivotal platform for economic cooperation with China in the Russian Far East.

Chinese Incrementalism in Chukotka

Rather than seeking direct ownership of strategic assets, China has adopted a strategy of “incremental industrial participation” in Chukotka’s extractive economy. This mode of economic engagement builds influence by layering engineering contracts, equipment supply, infrastructure cooperation, financing discussions, and supply-chain integration. This approach was established as early as 2011, when Chukotka Governor Roman Kopin and the chairman of China’s Shenhua Corporation signed a comprehensive cooperative agreement. That pact encompassed geological exploration, resource extraction and processing, power generation and transmission, and the construction of roads, railways, and ports. Shenhua showed particular interest in the Bering coal basin, whose estimated resources reached 4.5 billion tons and whose development would require a deep-water port, new generating capacity, and the Beringovsky–Anadyr Road.

The Baimskaya copper-gold project is the clearest contemporary example of this indirect participation. Its strategic importance derives from its planned capacity to process up to 70 million tons of ore annually, produce approximately 300,000 tons of copper per year during its initial full-production period, and generate a stable mineral-export cargo base for the NSR. Russian academic research identifies the Baimskaya mineral zone as the foundation of a future mining and infrastructure cluster in Chukotka. Available evidence, however, does not demonstrate Chinese control over the mining license or serving as project operator. Following the 2023 sale of GDK Baimskaya to Kazakhstan-based Trianon Limited, the ownership structure remained separate from the Chinese companies involved in construction and procurement.

Taken together, these arrangements suggest that China’s influence derives less from ownership than from participation in the project’s industrial architecture. This role is most apparent in engineering and construction. The principal contractor is China Nonferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction Company (NFC), an engineering subsidiary of the state-owned China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group (CNMC). NFC-linked ChukotTsvetMetStroy has been connected to construction of the processing plant and the supply of major technological equipment; NFC’s previous cooperation with KAZ Minerals on Kazakhstan’s Aktogay project likely provided relevant institutional and technical experience. Beyond construction, these contracts create longer-term industrial linkages through equipment supply, maintenance, spare parts, and technical servicing. Chinese shipbuilder Wison has also constructed hulls for floating nuclear power units intended to supply the project, although the reactors, turbines, final outfitting, and operational control remain Russian.

Similar limitations also exist in financing. Earlier negotiations included the China Development Bank, a Chinese state policy lender, and KAZ Minerals had previously used Chinese developmental financing in Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, Baimskaya’s current financing is primarily Russian and led by VEB.RF, Russia’s state development corporation. Pevek, the Chaun terminal, new roads, power lines, Arctic shipping, and the NSR together connect the mine to external markets. These systems do not establish Chinese ownership, but they facilitate China’s gradual incorporation into Chukotka’s mineral-processing and export supply chains. Collectively, these developments underscore that China’s expansion in Chukotka relies chiefly on a strategy of incremental industrial participation, as opposed to the direct acquisition of strategic assets.

How Chukotka Fits into China’s Long-Term Arctic Strategy

While individual Chinese projects in Chukotka appear commercially modest, viewed collectively, they closely mirror Beijing’s stated Arctic priorities, and reveal a coherent pattern of economic engagement defined by incremental industrial participation.

The previously mentioned Baimskaya copper-gold project is not only expected to become one of Russia’s largest new copper producers thereby generating a stable cargo base for the NSR but also stands to become the nucleus of a future mining and infrastructure cluster in Chukotka, and through this prism should be closely examined in terms of understanding Chinese interests.

Moreover, as a strategic commodity, copper’s growing importance reinforces the project’s significance. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), expanding electricity grids, electric vehicles, renewable energy, and energy storage are expected to increase global copper demand by roughly 30 percent by 2040, with Chinese grid expansion representing the largest single driver of recent demand growth.

