Russia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Blinken accuses RT of being worldwide Kremlin intelligence network

      by

      The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced new sanctions against the Russian state-backed media company RT, formerly known as Russia Today, after new information gleaned from the outfit’s employees showed it was “functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus”.The Russian government in 2023 established a new unit in RT with “cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence”, Blinken claimed, with the goal of spreading Russian influence in countries around the world through information operations, covert influence and military procurement.“Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world,” Blinken said. “Russian weaponization of disinformation to subvert and polarize free and open societies extends to every part of the world.”The US treasury would sanction three entities and two individuals tied to Rossiya Segodnya, the Russian state media company, Blinken said. The decision came after the announcement earlier this month that RT had funneled nearly $10m to conservative US influencers through a local company to produce videos meant to influence the outcome of the American presidential election in November.Speaking to reporters from the state department on Friday, Blinken accused RT of crowdfunding weapons and equipment for Russian soldiers in Ukraine, including sniper rifles, weapon sights, body armor, night-vision equipment, drones, radio equipment and diesel generators. Some of the equipment, including the recon drones, could be sourced from China, he said.“While the crowdfunding campaign is out in the open, what’s hidden is that this program is administered by the leaders of RT,” Blinken said. They included the RT head, Margarita Simonyan, who was among nine employees of the company targeted with a visa ban earlier this month.Blinken also detailed how the organisation had targeted countries in Europe, Africa and North and South America. In particular, he said that RT leadership had coordinated directly with the Kremlin to target the October 2024 elections in Moldova, a former-Soviet state in Europe where Russia has been accused of waging a hybrid war to exert greater influence. In particular, he said, RT’s leadership had “attempted to foment unrest in Moldova, likely with the specific aim of causing protests to turn violent”.“RT is aware of and prepared to assist Russia’s plans to incite protests should the election not result in a Russia-preferred candidate winning the presidency,” Blinken said.As a result of RT’s efforts to “weaponise disinformation”, Blinken said, the US, UK and Canada would launch a “joint diplomatic campaign … to rally allies and partners around the world to join us in addressing the threat posed by RT and other machinery of Russian disinformation and covert influence”. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Russian Forces Are Stepping Up Attacks on Pokrovsk, Ukraine Says

      by

      Bombardments are increasing in and around Pokrovsk, Ukrainian officials said, with water supplies now cut and a road overpass destroyed.Stepped-up Russian bombardments in and around Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine cut off water supplies and destroyed a road overpass that blocked a key route out of the strategic city, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday, as conditions deteriorated for civilians.Russian troops are pressing ahead with an offensive and are now on the city’s doorstep, about five miles away, officials said, renewing calls for all residents to evacuate. Those who remain must rely on water from wells dug near apartment blocks, according to residents. Already, much of the city is without natural gas or electricity.“The situation is dire and won’t improve anytime soon,” Vadym Filashkin, the head of the military administration for the Donetsk region, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app of the loss of water in Pokrovsk. “Leaving is the only smart option,” he added.The city is the focus of a monthslong Russian offensive that has not let up despite a risky move by Ukraine in August to divert forces by invading the Kursk region of Russia.Ukrainian troops are now also facing a counterattack toward their positions in Kursk, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Thursday. That statement came after posts on social media by Russian military bloggers and commentary by analysts that Ukraine had lost control of several villages in recent fighting.“Russia began counteroffensive activities,” Mr. Zelensky said, according to the Interfax-Ukraine media outlet.Ukrainian soldiers unloading artillery shells brought by their battalion commander to their position in the Pokrovsk region on Tuesday.Nicole Tung for The New York TimesInside Ukraine, Pokrovsk looks set for a similar grim fate experienced by other cities in the eastern Donbas region, like Sievierodonetsk and Bakhmut, as they came within range of Russian artillery or rockets that hit key infrastructure.In those cities, the lights blinked out, water taps ran dry and most people of means fled, leaving a small number of citizens, many of them older people who took shelter in basements as frequent shelling reduced buildings around them to ruins.Over the summer, the Russian Air Force began hitting Pokrovsk with glide bombs, which are far more destructive than ground-based artillery since they can carry far higher loads of explosives.In an interview last month, the city’s military administrator, Serhiy Dobryak, said he expected bombing to target infrastructure first and then residential areas as the Russian army closed in on the city.The Ukrainian military has prepared for urban combat in Pokrovsk, setting up concrete pillboxes on some roadsides. Russia’s offensive over the past about 10 days had concentrated on rural areas south of the city, but Pokrovsk remains at risk.Ukraine has halted daily evacuation trains from the city’s train station, in a further sign of unraveling security in the city.A bombardment overnight led to the collapse of an overpass.Civilians are still able to evacuate by car or bus using side roads, but the loss of water and destruction of bridges heralded a new phase of worsening conditions in Pokrovsk, Ukrainian officials said.Maria Varenikova More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Donald Trump a de facto Russian asset, FBI official he fired suggests

