A Russian named Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov has been charged with “orchestrating a years-long foreign malign influence campaign that used various U.S. political groups to sow discord, spread pro-Russian propaganda, and interfere in elections within the United States.” According to a DOJ press release, Ionov was directed by FSB and gained influence with three separate groups in Florida, Georgia and California.
The Biden family made millions when they aligned their financial interest with China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The Marco Polo site link contains explicit material. It’s been pixilated but some may still find it offensive.
Human rights campaigner Lord Alton of Liverpool told the House of Lords how the Russian military is stealing Ukrainian grain, destroying the country’s agricultural infrastructure and blockading its ports on the Black Sea, preventing exportation via that route.
Meanwhile, 400 million people are said to be dependent on grain imported from Ukraine, sometimes referred to as “the breadbasket of Europe”.
Russia will use its new axis of evil with Iran to exert massive pressure on the world’s democracies
It is two decades since George W Bush coined the phrase “axis of evil” to describe the rogue states that threatened the well-being of the West. And, to judge by this week’s Russo-Iranian summit, an equally deadly alliance is being formed between two states determined to undermine Western values.
The White House claims that President Vladimir Putin has been forced to embrace the ayatollahs because he finds himself totally isolated on the global stage following the invasion of Ukraine. The countries that have so far remained loyal to Moscow – North Korea, Eritrea, Belarus and Syria – can hardly be said to uphold the principles of democratic rule.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s private army, the Wagner Group, is being condemned by the United Nations experts from the Human Rights Council, and independent investigators, for committing war crimes and murdering civilians. The Wagner Group is a Russian mercenary militia that offers its services “for delicate missions abroad,” in exchange for access to the natural resource riches of the host nation.
While the Wagner Group has played a role in Syria and Ukraine, it is on the African continent where its domestic interference and human rights abuses have been most evident.
Both Russia and Iran are under massive international sanctions, both are ruled over by men with near-unlimited powers — and both view the West as an evil, corrupting force. President Putin will find much that is familiar when he arrives in Tehran tomorrow for talks aimed at boosting ties between the two amid the war in Ukraine.
Like you, I did not expect turbines would be on the exam. But the Trudeau government’s decision to waive export restrictions for Russian-owned turbines puts Canada right in the middle of a dispute between Ukraine and Germany over sanctions against Russia. Volodymyr Zelensky is furious, the World Ukrainian Congress is suing Canada, and this all looks more like a preview of coming attractions than like a one-off.
I called Sabine Sparwasser, Germany’s ambassador to Canada, who’s an old acquaintance and has held previous postings in Canada, off and on, since 2003.
Poor countries will suffer massive food shortages due to Russia’s war with Ukraine, which has cut off grain exports from Ukraine. Meanwhile, the world’s second biggest food exporter, the Netherlands, is planning to restrict farming in the name of protecting the environment, which will gravely damage the Netherlands’ highly efficient agricultural sector, and cut the number of livestock by an estimated 30%.
Germany’s largest residential landlord which owns around 490,000 properties is set to impose energy rationing that will cut heating to tenants at night in response to falling gas imports from Russia.
Vonovia “will cut the heating output between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. to 17 degrees Celsius,” reports Reuters, adding that the company hopes the measures will save up to 8% of heating costs.
Residents have already been informed that they will face huge spikes in heating bills as a result of Germany being forced to respond to Russia restricting supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Canada has imposed a new round of sanctions on Russia’s media machine designed to puncture disinformation campaigns about the war in Ukraine.
The sanctions target Russian news agencies, TV stations and journalists, including Petr Akopov, who has written approvingly about President Vladimir Putin’s rationale for the invasion of Ukraine, and Tigran Keosayan, a pro-Kremlin television presenter.
Speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin warned that “when [U.S. lawmakers] attempt to appropriate our assets abroad, they should be aware that we also have something to claim back” in a Monday session of the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, according to the Washington Examiner. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million.
In the last decade, Venezuela has quickly become a hub for Russian and Chinese cyber technologies in the Western hemisphere. In an effort to expand its grip on power, the Maduro regime in Caracas has allowed the country to become a laboratory for digital surveillance and authoritarian social control. Moscow and Beijing are thus able to project their global ambitions into the Western hemisphere by sending their cybersecurity know-how and infrastructure to Venezuela. In other words, it’s a win-win exchange for both sides as they carve out an anti-American cyber partnership in Latin America.
There is a slow-motion buildup to a hot war with Russia happening. The NATO and western alliance motive for the war is clear. The question is rapidly moving from “if” to “when.”
When it starts to show around the world that food is running out (the inevitable result of western nations chasing climate change energy policy) visible starvation is the moment when NATO and the Western alliance will attack Russia as a distraction. (Threadreader for you anti-Tweeter peoplekind)
“President Joe Biden apparently unwittingly financed his son’s participation in an escort ring tied to Russia,” reports the Washington Examiner. That’s what “records from a copy of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show.”
Documents on the laptop show that “Hunter Biden spent over $30,000 on escorts, many of whom were linked to ‘.ru’ Russian email addresses and worked with an ‘exclusive model agency’ called UberGFE during a 3 1/2 month period between November 2018 and March 2019.”
He was able to do this due “to Joe Biden committing to wiring him a total of $100,000 to help pay his bills from December 2018 through January 2019.” For example, “Joe Biden wired his son $5,000 while he was actively engaged with an UberGFE escort.”
