The Latest Breaking News from Stefan Wolff

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. 

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.

After the best part of a year, Russia has claimed victory in the meat-grinder that was the Battle of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s east. But the battle achieved virtually none of Russia’s original strategic objectives and came at a cost of Russian lives, estimated by Wagner Group boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as…

During the average year on The Conversation we routinely work with thousands of authors. One of the unique selling points that makes our operation such a valuable resource in this era of polarisation and fake news is that we can call upon the deep knowledge of so many academic authors.

One tank. According to press reports and news broadcasts from Moscow, a solitary T-34 dating back to the second world war was the only tank that trundled past the Russian president as he marked a scaled-down Victory Day on May 9 this year.

What we know – or think we know – about the progress of the war in Ukraine over the past few days has come courtesy of leaked Pentagon documents which appear to cover, in some detail, a wide range of issues around the conflict. As you’d expect, among the main…