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Russia faced a major bombardment today as huge explosions ripped through the occupied port of Berdiansk - with Ukraine believed to be making the most of new missiles gifted by Britain. Footage shows the moment facilities at the port are hit with a suspected Storm Shadow missile, Britain's most potent non-nuclear missile which can strike targets from a range of 150 miles. A huge plume of smoke was seen rising from a location in the port area on the Sea of Azov, in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region. Russian state media outlet RT said there had been 'casualties and destruction' from...

On this date in 1962, partisan Gheorghe Arsenescu was put to death at Bucharest’s Jilava Prison. Arsenescu was a leader and co-founder of one of Romania’s several bands of anti-communist resistance units. Arsenescu’s Haiducii Muscelului — the Muscel Outlaws — were a band of 30 to 40 in the Carpathian fooothills who scarcely posed a serious threat to the Romanian state, but who nevertheless managed to elude capture for nine solid years in the 1950’s. (More about the Haiducii in this Romanian pdf.) Arsenescu was finally nabbed in 1960, a few months after his former comrades Toma and Petre Arnautoiu...

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has claimed that nations who are willing “to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus” will be given nuclear weapons, days after confirming the transfer of some tactical nuclear weapons from Moscow to Minsk had begun. Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, made the comments in an on-camera interview released Sunday on the state-run Russia 1 channel. During the interview, Lukashenko said, “no one minds Kazakhstan and other countries having the same close relations that we have with the Russian Federation.” “It’s very simple,” he added. “Join the Union State of Belarus...

Cuban immigrants in Russia are joining the army to fight in Ukraine in exchange for citizenship, a report says. Several Cubans have signed year-long contracts and were sent to the war zone on Wednesday, local news outlet the Ryazan Gazette reported. Those who signed contracts to fight will receive a one-time payment from Russia's federal government equivalent to $2,433 and another $2,500 from the region of Ryazan, along with a monthly salary of $2,545, The New York Post reported. The Russian military has been offering enhanced pay to potential recruits many times the average Russian monthly wage of 63,060 rubles...

At least two people have been killed and 23 injured in a missile strike on a medical clinic in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the regional governor says. Of the 23 injured, 21 are in hospital and three are in a serious condition. Two boys aged three and six were also among the wounded, governor Serhiy Lysak said. Russian strikes on Ukraine have intensified in recent weeks ahead of an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive. Mr Zelensky posted a video of the damaged clinic that showed firefighters at the scene and smoke billowing from the building. "Russian terrorists once again confirm...

The 15-year-old Ukrainian schoolgirl was taken one warm morning last October. Like everyone else in Kherson, a city on the estuary of the Dnipro river in southern Ukraine, Yevheniia's family were still adjusting to life under Russian control. Putin's tanks and troops had poured into the city seven months earlier, soon after the invasion of Ukraine began. Now there were checkpoints, military police, rumours of Russian brutality; of women being raped. Ukraine was fighting to get the city back and there was a constant risk of shelling. Few people went out after 5pm. In the apartment where the teenager lived...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

If you think that the policy towards Russia, which is shaped by the perceptions and beliefs of the Washington status quo, is not seriously screwed up, think again and watch Charles Kupchan, a former Clinton and Obama National Security official and current shill for the Atlantic Council, take you on a bizarre journey worthy of Alice in Wonderland. Kupchan’s views are not unique to him. What he is saying about Russia and Ukraine is mainstream Neo-Con and reflects the views of Biden’s key national security aides and the leaders of the U.S. Senate and House. No amount of facts will...

The real version of the story As the article notes and as others have noted, hohos are using robots to try to extinguish fires and clean up the mess at these kinzhal vs patriot sites since no humans are volunteering to go near the places ("...I got enough health problems without glowing in the dark...").....

Small nuclear explosion, major radioactive poisoning event The only military use for DU is defeating tank armor. That begs a question, what was the point? I haven't read anything about tank battles in country 404 so far, Russians are basically using tanks for mobile medium range artillery. And there is still the possibility of parts of Poland and Germany being poisoned. And, whatever your opinion of hohos might be, the British should know better than to be participating in anything like this.

