These are what came up:
"Russian filmmakers killed in Africa were investigating mercenaries close to the Kremlin" by Anton Troianovski Washington Post August 01, 2018
MOSCOW — Three Russians producing a documentary about mercenary forces close to the Kremlin were gunned down in the Central African Republic this week, highlighting the risks that Russian journalists continue to take despite the growing numbers who perish in their line of work.
The journalists were shot dead in an ambush as they were driving across the war-torn country, according to local officials quoted by news agencies. The news outlet they were working for said they were investigating Russian military contractors operating in the Central African Republic, where President Faustin-Archange Touadera is looking to Russia as a provider of arms and military training amid a bloody civil war.
It is not clear who killed them.
The three men — Orkhan Dzhemal, Kirill Radchenko, and Alexander Rastorguyev — were among those Russians who continue to pursue independent investigative reporting despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on press freedoms and the violence often perpetrated against journalists. Just in recent weeks, two other Russian journalists died in unexplained circumstances in the city of Nizhny Novgorod.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled former Russian oil tycoon, financed the documentary on the mercenaries as part of what he said was several million dollars a year in support for news media in Russia. In an interview Wednesday, Khodorkovsky said he was determined to find out who was behind the murders and that it was too soon to blame the Kremlin or anyone else. He said he would get more closely involved in his outlets’ risk assessments in the future but that he wouldn’t stop funding investigative journalism.
‘‘It’s one of the few ways we can currently influence the situation in the country,’’ said Khodorkovsky, speaking by phone from London. ‘‘When even rather small news outlets write about something and it gets attention in even a narrow segment of the public, the authorities can get rather sensitive and tuck in their paws.’’
In recent years, Russian journalists have documented the workings of the St. Petersburg ‘‘troll farm’’ that tried to influence the US election, the activities of Russian forces in Ukraine and mercenaries in Syria, and a raft of examples of domestic corruption and abuse. Last month, six prison guards were arrested after the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta published a video of torture inside a Russian prison. Since 2000, at least 28 journalists have been killed in Russia, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry and the pro-Kremlin news media said the journalists themselves may have been to blame. The RIA Novosti state news agency quoted a Russian Africa expert as saying that the journalists had died in a ‘‘typical robbery amid the overall conflict.’’ Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia’s biggest tabloid, speculated that Western intelligence agencies may have carried out the killing in order to discredit Russian interests in the Central African Republic.
That was my first thought when I saw the headline, and some pointed the finger at France.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that local officials had reported that the journalists had ignored warnings that they were entering a dangerous area.
‘‘What they were really doing in C.A.R., what their goals and tasks were, is an open question,’’ Zakharova said in a Facebook post. She said the journalists had entered the country on tourist visas — without the proper accreditation — and that they had failed to seek security advice from the Russian Foreign Ministry before their trip.
Andrei Konyakhin, the editor of the Investigations Management Center — the Khodorkovsky news outlet working with the filmmakers — told the Associated Press that the reporters had used tourist visas in order to work undercover and that he was skeptical that they were robbed.
“This was done in a very demonstrative fashion,’’ he told the AP. ‘‘If they could have just taken everything from them, why kill them?”’
The Central African Republic has been beset by over two decades of conflict that in recent years has taken on overt religious tones.
Amid the carnage, Russia has seized an opportunity to gain influence in Africa. In March, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that Moscow was working with the diamond and gold-rich Central African Republic to study ‘‘the mutually beneficial development of Central African natural resources.’’
Where my print copy ended.
Russia also received UN approval to deliver small arms and ammunition to the country’s government and provide five military and 170 civilian instructors to train the country’s military.
The Investigations Management Center said the journalists were investigating mercenaries with the Wagner group, a private military company linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a catering magnate close to Putin. Russian news media have reported that Wagner is also active in Syria, and Prigozhin himself was indicted by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III for his alleged involvement in the St. Petersburg troll farm’s intervention in the 2016 US election.....
They will never let that go.
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Related:
Russia's Military Mission Creep Advances to a New Front: Africa
Also see:
Ukraine TV Comedian Wins Election's First Round
Some wonder if Zelensky may be a surrogate for Ihor V. Kolomoisky, an oligarch and bitter rival of Poroshenko's who moved to Israel after becoming embroiled in a banking scandal that could cost Ukraine $5.6 billion.
