In The News

Nilanthi Samaranayake says “For example, uncertainty over sedimentation and food security outcomes raises anxiety for both India and Bangladesh. In particular, there are concerns in Bangladesh, as the lowest riparian, about water quality impacts.”

Michael Kofman says, “The question is whether Ukraine’s relative advantage is sufficient to attain their objectives, and whether those advantages can be sustained. That depends not just on them, but also on the West.”

Brian Waidelich wrote, “In 2016, a Chinese astronaut participated in an ESA astronaut training course. The next year, two European astronauts carried out sea survival training with their Chinese counterparts. But after 2017, the budding human spaceflight cooperation between the two sides hit a snag.”

The Kyiv Independent's Illia Ponomarenko sits down with military analysts Michael Kofman, director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA, and Rob Lee, senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Eurasia Program, to discuss the current situation on the battlefields, Ukraine's planned counteroffensive and Russia's attempts to stop it, and the likely developments in Russia's war against Ukraine in 2023. 

Michael Kofman says that the argument about Ukraine’s diminished counter-offensive capacity “may be overstated; I think the main question is to what extent does defence of Bakhmut represent a strategy with diminishing returns relative to other options.”

Samuel Bendett says, "Russian forces began countering Ukrainian electronic warfare by launching very small DJI drones like Mavic2 in order to see how they behave in order to determine EW (electronic warfare) presence before launching larger and heavier DJI combat drones."

Michael Kofman says that holding Bakhmut has allowed Ukraine to grind down Russian power, but clinging to the town could be costly.

Samuel Bendett says, “It is likely that the Russians are going to continue to press around Bakhmut. The situation for the Ukrainian military there is very precarious.”

Brian Waidelich wrote, On 25 January 2023, Space News reported that the European Space Agency (ESA) no longer intends to send European astronauts to Tiangong, China’s newly completed space station.

The world’s 20 wealthiest nations met in New Delhi for the G20 summit. But the gathering on global cooperation was largely overshadowed by bitter disagreement on the war in Ukraine and concluded with no consensus. Amna Nawaz discussed the meeting, and China's and India’s support for Russia, with Sumit Ganguly and Elizabeth Wishnick.

Michael Kofman says, "Gerasimov is exhausting the Russian armed forces with a feckless series of offensive operations, which may yield some gains, like Bakhmut, but [are] unlikely to change the strategic picture.

Sam Bendett says, “Wagner’s influence goes way beyond Ukraine, and it is a useful tool for the Russian state to operate in areas where they don’t want to operate officially.”

Michael Kofman says that the rest [of the mobilized troops] have probably been used to fill out under-strength battalions and build a reserve to rotate front-line units out of Ukraine.

Michael Kofman says, "Over the past year, Russian forces in Ukraine leveraged their advantage in artillery to make up for a lack of manpower. But they were expending more than half a million shells per month."

Michael Kofman says, "Neither of these armies look today the way they did at the beginning of the war. Both have taken heavy losses. Both have lost a lot of their best people and best equipment."

Dmitry Gorenburg says, "The Russian navy has been left to, basically, just firing occasional precision guided missiles at energy infrastructure and that sort of thing in Ukraine."

Cornell Overfield says, “I would be surprised if Russia had not explored the re-base loophole, and that they didn’t use it/floated it unsuccessfully speaks volumes to me.”