Tag: russia

Russian Media: Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Agencies Preparing To Arrest Zelensky’s Wife Elena – Kiev Authorities Deny Report

Is Zelensky’s wife the next domino to fall?

Ever since Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky failed at curbing the power of Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO, the rampant corruption that is allegedly taking place in his government began to be exposed.

With Zelensky’s close friend and partner Timur Mindich fleeing justice and hiding in Israel, the number of Kiev regime figures who were fired and are facing investigations/indictments is long – and growing.

So far, these are the fallen ones: Herman Galushchenko – former Minister of Energy and former Minister of Justice; Svitlana Hrynchuk, former Minister of Energy; Oleksiy Chernyshov, former Deputy Prime Minister; Mykola Solskyi, former Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food; Andriy Pyvovarsky, former Minister of Infrastructure; Andriy Smyrnov, former Deputy Head of the Presidential Office.

And, of course, Andriy Yermak, chief of staff and right-hand man to Zelensky, formerly the second most powerful man in all of Ukraine, who has been indicted and ordered to pre-trial arrest.

But now, things may get much worse for Zelensky.

Today, Russian outlet RIA Novosti is reporting that the arrest of Zelensky’s wife, Olena (Elena), is being prepared by NABU and SAPO, who reportedly have ‘ample ground’ for detaining her.

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The EU’s sanctions fever: From Russia to China, a crisis expands

The European Union has taken yet another step in its long-running confrontation with Russia. But what now stands out is not only the scale – it is the restless, almost reflexive expansion of sanctions as a default instrument of policy.

In April, EU authorities unveiled their 20th round of sanctions targeting Russia and Belarus, while pointedly extending their reach toward China.

Sanctions spiral

What was once framed as a targeted response now resembles a sanctions regime without clear geographic or strategic limits. By including 56 designations tied to Russia’s military-industrial complex – 17 of them in China, the United Arab Emirates, Belarus, and Central Asia – the EU has effectively dissolved the boundaries of its own confrontation. Another 60 entities now face tightened export controls tied to alleged contributions to Russia’s defense sector.

For the first time, even a Chinese state-owned entity has been targeted by anti-Belarusian sanctions. In Brussels, this is justified through the language of “dual-use” goods. But outside Europe, the perception is of a growing tendency toward economic coercion that stretches legal authority across borders, fueled by an escalating appetite for pressure.

China’s response was swift: officials condemned what they described as “long-arm jurisdiction,” rejecting the EU’s attempt to discipline Chinese firms operating far beyond European territory. More importantly, Beijing read the move as a signal of the EU’s shifting posture toward China itself.

Within a day, China placed seven European entities on its control list over arms sales to Taiwan, imposing restrictions that mirror the EU’s own extraterritorial reach. These measures prohibit the transfer of Chinese goods to the targeted firms, extending the ripple effects well beyond those directly sanctioned.

The list includes one German entity, two Belgian firms, and four Czech companies – including military industrial manufacturers Omnipol and Excalibur Army, all deeply embedded in supply chains connected to Ukraine.

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With GOP Help, House Dems Force Vote To Give Another $1.3 Billion To Ukraine – Rep Dan Bacon Is Working For The Blob Agenda, Not America

In a rebellion defying the priorities of Speaker Mike Johnson, House Democrats have teamed up with two Republicans and an independent in a parliamentary maneuver that will force a vote on a bill that would give another $1.3 billion in military aid and other assistance to Ukraine, as that country continues to lose territory in its war with Russia.  

“We look forward to seeing the House pass this bill quickly and encourage the Senate to take it up without delay. The ​brave men and women of Ukraine ​are waiting,” said NY Rep. Gregory Meeks, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the author of the bill.  

All 215 House Democrats signed a discharge petition, a means by which representatives can bypass House leadership’s agenda-setting role and compel a vote on a bill. Seldom used over House history, discharge petitions are showing their potency in a House ruled by a narrow majority, as is the case today. Most famously, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna used the maneuver last year to compel a vote on forcing the release of the Epstein investigation files. For this Ukraine bill, the Democrats were joined by two Republicans — Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon — along with California independent Kevin Kiley, who earlier this year left the GOP. 

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WW3 WATCH: Russian Parliament Approves Law Authorizing Military ‘To Protect Russian Citizens Abroad’, as Critics Warn It Allows Putin To Invade Other Countries

Blood is thicker than water (and oil).

