Ukraine–Russia
Interstate warAn interstate war reshaping European security.
Context. Not headlines.
Understand conflicts beyond the news cycle.
Vigil connects current developments to the actors, institutions, forces, geography and pressures that shape what happens next.
Current at Vigil
- Global weekly brief2026-08-30
- All five conflicts reviewed2026-08-30
- Latest analytical note2026-08-28
Why the coast guard and not the navy
How Beijing applies pressure below the threshold of war — and what would show the model is changing
Key judgment
China has the largest navy in the world by hull count and does not use it to press its maritime claims around Taiwan. It uses a coast guard. That is not a second-best choice or a capability constraint: a white hull conducting an inspection makes a legal claim that a warship performing the identical act cannot make, and it is far harder to answer, because a military response to a law-enforcement act escalates and a law-enforcement response concedes that the waters are subject to competing jurisdiction. The instrument rests on published Chinese law that asserts enforcement powers in waters it declines to define, and it has been demonstrated in one place — around Kinmen since February 2024 — without ever being applied to shipping bound for Taiwan's main ports. This note explains why the ambiguity is the weapon, and identifies what would show it is being abandoned. It does not claim a blockade or quarantine is planned, prepared or likely, and it publishes no timeline, sequence or probability.
This week across every conflict
GLOBAL WEEKLY REVIEW · published 2026-08-30 · reporting window 2026-08-24 → 2026-08-30. The full brief carries every item, its sources and its confidence note.
- SyriaA negotiating position backed by formed units and a revenue base became an adviser's chair in seven months; the deferred constitutional file is now left without an obvious signatory.
Five days earlier the same commander said the integration phase was complete, Damascus called those words an admission of dissolution, and this module recorded both characterisations and adopted neither — because which one held determined whether a counterparty to the deferred constitutional question still existed.
- Ukraine–RussiaA decree making inadequate protection a ground for losing control of an asset moves the cost of an air-defence shortfall from the state to the owner.
Two years of strikes have already produced purchase limits, an export ban and imported gasoline. This is the first instrument that changes who owns the problem.
- CaucasusInviting expulsion rather than withdrawing transfers the cost of the rupture to Moscow, and leaves the alliance to choose between acting and showing its warning is unenforceable.
Nothing in Armenia's actual alignment changed this week. What changed is that the government stopped describing a frozen membership as a pause and described it as something it would be pleased to see ended by someone else — which is a different negotiating position, and a cheaper one.
Also reviewed this weekSahelTaiwan Strait
Vigil Dispatch
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Conflicts Vigil covers
All five published modules are reviewed every week. Each receives a dated weekly brief; quiet weeks explicitly record when no material change was identified.
Vigil currently covers 5 conflicts: Ukraine–Russia in Eastern Europe; Sahel in Central Sahel / West Africa; Caucasus in South Caucasus / North Caucasus; Syria in Levant / Eastern Mediterranean; Taiwan in Indo-Pacific / East Asia. Each is listed in full below, with its latest review.
Coverage orientation only — markers are approximate regional anchors for the conflicts Vigil publishes, not conflict extents or current activity.
Sahel
Regional systemOne conflict system across three states, with no single front.
Caucasus
Regional systemUnresolved wars inside a changing regional system.
Syria
Regional transitionA civil-war legacy shaping a regional transition.
Taiwan Strait
Strategic flashpointA pressure system where deterrence, not fighting, is the subject.
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- 01
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Every active conflict is reviewed on a weekly cycle and the findings are published as a dated brief — including the weeks where the finding is that nothing material changed.
- 02
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- 03
It shows what the assessment rests on
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