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THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Dutch and German intelligence agencies have gathered evidence of widespread Russian use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine, including dropping a choking agent from drones to drive soldiers out of trenches so they can be shot, they said on Friday. Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans called for tougher sanctions against Moscow. "The main conclusion is that we can confirm Russia is intensifying its use of chemical weapons," he told Reuters. "This intensification is concerning because it is part of a trend we have been observing for several years now, where Russia's use of chemical weapons in...

Russia's richest people received record dividends in 2024, according to Forbes Russia. The top earner was Alexei Mordashov, who received 201.8 billion rubles in dividends from Severstal. Russia's richest people collected record-high dividends in 2024, even as the country's economy showed clear signs of slowing, according to Forbes Russia on Thursday. Total dividend payouts to the 50 wealthiest Russians reached a record 1.769 trillion rubles, or $22.3 billion, according to the publication. That's a sharp increase from each of the previous two years, when less than 1.4 trillion rubles were distributed. The top earner was steel magnate Alexei Mordashov and...

Russia's wartime economy may finally be losing steam, fresh data shows. In June, Russia's manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index, or PMI, sank to 47.5 — its sharpest pace of contraction since March 2022, according to S&P Global. This was a reversal from the PMI of 50.2 in May, when Russia's manufacturing activity expanded. The results from the latest S&P Global manufacturing PMI survey are a contrast against the resilience that Russia's economy has been projecting over the last few years. Russia appears to have avoided an economic collapse since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But many analysts have...

Belarus has freed Sergey Tikhanovsky, a key dissident figure and the husband of exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, following a rare visit by a senior US official, Tikhanovskaya’s team announced on Saturday. Tikhanovsky, a popular blogger and activist who was jailed in 2020, arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, alongside 13 other political prisoners, his wife’s team said. The release came just hours after Belarusian authorities announced that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko met with US President Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, in Minsk. A video published on his wife’s official Telegram account showed Tikhanovsky disembarking a white minibus, with a...

LONDON (Reuters) -Pro-Palestinian activists broke into a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, damaging and spraying red paint over two planes used for refuelling and transport. Palestine Action said two members had entered the Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire, putting paint into the engines of the Voyager aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars. "Despite publicly condemning the Israeli government, Britain continues to send military cargo, fly spy planes over Gaza and refuel U.S./Israeli fighter jets," the group said in a statement, posting a video of the incident on X.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea will send thousands of military construction workers and deminers to support reconstruction work in Russia’s Kursk region, a top Russian official said Tuesday, the latest sign of expanding cooperation between the nations. North Korea has already supplied thousands of combat troops and a vast amount of conventional weapons to back Russia’s war against Ukraine. In April, Pyongyang and Moscow said that their soldiers fought together to repel a Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region, though Ukraine has insisted it still has troops present there. Wrapping up a one-day visit to Pyongyang, Russian Security...

A claim by the Russian Defence Ministry that Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin was "in the epicentre of a drone attack" has turned out to be a staged performance by the Kremlin. Russian state media claimed earlier this week that when Putin visited Kursk Oblast for the first time since the hostilities began in the area, his helicopter came "under fire from Ukrainian drones". In reality, this was not a combat incident but a meticulously staged event. Four sources within the government and the Kremlin told The Moscow Times that security officials promoted this shocking and "risky" episode in the media...

Journalists have uncovered the leak of two million documents concerning Russia’s secret nuclear bases. This discovery could have serious implications for the country's security, potentially necessitating significant infrastructure changes. Journalists from the investigative portal Danwatch and the newspaper "Der Spiegel" have obtained two million Russian documents pertaining to the country's secret nuclear bases. Among them are detailed plans for the construction and modernisation of the base in Yasny, where the Avangard hypersonic glide missile has been positioned since 2019. The documents also reveal information about security systems, the placement of cameras and sensors, and infrastructure details such as underground tunnels...

Americans celebrating Memorial Day by hitting the road will likely be paying the cheapest gas prices since 2003. GasBuddy, a fuel savings platform, said Tuesday that it forecasts the national average price of gasoline to be $3.08 per gallon on Memorial Day. That would make it the cheapest since 2021 in nominal terms. After adjusting for inflation, it would be the lowest since 2003. This is not expected to be short-lived. Prices of gasoline are expected to average around $3.02 per gallon between Memorial Day and Labor Day, with prices falling below three dollars on some days. That’s likely to...

Top brass at the FBI has emphatically declared that notorious sex predator Jeffrey Epstein’s death in 2019 was a suicide and that there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. FBI deputy director Dan Bongino and director Kash Patel have both concluded Epstein took his own life in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. “I have reviewed the case. Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. There’s no evidence in the case file indicating otherwise,” Bongino, a former conservative talk radio host, wrote on X.

