Kyiv’s reaction to a recent report showing that an errant Ukrainian missile was likely responsible for a deadly strike on a Ukrainian town highlighted its defensiveness in response to human rights critiques of its war effort. While this is unsurprising and even understandable, it is not actually needed and may hurt more than it helps.
Many observers have turned a critical eye to pre-invasion predictions about Russia’s war on Ukraine, given how wrong they turned out to be. But the reason they were wrong is inherent to the nature of warfare itself. Our ability to accurately predict the course of a war is compromised by the inherent uncertainty of war.
In early June, Ukrainian forces launched a long-anticipated, large-scale counteroffensive into Russian-controlled territory in the eastern portions of Ukraine. From the beginning, the fog of war surrounding developments on the ground has been thick, raising understandable questions, perhaps most importantly: Is it succeeding?
Depictions of Niger, Sudan and other African states as mere backdrops to geopolitical conflicts between distant outsiders neglect the role played by regional institutions, neighboring states and nonstate actors, while distracting from wider regional trends that will ultimately have a global impact of their own.
Two tourists were shot dead by the Algerian coast guard last week after mistakenly straying into Algerian waters while jet-skiing off the coast of Morocco. The incident highlights the potential for unintended escalation between the two neighbors and historical rivals, whose diplomatic ties have been severed since August 2021.