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Voting for membership in the Russian Federation has started in four oblast of Ukraine:Russian proxy officials in four regions — Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizka in the south — earlier this week announced plans to hold referendums over four days beginning on Friday. Russia controls nearly all of two of the four regions, Luhansk and Kherson, but only a fraction of the other two, Zaporizka and Donetsk. Ukrainian officials have dismissed the voting as grotesque theater — staging polls in cities laid to waste by Russian forces and abandoned by most residents.President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked...

Enjoy this brief, 3.5 min Freedom YTReferendum in Donbass with huge participation of local residents

Moscow’s already-eroding influence in Central Asia is set to decline even more rapidly. Vladimir Putin’s stature shrank in Samarkand. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan last week, Russia’s beleaguered leader essentially apologized to his Chinese counterpart, faced verbal reprimands from India’s Prime Minister, and waited uncomfortably for the Kyrgyz President to arrive late to a bilateral meeting. The SCO summit provided visual, real-time evidence of Russia’s diminished standing in Central Asia, which has faded due to the Kremlin’s foolish and poorly executed invasion of Ukraine. While Moscow’s already-eroding influence in Central Asia is set to decline even...

Anyone who listened to Vladimir Putin’s TV broadcast to his nation on September 21 had to be shocked by the Russian leader’s tone, incoherence and threat. US President Joe Biden, in a speech to the UN General Assembly, only made matters worse, not better, by putting all of the burden unequivocally on Putin’s head. There are many impacts from these events, including the bitter possibility of a wider war that will spill over into Europe. Both Biden and Putin seem to think they can play this kind of poker. Not only will they both lose, but the world will be...

section class="post-body"> Wednesday, September 21, 2022, Ukrainian authorities announced they had secured the release of 215 prisoners of war, including the commanders of the Azov Battalion defenders of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol. They entered captivity, based on a false promise by the Russian Army of rapid exchange when Mariupol finally surrendered (Mariupol Defenders Reject Russian Demand for Surrender Setting up the Largest Siege of a City Since WWII and Mariupol Surrenders to the Russian Army After Epic 82-Day Siege). In return, Ukraine released 55 Russians. The description of them is a little cagey, indicating that some...

Alexander Avilov / Moskva News Agency Thousands of conscription-age Russian men appeared to be attempting to flee the country Wednesday as others planned how to avoid being sent to the front after President Vladimir Putin declared a partial military mobilization for the war in Ukraine. “I don't want to be cannon fodder,” one 30-year-old Muscovite who asked for anonymity to speak freely told The Moscow Times. The most obvious way for men to avoid conscription is to leave the country and Wednesday’s direct flights from Russia to Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan — nearby countries that allow Russians to enter...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v1_39yAQkI The Duran Russian economy strengthens. EU economies in tatters Alex: All right, Alexander, let's take a look at the Russian economy. We haven't done an update in regards to the Russian economy for a while now. And my question to you is has it collapsed yet? Has the Russian economy collapsed as we have been hearing? Ursula von der leyen in her State of the Union address, the EU State of the Union address thing that they do. She said, and she actually said this, that the Russians are removing chips from their dishwashers and using them in military...

Protests have broken out in parts of Russia following President Vladimir Putin's announcement that he was calling up reservists in an escalation of the war in Ukraine, according to reports. According to Latvian news website Meduza, authorities have begun to confront protests that have erupted in Russian cities. The Avtozak LIVE Telegram channel has shared images of some of the protesters and signs saying "No mobilization" Other signs have used a play on words to turn "no war, no mobilization" to "no war, no grave-ization." In Irkutsk, according to the Irkutsk Anarchist Telegram channel, authorities have already dispersed rallies and...

The imprisoned Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny has slammed Vladimir Putin and an opposition group has called for nationwide protests after the Russian leader ordered a military mobilization amid the country's recent military losses in Ukraine during a Ukrainian military counteroffensive. Putin, in a televised address to the nation aired earlier on September 21, also warned the West that he isn't bluffing over using all the means at his disposal to protect Russia's territory. Navalny said Putin was sending more Russians to their death for a failing war in a video message recorded from prison and released on social media...