Key Points: The US Army's M10 Booker armored vehicle program is criticized as a prime example of a flawed requirements process. -Initially intended as a lightweight, C-130 airdroppable "light tank" to support airborne and light infantry units, successive requirement additions ("creep") resulted in a 42-ton vehicle too heavy for airdrop and even some base infrastructure, like bridges at Fort Campbell. -Despite failing its original key criteria, the airdrop requirement was dropped, and the program continued. -Critics argue the Army now fields a vehicle lacking its intended mission and unique deployability, representing bureaucratic inertia over battlefield need. -The M10 Booker has...

It is no secret that Russia ‘recycles’ wounded soldiers, sending them back to the front line as soon as they are mobile. Commanders have made sure that getting wounded is not a ticket out of danger. But now we are seeing more extreme cases, with soldiers still on crutches or even in wheelchairs being pushed forward in assaults. What is behind this bizarre phenomenon? There may be method behind this gruesome madness, but there are competing explanations. It would be easy to dismiss this sort of claim as Ukrainian propaganda. Except that apart from the many cases captured on drone...

Russian forces managed to capture around 68 square miles of Ukraine in April. But it cost them 4,800 vehicles and more than 36,600 dead and wounded troops, according to one statistician who collects data mostly from official Ukrainian sources including the general staff in Kyiv. In the same month, Ukrainian losses were “minimal,” concluded analyst Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting in Poland. Ukraine sprawls across 233,000 square miles, 19% of which is under Russian occupation. At the current rates of advance and loss, the Russians would capture the rest of Ukraine in the year 2256 at the cost of 101...

Trump may have accidentally confessed to insider trading and market manipulation on Truth Social. “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” the president wrote on Wednesday, a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for China, yet another market-shocking announcement that caused stocks to shoot up. Insider trading is a very illegal practice that involves using special or private information to give yourself an advantage in buying and selling stocks. Someone with knowledge of an economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up would be posting about how great...

Russian state media outlet RT published a story about the British Navy launching a ‘HMS Prince Andrew’ – not realising it was an April Fools’ joke. On April 1, a satirical article was published by the UK Defence Journal which claimed the navy was building a new supercarrier that could carry “infinity-hundred’ aircraft and would be named after Prince Andrew. The obviously tongue-in-cheek article said the carrier would be armed with Cold War-era Harriers or “naval Typhoons” launched via six catapults, and cost the taxpayer a modest £987.6 billion. The piece also quoted a pretend expert from the ‘Daily Mail...

Protests have erupted across northern Gaza on Tuesday as Palestinians call for an end to the conflict with Israel — and declaring that they’re “sending a message to the entire world” that they want Hamas to permanently leave the war-torn Strip. Hundreds of Palestinians were seen marching in the cities of Beit Lahia and Jabalia with signs that read, “Stop the war,” as civilians waved around white flags and chanted “Hamas out,” viral videos on social media show. The demonstration in Beit Lahia, which began in front of the Indonesian Hospital, saw the crowd vocally condemning Hamas’ rule and demanding...

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump used a “SpongeBob SquarePants” meme on Truth Social to mock federal employees after an email from Elon Musk to federal works sparked an outcry. The meme, posted to Truth Social Sunday afternoon, depicts SpongeBob reviewing a checklist entitled “Got Done Last Week.” Items on the checklist are “Cried about Trump,’ “Cried about Elon,” “Made it into the office for once,” and “Cried about Trump and Elon some more.” The hoopla began Saturday when Musk, labeled a special advisor to Trump for the new Department of Government Efficiency, warned federal employees of a new policy requiring...

Actor Sean Penn expressed his dissatisfaction with US President Donald Trump's decision to appoint Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, and Mel Gibson as Hollywood ambassadors. The two-time Oscar winner referred to the move as a "clown show". The 64-year-old also took issue with the Oscars' organizers for their lack of "backbone" in declining an opportunity to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the 2022 awards ceremony in Los Angeles. When questioned about Trump's trio of high-profile Hollywood ambassadors, he responded to the Oxford Union last week: "Look, clown shows can do great damage but I'm not very interested in them." Penn,...

A Russian intelligence-gathering vessel caught fire and temporarily lost control off the Syrian coast on Janaury 23, according to Associated Press (AP). The Kildin, a Russian spy ship equipped with surveillance technology, was seen emitting black smoke and flames as it drifted, prompting an urgent maritime radio warning to nearby vessels. The Associated Press obtained audio of the broadcast, as well as video and photographs of the incident. “Warship on your course,” the Russian Captain said. “I am drifting. I’m not under command.” The videos, taken by three NATO military officials, were collected by a nearby NATO vessel. These officials...

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson has stirred controversy once again by alleging that the Biden administration attempted to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a provocative statement made during his Monday podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show, the former Fox News host suggested that the U.S. government had tried to eliminate Putin without offering any supporting evidence. "The Biden administration did, they tried to kill Putin," Carlson boldly claimed. When his guest, journalist Matt Taibbi, expressed surprise, Carlson insisted, "Yes, yes, they did, which is insane." His remarks, made in a casual tone, sparked immediate backlash, given the lack of any concrete...