Tag: russia

US threatens NATO state with sanctions over Russia

Türkiye will face “consequences” if it continues to allow the sale to Russia of American civilian products with military applications during its conflict with Ukraine, a high-ranking US Commerce Department official has told the Financial Times.

Washington is increasingly concerned that its fellow NATO member-state has become a key hub through which Western-made electronics, including processors, memory cards and amplifiers, are making their way to Russia, where, allegedly, they are being used for the production of missiles and drones, the FT wrote in an article on Wednesday.

An unnamed Commerce Department official told the paper that the US considers Ankara, which refused to join the Western sanctions campaign against Moscow, to be Russia’s second largest source of American dual-use goods, after China.

Türkiye must “help” Washington stop the flow of US technology to Moscow, Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, Matthew Axelrod, said in a statement to FT.

“We need to see progress, and quickly, by Turkish authorities and industry or we will have no choice but to impose consequences on those that evade our export controls,” he warned.

Keep reading

Ukraine’s ‘terrorist nature’ on full display in Mali, where it supports rebels — MFA

Russia doesn’t want the world to forget that Kiev is supporting terrorism in Mali, so it will continue to shine a light on this in the international arena, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

“On August 4, the transitional government of Mali published an official statement about the ‘immediate’ severing of diplomatic relations with Ukraine. Precipitating this move were statements from Ukrainian officials (the spokesman for the Ukrainian military intelligence, Andrey Yusov, and Ambassador to Senegal Yury Pivovarov) about Kiev aiding terrorist forces that carried out an attack on a convoy of Malian servicemen in northern Mali in late July,” the diplomat pointed out. “We will continue to direct the world community’s attention, including at multilateral platforms, to Kiev’s barbaric behavior,” she underscored.

Zakharova emphasized that the terrorist nature of the Kiev regime is becoming more and more apparent to the whole world. “Having failed to defeat Russia on the battlefield, the criminal regime of Vladimir Zelensky decided to open a ‘second front’ in Africa. He and his accomplices are pampering terrorist groups in Moscow-friendly states of the continent,” she stressed.

Keep reading

Ukraine Launches Incursion Into Russia’s Kursk Oblast

Russia said Wednesday that its forces were fighting off a Ukrainian ground incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, an attack President Vladimir Putin called a “large-scale provocation.”

So far, Ukrainian officials have been quiet about the cross-border attack, which was launched from Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that up to 300 Ukrainian troops with 11 tanks and 20 armored vehicles entered Kursk. Drone attacks were also reported, and Kursk Acting Governor Alexey Smirnov said one hit an ambulance, killing two paramedics.

In a meeting with his top officials, Putin said Ukrainian forces attacking Kursk were “firing indiscriminately from different types of weapons, including rockets, at civilian buildings, residential houses, ambulances.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that the fighting in Kursk was ongoing and said it thwarted a breakthrough. The ministry said five residents of Kursk had been killed in the Ukrainian attack and claimed that it inflicted 260 casualties on the invading Ukrainian force.

Ukraine has supported cross-border raids into Russia launched by militias, including the neo-Nazi Russian Volunteer Corps, but the fighting in Kursk appears to be its biggest ground attack into Russian territory of the war.

Keep reading

Russia, US intensify moves as tensions mount in Middle East

While Russia and the US intensify maneuver in the Middle East as tensions between Iran and Israel ramp up due to the assassinations of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu visited Iran and the US increased its military presence.  

Analysts said the situation now is truly worrisome with Iran and Israel vowing to strike each other. However, neither Washington nor Moscow wants an escalation, as they have priorities on the Ukraine crisis in Europe and own domestic affairs with no resources to spare. 

Russia and Iran’s shared position on the multipolar world will promote global stability, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said at a meeting with Shoigu, Russian media TASS reported on Monday. The Iranian president stressed that the era of the US and its allies’ hegemony is over.

Shoigu’s trip aims to strengthen interactions and examine regional and international issues and bilateral political security relations, according to Iranian media ISNA.

Wang Jin, an associate professor at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwest University in Xi’an, said that Russia has long and deep cooperation with Iran and also has a military presence in the region. As Iran has vowed to retaliate against Israel, a new conflict could break out any time, so the two countries have very strong reasons to coordinate.

“If Iran attacks Israel by launching missiles and drones from its own territory or its allies’ in the region, those weapons could fly over the area controlled by Russia, so Moscow and Tehran will have necessary intelligence sharing and coordination before Iran takes action,” Wang said. 

