Teuta Sahatqija talks about development of cybersecurity capacity in Kosovo since 1999, gender equality in the technology industry, cybersecurity, cybercriminal and cyberviolence occurrences, and the importance of technological development. Teuta Sahatqija is a Women in Tech Ambassador for Kosovo Chapter and an Advisor to the Mayor of Pristina for Digital Transformation and Smart City.
Interviewer: Zrinka Boric
Dr. Zeno Poggi, co-founder, President and CEO of ZPC S.r.l., Vice President of ACCUDIRE S.r.l. and President of AWOS- A World of Sanctions, tackles a complex issue: The Sanctions Regime against Iran.
Interviewer: Anna Lorenzini
By: Igor Shchebetun, Fabrizio Napoli, Alessio Calzetti and Davide Gobbicchi.
Russian ships are trailing NATO in the Black Sea, and Putin is threatening to knock the teeth out of foreign aggressors which has given rise to serious disagreements. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia lost the gains of hundreds of years of territorial expansion. The country has crossed the threshold of the millennium licking its wounds and is under threat of further disintegration. Today, the post-Soviet states are facing a familiar unease; many are looking back at the past and cautiously awaiting Moscow's future actions. Faced with a cornered bear, the best strategy is to do nothing to anger it.
Stretched from west to east, Russia is Goliath on the world stage. The country has 20,000 km of common borders with seventeen states, twelve of which were part of the Soviet Union. Having such a long land border seriously complicates security. As early as the 15th century, the Grand Duchy of Moscow was immediately confronted with a geopolitical problem at the dawn of its restoration. Surrounded by enemies on all sides, Russia began to expand its territory and take possession of geographical barriers that could protect it. Be it rivers, lakes, mountains, or seas. In the first century of its existence, the country expanded annually by an area equal to the entire area of Belgium. By the early 18th century, Russia had grown to its present borders. Even today, the country's geography offers significant advantages. The frozen crown of Arctic ice that adorns Russia's territory makes land invasion from the north impossible. Even the most experienced admirals will not be able to approach Murmansk and Arkhangelsk by water, two serious obstacles will stand in their way: the Faro-Icelandic frontier and the Bear Frontier. The first is an open-ocean defense line between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, and the second is between Spitsbergen and northern Norway.
These narrow passages are easily defended by submarines, of which Russia has plenty. To the east, the rugged coastlines of Siberia adjoin the Bering Strait, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Sea of Japan. The short distance between Alaska and Russia may seem passable, but the Arctic climate: strong tidal waves and the presence of heavy firepower on both sides limit the movement of armed forces in this area. By controlling the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril Islands, Russia can deter hostile actions in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. At the same time, the Stanovaya Ridge and the Sayan Mountains strengthen Russia's position in the Far East. The harsh climate further restricts movement even in places where passage is possible. Most of Russia's eastern borders give the country's armed forces an advantage in any conflict, but the situation looks more complicated in the eastern European part of the country.
Central Russia stretches from St. Petersburg to Kazan and Volgograd. About 80 percent of the population lives in this geographic area. Almost every decision the Kremlin makes is based on these people's needs and interests, but the center shares its periphery with six other former Soviet republics: Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Their territories are among the most troubled regions of the world. Two anomalies, the Crimean Peninsula and the exclave of Kaliningrad, are a start. They are both strategic military bases, preventing hostile forces from entering the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. Both regions house heavy weaponry and assets to prevent access and maneuvering. Other powers have to think twice before approaching Crimea or Kaliningrad. Near the borders of the Russian Federation, the European Plain is more than 2,000 km wide, making it the largest open stretch of landscape in the world. The terrain here is flat, open, and defenseless. The main battle tanks provide some protection on this type of terrain, so Russia has about 13,000 of them-almost a fifth of the world's tank fleet. Still, no amount of weaponry can fully protect 2,000 km of flat terrain. For 750 km east of the Ukrainian border to the city of Astrakhan on the shores of the Caspian Sea there is a continuous hilly landscape called the Volgograd Corridor. The German military attempted to break this line in both world wars. Both times Russia hung on by a thread until the offensive was repelled. The collapse of the Soviet Union put the Baltics in the hands of NATO, which gave the three republics the confidence to negotiate with Russia as equals. The loss of Eastern European possessions took a heavy toll on Moscow, both politically and financially. The country had to fortify its borders with one of the most advanced weapons on the planet. Meanwhile, control of the Baltic would allow Russia to push its border as far as Kaliningrad. Thus, by restoring Soviet borders, Moscow would reduce the length of its unprotected flank to.
