RUSSIA

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1771280755504677080?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1771287713045414025?s=19

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/russia-moscow-gunmen-concert-hall-injuries-fe7db5bb4ad4df17b6cbd04a3250faa1   Russia says 60 dead, 145 injured in concert hall raid; Islamic State group claims responsibility

 

Russia says 60 dead, 145 injured in concert hall raid; Islamic State group claims responsibility

Yesterday

MOSCOW (AP) — Assailants burst into a large concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing over 60 people, injuring more than 100 and setting fire to the venue in a brazen attack just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on affiliated channels on social media. A U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies had learned the group's branch in Afghanistan was planning an attack in Moscow and shared the information with Russian officials.

It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the attackers after the raid, which state investigators were investigating as terrorism.

The attack, which left the concert hall in flames with a collapsing roof, was the deadliest in Russia in years and came as the country’s war in Ukraine dragged into a third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the raid a “huge tragedy.”

The Kremlin said Putin was informed minutes after the assailants burst into Crocus City Hall, a large music venue on Moscow’s western edge that can accommodate 6,200 people.

The attack took place as crowds gathered for a performance by the Russian rock band Picnic. The Investigative Committee, the top state criminal investigation agency, reported early Saturday that more than 60 people were killed. Health authorities released a list of 145 injured — 115 of them hospitalized, including five children.

Some Russian news reports suggested more victims could have been trapped by the blaze that erupted after the assailants threw explosives.

Video showed the building on fire, with a huge cloud of smoke rising through the night sky. The street was lit up by the blinking blue lights of dozens of firetrucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles, as fire helicopters buzzed overhead to dump water on the blaze that took hours to contain.

The prosecutor’s office said several men in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and fired on concertgoers.

Dave Primov, who was in the hall during the attack, described panic and chaos when the attack began.

“There were volleys of gunfire,” Primov told the AP. “We all got up and tried to move toward the aisles. People began to panic, started to run and collided with each other. Some fell down and others trampled on them.”

Videos posted by Russian media and on messaging app channels showed men toting assault rifles shooting screaming people at point-blank range. One video showed a man in the auditorium saying the assailants had set it on fire, as gunshots rang out incessantly.

Guards at the concert hall didn’t have guns, and some could have been killed at the start of the attack, Russian media reported. Some Russian news outlets suggested the assailants fled before special forces and riot police arrived. Reports said police patrols were looking for several vehicles the attackers could have used to escape.

In a statement posted by its Aamaq news agency, the Islamic State group said it attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk on Moscow’s outskirts, killing and wounding hundreds. It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the claim.

However, U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the claim by the Islamic State group's branch based in Afghanistan that it was responsible for the Moscow attack, a U.S. official told the AP.

The official said U.S. intelligence agencies had gathered information in recent weeks that the IS branch was planning an attack in Moscow. He said U.S. officials privately shared the intelligence earlier this month with Russian officials. The official was briefed on the matter but was not authorized to publicly discuss the intelligence information and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Noting that the IS statement cast its claim as an attack targeting Christians, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on the terrorist group, said it appeared to reflect the group’s strategy of “striking wherever they can as part of a global ‘fight the infidels and apostates everywhere.’”

In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS downed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacation-goers returning from Egypt. The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, also has claimed several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in the past years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of former Soviet Union.

On March 7, Russia’s top security agency said it thwarted an attack on a synagogue in Moscow by an Islamic State cell, killing several of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. A few days earlier, Russian authorities said six alleged IS members were killed in a shootout in Ingushetia in Russia’s Caucasus region.

On Friday, statements of outrage, shock and support for those affected by the concert call attack streamed in from around the world.

Some commentators on Russian social media questioned how authorities, who relentlessly surveil and pressure Kremlin critics, failed to identify the threat and prevent the attack.

Russian officials said security was tightened at Moscow’s airports, railway stations and the capital’s sprawling subway system. Moscow’s mayor canceled all mass gatherings, and theaters and museums shut for the weekend. Other Russian regions also tightened security.

The Kremlin didn’t immediately blame anyone for the attack, but some Russian lawmakers were quick to accuse Ukraine and called for ramping up strikes. Hours before the attack, the Russian military l aunched a sweeping barrage on Ukraine’s power system, crippling the country’s biggest hydroelectric plant and other energy facilities and leaving more than a million people without electricity.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said that if Ukraine involvement was proven, all those involved “must be tracked down and killed without mercy, including officials of the state that committed such outrage.”

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukraine involvement.

“Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” he posted on X. “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield.”

John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said he couldn’t yet speak about the details but “the images are just horrible. And just hard to watch.”

Friday's attack followed a statement earlier this month by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that urged Americans to avoid crowded places in view of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large gatherings in the Russian capital, including concerts. The warning was repeated by several other Western embassies.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Friday the U.S. government had information about a planned attack in Moscow, prompting the State Department advisory to Americans. The U.S. government shared the information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding “duty to warn” policy, Watson said.

Putin, who extended his grip on Russia for another six years in this week’s presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians. “All that resembles open blackmail and an attempt to frighten and destabilize our society,” he said earlier this week.