Ukraine's Newly Elected President Is Jewish. So Is Its Prime Minister
Oligarch's Return Raises Alarm in Ukraine
Ihor Kolomoisky flew by private jet to Dnipro, his hometown, from Israel.
"Anti-Kremlin journalist faked his own death, Ukraine’s security chief says" by Amie Ferris-Rotman Washington Post May 30, 2018
MOSCOW — A fierce Kremlin critic and prominent Russian war correspondent, Arkady Babchenko, said on Wednesday he had faked his own death in order to foil a real plot against his life.
Babchenko showed up at a news conference in Kiev, one day after he was reportedly killed there, shocking a room full of journalists who had been covering his supposed murder. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko blamed Moscow for wanting to kill Babchenko and congratulated his country’s security services for becoming stronger in the face of ‘‘Russian aggression.’’
One thinks if they wanted to, they would have.
Russia dismissed the charge as part of an ‘‘anti-Russian campaign,’’ its foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said.
Babchenko, 41, fled his native Russia for Ukraine last year after receiving death threats for criticizing Russian military involvement in Syria. He told reporters Wednesday that his fake death was part of an operation with the security services in Ukraine that took two months to prepare.
Sporting a black hoodie and appearing somewhat perplexed, Babchenko first offered his wife ‘‘special apologies for the hell she’s been through these past two days.’’ His wife, according to reports Tuesday, had found his body after he had been shot several times by the entrance to their apartment in Kiev. It was not clear if she had been involved in the plot or not.
WTF was he thinking?
He matter of factly told reporters, ‘‘I’ve done my work. I’m still alive and not going anywhere.’’ A few hours after his stunning appearance, Babchenko triumphantly took to Twitter to say he will live to the age of 96 and dance on the grave of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also promised he would drive an American military truck through central Moscow.
Babchenko’s resurfacing immediately brought cheers of jubilation from his colleagues at Radio Free Europe in Ukraine, but it also drew condemnation from Russians, wary of how his faked death could be manipulated by Russian authorities.
‘‘What a wonderful day for Kremlin propaganda,’’ Russian journalist Leonid Ragozin tweeted.
Why?
Because the Ukrainians look like complete fools?
Russia’s state-run RT network used the incident to draw parallels with the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter earlier this year in England, which the West blamed on Russia, implying that both incidents were faked.
Ethical questions were also raised in the wider journalism community.
‘‘It is always very dangerous for a government to play with the facts, especially using journalists for their fake stories,’’ the head of Reporters Without Borders, Christophe Deloire, wrote on Twitter.
You should try reading a Bo$ton Globe every morning.
No stranger to death, Babchenko served in the Russian army during Chechnya’s two wars for independence, after which he wrote a powerful memoir about the everyday brutality of conflict before turning to journalism, writing about war for a range of Russian publications.
His alleged death was widely condemned by American and European officials as an attack on press freedom. Vigils and tributes to Babchenko popped up in Moscow, just moments before he dramatically re-appeared. The Russian government had demanded on Tuesday that Ukraine conduct a full investigation into his death, though many in Kiev suspected at the time that Russians were behind it.
All you can do is shake your head at this slop.
Ukraine’s chief of security services, Vasyl Gritsak, said Ukrainian police had detained one suspect involved in the real plot against Babchenko, a former rebel fighter in eastern Ukraine — in other words, one allied with Russia in the fighting there. Gritsak said he had been paid $30,000 to carry out the attack. Poroshenko ordered that Babchenko and his family be given round-the-clock security.....
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Here is how they did it:
"How Ukrainian officials faked a journalist’s death with pig’s blood and makeup" by Yuras Karmanau and Nataliya Vasilyeva Associated Press May 31, 2018
KIEV, Ukraine — To mimic gore, they used makeup and pig’s blood. They shot bullet holes in one of his sweatshirts, and to top off Arkady Babchenko’s staged murder, they even took him to the morgue.
The problem is, be it a mass shooting event or something else, we have seen staged and scripted crisis drills "go live," and this stunt simply casts into question all the "news" events that are reported in the pre$$.
The journalist revealed Thursday how Ukrainian security services faked his murder to thwart a contract hit allegedly arranged by Babchenko’s native Russia.
Police said Tuesday night that Babchenko had been shot and killed in his apartment building. The next day, he showed up alive in front of journalists and authorities revealed that it all had been a ruse and said that the organizer of the planned assassination had been arrested.
