Austrian financier Jan Marsalek disappeared on June 18, the same day the 40-year old was fired from his position as chief operating officer of Wirecard, a German financial services provider. A €1.9 billion hole had been discovered in Wirecard’s accounts by an independent auditor and Marsalek had been fingered as the one responsible for it. Investigative journalists affiliated with Bellingcat, a digital forensic website, suggested that Marsalek fled from Germany to Belarus via Estonia, and then had been taken to Russia by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. Further reporting by the Financial Times revealed that Marsalek appeared to have close […]
Cold War
8 posts
In space, no one can hear you scream—and that’s also true of being in a secret Soviet research facility circa 1983, the setting of director Egor Abramenko’s Sputnik. A clever riff on Alien (and its sequel) that generates solid suspense from assured formal touches and a story that only succumbs to heavy-handed gestures at a few key moments, it’s a capable horror show that, like its spiritual ancestor, suggests that terror is born in the womb—and, also, that every country is home to its very own deviously warmongering Paul Reiser. The untrustworthy official in question here is Colonel Semiradov (Fyodor Bondarchuk), […]
A recently found Pravda article dated 27 August 1979 evokes memories of Joe Biden’s first visit to the USSR. US academics have walked down memory lane discussing Biden’s role in the US-Soviet SALT II negotiations and unexpected collapse of the agreement. While commenting on his meeting with the Soviet leadership Delaware Senator Joe Biden told The New York Times on 30 August 1979 that it had left him with the impression that the Kremlin was prepared to consider further arms cuts following President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s signing of the SALT-II agreement in Vienna in June 1979. Biden […]
The United States’ comparative military advantage has eroded significantly as the technologies that helped sustain its primacy since the Cold War have proliferated to great power and regional competitors such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. They have evolved their capabilities and operational approaches to negate and otherwise avoid traditional American warfighting strengths. The United States is highly unlikely to regain its competitive advantage through like-for-like replacements of its legacy platforms with incremental improvements while remaining beholden to industrial age notions of warfare focused on individual weapon systems focused on inflicting attrition. Instead, future success demands that the U.S. military […]
MELBOURNE, Australia — China could stand to lose almost all of its ballistic and cruise missiles if it were to sign a new strategic arms control treaty, according to a new regional security assessment. The analysis, titled “The End of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty: Implications for Asia,” is one of the chapters of the annual Asia-Pacific regional security assessment published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank. IISS’ report was released June 5 and covered regional security topics such as Sino-U.S. relations, North Korea and Japanese policy. China could lose 95 percent of its ballistic and cruise […]
Col.-Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian General Staff said Russia has sent a formal letter to NATO proposing to scale down each other’s military activities for the period of the coronavirus outbreak,… Source link
Arms control is a natural starting point for U.S.-Russia rapprochement. However, three main challenges hinder any headway. Source link