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A team of vigilante hackers carrying out cyber-attacks against Russia has been sent awards of gratitude by Ukraine's military. The team, One Fist*, has stolen data from Russian military firms and hacked cameras to spy on troops. The certificates are a controversial sign of how modern warfare is shifting. [excerpt] *One Fist is made up of hackers from eight different countries including the UK, US and Poland.

Letter to Congress from American Veteran in Ukraine Jake Broe [I am a United States Air Force veteran who served as a Nuclear and Missile Operations Officer (13N). 437K subscribers 2-24-2024 17:00 Minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg49VcsWvd8 Excerpt: "Jake is sharing an opinion piece from an American Service veteran currently in Ukraine. An American Veteran plea arm Ukraine or Surrender Freedom. This man's name is John Roberts call sign name is Jackie Not everyone has and uses social media. Not everyone wants to be on camera. So today, I'm going to use my platform and my voice to share his message. This is...

Two members of Congress who were U.S. Military Academy classmates and later reconnected on Capitol Hill are looking to provide avenues for immigrants to gain citizenship while also building up recruitment for the military... “The legislation addresses two challenges facing the United States: an influx of migrants looking to work, build a better life for their families, and contribute to our country, as well as a recruitment crisis within the ranks of our Armed Forces,” according to a release first shared with the Washington Examiner. Ryan said in a statement on the Courage to Serve Act that he and James...

Ukraine will change its citizenship law to allow foreign volunteer fighters to become Ukrainians, as well as “all ethnic Ukrainians” around the world to get passports, no matter how many generations different, the President has said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a raft of new laws he had submitted to the national parliament (Verkhovna Rada) on Monday in a speech marking the Ukrainian Day of National Unity, an annual celebration of the short-lived 1917-era Ukrainian People’s Republic. Among the announcements are a serious liberalisation of Ukrainian citizenship law, allowing dual citizens for the first time and opening up passports to...

"Ukrainian soldiers shoot their own foreign colleagues: - During an argument between Ukrainian soldiers and foreign mercenaries in the Ukrainian army the go-pro camera of one of them caught the first ones shooting and killing at close range English speaking militants. It has been reported before (https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses/34827) that nationalist units act as barrier detachments to prevent conscripts from surrendering or leaving their positions, in the video the English speaking troops are ordering Ukrainians to go back to their lines when they are shoot by them. - I would say in this case the foreign mercenaries are the ones keeping the...

Women have rarely taken frontline fighting roles within the Ukraine war until now. A Russian mercenary group is attempting to recruit women for combat roles in Ukraine, according to the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). In its daily intelligence briefing for Monday, the MoD said that Redut - a state-backed private military company - is appealing for women to work as snipers and drone operators in its Borz Battalion. Redut - formerly known as Shield - has links to the GRU, Russia's foreign intelligence agency. It is part of a group of mercenary forces that protect commercial operations of Russian...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of the top commanders of the Wagner military contractor to take charge of “volunteer units” fighting in Ukraine, signaling the Kremlin’s effort to keep using the mercenaries after the death of their chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin. In remarks released by the Kremlin on Friday, Putin told Andrei Troshev that his task is to “deal with forming volunteer units that could perform various combat tasks, primarily in the zone of the special military operation” — a term the Kremlin uses for its war in Ukraine. Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was also present at the...

The Cuban government has exposed a Russian trafficking operation used to lure Cubans into the war against Ukraine, Cuban authorities announced Monday. “The Ministry of the Interior has detected and is working to neutralize and dismantle a human trafficking network operating from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens living there, and even some from Cuba, into the military forces participating in war operations in Ukraine,” the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday. The authorities are taking legal actions against the traffickers, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.

A Wagner mercenary fighting in Ukraine had only a 1-in-5 chance of making it through unscathed, according to the latest figures. The unverified numbers, posted on Telegram by several Wagner-affiliated channels, claim that in all operations from the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion up until the “capture of Bakhmut” on May 20: · Wagner had 78,000 thousand fighters in total. · 49,000 of these were convicts. · 22,000 were killed. · 40,000 wounded This leave just 16,000 that made it through the fighting without being killed or injured. The figures appear to have been released in response to Russian Ministry...

