#Kremlin drone attack

[blueiscoool]

Kremlin Drone Attack

Russia claims two Ukrainian drones attacked the Kremlin overnight in an attempt to assassinate The Butcher of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

[ivovynckier]

Russia today. After the drone attack on the Kremlin, Vladimir needs to run an errand.

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Last night in Odintsovo near Moscow, a powerful fire. Drone attack suspected, August 10, 2023. Source: IanMatveev

[know-news-is-good-news]

They will get you eventually Vlad ! !

BUT it's NOT the Ukraine ! !

THIS is your own people, and they have had enough ! !

Your time is UP ! !

Vlad in trouble ! !

[telerealrd]

El Kremlin acusa a EE.UU. de intentar atacar al presidente Putin

El Kremlin ha acusado a Estados Unidos de estar detrás de un supuesto ataque con drones contra la residencia del presidente ruso, Vladimir Putin. La acusación se produce menos de 24 horas después de que Moscú informara de que había frustrado un ataque nocturno contra un edificio que es el corazón del gobierno del país y la residencia de Putin. Según el portavoz del Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov,…

[mariacallous]

One of the bleakest places on Earth today is the central processing facility for the remains of dead soldiers in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the logistical hub of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Designed to process hundreds of corpses at a time, this sprawling mega-morgue has been hopelessly overwhelmed for many months. Footage from the inside, posted by witnesses on social media, shows hundreds of bodies in various stages of decomposition and limbs strewn across the corridor floors. In wooden boxes lining the walls from floor to ceiling, row after row after row, are the lucky ones: those whose bodies were recovered from the battlefield, identified, sealed in zinc-lined caskets, and prepared for dispatch to their grieving relatives in the farthest corners of Russia. Many more corpses have been abandoned to rot in Ukrainian fields because evacuating them is impractical under the constant barrage of the defenders’ artillery and drones.

To be sure: These soldiers’ deaths are the necessary consequence of Ukraine’s right to defend itself against an illegal war of conquest. What’s more, many of these ordinary Russian soldiers likely committed despicable brutality and war crimes against Ukrainians, including defenseless civilians. But the horrific rate at which Russians are getting killed at the front—much higher than corresponding Ukrainian losses, although exact numbers are kept secret by both sides—points to two disturbing truths about the Russian way of waging war. First, a cruel disregard for human life extends to Russia’s own forces, which the Kremlin systematically deploys in so-called meat grinder and human-wave attacks. Second, mass death among Russian troops has become part of an increasingly explicit eugenics policy, by which the Kremlin seeks to rid Russia of undesirable elements and reconfigure the Russian population. The eugenics aspect of Russia’s war has long been an open secret, widely discussed on Russian talk shows and social media. Now, a high-ranking Russian politician has made it plain for the first time.

The numbers boggle the mind. With an estimated rate of 1,500 casualties per day, October was the bloodiest month of the war for Russia as President Vladimir Putin throws everything he has into battle. Estimates for total Russian war deaths range from 115,000 to 160,000, more than 10 times Soviet combat deaths in Afghanistan. Total Russian casualties—killed and wounded—are estimated at around 800,000. According to Anastasia Kashevarova, a rabidly pro-war Russian journalist, the average Russian infantry soldier lasts less than one month at the front before being killed. With casualties exceeding Russia’s ability to recruit fresh soldiers, few of the troops receive any serious training before they’re sent to assault the Ukrainian lines.

It’s not just lives that Russia is losing in astonishing numbers—equipment, too, is being lost at a rate far beyond what’s possible to replenish from weapons production or dwindling stocks. According to WarSpotting, an open-source intelligence project that uses video confirmation to track Russian equipment losses, Russia lost more than 500 pieces of heavy equipment in October—including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and aircraft—twice as many as during the Battle of Grozny from 1994 to 1995, whose catastrophic losses in men and equipment demoralized Russian forces and society at the time. Today, some of the largest Russian military storage bases have almost been stripped clear of equipment, with even old Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles dragged to the front.

Russian politicians, pundits, and ordinary citizens, who fantasize publicly about mass murdering Ukrainians, make no secret of the view that their own soldiers’ lives are worth hardly more. The shift to World War II-style meat grinder tactics has been widely and passionately discussed on pro-war Telegram channels since the battle for Bakhmut, which began in the summer of 2022 and lasted almost an entire year. The battle marked a doctrinal shift from the failed concept of battalion tactical groups—composed of some of the most elite and efficient Russian units, such as paratrooper and special forces regiments—to Soviet-style mass frontal assaults.

