Tag: russia

Reuters Has Ulterior Motives For Reporting That Iran Tipped Russia Off Before The Crocus Attack

Reuters cited three unnamed sources to exclusively report on Monday that Iran had allegedly tipped Russia off about a then-impending major terrorist attack after learning about it from ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorists who were detained after the group’s early January attack in Kerman. The information lacked specific details, but the outlet editorialized that “It is harder…for Russia to dismiss intelligence from diplomatic ally Iran on the attack” than from the West, the latter of which they claim that it downplayed.

Accordingly, Reuters wrote that this “raised questions over the effectiveness of Russian security services”, thus exposing the ulterior motive behind this report. The West has done all that it can to deflect from Russia’s accusations that Ukraine was tied to this terrorist attack via the evidence that its investigation has uncovered. This includes claiming that the vague warning that the US passed along to Russia was obtained from spying on ISIS-K, not on Kiev like this analysis here compellingly argues.

By including an Iranian dimension into the emerging narrative of early warnings ahead of the Crocus terrorist attack, the West via Reuters wants to further deflect from its own and Ukraine’s involvement in what happened while simultaneously discrediting the Russian security services. This analysis here debunks the false narrative that President Putin downplayed ISIS-K threats in the run-up to the attack, yet the West is doubling down on that claim, largely in response to evidence implicating Kiev.

To be sure, there’s a chance that one or some of those ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorists that Iran detained in January might have heard about the group’s plans to attack Russia, but that’s altogether different than them having knowledge of the then-impending Crocus plot. Russia already knows that it’s in that group’s crosshairs after they bombed its embassy in Kabul in September 2022. Without specific information, whether from Iran or anyone else, nothing on the home front would have changed in response to that.

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Ukraine Lowers Age of Conscription by Two Years to Fill Troop Shortfalls

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a law that lowers the country’s age of conscription by two years to make up for troop shortfalls.

The new legislation lowers the age of mobilization to 25 from 27 years, meaning more young men will be removed from the struggling Ukrainian economy and sent off to the meatgrinder in anticipation of another Russia summer offensive.

Part of Ukraine’s difficulties in finding new conscripts has been driven by the fact that many young men have either fled the country, faked illnesses or offered bribes to avoid being sent to the front lines.

“Conscription has been a sensitive topic in Ukraine since nearly the beginning of the war, with videos of Ukrainian men being scooped off the streets, presumably to be sent to the front,” reports Remix News.

“The country has suffered from a lack of suitable troops after two years of war and ammunition shortages.”

Videos have previously emerged which purport to show Ukrainians who tried to avoid being conscripted being thrown off a bus and beaten by SBU, Ukraine’s equivalent of the FBI.

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Every NATO Country Already Has Troops In Ukraine, Estonia Says

Estonia has long been no friend of Russia, and a leading anti-Moscow hawkish voice within the Baltics, and that’s why a fresh interview by Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur in European media is raising eyebrows as he issued some very revealing statements.

The defense chief said in the interview with the Austrian newspaper Die Presse that all NATO countries already have NATO personnel stationed in Ukraine, but that they aren’t directly engaged in hostilities as they are there in advisory roles. He was responding to recent provocative statements by France’s Macron.

“The reality is that every NATO member country already has military personnel in Ukraine, such as military attaches or people who travel to Ukraine from time to time,” the Estonian defense chief said. “What [French] President [Emmanuel] Macron said mainly related to personnel training,” he added, according to a translation in Russian media.

Starting in late February Macron had told a gathering of top defense officials in Paris that Western boots on the ground in Ukraine should be an option as “we cannot exclude anything” in the pursuit of preventing Russia from winning the war.

Still, in the interview Pevkur emphasized that currently there’s no serious talk of NATO troops directly participating in fighting and that “this has already been ruled out.”

However, he did preview a very dangerous potential plan which would certainly lead to escalation: “Western defense officials are currently planning to set up training camps in Ukraine in a bid to avoid issues with border crossings and to speed up the preparation process,” Pevkur said to the Vienna-based publication.

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Ukrainian Drones Hit Russia’s Third-Largest Oil Refinery, Prompting White House Anger

As discussed in our morning wrap, US equity futures are dipping lower as bond yields in the US continue to move higher as crude continues to surge and is up another 2% on growing fears of middle-eastern escalation after a senior Iranian commander was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Syria yesterday, with Iran immediately vowing revenge, and as Ukraine once again struck oil infrastructure targets deep inside Russia, overnight hitting Russia’s 3rd largest refinery, ~800 miles from the front lines.

