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The car bomb attack on 'Putin's Rasputin' - who Vladimir deemed 'uncontrollable' - has 'all the hallmarks of a Russian GRU execution' because the military spy group 'often include a target's family', an expert has claimed. Yuri Felshtinsky, author of Blowing up Ukraine: The Return of Russian Terror and the Threat of World War III, has claimed the attack on Putin loyalist Alexander Dugin's daughter would have been authorised by the Kremlin. He claimed that Dugin, 60, had a reputation for being 'unruly' and that the Kremlin is 'using Dugin in its own global propaganda war' counting on the fact...

A member of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee warned that bio-weapons are being made that use a target's DNA to only kill that person. Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, US Rep Jason Crow of Colorado warned Americans to not be so cavalier about sharing their DNA with private companies due to the coming of the new type of weapon Earlier this week the Washington Examiner reported on just how easy it could be for privately-owned databases to be used to develop bioweapons such as the ones touted by Crow. The publication explained how DNA belonging to a...

Germany under intense pressure to scuttle the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to bring natural gas from Russia underwater to Germany. That's the assessment of Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The United States behind that pressure. On Friday a White House official told the media that nine thousand US troops were going to be withdrawn from Germany..... A Russian disc jockey arrested in Berlin at the request of the United States...... A Florida judge who has refused to release grand jury records related to the late Jeffrey Epstein has close ties to politicians involved in the investigation of Epstein 15...

Ofcom, Britain's communications watchdog, highlighted seven instances of problematic reporting by the channel. Its handling of the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury played a large part. British communications watchdog Ofcom announced the measure on Friday, after an investigation into RT's coverage of the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. The fine of £200,000 ($250,000, €220,000) comes eight months after Ofcom launched its investigation into RT. Lack of impartiality Ofcom said RT, formerly known as Russia Today, "failed to preserve due impartiality in seven news and current affairs programs...

More than a year ago, in the small British town of Salisbury, agents of the GRU (military intelligence of Russia) poisoned a former Russian double agent and former GRU colonel, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, who came from Moscow to visit her father. (For simplicity, we will use the well established abbreviations of the GRU, KGB, etc., even if their current names are different.) Skripal was recruited in 1995 by Pablo Miller, a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, better known by the acronym "MI6") agent in Madrid. MI6 assigned Skripal his spy nickname: "Forthwith." After a successful espionage service...

A high-ranking Russian law official believed to be the authority behind attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who took part in the notorious Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr during the presidential campaign, has been killed in a mysterious helicopter crash. Deputy prosecutor-general Saak Karapetyan - a long-time ally of President Vladimir Putin - died last night when his AS-350 came down in Kostroma region northeast of Moscow during an unauthorized flight. Karapetyan had been in charge of Russian criminal investigations into the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK, and the deaths of Putin critic...

An online investigations group has published what it says is the real identity of one of the prime suspects in the Salisbury nerve agent attack. Bellingcat has reported that the man who was named as Ruslan Boshirov is actually Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, who they say is a highly decorated officer in the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. The Home Office said it could neither confirm nor deny the reporting about the suspect’s real identity. Scotland Yard, which has already said it believed the two suspects were using aliases, declined to comment.

Moscow issued a stern warning to the US on Friday against ramping up sanctions against Russia, saying the Kremlin will retaliate with economic, political and unspecified “other” measures. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s warning reflects Russian fears over the impact of new restrictions on its economy and assets, including the ruble, which has lost nearly 6 percent of its value this week on sanctions jitters, according to Reuters. In a sign of how seriously Russia is taking the threat, strongman Vladimir Putin discussed what the Kremlin called “possible new unfriendly steps by Washington” with members of his Security Council. They said...

The Trump administration is hitting Russia with new sanctions punishing President Vladimir Putin's government for using a chemical weapon against an ex-spy in Britain, U.S. officials told NBC News Wednesday. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed off on a determination that Russia violated international law by poisoning the former spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in March, officials said, a decision that was announced Wednesday afternoon by State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert. Although the U.S. joined European countries in publicly blaming Moscow within days of the attack, the Trump administration had never issued the formal determination that triggers automatic sanctions...

"A man and a woman found unconscious in Wiltshire were poisoned by Novichok-the same nerve agent that poisoned ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal, police say" BBC News story published at around 6pm Eastern-2300 British Summer Time 7/4/2018 Last Saturday in Amesbury, England Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess became ill and went unconscious. Soon workers in hazmat suits were in the area. At first police thought it might be a drug related incident. First media reports appeared this morning with the words "mysterious substance" attached to what caused the pair to go unconscious. But late tonight in the UK "Novichok" was identified...

A man and a woman found unconscious in Wiltshire were poisoned by Novichok, the same nerve agent as ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal, police say. The couple, believed to be Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, are in a critical condition having been found unconscious at a house on Saturday. Police say no one else has presented the same symptoms. There was "nothing in their background" to suggest the pair were targeted, the Met Police said.... Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said it could not be confirmed whether the nerve agent came from the same batch that Mr. Skripal, and his...

Moscow [Russia], Apr. 15 (ANI): Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed on Saturday that the toxin used to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, was BZ toxin, as confirmed by a Swiss laboratory. "Based on the results of the examination, traces of the toxic chemical BZ and its precursors, related to chemical weapons of the second category in accordance with the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, were found in the samples. BZ is a nerve agent temporarily disabling a person. The effect is achieved within 30-50 minutes and lasts up to four days," said...

The international chemical weapons watchdog has backed Britain’s findings on the identity of the chemical used in the Salisbury nerve agent attack. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said an analysis of samples taken from the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia, and Det Sgt Nick Bailey confirmed the assessment of the UK, which has said that the three were affected by novichok, a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia. The executive summary released by the OPCW does not mention novichok by name, but states: “The results of the analysis by the OPCW designated laboratories...

LONDON — British officials investigating the poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian double agent, believe it is likely that an assassin smeared a nerve agent on the door handle at his home. This operation is seen as so risky and sensitive that it is unlikely to have been undertaken without approval from the Kremlin, according to officials who have been briefed on the early findings of the inquiry.

Israel kicked out zero Russian diplomats. Jerusalem’s desire to stay in Moscow’s good graces side is understandable. For a start, many Israeli citizens have deep roots in Russia. More importantly, the government of Vladimir Putin has become a major player in regional affairs, having boots on the ground — and jets in the air — only a few miles from Israel’s borders in Syria. But Israel’s neutrality is being tested by the West’s harsh response to the poisoning of ex-Russian double spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia earlier this month, which much of the world blames Russia for. The...

Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian exile who was a close friend of a noted critic of President Vladimir Putin, has died from an "unexplained" cause in London, police say. The Metropolitan Police says that its counterterrorism unit is handling the case "because of associations that the man is believed to have had." Glushkov, 68, was a close friend of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a prominent critic of the Kremlin who was found dead in 2013. At the time, an inquiry found he had hanged himself — but Glushkov publicly disputed the idea that his friend and former business ally would have...