In Bakhmut, Wagner Group commander Yevgeny Prigozhin introduced what is now the standard Russian tactic of sending human wave after human wave of disposable infantry into the assault until the Ukrainian defenders’ guns jam or run out of bullets. In Wagner’s case, these were mainly convicts recruited from prisons with promises of freedom and mercenaries lured by exorbitant pay. Russia finally won the yearlong fight over the city’s smoldering ruins at the cost of at least 20,000 Wagner mercenaries alone. Later, the meat grinder policy was adopted for the entire Russian army, with each major unit setting up assault groups for that purpose.

It has been a terrifyingly effective tactic, but Russian casualties incurred by it are beyond comparison in recent military history. The battle for the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka alone may have cost around 16,000 Russian lives—and that appears to be a very conservative estimate circulated by Russian pro-war bloggers, who generally have an incentive to downplay their own side’s losses.

But Russian disregard for life is not just a question of battlefield tactics. What stands out is the deliberate cruelty. The Russian military has stunned the world with its wanton brutality toward Ukrainian civilians—including widespread rape, torture, killings, and abductions—and prisoners of war. (The latter are now routinely executed, another in a long list of Russian war crimes.) But the cruelty dispensed by officers on their own subordinates is also shocking. Russian Telegram channels are full of accounts of soldiers tortured for refusing or questioning orders, of seriously wounded troops sent to a certain death in an assault, and of Soviet-style barrier troops behind the front line, whose sole job is to shoot shirkers and deserters—also known as nullification. Suicidal human-wave attacks are both a means and an end: Commanders have reportedly assigned soldiers to these expendable units as a punishment for various disagreements or for the failure to pay a bribe.

Under these circumstances, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many Russian soldiers choose to end their lives. By now, there are hundreds of videos online showing Russian soldiers shooting themselves through the mouth to spare themselves an even grislier death, knowing that there is little hope for medical evacuation on the Russian side.

An even more sinister aspect of Russia’s disregard of the value of life is the increasingly open framing of the war as a national eugenics project. “Spare people” with low “social value��� is how Russian parliamentarian Aleksandr Borodai described his compatriots sent as cannon fodder to Ukraine in a leaked tape, the authenticity of which he later confirmed. Expendable manpower, he explained, can be thrown at Ukraine’s “bravest [and] boldest,” and “exhaust the enemy to the maximum.” Borodai isn’t just anybody: He’s a political consultant from Moscow who declared himself prime minister of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic in Ukraine in 2014, and he’s now a member of the Russian parliament for the ruling United Russia party. Coming from someone this prominent, it is essentially a confirmation of how Russia is running the war.

That the war has changed the composition of the Russian population has long been clear from the incomparably higher rates at which non-Russian ethnic minorities—Buryats, Tatars, Tuvans—are dying in the war. But these are not the only disfavored parts of the Russian population while the Russian leadership shields the politically important populations of Moscow and St. Petersburg, where unrest could endanger the regime and where much of the Russian elite resides. Prisons have been virtually emptied as inmates are sent to the bloodiest sections of the front. And the protection of the major urban populations in European Russia means that the more remote, poorer, and less ethnically Russian regions are bleeding out.

To compensate for the deliberate loss of “expendables” at the front, a crucial part of Moscow’s eugenics program is played by Ukrainians. Several million Ukrainians have been removed from the occupied territories and resettled in Russia, a disproportionate share of them women and children. In their place, Russian settlers are moving in. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of these abducted children are now being Russified to strip them of any Ukrainian identity, a clear echo of the Nazi eugenics policy of shipping blond Polish children back to the Reich to be adopted and turned into Germans. Some of the Ukrainian boys are now old enough to be forcibly conscripted into the Russian army—yet another war crime on an already long list.

Russia still has numerical superiority, but its resources are not infinite. The suicidal Russian strategy of waging war, while effective, is not sustainable in the long term, especially with the Russian economy already showing signs of immense strain.

The fate of Russia’s invasion now effectively hinges on Western willingness to commit to Ukraine’s push for independence from Russia’s neo-imperialist aspirations. U.S. President Joe Biden’s final weeks in office may yet prove to be critical: His decision to grant Ukraine permission to strike key military targets inside parts of Russia with U.S.- and British-supplied weapons has already elicited an angry response from Moscow, even if there is nothing new about Ukraine using Western arms to strike vital targets in what Russia considers its lands, including illegally annexed Crimea. It’s up to the West to help Ukraine make sure that Putin loses his gamble as he throws everything he has against Ukraine before his equipment and trained soldiers run out. Catastrophic human losses won’t deter him, as they are deeply ingrained in Russia’s cruel way of waging war.