Chinese academic studies likewise identify copper as a strategic resource essential for the country’s energy transition and long-term resource security. Critical minerals represent only one dimension of the project’s strategic significance. Its transport infrastructure also aligns closely with China’s connectivity objectives in the Arctic.

Released in 2018, China’s “Polar Silk Road” policy encourages Chinese firms to become involved in Arctic infrastructure, shipping, and resource development projects in neighboring states. The Baimskaya project—with its integrated road, port, and NSR export energy infrastructure—aligns closely with these objectives, though there is no proof it was custom-designed for Chinese interests. This combination of factors indicate that Chukotka exemplifies a distinctive feature of Chinese engagement in the Arctic. Rather than pursue high-profile acquisitions, China appears to be embedding itself in the Russian Arctic through engineering expertise, industrial supply chains, infrastructure participation, and commercial partnerships, a model that minimizes political exposure while establishing a durable economic presence.

Conclusion

While China’s role in Chukotka appears modest when measured by foreign direct investment alone, a broader examination of incremental industrial participation reveals a different pattern. Despite limited asset ownership, Chinese companies have become increasingly involved in engineering, equipment supply, infrastructure construction, and specific areas of project financing, particularly within the Baimskaya mining cluster.

These activities closely correspond to China’s publicly stated priorities of securing critical mineral supply, improving Arctic connectivity, and expanding commercial use of the Northern Sea Route. Rather than replicating the large-scale acquisitions associated with some Belt and Road projects, China appears to be pursuing a more incremental approach in the Arctic littoral of the Russian Far East, seeking to embed itself within industrial and logistics networks through partnerships and commercial contracts. Whether this incremental model becomes characteristic of China’s broader Arctic engagement will be an important indicator of the future evolution of Sino-Russian economic cooperation in the High North.

^[1] Leonov, S. N. 2019. “Vzaimodeiistvie Rossii i Kitaia v Arktike,” Rossiisko-kitaiskie issledovaniia 3, no. 3: 7–1.

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By Emil Avdaliani

Since the fall of the Assad dynasty in late 2024, the Russian military presence has remained a major mystery as to what Moscow’s future will be in Syria. Following Assad’s flight to Moscow on December 8, 2024, Russia has significantly scaled back its presence at its two principal facilities on Syria’s Mediterranean coast: the Tartus naval base and its strategic air base at Khmeimim, located in the Syrian province of Latakia. Russia’s future stay in Syria became even more uncertain after the new government in Damascus terminated the 49-year commercial port management concession granted to the Russian engineering construction business Stroytransgaz.

Russia has also pulled out from Qamishli Airport located in northeastern Syria and restricted its patrolling missions along the border with Israel. This reduced presence has coincided with Moscow’s ever-demanding war effort in Ukraine and the deterioration of Russia’s position in the Middle East following the weakening of its key regional partner – Iran. In fact, for the first time since 2013, Russia currently has no naval presence operating in the Mediterranean Sea.

Yet, over the past several months, Syria’s new leadership has not only maintained working ties with Moscow but even attempted to revive and expand the relationship. This has come as a surprise to many given that the interim government of Ahmed al-Sharaa, once in power, severed Syrian ties with Assad’s other allies such as Iran and Hezbollah. When it comes to Russia, however, the interim Syrian leader has twice visited Moscow: first on October 15, 2025, and then on January 28, earlier this year.

Preserving Russia’s Syrian Footprint: Khmeimim and Tartus

After these visits, the new Syrian government allowed Moscow to maintain a scaled-down military presence in its former Mediterranean bases. The Russian newspaper Kommersant has closely tracked Russian activity, reporting in April that Damascus intended to change the operation of Russian facilities to a non-military role by converting the Khmeimim airbase into a “training and humanitarian facility” for Syrian forces, noted one Syrian official. The move would effectively mean an end to the base’s military functions, and Moscow and Damascus would end up jointly operating the facility. Such a change in terminology would allow Russian sources to continue using Khmeimim airbase, which Kommersant noted is a vital staging area for Russian forces operating in Africa.