After 9 months, Bloodbath Bakhmut is falling. Soon, scared, maimed and dying Ukrainian soldiers won’t have to scream in the “Meat Grinder”. Maybe Ukraine is falling. Russia stands on the dead, proud captor of buildings like holes and earth like charcoal. There's the possibility that I'm lying. After all, John Kirby, retired Admiral and ex-spokesperson for the Pentagon, and now spokesperson for the National Security Council, stated on May 2 that: "Russia's attempt at an offensive in the Donbas, largely through Bakhmut, has failed." In the words of the White House, "The National Security Council is the President's principal forum...

After decades meting out sanctions and financial coercion, the US may soon feel its grip on world trade beginning to loosen...Change is good, but dollars are better, a US author of romance novels once wrote. A similarly light-hearted sentiment often inspires discussions about the future role of the US dollar as the world’s leading currency. The consensus view is that the dollar is safe. I think the consensus is wrong.The dollar is the foundation of US global leadership, and the future of the dollar is therefore intricately linked to the debate about geopolitical fragmentation. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da...

When Vladimir Putin takes to the stage on Tuesday to commemorate the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, his speech on Red Square will have been preceded by a turbulent week in which drones attacked the Kremlin and one of his top war leaders threatened mutiny. The dramatic footage early last Wednesday of two drones flying over the walls of the Kremlin, its historical seat of power, exposed vulnerabilities in the heart of the Russian capital, putting Moscow on edge. The authorities have banned the use of drones and started jamming GPS signals, leading to taxis appearing to be in the...

'In the absence of ammunition they're doomed to perish senselessly,' Yevgeny Prigozhin saysYevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Russia's Wagner Group mercenary force, said in a sudden and dramatic announcement on Friday that his forces would pull out of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that they have been trying in vain to capture since last summer. Prigozhin said they would withdraw on May 10 — ending their involvement in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war — because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies. He asked defence chiefs to insert regular army troops in their place. "I declare on behalf...

RUSSIA has deployed its new T-14 Armata ‘robo-tanks’ to the frontline in the Ukraine war ahead of an expected blitz by Kyiv’s forces. The tank has an unmanned turret which is equipped with a powerful gun that has a five-mile range it's been claimed could reduce cities to rubble "in minutes". The Russians also claim it has a special stealth coating to make it invisible to enemy radar. It comes ahead of a widely anticipated Spring counter-offensive by the Ukrainians. The attack is expected to be a key moment in the Ukraine war and experts believe Ukraine could seek to...

The Kremlin is suddenly concerned with saving face ahead of an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive. After spending the last year reassuring Russians that victory is inevitable in the war against Ukraine, the Kremlin is now frantically working to lower expectations—and rolling out a contingency plan to lessen the impact of a humiliating defeat. A new manual prepared by Russia’s presidential administration and distributed to the Kremlin’s army of propagandists contains some surprising instructions: Do not “underestimate” Ukraine’s impending counter-offensive and do not spread the idea that Kyiv is somehow “not ready” for it. That’s according to the independent news outlet Meduza,...

May Day should be a day to honor victims of an ideology that took tens of millions of lives. But we should also be open to alternative dates if they can attract broad enough support.NOTE: This post largely reprints last year's Victims of Communism Day post, with some modifications. Today is May Day. Since 2007, I have advocated using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day. I outlined the rationale for this proposal (which was not my original idea) in my very first post on the subject: May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union...

self explanatory / good stuff on Russian history...

Four oil tanks hit by Ukrainian 'drone strike' at naval port in annexed Crimea Video shows huge fireball raging and Russia says fire will not be out until tonight A huge ball of fire is raging in Crimea after a suspected Ukrainian aerial drone strike hit a major fuel depot in the heart of an annexed naval port Sevastopol today. Footage showed a fireball with huge flames and a mushroom-like black cloud from a major fire triggered by two explosions in Cossack Bay, in the Crimean Peninsula. The blasts came at 4:20am and 4:21am local time (2.20am and 2.21am UK...

A drone strike has caused a massive fire at an oil depot in Russian-controlled Crimea, local officials say. Social-media footage showed flames billowing from the site in Sevastopol, Crimea's main city, early on Saturday. The fire was later put out and no-one was hurt, the Moscow-appointed regional governor said. On Friday Russia launched a wave of air strikes in cities across Ukraine, killing at least 25 people. It was the first such attack in months. The Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, is home to the main naval base for Moscow's Black Sea Fleet. "According to preliminary...