Tag: russia

FACEBOOK TELLS MODERATORS TO ALLOW GRAPHIC IMAGES OF RUSSIAN AIRSTRIKES BUT CENSORS ISRAELI ATTACKS

AFTER A SERIES of Israeli airstrikes against the densely populated Gaza Strip earlier this month, Palestinian Facebook and Instagram users protested the abrupt deletion of posts documenting the resulting death and destruction. It wasn’t the first time Palestinian users of the two giant social media platforms, which are both owned by parent company Meta, had complained about their posts being unduly removed. It’s become a pattern: Palestinians post sometimes graphic videos and images of Israeli attacks, and Meta swiftly removes the content, providing only an oblique reference to a violation of the company’s “Community Standards” or in many cases no explanation at all.

Not all the billions of users on Meta’s platforms, however, run into these issues when documenting the bombing of their neighborhoods.

Previously unreported policy language obtained by The Intercept shows that this year the company repeatedly instructed moderators to deviate from standard procedure and treat various graphic imagery from the Russia-Ukraine war with a light touch. Like other American internet companies, Meta responded to the invasion by rapidly enacting a litany of new policy carveouts designed to broaden and protect the online speech of Ukrainians, specifically allowing their graphic images of civilians killed by the Russian military to remain up on Instagram and Facebook.

No such carveouts were ever made for Palestinian victims of Israeli state violence — nor do the materials show such latitude provided for any other suffering population.

Keep reading

NATO Abandons Diplomacy, Says No Longer ‘At Peace’

At the end of its annual summit in Madrid in late June, NATO adopted a new strategic concept. The guidance document is the eighth of its kind since the founding of the alliance in 1949. It radically breaks with the three previous post-Cold War security briefs, however, which observed that “the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace” because “the threat of a conventional attack against NATO territory is low.” In the eyes of NATO, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed that calculus, claiming that the military organization can no longer discount the possibility of an assault on sovereign NATO states. Continuing the same cryptic language, the new strategic concept concludes that the Euro-Atlantic area now is “not at peace,” in spite of no NATO member being in a state of war with Russia.

Behind this word play, a more dangerous policy change has been codified in the document. Since the adoption of the Harmel Report in 1967, NATO has always officially included diplomacy in one form or another (with political dialogue and strategic partnership being interchangeable labels) as one of its “core” or “fundamental” tasks. The “NATO 2030” report from November 2020, for instance, unequivocally stated that “NATO should continue the dual-track approach of deterrence and dialogue with Russia.”

In the new strategic concept, the core tasks have been purged of the need for diplomacy, except for one or two throw-away lines about “meaningful and reciprocal political dialogue” about arms control issues buried in the middle of the text. Rather, in addition to its original function of deterrence and defense, NATO now fully embraces “crisis prevention and management,” which it has spearheaded since the 1990s with its legally dubious and morally questionable interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya; and “cooperative security,” referring to NATO’s enlargement in Eastern Europe and its Partnership for Peace cooperation with countries in ever further-away regions, including the Black Sea, the Middle East, North Africa, and even the Indo-Pacific, which the British have been pushing to include in a “global NATO.”

Russia was the first country to sign up for the Partnership for Peace program back in 1994. The new NATO doctrine, however, states that Russia can no longer be considered a partner “in light of its hostile policies and actions.” The strategic concept ignores the fact that NATO’s enlargement and new core tasks, which the alliance adopted after the Cold War in an effort to justify its continued existence, have likewise long been seen as hostile in Moscow, nor does it offer any reflection on how the new policies might have contributed to the current unpeaceful “strategic environment.” Instead, it hails the “historic success” of NATO’s expansion in terms of space and substance and insists that the alliance “does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to the Russian federation.”

Keep reading

Intelligence Expert Believes CIA Behind Car Bomb Assassination of Daughter of Alexander Dugin

CIA expert Douglas Valentine, author of the seminal book The Phoenix Program (1990), believes that the CIA was behind the car bomb that killed Darya Dugina, a journalist and daughter of well-known Russian intellectual Alexander Dugin.

Ms. Dugina, 29, was killed on Saturday night when a bomb blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving in a suburb of Moscow. She was the intended target along with her father, whose promotion of a Eurasian Union has influenced the thinking of Vladimir Putin and members of his inner circle.

Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB) blamed the Ukrainian intelligence services for the killing, specifying that the attack was carried out by a woman named Natalya Vovk (AKA Natalya Shaban), a member of the Azov Battalion along with her brother who arrived in Russia last month with her teenage daughter.[1]

Vovk allegedly rented an apartment from where she researched Ms. Dugina, attended “The Tradition” celebration where her father gave a speech and Ms. Dugina was killed, and after planting the bomb, fled to Estonia via Pskov.

Keep reading

Russia releases video of suspected Moscow car bomber

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has made public a video of Ukrainian national Natalya Vovk, identified as the prime suspect in Saturday’s car bombing that killed journalist Darya Dugina in Moscow. The footage published Monday shows Vovk and her teenage daughter entering Russia, inside the building where Dugina lived, and leaving the country in haste. 

Vovk, 43, was named by the FSB on Monday as the prime suspect in the assassination of Dugina. The Ukrainian national arrived in Russia on July 23, using Donetsk People’s Republic license plates to avoid scrutiny. While in Moscow, she swapped the plates on her Mini Cooper to those of Kazakhstan, a friendly former Soviet republic. On Sunday, after the bombing, Vovk drove to Estonia with Ukrainian plates, the FSB said.

Photos of the different license plates were included as part of the video presentation.

Keep reading

Ukrainian regional security chief commits suicide – media

The head of Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, in Kirovograd Region was found dead in his home on Saturday evening, with sources telling local media that it was likely a suicide.

The body of Aleksandr Nakonechny was discovered by his wife at their apartment in Krapivnitsky, the website Obozrevatel explained.

The SBU has confirmed the security chief’s death, saying that the incident is being investigated.

Obozrevatel added that Nakonechny died of a “penetrating gunshot wound to the body.” 

According to preliminary data, he “committed suicide” with the firearm that he had been previously awarded for excellent service, a source told the outlet.

Lieutenant-colonel Nakonechny had been in charge of the region’s department of the SBU since January 2021.

Keep reading

Daughter of Putin Ally Killed in Explosion Outside Moscow

According to reports Darya Dugina, the daughter of Putin ally Alexander Dugina, was killed in an explosion outside of Moscow.

Russian media are saying Alexander Dugina was the target of an assassination attempt, but his daughter was killed instead.

Darya Dugina was reportedly on her way home from a festival when her Toyota Land Cruiser was blown up.

Alexander Dugina was supposed to be in the Land Cruiser with his daughter but changed vehicles at the last second, according to Russian media.

Keep reading

Pentagon announces extra $775M in weapons to Ukraine

The United States will send another $775 million in missiles, drones, vehicles and mine clearing equipment to Ukraine to help in its war with Russia as the conflict enters a near standstill, the Pentagon announced Friday.

The new assistance package will include 16 howitzers and ammunition, AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM), ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 15 Scan Eagle reconnaissance drones, and armored vehicles, among other armaments, a senior Defense official told reporters. 

The package comes at a critical time as Ukraine and Russia battle for control of the eastern part of Ukraine.  

Nearly six months into the war, the two sides are locked in a near operational standstill, with neither Kyiv nor Moscow able to drum up enough ground troops and weapons to turn the course of the conflict, Western officials assess.  

The extra shot of lethal aid could help Ukrainian forces gain the upper hand as Russian troops struggle with losses inflicted by U.S.-made missile systems.  

“I would say that you are seeing a complete and total lack of progress by the Russians on the battlefield,” the senior Defense official said, adding that it’s important to both sustain Ukrainian battlefield successes and enable them to be make gains as the conflict shifts.   

“We want to make sure that Ukraine has a steady stream of ammunition to meet its needs, and that’s what we’re doing with this package.” 

The latest lethal aid follows the $1 billion in weapons and equipment given to the embattled country earlier this month, the largest such tranche pledged since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. 

The package also pushes the United States past the $10 billion mark for military assistance for Ukraine under the Biden administration, spread out over 19 packages since August 2021. 

