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Shortly after Ukrainian troops captured two Russian Spetsnaz soldiers, a Ukrainian special forces unit of the Dnipro-1 Battalion shot down a $6 million Russian Forpost drone near Avdeevka in Eastern Ukraine. The Russian government was quick to distance itself from the soldiers, and even went so far as to parade their families in front of the media to deny their active status. However, the drone that was shot down that day is not something the Russian government can deny owning and operating... (includes a video)

The former Russian soldiers who spoke to Reuters, as well as human rights activists, said some soldiers were fearful of being sent to Ukraine, were pressured into going, or disgruntled at the way they were treated after fighting there. The former tank soldier from Moscow said he would not have gone to Ukraine voluntarily. "No, what for? That's not our war. If our troops were officially there it would be a different story." He said he had been sent to fight in Ukraine last summer and returned to Russia in September when the first peace talks took place. His crew operated...

First part of the interview found here(translated from Russian by I.M.) War in Ukraine- How many of you crossed the border?- There are 31 tanks in the battalion. We crossed company at a time. Ten tanks in each company. For every 10 tanks there were three BMPs added, armored medical carrier and five "Ural" trucks with ammunition. That's the size of the company tactical task force. Tank battalion is made of about 120 people - three tank companies, support platoon, communications platoon. Plus infantry, of course. Approximately 300 people have crossed. All from Ulan-Ude (Russian city in Siberia). Basically, most...

“We all knew what we were doing and what can happen." Interview with the Russian tank gunner, who, together with his battalion, was sent to fight for Debaltseve, Ukraine(Translated from Russian by I.M.) ------------------------------------------------- Dorzhi Batomunkuev, 20 years old, 5th Tank Brigade (Ulan-Ude), military base № 46108. Conscript, called to service on November 25, 2013; in June 2014 signed a three year contract. Personal Number 200220, military ID 2609999. Face burned, wrapped a bandage, blood showing from under the bandage. Hands wrapped too. Ears burned and shriveled. I know that he was wounded in Logvinovo. Logvinovo – “neck” of the...

Former American porn star Sasha Grey ditched her acting career and worked as a nurse for pro-Russian rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine until she was brutally murdered by Ukrainian government forces. That, at least, is according to an anti-Kyiv propaganda campaign featuring a photo of Grey that has appeared on Russian social media networks, including Odnoklassniki, a social media site popular among people over the age of 30.

"How the murder of Batman split the LPR" (translated from Russian by IM) Map of East Ukraine and glossary of names: LPR - Luhansk People's Republic is the eastern of the two breakaway regions. Formally, the head is Igor Plotnitsky, but his troops only control the capital Luhansk (Луганськ) and area around it (marked green on the map, top right of the separatist held territory) Nikolai Kozitsyn and the "Great Don Cossack Army" is to the south of Plotnitsky-held territory (light green, almost beige on the map) Stas Sinelnikov and the “Cossack Hundred” is between Kozitsyn’s forces and the Russian...

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The Russian independent radio station Ekho Moskvy has received a formal warning from Roskomnadzor, Russia’s censor. The latter accuses it of ‘extremism’ and claims that the material in its Oct 29 programme “With our own eyes” [Svoyimi glazami] “justifies military or other crimes”. The letter is spread out on two pages, yet gives no indication as to how the said material can be deemed to ‘justify war crimes’. Ekho Moskvy’s chief editor Alexei Venediktov has said that they will be lodging a court appeal against the warning. According to Russian law, two such warnings within the space of a year...

10 Russian soldiers. 331 Airborne Regiment of the 98 Guards Division (military base #71211 out of Ivanovo) Same story, here with pictures from their Russian Facebook profiles (VKontakte)

On Friday evening, the editors of Slon.ru, an independent internet news portal, received notice from the Russian state prosecutor’s office that it had 24 hours to remove an article about a Novosibirsk performance artist hosting a demonstration demanding Siberian self-determination and federalization. “We give up all our resources [to Moscow] and in return we get a raft of idiotic laws,” announced the performance mastermind, Artem Loskutov, a well-known performance artist and provocateur. The article has been removed, but the site, part of the same holding as the beleaguered independent television channel Dozhd, still faces closure. File this one under irony:...

