Russia

Fans of heavy metal could face jail in Russia as Putin bans ‘satanists’

Russian fans of heavy metal and goth music could face prison after the Kremlin’s top court outlawed the “international satanism movement” as an extremist and terrorist group — even though no such organisation exists.

The Russian Supreme Court’s ruling came after appeals from the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, MPs and other officials. It means that anyone who is alleged to be a member of the non-existent movement could face up to eight years in prison. Critics said the ruling would increase the climate of fear that has gripped Russia since President Putin ordered tanks into Ukraine in 2022.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inPutin, Russia, WTF?

UK sanctions Russian spies over ‘malicious activity’

A string of Russian spies and their units have been exposed by Britain’s security services over their years-long campaign of cyber hacking, arson and sabotage.

Spies who targeted the daughter of the former double agent Sergei Skripal, five years before both were nearly killed in the Salisbury novichok incident, are among 18 Russian military intelligence officers who have been sanctioned.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia", Russia, UK

Russia first country to recognize Taliban rule

Afghanistan’s Taliban government said on Thursday Russia had become the first nation to recognize its rule.

The announcement came after Aghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met the Russian ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, in Kabul on Thursday.

“This brave decision will be an example for others… Now that the process of recognition has started, Russia was ahead of everyone,” Muttaqi said in a video posted on X.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia, Taliban, WTF?

Putin knows we are spreadsheet warriors and Europe is in no position to fight

The European Union has experienced quite a few shocks over the past two decades. The most significant one was not Covid, or Brexit, or the Ukraine war. It was the sovereign debt crisis. The fairytale story is that Mario Draghi single-handedly ended the crisis when he told the world that he would do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. He was the president of the European Central Bank when he announced a backstop. It is a convenient explanation because it assumes that the crisis is over.

I am going to put my head on the block to predict that this crisis could come back sooner than we think. Last time, it was the southern Europeans who triggered it. This time, it is the northern Europeans with their relentless push for an increase in defence spending to 5% of GDP.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEU, Europe, European Union, NATO, Russia

Why Russia Is Giving Iran the Cold Shoulder After Israel Attack

At the start of the year, Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart at the Kremlin to sign a new strategic partnership to seal the budding alliance between the two countries that had spent the last decade trying to undermine the U.S.-led world order.

Now, after more than a week of punishing Israeli and U.S. airstrikes, that partnership is doing Tehran little good.

When Putin met with Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, on Monday, the Kremlin leader gave a stony-faced assessment of the U.S. strikes. He called the strikes unjustified and unprovoked and said Russia wanted to help the Iranian people.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inIran, Russia

Russia may attack Nato in next four years, German defence chief warns

Members of the Western alliance Nato need to prepare for a possible attack from Russia within the next four years, according to Germany’s chief of defence.

General Carsten Breuer told the BBC that Russia was producing hundreds of tanks a year, many of which could be used for an attack on Nato Baltic state members by 2029 or even earlier.

He also insisted that Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, remains unified over the war in Ukraine, despite differences of opinion expressed recently by both Hungary and Slovakia.

Invite them to invade Poland then invade Russia!

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inNATO, Russia

Crescent rising over Russia: the numbers that keep Putin awake

Canadian director Denys Arcand’s film “The Decline of the American” Empire opens with a professor, played by Rémy Girard, telling his students: “Three things are important in history: numbers, numbers, and numbers again”.

Khomeini knew about numbers and in 1989 he wrote a letter to Communist Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in which the ayatollah invited the Soviet leader to embrace Islam to “fill the void in your system.”

The Soviet Union fell, Khomeini and Gorbachev died, but that letter seems to have found its way thanks to numbers.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Islam, Islam and violence, Russia

Nato’s ‘drone wall’ that would see Russia’s invasion coming

Germany is seeking to build a “drone wall” along Nato’s eastern border with Russia to help defend its Baltic allies from a future invasion.

Friedrich Merz, the incoming chancellor, has vowed to rearm Germany in response to the threat from Russia, passing historic reforms last month that unlock potentially unlimited spending on defence projects.

The German arms industry is now discussing the idea of building a fleet of drones – or a “drone wall” – to defend all or parts of Nato’s eastern flank.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inNATO, Russia

Russian spies ‘paid teenager to burn down Ikea’

Russia allegedly paid a Ukrainian teenager to firebomb an Ikea store as part of its “hybrid war” on the West, US media reported on Thursday.

Russian spies are said to have offered the 17-year-old $11,000 (£8,000) in cash and a BMW to carry out the attack on an Ikea store in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, the New York Times reported.

The agents communicated with him via the encrypted Chinese messenger app Zengi, under the James Bond-inspired alias of Q, Lithuanian prosecutors allege.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia, WTF?

Is Russia recruiting migrants to carry out attacks on European soil? Germany may have uncovered a ‘smoking gun’

What began as an isolated act of terror may now reveal a far-reaching plan to fracture Europe’s political landscape and tilt it toward chaos

In May last year, a 25-year-old Afghan asylum seeker called Sulaiman Ataee walked onto a German market square, drew a hunting knife, and plunged it into the far-Right activist Michael Stürzenberger.

In the 25 seconds of mayhem that followed in Mannheim, one policeman was fatally stabbed in the neck and six people who tried to intervene suffered knife wounds. Mr Stürzenberger survived – just.

Ataee was shot, arrested and charged with murder. His trial began in February

(Link Fixed)

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West, Russia

Mystery of Russian web searches about Mannheim attack days before it happened

Russian internet users were searching for information about a terror attack in Germany several days before it occurred, according to an investigation that suggests Moscow may have had advance knowledge of the violence.

In May last year a rejected asylum seeker from Afghanistan killed a police officer and wounded five other people with a knife in the western city of Mannheim, as he apparently sought to assassinate a far-right critic of Islam.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Germany, Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West, Russia, WTF?

Revealed: Putin’s secret war in UK waters

Russian sensors trying to track nuclear submarines have been found in a campaign of ‘greyzone’ warfare that also targets our energy and internet. Even oligarchs’ superyachts are in on it

Russian sensors suspected of attempting to spy on the UK’s nuclear submarines have been found hidden in the seas around Britain.

The discovery by the British military was deemed a potential threat to national security and has never been made public. Several were found after they washed ashore, while others are understood to have been located by the Royal Navy.

The devices are believed to have been planted by Moscow to try and gather intelligence on Britain’s four Vanguard submarines, which carry nuclear missiles.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia

Putin supporters turn on Kremlin over Muslim migration

Vladimir Putin’s supporters have turned on the Kremlin over Muslim migration into Russia from Central Asia, comparing the situation with that of European cities with large minority populations.

Rybar is a prominent Telegram blog with more than 1.3 million subscribers and whose founder Mikhail Zvinchuk, a former military translator, was awarded the Order of Merit of the Fatherland Second Class by Putin in 2023.

Yet last month, it posted a scathing analysis of Russia’s rapidly changing demographics, using the Moscow suburb of Kotelniki to illustrate its point.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Islam, Islam and violence, Russia

How Russia and China are seizing on Canada’s carelessness in the Arctic

At the end of the pier at the Nanisivik Naval Facility sit three unused jetties.

Ice smothers the remote base for most of the year, encasing its empty helipad, site office and diesel tanks – then melting away as the seasons pass.

When it was commissioned in 2007, Nanisivik was meant to signal Canada’s commitment to protecting its Arctic territories.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Canada's China Class", "China - Communist Slave State", Canada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government, Russia