Tag: Russia

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was believed dead after a private jet on which he was listed as a passenger crashed north of Moscow with no survivors. Prigozhin, 62, spearheaded a mutiny against Russia’s top army brass on June 23-24, which President Vladimir Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war. Others who have opposed Putin or his interests have also died under unclear circumstances or come close to death. Here are some details about these mysterious incidents: ANNA…

The two founders behind Tornado Cash, a Russian cryptocurrency mixing service, have been charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, according to a statement on Wednesday. Roman Storm and Roman Semenov were officially charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, according to a newly unsealed indictment. Storm was arrested in Washington on Wednesday but Semenov still remains at large, the…

(AP) — A private jet crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board. Prigozhin’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in late June. The Kremlin said the founder of the Wagner private military company, which fought alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, would…

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was widely reported to have led a “coup” attempt in Russia two months ago, was killed on Wednesday after his plane “crashed” in Russia’s Tver region, according to RT. A private jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed on Wednesday in Russia’s Tver Region. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said all 10 people on board had died. Rosaviation has since said that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Private Military Company, was listed among…

A European spy agency told the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) it knew of an Ukraine special operations team plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipeline three months before explosions damaged the undersea system last year, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper cited US intelligence allegedly leaked earlier this year by a low-level US Air National Guard computer technician who had access to large amounts of highly classified materials.

The leaked documents indicated that an unnamed European intelligence body told the US spy agency in June 2022, four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, that Ukraine military divers reporting directly to the country’s military commander-in-chief were planning the attack.

President Joe Biden‘s administration on Thursday asked Congress for more than $13 billion in new military spending for Ukraine, citing the need for continued support following Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of the country last year. The funding would help Ukraine and other vulnerable countries “impacted by Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion,” Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Shalanda Young wrote in a letter to Congressional leader Kevin McCarthy and others. Close to $10 billion of the new military funding would…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday asked Congress to provide more than $13 billion in emergency defense aid to Ukraine and an additional $8 billion for humanitarian support through the end of the year, another massive infusion of cash as the Russian invasion wears on and Ukraine pushes a counteroffensive against the Kremlin’s deeply entrenched forces. The package includes $12 billion to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home after a deadly climate season of heat and storms,…

Legendary national security journalist Seymour Hersh has published a report this week alleging US intelligence helped the Ukrainians blow up the Kerch Bridge (or also, Crimean Bridge), which happened earlier this month and corresponded to President Putin refusing to renew the Black Sea Grain Initiative deal. What’s more is that Hersh’s sources described that the US assisted in the initial, larger Kerch Bridge explosion which had initially temporarily disabled it in October 2022. “The Biden administration’s role in both attacks was…

A Russian fighter jet fired flares and struck another U.S. drone over Syrian airspace on Wednesday, the White House said, in a continued string of harassing maneuvers that have ratcheted up tensions between the global powers. It’s the sixth reported incident this month, and the second in the past 24 hours, in which the United States has said Russian warplanes have flown dangerously close to American manned and unmanned aircraft, putting crews and the planes at risk and raising questions as to…

NATO has confirmed that its IT team is investigating claims about an alleged data-theft hack on the Communities of Interest (COI) Cooperation Portal by a hacking group known as SiegedSec. The COI Cooperation Portal (dnbl.ncia.nato.int) is the military alliance’s unclassified information-sharing and collaboration environment, dedicated to supporting NATO organizations and member nations. Yesterday, the hacking group ‘SiegedSec’ posted on Telegram what they claimed to be hundreds of documents stolen from the COI Cooperation Portal. SiegedSec post on Telegram Cybersecurity company CloudSEK analyzed…

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region has said that Ukraine fired cluster munitions at a village near the Ukrainian border on Friday, but that there were no casualties or damage. The governor made the statement on Saturday during a daily briefing on his Telegram channel, without providing visual evidence. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian authorities. “In Belgorod district, 21 artillery shells and three cluster munitions from a multiple-launch rocket system were fired at the village of Zhuravlevka,” Governor…

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announces that President Erdogan agrees to forward Sweden’s bid to Turkey’s parliament. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has agreed to back Sweden’s bid to join NATO after a year of blocking the move, citing Turkish security concerns. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Monday that Erdogan agreed to forward Sweden’s membership bid to Turkey’s parliament. After talks in Vilnius, Lithuania, with Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, Stoltenberg said Turkey had agreed to move forward….

“The US Department of State has finally turned into the ‘Ministry of Truth’ predicted by George Orwell and actually dictates to the American media what exactly they should write and say. In June, the Department of State issued instructions to major telecommunications holdings such as AT&T, Comcast Corporation, Graham Media Group, Nash Holdings, Newsweek Publishing, and The New York Times Company to misrepresent events in and around Russia,” the SVR said in a statement, adding that the goal is to…

  According to the company, Spain imported 7,673 gigawatt hours (GWh) of liquefied natural gas from Russia last month, which accounted for 26.8% of the kingdom’s total purchases. From January to June, Spain purchased 41,145 GWh of LNG from Russia, Enagas added. Russia is followed by Algeria and the United States. Algeria exported to Spain 21% of the total amount of gas, and the United States – 18.5%. Earlier, media reported, citing sources, that Madrid urged Spanish importers of Russian…

Mali has freed at least two jihadists from the Sahel affiliate of the Islamic State group in a prisoner exchange, a security official and two politicians told AFP on Saturday. The Sahel country’s military had in recent days released Oumeya Ould Albakaye and Dadi Ould Cheghoub, both members of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), flying them from Bamako to the Gao region in the north, the security official said. One of the politicians, an elected official in Gao, said that at least three jihadists were…

The Kremlin on Saturday slammed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s decision to repatriate several Ukrainian commanders who should have remained in Turkey until the end of the conflict under a deal. The Ukrainian presidency confirmed that it had secured the return of members of the crack Azov regiment, which is despised in Russia, after “negotiations with the Turkish side.” They were greeted at Istanbul airport by Zelensky, who was on a visit to Turkey. “The return of Azov commanders from Turkey to Ukraine is nothing but a direct violation of the terms…