ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

On February 23, a booby-trapped car exploded near the president palace in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Soon after, a second booby-trapped car exploded near a hotel away from the palace, according to Reuters. “So far we carried 18 dead people and 20 others injured from the blasts tonight,” Abdikadir Abdirahman, the director of Amin Ambulances, told Reuters. Right after the first explosion, several armed fighters attacked a checkpoint near the presidential palace, according to the France-Press Agency (AFP). However, according to the Somali National News Agency (SONNA), Somalia’s Security Minister Mohamed Abukar Islow said that security forces had foiled the attack on the palace. He added that at least five attackers had been killed. Moreover, Islow revealed that security forces had a prior intelligence about the possible of terrorist attacks and that they had been on high alert when the attack had happened. According to Reuters, the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab group cl...

Photo: Reuters/ Gleb Garanich Written by  J.Hawk   Introduction After four years of “freedom” and “European integration”, Ukraine is in the throes of a crisis that makes the “wild ’90s” seem like a picture of stability. The economy is continuing to decline, to the point of the country becoming a net importer of agricultural products. The International Monetary Fund is increasingly reluctant to extend new loans, which are now necessary simply to service Ukraine’s ballooning national debt. The country’s Western partners are visibly tired of Ukraine and its problems, seeing in it more of a liability than an asset that could be used to exert political pressure on Russia. Even erstwhile ardent supporters of the Maidan, like the poet Evgeniya Bilchenko, has traded her Right Sector membership for an exile in Russia, and her support for Western values for a rediscovered fondness of Russian traditionalism. Millions of ordinary Ukrainians have likewise voted with her feet and ...