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Terrified Russians are scrambling to flee the country today with one-way flights out of Moscow sold out after Vladimir Putin sparked mass panic by ordering a troop mobilisation in a dramatic escalation of the Ukraine war. Tickets to Johannesburg for a family of three were earlier fetching £44,000, while the cheapest flights from the capital to Dubai were costing more than £4,500 - about five times the average monthly wage, amid the desperate race to escape the potential conscription. In a nationwide speech, Putin ordered the call-up of 300,000 military reserves - a first in Russia since the Second World...

Russian airlines have stopped selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65 unless they can provide evidence of approval to travel from the Ministry of Defense. All flights from Russia to available foreign destinations were sold out Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin declared a “partial” mobilization of the country’s 25 million reservists. Flights from Moscow to the capitals of Georgia, Turkey and Armenia — which do not require visas for Russians — for Sept. 21 were unavailable within minutes of Putin’s announcement, according to Russia’s top travel planning website aviasales.ru. By noon Moscow time, direct flights from Moscow to...

Vladimir Putin today made a speech announcing that the conflict in Ukraine would be escalated, resulting in citizens attempting to leave the country. In Putin's speech, he said there would be a partial mobilization of the military. Reservists and ex-military personnel with "certain military specialties and relevant experience" will be subject to conscription, he said. Following this, according to the Russian online newspaper Lenta, flights to Armenia, Turkey and Georgia sold out. "All tickets for direct flights to Istanbul and Yerevan were sold out in a few minutes after Putin's address," the publication's Twitter page wrote in a caption. It...

Fighting on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan killed about 100 troops Tuesday as attacks on both sides fed fears of broader hostilities breaking out between the longtime adversaries. Armenia said at least 49 of its soldiers were killed; Azerbaijan said it lost 50. The fighting erupted minutes after midnight with Azerbaijani forces unleashing an artillery barrage and drone attacks in many sections of Armenian territory, according to Armenia’s Defense Ministry. It said shelling grew less intense during the day but Azerbaijani troops were trying to advance into Armenian territory. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said it was responding to a “large-scale...

Student’s find provides new evidence region may be one of first places early humans settled outside Africa.Archaeologists in Georgia have found a 1.8m-year-old tooth belonging to an early species of human that they say cements the region as the home of one of the earliest prehistoric human settlements in Europe, and possibly anywhere outside Africa.The tooth was discovered near the village of Orozmani, which lies about 60 miles south-west of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and is near Dmanisi, where human skulls dated to 1.8m years old were found in the late 1990s and early 2000s.The Dmanisi finds were the oldest...

Vladimir Putin has approved a 31-page "humanitarian policy" which says Russia should "protect, safeguard and advance the traditions and ideals of the Russian World". The foreign policy concept of a "Russian World" is a notion that hardliners have used to justify intervening abroad to support Russian speakers, such as in parts of Ukraine. It means that the idea is now enshrined in official policy, though it was presented as a soft power strategy. The new policy stated that Moscow should further deepen its ties with the self-styled Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic - two breakaway entities in...

Turkish Bayraktar TB2 have destroyed more than 800 Russian targets in ongoing war between Russian and Ukraine including two Ilyushin IL-76 strategic airlifter and more than 120 tanks Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial reconnaissance and strike vehicles turned out to be quite an effective weapon in the fight against various kinds of targets. As it turned out, these drones showed the greatest efficiency in the fight against MLRS, air defence systems and tanks, destroying more than 120 units of heavy combat vehicles and more than 280 missile launchers, although drones even account for combat aircraft and helicopters. According to statistics published...

There were three pillars on which the Iranian regime was founded, following the 1979 revolution, hi-jacked by the elderly fanatical cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The first pillar was the system of velayat-e-faqih, or guardianship of the Islamic jurist, which laid the foundations for the first fundamentalist Islamic state and was written into the constitution. The second pillar was the complete transfer of all power and authority to the Supreme Leader and from him to the theocracy of ayatollahs and mullahs, who perversely claimed their authority came directly from God. The third and final pillar, carefully designed by Khomeini, was the...

Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) form part of a team of Chinese, Spanish, and French scientists that has just published a study of what may prove to be China's most ancient human fossil, in the Journal of Human Evolution. The researchers employed microCT, geometric morphometry, and classical morphology techniques to investigate the remains of the maxillary and five teeth from the skull unearthed at the Chinese site of Gongwangling.This site is on the vast plains on the northern slopes of the Quinling Mountains (province of Shaanxi, in central China) and was discovered by...

Moldova officially applied for fast-track EU membership on Thursday (3 March), joining Ukraine and Georgia, its partners from the so-called Associated Trio, a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. Prompted by war in neighbouring Ukraine, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, the prime minister and the parliamentary speaker signed a formal application for her country to join the EU on Thursday. “It took 30 years for Moldova to reach maturity, but today the country is ready to take responsibility for its own future,” said Sandu, before holding up the signed document to the television cameras. “We want to live in peace,...