January 28, 2022 — No Comments
In this second event of "The View From: Voices from South East Asia" conceptualised and moderated by ITSS Verona members Arslan Skeikh and Arnaud Sobrero, Dr Richard Bitzinger and Dr Fitri Bintang Timur share their immense experience on issues regarding international security, great power competition, trade, diplomacy, and conflict in greatly strategic South East Asia.
Professor Boaz Ganor, founder of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), Israel, shares his insights on the debate regarding the definition of terrorism and explains how it can be demarcated it from guerrilla warfare and proxy warfare.
Intervierwer: Zachariah Parcels
By: Giovanni Giacalone and André L. V. C. Carvalho.
On January 3rd, 2022, Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office announced the arrest of five men in Colombia’s southern department of Putumayo. The detained individuals are now facing drug trafficking charges as they are accused of running their own marijuana plantations and cocaine labs in Colombia’s department of Cauca and using the local indigenous communities to transfer the drugs near the Colombia/Brazil border before having it shipped across to Brazilian territory by boat.
During the operations, the police seized over $250,000,000 from the organization, together with a large quantity of cocaine, marijuana, and three cargo carriers.
The Attorney’s office also revealed the identities of the arrested individuals: Medardo Alfredo Cifuentes Giraldo “Gordo”, in charge of coordinating the purchase, storage, and concealment of the merchandise, as well as handling transactions on the Colombian-Brazilian border; Wilmer Alexander Bastidas Bernal “Engineer”, indicated by investigators as the financial link; Kelly Johana Gómez Gómez “Mona”, allegedly responsible for recruiting transporters and guards at the collection centers; Pablo Giovanny Landázuri Cortés “Negro”, one of the alleged drug producers; and Víctor Ferney Giraldo Barrera, “Vaca”, who is credited with transporting the drug.
The Attorney General’s Office also revealed that the drug loads were supposed to be sold to major criminal enterprises operating in Brazil, such as Comando Vermelho (CV) - one of the oldest criminal organizations of Brazil -, and Família do Norte (FDN), the biggest organization of the Amazon region, with chapters in Peru, Venezuela and Colombia.
Over 900 km of border between the two countries in the dense Amazon jungle, make it extremely difficult to control illegal trafficking, and rivers such as the Putumayo, Rio Caqueta, Vaupes, and Rio Apaporis have become major ways of transit for illegal substances.
As exposed by InsightCrime, while much of the drug flow into Brazil comes from Bolivia and Paraguay, the Colombia connection has become increasingly relevant. This aspect should not be underestimated since in the past few years, Brazilian narco-organizations have become major exporters of drugs to Europe. As explained to Reuters by custom inspector Oswaldo Dias, in less than a decade Brazil’s drug gangs have risen from domestic street sellers to major international players in the drug business, using Santos and other ports to ship narcotics, mainly to Europe, with a value of over $10 billion only for the European market. The phenomenon was confirmed by Laurent Laniel, a senior analyst at the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).
As to Colombia, the ongoing clashes near the tormented border with Venezuela between ELN and FARC over illegal business control, with the Colombian army having to send reinforcements, surely doesn’t help the central government as it swallows up resources that could be used to control the southern part of the border with Brazil.
Additionally, the Colombian government has to deal with the increasing activity of the Urabeños drug cartel and paramilitary group and specifically with its franchise-like model of trafficking that relies on local gangs with no formal links to the cartel as they are simply sub-contracted to operate for them, in their name. (ITSS exposed the Urabeños drug cartel activity in November 2021).
According to the aforementioned, the drug trafficking flow into Brazil comes in most part from Bolivia and Paraguay. Although ties between Brazilian and Colombian criminal enterprises are not new, they have been growing in the last year and the impacts on the security in the region are starkly.
