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On Tuesday, a coalition of progressive Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives announced that it would be withdrawing its letter to Joe Biden calling for the White House to lead peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. As reported by Axios, the move comes just one day after the group of 30 lawmakers first released the letter, with signatories including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). The sudden about-face appeared to be the result of backlash against the lawmakers, who suggested that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine might be the only option left for bringing about an...

The Biden administration has just announced yet another new weapons package for Ukraine worth $600 million, which now brings to total US military aid pledged since the start of the conflict to $15.1 billion. Crucially, in this case the arms are being sent under the presidential drawdown authority, which allows the White House to take arms directly from US military stockpiles for use by foreign allied forces. The administration confirmed it was the 21st time it drew from Pentagon stockpiles. The Guardian details, “Joe Biden authorized the latest assistance using his Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the president to authorize...

Russian forces have conducted a series of operations against the U.S.-led coalition in Syria this month, including one this week at a strategically located base in the southern part of the country, U.S. military officials said. The Russian actions have alarmed U.S. military officials, who are concerned that a miscalculation might escalate into an unintended conflict between the U.S. and Russian forces in Syria. Tensions between the two countries are already high following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February and American efforts to arm the Ukraine military to defeat Russian forces there. On Wednesday, Russia carried out airstrikes at the...

But the U.S. hasn’t provided nearly enough launchers to blunt the Russian equipment advantage. Ohio Republican Rob Portman, who is co-chairman of the Senate Ukraine caucus, on the Senate floor this week offered a blunt assessment of the facts on the ground: Brutal fighting continues in Severodonetsk, where the Russians are making grinding progress, and the Luhansk region could fall within weeks if the Ukrainians can’t get longer-range artillery. “Because the Russians have more artillery than the Ukrainians and their weapons have longer ranges,” the Senator explained, “the Russian forces concentrate massive firepower on Ukrainian positions at distances, which the...

Blurry fotos at source. Dumskaya - Odessa news says it`s one of the three Admiral Grigorovich class frigates but they don`t know which one.

Much attention has been justifiably directed at the remarkable performance of both military and consumer UAVs in assisting Ukraine’s efforts to rebuff invading Russian forces. But soon, news may also be generated by drone boats similarly turning the tides for Ukraine defenses in coastal waters of the Black Sea. As part of its additional $800 million military aid package the US announced last week, the Department of Defense said it will be providing Ukraine with drone boats – better known as uncrewed surface vessels (USV) – for use against attacking Russian Navy craft in the Black Sea. The US Navy...

President Biden on Wednesday announced $800 million in new lethal aid for Ukraine, bolstering U.S. support to the ex-Soviet nation as it ends the third week fighting Russian forces. The latest tranche — part of the nearly $14 billion Congress appropriated for Ukrainian aid which Biden signed into law a day prior — brings the U.S. government’s total pledge of military assistance for the embattled nation to $1 billion in the past week and $2 billion since Biden took office. ...

Houthi rebels in Yemen say they have captured a large number of Saudi troops after a major attack near the border between the two countries. A Houthi spokesman told the BBC that three Saudi brigades had surrendered near the Saudi town of Najran. He said thousands of soldiers had been captured and many others killed. Saudi officials have not confirmed the claim. The operation was the largest of its kind since the conflict began, the spokesman said. Colonel Yahiya Sarea said Saudi forces had suffered "huge losses in life and machinery". All those captured would be paraded on the Houthi-run...

Syrian President Bashar Assad met on Tuesday in Damascus with an unnamed senior Iranian official to discuss ways to cope with Israeli airstrikes in the war-torn country, reported regime-affiliated Syrian newspaper Al-Watan. According to the report, the Iranian official also discussed with Assad the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan and presented Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s plan to contend with it. The report comes against the backdrop of recent attacks on pro-Iranian forces in Syria, some which have been attributed to Israel though it denies involvement. In other cases, Israel has taken responsibility for attacks in Syria. In the...

...twenty-one sailors from the M/T Kokuka Courageous who had abandoned their ship after discovering a probable unexploded limpet mine on their hull... At 4:10 p.m. local time an IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) Gashti Class patrol boat approached the M/T Kokuka Courageous and was observed and recorded removing the unexploded limpet mine from the M/T Kokuka Courageous (video attached). The United States has no interest in engaging in a new conflict in the Middle East. However, we will defend our interests.

