Small Wars Journal

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Patrick Tucker of Defense One reports how Zelenskyy’s firing of popular defense minister Mikhailo Fedorov has triggered street protests and heavy negative domestic media coverage. Allies have criticized the move as self-defeating mid-war. The dismissal followed the ouster of prime minister Yuliia Svyrydenko, part of a broader reshuffle reported on by the Economist. Fedorov, 35, previously built Ukraine’s celebrated Diia digital-services app before pivoting to defense in January.

Nicholas Bariyo reports in his latest WSJ piece, “Wagner’s Remnants Are Running an Opioid Empire in the Center of Africa,” that Wagner’s leftover fighters, now numbering around 500 and based along the Oubangui River in the Central African Republic, have built a fresh power base on tramadol trafficking. According to the report, they’re using the opioid to fund gold and timber operations. And Moscow doesn’t have the bandwidth to control it.

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Over the past four years, more than 100 articles and op-eds have dissected irregular warfare—some good, some bad, and some downright ugly. The good ones look past the purely kinetic to explore critical sub-components like cognitive, unconventional, and political warfare. The mediocre ones bog down in bureaucratic debates over which specific command, agency, or organization should manage these units and operations.

Interview with Sam Rosenberg, by Octavian Manea This interview is part of a collaborative initiative with the the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) hosted by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Lt. Col. Sam Rosenberg serves as the Concepts and Contingencies Branch Chief in the G5 Plans Division for US Army Europe-Africa, headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Applying the ends-ways-means-risk framework to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and the war it failed to end, this article finds a mismatch at every level of strategy: a political objective that has shifted repeatedly, a sequencing choice that spent coercive leverage before extracting verified compliance, and instruments of national power that performed well in isolation but were never integrated toward a common end.

The accelerating convergence of exoskeletons, genetic engineering, and cyborg technology is fueling a global military race to create biologically and technologically enhanced soldiers. While these innovations promise to revolutionize warfare by offering unprecedented human capabilities, they also introduce profound ethical dilemmas and critical security risks that could reshape the future of global conflict.

Transnistria is in crisis. The de facto breakaway polity that emerged from the Russian-backed secessionist war with Moldova (1990–1992) now faces an overlapping set of military, economic, and energy shocks that are progressively undermining its political viability.

Today, Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar delivered his opening statement at the Select Committee’s hearing titled China’s Economic Espionage and Subnational Influence in the United States. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. Today’s hearing is on the Chinese Communist Party’s economic espionage and malign influence targeted at the subnational level.