To this should be added more recent developments such as the reports in early July when Moscow announced it would get a commercial logistics hub up and running in one of two berths in Tartus. The revelation followed the June 6 announcement by the Russian-Syrian Business Council that Moscow would establish an assembly and distribution center for Russian goods in the strategic port.

In light of these recent developments, when it comes to relations with Russia, Damascus seems to have its own specific logic for how it interacts with Moscow. Firstly, it is about Syria’s economic situation. The Arab country owes around $1.2 billion in Assad-era debt to Russia. More importantly, Syria is in dire need of a large inflow of foreign investments to rebuild the country, and Damascus believes that Russia could be one of those investors. Russian expertise is also of critical importance when it comes to the operation of three large dams on the Euphrates River, which were either built or designed with Soviet assistance. Given the poor condition of these massive structures today, their rehabilitation is far more likely to occur with Russian help than with Turkish or European support.

Russian familiarity with Syria’s needs accumulated throughout decades of close cooperation, as evidenced by how Damascus handled the country’s currency printing issue. In 2025, Syrian authorities extended cooperation with the Russian company Goznak, which had long enjoyed a monopoly in the printing of Syrian currency.

Equally critical is the issue of oil and wheat, of which Russia is a leading exporter into Syria. If during the Syrian Civil War, Iran was Syria’s major oil supplier, the rupture in relations with Tehran left Russia as the primary exporter covering nearly half (46 000-60 000 barrels) of all Syrian oil demand. When it comes to wheat, Moscow’s influence is less decisive given Damascus’s arrangements with other countries. Nevertheless, Russia remains an important supplier of wheat to the Arab country.

The Russia Factor in Syrian Diplomacy

Another issue driving Syrian rapprochement with Moscow is Russian diplomatic power. Russia retains veto power in the United Nations’ Security Council, where it played a critical role in shielding former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad during the early stages of the Syrian uprising and after his violent crackdown on Syrian opposition forces. For Damascus, it will be difficult to completely sever ties with Russia also because the latter was the biggest exporter of weaponry into the country before the downfall of Assad. Despite close ties with Türkiye and the United States, Damascus is unlikely to replace Russian technologies any time soon, which means that the Syrian armed forces will need continued access to Russian weaponry, spare parts as well as technical services.

Equally significant, a wider geopolitical calculus is driving Russo-Syrian rapprochement that factors into the equation for Damascus. A weak Syria that emerged since the civil war broke out in 2011 was a boon to Israel, which has throughout its history opposed the emergence not only of coalitions of Arab states, but also that of a single strong player in its immediate neighborhood. No wonder then that Israel has engaged in an intermittent aerial campaign against military targets in Syria once a new government was formed following the fall of the Assad regime.

A fractured Syria has been unable to counter Israel’s regional ambitions due to the lack of military capabilities and diplomatic support. It is in this context that Russia’s lingering presence in Syria serves as a mitigating factor, a tool to temper Israeli actions in the region, and one that Damascus likely values. Moscow is also perfectly well suited to serve as a mediator between Damascus and Tel-Aviv, which was particularly effective during the Assad regime.

Ties with Russia are also part of Syria’s effort to diversify its foreign partnerships portfolio well beyond its close relations with Türkiye and the improving ties with the United States and Europe. The rapprochement with Russia, however, does not mean that Syria would not try to keep the balance. Indeed, even on issues such as the war in Ukraine, Damascus has simultaneously forged good relations with Ukraine, developing security (primarily drone expertise) cooperation with Kyiv as exemplified by President Zelenskyy’s recent visit to Syria this past April.

Damascus’ approach can thus be characterized as a multi-vector foreign policy balancing Russia, Türkiye, the Gulf states, Europe and the United States. However, this places limits on what Russia can achieve in Syria. Moscow knows that it no longer enjoys the privileged position it once had with the Assad regime. Instead, it now has to compete alongside other external powers for influence within a more diversified Syrian foreign policy. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), for example, is especially pertinent given its seeming ambition to fully control the port of Tartus. Indeed, once Stroytransgaz left, Damascus signed a 30-year concession with DP World, worth an estimated $800 million.

