By John Erath On August 11, news broke out of a fire at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine. Both the Russian and Ukrainian governments immediately blamed each other, but, as with previous incidents, it seems absurd that Ukraine would risk a nuclear incident on its own territory, whereas Russia celebrates its history […]
Factsheets & Analysis on Russia
Current Russian Threats Are Predictable for This Time of Year
By John Erath Each year on May 9, Russia celebrates “Victory Day,” with typically excessive self-congratulation on the ending of the Second World War. The occasion is not commemorated with the same enthusiasm in other parts of eastern Europe for which May 9, 1945, marked a new era in Russia’s domination. History aside, early May […]
The China Dilemma
By John Erath Earlier this year, for the first time since the Cold War, it was announced that the total number of nuclear weapons in the world rose in 2022. Largely, the reason for the increase was China’s rapid construction of additional weapons. Although the United States and Russia are undergoing modernizations of their nuclear […]
Fact Sheet: The Sino-Soviet Border Dispute
In 1969, long-simmering Sino-Soviet tensions boiled over into direct military confrontation along the Ussuri River. The Ussuri served as an official border boundary between the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and it had been a point of Chinese contention that the Soviet Union had forced China to consign Chinese […]
The Right and Wrong Lessons to Learn from Missile Defense in Ukraine
By Shawn Rostker The war in Ukraine has been marked by a Russian reliance on air strikes in the face of its failure to capture decisive victory on the ground. The use of drones and missiles against military and civilian targets has been one of the main pillars of a Russian strategy to drain Ukraine’s […]
