Institute for the Study of War

Founded in 2007 by military historian Kimberly Kagan, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is a non-partisan Washington think tank producing daily battlefield assessments, interactive control maps and order-of-battle analysis on the Russia-Ukraine and Iran conflicts. It publishes jointly with the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, including a daily Iran Update alongside its Ukraine coverage.

Its core method is cross-checking official claims, Russian, Iranian, American or otherwise, against geolocated footage and open-source reporting, which is why its assessments routinely contradict the government whose claims it is checking: it has found no evidence behind Russian battlefield claims, read Iranian diplomatic gestures as cover narratives, and relayed unconfirmed Russian-source reports without endorsing them.

Some Western commentators characterise its institutional stance as hawkish, and Russian state media dismisses it as a Western propaganda outlet. Its figures nonetheless feature regularly in parliamentary and congressional debates on military aid and in Western government assessments of both wars.