Tag: russia

Limo from Vladimir Putin’s ‘fleet’ blown up in massive explosion

An Aurus limousine believed to be part of Vladimir Putin’s official car fleet exploded and caught fire in Moscow. Footage appears to show the £275,000 Aurus Senat ablaze on a street just north of Moscow’s FSB secret service Lubyanka headquarters.

The car is believed to be part of a fleet of vehicles belonging to the Kremlin’s Presidential Property Management Department. Images show the engine fire spreading to the interior of the limousine. It was not clear who was in the vehicle at the time of the incident.

Nor has there been any confirmation about what caused the sudden blaze on Sretenka Street.

Reports suggest that there were no injuries or fatalities as a result of the explosion and fire.

Putin, 72, routinely uses the Russian-made cars and has gifted the limousines, for example to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

The incident is likely to increase Kremlin paranoia that foreign agents are plotting to assassinate Putin.

Earlier this year, the Kremlin warned any attempt to assassinate the Russian leader would be met with a nuclear response.

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Russia Says UK & France Behind Latest Attack On Its Energy Infrastructure

There’s been another reported attack on the Sudzha pipeline infrastructure in Russia’s Kursk Region on Friday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova conveyed to journalists a Russian military assessment saying a metering facility was “de facto destroyed” in a Ukrainian HIMARS attack. 

But unlike some of the prior Ukrainian attacks on the area, the Kremlin is directly blaming the West, going to far as to say that orders for the new strike came directly from European capitals.

We “have reasons to believe that targeting and navigation were facilitated through French satellites and British specialists input [target] coordinates and launched [the missiles],” Zakharova said, as cited in national media.

“The command came from London,” she emphasized, describing it as part of a West-backed “terror” campaign meant to degrade and destroy Russia’s energy infrastructure. 

The Kremlin has concluded this demonstrates that Kiev is “impossible to negotiate with,” she explained. The Ukrainians have done nothing to actually uphold the energy ceasefire put forward by Trump, despite that Zelensky “publicly supported” it, she said, suggesting it was all an empty game.

“Over the past 24 hours, the Kyiv regime continued its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure using various types of drones and HIMARS multiple rocket launchers,” the Russian military had also described.

Russia has alleged Ukraine launched rockets on the Sudzha facility, which had already been damaged in an earlier attack this week, along with nearly 20 drones launched at an oil refinery in the southern Saratov region.

Ukraine is meanwhile denying the Russian allegations, instead suggesting it’s a false flag orchestrated by Moscow:

On Friday, Ukraine denied claims that its forces fired on the gas metering station Sudzha and accused Russia’s military of striking the facility.

“Russia has again attacked the Sudzha gas transmission system in the Kursk region, which they do not control,” Andriy Kovalenko, an official who is responsible for countering disinformation, said on social media.

The two sides have traded blame for violating the energy ceasefire on basically a daily basis since it was proclaimed. It seems to have barely held, if at all, despite ongoing pledges from both sides to uphold it.

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After Rejecting Peace, Ukraine Loses Security Guarantees & Revenue From Trump’s Mineral Deal Offer

President Donald Trump’s administration revised the previous mineral deal it had offered Ukraine, which the country’s Dictator Vladimir Zelensky rejected after disrespecting the United States in the White House. The new version of the mineral deal, which Reuters claimed to have attained a draft of on Friday, provides less to Ukraine than the old version did. Interestingly, the revised deal comes directly after Kiev failed to agree to a ceasefire and Moscow announced it will no longer deal with Ukraine’s current government due to trust issues.

“The U.S. has revised its original proposal, said the sources, and it gives Ukraine no future security guarantees but requires it to contribute to a joint investment fund all income from the use of natural resources managed by state and private enterprises across Ukrainian territory,” Reuters said Friday.

Security guarantees have been a key goal for the Dictator, who in October based his ill-fated ‘victory plan‘ around them.

The original mineral deal only required Kiev contribute 50 percent of its income from state-owned, and just state-owned natural resources.

The new requirement for Kiev to contribute 100 percent of its income from the public, and chiefly, private use of its natural resources to a joint fund is likely another critical blow to the war-torn nation, as it has relied on foreign gifts to maintain its war, going so far as to have its Dictator travel the globe begging for money.

Trump sees a mineral deal as a method of recouping costs associated with funding Ukraine’s war. He has also said that the sheer fact American businesses would be engaged in commerce in Ukraine is a type of security guarantee in and of itself.

On Wednesday Trump said that Washington is making progress toward a ceasefire via a strategy of commerce and trade. The mineral deal appears central to Trump’s operations in this space.

While negotiations between Moscow and Kiev have taken place as recently as this week, no ceasefire deal had been reached.