In 2017, investigations conducted by the Brazilian Federal Police and the Federal Prosecutor of the Amazon region pointed to a ‘strictly close’ relationship between the FDN and the FARC. The FDN operates primarily in the North region and has control over the main drug flow routes in the triple border region between Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Moreover, according to the reports, the organization used its connections with the Colombian partners to trade drugs and buy heavy weaponry to be used in Brazil.
However, the FDN is not the only one. Both the CV and the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) – the two biggest criminal enterprises in Brazil - have also been strengthening their ties with Colombian organizations for a number of years. In 2019, the Army Chief of Staff of Colombia reported that the ELN had entered into a partnership with CV with the aim of facilitating drug trafficking (especially cocaine) in the Amazon region, specifically on the border between Leticia (Colombia) and Tabatinga (Brazil), using the Solimões River to provide an outlet for cocaine trafficking.
The success of these organizations is due to an outdated patrolling system, which, when associated with the complex geography of the region, allows them to easily escape from army platoons and federal police units. Among other things, the partnership with Colombian cartels provided Brazilian organizations with heavy weaponry and high-quality navigation equipment and vessels, often superior to security forces in the region. Currently, the 1,632km Brazil-Colombia route is practically uninhabited and unprotected, a fact that drives its growth every year. A clear example is that in recent years, the volume of drugs seized in the region has grown by no less than 1,324%.
This generates a series of other problems for security in the region, since in addition to the existing alliance between Brazilian and Colombian organizations there is also a war for the control of the main trafficking flows. In 2017, with the help of weapons provided by Colombian organizations, the FDN murdered more than 60 members of rival factions that were at war over the flow of cocaine. In this way, taking into account the delicate situation faced by the security forces in the region, the region remains an eternal "no man's land" in the hands of large drug trafficking organizations.
By: Danilo delle Fave and Marco Verrocchio.
The history of Unmanned Ground Vehicles
Despite the common public image of drones as hi-tech military assets, ground drones have a history dating back to the Second World War. The first type of Unmanned ground vehicle was deployed during the Winter War between Finland and the USSR in 1940 and the early phase of operation Barbarossa. The TT-26 was a teletank, a wireless remotely controlled unmanned tank. It worked via a control tank that would control the vehicle at a distance between 500 m and 1.5 km. The control tank was meant to stay back and grant fire support while maneuvering the teletank against the enemy. In case of malfunction, or any condition that would allow the capture of the vehicle, the control tank had to destroy the TT-26. Even older was the use of remotely controlled vehicles as bombs, since, during the First World War, the French developed the Crocodile Schneider Torpille Terrestre as mobile explosive against enemy trenches, later redisigned by the French veichle designer Adolphe Kégresse in the 1930s. Kérgesse technology was acquired by the German forces after the invasion of France of 1940, making it the base model for the Goliath tracked mine.
The Goliath, together with its advanced version Springer and its heavier version the Borgward IV, was used massively by the Wehrmacht in all fronts, beginning in early 1942. However, they were expansive, slow and vulnerable to small-arms fire, too big to be carried by soldiers and with poor ground clearance, a common issue to the Anglo-American counterpart of the Goliath. Nevertheless, it managed to become the most advanced Unmanned Ground Vehicle of its times, laying down the premise for the contemporary ground drones. Despite their original nature as offensive weapons, during the second half of the XX century the first modern Unmanned Ground Vehicle was developed as explosive ordnance disposal. During “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, the British army deployed the Wheelbarrow Mk 7 in order to reduce casualties in the soldiers ranks, which were caused mostly by improvised explosive devices of the Irish Republican Army.
The development of Unmanned Ground Vehicles and their multiple purpose
In the recent years, there has been considerable improvement in Research and Development (R&D) in the field of electric vehicles and their overall capabilities. These technologies had a relevant impact on the Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) in warfare. Nowadays, the UGV can carry out many complex tasks and is becoming a real resource for the armed forces of various countries. The UGVs are classified into two broad types: autonomous and remotely operated.
Due to this evolution the machine can be used for multiple purpose such as:
Current deployment of Unmanned Ground Vehicles
In 2015, Russia’s military Industry Committee announced its objective of deploying 30 percent of Russia’s Kinetic weapons on remote-control platforms by 2025. In fact, in May 2018, the Russian military revealed it had combat-tested its Uran -9 Robot Tank in Syria for surveillance and counter-terrorism purposes. Respectively, in 2019, the United States’ Army held a major prototyping competition for developing robot combat vehicles which would provide the country with an unqiue edge. The US had in fact deployed on the frontline small UGVs like the Foster-Miller TALON and its successors, but is working on the construction on bigger UGVs like the Ripsaw. Many military experts are describing the coming year as “the year of the armored vehicle” due to the increasing competition between these countries.