As OilPrice details, Ukrainian drones hit the primary refining unit of Russia’s third-largest refinery southeast of Moscow more than 800 miles from the front line, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Ukraine keeps striking Russian oil assets despite the Biden admin’s unequivocal demands for a hard stop, suggesting that diplomatic fallout is now imminent.

The Taneco refinery of Russian company Tatneft in Tatarstan, an industrialized region southeast of Moscow, was attacked by Ukrainian drones in the latest such attack from Ukraine on Russian refining infrastructure.

The refinery has a capacity to process 340,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude. Its primary refining unit, with a capacity to process about 155,000 bpd, was hit in Tuesday’s attack, according to pictures seen by Reuters. The unit caught fire, which was swiftly extinguished, Russian media report.

They also quote Ramil Mullin, the mayor of the city of Nizhnekamsk, where the refinery is located, as saying that there have been no injured people in the attack.

“There are no injuries or serious damage,” Mullin wrote on Telegram. “The technological process of the enterprise has not been disrupted,” the mayor added.

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Global War Status: Russian Front

Bear with me. I’m going to try to tie several threads together into a coherent whole. I’ll be presenting extensive transcripts of Doug Macgregor, which I find largely convincing—with one caveat. That caveat depends on how stupid Western leaders are. That caveat will be tempered by John Helmer’s reporting on the electric war—which translates into whether the stupidity of the Western ruling class can be thwarted by sheer impossibility on the electric level.

To begin, let’s just restate what this war is all about. We’ve been over this many times, but it’s useful to repeat it. The whole point of the war on Russia was—and still is—to effect regime change, break the Russia Federation up into controllable separate entities, and then loot it for its resources—as a prelude to establishing control over China and thus, ultimately, Eurasia, including the Middle East. It’s about Western Ruling Class governance of the entire world, fueled by control over global resources. Everything else, including the climate hoax, is simply subordinate to that end goal.

Ukraine was and remains a stepping stone toward Russia. In the post WW2 world the American—and, thus, Western—way of war is grounded largely on terror. It’s not so much about defeating militaries as defeating populations, forcing populations into submission via the model of Germany and Japan. The means used are flexible, depending on circumstances. Regime change and propaganda—fueled by the seeming inevitable triumph of the secular Western model—is often the preferred or only option, although regime change itself will often require force. This has happened repeatedly but, with regard to Russia, began definitively in Kiev in 2014—the earlier example of NATO’s war on Serbia could not be repeated in the Ukrainian environment. Nevertheless, a coup, fueled by a violent nationalistic minority of the Ukrainian population, was put into effect with the goal of bringing NATO up to the borders of Russia and exerting maximum—short of open war—pressure on Russia’s political structure by destabilizing the Putin government. The goal was to present to the Russia public the view of Putin as unable to prevent NATO’s triumphant eastward expansion and of Putin as opening Russia to possible catastrophe. Solution for the Russian public: regime change.

As we now know, this hasn’t worked. The magic sanctions war—which was supposed to obviate the necessity of massive kinetic warfare—proved to be an abject failure. Russia’s resolve and creative response to the Ukrainian/NATO threat has led the West to the verge of panic, as Ukraine’s military faces collapse. The West faces the collapse of the entire Globalist Project outlined above. What is so worrisome about the Crocus terrorist attack by the West on Russia is that it represents a doubling down of the regime change strategy. As Alastair Crooke has explained (in his most recent conversation with Judge Nap), the Crocus terror attack was not actually “asymmetric warfare” because it did not target Russia’s military. It was a pure terrorist act aimed at political destabilization of Putin’s government—a continuation of past, failed, strategy, but which now risks wider war.

Russia’s response, which was probably imminent anyway, has been what John Helmer calls the “electric war”. Crooke also refers to this, and specifies that it will also affect Western Europe/NATO. How that effect will occur is explained by Helmer, but first let’s mention one salient fact. The Ukrainian rail system—which is the primary means by which the Ukrainian military transfers troops and supplies—runs on electricity. Remove that capability and the Ukrainian military faces the very real possibility of being largely stranded on the east side of the Dnieper river, subjected to Russian attacks for which it has not defenses. With the fall of Ukraine’s fortress towns and cities in the east, the remains of its military is attempting to dig into the mud, which offers no protection to the Russian glide bombs.

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Blaming Russia For “Havana Syndrome” Pushes The Opposite Narrative Than Intended

For Russia to have successfully used a mobile directed energy weapon over 1,500 times, including against the US’ “top 5%, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency,” then it must have deeply penetrated the US Government in order to discover those elite targets’ identities and locations.