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Who Will Be The Next President of Ukraine?

Apresidential election was supposed to be held in Ukraine on March 31, 2024. However, due to the extension of martial law for 90 days in February 2025 (until May 9, 2025), the scheduled election was postponed for the 14th time.

Ukrainian citizens are well aware that, in fact, Ukraine is currently led by an illegitimate President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was elected in 2019 for a term of five years. And although, on February 26, 2025, after the previously postponed vote, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament of Ukraine) was still able to pass a resolution that presidential elections should not be held yet, the Ukrainian people understand that, due to the end of Zelensky’s term of office in 2024, the laws he signs and decisions he makes are illegitimate and can be challenged in court over time.

On February 19th,U.S. President Donald Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator”[1] and warned that he needed to act quickly to secure peace or he risked losing his country. This intensified the animosity between the two leaders, which alarmed European officials. Washington suspended military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv. Meanwhile, Donald Trump also said that Ukraine requires presidential elections and territorial concessions for further talks.

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Putin Says No Peace Possible With Zelenskiy, Suggests UN Govern Ukraine In Near Term

Russian President Putin declared peace is next to impossible with Ukrainian President Zelenskiy in power. He questioned yesterday how Russia could negotiate with an illegitimate government that is not legally elected.

Putin suggested in the speech that the United Nations could be brought in to govern Ukraine, as there is precedence for this action.

Zelenskiy recently said Putin will die soon as negotiations are ongoing with Washington and Ukraine. These are not the actions of a Ukrainian leader who wants peace.

The EU and Zelenskiy, as well as elements within the U.S. government, are working to sabotage any effort by the Trump administration to secure a peace deal in Eastern Europe.

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Ukrainian Dictator Zelensky Says Putin ‘Will Die Soon’ & War ‘Will Come To An End’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky boldly claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin “will die soon” and the ongoing war “will come to an end.”

The comment came during an interview with a French news outlet just after Zelensky met with French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday.

Rumors of Putin battling through major health issues have been spread for several years now.

Zelensky’s inflammatory remark could throw a wrench into ongoing peace negotiations between U.S. and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia last week.

History suggests Zelensky, not Putin, is in danger of coming to an early demise as Western puppet leaders are often discarded after the globalist system is finished using them.

And, if Zelensky’s Western handlers don’t take him out to cover up their loose ends, he could be targeted by the Kremlin or even his own people who he’s been sending into the deadly meat grinder in the war against the Russia.

Infowars founder and host Alex Jones wrote on 𝕏, “If I was placing a bet on who is going to live longer, my money would be 20 to one on Putin. My money is on Putin out living Zelensky.”

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Even if the war ended tomorrow, Ukraine could end up broke by 2026

There is no plan in place to fund the Ukrainian budget after 2025.

Even if the war ends by the summer of 2025, it will take some time to reduce military expenditures, leaving European nations on the hook. It’s not clear that European elites have fully understood the political costs, however much longer the war continues.

With intensive, U.S.-brokered negotiations ongoing in Saudi Arabia involving separate Ukrainian and Russian delegations, hopes are rising that the Trump administration will finally be able to bring an end to the war.

But even if the war ends tomorrow, it would be unwise to assume that Ukraine could reduce military spending close to prewar levels.

Ukraine now has almost 900,000 men and women at arms, a threefold increase from peacetime, and that doesn’t take into account irrecoverable losses through death and injury. Estimates vary widely, but the casualty rate is commonly thought to number in the hundreds of thousands, with compensation provided to the injured and families of the deceased.

The war in Ukraine has therefore come at a vast financial cost to that country. Ukraine’s defense spending has risen tenfold since the 2021 budget was announced, when social welfare payments were the country’s biggest expenditure.

This has left a gaping hole in Ukraine’s finances that no amount of tax increases or Western donations will be able to fill over a sustained period without political consequences.

Since 2022, Ukraine has run an average budget deficit of over 22% of GDP. Based on the current exchange rate, Ukraine’s budget shortfall in 2025 amounts to around $41.5 billion. And that assumes defense spending falling slightly this year. In the hopefully unlikely event that war continues to the end of the year, the Ukrainian state would need to revise its budget upwards as it did in 2024.

Today, Ukraine’s domestic revenue, including taxes, excise, and duties, just about covers the cost of the defense effort, which in 2024 accounted for 64% of its total budget expenditure. That includes significant tax increases as the war has gone on. Total tax revenue will have risen by more than 100% since the war started and personal income taxes by over 200%. This in a country in which, according to the Wilson Center, 50% of the population lives at a basic subsistence level.

As Ukraine is cut off from international capital markets, it has had to meet the difference through aid and loans from Western nations.

