The Latest Breaking News from Stefan Wolff

For the past month, the world’s attention has reeled at the violence in Israel and Gaza. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has ground on, day by day, metre by metre. Fierce fighting has continued in the north-eastern Donetsk region as a Russian offensive has attempted – thus far unsuccessfully –…

At a press conference after talks with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, this afternoon, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg sounded like a man determined to take a “glass half full” attitude when he said that “every metre that Ukrainian forces regain is a metre that Russia loses”.

Where were you when you heard that Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aircraft had crashed and he was presumed dead? For Ukraine watchers it was something of a surreal JFK moment. And, like the Zapruder tape, the video footage of the Russian mercenary group commander’s Embraer Legacy 600 private jet…

Stefan Wolff professor of international security at the University of Birmingham explains how Yevgeny Prigozhin is just another in a long line of those who have faced an early demise after opposing Vladimir Putin. 

Google the words “Ukraine counteroffensive” and the adverb you will most commonly find associated with them is “slowly”. The popular misconception in the months leading up to the launch of Ukraine’s summer push was that, like last autumn’s lightning counter-attacks around Kherson in the south and Kharkiv in the north-east…

Reports from the front lines of the various conflict zones reveal daily just how difficult Ukraine is finding its summer counter-offensive. Russia has had months to build defensive fortifications and Ukrainian troops are having to fight their way through territory which – according to Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s…

Ukrainian units are forcing their Russian foes back by what on some days seems like a few metres at a time. But on June 24, at least some Russian troops moved much more rapidly toward their own capital.

Britain must be ready for the end of Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia, government insiders have warned following the Wagner Group’s failed revolt at the weekend.

So the Ukrainian counteroffensive is well and truly underway, even if progress is measured in metres rather than the rapid advances that characterised Ukraine’s highly successful push last autumn. Volodymyr Zelensky himself has confirmed this, saying progress has been “slower than desired” and noting that the Russian invaders have mined…

The likely cause of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and power plant in the early hours of Tuesday morning remains shrouded in mystery – predictably, both sides are blaming each other. But it’s important to remember that under the Geneva conventions the destruction of infrastructure such as dams and…

A dam that supplies drinking water to thousands of Ukrainians as well as cooling water for reactors at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station was ruptured on June 6, 2023.