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Category: War

The viral ‘Ukrainian biolab’ conspiracy theory hatched in rural Virginia

The viral ‘Ukrainian biolab’ conspiracy theory hatched in rural Virginia

Update: On Tuesday, April 5, 2022, Creech appeared on the Alex Jones Show, where he confirmed his identity — and his role in perpetrating the biolab conspiracy theory. The ADL Center on Extremism has, with a high degree of confidence, identified “Clandestine,” the man behind the viral biolab conspiracy theory, as Jacob Creech, a self-described former restaurant manager and Army National Guard veteran living in rural Virginia. The discovery highlights how a fringe QAnon figure, harnessing the power of social…

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Russia’s stunning failure to seize Kyiv

Russia’s stunning failure to seize Kyiv

The Associated Press reports: Kyiv was a Russian defeat for the ages. The fight started poorly for the invaders and went downhill from there. When President Vladimir Putin launched his war on Feb. 24 after months of buildup on Ukraine’s borders, he sent hundreds of helicopter-borne commandos — the best of the best of Russia’s “spetsnaz” special forces soldiers — to assault and seize a lightly defended airfield on Kyiv’s doorstep. Other Russian forces struck elsewhere across Ukraine, including toward…

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U.S. blocks Russian debt payments and unveils new sanctions in bid to raise pressure on Moscow

U.S. blocks Russian debt payments and unveils new sanctions in bid to raise pressure on Moscow

Reuters reports: The United States stopped the Russian government on Monday from paying holders of its sovereign debt more than $600 million from reserves held at American banks, in a move meant to ratchet up pressure on Moscow and eat into its holdings of US dollars. Under sanctions put in place after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, foreign currency reserves held by the Russian central bank at US financial institutions were frozen. But the Treasury Department had been allowing…

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As Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupts food production, experts question expanding use of cropland for biofuels

As Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupts food production, experts question expanding use of cropland for biofuels

Inside Climate News reports: In the six weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, the conflict has not only sent energy prices soaring, but has disrupted food production, pushing costs upward and stoking fears of global food shortages. The United Nations has warned of surging food insecurity in countries that depend on wheat from Ukraine, a critical and major breadbasket. Many of them were already teetering on the edge of hunger before the crisis. As these effects of the conflict ripple across…

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How a Russian propagandist justifies genocide in Ukraine

How a Russian propagandist justifies genocide in Ukraine

Mariia Kravchenko has posted a translation of an article by a Russian propagandist, originally published by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti: In this article, the author is describing ways how Russians want to wipe out Ukraine in the same way the Soviet regime did it. ⠀ It’s important to spread this article. The Russian war should be stopped now. It was supposed to be stopped 8 years ago when it only began. 71% of Russians feel proud about…

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Russia’s biggest rappers are going hard against Putin’s war on Ukraine

Russia’s biggest rappers are going hard against Putin’s war on Ukraine

Rolling Stone reports: A blazing-yellow Bentley. Face tattoos. Booming bass lines in a parking garage. The burnt-out husk of a bullet-riddled car. As the rapper, who would look comfortably at home on a Tekashi 69 set, spits bars about Cartier and riches from behind the wheel, a woman and her son are held at gunpoint. Suddenly, blood spatters the car’s glossy yellow contour as the victims are dispatched offscreen. This might look like just another hip-hop video. In fact, the…

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Russian invaders are now treating the whole Ukrainian population as combatants, as dirt to be cleansed

Russian invaders are now treating the whole Ukrainian population as combatants, as dirt to be cleansed

Franklin Foer writes: On the morning of March 4, a teacher was sheltering in a basement in Bucha, an old railroad stop northwest of Kyiv that over the centuries had grown into a verdant suburb. The town lay along the Russian military’s intended path of conquest, leading into the Ukrainian capital. And while the invaders struggled to realize their overarching plan, they gained a toehold in Bucha. At 7 a.m., the teacher, huddled alone with her two dogs, heard a…

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History stokes Putin’s imperial dream of a ‘Greater Russia’

History stokes Putin’s imperial dream of a ‘Greater Russia’

Samuel McIlhagga writes: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has become an exemplary instance of the use of historical ideas to justify invasion. Whereas U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq was couched in abstract rhetoric about “the power and appeal of human liberty,” Putin has resorted to esoteric historical arguments to explain his choice to invade. Putin, in his information and propaganda war, has repeatedly used certain imperial tropes that make historical claims about how Russia should be…