Russian airlines have stopped selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65 unless they can provide evidence of approval to travel from the Ministry of Defense. All flights from Russia to available foreign destinations were sold out Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin declared a “partial” mobilization of the country’s 25 million reservists. Flights from Moscow to the capitals of Georgia, Turkey and Armenia — which do not require visas for Russians — for Sept. 21 were unavailable within minutes of Putin’s announcement, according to Russia’s top travel planning website aviasales.ru. By noon Moscow time, direct flights from Moscow to...

Biden’s speech at the UN this morning will mark the first time in history an American president was translated to ENGLISH. ...

Ankara will not account for talks it held during the recent SCO summit, the Turkish president has saidTurkey has no obligation to report to the European Union after it took part in a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. Earlier, the Turkish leader revealed that Ankara is seeking to join the bloc, which includes Russia and China...."The European Union would keep us out for 52 years, it wouldn’t let us near, and then they would say, ‘Why did he talk with this country, or that country?’" he said, referring to the fact...

America will retaliate with 'a devastating strike' against Russia's military if Vladimir Putin uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the United States Army's former European commander has warned. Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges today said any response by America 'may not be nuclear' but warned that if Putin were to use nukes in Ukraine that the US could look to 'destroy the Black Sea Fleet or destroy Russian bases in Crimea'. His comments come after the Russian premier sent shockwaves around the world, as he announced the 'partial mobilization' of his reserve military forces to continue his murderous invasion of Ukraine....

Irina Yarovaya emphasized that the President's decision to conduct a special military operation made it possible “to suspend the Pentagon's dangerous military-biological activities on the territory of Ukraine.” She recalled that for the effective work of the Commission, there were created four working groups: on medicine, law, security, information and a scientific advisory council, that would help to discuss important issues in various formats with experts, interested ministries and departments and analyze documents and materials. “I want to present to you the materials that have already been studied by the Commission. These are documents that we had analyzed in the...

Multiple pro-Moscow officials in Ukraine on Tuesday announced their intent to stage referendums on joining Russia, including the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin, as well as the Russia-installed official over the southern Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo. “I think that people have long been waiting for a referendum here and it will probably be a political move that will help ensure the safety of civilians,” Pushillin said Tuesday. ...

Vladimir Putin today made a speech announcing that the conflict in Ukraine would be escalated, resulting in citizens attempting to leave the country. In Putin's speech, he said there would be a partial mobilization of the military. Reservists and ex-military personnel with "certain military specialties and relevant experience" will be subject to conscription, he said. Following this, according to the Russian online newspaper Lenta, flights to Armenia, Turkey and Georgia sold out. "All tickets for direct flights to Istanbul and Yerevan were sold out in a few minutes after Putin's address," the publication's Twitter page wrote in a caption. It...

LONDON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Russia will draft 300,000 reservists to support its military campaign in Ukraine, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Wednesday in televised remarks.In Moscow's first update on casualty numbers in almost six months, Shoigu said 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict.President Vladimir Putin had ordered Russia's first mobilisation since World War Two in an early-morning television address, saying the additional manpower was needed to win a war against not only Ukraine but also its Western backers. read more

Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Wednesday, stressing China's military readiness after the Army ''fully implemented the strategy of reforming and strengthening the military','' as reported by CCTV.The media wrote that Xi said the country should ''grasp the new situation and [...] focus on preparing for war,'' without providing further details on what conflict he referred to.Beijing and Moscow recently underwent joint military exercise, however, the situation around Taiwan is also becoming more intense, with the Taiwan's Defense Ministry today stating that 12 Chinese aircraft crossed the median line of the...

Russia’s State Duma stated that enacted "military" laws do not mean the announcement of a general mobilization. It was stated in "Parlament newspaper" by Andriy Kartapolov - Head of the State Duma Defense Committee and one of the authors of the amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation introducing the concepts of "mobilization," "martial law" and "wartime", informs Censor.NЕТ. "There will be no general mobilization. The president has said this more than once, and directly says it through the mouth of his press secretary Dmitry Peskov and many other politicians at the federal level. "The law" does not...

Many have noted the suspicious and very convenient timing regarding Azerbaijan-Armenia hostilities which serve as an additional distraction for Russia amid its special military operation in Ukraine and its ongoing operations in Syria. In addition to a recent visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Armenia, anti-CSTO protests promoted by US government-funded media organizations in Armenia point toward events being much more than convenient timing and instead similar to US-engineered unrest seen in Ukraine in 2014.