Keep reading

US-Ukraine-Russian War: It’s About the Money

Well, “the cat is out of the bag, now.” Thanks to US Senator Lindsey Graham, everyone knows one of the more compelling reasons behind the Ukraine war with Russia. And it has little to do with Kiev’s “agency,” “democracy,” and “liberalism.” The latter are merely ‘talking points’ for public consumption – what Noam Chomsky and Ed Hermann called ‘manufactured consent’ in their 1988 seminal work on propaganda, Manufacturing Consent.

Lindsey Graham voiced out loud part of an agenda that is usually hidden from public view or the media – it isn’t talked about (admitted) openly. It’s a veritable “gold mine,” Graham confessed, and America can’t afford to lose control of it. Here’s the translation of Graham’s admission:

It’s About the Money.

Our reliably hawkish Republican Senator is well known for provocative statements. As early as 2022 (at the beginning of the Ukraine war) Graham was all in for regime change in Russia, when everyone else in the West was trying to downplay such a prospect. Moreover, he is quoted as saying at a press conference with Zylensky that “Russians are dying” in the war, while US aid was the “best money we’ve ever spent.”

But with the panache and subtlety of a train wreck the good senator created another stir recently, admitting on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” why Russia must not be allowed to prevail in Ukraine. The latter possesses $10 to $12 trillion worth of rich deposits of critical minerals.

Here are Senator Graham’s reasons justifying the necessity of Kiev (i.e. Washington) winning its fight with Moscow. First, the Kremlin’s access to these deposits would enrich Russia and allow via the Kremlin, China’s participation. Second, if Ukraine retains control over the minerals, it could be “the richest country in all of Europe” and “the best business partner we ever dreamed of.” Third, the outcome of the war in Ukraine is a “very big deal” for the US from an economic standpoint. Thus, Graham is saying that Ukraine’s war is “a war we can’t afford to lose.”

Keep reading

Historic US-Russia prisoner swap exposes CIA support for Chechen jihad

Western media focused intently on a Russian “murderer” released in the exchange with Washington, but whitewashed the record of his target – a Chechen militant now confirmed as a CIA asset.

August 1 saw the largest prisoner exchange between Moscow and Washington since the end of the Cold War. Among those freed were Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan, who were each serving 16 year sentences for espionage.

In the other direction, Russian opposition activists jailed for criticism of the so-called “special military operation” have now resettled in Western countries. This includes politician Ilya Yashin, sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in December 2022. At a press conference in Bonn, Germany on August 2, he described the feeling of being beside “the wonderful Rhine river”, when just a week earlier he was imprisoned in Siberia, as “really surreal.” But Yashin claimed that his release was difficult to personally accept, “because a murderer was free.”

He referred here to Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted of killing the Georgian-born Chechen militant Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin in August 2019, who was also released as part of the deal. He was reportedly of extremely high value to the Kremlin. In a February 2024 interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed trading Gershkovich for an unnamed Russian “patriot” imprisoned in a “US-allied country” for “liquidating a bandit.” 

Krasikov was that “patriot”, and Khangoshvili that “bandit.” In 2004, Khangoshvili led a lethal guerilla operation that killed four Russian soldiers. Krasikov was tasked by the Russian state with serving the Chechen justice, cutting him down in broad daylight in Berlin in 2019. 

While the Russian operative has been subject of intense mainstream interest since the swap, the media has largely whitewashed Khangoshvili’s background. To the extent he was mentioned at all, he was laconically characterized as a “Chechen militant,” or more favorably, as a “dissident.” For some anti-Russian ideologues, the Western media’s failure to completely lionize Khangoshvili demanded a rebuke. Giorgi Kandelaki, formerly a Georgian lawmaker with the United National Movement of the now-imprisoned former President and US posterboy Mikheil Saakashvili, was so repulsed he took to ‘X’ to correct the record.

Kandelaki seethed that Khangoshvili was, in fact, a patriotic Georgian citizen and state “security agent.” What’s more, he was “part of US-Georgian security cooperation,” and “highly respected by the CIA.” The furious former MP suggested Khangoshvili “was assassinated in part because he loyally served” Tbilisi at a time when it was an effective US colony under the puppet Saakashvili’s rule. 