At a news conference, Babchenko himself wasn’t clear on why the security services thought the elaborate deception was necessary.
Yeah.
Why go to all that trouble?
‘‘They probably had their reasons. Maybe they wanted to collect proof that would be 100 percent solid,’’ he told reporters.
One of Russia’s best-known war reporters and a vehement Kremlin critic, the 41-year-old Babchenko fled the country in February 2017 because of what he described as death threats. He said Ukrainian agents came to him about a month ago and said that Russian security services had put out an order for his slaying. ‘‘I said: ‘Great. Why have you been waiting for a month?’’’ he recounted.
To make the staged murder look genuine, Babchenko said, security officers took his sweatshirt and shot holes in it. Babchenko said he put on the shirt and got smeared with pig’s blood. ‘‘I took a mouthful of it and spit it out,’’ he said. One of the officers also told him how to fall down to appear to have been genuinely shot.
His wife called an ambulance and he was taken to a hospital intensive care unit, where a forensic expert ‘‘documented’’ his death. After that, he ended up in a morgue that he said was ‘‘freezing as hell.’’ Once inside the morgue, Babchenko said he was ‘‘resurrected,’’ taking off the blood-stained clothes. ‘‘I just sat there watching the news about what a great guy I was,’’ he added.
Babchenko said Thursday he had told his ‘‘closest relatives’’ about the sting operation in advance, although on Wednesday, he said he had apologized to his wife ‘‘for the hell she had to go through in the past two days.’’
This isn't making any sense!
The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the Ukrainian government, saying it was ‘‘fanning anti-Russian hysteria.’’ Relations between the two countries have been strained since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and separatists backed by Moscow in eastern Ukraine have fought government troops in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people.
I'm told the long-simmering conflict between Russia and Ukraine started with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, except Russia didn't annex Crimea, and the AP totally ignored the 2014 Obama coup that kicked it all off!
Babchenko’s faked death caused real shock in Ukraine, where other journalists have been killed in recent years. It also brought widespread criticism from press freedom groups.
BOTCH JOB!
Sergei Tomilenko, head of the Ukrainian Journalists Union, complained that authorities had presented no evidence that an assassination plot actually existed or that Russia was involved. Without such evidence, he said, the deception could be considered politically motivated, ‘‘which discredits not only journalists, but the image of Ukraine.’’
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov lashed out at the criticism. ‘‘What would you want? That Babchenko had been killed?’’ he said.
There is no evidence of any plot, dick!
Babchenko said he is staying in a secure location for the time being and his immediate plans are to try to overcome the stress he’s endured. ‘‘I’m planning to have a good sleep, get drunk and fall asleep while drunk and think about nothing for the next two or three days,’’ he said.
It's was self-induced stress for God's sake. He was a willing tool!
On Wednesday, when Babchenko’s stunning appearance in front of journalists brought whoops and applause, Ukrainian Security Service chief Vasyl Gritsak said a Ukrainian citizen who allegedly was paid $40,000 by the Russian security service to organize and carry out the hit had been arrested. The man in turn allegedly hired an acquaintance to be the gunman.
The alleged organizer, Boris German, was arraigned Thursday night and ordered held in custody for two months. German told the court he had been working with Ukrainian counter-intelligence because a friend living in Russia who planned to cause disorder in Ukraine had approached him.
Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko said the man contacted by German to kill Babchenko informed authorities of the plot. At a subsequent meeting of German and the proposed triggerman, German said he had orders for about 30 other killings, including that of a former officer of Russia’s Federal Security Service, Lutsenko said on Ukraine’s Inter TV channel.
News reports said German’s lawyer has identified him as the executive director of a joint venture in Ukraine with German arms-maker Schmeisser.
The Germans are always involved when there is turmoil in Russia.
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Related:
FBI warns consumers about malware aimed at Internet routers
The Talos Intelligence Group traced the infection to an outlaw group linked to Russia’s military intelligence service — the same bunch blamed for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign — after spotting a surge in infections in routers in Ukraine, suggesting an imminent attack on the digital infrastructure of that country.
It's a “new world” out there, and who knew COVID had infected the Ukraine two years ago?
God help us all:
"Indicted Russians tried hacking Orthodox clergy, list suggests" by Raphael Satter Associated Press August 27, 2018
LONDON — The Russian hackers indicted by the US special prosecutor last month have spent years trying to steal the private correspondence of some of the world’s most senior Christian Orthodox figures, The Associated Press has found, illustrating the high stakes as Kiev and Moscow wrestle over the religious future of Ukraine.