Even though the Chinese government has focused on the improvement of his fleet, it has already built a new type of UGV, like the new model SHARP CLAW 2, which can be filtered with a range of accessories, included weapon, robotic or sensor system and can be armed with a remote controlled gun carriage. In Europe, however, few countries, such as Germany and Estonia, decided to improve and invest in the UGV projects.
The Estonian government aims to build and maintain an efficient export-based high-tech Europe-wide defence sector by encouraging cooperation between the Estonian Armed Forces and the country’s defence industry. Milrem, an Estonian robotic vehicle manufacturer, is this ambition’s best example, particularly with its THeMIS vehicle (short for Tracked Hybrid Modular Infantry System). The so-called “pocket tank” was designed to play a variety of roles, from logistics to reconnaissance. To go even further, the vehicle should also be able to support ground forces directly in combat, as the unmanned ground vehicle could be integrated with weapons and devices from other defence manufacturers.
Milrem is not the only actor in the UGVs market in Europe; the German manufacturer Rheinmetall Defence is an interesting counterpoint. Despite not being part of the PESCO-funded industrial consortium, the firm has been busy developing new ground robots which ought to support soldiers on the battlefield as well. In November 2020, Rheinmetall unveiled its most recent project: the Mission Master Unmanned Ground Vehicle. According to the company, the vehicle was created for delivering “high-risk scouting missions and deliver a real-time common operating picture without putting soldiers in danger”, by using 360° camera, infrared technology and 7.62mm guns controlled from the weapon’s station. The Dutch army recently received some of Rheinmetall’s UGV prototypes for testing, while the United-Kingdom ordered four of them as part of its Robotic Platoon Vehicle Programme.
Despite the reliability issues, in primis the vulnerability to EMP and software viruses, that prevent the fully automatization of ground warfare, the UGVs have indeed changed the face of warfare. Their use for ordnance disposal, recons, and in general for support to infantry and tanks will be surely expanded in the near future. In Western countries UGVs will be massively implemented in order to reduce human casualties and drop the political cost of military missions. Naturally, if their cost would drop considerably, we could foresee “pocket divisions” that could be rapidly deployed in different battlefields and controlled via encrypted communications in the most technological advanced armed forces.
By: Carlotta Rinaudo
A few months after Russia’s occupation of Crimea in early 2014, President Vladimir Putin sent another shockwave through another former Soviet state. Kazakhstan, according to a comment made by President Putin, was an artificial nation that “never had any statehood” - a vast land that historically belonged to the Russian empire. These remarks alarmingly recalled a similar statement made by Putin in 2008 when he claimed that Ukraine was “not even a state.” The questioning of Kazakhstan’s legitimacy promptly triggered an angry reaction in the arid steppes of Central Asia, where the Kazakh population called for the need to “send a history textbook to Putin”.
Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has actively sought to protect its hard-won autonomy from the looming threat of Russia’s expansionism. Yet, the prompt arrival of over 2000 Russia-led troops on Kazakhstan’s soil in early January 2022 may well pose a threat to such autonomy. As Russian military forces helped President Tokayev restore order, amidst domestic turmoil, Moscow gained a new opportunity to exert influence in its own backyard. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s political fate could now be tightly and irreversibly intertwined with the aspirations of President Putin.
Kazakhstan’s desire to preserve its autonomy from Moscow is no secret. Over the past three decades, the oil-rich country has embraced a so-called “multivector” foreign policy, weaving a web of positive political and economic relationships, not only with Russia, but also with the other Great Powers engaged in the region – mainly, China and the United States (US). In the early 2000s, Kazakhstan quickly capitalized on China’s thirst for energy resources, and the first Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline was inaugurated in 2005 to transport oil from the Caspian Sea to the Xinjiang region. It was also in Kazakhstan in 2013, that Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced his ambitious megaproject, widely known as the Belt and Road Initiative. The country also attracted billions of dollars of investment from a wide array of American energy companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron. Maintaining positive economic and political relationships with both China and the US has played an essential role in counterbalancing Russian influence and preserving Kazakhstan’s autonomy over time.