Outlook

Moscow is keen on retaining a military presence in Syria given that the country geographically serves as a mid-point between Russia itself and the African continent where the notorious Wagner Group transformed itself into the Africa Corps. Experts should keep in mind that military facilities in Syria have become all the more important given the troubles the Africa Corps is experiencing in the Sahel region, especially in Mali where the Tuareg rebels led by the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) have been pressing on the capital Bamako. Moreover, the bases’ strategic value has further increased following the deterioration of Russia’s relations with Europe and NATO.

At the same time, major tensions remain in Russia-Syrian relations that should not be overlooked. The most significant unresolved issue remains the status of former President Bashar al-Assad. Syrian authorities continue to seek legal accountability for senior figures associated with the previous regime and have repeatedly expressed interest in Assad’s extradition to stand trial for his crimes. Moscow, however, continues to provide political asylum for the former Syrian leader and has shown no indication that it is prepared to reconsider this position. Another area of mutual concern involves the activities of former Assad-era political, military and intelligence figures now residing abroad. Syrian officials remain concerned that remnants of the previous regime could attempt to undermine domestic stability through external financing or political organization. Russian authorities have publicly emphasized that their territory will not serve as a platform for destabilization against the new Syrian government.

Though these differences remain politically sensitive, both governments have deliberately prevented them from dominating broader bilateral relations. Instead, discussions increasingly focus on future cooperation rather than lingering disputes. Syria is thus trying to reshape Russia’s presence in the country in a way that suits Damascus’ interests. It was within this effort that al-Sharaa first pressed against an extensive Russian military presence in the country but then has allowed a limited presence in exchange for greater concessions from Moscow.

The relationship today is neither an alliance nor a rivalry. Instead, it represents a careful partnership based on overlapping strategic interests, with both governments recognizing that cooperation remains more beneficial than confrontation. The elasticity of Russian-Syrian relations underscores Moscow’s broader capacity to adapt to changing political realities in the Middle East.

Although Russia suffered a major strategic setback with the collapse of the Assad regime, it has avoided complete marginalization by recalibrating its objectives and accepting a more limited but potentially more sustainable role in Syria as it struggles to retain its last major strategic foothold in the Middle East. Maintaining naval access to Tartus may matter less to Moscow now, but down the road, once the Ukraine war has ended and Türkiye has removed the constraints of the Montreux Convention, then the strategic importance of accessing Tartus will matter greatly when Russia tries to restore its great power status.

Author Bio

Emil Avdaliani is a Professor of International Relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a scholar of the Silk Roads. He can be reached on Twitter/X at

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by Vusal Guliyev

On May 30, 2026, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan signaled a potentially significant turn in Türkiye–Japan defense relations when he told Nikkei Asia that Ankara sees considerable potential for cooperation with Tokyo in unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Fidan highlighted prospects for joint development and co-production, arguing that the two countries possess complementary technological strengths that could create mutually beneficial opportunities. His remarks came amid a broader intensification of defense contacts between Türkiye and Japan, including high-level ministerial exchanges, visits by Japanese officials to Turkish defense companies, and growing Japanese interest in combat-tested Turkish unmanned systems.