      by

      Donald Trump can be seen as a Russian asset, though not in the traditional sense of an active agent or a recruited resource, an ex-FBI deputy director who worked under the former US president said.Asked on a podcast if he thought it possible Trump was a Russian asset, Andrew McCabe, who Trump fired as FBI deputy director in 2018, said: “I do, I do.”He added: “I don’t know that I would characterize it as [an] active, recruited, knowing asset in the way that people in the intelligence community think of that term. But I do think that Donald Trump has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States, and I think his approach to interacting with Vladimir Putin, be it phone calls, face-to-face meetings, the things that he has said in public about Putin, all raise significant questions.”McCabe was speaking to the One Decision podcast, co-hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, the British intelligence service.The conversation, in which McCabe also questioned Trump’s attitude to supporting Ukraine and Nato in the face of Russian aggression, was recorded before the debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, in which Trump made more controversial comments.Claiming Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had he been president, Trump would not say a Ukrainian victory was in US interests.“I think it’s in the US’s best interest to get this war finished and just get it done,” he said. “Negotiate a deal.”Claiming to have good relationships with Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, Trump falsely said his opponent, Kamala Harris, failed to avert war through personal talks.The vice-president countered that she had helped “preserve the ability of Zelenskiy and the Ukrainians to fight for their independence. Otherwise, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.”In one of the most memorable lines of the night, Harris added: “And why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch.”The candidates were not asked about recent indictments in which the Department of Justice said pro-Trump influencers were paid to advance pro-Russia talking points.McCabe was part of FBI leadership, briefly as acting director, during investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump and Moscow. Trump fired McCabe in March 2018, two days before he was due to retire. McCabe was then the subject of a criminal investigation, for allegedly lying about a media leak. The investigation was dropped in 2020. In October 2021, McCabe settled a lawsuit against the justice department. Having written The Threat, a bestselling memoir, he is now an academic and commentator.Speaking to One Decision, McCabe said: “You have to have some very serious questions about, why is it that Donald Trump … has this fawning sort of admiration for Vladimir Putin in a way that no other American president, Republican or Democrat, ever has.“It may just be from a fundamental misunderstanding of this problem set that’s always a problem. That’s always a possibility. And I guess the other end of that spectrum would be that there is some kind of relationship or a desire for a relationship of some sort, be it economic or business oriented, what have you.“I think those are possibilities. None of them have been proven. But as an intelligence officer, those are the things that you think about.”Saying he had “very serious concerns” about the prospect of a second Trump term, McCabe said he would always be concerned about Russia’s ability to interfere in US affairs.He said: “Their desire to kind of wreak havoc or mischief in our political system is something that’s been going on for years, decades and decades and decades.“Their interest in just simply sowing chaos and division and polarization. If they can do that, it’s a win. If they can actually hurt a candidate they don’t like, or help one that they do like, that’s an even bigger win.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Debate Puts Trump’s Affinity for Putin Back in the Spotlight