The targets included top aides to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who often is described as the first among equals of the world’s Eastern Orthodox Christian leaders. The Istanbul-based patriarch is currently mulling whether to accept a Ukrainian bid to tear that country’s church from its association with Russia, a potential split fueled by the armed conflict between Ukrainian military forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
AP’s evidence comes from a hit list of 4,700 e-mail addresses supplied last year by Secureworks, a subsidiary of Dell Technologies. AP has been mining the data for months, uncovering how a group of Russian hackers widely known as Fancy Bear tried to break into the e-mails of US Democrats, defense contractors , intelligence workers, international journalists, and even American military wives. In July, as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, a grand jury identified 12 Russian intelligence agents as being behind the group’s hack-and-leak assault against Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The targeting of high-profile religious figures demonstrates the wide net cast by the cyberspies.
Patriarch Bartholomew claims the exclusive right to grant a ‘‘Tomos of Autocephaly,’’ or full ecclesiastic independence, sought by the Ukrainians. It would be a momentous step, splitting the world’s largest Eastern Orthodox denomination and severely eroding the power and prestige of the Moscow Patriarchate, which has positioned itself as leading player within the global Orthodox community.
‘‘If something like this will take place on their doorstep, it would be a huge blow to the claims of Moscow’s transnational role,’’ said Vasilios Makrides, a specialist in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Erfurt in Germany. ‘‘It’s something I don’t think they will accept.’’
What will they do, declare war on the Church?
The Kremlin is scrambling to help Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill retain his traditional role as the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and ‘‘the more they know, the better it is for them,’’ Makrides said.
The Russian Orthodox Church said it had no information about the hacking and declined comment. Russian officials referred to previous denials by the Kremlin that it has anything to do with Fancy Bear, despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary.
Consider the veracity of the accuser and their evidence!
Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill is flying to Turkey later this week in a last-ditch bid to prevent a split. Hilarion Alfeyev, Kirill’s representative abroad, has warned that granting the Tomos could lead to the biggest Christian schism since 1054, when Catholic and Orthodox believers parted ways.
‘‘If such a thing happens, Orthodox unity will be buried,’’ Alfeyev said.
Bartholomew, who is 78, does not use e-mail, those church officials said, but his aides do, and the Secureworks list spells out several attempts to crack their Gmail accounts.
The web version picked this up:
Spy games have long been a part of the Russian Orthodox world. The Soviet Union slaughtered tens of thousands of priests in the 1930s, but the Communists later took what survived of the church and brought it under the sway of Russia’s secret police, the KGB, with clerics conscripted to spy on congregants and emigres. The nexus between Russia’s intelligence and religious establishments survived the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and the KGB’s reorganization into the FSB, according to Moscow-based political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin. The Russian hackers’ religious dragnet also extended to the United States and went beyond Orthodox Christians, taking in Muslims, Jews, and Catholics whose activities might conceivably be of interest to the Russian government. Fancy Bear also went after Ummah, an umbrella group for Ukrainian Muslims; the papal nuncio in Kiev; and an account associated with the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, a Byzantine rite church that accepts the authority of the Vatican, the Secureworks data shows.....
Those were Stalin's Jews, and you don't even know their names.
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Related:
"Police in Ukraine launched criminal cases against priests who defied quarantine regulations and allowed believers without face masks inside churches for the Easter services. The country’s Interior Ministry says some 130,000 people attended Easter church services on Sunday. It says quarantine regulations were violated in 19 churches across 13 regions. Five criminal cases have been launched against priests in two parishes of the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The priests may face up to eight years in prison. Ukraine has registered 6,592 cases of the coronavirus and 174 deaths."
What a difference two years makes.
Time to fire off a few missiles:
"Putin: If US develops banned missiles, so will Russia" by Nataliya Vasilyeva Associated Press December 05, 2018
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday warned the United States that if it walks out of a key arms treaty and starts developing the type of missiles banned by it, Russia will do the same.
Putin’s remarks to Russian news agencies on Wednesday came a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced at a NATO meeting that Washington will suspend its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 60 days, citing Russian ‘‘cheating.’’