To strengthen its national identity and further distance itself from Moscow, Kazakhstan sought to depict Russian and Kazakh civilizations as two separate cultural universes. In 2014, the government opened a new National Museum that emphasizes Kazakhstan’s century-long history as the cradle of the great steppe civilization, and in 2017 it shifted the national alphabet from Cyrillic to the Latin script.
Despite these significant efforts, the unprecedented levels of violence raging across Kazakhstan largely proved that a hardly-won autonomy can be easily dismantled by structural corruption and internal power struggles between the kleptocratic élite. Kazakhstan sits atop massive reserves of oil, minerals, natural gas and uranium, yet these resources have always served the interests of the very few, rather than the needs of the Kazakh wider population. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many businessmen effectively took ownership over the country’s energy resources, accumulating massive wealth. Today, only 162 individuals account for 55% of Kazakhstan’s total wealth - with many of them living in lavish apartments in London - while some Kazakh citizens sole earnings are one hundred US dollars per month. It is in this context of stark income inequality that an increase in fuel prices triggered a series of anti-government peaceful demonstrations on January 1st. From January 4th to January 7th, these peaceful protests in several large cities were allegedly hijacked by violent criminal gangs. Human-rights activist Galym Ageleulov recalls that “an unruly mob of thugs” started to storm public buildings - a group of criminals that “did not look like students, bookish dissidents and middle-class malcontents who usually turn out for protests.” After January 4th, Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty was transformed into “something from an apocalypse film,” with violence raging across the streets, burned buildings, incinerated cars, food shortages, massive internet outages and ultimately, the President ordering security forces to “fire without warning.”
According to Russian expert Danil Kislov, this chaos was not the result of popular discontent, but the product of a “desperate struggle for power” between two political clans – those loyal to President Tokayev on one side, and those loyal to his predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, on the other. As the former dismissed the latter from his position as head of Kazakhstan’s security council, members of Nazarbayev’s political clan may have exploited the anti-government demonstrations in an attempt to remove Tokayev from power and restore Nazarbayev as President. Other reports reveal that between January 4 and January 6, the paramilitary groups encountered no resistance from security forces. Police seemed unable or unwilling to stop the ongoing violence, leading to President Tokayev requesting the support of Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization.
Clearly, the intervention of Russia came as a double-edged sword. Although it helped President Tokayev restore order and secure his grip on power, it also compromised Kazakhstan’s hard-won autonomy. Although the Russian military forces began withdrawing from Kazakhstan on January 13, it is clear that President Putin secured an important geopolitical victory in Russia’s near abroad, linking Kazakhstan’s political fate to Russian interests. As political expert Dimash Alzhanov said, the intervention of these troops “has its own price and will not be forgotten.” Their counterparts, Kazakhstan’s political élites, may have learned a valuable lesson. Three decades of foreign investments and multivector foreign policy won’t protect Kazakhstan from Russia’s long tentacles – not so long as the country is weakened by structural corruption and internal Cold War-style power struggles between kleptocratic élites.
January 18, 2022 — No Comments
In this interview, Andre Morsman talks about EU and Dutch national security in view of the Covid-19 pandemic, and how we can expect the recent strategic security autonomy discussions and France's Presidency in the Council of the European Union to affect security discussions in the Netherlands. Andre Morsman is Senior Security Advisor at the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Lieutenant Colonel, Strategic advisor network military at the Dutch Ministry of Defense.
Interviewers: Rosa Maria Torraco, Alessandro Spada, Eleonora Shehu, Isabelle Despicht
This is ITSS Verona Member Series Video Podcast by the UK & European Affairs Team
In this ITSS Verona Member Series Video Podcast by the Political Economy, Development, and Energy Security Team, Gonzalo Pozo Martin talks about Nord Stream 2 and its consequences on EU-Russia relations, touching upon the Ukrainian crisis, the European sanctions, the EU taxonomy, and the context following German elections. Gonzalo Pozo Martin is Lecturer in International Relations, with a specialization in International Political Economy at Stockholm University, Sweden.
Interviewer: Elena Bascone