[tomorrowusa]

Ukraine is said to have provided intelligence which led to deadly attacks by insurgents on Russian mercenaries in the West African nation of Mali. FYI: Tinzaouaten, the city closest to the attacks in Mali, is 2,440 miles/3,928 km from Ukraine's port city of Odesa.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has claimed it was involved in an ambush that killed fighters from Russia’s Wagner group in the west African nation of Mali, thousands of miles away from the frontline in Ukraine. A Telegram channel linked to the Wagner leadership on Monday admitted the group had suffered heavy losses during fighting in Mali last week. It said Wagner and the Malian armed forces had “fought fierce battles” over a five-day period against a coalition of Tuareg separatist forces and jihadi groups, who had used heavy weapons, drones and suicide bombers. Numerous Wagner fighters, including a commander, Sergei Shevchenko, were killed, the channel said. Andrii Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, said on Monday that “the rebels received necessary information, and not just information, which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals”. Yusov did not say whether Ukrainian military personnel were involved in the fighting or were present in the country. He said the agency “won’t discuss the details at the moment, but there will be more to come”. The Mali government, which has been fighting various insurgencies in the north of the country for more than a decade, requested help from Wagner after a military junta took power in 2020.

The Wagner Group is still around but under new management since Putin killed off its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.

So why is Russia in Africa?

The group is also active across Africa, and continues to be so even after Prigozhin was disgraced following a failed coup attempt last summer. He later died after an explosion onboard his plane, widely believed to have been ordered by the Kremlin, but Wagner’s influence in Africa remains. “For Moscow, the African countries where Wagner is present is just a zone of interest that allows it to get hold of resources – gold, diamonds, gas and oil – and the money goes to finance Russian aggression,” said Serhii Kuzan, director of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center in Kyiv, explaining why Ukraine might want to target Wagner in Africa. He added that the raids had additional benefits for Kyiv: “liquidating” some of the most experienced Wagner fighters and lowering the overall military potential of the group, and also exacting revenge for war crimes in Ukraine. “A significant part of the destroyed fighters got military experience in Ukraine, where they carried out hundreds or thousands of war crimes … these crimes should be punished, and Russian war criminals should know that they will never be safe,” said Kuzan.

Ukrainian intelligence has a long reach and Ukraine has a long memory for war crimes committed by the invaders.

On a linguistic note, GUR should realistically be written HUR. The full name of Ukrainian military intelligence is: Головне Управління Розвідки Міністерства Оборони України (Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine). For short, that's Головне Управління Розвідки.

In Russian, Г is pronounced like the English hard G. In Ukrainian, Г is pronounced like a regular English H. There's a separate letter in Ukrainian for English hard G written like this Ґ. But the Soviet Union tried to suppress this letter because its existence was another reminder that Ukrainian is not Russian. So there's been some lingering alphabetic confusion over the use of this letter. But I promise you that it is preferable to transliterate ГУР as HUR.

[misfitwashere]

Moscow Terror

A Chronology that Might Help Predict

Timothy Snyder

Mar 22, 2024

1. US warns that Russia will invade Ukraine.  General disbelief, daily Russian mockery. (December 3 2021-February 24 2022)

2.  Russia invades Ukraine, kills tens of thousands of people, kidnaps tens of thousands of children, commits other ongoing war crimes (February 24 2022-present)

3.  Russia blames US for Russia's invasion of Ukraine (March 2022-present)

4. US warns of terror attack in Moscow.  Putin denies any risk and mocks the United States. (March 7 and March 19 2024).Since Russia invaded Ukraine, its riot police and security forces have been tasked with terror measures in Ukraine and suppressing dissent in Russia.

5.  Terror attack near Moscow, ISIS takes responsibility, Russia meanwhile kills Ukrainian citizens with drones and missiles as it has for more than two years. (today, March 22 2024)

6.  Russia's security apparatus, focused on bringing carnage to Ukraine, has failed in Moscow.  Russia's leaders, focused on demonizing the US, did not protect Russians.  What next?  Where to direct the blame?

7.  It would not be very surprising if the Kremlin blames Ukraine and the United States for terror in Moscow and uses the Moscow attack to justify continuing and future atrocities in Ukraine.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Rachel O'Donoghue

Two incidents came to light over the past week that should be the final nail in Al Jazeera‘s credibility coffin.

The first was the unmasking of one of the network’s journalists as a Hamas commander.

The IDF revealed evidence that was obtained from a laptop found in Gaza and showed Mohammed Wishah held a senior role in the terrorist group’s anti-tank unit, including photographs of him teaching young jihadis how to fire anti-tank missiles and making incendiary devices.

