In The News

Samuel Bendett writes, “On February 2, 2023, Russia’s Dmitry Rogozin—a former Roskosmos (space agency) director who has since reinvented himself as a frontline soldier in eastern Ukraine—announced on his Telegram channel that several Marker UGVs (uncrewed ground vehicles) have arrived in the Donbas.”

Samuel Bendett says, “If we gauge how important any given technology is to the Ukrainians based on how it’s discussed across the Russian Telegram ecosystem, then I would say it was rather important.”

Michael Kofman says that he believed Russia’s “force quality appears relatively low” and “can likely offer a stubborn defence, but [is] less liable to be suitable for offensive operations.”

Ken Gause says, “If something were to happen to Kim, no, she's way too young and this is a Confucian-based society. It's male dominated. If you're going to do something like this, you're probably going to have to get started early and spend not years but probably decades socializing this with the larger leadership.”

Michael Kofman says, “I don’t think anyone can say with good confidence how much Russia has spent on the war."

Michael Kofman says that Bakhmut represents “a gateway” to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, both of which have been subject to recent Russian missile strikes .

Samuel Bendett says, “Russians and the Wagner mercenaries are throwing a lot of soldiers at the Ukrainians. They are trying to grind away at the Ukrainian defenses, and there is indication that in some parts of that front Russian pressure is having an effect.”

Samuel Bendett says, "Whether it was indeed a Tu-141 or another drone is less relevant than the fact that Ukraine is seeking to impose high costs on Russia by apparently launching drones deep inside Russian airspace to attack targets that are supposed to be secure."

Jeffrey Edmonds says, “I don’t think the Russians are planning an offensive” from around Zaporizhzhia.

Dmitry Gorenburg describes  Russia’s tactics around Vuhledar as “reconnaissance by force—probing and testing.”

Ken Gause says that being a former singer detracts from the idealized image of a first lady, “especially in a culture like North Korea, where there's a certain harshness and certain purity, where they try to portray the leader as being above the kind of, normal sort of careers that some people would have, especially, dancers and things like that.”

David Finkelstein says, “ I was not surprised by the fact that the Chinese are doing this and may have done it again in the past, as the statement said, because that's what countries do. They surveil each other.”

Sam Plapinger writes, “How does urban warfare in Ukraine, where the adversaries are relatively balanced nation-states, differ from recent Fallujah- or Mosul-type battles between states and non-state armed groups?”

Samuel Bendett says, "They aren't necessarily going to be ready for the very complicated environment of a Ukraine battle space."

Dmitry Gorenburg says, "Some Western commentators have suggested that this is related to some kind of effort by Prigozhin to position himself as a successor to Putin, but this is ludicrous. What is actually going on is an effort to increase influence among the top leadership—in other words, by appearing more useful to Putin.”

Samuel Bendett says, “This would be a first combat deployment for the Marker UGV, and yes, it wasn’t really tested in combat conditions before. It was tested in a rather controlled environment, even when it had to navigate autonomously through a forested environment in late 2021. There is of course a possibility of a classified series of tests that could have taken place, but as far as all info about this UGV, there was no real combat stress test.”

Samuel Bendett says, “What’s interesting is that Marker was always presented as a proof of concept, a flagship project for [general AI artificial intelligence] applications.”