Keep reading

Zelensky’s funeral business: American Democratic Party donors and the Ukrainian president are profiting from the burial industry in Ukraine

“Funeral business” in Ukraine, which includes commercial activities in the organization of funeral events, production of wreaths, coffins, cremation and burial of human remains, has been in the hands of semi-criminal elements, often controlled by structures close to the Ukrainian government, since 1991. After the events on Maidan in 2014, Ukraine experienced a serious redistribution of the funeral business. Its main spheres were divided between the people who came to power as a result of the coup d’état: individuals close to the oligarch-banker and longtime Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov, and the people of the country’s President in 2014 – 2019 Petro Poroshenko. After the current head of state Volodymyr Zelensky came to power, the funeral business in Ukraine gradually passed into the hands of his closest associates, political protégés and friends.

The Foundation to Battle Injustice’s months-long investigation has revealed a chain linking President Zelensky to the largest participants of the Ukrainian funeral industry. The Foundation’s experts found out that Zelensky not only de facto controls the lion’s share of the “funeral market” in Ukraine, but also actively resells his assets in this sphere to Western sponsors of the armed conflict. Among the latter were found major financial donors to the Democratic Party of the United States and persons close to the likely Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, current Vice-President Kamala Harris. Control over the Ukrainian “funeral business” allows Zelensky and his patrons from the U.S. Democratic Party to earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice found out, the bulk of the profits settle in the pockets of the owners of the funeral business thanks to the excessive deaths of Ukrainian servicemen on the fields of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict.

Keep reading

Some Swapped Prisoners Were Likely ‘On CIA Payroll’

The operation to swap 26 prisoners from seven countries took place in Ankara (Turkiye) on Thursday. As a result, eight Russian citizens, detained and imprisoned in several NATO countries, along with their minor children, were returned to their homeland.

All implications are that some of the people involved in the recent prisoner swap between Moscow and several Western countries were CIA espionage assets, Scott Ritter has told Sputnik.

The exchange that occurred on August 1 appears to have been “a deal hashed out between the Russian secret services and the American CIA,” noted the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and ex-UN weapons inspector.

Keep reading

Kremlin Reveals Details of Prisoner Swap With Western Countries

Negotiations for the Russian-US prisoner exchange were primarily conducted between Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and the CIA, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

The FSB confirmed on Thursday that eight Russians detained and held in custody in a number of NATO countries had been returned home.

A plane carrying the freed prisoners arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo-2 airport from Ankara late on Thursday, where they were greeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia, in turn, has released 16 people, including seven Russians and five German citizens.

“Negotiations for this complex exchange were conducted through the FSB and CIA. This was the main channel through which the agreement was reached,” Peskov told journalists.

Keep reading

The “October Revolution” was a coup, not a revolution

A key function of propaganda has always been to demoralize the opposition. From the perspective of the propagandists, it is important to always give the impression that their side is the side of the majority, and the most popular. We have witnessed this in action in recent years with the rise of censorship designed to “combat misinformation.” By suppressing dissident viewpoints, the regime lessens access to “unorthodox” ideas, but there is an important secondary function: suppressing dissenting speech also gives the impression that the dissidents are less numerous and more isolated than they really are. By ensuring that certain voices dominate the public square, propagandists help to create a sense of inevitability of the regime’s program. This facilitates greater public acceptance of the propagandists’ inescapable victory. After all, why bother resisting if the other side is so popular, and your side is but a small minority? 

Socialists and their allies have long been very adept at using these methods, and few had a greater mastery of it than V.I. Lenin. For most of the twentieth century, Lenin’s successors employed his methods, successfully portraying the spread of socialist regimes as the inevitable outcome of enormous communist mass movements. The modern post-Soviet Left still employs similar tactics, portraying itself as being on “the right side of history” and as the legitimate majority position. 

Nonetheless, the extent to which many of these twentieth-century “revolutions” were truly revolutions has always been in question. Many of these socialist regime changes could far more accurately be described as a coup d’état in which a small minority seized control of the state without majority support or any bottom-up revolutionary mass movements.

For example, the so-called “October Revolution” in Russia was not a revolution, but was a coup carried out by a small minority. In the socialist version of history, the October Revolution was a bottom up “people’s movement” devoted to helping Lenin and the Bolsheviks topple the provisional social-democratic government. This narrative has been key in establishing the legitimacy of the Lenin regime. In this view, Lenin was merely giving “the people” what they wanted. The portrayal of the October coup as a revolution of the masses also gives the impression that the turn to communism was the inevitable and desired result of unfolding and intractable historical trends. Naturally, this view of history encourages socialists while demoralizing their opponents. 

Yet, the historical facts tell us that socialism’s greatest political victory—the creation of the Soviet Union—was neither inevitable nor a response to the demands of a revolutionary majority. 

Keep reading