The brutal war in Ukraine is in its fifth year, and seemingly nowhere near the end, despite statements to the contrary by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and US President Donald J. Trump.

But already on the horizon, there appear dark clouds suggesting further military conflicts may be about to erupt.

Euronews reported:

“Russia’s State Duma approved a law allowing the use of the armed forces “to protect Russian citizens abroad,” which de facto permits Vladimir Putin to invade other countries.

Russia’s lawmakers have passed a law formally authorizing the Kremlin to deploy troops abroad to ‘protect Russian citizens’, giving Russian President Vladimir Putin the authority in practice to invade foreign countries.”

“According to the State Duma documents, the ‘bill was drafted to protect the rights of Russian citizens in the event of their arrest, detention, criminal or other prosecution pursuant to decisions of foreign courts vested with criminal jurisdiction by other foreign states without Russia’s participation’.”

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Russia Launches Massive Drone And Missile Assault On Ukrainian Western Border Crossings Amid Escalation Signs. Pentagon Halts 4,000 Troop Deployment To Poland.

In one of the largest aerial assaults of the ongoing conflict, Russia on Wednesday unleashed hundreds of kamikaze drones and missiles targeting Ukrainian infrastructure, with a notable focus on border crossings to Western neighbors. Ukrainian officials and regional reports described the strikes as unprecedented in scale, raising concerns about efforts to isolate Ukraine economically and logistically from Europe.

According to Ukrainian Air Force data, Russian forces launched 753 strike drones—primarily Geran-2 (Shahed-type) models, along with decoys—between 08:00 and 18:30 local time. Air defenses reportedly neutralized or suppressed around 710 of them, though strikes caused damage in multiple regions, including western areas near NATO borders, reported Military.com.

At least 150 Geran-2 drones specifically targeted Ukraine-side border crossings with Poland, according to preliminary assessments. Slovakia temporarily closed all its border crossings with Ukraine for security reasons after Russian drones approached the Zakarpattia region and the city of Uzhhorod. Operations resumed after a brief suspension.

Drones were also spotted in Moldovan airspace during the assault. Moldovan authorities reported the incursion but took no interceptive action, observing the drones flying near the Romanian border, wrote Spectator.

The attacks included a significant missile component, with reports of hypersonic Kinzhal missiles among the strikes on targets across Ukraine.

Analysts and observers note that the emphasis on western border infrastructure suggests an intent to disrupt not only weapons flows but also cross-border trade and economic links. This comes as some describe the conflict shifting from Russia’s initial “special military operation” framing to a more conventional full-scale war.

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‘Zelensky thrives on war, why would he end it?’: Former press secretary exposes Ukraine’s posturing

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is prolonging his country’s conflict with Russia in order to enrich himself and his associates in his cabinet, former spokeswoman Yulia Mendel has claimed in an interview with Tucker Carlson.

Mendel, Zelensky’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, launched a series of stinging allegations of corruption and drug use as Andrey Yermak, Zelensky’s former influential chief of staff, was named a suspect in a money laundering case. Zelensky’s longtime former business partner, Timur Mindich, fled the country last year to avoid arrest in connection with another major corruption scandal involving energy-sector kickbacks that has seen several other close associates of the Ukrainian leader placed under suspicion.

In an episode of the Tucker Carlson Show released on Monday, Mendel described her former boss as a “dictator” who has grown “detached from reality” and employed “thousands of talking heads” to craft a favorable image both at home and abroad.

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Trump Also Says That the Russia-Ukraine War Will End Very Soon

Is the war about to end?

The war between Russia and Ukraine entered its fifth year, and while the advances by Moscow troops is nowhere as fast as last year, the war is still ongoing, as brutal as ever.

People around the world were surprised, when on Sunday, after their ‘Victory Day’ parade, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that he believed that the war in Ukraine was near the end.

Yesterday, this statement was reinforced by Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov.

So, today, US President Donald J. Trump came to public to say the very same thing: the war is almost over.

Reuters reported:

“President Donald Trump said ​on Tuesday that ‌the war in Ukraine is very ​close to ​ending and he believes ⁠there will be ​a settlement between ​Russia and Ukraine.

‘The end of the war ​in Ukraine I ​really think it’s getting ‌very ⁠close’, Trump told reporters as he left the White ​House ​for ⁠a trip to China. ​Trump’s comments echoed those ​made ⁠by Russian President Vladimir Putin ⁠on ​Saturday.”