Russia was shaken by a series of deadly terror attacks in the early 2000s during the fighting with separatists in the Russian province of Chechnya.

In October 2002, Chechen militants took about 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the building and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters died, most from effects of narcotic gas Russian forces use to subdue the attackers.

In September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a school in Beslan in southern Russia taking hundreds of hostages. The siege ended in a bloodbath two days later and more than 330 people, about half of them children, were killed.

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Associate Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.

___

This story was updated to correct that John Kirby is a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, not the White House national security adviser.

Halifax2TheMax

Funny, no mention of the pancaked apartment building full of old people that precipitated the attacks referenced. Anyone get POOTWH’s comments and whether he’s spoken to or sent a message to Putin on the ritz? Presumptive next POTUS and all? 

How about Putin on the ritz’s remarks about the US embassy warning? Smells nothing like teen spirit and a whole lot like wagging the dog.

Maggie  Three Names should hold a presser. Against POOTWH.

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1771448999867777523?s=19

Halifax2TheMax

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1771448999867777523?s=19

But was it a fiat? They knew that before anything. Boris? Natasha? 

Rocky! Bulwinkle! Get on it. Well, okay professor Poindexdeter.

gimmesometruth27

i like how russia continues to blame ukraine for the attack when isis has repeatedly said they are responsible.

i thought trump eradicated isis? how do i know? because he has never shut the fuck up about it.

somehow this will become biden's fault and a new election issue for gop to run on.

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1771651499958870312?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1771987702197391751?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1774383670817652949?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1775059198125965583?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1776114067708461543?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1777371017549111806?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1777961374116688221?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1782386203360219433?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1782647672186306912?s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1784719106131763670?s=19

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/russia-general-arrested-ukraine-popov-bribery-1d7e2b65eb4c796649979a1a4db56f18   Russian general who criticized equipment shortages in Ukraine is arrested on bribery charges

 

Russian general who criticized equipment shortages in Ukraine is arrested on bribery charges

Today

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A Russian general who was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine has been arrested on charges of widescale bribery, Russian news reports said Tuesday.

The arrest of Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, who had commanded the 58th Guards Combined Arms Army, follows the arrest last month of Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, a close associate of then-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, also on bribery charges.

President Vladimir Putin dismissed Shoigu as defense minister on May 12, appointing him head of the national security council. Shoigu had been widely blamed for Russia's failure to capture Kyiv early in the Ukraine fighting and was accused of incompetence and corruption by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who launched a mutiny in June 2023 to demand the dismissal of Shoigu and military chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov.

Less than a month after Prigozhin's failed uprising, Popov was dismissed. He said he had spoken to Shoigu about insufficient equipment in the Ukraine war that had led to excessive Russian deaths, and that his dismissal was a "“treacherous” stab in the back to Russian forces in Ukraine.

Popov's forces were fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region, one of the most hotly contested areas in the Ukraine war. His dismissal came one day after the 58th Army's command post in the city of Berdyansk was hit in a Ukrainian strike, killing a high-ranking general.

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/baltic-sea-russia-security-border-fb9849dd556fa166f1135172c6935c9d   Baltic Sea nations react warily to a reported Russian proposal to revise its maritime border

 

Baltic Sea nations react warily to a reported Russian proposal to revise its maritime border

By JAN M. OLSEN

Yesterday

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Leaders around the Baltic Sea reacted warily Wednesday to reports that Russia could revise the borders of its territorial waters in the region, with Lithuania's foreign minister calling it an "obvious escalation” that must be met with an "appropriately firm response.”

In a draft proposal reported by some Russian media, Russia's Defense Ministry suggests updating the coordinates used to measure the strip of territorial waters off its mainland coast and that of its islands in the Baltic Sea. The existing coordinates were approved in 1985, the ministry says; adding they were “based on small-scale nautical navigation maps” and don't correspond to the “modern geographical situation.”

It wasn’t immediately clear from the draft whether the proposed changes would shift the border or merely clarify it.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Russia had signed a United Nations convention that regulates how to make such changes. “Both we and Finland assume that Russia — which is a signatory party to that convention — lives up to that responsibility,” he said, according to Swedish news agency TT.

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If Russians were to challenge borders, “then Russia violates a U.N. convention, then Russia has the whole world against it,” Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said, according to Finnish broadcaster YLE.

She said, however, it likely was a routine act by Russia and not a provocation.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb wrote on X that Russia had not been in contact with Finland on the matter. “Finland acts as always: calmly and based on facts,” he wrote.

Also on X, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis asserted that Russia was “attempting to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about their intentions in the Baltic Sea.” There has been great concern in Lithuania about Russian troops’ latest gains in northeastern Ukraine.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who was on a visit to Lithuania on Wednesday, echoed Landbergis remarks saying that “whatever this was or actually is, it appears to be another example of the thoroughly perfidious kind of hybrid warfare that Putin is practicing," German news agency dpa reported.

The Baltic News Service said Lithuania summoned the Russian representative for a detailed explanation.

