Europe News & Analysis (including Russia/CIS)
Ukrainian Prudence Meets Russian Limitations: Explaining the Current Pace and Nature of Russia’s War on Ukraine
The factors explaining why things are now happening the way they are happening (Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook), August 23, 2022; adapted for and published by Small Wars Journal as Russia’s Limits Meet Ukraine’s Discretion ...
The West’s Humanitarian Response to Ukraine Should Inspire Repetition, Not Envy
What a brief comparison between today’s aid work in Ukraine and efforts during Iraq’s Battle of Mosul against ISIS can teach us (Russian/Русский перевод coming soon) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook), August 9, 2022 People offer rooms ...
How Ukraine War Will Likely Go Rest of 2022, or, Kherson: The Beginning of the End for Russia
It’s possible Ukraine can push Russia out entirely (including from Crimea & the Donbas) in the coming months; here’s how that would most likely go down. If my last piece focused on the “why” Ukraine will win, this one focuses ...
Russia’s Defeat in Ukraine May Take Some Time, But It’s Coming and Sooner Than You Think
Dynamics over time are the key to analyzing just about anything, and they clearly favor Ukraine in Russia’s failing war of conquest (Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook), July 30, 2022; adapted version featured by Small ...
Debunking One of the Worst Arguments Against Increasing Support for Ukraine
Some fools claim that the West has been the aggressor against Russia here. The best argument against this—that enthusiastically helping Ukraine is not only a proper response to Russian aggression in this current war but to a decade-and-a-half of Russian ...
THE THREE MAPS SHOWING WHY UKRAINE IS WINNING AND RUSSIA IS LOSING (and why is isn’t even close)
Three maps juxtaposed in one collage are worth at least three-thousand words and tell the bigger picture of the war in Ukraine (Russian/Русский перевод; Если вы состоите в российской армии и хотите сдаться Украине, звоните по этим номерам: +38 066 ...
A Flurry of Telling Parallels Between the 1939-1940 Soviet-Finnish Winter War and Russia’s 2022 Ukraine War
Apart from other thematic ways I already discussed that Putin today is repeating Stalin's mistakes from the disastrous launching of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland, here are a number of other illuminating similarities between the two debacles (Russian/Русский перевод) By ...
Moscow’s 1939 Finland Hubris Repeats Itself in Ukraine in 2022
Stalin and his Kremlin inner circle were egregiously overconfident in their planning for the Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland in 1939. Disaster would follow. That Soviet-Finnish Winter War today is a gift of lessons for Putin and his Kremlin inner ...
How Delusions of Phantom Fascists Duped Stalin in 1939 and Putin in 2022
Before Stalin launched his war against Finland in 1939, Soviet war planners based their planning on the self-serving, inaccurate fiction that Finland was rife with fascists. This delusion would cost them dearly in the war, and in 2022 Putin and ...
“Banderites”: What Russia Really Means When It Calls Ukraine Nazi and Fascist
Putin thought he could use Ukraine’s complicated history that even divides Ukraine to his significant advantage in his massive military escalation there. He was wrong. (Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg, May 31, 2022 (Twitter @bfry1981; LinkedIn, Facebook); this is ...
A Brief History of Russian and Soviet Genocides, Mass Deportations, and Other Atrocities in Ukraine
War crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and mass killings carried out by their eastern neighbor are nothing new for Ukrainians; while not comprehensive, this brief outline focuses on what is most currently relevant from a series of horrors visited ...
A Terrifying Comparison Between Putin and Stalin
Looking at the geopolitics of Eastern Europe in 2022 and 1939 is both illuminating and disturbing (Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg, May 23, 2022 (Twitter @bfry1981; LinkedIn, Facebook); this is the first of a series of articles excerpted and/or ...
