The Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) is an independent, non-profit social enterprise dedicated to countering disinformation, exposing human rights abuses, and combating online behaviour harmful to women and minorities.
The New York Times reports: In a scorched, gold-rich area 200 miles north of the Sudanese capital, where fortunes spring from desert-hewn rock, a mysterious foreign operator dominates the business. Locals call it “The Russian Company” — a tightly guarded plant with shining towers, deep in the desert, that processes mounds of dusty ore into bars of semirefined gold. “The Russians pay the best,” said Ammar al-Amir, a miner and community leader in al-Ibediyya, a hardscrabble mining town 10 miles…
The New York Times reports: Vladimir Efimov, a local politician on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East, was charged with “discrediting the army” and ordered to pay a $500 fine three times in recent months over antiwar images that he displayed on social media. When he continued, reposting battlefield pictures like the wholesale destruction of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol under Russian bombardment, prosecutors ratcheted up the charges and accused him of a felony — punishable by up…
The Observer reports: Gamlet Zinkivskyi grew up speaking Russian in the city of Kharkiv, just like his parents. But when Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, it was the final push for him to switch fully to Ukrainian. “Unfortunately, I grew up speaking Russian, but it’s not pleasant to speak the same language as the army that is destroying whole areas of our country,” said Zinkivskyi, a 35-year-old street artist widely known to Kharkiv residents, who…
Sky News reports: US military hackers have conducted offensive operations in support of Ukraine, the head of US Cyber Command has told Sky News. In an exclusive interview, General Paul Nakasone also explained how separate “hunt forward” operations were allowing the United States to search out foreign hackers and identify their tools before they were used against America. Speaking in Tallinn, Estonia, the general, who is also director of the National Security Agency (NSA), told Sky News that he is…
Channel 4 News travelled to the northern front line in the Donbas to speak to soldiers about life under relentless Russian bombardment.
Der Spiegel reports: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is exasperating. For months, the narrative has been that he would prefer not to deliver any weapons at all to Ukraine, and certainly not any heavy weaponry. The chancellor, according to the scuttlebutt, has had to be forced into every single concession and then he delays the deliveries. On Wednesday, Scholz had to listen in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, as opposition leader Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) lambasted him as…
Politico reports: Mark Holtsyev knew the window to rescue desperate residents of Lyman before Russian forces razed the town was closing fast. The tall, amateur equestrian turned volunteer paramedic jumped in his ambulance and hurtled down the road, past rocket craters and plumes of black smoke rising from the surrounding fields. Holtsyev is one of dozens of volunteers who have been risking their lives day in and day out, zipping over some of the most treacherous roads of eastern Ukraine’s…
The New York Times reports: Since Western allies announced extensive restrictions on exports of semiconductors, computers, lasers, telecommunications equipment and other goods in February, Russia has had difficulty obtaining microchips to replenish its supply of precision-guided munitions, according to one senior U.S. official, who, along with most other officials interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters based on intelligence. On Tuesday, when asked if a chip shortage was crippling the Russian military, Commerce Secretary…
MarketWatch reports: The almost 1,000 companies that have opted to pull out of Russia following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine are not just benefiting from a reputational boost. They are also being rewarded by financial markets, while those who remain behind are being punished. That’s according to a new report from Yale Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his research team at the Yale School of Management. The team has been monitoring almost 1,300 companies that do business in Russia and has…
The New York Times reports: The old nuclear order, rooted in the Cold War’s unthinkable outcomes, was fraying before Russia invaded Ukraine. Now, it is giving way to a looming era of disorder unlike any since the beginning of the atomic age. Russia’s regular reminders over the past three months of its nuclear might, even if largely bluster, were the latest evidence of how the potential threat has resurfaced in more overt and dangerous ways. They were enough to draw…
Tom Nichols writes: In the early days of my career, I was a Russian-speaking “Sovietologist” working in think tanks and with government agencies to pry open the black box of the Kremlin’s strategy and intentions. The work could be unsettling. Once, during a discussion of various nuclear scenarios, a colleague observed matter-of-factly, “Yes, in that one, we only lose 40 million.” He meant 40 million people. The end of the Cold War, however, led to an era of national inattentiveness…
William M Arkin reports: Vladimir Putin’s health is a subject of intense conversation inside the Biden administration after the intelligence community produced its fourth comprehensive assessment at the end of May. The classified U.S. report says Putin seems to have re-emerged after undergoing treatment in April for advanced cancer, three U.S. intelligence leaders who have read the reports tell Newsweek. The assessments also confirm that there was an assassination attempt on Putin’s life in March, the officials say. The high-ranking…
The Wall Street Journal reports: Hundreds of Russian soldiers have escaped the fighting in Ukraine or refused to take part during the early stages of the war, according to military decrees viewed by The Wall Street Journal as well as accused soldiers and lawyers defending them. Military analysts and Ukrainian officials say there have been many more. Russia’s army stumbled badly early in its invasion of Ukraine and suffered thousands of casualties and the loss of an estimated quarter of…
Vox reports: In late May, a large plume of pink smoke erupted from a chemical plant and rose above apartment buildings in Ukraine’s eastern city of Severodonetsk. The smoke was toxic — it came from a tank of nitric acid that was struck by Russian military forces. “Do not come out of shelters!” the region’s governor, Sergiy Gaiday, said on Telegram, following the attack. “Nitric acid is dangerous if inhaled, swallowed, and in contact with skin.” Since Russia invaded Ukraine,…
Julia Davis reports: While some in the West are pondering what kind of a concessions would allow Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin “to save face” in Ukraine, leading Russian lawmakers and top propagandists are advocating smashing the West, which they say is Russia’s ultimate target. On the state TV show 60 Minutes, host Olga Skabeeva announced: “I have some unpleasant news… Even though we are methodically destroying the weapons that are being delivered [to Ukraine], but the quantities in which the…