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Ukraine's top commander said on Thursday Kyiv had set up a military commandant's office in the occupied part of Russia's Kursk region where he said his forces were still advancing, even as Moscow's troops stepped up its offensives in Ukraine's east. The remarks by Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi were the strongest sign yet that Kyiv's forces plan to dig in after launching a lightning cross-border assault on Russia last week that has opened a new front in the 2-1/2 year-old all-out war. "We are moving forward in Kursk region. A military commandant's office has been created which must ensure order...

THIS is the moment Vladimir Putin's $40 million nuclear-capable Tu-22 bomber jet crashed in Siberia today in a humiliating blow to the despot. The valuable Russian aircraft came down in a fiery blaze after takeoff, marking another embarrassment for Vlad as Ukraine continues its successful invasion of Russia. Witnesses said the Tu-22M3 nuclear bomber - planes used by Putin as a key part of his nuclear arsenal - broke apart in the sky before crashing amid fierce explosions. Dramatic footage showed the moment an enormous fireball filled the sky as the aircraft came down. The crew of four ejected safely...

Russian companies that do business with China have encountered more headwinds in recent days as Chinese banks raised the yuan-ruble exchange rate to capitalize on their neighbor's weakened currency. While the yuan currently buys 12.07 rubles at the Russian central bank's exchange rate, Chinese banks are selling the currency at 13 rubles per yuan, charging a premium over the Russian central bank rate of 12.07 rubles, the Moscow Times reported on Thursday. -snip- Chinese banks are not the first to profit from the ruble's plight. Mongolia and Turkey have for some time converted rubles into yuan several percentage points above...

Ukraine’s surprise invasion of the Russian Kursk region has not left the latter’s rail untouched. The attack led to rail congestion in the area, and now Kursk and surrounding areas are no longer accepting freight trains coming in from Belarus. The Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region has prompted Russia to move soldiers from all over the country to contain the Ukrainian advance, says the Belarusian Railway Workers Association (BelZhD). The inflow of soldiers to the new front by train has overcrowded stations in the region. For that reason, Russian Railways (RZD) says it can no longer accept freight trains...

Footage of Prigozhin shows how the slain leader predicted Ukraine's shock offensive. THE slain chief of the notorious Wagner mercenary group predicted Russia would come under siege from Ukraine before Vlad had him killed. Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin died when his plane was blown out of the sky in August 2023, allegedly on Putin's orders. He led the private Russian military unit that was called in to assist the Kremlin's quest to illegally conquer Ukraine and became increasingly frustrated with how war efforts were organised. Fed up with the Ministry of Defence, Prigozhin eventually threatened a coup against Moscow - a...

Putin has appointed his ex-bodyguard, who is considered a likely successor for the Russian leader, as an 'angel of vengeance' tasked with trying to reclaim the territory seized by Ukraine. Former bodyguard Alexei Dyumin, who once single-handedly scared off a bear from the president's mountain residence, will lead the charge on 'Operation Revenge' to reclaim the 386 square miles of Russian soil now under Ukrainian control. Dyumin, 51, grew up in the Kursk region, where a state of emergency was implemented almost immediately after thousands of Kyiv's troops surged across the border and began seizing territory. Putin has now chosen...

Ukraine’s strike on Russia, the biggest by a foreign force since World War Two, has dramatically changed the narrative around the war. Ukraine claimed to have shot down a Russian fighter jet on Wednesday as Kyiv’s forces escalated the biggest foreign incursion suffered by Russia since the Second World War. Kyiv’s military said its forces destroyed the Russian Su-34 aircraft overnight in the Kursk region while carrying out a combat mission.

UKRAINE has blitzed Putin's forces with massive kamikaze drone and missile strikes overnight as Zelensky has vowed to go "even deeper" into Russia. Some 117 drones targeted at least nine regions across Russia, also hitting two crucial airfields in Mad Vlad's territory. One of them includes the Savasleyka military base in the Nizhny Novgorod, home to lethal hypersonic Kinzhal missiles and MiG-31K aircraft used to bomb Ukraine. An aircraft-type drone was seen in the sky ahead of the strike with a total of ten “arrivals” reported. A video from ASTRA media outlet suggests that there was a direct hit. Footage...

Dozens of systems used by government bodies and IT companies in Russia have reportedly become the targets of Chinese hackers. Moscow-based cybersecurity provider Kaspersky Lab, revealed that the backdoor malware used to gain access to the systems was "GrewApacha," a Trojan used since at least 2021 by the Chinese cyber-espionage group known as APT31 (Advanced Peristent Threat 31). APT31 is believed to have ties to China's civilian spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS). Earlier this year, the United States Justice department indicted several Chinese nationals and one company for allegedly carrying out APT31 operations. "During these attacks, attackers...