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Russian anti-war journalist Yekaterina Duntsova, who was barred from running in the country's upcoming presidential election in March, was briefly detained in Tver, north of Moscow, on January 14. Duntsova said she was stopped by police after she left a meeting during which she announced she was founding a new party called Dawn. She said police stopped her car and took her to a police station where she was tested for drugs. Duntsova said she was released after the test result came out as negative....

Cliff Kincaid wrote an article for Renew America, titled. 'The communist plot against Trump.' In it, he goes into the special counsel, Jack Smith’s wife, Katie Chevigny. Chevigny is a Biden donor who put together a sympathetic documentary on Michelle Obama. The real story he says, is not Katie Chevigny, but her parents. Kincaid wrote a 12-page special report on them, "The Communists, Globalists, Terrorists, and Fellow Travelers Trying to Jail President Trump". Chevigny’s parents were well-connected to the communist and terrorist movements that backed Barack Hussein Obama. Kincaid says they’re trying to destroy Trump. Her father was a leftist...

New edict affects all of Moscow's historic holdings across three continents, including former imperial colonies in the US. Russia has laid the groundwork for expanding its soft power across North America and Asia with a new decree Vladimir Putin signed last week. The new order provides funds to search, register and provide legal protection to Russian properties abroad – including land and buildings located in former Russian Empire and Soviet Union territories. Among the areas affected by the new decree is Alaska, which was sold to the United States in 1867 and still hosts communities with close links to Russia....

The wife of a Russian soldier delivered an emotional appeal for his return from Ukraine on Saturday at the election headquarters of President Vladimir Putin, a defiant gesture in a country where open criticism of the war is banned. "Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has issued a decree that my husband has to be there (in Ukraine). I'm interested to know when he will issue a decree that my husband has to be home," Maria Andreyeva said. She became involved in a heated exchange with a woman who told her that Russian soldiers in Ukraine were defending the motherland and she should...

A new viral video shows the crew of a Russian T-90M Breakthrough tank getting a first-hand lesson in the devastating firepower of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s Bushmaster M242 25mm automatic cannon. The War Zone reached out to highly-experienced armor experts to explain exactly what we are seeing in the intense combat footage and how the Bradley was able to take on Russia's most capable frontline tank.

The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has imposed sanctions against 19 tankers that transported Russian oil under the flags of Liberia and Panama. SOURCE: US Department of Treasury DETAILS: It is noted that sanctions are imposed in connection with the violation of the restriction on oil prices. 18 tankers fly the flag of Liberia, and one sails under the flag of Panama. Two companies own the tankers: Hennesea Holdings Limited (UAE) and Cielo Marine Ltd (Hong Kong). It is known that the shipping firm Hennesea Holdings Limited (Hennesea), which is headquartered in the United...

Russian strategic culture: Why Russia does things the way it does By Martti J. Kari, former intelligence Colonel in the Finnish Defense Forces BACKGROUND My background is that I have served in military intelligence for most of my career. I am an officer and an intelligence colonel who retired last fall. I started here in January at the university as a teacher. I teach intelligence. As I have spent most of my career in intelligence, Russia and the Soviet Union have always been my point of interest. As a young lieutenant, I was sent to what was then Leningrad to...

Joseph Stalin is roaring back to life in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Monuments are being built, “Stalin centers” are being constructed, and Putin’s war against Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Ukraine is being compared to Stalin’s victory over Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Given the fascist nature of Putin’s regime and the imperialist, genocidal war he’s conducting in Ukraine, Stalin’s rehabilitation makes perfect sense. More important than the political rationale behind Stalin’s “return” to Russia, however, are the moral implications of such a move. Back in 2011, Yale University historian Timothy Snyder asked, “Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?” His answer implied that both men were...

Russians have clashed with riot police in a rare, large protest after an activist was sentenced to four-years in a penal colony. Fail Alsynov appeared in court on Wednesday accused of making a racist comment in a speech against plans to mine gold in the central Bashkortostan region using migrant workers. Despite temperatures of -20C (-4F), thousands gathered outside the courtroom in Baymak demanding his freedom after the sentence was passed down. Videos shared on social media showed a bus and three heavy police trucks, alongside crowds of protesters who squared up to officers who were holding shields and wearing...