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Women and girls recount huge scale of sexual violence inflicted by Russian soldiers in Ukraine

Women and girls recount huge scale of sexual violence inflicted by Russian soldiers in Ukraine

The Guardian reports: Women across Ukraine are grappling with the threat of rape as a weapon of war as growing evidence of sexual violence emerges from areas retaken from retreating Russian forces. The world was horrified on Sunday by a picture taken by the photographer Mikhail Palinchak on a highway 20km outside the capital, Kyiv, in which the bodies of one man and three women were piled under a blanket. The women were naked and their bodies had been partially…

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New reports of war crimes in Ukraine emerge as Russians retreat from Kyiv area

New reports of war crimes in Ukraine emerge as Russians retreat from Kyiv area

The Wall Street Journal reports: Nearly 300 civilians have been buried in mass graves by local authorities in this small suburb of Kyiv after Russian troops withdrew last week, one of several regions where Ukrainian officials and independent rights watchdogs say they are uncovering evidence of war crimes perpetrated by occupation forces. Footage taken by the Ukrainian military shortly after Russian forces abandoned Bucha showed streets littered with bodies of civilians, some of them with their hands tied. Human Rights…

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U.S. aims to hold Western alliance together during what might become a protracted war

U.S. aims to hold Western alliance together during what might become a protracted war

Politico reports: More than a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House is preparing for the possibility of a brutal, violent quagmire that could last several months or more and test the West’s resolve. Western military and intelligence assessments that had believed Russia would quickly topple Kyiv and seize control of much of Ukraine were proven incorrect, as Ukrainian forces, backed by NATO weaponry, have shown surprising resistance. Russia’s military has suffered extraordinary losses in troops and equipment…

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Putin’s 20-year advance to war in Ukraine — and how the West mishandled it

Putin’s 20-year advance to war in Ukraine — and how the West mishandled it

The Wall Street Journal reports: In Ukraine, President Yushchenko was struggling to fulfill the hopes of the Orange Revolution that the country could become a prosperous Western-style democracy. Fractious politics, endemic corruption and economic stagnation sapped his popularity. Mr. Yushchenko sought to anchor Ukraine’s place in the West. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2008, he met with Ms. Rice, by then the U.S. Secretary of State, and implored her for a path to enter NATO. The…

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Putin is making the same mistakes that doomed Hitler when he invaded the Soviet Union

Putin is making the same mistakes that doomed Hitler when he invaded the Soviet Union

John Blake writes: Russian President Vladimir Putin often evokes the Soviet Union’s epic defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II to justify his country’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet Putin is committing some of the same blunders that doomed Germany’s 1941 invasion of the USSR — while using “Hitler-like tricks and tactics” to justify his brutality, military historians and scholars say. This is the savage irony behind Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine that’s become clear as the war enters its…

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Many Russians now accept the Kremlin’s assertion that their country is under siege from the West

Many Russians now accept the Kremlin’s assertion that their country is under siege from the West

The New York Times reports: The stream of antiwar letters to a St. Petersburg lawmaker has dried up. Some Russians who had criticized the Kremlin have turned into cheerleaders for the war. Those who publicly oppose it have found the word “traitor” scrawled on their apartment door. Five weeks into President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, there are signs that the Russian public’s initial shock has given way to a mix of support for their troops and anger at…

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Trumpian younger conservatives hold an ‘emergency’ meeting over Russia

Trumpian younger conservatives hold an ‘emergency’ meeting over Russia

Politico reports: J.D. Vance was on the warpath. “Using American power to do the dirty work of Europe is a pretty bad idea,” he told a crowd on Thursday, warning against the U.S. getting more involved in Ukraine. “We don’t have that many non-insane people in Washington. I need you to be some of them.” Vance wasn’t speaking at a campaign stop in Ohio, where he is running for the U.S. Senate, but at the Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown…

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U.S. will reportedly help Ukraine by sending Soviet-made tanks

U.S. will reportedly help Ukraine by sending Soviet-made tanks

Politico reports: The U.S. government is reportedly set to transfer Soviet-made tanks to support Ukrainian defense efforts against continued Russian attacks in the country’s east. A government official in Washington told the New York Times on Friday that the decision of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration had come as a response to requests by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to support his country’s war effort with military equipment, including tanks. Following Zelenskyy’s appeals last week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had…

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