OTTAWA — Russia’s ambassador to Canada says Ottawa is at the vanguard of a social media effort he argues is meant to demoralize Russian soldiers.
In an interview with Russian state media, Oleg Stepanov chided Canada’s foreign affairs department for frequently posting unflattering information about the war in Ukraine, particularly recent tweets about Russian men fleeing a military draft.
The US has charged five Russians and two Americans with conspiracy related to procurement and money laundering on behalf of the government in Moscow.
The justice department said they were suspected of trying to obtain military-grade and dual-use technologies from US firms for Russia’s defence sector.
They are also believed to have conspired to smuggle sniper ammunition in violation of US sanctions.
One of the Russians is thought to be a Federal Security Service (FSB) officer.
Russia has released jailed WNBA star Brittney Griner in exchange for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death” after months of negotiations and hostility on both sides.
OTTAWA — Canada’s spy agency has noted an “alarming escalation” of espionage and foreign interference since the beginning of the pandemic, with countries like China threatening or intimidating people in Canada into namely supporting a specific electoral candidate.
“These activities are real, they’re persistent, they’re increasing, and it’s not hypothetical, we see it everyday in our work. And these activities will be targeting all level of governments, whether it’s federal, municipal, provincial,” veteran CSIS intelligence analyst Noura Hayek told attendees of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws conference Monday.
Can’t they identify the perps?
Can’t they deport them?
Why do CSIS’ hands seem to be tied?
Or is Canada’s China class preventing that action be taken?
BERLIN — On a balmy September evening last year, an Azeri man carrying a Russian passport crossed the border from northern Cyprus into southern Cyprus. He traveled light: a pistol, a handful of bullets and a silencer.
It was going to be the perfect hit job.
Then, just as the man was about to step into a rental car and carry out his mission — which prosecutors say was to gun down five Jewish businessmen, including an Israeli billionaire — the police surrounded him.
Perhaps they’re most upset that in a remarkable new interview the pope still wouldn’t mention Vladimir Putin by name.
Pope Francis has walked on eggshells to avoid the wrath of Vladimir Putin and, likewise, of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long presented an altogether intractable if not impossible set of challenges for the Roman Catholic Church, recently rearing its ugly head yet again in the Ukraine war (that’s a separate column altogether). Francis has repeatedly and delicately prayed for the people of Ukraine and of Russia, each step of the way carefully avoiding poking a stick at the bear in the living room: Vladimir Putin.
That appears to have changed.
If they had met as presidents of other countries, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin would probably have hated each other. Historically, Turkish Islamists have hated both Tsarist and Soviet Russia. Similarly, Russians have never been fond of the Turks. Today, however, Erdogan, with a foot in NATO, is exhibiting a pro-Russian tilt never seen before. What is the secret of this ostensible marriage?
A Dutch court has found three men guilty of murder for shooting down a passenger jet over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 people.
The court found that a Russian-made missile supplied from Russia and fired by an armed group under Russian control brought down flight MH17.
The men – two Russians and one Ukrainian – were found guilty in absentia and sentenced to life in jail. A third Russian was acquitted.
The missile attack was one of the most notorious war crimes in Ukraine before allegations of atrocities there became an almost daily reality.
MOSCOW – Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced Monday that 100 Canadians have been added to the list of people banned from entering the country in response to sanctions against Russia by Canada.
A ministry statement said author Margaret Atwood, actor Jim Carrey and Amy Knight, a noted historian of the KGB, were on the banned list.
Lucky Buggers!
Russia was not always destined to be so bitterly opposed to the West.
Russia draws little sympathy these days, and quite right, too. It launched a misguided and ill-prepared war, which has already devastated many Ukrainian cities and cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives.
Russia, too, is paying a price, though perhaps not yet as high a price as Ukraine and its Western allies might hope. It has likely suffered more casualties than Ukraine. It has lost many of its best-educated young people to exile, and seen its post-imperial weakness mercilessly exposed. But there is another dimension to Russia’s tragedy that is less obvious, but which may become clearer over time.
The Iranian regime is now providing weapons and troops to Russia with full impunity. What are the ruling mullahs of Iran getting in return?
Canada’s ability to detect foreign incursions in its Arctic territories is “very limited” and in need of modernization, says a high-ranking Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) general.
“The North Warning System is very limited in its ability to actually detect the current threat presented by Russia right now and China in the future,” said Lt. Gen. Alain Pelletier, deputy commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), while testifying before the House of Commons national defence committee on Nov. 1.
A suspected Russian spy who posed as a Brazilian academic before his arrest this week by Norway’s domestic security agency spent years studying at Canadian universities with a focus on Arctic security issues.
The man, who called himself José Assis Giammaria, worked as researcher at the University of Tromsø and was arrested on suspicion he had entered Norway under false pretences. On Friday, prosecutor Thomas Blom named the man as Mikhail Mikushin, adding that Norway’s domestic security agency was “not positively sure of his identity, but we are quite certain that he is not Brazilian”.
Hostile countries, a group that includes China and Russia, are targeting foreign nationals and diaspora populations in Canada, as well as activists and journalists, according to the Communications Security Establishment.
“State-sponsored cyberthreat actors almost certainly” target those groups in order “to monitor and control these individuals,” Canada’s cyber defense agency said in a new report. The tools they use include “content monitoring on foreign-based applications, social media-enabled activity and espionage against individuals using spyware.”
We have Bigger Fish to worry about than Russia or China … The enemy within aka the Liberal Party.
A Russian court on Tuesday rejected Brittney Griner’s appeal after the jailed WNBA star begged for forgiveness for her “mistake” — upholding her nine-year sentence on drug charges.
Griner and her lawyers had asked for acquittal or at least a more lenient sentence, which they said was disproportionate to the offense and at odds with Russian judicial practice.
