A Russia-based outreach organization that has cultivated relationships with rising American, European and Canadian policy professionals and academics has secretly received financing and direction from Moscow’s spy service, U.S. prosecutors allege.
In court documents filed in Washington, U.S. authorities say that an organization known as Public Initiative Creative Diplomacy, or PICREADI, was being used by Russian intelligence to glean information about influential foreigners.
As Winston Churchill famously pointed out, “I never worry about action, but only about inaction”. The Biden administration’s inaction has led to the creation of a new axis of tyrannies: Russia, China and Iran, with North Korea not far behind. As the Tehran Times, which has close ties to Iran’s foreign ministry, wrote: “[T]oday we are witnessing the formation of a new world order….”
Years before Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “no-limits” partnership and the Kremlin launched a wide-ranging censorship campaign following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Beijing and Moscow were sharing methods and tactics for monitoring dissent and controlling the Internet.
That growing cooperation between the two countries is shown in documents and recordings from closed door meetings in 2017 and 2019 between officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), its chief Internet regulator, and Roskomnadzor, the government agency charged with policing Russia’s Internet, that were obtained by RFE/RL’s Russian Investigative Unit (known as Systema) from a source who had access to the materials. DDoSecrets, a group that publishes leaked and hacked documents, provided software to search the files.
When a young Brazilian named Victor Muller Ferreira, with a master’s degree from a top American university, landed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in April last year to take up an internship at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, things did not go quite according to his plan.
The Dutch authorities had been tipped off by the FBI that he was not who he claimed to be. He had been identified as Sergey Cherkasov, an officer in the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. They promptly put him on a flight back to Sao Paulo, where two months later he was jailed for 15 years for identity fraud.
World War II was already a year old when Germany, Japan and Italy formally signed the Tripartite Pact in 1940, creating a military alliance among three nations intent on world domination. History would subsequently call them the Axis powers. It would be another year before America entered the conflict, but this Axis alliance of power sent a sharp and chilling message to Washington. There was no mistaking now that our nation, and our very civilization, was now in serious jeopardy.
In its wake, America accelerated its defense planning and just prior to the Axis pact being signed, the United States reintroduced the draft in recognition that, pact or no pact, democracy was at risk.
Maria Mayer and Ludwig Gisch settled in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, in 2017, with their two young children. People who met the couple tended to like them; the new arrivals from Latin America were friendly but never overbearing, inquisitive but never pushy.
Mayer opened an online art gallery, while Gisch ran an IT startup. They told friends that a nagging fear of street crime at home in Argentina had prompted their move to Europe. Peaceful, mountainous Slovenia offered a refreshing change of pace.
In interviews with about a dozen people who knew one or both of the couple, two words kept cropping up: “ordinary” and “nice”. Neighbours insisted the people living at No 35 were a run-of-the-mill family, and said the children could often be heard playing in the garden, shrieking in Spanish.
OTTAWA – Russia’s ambassador in Ottawa claims Canada is unsafe for his compatriots to visit.
“Canada today is a very dangerous country for Russian citizens,” Oleg Stepanov said in a Russian-language interview last Friday.
“I would not recommend it for tourism, education or business.”
Now if he said Canada was a stupid country citing Trudeau as proof I would have no choice but to agree with him.
A spy inside the British embassy was snared betraying his country by an undercover MI5 operation involving an agent posing as a Russian intelligence officer called Irina, a court has heard.
David Smith, 58, was a security guard in the British embassy in Berlin who hated the UK and kept a cartoon of Vladimir Putin holding Angela Merkel’s severed head in his work locker.
As far back as 2018, the ex-Royal Air Force officer began gathering sensitive information about British interests and is alleged to have given them to Russia in exchange for money.
China and Russia continue to deepen their ties, a pact that has not gone unnoticed by the European public. In a new poll taken by the International Republican Institute (IRI) across 13 Central and Eastern European countries, there was much concern about this deepening partnership.
Iran is now selling surface-to-surface missiles to Russia for use in its war on Ukraine — on the cusp of a reported “major Ukrainian offensive” — in addition to the drones it has already been delivering, two senior Iranian officials and two Iranian diplomats told Reuters.
According to anonymous US and allied officials quoted by the Washington Post, Iran has secretly agreed to send “what some officials described as the first Iranian-made surface-to-surface missiles intended for use against Ukrainian cities and troop positions.”
The agency that oversees cybersecurity for the federal government called for a “heightened state of vigilance” against the threat of retaliatory cyber attacks from Russia-aligned hackers on Thursday — just hours after Ottawa promised to give Ukraine four Leopard 2 A4 main battle tanks.
The warning comes as Killnet, a group Canada and its allies list as a “Russian-aligned cybercrime group,” vows to go after countries that support Ukraine.
A spokesperson for the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) said the agency “is aware of reporting regarding an increase in Russian state-aligned hacktivist groups seeking to compromise or disrupt Ukrainian-aligned allies, in response to their continued support of the government of Ukraine.”
German authorities have arrested a man alleged to have passed intelligence information to Russia, German prosecutors said on Thursday.
The suspect, identified as Arthur E. in line with Germany’s privacy laws, was arrested on Sunday in Munich airport, as he arrived from the US.
German authorities were aided in their efforts by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
“Arthur E. took the information to Russia and handed it over to the intelligence service there,” said a statement from prosecutors.
A former FBI official involved in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia was charged Monday for violating sanctions on behalf of a Russian oligarch sanctioned by the U.S. government.
Turkish Islamists, especially neo-Ottomans, have historically hated Russia — both Czarist and Soviet. Similarly, Russians and Soviets have never been great fans of the Turks — both Ottoman and republican. Today, however, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with a big foot in NATO, is exhibiting a pro-Russian tilt never seen before, and at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen as an existential threat to Western interests. What is the secret behind this sudden marriage?
For Putin, Erdoğan’s friendship is growing ever more important — and vice versa.
Even if you care nothing for ballet, the very name of the Bolshoi Theatre carries a romance and glamour unmatched by any other theatre in the world. The company was founded under Catherine the Great, and first held performances in a private home before its famous white neoclassical building was opened in 1825. But it was under the Soviet Union that its international prestige reached its greatest height, as it became a touring advertisement for the virtues of the Communist system. When the Bolshoi first visited London in 1956, the excitement was such that people began queuing three days before the ticket office even opened. Three years later, when the company visited New York, touts were reportedly selling tickets for $1,200 in today’s money. Not even the Wolverhampton Grand can compete with that.