The United States has shared intelligence evidence with its NATO allies that it says shows that Russia’s new SSC-8 ground-fired cruise missile could give Moscow the ability to launch a nuclear strike in Europe with little or no notice. Russia has denied the accusations.
President Trump earlier this year announced his decision to withdraw from the INF, accusing Russia and China — which is not a signatory to the treaty — of violating it.
Putin on Wednesday accused the United States of making up excuses for pulling out of the pact, saying that the United States first made up its mind to walk out of it and only then ‘‘started to look for the reasons why they should do it.’’
‘‘It seems that our American partners believe that the situation has changed so much that the US has to have this type of weapons,’’ he said in televised remarks. ‘‘What would be our response? A very simple one: in that case, we will do the same.’’
Speaking at a briefing of foreign military attaches earlier, General Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff of the Russian military, warned of a Russian response, and said that it would be the countries that host US intermediate-range missiles that would become immediate targets for Russia.
When signed in 1987, the INF treaty was lauded as a major safeguard for global security since they eliminated shorter-range missiles that take just a few minutes to reach their targets. The removal of such destabilizing weapons would in theory allow more time for decision-making in case of a warning of a missile attack.
US ally Germany, which has been keen to preserve the treaty, called on Russia to try to save it while it still has the time.
‘‘The INF treaty is of great significance for security in Europe,’’ government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said in Berlin on Wednesday. ‘‘The German government welcomes the fact that the American government is giving its preservation another chance,’’ she added, referring to the 60-day deadline. She also noted that the issue came up in a meeting between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Trump in Argentina on Saturday.
That was pre-COVID.
‘‘It is now up to Russia to avert the end of the treaty,’’ Demmer said.
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The U.S. soon fired back:
"The fate of a deal freeing several Russian companies, including aluminum giant United Co. Rusal, from punishing U.S. sanctions now rests in the hands of Congress, where Republicans and Democrats are already voicing skepticism about the agreement. Congress has a month to decide whether to intervene to block the agreement announced Wednesday by the Treasury Department. Under the deal, Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska will remain under U.S. sanctions and his property will remain blocked, but the Treasury department will remove financial restrictions on Rusal, En+ Group Plc and EuroSibEnergo JSC. Deripaska is required to cut his direct and indirect share ownership below 50 percent in each company under the terms of the agreement. If he ends up in any way controlling the companies, “then we would insist that the company be re-listed at the end of the day,” said Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat. The United States sanctioned Deripaska, along with dozens of Russian tycoons, companies, and key allies of Putin in April under a 2017 law that strengthened US sanctions targeting Russia. The sanctions were part of a broader US effort to punish associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin for Moscow’s interference with the 2016 American elections. Aluminum markets spun into chaos after the sanctions were announced and global prices shot up by as much as 20 percent in the first week. Sanctioning one of the world’s largest aluminum suppliers threatened a worldwide shortage of the metal, forcing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to backtrack."
We are on the retreat everywhere -- just like the Germans in 1944.
Would all make a great movie, wouldn't it?
"The movie theater was dead, they said. After ticket sales slumped in 2017 , due largely to the worst summer season in more than a decade, punditspredicted the demise of moviegoing, an inevitable casualty to the rise of streaming. This year, the movies flipped the script. This weekend, as ‘‘Aquaman,’’ ‘’Bumblebee,’’ and ‘‘Mary Poppins Returns’’ arrive in theaters, ticket sales will reach a new record, passing the previous 2016 high of $11.4 billion. Driven in part by ‘‘Black Panther,’’ ‘’Crazy Rich Asians,’’ and even documentaries like ‘‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor?’’ box office sales of $11.8 billion are expected for the year. The overall domestic gross is up nearly 9 percent from last year; ticket sales are up about 6 percent. And it’s not just in North America. Propelled by Chinese moviegoers, global ticket sales should, for the second time ever, exceed $40 billion. Saudi Arabia declared itself open for business to Hollywood, after more than 35 years without theaters. In the United Kingdom, cinemas are headed to their best year since 1971. ‘‘Last summer of 2017, when there just weren’t very many movies coming out that had any traction, we confronted the inevitable story about the impending death of the movie theater business. And we said back then: It’s all about short-term product supply,’’ said John Fithian, president of the National Organization of Theater Owners. ‘‘We knew that once the movies came back, we would be fine.’’
What I have noticed is good almost always, with rare exception, wins in the movies.
Not so much in real life.