Unsurprisingly, Wishah’s terrorist background did not preclude him from securing a comfortable reporting job at the Qatari-owned network, which has previously been forced to take down fake anti-Israel stories and stands accused of repeatedly promoting Hamas propaganda.

The second incident involved another Al Jazeera journalist, Ismail Abu Omar, whose leg was amputated after being injured in an Israeli air strike in Rafah.

Around the same time that Al Jazeera was describing the injuries Omar sustained as proof of a “full-fledged crime [to be] added to Israel’s crimes against journalists,” it was revealed that Omar accompanied Hamas terrorists into Israel on the day of the October 7 massacre.

In footage that Omar himself posted online on the day of the attacks, he can be seen inside Kibbutz Nir Oz and even praised the Hamas terrorists carrying out the atrocities, saying: “The friends have progressed, may God bless.”

On October 7, he also boasted that Palestinian children would “play with their heads” in reference to massacred Israeli civilians.

Despite the trend of Al Jazeera employees moonlighting as either Hamas supporters or seasoned Hamas terrorists, which included another two journalists being revealed as terror operatives after their deaths in January, the media continue to ignore the unpleasant truth about Al Jazeera.

Indeed, the very same outlets that quite rightly balk at the idea of trusting media controlled by authoritarian regimes, such as Russia Today or the New China News Agency, seem worryingly comfortable with uncritically regurgitating Al Jazeera’s lies. Worse, they seem to actively cover for the network.

Take The Guardian, for example, and its repeated criticism of Russian state-owned media, which it has accused of being “Vladimir Putin’s fake news factories” and of promoting the “Kremlin message.”

But apparently, such ethical concerns don’t extend to uncritically reprinting the claims of an outlet that is effectively owned by an Islamic regime that is headed by the all-powerful Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

The Guardian failed to do a modicum of journalistic due diligence when it came to reporting Al Jazeera’s absurd claim that Omar was “directly targeted by a missile fired by a drone.”

Did the article state that Omar accompanied terrorists who murdered and raped civilians during the October 7 massacre? No. Did it reveal that he expressed a wish to see Palestinian kids play with the severed heads of Israelis? No. Did it mention that Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari state and closely aligned itself with Hamas? Of course not.

The Guardian journalist who wrote the piece, Peter Beaumont, even had the audacity to lament how “Al Jazeera’s Gaza team has paid a particularly heavy price during the war” while referencing the deaths of Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya and omitting the fact that they were terror operatives.

As for Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed Wishah, whose Instagram page includes photos of him with Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, The Guardian failed to cover his exposure as a Hamas commander at all.

Of course, The Guardian wasn’t alone in not reporting the damning revelations about Al Jazeera.

There was silence among mainstream Western news outlets — from CNN to The Washington Post — when the evidence against Mohammed Wishah emerged. It almost defies belief that not a single story was written about a journalist tasked with reporting the facts out of Gaza who was also a Hamas terrorist.

The Knesset has started advancing a bill that would give the government the power to close the offices of foreign media channels that are found to be likely to harm the security of the state, including, potentially Al Jazeera.

But the foreign press attitude toward Al Jazeera remains stubbornly positive.

How much more evidence of the network’s terror ties does the media need for that to change?

[ketrindoll]

Russian scheduled threats to erradicate London, Europe, and whole Baltic states (reminder that Trump said he'll allow putin to do whatever), have become so pathetic, ruzzian own war propagandists are making fun of it:

[Rough transl.: There's a tradition in our TV: every few years virtually bomb London. There's new scenario, new speakers, but the attitude is old. But interesting graphic's]

First of all, London is the third capital of russian oligarchs. They have all their wives/kids/mistresses/Plan-B homes there. It's never getting destroyed for as long as russia has oligarchs.

But it's funny to see this negativity towards Kremlin propagandists from russia's own war dogs. Of course, they have a reason to think these claims are funny. After all, in 2.5 years ruzzia:

- Failed to bomb Ukrainian leadership and logistics, resorting to terrorism instead

- Failed to achieve full domination of the skies

- The attack pace is so "rapid" they present taking over any village as this huge victory

- Ruzzia's own air defence is so lame they cannot do anything not only about long-range Western missiles, but simple Ukrainian drones

Of course, ruzzians always knew their country is pathetic. It still never stopped them from wanting to erradicate every other nation on Earth to make themselves feel a bit better.

[dzthenerd490]

News Post

Palestine

Dying in ‘Hell’: The fate of Palestinian medics jailed by Israel | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

UK counter-terrorism police arrest 10 Palestine Action activists (newarab.com)

Israeli Attacks Kill 14 in Gaza; Bezalel Smotrich Calls for Palestinian Population to Be Halved  | Democracy Now!

Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza | AP News

Ukraine

Ukraine says Russian attack sets a new record for the number of drones used | AP News

Ukraine’s warriors brace for a Kremlin surge in the south  (economist.com)

Russian deserter reveals war secrets of guarding nuclear base (bbc.com)

‘Worst-case scenario’: Ukraine awaits Trump’s presidency with trepidation | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Sudan

Sudan in danger of becoming a failed state, Jan Egeland warns (bbc.com)

Sudan's Burhan allows UN to use three airports for aid delivery - Sudan Tribune

Major aid scale up by WFP in Sudan as country faces famine (yahoo.com)

U.N. humanitarian chief attends event in Sudan to raise awareness about violence against women | Africanews

Lebanon

LIVE: Israel bombs Lebanon’s Beirut; cabinet discusses possible truce | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Israel cabinet meeting to discuss Lebanon deal postponed: CNN (newarab.com)

Live updates: Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal, war in Lebanon and Gaza | CNN

Syria

(74) Updates LIVE: Israel bombs Lebanon’s Beirut; cabinet discusses possible truce (aljazeera.com)

Can Israeli strikes in Syria undermine Iran-backed militias? (voanews.com)

Surprise Attack On U.S. Base In Syria, Rockets Hit Army Facility During Training Session | Watch (indiatimes.com)

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Details: The ISW states that several indicators suggest that the strike was designed by Russia internally(..)

P.S. Long-term personal experience shows that any information spread by the Russians should be taken as BS at first until the opposite is confirmed. Too many things related to this incident look very strange and illogical. First of all, the information did not appear immediately...in the morning. All signs point to another "Ryazan sugar"...

[liberty1776]

Scott Ritter on the drone attack against the Kremlin

[sprites4ever]

From Putin updating the russian nuclear doctrine (aka, giving himself the right to whatever he wants, whenever he wants):

I would also like to draw your attention to something else in particular. The updated version of the document proposes that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear-weapon state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear-weapon state, should be regarded as a joint attack on the Russian Federation. The conditions for Russia's transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly set out. We will consider such a possibility if we receive reliable information about a massive launch of aerospace attack means and their crossing of our State border. I am referring to strategic and tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft.

SOURCE: Kremlin website http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75182

This is kept vague and as if it were an actual issue russia faces. But given the immense specificness of this scenario, it's clear that the vague wording only exists to justify a scenario that's specifically about them facing the consequences for the war against Ukraine which they started.

After all, equating an attack by a non-nuclear-armed state with a joint one by it and any nuclear-armed ones supporting it is a nonsensical concept which has nothing to do with how war works. Putin just wants to avoid getting hit with missiles from Ukrainian territory as the consequence of hitting Ukraine with missiles from russian territory since day 1 of his bullshit war. Obviously, doing that would not be an escalation on Ukraine's part, and if russia wants to equate Ukraine with its supporters, that logic could be applied to China, Iran and North Korea, too.

The idea that any conventional attack can justify a nuclear response is, of course, also completely false and uniquely russian, as is making clear that you have no no-first-use policy, while officially claiming to have one. This is Orwellian doublespeak and obviously an attempt at clothing blatant aggression as defense. It's not defense when territory you do not own is attacked by its owners, and that attack is not an aggression. It's justice, something the cowards in the Kremlin who hide their children at universities in the oh-so-evil US are deathly afraid of.

It may be the typical russian hypocrisy, self-righteousness, victim complex, rapist method of fusing victim-blaming with threats and cowardly aggression one should be used to by now, but the moral bankruptcy of it does not cease to disgust me. It's really difficult to put my hatred into words. I don't need any propaganda to hate russia, they're doing just fine instilling that feeling in me by themselves via their unending lies, crimes and global terrorism. I never cared much about russia before their invasion in 2022. Now I hate them.

While everyone would, for some reason, prefer to scream about the idiots in Israel and Palestine, this conflict has put all modern political customs and standards of humanity at stake. The aggressor commits war crimes with a frequency which I genuinely haven't seen matched by any power in any war over many decades and routinely threatens to destroy the entire world with nuclear weapons over their victim fighting back. Only NATO members talk about this and treat Ukraine's fight for survival as a side gig. The entire world fails to see the gravity of this, which must stop! They must come together to stop the obvious, literally evil villain, russia!

[alcestas-sloboda]

February 2022: Kyiv in 3 days

May 2023: Ukraine tried to attack Kremlin with drones