Putin has admitted that Trump is the only foreign head of state that truly wants to bring an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine.

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Oz: Chinese Government Involved in Fraud, Suspect Russia, Cuba as Well

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz discussed fraud and said that “We’ve got the Chinese government involved in a big fraud ring in New York” in addition to suspected fraud that the Russian and Cuban governments are involved in.

Guest host Kayleigh McEnany asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:25] “[L]ast time, when I spoke with you, you talked about the Cuban government possibly being involved in some Florida fraud, but it’s bigger than that. There are many foreign [governments] that are getting taxpayer dollars and taking advantage of taxpayers, tell me about what you found.”

Oz responded, “Well, we’ve got Russian government involvement, we believe, in Los Angeles. We’ve got the Chinese government involved in a big fraud ring in New York. And, of course, the Cuban connection that you mentioned was pointed out to me by the former mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, who pointed out that we’ve got twice as many durable medical equipment suppliers — they sell wheelchairs and canes — twice as many as there are McDonald’s in South Florida and the owners all seem to be Cuban and they flee back to Cuba with the money when we come after them.”

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When one man, a civilian, controls the kill switch for military ops

In September 2022, Ukrainian forces prepared to launch a drone strike on the Russian naval fleet anchored off Crimea. The drones never arrived.

Elon Musk had decided, unilaterally, not to activate Starlink coverage over the region. But he wasn’t simply declining to help. SpaceX had already been managing battlefield access for both sides: restricting Russian use, imposing speed limits to prevent drone integration, and maintaining a verified whitelist with Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. One private citizen, with no security clearance and no accountability to any electorate, was governing the battlefield connectivity of an active war.

The public debate treats this as a story about Elon Musk — his politics, his proximity to the White House, his X posts. That framing lets the actual problem off the hook. Replace Musk with the most patriotic, internationalist, apolitical CEO imaginable and the structural problem remains identical. The Pentagon has spent a decade building critical military functions on infrastructure it can’t legally compel, and the consequences are now arriving in real time.

A common reflex is to argue that private defense contractors have always been central to American military power. Lockheed Martin builds the F-35; Raytheon builds the Patriot. What’s different now is the control plane: who has real-time administrative control during use. When the government buys a tank, it owns it. The keys don’t expire. The manufacturer can’t disable it mid-mission or impose terms in combat. Software and AI are different. Vendors keep ongoing control — updates, access, and usage limits. They don’t sell a capability; they license access to one, and the license has conditions.

Those conditions have already collided with active operations. After months of failed negotiations, the Pentagon formally designated the AI firm Anthropic a supply-chain risk because of restrictions on how its model could be used. The Pentagon was explicit in its decision: “The military will not allow a vendor to insert itself into the chain of command.” Emil Michael, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, described the moment he fully grasped the vulnerability: Anthropic’s models were already embedded across combatant commands and intelligence agencies, wired into classified workflows. Anthropic retained the control plane inside the Pentagon’s cloud — able to update, restrict, or shut off access. When Michael raised hypothetical crisis scenarios, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, offered exceptions case by case. “Just call me if you need another exception,” Michael recalls him saying. In a genuine crisis, a commander can’t call a vendor to authorize military action, nor should he have to.

This isn’t about whether Anthropic’s rules are reasonable. They weren’t set by anyone accountable to the joint force, there’s no override mechanism, and the Pentagon had made itself dependent on systems it doesn’t control.

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Ukraine has violated Victory Day ceasefire – Moscow

The Ukrainian military has violated the Victory Day ceasefire on 8,970 occasions since it took effect at midnight on Friday, including drone and artillery strikes, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Moscow said on Friday that it had ordered all of its troops along the Ukraine front line to halt combat operations and stay at their positions.

In a statement on Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry stressed that its forces were continuing to abide by the ceasefire. By contrast, the Ukrainian military had conducted “strikes on our forces’ positions involving unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery,” military officials in Moscow reported. On top of that, a number of Russian regions, including Crimea, Bryansk Region, Belgorod Region, Kursk Region, and Moscow Region, have come under Ukrainian attacks.

According to the ministry, of the 8,970 ceasefire violations on Kiev’s part, 1,173 attacks were conducted by Ukrainian artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, mortars and tanks. The Russian military has additionally recorded a total of 7,151 enemy drone strikes.

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