Two tankers have been targeted this morning while transiting waters near to Fujairah. Frontline’s fully laden LR 2Front Altair was hit by surface attacks, and an enormous fire ensued forcing the crew to abandon ship. The crew were safely picked up by nearby general cargoship, Hyundai Dubai. Bernhard Schulte’s chemical tanker Kokuka Courageous was also hit.

Saudi Arabia's mass execution of 47 prisoners — including prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr — triggered unrest across the Middle East on Saturday, particularly in Iran, where protesters stormed and ransacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Photos and video footage posted on Twitter by Iranian journalist Sobhan Hassanvand showed a mob of angry demonstrators smashing windows and setting fire to the Saudi diplomatic outpost in the Iranian capital. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi also condemned the executions. "I'm shocked & saddened at Sheikh Nimr's execution by Saudi authorities," he wrote on Twitter. "Peaceful opposition is a fundamental right. Repression does...

A Kurdish militia in northern Syria has joined forces with Arab rebels, and their new alliance has been promised fresh weapon supplies by the United States for an assault on Islamic State forces in Raqqa, a spokesman said on Monday. The alliance calling itself the Democratic Forces of Syria includes the Kurdish YPG militia and Syrian Arab groups, some of which fought alongside it in a campaign that drove Islamic State from wide areas of northern Syria earlier this year. The Arab groups in the new alliance are operating under the name "The Syrian Arab Coalition" - a grouping which...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Insurgent commanders say that since Russia began air attacks in support of the Syrian government, they are receiving for the first time bountiful supplies of powerful American-made antitank missiles. With the enhanced insurgent firepower and with Russia steadily raising the number of airstrikes against the government’s opponents, the Syrian conflict is edging closer to an all-out proxy war between the United States and Russia. The increased levels of support have raised morale on both sides of the conflict, broadening war aims and hardening political positions, making a diplomatic settlement all the more unlikely. The American-made TOW antitank...

BEIRUT — American antitank missiles supplied to Syrian rebels are playing an unexpectedly prominent role in shaping the Syrian battlefield, giving the conflict the semblance of a proxy war between the United States and Russia, despite President Obama’s express desire to avoid one. The U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles were delivered under a two-year-old covert program coordinated between the United States and its allies to help vetted Free Syrian Army groups in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. Now that Russia has entered the war in support of Assad, they are taking on a greater significance than was originally intended. So...

CNN)U.S. military cargo planes gave 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups overnight in northern Syria, using an air drop of 112 pallets as the first step in the Obama Administration's urgent effort to find new ways to support those groups. Details of the air mission over Syria were confirmed by a U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly because the details have not yet been formally announced. C-17s, accompanied by fighter escort aircraft, dropped small arms ammunition and other items like hand grenades in Hasakah province in northern Syria to a coalition of rebels groups vetted by the US,...

In less than a year, the United States has toppled the democratically-elected government of Ukraine, installed a Washington-backed stooge in Kiev, launched a bloody and costly war of annihilation on Russian-speaking people in the East, thrust the economy into a downward death spiral, and reduced the nation to an anarchic, failed state destined to endure a vicious fratricidal civil war for as far as the eye can see. Last week, Washington suffered its greatest military defeat in more than a decade when Ukraine’s US-backed army was soundly routed in the major railway hub of Debaltsevo. Roughly, 8,000 Ukrainian regulars along...

Snippet: "Iran and its terrorist proxy groups’ influence in Latin America remains a troubling security threat to the region and world, experts said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday."

MOSCOW — A Western military attack on Syria will only create more problems in the region, lead to more bloodshed and result in the same sort of “catastrophe” as previous Western interventions in Iraq and Libya, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Monday. “Hysteria is growing and confrontation is incited,” Lavrov said in what he portrayed as an emergency press conference. He said the United States and its European allies have condemned the regime of Bashar al-Assad without any evidence that it actually used chemical weapons in an assault on a Damascus suburb on Aug. 21. China's president aims to...

This summer, friends and I took a cruise in Alaska where the tourist shops often featured the Russian matryoshka dolls.  The dolls originated in Japan but were made popular in Russia around the time of the Russian Revolution, a century ago.  You've seen them -- you pop open an outer doll, and nested inside is another.  The magic of the art is that you keep opening layer after layer, only to find another even smaller doll, until at last the final incarnation is just a kernel in size.  The successive dolls vary from near exact duplicates with hard-to-identify slight...