Breaking news on the crisis in Niger; a PMC Wagner (Russian-language site at link) source has stated: A decision was made to deploy combat troops of the Wagner PMC in & around the capital of Niger, in light of current security situation & foreign threats.PMC Wagner, also known as the Wagner Group, is a Russian state-funded military group controlled by Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, and technically operates outside Russian law, which prohibits private military groups.PMC Wagner is also the group implicated in an aborted coup attempt in Russia last June, which led to the arrest of Russian General Sergei Surovikin....

...The new study supports the results of an earlier chemical analysis of the soldiers' teeth. Published last year... the paper found that roughly two-thirds of soldiers who died during the 480 battle were not of Greek origin and that one-fourth of troops who died in 409 were not local to the area...That’s likely because paying soldiers to fight did not fit the prevailing narrative of "heroic Greek armies of citizens and the armored spearmen known as hoplites" rising up to defend Himera that Greek writers wanted to portray, study co-author David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University, tells the New...

German volunteers are fighting in Ukraine. Most of them, for the Russian invaders Germany’s Federal Interior Ministry has confirmed that dozens of German volunteers are fighting in the war in Ukraine, “Welt am Sonntag” reported on Saturday. In reality, their number may be higher, but data in report only pertains to individuals linked to political extremism. German security services have records of 61 people “with links to extremism or politically motivated crimes” departing from Germany, of which 39 people have left the country “with the intention of participating in hostilities.” Of these, 27 are fighting on the side of Russia...

Time may be running out for the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group. Most of the mercenaries fighting for Wagner are about to go home, and what fighters do remain could soon be cut off from the rest of Russia’s armed forces.Last fall, Wagner recruited heavily in Russian prisons to bolster its ranks. Wagner fighters were credited with taking Soledar and are now the tip of the spear in Russia’s attack on the city of Bakhmut.President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Ukrainian soldiers at front-line positions near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast on March 22, according to the President's Office. During his...

His private army is pushing hard to give Russia a battlefield win in Ukraine, but mounting evidence suggests the Kremlin has moved to curb what it sees as the excessive political clout of Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary group. Prigozhin, a 61-year-old ex-convict, has grabbed headlines in recent months over his bloody role in Ukraine and is sometimes portrayed in the West as a real-life James Bond villain. Shaven-headed and fond of coarse language, he has made a splash in Russian-language media too where he has revelled in being sanctioned by the West, publicly insulted Russia's top military...

Humanitarian worker and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Pete Reed was killed while aiding civilians in Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Thursday, according to his family and two medical aid groups he worked with. Reed, who served two deployments as a Marine rifleman in Afghanistan, founded the nonprofit Global Response Medicine in 2017. In a statement, the organization said, "Pete was the bedrock of GRM, serving as Board President for 4 years. In January, Pete stepped away from GRM to work with Global Outreach Doctors on their Ukraine mission and was killed while rendering aid." Andrew Lustig, the founder and president of Global...

Southwest of the city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers Andriy and Borisych live in a candle-lit bunker cut into the frozen earth. For several weeks they have been confronting hundreds of fighters belonging to the Russian private military contractor Wagner throwing themselves against Ukrainian defenses. Disguised in a balaclava, Andriy recounts one seemingly endless firefight when they came under attack by a flood of Wagner fighters. “We were fighting for about 10 hours in a row. And it wasn’t like just waves, it was uninterrupted. So it was just like they didn’t stop coming.” Their AK-47 rifles became so hot from...

A former American Navy SEAL was killed this week during Russia’s assault on eastern Ukraine while fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, a Navy official tells TIME.Daniel Swift, a Navy Special Warfare Operator First Class who had gone AWOL, died Jan. 18 after suffering injuries with a unit under attack by Russia, the official said.

The Iranian government is stepping up its efforts to eliminate the opponents of the regime who have fled the country. The Washington Post reports that the Iranians are offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to mercenaries...

More and more North Korean construction workers deployed to Russia are escaping from their jobs after hearing they are to be sent to Russian-controlled areas in Ukraine, sources in Russia told RFA. The cash-strapped North Korean government sends legions of workers to Russia to earn desperately needed foreign currency. Workers forward the lion’s share of their salaries to the government, but what they get to keep is greater than what they could earn doing similar work back home. But now that there is demand for construction in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, increasing numbers of North Korean construction workers...

Wagner-Line: How useful is Russia's Defensive construction?