Keep reading

More Boogaloo Bois Are Heading to Ukraine to Fight

Since the war in Ukraine began, some young Americans have rolled into towns there, waving flags with tropical prints. Local soldiers have sometimes assumed the foreign fighters had traveled all the way from Hawaii to join the fight against the Russian invasion.

But in reality, those flags have nothing to do with Hawaii. They’re the symbol of the American “Boogaloo” movement, a sprawling network of anti-government extremists, militiamen, and far-right members. The movement made its way offline and onto American streets in early 2020, when groups of young men in Hawaiian shirts carrying AR-style rifles started showing up to anti-lockdown protests.

Since the “Boogaloo”—memespeak for a violent uprising or civil war—failed to materialize in the U.S., some of the movement’s adherents sought battle experience elsewhere: Ukraine. 

VICE News has learned that 10 so-called “Boogaloo Bois” are preparing to deploy from the U.S. to Ukraine in the coming weeks, just as government agencies worry that American far-right extremists traveling to the conflict for combat experience could become national security threats upon their return. Vouching for them is Mike Dunn, a 21-year-old from Virginia, who was considered a leader in the Boogaloo movement and has been embroiled in the conflict in Ukraine since April. Until recently, he was recovering in a Ukrainian military hospital after his brigade came under heavy artillery in July, leading to fatalities, while defending a village in the Donetsk region. 

“I’ve met a couple of Americans here that are active Boogaloo Bois, and I have more Boogaloo Bois that will be arriving here,” Dunn told VICE News.

“They’ll be going through background checks and processing into whatever unit picks them,” Dunn said. “Whenever a unit takes them, they’ll process into and start fighting, to either get experience or to reignite some type of passion in their lives, for the excitement, I guess.” 

Keep reading

Intelligence Community Goes to the Washington Post to Push a Claim That It Knew When Russia Would Invade Ukraine

According to a major exclusive in Tuesday’s Washington Post, before Russia invaded Ukraine, “U.S. intelligence community had penetrated multiple points of Russia’s political leadership, spying apparatus and military, from senior levels to the front lines, according to U.S. officials.” If so, we might add, how well did that work out for us?

This is how the Washington Post sets the scene.

On a sunny October morning, the nation’s top intelligence, military and diplomatic leaders filed into the Oval Office for an urgent meeting with President Biden. They arrived bearing a highly classified intelligence analysis, compiled from newly obtained satellite images, intercepted communications and human sources, that amounted to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war plans for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

For months, Biden administration officials had watched warily as Putin massed tens of thousands of troops and lined up tanks and missiles along Ukraine’s borders. As summer waned, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had focused on the increasing volume of intelligence related to Russia and Ukraine. He had set up the Oval Office meeting after his own thinking had gone from uncertainty about Russia’s intentions, to concern he was being too skeptical about the prospects of military action, to alarm.

The session was one of several meetings that officials had about Ukraine that autumn — sometimes gathering in smaller groups — but was notable for the detailed intelligence picture that was presented. Biden and Vice President Harris took their places in armchairs before the fireplace, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined the directors of national intelligence and the CIA on sofas around the coffee table.

Tasked by Sullivan with putting together a comprehensive overview of Russia’s intentions, they told Biden that the intelligence on Putin’s operational plans, added to ongoing deployments along the border with Ukraine, showed that all the pieces were now in place for a massive assault.

According to the Washington Post, we had it all. We knew the axes of advance, and we knew the sequencing of actions involving Russian airborne and special operations forces. Even so, Joey SoftServe was in a quandary because the #OrangeManBad had really fouled up things.

As he absorbed the briefing, Biden, who had taken office promising to keep the country out of new wars, was determined that Putin must either be deterred or confronted, and that the United States must not act alone. Yet NATO was far from unified on how to deal with Moscow, and U.S. credibility was weak. After a disastrous occupation of Iraq, the chaos that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and four years of President Donald Trump seeking to undermine the alliance, it was far from certain that Biden could effectively lead a Western response to an expansionist Russia.

The Euros were skeptical of the intel and suspected the US was making it sound much more definitive than it was. On the other hand, the Ukrainians were afraid that reacting to intelligence in which they didn’t have 100% confidence could possibly precipitate a Russian invasion and would definitely hurt Ukraine’s economy.

Keep reading