      by

      The former president’s refusal to back Ukraine’s war effort showed the likely limits of U.S. support for Kyiv if he returns to the White House.Donald J. Trump’s refusal to say that he hopes Ukraine will win its war against Russia has cast a spotlight on what promises to be an abrupt U.S. policy shift toward the conflict — and Washington’s relations with Moscow — if Mr. Trump returns to the White House.Twice Mr. Trump was asked directly at the debate on Tuesday night whether he hoped for Ukraine’s victory, and both times he insisted that his main goal was for the war to end quickly. “I think it’s in the U.S.’s best interest to get this war finished and just get it done, negotiate a deal, because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed,” he said.The former president went on to suggest that he would leverage his friendly relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, underscoring clear signs that he intends to reverse President Biden’s confrontational relationship with Russia.Mr. Trump’s answers “should tell people all they need to know — which is that if Trump gets elected and gets involved, Ukraine’s going to be the loser and Russia’s going to be the winner,” said John R. Bolton, who served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. Mr. Bolton has become a vocal critic of the former president, who fired him after repeated policy disagreements.Mr. Trump offered little detail on how he would negotiate a rapid end to the Ukraine war, saying only that he would speak to both Mr. Putin and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to strike a deal even before he was inaugurated in January.That is a seemingly impossible goal. Mr. Zelensky has ruled out any settlement with Russia that does not restore his country’s original borders, while Mr. Putin seems determined to conquer even more of Ukraine than the roughly one-fifth of its territory that his army now occupies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      North Korean Missiles Rain Down on Ukraine Despite Sanctions

      by

      Russia has received new shipments of Hwasong-11 short-range ballistic missiles, according to a new report.North Korea has continued to supply advanced short-range ballistic missiles to Russia in defiance of sanctions meant to prevent Pyongyang from developing such weapons and Moscow from importing them, according to a report by a weapons research group.Remnants of four of the missiles, which are called Hwasong-11, were examined in Kyiv on Sept. 3 by investigators from Conflict Armament Research, an independent group based in Britain that identifies and tracks weapons and ammunition used in wars around the world.That team decoded production markings on several parts from each missile collected by Ukrainian authorities.A Hwasong-11 missile used in an Aug. 18 attack on Kyiv had markings showing that it was made this year. Internal parts from three others, which were used in attacks in July and August, lacked markings that would indicate when they were manufactured.The researchers released those findings in a report on Wednesday.In early January, the White House accused North Korea of providing ballistic missiles to Russia, but subsequent shipments had not been previously reported.The Hwasong-11 missile has a range of about 430 miles and can be fitted with nuclear or conventional warheads, according to a U.S. Army report. It is visually similar to the Russian Iskander short-range ballistic missile and may have been made with foreign assistance, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Ukraine’s Top Diplomat, Dmytro Kuleba, Offers His Resignation, Official Says

      by

      When Russian forces rolled across the border into Ukraine at the start of their full-scale invasion in February 2022, Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, compared the assault to Nazi Germany’s in World War II. “Ukraine defeated that evil and will defeat this one,” Mr. Kuleba tweeted. Then he spelled out the country’s mission: “Stop Putin.”That remained Mr. Kuleba’s central message for 30 months as he rallied wartime international support for Ukraine, courting allies old and new and becoming one of the most recognizable faces representing Kyiv’s cause.Mr. Kuleba was the most senior of the cabinet officials who Ukraine’s parliament speaker said had offered to resign on Wednesday. It appeared to be the largest reshuffling of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s cabinet since the start of the war, a move Mr. Zelensky described as necessary to “achieve all the results we need.” Mr. Kuleba did not comment publicly on the matter.As Ukraine’s top diplomat, Mr. Kuleba sought to drum up both military and political support. He was a forceful advocate in the monthslong effort — eventually successful — to convince the United States and Germany to supply Ukraine with the Patriot air-defense system in order to protect against Russian missile attacks.“Ukraine is currently the only country in the world that is subject to ballistic missile attacks almost every day,” he said during a news briefing in March. “Patriots should be deployed here, in Ukraine, to protect real human lives, and not to remain in places where the missile threat is zero.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      As Ukraine Mourns a Pilot’s Death, Jet’s Crash Is Still a Mystery