Before Hakan Fidan’s recent remarks, former Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu had previously signaled Ankara’s interest in strengthening defense cooperation with Tokyo, laying an important foundation for the closer Türkiye–Japan partnership that is now taking shape. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo in September 2022, Çavuşoğlu stated that Türkiye saw significant potential for deepening ties with Japan and expressed hope that Turkish defense companies would eventually be able to export armed drones to the Japanese market. He also noted that several Asian countries, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia, had already demonstrated a strong interest in Türkiye’s defense industry

The growing momentum behind Türkiye–Japan defense cooperation was further demonstrated on May 6, 2026, when the two countries held the first-ever Japan–Türkiye Defense Industry Cooperation Day on the sidelines of the SAHA 2026 International Defence and Aerospace Exhibition in Istanbul. During the event, Japan’s Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA) and Türkiye’s Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB) signed a Letter of Intent aimed at establishing a working-level framework for deeper collaboration in defense equipment and technology. The gathering brought together approximately 40 Turkish and Japanese defense companies and drone manufacturers to explore opportunities for joint research, technology transfer, co-development, and industrial partnerships.

*Image above: Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani meeting with Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler

Ministerial-level defense engagement received a significant boost in mid-August 2025 when Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani became the first Japanese defense minister to pay an official visit to Türkiye. During his meetings with Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler in Ankara, the two sides agreed to deepen cooperation in defense industries and technology and launch consultations between senior defense officials. Nakatani also visited leading Turkish defense companies and facilities, including Baykar, Istanbul Naval Shipyard, and Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAŞ).

Later, in January 2026, Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler highlighted the growing potential of Türkiye–Japan defense-industrial cooperation, describing it as a partnership that could eventually reach a “strategic level.” In an interview with Japan’s Kyodo News, Güler emphasized that combining Japan’s advanced technological capabilities with Türkiye’s production capacity and operational experience could create significant opportunities for collaboration in defense technologies. He also pointed to Turkish unmanned systems, including the ANKA and Bayraktar platforms, as cost-effective and operationally proven solutions that could contribute to Japan’s efforts to modernize its defense ecosystem.

Tokyo’s growing interest in Turkish drone technologies is closely linked to its rapidly changing security environment. Japan is undergoing a rapid transformation from a traditionally pacifist economic power into a more assertive military and geopolitical actor amid intensifying strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. The strategic vision first advanced by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is now being further expanded under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi through increased defense spending, the acquisition of counterstrike capabilities, enhanced military diplomacy, and historic reforms to Japan’s arms export policy. Recent developments—including the expansion of defense cooperation with the Philippines and Australia, as well as agreements on combat drone cooperation with Ukraine—underscore Tokyo’s transition toward a more proactive and strategically assertive security posture.

As part of this transformation, Japan has invested heavily in emerging defense technologies, including artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, space capabilities, and unmanned platforms. However, despite possessing one of the world’s most advanced technological sectors, Japan’s domestic defense industry has faced challenges in developing cost-effective and combat-proven unmanned systems. At the same time, Tokyo is grappling with a shrinking population and persistent manpower shortages within the Self-Defense Forces, increasing the need for force-multiplying technologies that can reduce reliance on personnel-intensive operations.

In this context, Turkish unmanned aerial systems offer a potentially attractive solution. They combine relatively affordable production costs with extensive operational experience across multiple conflict zones, providing unmanned capabilities that have already demonstrated effectiveness under real battlefield conditions.

Türkiye’s Battle-Tested Drones

The international reputation of Turkish unmanned systems has been significantly enhanced by their performance in several recent conflicts. During the 2020 Second Karabakh War, Turkish-made drones operated by Azerbaijan played an important role in improving battlefield reconnaissance, target acquisition, and precision-strike capabilities. Their effectiveness contributed to Azerbaijan’s military successes and attracted considerable attention from military planners worldwide.

Similarly, during the initial stages of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Turkish drones gained international recognition for their ability to support intelligence gathering, surveillance missions, and strike operations against Russian military assets. These experiences have transformed Türkiye into one of the world’s leading drone exporters and elevated its status within the global defense industry. Turkish manufacturers have demonstrated an ability to rapidly innovate, adapt to battlefield lessons, and produce systems that offer an effective balance between capability and affordability

As Türkiye’s defense industry matures, Ankara is increasingly seeking partnerships that move beyond traditional export relationships. Ankara has strong incentives to deepen defense cooperation with Tokyo. Cooperation with Japan offers access to one of the world’s most sophisticated technological ecosystems, providing opportunities to integrate advanced Japanese expertise in areas such as sensors, artificial intelligence, robotics, semiconductors, advanced materials, and precision manufacturing. Such cooperation could help accelerate the development of next-generation unmanned systems while enhancing the competitiveness of both countries’ defense industries.

