The Levant Files

In what analysts are calling a watershed moment for Russian influence in the Sahel, Mali's military junta suffered a devastating blow over the weekend of April 25–27, 2026, as coordinated attacks by Tuareg separatists and Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists overran key towns and forced Russia's Africa Corps paramilitaries into a humiliating retreat from Kidal, the symbolic northern stronghold they had seized just two and a half years ago. According to the Le Monde, the assault, launched on April 25 by the Azawad Liberation Front (ALF) and the jihadist group Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), struck simultaneously across multiple locations — including Bamako's military district of Kati, the airport at Sévaré, and Gao — marking the largest rebel offensive in Mali since 2012. By Sunday, the pro-independence flag flew over Kidal's fort, the same spot where Wagner mercenaries had triumphantly raised their skull-and-crossbones banner in November 2023. Moscow's local p...

Bulgaria's eighth parliamentary election in five years produced the clearest result the country has seen since 1997, but the landslide victory of former president Rumen Radev and his newly formed Progressive Bulgaria (PB) party is already sending a chill through European Union capitals. While the vote may finally end the Balkan state's grinding political paralysis, it has also raised urgent questions about Bulgaria's reliability as an EU partner on Ukraine, Russia, and the bloc's geopolitical agenda. The Vote and Its Result Held on 19 April 2026, the election saw PB secure approximately 44.6 percent of the vote and around 131 seats in the 240-seat National Assembly — an outright parliamentary majority. GERB-SDS, the centre-right party of former prime minister Boyko Borissov, collapsed to just 13.4 percent and 39 seats, while the reformist We Continue the Change–Democratic Bulgaria coalition (PP-DB) took 12.6 percent and 37 seats. In a striking historical footnote, the B...

As established alliances crack under pressure, states across the globe are scrambling to forge new partnerships — and Turkey finds itself at the center of a rapidly shifting strategic map. Writing in the Turkish news outlet YetkinReport, analyst Hasan Göğüş argues that U.S. President Donald Trump's norm-breaking foreign policy — including threats to withdraw from NATO and his administration's support for Israeli military operations — has set off a chain reaction of realignment stretching from the Middle East to South Asia. Gulf states, long accustomed to sheltering under a U.S. security umbrella, are now nursing deep disillusionment. New groupings are forming fast. The 'Islamic NATO' That Never Was The most dramatic illustration of institutional failure, Göğüş writes, is the paralysis of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Since the outbreak of war between the U.S./Israel axis and Iran on February 28, 2026 — a day when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was ...

A fragile ceasefire between Pakistan and Afghanistan teetered on the edge of collapse on Monday after both sides accused each other of launching fresh cross-border attacks, threatening weeks of painstaking diplomatic progress and reigniting fears of a return to full-scale hostilities along one of the world's most volatile frontiers. Afghanistan's Taliban authorities reported that at least four people were killed and some 70 others wounded in mortar and rocket fire in the eastern Kunar province, with Taliban Deputy Spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat stating that Pakistani military strikes hit the Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani University in Asadabad, injuring approximately 30 students along with women and children. "We strongly condemn these attacks by the Pakistani military regime, in which ordinary people, academic, and educational institutions were targeted, and declare them unforgivable war crimes," Fitrat said. Pakistan's information ministry flatly rejected the allegati...

The ongoing standoff between Iran and the United States over the Strait of Hormuz has forced a fundamental rethinking of regional energy routes and trade corridors. According to the Iranian Tasnim News Agency, citing OilPrice, Afghanistan has emerged as a potential pivot point for an alternative route that circumvents the critical Hormuz chokepoint — though Taliban control of the country has cast serious doubt on Kabul's viability as a bridge to global markets. The question of Afghanistan's willingness and capacity to participate in emerging energy and trade networks was the central focus of a recent one-day conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, organized by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy (NLI). The event, held under the auspices of NLI's Central Asia Center and within the framework of the "Seven Silk Roads Plus" initiative, envisions a broader Central Asian economic community and the emergence of a powerful trade crescent stretching from the ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Saint Petersburg on Sunday, reaffirming the deep strategic ties between Moscow and Tehran and pledging to work toward peace in the Middle East as swiftly as possible. The meeting brought together senior officials from both sides, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov, and Chief of the Main Directorate of the General Staff Igor Kostyukov, along with Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi and Iran's Ambassador to Moscow Kazem Jalali. Message from Iran's Supreme Leader Opening the talks, Putin revealed that he had received a personal message from Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei the previous week. Without disclosing its contents, the Russian president asked Araghchi to convey his "gratitude for this message and best wishes for his health and well-being." Putin praised the resilience of the Iranian people, stating they are...

Iran's state-linked Mehr News Agency has published a striking opinion piece arguing that Tehran's participation in both the 2026 Hajj pilgrimage and the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States constitutes a strategic necessity — framing athletic competition and religious observance alike as extensions of Iran's military and ideological resistance. The article, written in the ideological register characteristic of Mehr's state-directed editorial line, claims that Iran recently emerged victorious from a "forty-day war" against what it describes as an "illegal and oppressive" military assault by the United States and Israel — an assertion that cannot be independently verified and reflects the Iranian government's own contested narrative. Against this backdrop, the agency argues that boycotting either event would amount to self-imposed isolation, handing adversaries a propaganda victory. "Boycotting the World Cup means surrendering the platform...

Two months after the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28, the front pages of Iranian newspapers on Monday converge on a single, uneasy truth: the war has not ended, but nobody wants it to resume. The widely-read daily Hamshahri captured the prevailing mood with a phrase that has become the editorial shorthand of the moment — "gunpowder diplomacy, a fragile balance between deterrence and war." Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is in St. Petersburg for talks with Vladimir Putin, peace negotiations with Washington are stalled, the Strait of Hormuz remains a chokepoint reshaping the global economy, and the Iranian rial has collapsed to 1.32 million per dollar. Beneath the official messaging of defiance and unity, Iran's newspapers reveal a country navigating acute economic pain, leadership questions, and a diplomatic standoff in which every move is calculated in terms of pressure, leverage, and the risk of miscalculation. Diplomacy In Motion: ...

Mali's military rulers were plunged into their gravest security crisis in years on Sunday after a weekend of coordinated nationwide attacks by jihadist fighters and Tuareg separatists killed the country's defence minister and reportedly handed a strategic northern city to rebels. Defence Minister Sadio Camara, a senior member of the ruling junta and seen by many as a potential future leader, was killed Saturday by a car bomb planted outside his home in Kati, a military stronghold roughly 15 kilometres north of the capital Bamako. His second wife and two of his grandchildren also died in the blast, according to relatives. The attack is believed to have been carried out by the al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM). The offensive, which began at dawn Saturday, was synchronised between JNIM and the Tuareg-dominated Azawad Liberation Front (FLA). Targets included the Kati base, Bamako's international airport, and towns across central and northern Mali...