America’s decline is not irreversible. Media coverage of world events focuses on one crisis at a time, as if each was a separate phenomenon. But Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, the assaults on shipping in the Red Sea, China’s threats on Tawain, the closing of the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthis, and even Venezuelan plans to conquer much of oil-rich Guyana are not separate events, but highly related. All follow patterns laid out in Samuel Huntington’s 2011 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order which predicted the rise of “revanchist” powers seeking to recover perceived past glory....

Vladimir Putin's police state has become so repressive that a popular joke from Soviet times has resurfaced and been repurposed for those Russians today who dare to acknowledge the truth about the autocratic regime they are living under. It tells the story of two FSB (successor of the KGB) agents who are having a beer after work. The first one, Ivan, says to his colleague, 'Tell me, Dmitry. What do you really think about Putin?' and Dmitry replies, 'The same as you do.' Ivan thinks for a moment and says: 'In that case, it is my duty to arrest you.'

Ukraine entered 2023 filled with hope. Its forces had just secured enormous battlefield and strategic victories, first at Kherson and then Kharkiv, recapturing much lost territory from the Russian invaders, and Western capitals seemed increasingly confident that victory could be at hand.By the end of January, European and American leaders were no longer talking about whether to send Western main battle tanks, but how many and when. Britain led the charge, confirming that the formidable Challenger II would be sent to Ukraine, and putting intense diplomatic pressure on Washington and Berlin to follow London’s lead. Both duly buckled. With tanks...

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk region, wrote on Telegram that the city of Donetsk was subjected to heavy strikes on New Year's Eve, while a statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the assault on the city a "terrorist act" and alleged Kyiv's forces had targeted civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko reported in a Telegram post that members of the Russian "elite" based in occupied Donetsk were attending a New Year's dinner with guests from Moscow at the time of the attack... Pro-Ukrainian X user (((Tendar))) wrote that "accurate readings on what the casualties...

For people who don’t know, Christmas in Russia/Ukraine is a more traditional advent thing, and it’s not commercialized like in the West. It’s also on the 7th of January, because the Eastern Church uses the Julian (solar) calendar. So, New Year’s is the bigger celebration day of the period. They’ve even started with the Western-style gifts, but they do it on New Year’s, not on Christmas.

I have warned that Zelensky will go down in history as the evil ruler he truly is. And for those who constantly want to pretend this is Russian propaganda, tell that to the 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers who are dead and all the broken homes Zelensky has left behind, along with the 8 to 10 million who have fled Ukraine. Worse still, he is making it a criminal act to flee the country and avoid his draft to justify the EU arresting Ukrainians and deporting them back to be sent to their death on the front lines. The idea of ​​drafting...

Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, has made a startling declaration regarding Russia's military objectives in Ukraine.In a statement on Telegram, he affirmed that Russia's so-called special operation aims to continue, with its goals including the disarmament of Ukrainian forces and the rejection of neo-Nazism by the current Ukrainian state.Medvedev also stated that Russia intends to capture additional Ukrainian cities, specifically naming Odessa, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Kyiv.

Synopsis: A panel of Russian commentators on state owned television channel "Russia 1" discussing a recent 'naked party' by Russian elites and their reactions to it. Russia language transcript at the link. Click the 'more' button and you'll see the transcript feature.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has hosted a summit of former Soviet republics and called for unity among them. Putin presided over an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. Russia is expected to chair the group next year. -snip- One of the participants was Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. He is believed to have been frustrated with Russia since ethnic Armenian forces were forced to surrender in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh following a military offensive by Azerbaijan in September. Pashinyan apparently believes that Moscow failed to fulfill its role as Armenia's ally. He...

Russian language transcript at the link. Go to "more" and expand the page to see this option.

A Russian television serial exploring the tragedy wrought by brutal teenage street gangs fighting for survival, money and love in the last years of the crumbling Soviet Union has become a sensation in Russia. The series – “A hoodlum’s promise – blood on the asphalt” – shows the savagery of the gangs which carved up the Russian city of Kazan in 1989 as the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev gyrated the Soviet Union towards its 1991 demise. In the Kazan badlands, many of the teenagers tried to make sense of their Soviet world turned upside down by flocking to the gangs...