Several areas appear particularly promising for future collaboration. One potential avenue involves intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms designed for maritime operations. As an island nation with extensive maritime responsibilities, Japan requires persistent surveillance capabilities to monitor vast stretches of surrounding waters. Turkish expertise in unmanned aerial systems could complement Japanese sensor technologies and maritime surveillance infrastructure, creating more effective platforms for maritime domain awareness.

Artificial intelligence and autonomous systems offer another promising field for cooperation. The future of unmanned warfare is increasingly shaped not only by platform performance but also by software, machine learning, and autonomous decision-support systems. In April 2026, Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) established the Unmanned Defense Capability Promotion Office and the Unmanned Systems Office as part of a broader effort to integrate unmanned and AI-enabled technologies into military operations. Japan’s strengths in robotics and advanced computing could complement Türkiye’s experience in deploying unmanned systems under operational conditions, potentially leading to the development of more sophisticated autonomous platforms capable of operating in complex environments. On the other hand, expanded cooperation in unmanned defense systems could help Tokyo adapt its defense posture to the challenges posed by a shrinking population.

Beyond bilateral considerations, the emerging partnership carries broader regional implications. In East Asia and the Indo-Pacific, the potential integration of Turkish drone technologies into Japan’s defense architecture could contribute to Tokyo’s efforts to strengthen its Pacific defense. This objective is reflected in the establishment of the Pacific Defense Initiative Office by Japan’s Ministry of Defense in April 2026, a move that underscores Tokyo’s growing focus on strengthening its defense ecosystem through enhanced operational coordination, advanced military technologies, and more integrated deterrence strategies. Greater access to advanced drone capabilities would strengthen Japan’s ability to monitor and respond to emerging threats while reducing operational burdens on manned platforms.

For Türkiye, expanding defense cooperation with Japan would further demonstrate its transformation from a regional security actor into a globally connected defense-industrial power. Ankara has already established defense partnerships across the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and Europe. A deeper relationship with Japan would also extend Türkiye’s strategic reach into Indo-Pacific defense markets and reinforce its growing reputation as a supplier of advanced military technologies.

Outlook

While defense cooperation between the two countries has historically remained limited, changing geopolitical realities and evolving security priorities are creating new incentives for collaboration. The emerging drone partnership reflects a broader convergence between two technologically capable middle powers seeking to enhance their strategic autonomy, strengthen their defense-industrial bases, and respond to increasingly complex regional security challenges. The strategic rationale for closer Türkiye–Japan collaboration appears increasingly compelling. Both countries face evolving security environments that require innovative technological solutions, and both seek to strengthen their defense-industrial capabilities while reducing excessive dependence on external suppliers. The convergence of these interests provides a strong foundation for expanded cooperation in unmanned systems and related technologies.

In sum, Japan possesses advanced expertise in sensors, communications systems, materials, and electronics, whereas Türkiye offers extensive operational experience and internationally competitive unmanned platforms. If successfully institutionalized, cooperation in drone and counter-drone systems could become one of the most important pillars of a broader Türkiye–Japan strategic partnership and a noteworthy example of how middle powers are adapting to the changing dynamics of global security and technological competition.

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About the Author:

Vusal Guliyev is a frequent contributor to The Saratoga Foundation. He is the Indo-Pacific & Eurasian Affairs Analyst at the Baku-based Center of Analysis of International Relations (AIR Center). Mr. Guliyev’s professional and academic experience spans leading research institutions, think tanks, and fellowship programs across Azerbaijan, Türkiye, China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States.

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