At the moment this article is being written Ukrainian troops are fighting a fierce battle for the fourth day running to protect their capital Kyiv against Russian troops. Developments in the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian armed conflict are moving fast. The world was shocked when, after proclaiming the independence …

In the tenth issue of last year’s Militaire Spectator, Colonel Han Bouwmeester elaborated on the use of maskirovka and reflexive control prior to and during the planned Russian annexation of Crimea.1 Subsequently, in the twelfth issue, Ruben Tavenier addressed the numerous concepts that have been …

Since the start of the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war, the Ukrainian armed forces have -quite unexpectedly- proven to be adept at withstanding the Russian onslaught on their territory. At the time of writing, the Russian armed forces have withdrawn from the Ukrainian capital and are making painfully little …

The geopolitical situation has changed dramatically over the past six months. After the Russian Federation brutally invaded its neighbor Ukraine, the EU has, for the first time in its history, announced drastic sanctions in several steps. The Atlantic cooperation within NATO has improved significantly, …

The war in Ukraine shows that EU member states enjoy a wide margin of appreciation for applying arms exports criteria.

This publication marks the first results of the Tactical Media Room Ukraine project, launched in February 2022 in Amsterdam after the shocking Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Tactical Media Room is a network of activists, journalists, scholars, and artists linked by the exchange of ideas and …

Since 2014, Western militaries renewed their focus from peacekeeping to combat operations against advanced opponents. Russian tactics, as demonstrated in the conflict in Ukraine, relied on massed indirect fires. Facing a (near-) peer adversary keen on using artillery on a massive scale raises the …

This second part of the diptych on the art of deception revisited is about Russian deception and the way it was applied during the annexation of Crimea in 2014. During the annexation, armed soldiers dressed in dark green uniforms without insignias turned up and took control of the Ukrainian peninsula. …

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in the southeast region of Ukraine, NATO deployed four battlegroups to Poland and the Baltic States. The Netherlands contributes troops to the battlegroup in Lithuania, which considers itself a ‘front state’ against the Russian Federation. …