When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, one of their first targets was the city of Mariupol. The battle that followed is an epic story of resistance in which a very small number of Ukrainian fighters defended the city for over eighty days against a Russian force five to eight times their size, preventing the Russians from diverting to other parts of Ukraine. In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Aiden Aslin, a British citizen who took part in that battle and was captured by Russian forces there in April 2022. His experiences offers a unique view of how the Battle of Mariupol unfolded, and the details of his captivity as a Russian prison of war for over five months offer a glimpse into an often unseen aspect of the war.
For a decade, John Spencer has been closely studying urban warfare—including its unique challenges and what is required to prepare for those challenges. He...
The Battle of Jenin took place in April 2002 and was a key battle in the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) Operation Defensive Shield. In...
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...