However, Russia’s Interfax news agency later Wednesday cited an unnamed military diplomatic source as saying Moscow does not intend to revise the border or the width of its territorial waters.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters there was “nothing political” in the Defense Ministry’s proposal.

“You see how tensions and the level of confrontation are escalating, especially in the Baltic region. This requires appropriate steps from our relevant bodies to ensure our security,” Peskov said.

The proposal was published on an official government website for draft legislation but appeared deleted Wednesday. It wasn’t immediately clear why.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. The Baltic Sea — Russia’s maritime point of access to the city of St. Petersburg and its Kaliningrad enclave — is now almost surrounded by members of the military alliance.

Kaliningrad is sandwiched between Lithuania to the north and east and Poland to the south. It is home to the Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet.

__ Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/russia-putin-ukraine-e192904652221b29efdc88d0af23114e   Putin warns that Russia could provide long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets

 

Putin warns that Russia could provide long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets

By JAMES JORDAN and HARRIET MORRIS

1 minute ago

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — President Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday that Russia could provide long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets in response to NATO allies allowing Ukraine to use their arms to attack Russian territory.

Putin also reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.

The recent actions by the West will further undermine international security and could lead to “very serious problems,” he said, taking questions from international journalists — something that has become extremely rare since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.

“That would mark their direct involvement in the war against the Russian Federation, and we reserve the right to act the same way,” Putin added.

The United States and Germany recently authorized Ukraine to hit some targets on Russian soil with the long-range weapons they are supplying to Kyiv.

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VLADIMIR PUTIN

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On Wednesday, a Western official and a U.S. senator said Ukraine has used U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia under newly approved guidance from President Joe Biden that allows American arms to be used for the limited purpose of defending Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. The official was not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Putin claimed that using some Western-supplied weapons involves military personnel of those countries controlling the missiles and selecting targets, and therefore he said Moscow could take “asymmetrical” steps elsewhere in the world. The U.S. military said it does not control the missiles it provides to Ukraine or the targets.

“If they consider it possible to deliver such weapons to the combat zone to launch strikes on our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same type to some regions of the world where they can be used to launch strikes on sensitive facilities of the countries that do it to Russia?" he said.

"We will think about it,” he told the journalists on the sidelines of the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Asked whether Russia could resort to using nuclear arms, Putin said the conditions for utilizing that arsenal are clearly spelled out in Moscow's security doctrine.

“For some reason, they believe in the West that Russia will never use it,” he said.

“Look at what is written there,” he said of Russia’s nuclear doctrine. “If somebody’s actions threaten our sovereignty and territorial integrity, we consider it possible to use all means at our disposal.”

Even Russia's battlefield nuclear weapons are much more powerful than what the U.S. used against Japan in World War II, Putin said.

Speaking to senior news leaders of international news agencies, including The Associated Press, for more than three hours, Putin also said nothing will change in terms of Russia-U.S. relations regardless of whether Biden or Donald Trump wins the American presidential election in November.

“We will work with any president the American people elect,” Putin said.

“I say absolutely sincerely, I wouldn’t say that we believe that after the election something will change on the Russian track in the American politics,” he added. “We don’t think so. We think nothing that serious will happen.”

Putin also said Trump’s felony conviction at his hush money trial last week was the result of "the use of the court system as part of the internal political struggle.”

The Russian leader faced questions on various topics, although the more than two years of fighting in Ukraine dominated the session.

Putin claimed the West had opportunities to end the fighting in Ukraine but did not act on them, citing a letter he once supposedly wrote to Biden that said hostilities could end in two or three months if Washington stopped supplying Kyiv with weapons.

Asked about Russian military losses, Putin said that no country would reveal that information during hostilities but claimed without providing details that Ukraine's casualties are five times greater than Russia’s.

He also said Ukraine has more than 1,300 Russian troops in captivity, while more than 6,400 Ukrainian soldiers are being held in Russia.

The claims could not be independently verified and some Western estimates put Russia’s losses much higher than Ukraine’s.

Asked by AP about the case of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Putin said the U.S. is “taking energetic steps” to secure his release. Gershkovich was jailed over a year ago while on a reporting trip and charged with espionage. The journalist, his employer and the U.S. have denied the allegations, and Washington has declared him to be wrongfully detained.

Putin said that any such releases “aren’t decided via mass media” but through a “discreet, calm and professional approach.”

“And they certainly should be decided only on the basis of reciprocity,” he added, an allusion to a potential prisoner swap.

Putin has used the St. Petersburg forum as a showcase for touting Russia’s development and seeking investors. The meeting with journalists took place in Gazprom's new global headquarters, a needle-shaped 81-story skyscraper overlooking the Gulf of Finland.

While meetings with journalists were part of previous sessions, he has not taken questions from Western journalists at the St. Petersburg event since sending troops to Ukraine.

Last year, journalists from countries that Russia regards as unfriendly — including the U.S., the U.K. and the European Union — were not invited, and Western officials and investors also steered clear of the session after wide-ranging sanctions were imposed on Moscow over Ukraine.

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Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.