CBS News, The Insider, and Der Spiegel released the findings of their joint investigation on Sunday blaming Russia for “Havana Syndrome”, which refers to the mysterious ear and head pain that over 1,500 US Government (USG) staffers across the world claim to have experienced since 2016. It appeared timed to coincide with Congress’ plans to vote on Ukraine aid sometime later this month, with the intent obviously being to scare lawmakers into approving more funds for America’s proxy war on Russia.

It might have the opposite effect than intended, however, since those outlets’ dramatic claims paint a picture of deep Russian intelligence penetration of the US’ diplomatic and security services that can’t be remedied by simply sending more money to Ukraine. If what they wrote is true, then Russia has created a mobile directed energy weapon (DEW) that it’s already successfully used over 1,500 times, including against the US’ “top 5%, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency”.

This startling statistic comes from the recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who ran the Pentagon’s investigation into the matter. He claimed that this elite echelon of victims had all “worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and done extremely well” but were then “neutralized” after their injuries. His allegations contradict the Intelligence Community’s (IC) official review from last year that no DEWs nor foreign adversaries were responsible for these “anomalous health incidents”.

Those who take the IC’s official review at face value suspect that the prior hysteria about “Havana syndrome” was just a means of fearmongering about Russia, which they also naturally believe is the motive behind the latest joint investigation’s findings. Meanwhile, those who suspected that the IC’s official review was a cover-up take the latest joint investigation’s findings at face value, which means that they truly believe that Russia has deeply penetrated the US’ diplomatic and security services.

There’s no credible evidence to suggest that this is the case, especially since Russia would have presumably been much better prepared for responding to America’s diplomatic and military provocations throughout the course of their ongoing proxy war if it had moles within both. Nevertheless, the only way that one can believe that it’s systematically targeting members of those institutions who had all worked against it “extremely well” in the past is if it knew who they were and where they lived.

That in turn obliges one to believe that it must have deeply penetrated them in order to obtain this highly classified information, thus meaning that Russian spies are more highly placed than anyone had thought even after the witch hunt that followed the Russiagate hysteria. Once again, there’s no credible evidence that this is the case, and another argument against this theory is that Russia isn’t targeting any similarly prominent Ukrainian diplomats or security officials despite being at “war” with their country.

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EXPLOSIVE INVESTIGATION LINKS RUSSIA’S SHADOWY “UNIT 29155” TO ‘HAVANA SYNDROME’ ATTACKS ON U.S. OFFICIALS WORLDWIDE

Compelling new evidence suggests that a shadowy group within Russia’s GRU military intelligence, known as Unit 29155, could be orchestrating attacks on American personnel using directed energy weapons.

Previously implicated in high-profile assassination attempts and sabotage operations across Europe, the unit is now suspected of being behind the controversial and mysterious afflictions known as “Havana Syndrome,” which have plagued U.S. officials around the globe, according to a joint investigation by The Insider, 60 Minutes, and Der Spiegel.

Havana Syndrome, officially known as “Anomalous Health Incidents” (AHI), describes a mysterious medical condition reported by U.S. officials and military personnel mainly while serving abroad. 

First reported in 2016 among embassy workers from the U.S. and Canada in Havana, Cuba, symptoms of Havana Syndrome include sudden extreme headaches, ear pain, dizziness, nausea, and cognitive issues. In some cases, long-term health consequences have ended careers and altered lives. 

Victims of Havana Syndrome recount nearly identical experiences, including sudden intense pain brought on by a mysterious and unseen crippling force. 

“It was like this piercing feeling on the side of my head, and I got vertigo,” Olivia Troye, the Homeland Security Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, recounted to 60 Minutes about an experience she had outside the White House in 2019. “I was unsteady. I felt nauseous, and I was somewhat disoriented.” 

Former covert CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos said he had a terrifyingly similar encounter in a Moscow hotel room in 2017. “I couldn’t stand up,” Polymeropoulos noted in a 2020 interview with G.Q. “I was falling over. I had an incredible sense of nausea and ringing in my ears. I was, frankly, terrified.”  

Troye and Polymeropoulos are among the more than 1,000 U.S. officials who, over the past eight years, have reported experiencing what seems to be an attack by a debilitating directed energy weapon.

Yet, despite numerous reports suggesting a pattern, the idea that a foreign adversary might be intentionally targeting U.S. officials, or even the recognition of “Havana Syndrome” as a genuine condition, has become a point of contention in Washington, D.C.

Investigations into Havana Syndrome have frequently resulted in unclear and sometimes conflicting conclusions.

In February 2022, a White House panel of experts concluded that radio waves could cause some of the injuries associated with the mysterious incidents. However, the panel also found that most incidents could be explained by stress or psychosomatic reactions. 

In the same month, a report by the JASON Advisory Group commissioned by the State Department found that it was unlikely that Havana Syndrome incidents resulted from directed energy attacks. 

In March 2024, two major studies by the National Institutes of Health examining the conditions of over 80 government employees and family members who experienced “anomalous health incidents” found no consistent evidence of brain injury. 

In an editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Stanford microbiologist Dr. David Relman, who has investigated cases of Havana Syndrome, criticized the NHI’s findings.

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Russian nexus revealed during 60 Minutes Havana Syndrome investigation into potential attacks on U.S. officials

A lead U.S. military investigator examining reports of what has become known as Havana Syndrome told 60 Minutes he believes U.S. officials are being attacked by Russia and that the official threshold to prove it was set impossibly high.

Greg Edgreen, a now-retired Army lieutenant colonel who ran the Pentagon investigation into what officials refer to as “anomalous health incidents,” said the bar for proof was set so high because the country doesn’t want to face some very hard truths, like the existence of possible failures to protect Americans.

“Unfortunately I can’t get into specifics, based on the classification,” Edgreen said. “But I can tell you at a very early stage, I started to focus on Moscow.”

A 2023 government report deemed it “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary was behind the mysterious brain injuries suffered by U.S. national security officials, yet more than 100 Americans have symptoms scientists say could be caused by a beam of microwaves or acoustic ultrasound. Victims are frustrated that the government publicly doubts an adversary is targeting Americans. The ongoing, five-year 60 Minutes investigation has now uncovered new evidence pointing toward Russia.

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Russia Demands Ukraine Arrest and Hand Over SBU Head Vasyl Malyuk, After He Admits on TV Role in Terror Attacks

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has come out and unveiled Moscow’s demand that Ukraine authorities hand over all people connected with terrorist acts committed in their territory.

The list surprisingly even includes the head of Kiev’s SBU Security Service, Vasyl Malyuk.

Besides the recent ‘bloody Crocus terrorist act’, the attacks in question include bombings that killed the daughter of a prominent nationalist philosopher, a war blogger, and another incident in which a writer was seriously hurt.

While the investigation by the Russian authorities indicate that the traces of all these crimes lead to Ukraine, in the case of Malyuk there is a voluntary admission on TV.

“We will not officially admit this in any way, but at the same time I will tell you some details,” he said in an interview with a Ukrainian TV channel.

Reuters reported:

“‘Russia has turned over to Ukrainian authorities its demands … for the immediate arrest and extradition of all those connected to the terrorist acts in question’, the [Russian Ministry’s] statement said.

The ministry statement said those to be handed over included SBU head Vasyl Malyuk, who has acknowledged [in an interview with Ukrainian television channel ICTV] his service was behind attacks on the bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland […].

‘The Russian side demands that the Kyiv regime immediately cease all support for terrorist activity, extradite guilty parties and compensate the victims for damages’, it said.

‘Ukraine’s violation of its obligations under anti-terrorist conventions will result in it being held to account in international legal terms’.”

Here are some other excerpts by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

“Other barbaric terrorist attacks using explosive devices cost the lives of journalists D.A. Dugina and M.Yu. Fomin (V. Tatarsky), led to the serious injury of the writer E.N. Prilepin and the death of his driver A.I. Shubin, the death of five people as a result of the explosion of the Crimean Bridge, 42 people were injured in an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg.”

It does seem odd for a warring party to demand another to comply with treaties and conventions.

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‘Operation Anti-Migrant’: Russia Starts Mass Deporting Muslims After Moscow Concert Massacre

Russian authorities have begun deporting large numbers of Muslims in the wake of last week’s deadly Islamist state attack at a Moscow concert hall, in an effort that has been reportedly dubbed “Operation Anti-Migrant.”

According to The Moscow Times, anti-Islamic sentiment has soared in the aftermath of the attack, in which at least 144 people were killed and hundreds of more were wounded or in critical condition. Islamic State has since claimed responsibility for the massacre.

The Times notes:

Authorities in St. Petersburg have been deporting migrants en masse in the week since the deadly attack on a Moscow region concert hall, the legal rights group Perviy Otdel said Friday. More than 64 foreigners were deported from the city’s Vyborgsky district on Thursday alone, the NGO said, citing one of its unidentified lawyers.

…

A number of buses carrying migrants were also headed to St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo International Airport on Friday afternoon, they added. The countries where the migrants were being sent to were not specified, though it is known that labor migrants in Russia mostly hail from poor Central Asian countries.

The four men accused of carrying out the attack were from Tajikistan, a majority Muslim country that does not share a border with Russia.

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