Hundreds of thousands of professional workers, many of them young, have left Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, accelerating an exodus of business talent and further threatening an economy targeted by Western sanctions. Those leaving the country include tech workers, scientists, bankers and doctors, according to surveys, economists and interviews with emigrants. They are departing for countries including Georgia, Armenia and Turkey. More are expected to follow. A mid-March survey by OK Russians, a nonprofit helping people leave the country, estimated that around 300,000 workers had departed since the war started in late February. While precise counts of the number...

In four weeks of combat, Russia may have lost 25 percent of its initial attacking force. These casualties are not on the scale of World War II but are large compared with the relatively small size of the Russian military today. Although reinforcements and replacements can offset some of these casualties, the loss of trained troops will impair military operations and eventually have a political effect. Russian losses to date are high. NATO estimates that Russia has lost between 7,000 and 15,000 soldiers. Wounded who cannot rapidly return to duty generally number about twice the number of dead. That would...

Donald Trump has teased a a 2024 presidential run saying he 'may have to do it again' during a rowdy Georgia rally where he slammed Joe Biden for 'giving up' on Ukraine and said the president should 'recuse himself' from the country altogether because of his son Hunter Biden's dealings with it. Trump returned on Saturday to Georgia, the state that has served as ground zero for his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and now will test his enduring influence over the Republican Party. The former president addressed many recent issues popular with conservatives, while...

The sample site in Satsurblia cave. (Anna Belfer-Cohen) A cup of mud that has been buried beneath the floor of a cave for millennia has just yielded up the genome of an ancient human. Analysis reveals traces of a woman who lived 25,000 years ago, before the last Ice Age; and, although we don't know much about her, she represents a significant scientific achievement: the feasibility of identifying ancient human populations even when there are no bones to recover. The sample also yielded DNA from wolf and bison species, which an international team of scientists were able to place in...

Most EU countries, including Hungary, have voiced solidarity with LGBTIQ protesters in Georgia after a violent mob halted their Pride march on Monday (4 July). “We condemn today’s violent attacks on the civic activists, community members, and journalists, as well as the failure of the government leaders and religious officials to condemn this violence,” the EU states’ embassies in Tbilisi said in a joint statement. “Participation in peaceful gatherings is a human right guaranteed by Georgia’s constitution. Violence is simply unacceptable and cannot be excused,” they also said. And they called on those who incited or carried out hate-crimes to...

On Monday, June 21, Turkish President Recep Erdogan said that his recent meeting with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels opens a "new era" in diplomatic relations between the two countries. According to Erdogan, there are no problems in relations between Turkey and the United States that cannot be solved, and there are much more areas for cooperation. Biden expressed the hope that countries can make real progress. At the same time, the parties did not agree on problematic issues, such as the acquisition by Turkey of Russian S-400 anti-missile systems, violation of...

BUCHAREST, Romania — Government ministers in the former Soviet and communist countries along the Black Sea basin are bracing for President Joe Biden’s meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia next Wednesday in Geneva. But, analysts are warning them to keep their expectations low. They hope the American president will stand for democratic ideals and support their security, but regional analysts say they may be pawns in a broader geopolitical chess match between great power rivals. From Kyiv to Bucharest, government leaders are attempting to influence Biden ahead of the meeting, underscoring that their democracy depends on the United States and...

To a West where no one seems to want to fight anymore or care anymore about their own traditions, where they spit on their own history, topple their statues and erase their own culture, where the land no longer sends any echo, the Armenians, small, scattered around the world, forgotten and barricaded, now at war for Nagorno against the Islamic Ummah led by Turkey, show us a path in which we do not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed. Half of Nagorno's population, 75,000 people, has been displaced due to Turkish-backed Azerbaijan attacks. We must hope they resist. I have just...

A nation that is faithful to God and its fatherland will be miraculously blessed by God, His Eminence Metropolitan Daniel of Chiatura and Sachkhere of the Georgian Orthodox Church said during his Sunday sermon at the Holy Trinity Cathedral. A miracle was seen in Georgia, where there was no eruption of the coronavirus epidemic despite the fact that the churches were never closed, as in many other countries, Met. Daniel emphasized, reports 1tv.ge. “The Georgian ethos is one of the first,” Met. Daniel said. “Someone may ask how it survived. It survived for two reasons: it was dedicated to the...

A nation that is faithful to God and its fatherland will be miraculously blessed by God, His Eminence Metropolitan Daniel of Chiatura and Sachkhere of the Georgian Orthodox Church said during his Sunday sermon at the Holy Trinity Cathedral. A miracle was seen in Georgia, where there was no eruption of the coronavirus epidemic despite the fact that the churches were never closed, as in many other countries, Met. Daniel emphasized, reports 1tv.ge. “The Georgian ethos is one of the first,” Met. Daniel said. “Someone may ask how it survived. It survived for two reasons: it was dedicated to the...