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Michael Weiss and Holger Roonemaa Mon, February 20, 2023 at 5:00 PM CST A leaked internal strategy document from Vladimir Putin’s executive office and obtained by Yahoo News lays out a detailed plan on how Russia plans to take full control over neighboring Belarus in the next decade under the pretext of a merger between the two countries. The document outlines in granular detail a creeping annexation by political, economic and military means of an independent but illiberal European nation by Russia, which is an active state of war in its bid to conquer Ukraine through overwhelming force. “Russia’s goals...

To this day, Jake insists his mind was not his own when he set out to kill Dr. Michael Weiss at his office on Nov. 12, 2012. Jacob Nolan interview with "48 Hours" Jake Nolan speaks out to "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant. CBS NEWS Jake Nolan: There's never gonna be a night I don't fall asleep feeling awful for what I've done. Jake Nolan: The knife was in my pocket. And the sledgehammer was over my shoulders … He sees the sledgehammer and charges at me … and I reached for the knife. … Here I am with...

“Early retirement” is a strange way to describe a 44-year-old’s acceptance of a new government role, but for Mikk Marran, Estonia’s spymaster, it feels a lot like that. As of next month he will no longer helm Välisluureamet, the Baltic state’s foreign intelligence service, which, long before Vladimir Putin’s faltering invasion of Ukraine, was at the forefront of assessing the threats and capabilities of a resurgent and revanchist Russia.(snip) According to one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence officer, “Estonia punches far above its weight on Russian affairs. The respect for Marran and his service in the U.S. intelligence community is quite...

An appearance on CNN—which included some pushback against Trump’s reaction to the Orlando massacre—was enough to inspire 72 hours of online abuse. There is a shrinking but still very real possibility that a pumpkin-faced blowhard who lives like a Borgia, talks like a child, and wears a dead Tribble on his head may soon be in possession of our nuclear launch codes. To call this a national embarrassment is to implicitly hold our nation in higher esteem than I’m any longer prepared to do.

The Kremlin isn’t sending just any troops to prop up the Assad regime. It’s dispatching units that spearheaded Russia’s slow-rolling invasion of Ukraine.Reuters confirmed Wednesday what The Daily Beast first reported last week—not only have Russian troops been deployed to Syria but they are indeed taking part in active combat operations, although against which of the manifold enemies of the Assad regime remains unclear.U.S. government sources told the news agency that two tank landing ships, aircraft and naval infantry forces have arrived in Syria in the past 24 hours, with the largest buildup occurring in Latakia, the northwest coastal province...

Putin’s air campaign in Syria is not only supporting Assad, it’s giving cover to fighters from the so-called Islamic State. Last June, the U.S. embassy in Damascus accused Bashar al-Assad’s air force of clearing a path for an ISIS advance on Syrian rebels in the Aleppo town of Azaz. “Reports indicate that the regime is making air strikes in support of [ISIS’s] advance on Aleppo, aiding extremists against Syrian population,” the embassy account tweeted, following up with a broader accusation: “We have long seen that the regime avoids [ISIS] lines, in complete contradiction to the regime’s claims to be fighting...

Moscow will reportedly provide Russian troops in Syria with an advanced antiaircraft missile system as part of its military support for Syrian president Bashar Assad. "This system is the advanced version used by Russia, and it's meant to be operated by Russians in Syria," a Western diplomat who is regularly briefed on US, Israeli, and other intelligence assessments told Reuters. And as The Daily Beast's Michael Weiss points out, any antiaircraft missiles deployed by Russian troops in Syria won't be directed at ISIS, since ISIS has no air force. In fact, none of the rebels do — only government forces...

As bellwethers of liberal demoralization about this election go, I've not yet come across anything so clanging as the following comment from Hannah Rosin, responding to the phenomenon of Sarah Palin: "One of my many depressed Obama-supporting friends suggests a tidy solution: Repeal the 19th Amendment." That would be the one that extends the franchise to women, and the point was driven home by the forum Rosin chose for relaying this morose alternative: the XX Factor feminist blog at Slate. I'll save you the trouble of searching out any black conservative's anguished recommendation that the 15th Amendment be put on...