When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, one of its first targets was the city of Mariupol. Despite being outnumbered by—and less well equipped than—their adversaries, Ukrainian defenders held out for three months. As the Russian siege of the city intensified, Ukrainian forces defended a shrinking perimeter with a command post in the Azovstal steel plant. One of those Ukrainian defenders was Sergeant Arseniy Fedosiuk. He joins John Spencer on this episode, relaying his experience in Mariupol, exploring the unique challenges of defending urban terrain against a superior enemy, and describing what happened at the end of the three-month battle, when he was taken prisoner by Russian forces.
In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Stuart Lyle, urban operations research lead at the United Kingdom’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, for...
Observers watched the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War closely, searching for indicators of the character of warfare on tomorrow's battlefields. The lessons extracted have covered advanced...
In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Ze’ev Orenstein, director of international affairs at the City of David Foundation. He explains the history...