      by

      In a reversal, two senior U.S. military officials say the cause of the F-16’s crash was probably not friendly fire.As hundreds of Russian missiles and drones streaked across Ukraine on Monday, the Ukrainian fighter pilot known as Moonfish was exactly where he had said he always wanted to be: in the cockpit of an F-16 giving chase.“The F-16 is a Swiss Army knife,” the pilot, Lt. Col. Oleksiy Mes, told reporters while training on the warplane last fall. “It’s a very good weapon that can carry out any mission.”Colonel Mes helped lead Ukraine’s intense lobbying effort to secure the F-16 fighter jets, a half-dozen of which joined the fight against Russia earlier this month. And he was among the dozen or so pilots trained to fly the sophisticated warplane in combat.After shooting down three Russian cruise missiles and one attack drone in Monday’s assault, he was racing to intercept yet another target when ground control lost communication with his aircraft, Ukrainian Air Force officials said.“The plane crashed, the pilot died,” the Ukrainian military said in a statement.The death of a widely celebrated pilot and the loss of one of the long-coveted fighter jets so soon after their deployment cast a pall over the battlefield just as the giddy first days of the incursion into Russia’s Kursk region were fading away and concerns mounted over an advancing Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine.As the nation mourned the death of the pilot, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine dismissed the head of the country’s Air Force and promised a thorough investigation of the incident, including the possibility raised by a Western official on Friday that it was the result of friendly fire from a Patriot missile battery.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Ukraine Investigating Potential Causes of the Crash of an F-16

      by

      There are indications that friendly fire may have been involved, a Western official said. Ukraine is investigating the crash this week of one of the few F-16 fighter jets that had been delivered to the country by its allies in NATO, and was already collaborating with the United States to try to determine what happened, the head of Ukraine’s air force said on Friday.At the same time, a Western official who has been briefed on the preliminary investigation said that there are “indications” that friendly fire from a Patriot missile battery might be involved in the crash.The United States has supplied Ukraine with Patriots, which include a powerful radar system and mobile launchers that fire missiles at incoming projectiles, and the Ukrainian military has used them frequently as part of its defense against Russian aerial attacks.One possibility being explored is whether a Patriot battery might have accidentally fired at the plane, the official said. A second possibility is system malfunction.F-16 aircrafts flying during Ukraine’s Air Forces Day this month.Valentyn Ogirenko/ReutersUkraine said on Thursday that the plane was destroyed on Monday during a combat mission to repel a barrage of Russian missiles and drones. The loss of the plane is a significant blow to Ukraine’s effort to integrate the aircraft into its war effort, and to convince NATO allies that it can efficiently handle sophisticated western weapons.The pilot who died in the crash, Lt. Col. Oleksiy Mes, was one of the few who had been trained to fly the complex aircraft.The F-16’s, as well as other aspects of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, promised to be on the table at a scheduled meeting in Washington on Friday between the American defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and Ukraine’s minister of defense, Rustem Umerov.Ukraine took delivery of a small number of F-16s just a few weeks ago. Allies in Europe have promised the country 45 of the fighter aircraft, but so far only about six are believed to have arrived.The aircraft, delivered after many months of pressure by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and other senior officials, are the most high-profile piece of military hardware supplied by the country’s allies since Russia launched its full scale invasion of the country 30 months ago.As such, they have become a symbol of Ukraine’s defense and their pilots were considered by many people to be national heroes.“We will find out the causes of the air disaster,” said the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleschuk, in a post on the Telegram social media app on Friday. “We have to thoroughly understand what happened, the circumstances, and whose responsibility it is.” More