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Mainstream Media Criticizes Ceasefire Negotiations in Ukraine: Don’t Believe Them

The mainstream media continuously points out that while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed readiness to accept the Trump administration’s proposed thirty-day ceasefire without preconditions, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said only that he supports the idea of a ceasefire while attaching preconditions that render it unworkable.

Neither claim is true. Zelensky has attached preconditions, and Putin’s preconditions are not a priori designed to render a ceasefire unworkable.

Zelensky has said, not that he has no preconditions, but that “We do not set conditions that complicate anything.” Though largely omitted from the mainstream narrative, Zelensky has agreed to negotiations with certain key preconditions. According to reporting by The Independent, Kiev stipulates that negotiations must guarantee the return of children abducted by Russia and of Ukrainian civilians illegally held by Russia. Two key red lines are that no territory beyond that already occupied by Russia be ceded and that adequate security guarantees be given. Those security guarantees, Zelensky has previously made clear, must be NATO membership or must be international forces that include the United States.

Though those two key red lines have escaped criticism, they are not categorically different from Putin’s key preconditions. Putin, too, has made territorial demands to address Ukraine’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements and to protect the rights and lives of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. And Putin, too, has made security demands to address NATO’s failure to implement its promise not to expand east, a broken promise that has made its way all the way to Ukraine and threatened Russia’s security. The Kremlin has recently called this its own “ironclad” security guarantee, and the Russian readout of the conversation between Trump and Putin refers to “the root causes of the crisis” and “Russia’s legitimate interests in the field of security.”

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Chronicle of An Unnecessary War: How the West Provoked Russia and Squandered Peace

Scott Horton’s 900-page masterpiece, Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, is a hugely important work that meticulously documents how three decades of Western encirclement provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This long review aims to provide a broad and comprehensive overview of the many crimes, miscalculations, and failures by all sides that led to an unnecessary war.

Scott Horton, founder and director of the Libertarian Institute, is best known for conducting over 6,000 in-depth interviews with experts on U.S. foreign policy. His impressive new book Provoked is a monumental indictment of Western foreign policy follies, tracing how NATO expansion and regime-change wars fueled Russia’s hostility. With thousands of citations, Horton’s research persuasively shows that Western actions—cloaked in rhetoric of democracy and humanitarianism—provoked Moscow’s response.

From NATO’s broken promises to the arming of extremists, Horton exposes a pattern of Western hypocrisy, painting Russia as an expansionist aggressor while sabotaging peace talks in Ukraine. The book is not a defense of Putin’s regime but a forensic audit of how Western overreach and ideological hubris transformed post-Cold War optimism into nuclear standoff. With the precision of a historian and the tenacity of an investigative journalist, Horton challenges the mainstream portrayal of Russia as the sole architect of global instability, arguing instead that U.S. and NATO policies exacerbated conflicts from Chechnya to the Donbas.

By weaving diplomatic cables, declassified documents, battlefield testimonies, and historical analysis into a gripping narrative that is as engrossing as it is unsettling, Horton encourages readers to challenge the myths that threaten to destroy us. Every pivotal claim is substantiated with quotes and data from unimpeachable sources, even establishment figures and outlets. Horton’s reliance on mainstream-respected voices, paired with granular archival research, grants the book a rare authority, transforming what might read as contrarian revisionism into an irrefutable counter-narrative. Horton’s sharp analysis and dark humor make Provoked compelling. This is not a polemic but a forensic use of the West’s own records to expose its missteps.

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Biden-Appointed U.S. Attorney Who Was Found Dead Led High-Profile Investigations Into CIA Leaks and Russian Fraud Cases

Jessica Aber, a Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney who was found dead in her Virginia home this past weekend, was known for spearheading high-profile investigations into CIA intelligence leaks, war crime allegations tied to individuals linked with Russia, and suspects involved in transferring sensitive U.S. technology to Moscow.

Jessica Aber, 43, was found unresponsive on Saturday morning.

“This morning, at approximately 9:18 a.m., Alexandria Police responded to the 900 block of Beverley Drive for the report of an unresponsive woman. Officers located a deceased woman. Following notification of family members, the Alexandria Police Department can confirm the identity of the woman as Ms. Jessica Aber, age 43, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia,” police said.

Alexandria Police responded to a call about an unresponsive woman at Aber’s residence on Beverley Drive, Alexandria, Virginia.

Officers found her dead, and the department initiated an investigation as a matter of protocol, with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia tasked with determining the cause and manner of death.

A family friend told CBS News that her death is believed to be the result of a longstanding medical issue, and two former senior Justice Department officials informed NBC News that authorities have found no reason to suspect foul play.

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