“Why was the Boeing from Amsterdam shot down” by Andrei Illarionov Note about the author: Illarionov is a former economic policy advisor to Vladimir Putin but presently is one of his harshest critics. He is a senior fellow in the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity think tank at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. (Excerpted. Translated from Russian by I.M.) Why MH17?On the day of July 17, there were several dozen passenger planes that flew over the area where SAM "Buk-M1" was located. This included a Lufthansa flight Munich-Dehli twenty minutes earlier, and Singapore Airlines flight Copenhagen-Singapore a minute...

Andrei Illarionov is a former economic policy advisor to Vladimir Putin but presently is one of his harshest critics. Tyzhden.ua sits down with him to discuss the upcoming Ukrainian presidential election, the likelihood of a new World War and to share his view on new geopolitical conflicts. (Article published May 24, 2014 in the Ukrainian weekly Tyzhden, interviewed by Alla Lazareva) Tyzhden.ua: Mr. Illarionov, do you think that Russia will try to disrupt the upcoming Sunday vote? I don’t think Putin will do that. Overall his position is as follows: Ukraine either has to be Putin's (be it under Yanukovych,...

Yesterday there was a facebook post from Igor Rozovskiy, an "Odesa ambulance doctor" who had an eyewitness account about the events that took place in the city. The post was in Russian but was soon translated into English and German. Below is the origional post and the English translation: The problem is the Facebook account is fake - it uses an image of a Stavropol (Russia) dentist (the picture is near the bottom of a page) and spokesman for the Odesa ambulance services had confirmed that no one with that name is employed there.

Governor of the Odessa region, Vladimir Nemirovsky blamed police for what happened in the city earlier today. He wrote on his Facebook page: "Today's casualties in Odessa could have been avoided. The only thing that law enforcement officers had to do was not to have trade off their homeland, their conscience, but stay true to the oath to the Ukrainian people" - he wrote. "If police had complied with the request of the Odesa region administration, and didn’t get involved in diplomacy, today would have been different. For most of them, as always, first, was not their country, but their...

"Grave-like silence" (Translated from Russian) Kiev government is silent, or it talks with those with whom it is already too late. At least 3 dead and about 100 injured in various clashes just on Sunday, a religious holiday - and a day of silence from all officials of ministerial level and above about the situation in the country. One after another Donbas regional centers and military properties are captured – and the government doesn’t consider it necessary to explain it to the people. It wasn’t until late in the evening, that the acting President of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov spoke. Everyone...

During the month of March, SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) uncovered at least eight cases of espionage and sabotage attributed to subversive groups of visiting "Putin tourists" who tried to destabilize the situation in Ukraine and the upcoming presidential election.(The article is a summary, where each case has a link to the full length news story. Dated April 1 2014, it appeared on “The Ukrainian Week” website. Translated from Ukrainian) In the evening on March 10 in Donetsk, police and SBU had detained a person from the Russian Military Intelligence. Later it turned out, that the detainee was a citizen...

Russia's Vladimir Putin has committed a grave strategic blunder by tearing up the international rule book without a green light from China. Any hope of recruiting Beijing as an ally to blunt Western sanctions looks doomed, and with it the Kremlin's chances of a painless victory, or any worthwhile victory at all. Mr Putin was careful to thank China's Politburo for its alleged support in his victory speech on Crimea. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has been claiming with his usual elasticity that “Russia and China have coinciding views on the situation in Ukraine.” This is of course a desperate lie....

Mykola Melnyk: "Psychology of a cop and a soldier are fundamentally different" The former first deputy head of military intelligence and one of the founders of the National Guard of Ukraine discusses how the country will be defending itself from the Russian invasion. (Article is dated March 13 2014, Bogdan Butkevych for the “The Ukrainian Week”) Mykola Melnyk was one of the men from the old patriotic military, who in record time in 1991 created the new Ukrainian army and kept the country away from conflicts, until the present time that is. He rose to the rank of lieutenant general,...

The official website of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia had announced that it will be putting forward a motion in the Russian State Duma to relieve Ilya Ponomarev of his duties as an MP. Ponomarev became the only lawmaker out of 446 who voted against ratification of the treaty annexing Crimea. "On April 7th, the faction will introduce a motion before the State Duma to recognize that Ilya Ponomarev had lost the authority of a deputy, because he opposed the interests of the state, blindly obeying the Nazis who want to split the country " – was said in...