Russia

China and Russia: The Guns of April

China and Russia: The Guns of April

Russian troops are massing on the Ukraine border, Chinese vessels are swarming Whitsun Reef of the Philippines in the South China Sea, and China’s air force is flying almost daily through Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone. Chinese troops for almost a year have been dug in deep in Indian-controlled Ladakh in the Himalayas. Two large aggressors are threatening to break apart neighbors and absorb them.

The Biden administration has issued warnings to both Moscow and Beijing, but neither looks impressed. American attempts to de-escalate flashpoints are seen in Russian and Chinese circles as failures of resolve.

At least at this moment, those adversaries are right to scoff at the new U.S. leader.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China - Communist Slave State", Russia, USA

Why Russia’s GRU military intelligence service is so feared

If the definition of a successful intelligence service is obscurity, the GRU is probably Russia’s most effective spy agency.

In communist times, the KGB became a byword in the West for Soviet spooks, whether they were infiltrating corridors of power abroad or suppressing dissidents at home, but few people ever heard of the GRU (an acronym pronounced like the English word “grew”).

Yet the military intelligence service – GRU stands for Main Intelligence Directorate – outlasted the KGB when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and appears to be flourishing today.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia

Russia: Vladimir Putin signs law allowing him to rule till 2036

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed legislation that could theoretically mean he stays in power till 2036, according to a copy of the bill posted on the government’s legal information portal.

Under the previous constitution, Putin, 68, who has already been in power for more than two decades, would have been required to have stepped down after his second consecutive term ends in 2024.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia

Alexei Navalny: “Prepared to Lose Everything”

The near-murder of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny by the nerve-agent novichok last August, his return to Moscow in January, and the resultant protests attended by tens of thousands of citizens in more than a hundred Russian cities, raise the question of how long the Russian people will continue to tolerate President Vladimir Putin’s repressive acts against political enemies and rivals.

The crowds were rallying in support of Navalny after his return to Moscow on January17, 2021 from medical treatment in Germany, some in temperatures of -60 degrees Fahrenheit. The police, attacking the protestors with batons, arrested more than 3,300 people.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia

Inside a Russian penal colony

Alexander Navalny is about to discover that the spirit of Stalin’s gulags is alive and well

Organised into work brigades and subjected to the violent whims of sadistic military guards, the day-to-day lives of the inmates are punctuated only by malnourishment, corporal punishment and death. The penal colony is a place where the authorities can act with impunity, free to torture prisoners in the hope of extracting a false confession.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia

Are China, India and Russia “Vaccine Super-Powers”?

Here:

Of the top 10 countries in the world on a doses per capita basis, six of them are using vaccines from Russia, China or India. Canada is 42nd in the world on a doses per capita basis according to Bloomberg News Service’s vaccine tracker. News reports and information from government websites show 16 of the countries ahead of Canada are using shots from one of those three countries.

While Western nations, including Canada, scramble to get doses for their citizens, the governments in Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi are shipping vaccine abroad to make new friends, even as their own national vaccination efforts lag behind the rest of the world.

This week, China’s ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu, said his country always planned to help the world.

(Sidebar: what a lying sack of crap.)

“China stated in the early stages that once vaccines were developed and deployed they will become a global public good, so we are just honouring our commitment to help people, especially in developing countries,” he said. “We know the virus knows no borders.” …

Guy Saint-Jacques, a senior fellow at the University of Alberta’s China Institute and a former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, said China is clearly using the vaccines to help its image.

“This is part of their efforts to burnish their reputation abroad because they know that it has been tarnished with all the mistakes they made handling the pandemic and also they want to contrast themselves with Western countries,” he said.

 

 

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by Osumashi••0•Posted in"China eats weird animals disease", Canada, Canada's incompetent Liberal Government, China, India, Russia, vaccine controversy

North Korea: Russian diplomats leave by hand-pushed trolley

A group of Russian diplomats and their families made an unusual exit out of North Korea on a hand-pushed rail trolley due to strict Covid measures.

The eight people travelled by train and bus before pushing themselves across the Russian border for about 1km (0.6miles) over train tracks.

North Korea has blocked most passenger transport to limit the virus’s spread.

The country maintains it has not had any confirmed cases, but observers dispute this claim.

h/t DM

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inNorth Korea, Russia, WTF?

State actors have done ‘significant harm’ to Canadian companies, says head of spy agency – Trudeau’s Liberal government not named leading many to question report’s integrity

State actors have done ‘significant harm’ to Canadian companies, says head of spy agency – Trudeau’s Liberal government not named leading many to question report’s integrity

The head of Canada’s spy agency said today Canadian companies in almost all sectors of the economy have been targeted by hostile foreign actors — and named Russia and China as two of his main sources of concern.

“The threat from hostile activity by state actors in all its forms represents a significant danger to Canada’s prosperity and sovereignty,” said David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, in his first public speech in three years.

“Our investigations reveal that this threat has unfortunately caused significant harm to Canadian companies.”

Russia and China are certainties but how could he forget to include Trudeau’s Liberals?

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

What America can learn from Russia

Spiralling addiction, inequality and an oligarch class can pave the way for authoritarianism

An elite openly contemptuous of the poor. Millions of people living in towns where traditional industries (and the measure of security they provided) have vanished. Spiralling addiction. A class of super wealthy oligarchs, much too close to the government, exercising way more power than they ought to. All major communications channels controlled by a tiny coterie of billionaires.

Sound familiar?

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia, USA

Russia: Putin Shoots Himself in the Foot

Russia: Putin Shoots Himself in the Foot

Aleksei Navalny, opposition leader, anti-corruption activist and fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, returned to Russia on January 17 after recovering for five months in Germany from having been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, Novichok. It was an event widely reported to have been an assassination attempt by Russian state agents.

Upon landing, Navalny was immediately arrested on charges that he had violated the parole terms from a suspended sentence received in 2014 for alleged fraud, a conviction that the European Court of Human Rights ruled was “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia

Is Russia targeting CIA spies with secret weapons?

Marc Polymeropoulos woke up in his hotel room with his head spinning and ears ringing. “I felt like I was going to vomit. I couldn’t stand up. I was falling over,” he recalls. “I have been shot at numerous times and this was the most terrifying experience in my life.”

Polymeropoulos had spent years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan as a senior officer of the CIA fighting America’s war on terrorism. But that night in Moscow he believes he was targeted by a secret, microwave weapon.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEspionage, Russia, USA

Anti-Kremlin protests break out across Russia

Russian police have detained over 250 anti-Putin protesters today as activists took to the streets and a frozen ocean demanding the release of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

The authorities mounted a massive effort to stem the tide of demonstrations after tens of thousands of people rallied across the country the previous weekend in the largest and most widespread show of discontent the country has seen in years.

The first protests took place in the East, including the port city of Vladivostok where several dozen protesters gathered in the city’s central square despite police closing it off ahead of the rally.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia