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The World Health Organization (WHO) paid $250 each to at least 104 Congolese women who were allegedly sexually abused by its staffers during the deadly Ebola outbreak in the African nation, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Tuesday.

The payments, totaling $26,000, were made earlier this year when Gaya Gamhewage, the doctor in charge of the WHO’s work on sexual harassment and abuse prevention, visited the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to address the biggest known sex scandal in the agency’s history, the outlet added, citing internal documents.

Recipients were reportedly required to complete training courses designed to assist them in starting “income-generating” businesses in order to receive the cash. One of the abused women is said to have given birth to a baby with a disability that requires special medical care.

An investigation commissioned by the WHO reported in September 2021 that 21 of its employees were among 83 aid workers who sexually assaulted local women and girls while on a 2018-2020 UN Ebola mission in the DRC.

According to the 35-page report, the abuses, which included nine allegations of rape, were committed by both local and international workers. While dozens of women claimed to have been offered work in exchange for sex, others said they were coerced with alcohol, trapped in hospitals, and forced to have sex, leaving two of them pregnant.

The commission said it found clear structural failures and an inability to manage the risks of sexual exploitation and incidents of abuse in the Central African country. Prior to that, AP reported that senior WHO management had been made aware of the sexual misconduct in 2019 as it occurred but did little to stop it.

Last month, the global health agency announced that five staff members had been sacked since 2021 in response to findings of sexual misconduct. The names of 25 other alleged perpetrators have also been entered into a UN database to prevent future employment, it added.

However, the alleged victims are said to have expressed distrust in the WHO, insisting that its efforts were not enough. According to the AP, several Congolese women who were sexually exploited have yet to receive compensation. While the institution reportedly said in a confidential document last month that about a third of the known victims were “impossible to locate,” it claimed that nearly a dozen others declined its offer.

Those who received the $250 cash, including a young woman who now has a five-year-old daughter as a result of the incident, told the outlet that the payout was insufficient and that their main goal was to see justice served.

“It’s not unheard of for the UN to give people seed money so they can boost their livelihoods, but to mesh that with compensation for a sexual assault, or a crime that results in the birth of a baby, is unthinkable,” Paula Donovan, co-director of the Code Blue campaign against sexual misconduct in the UN, is quoted by AP as saying.

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https://www.rt.com/africa/587314-who-congolese-sexual-abuse-compensation/

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Jacob Chansley, dubbed the ‘QAnon Shaman’ of the 2021 Capitol Hill riot in Washington DC by US media, is now seeking to return to the venue as a member of Congress. Chansley has filed paperwork with Arizona to run in the state’s 8th congressional district in 2024.

Chansley, now 36, is a US Navy veteran who gained fame – or notoriety – during the January 6, 2021 protest outside the US Capitol, as thousands of Americans challenged the certification of the 2020 election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. He showed up to the protest shirtless, adorned in red, white and blue body paint, wearing a fur hat with horns and carrying an American flag.

Multiple outlets reported on Monday that Chansley has filed a Statement of Interest with the state government, specifying that he is running for the congressional seat as a Libertarian Party candidate. The seat is currently held by Republican Debbie Lesko, 64, who has announced she would not seek re-election.

“The media called me the ‘Q-Shaman’ or ‘Qanon-Shaman’, but that is a straw man they created in an attempt to control the narrative [and] destroy my public image,” Chansley stated on his X (formerly Twitter) profile, AmericaShaman.

Democrats have claimed that the protesters supporting then-President Donald Trump were engaging in a violent “insurrection,” a term used in the 14th Amendment to disenfranchise the defeated side in the US Civil War. None of more than 1,000 Americans prosecuted for January 6 has been charged with that particular crime, however. Chansley himself pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing an official proceeding.

“Men of honor admit when they're wrong. Not just publicly but to themselves. I was wrong for entering the Capitol. I have no excuse,” he told the judge. In November 2021, Chansley was sentenced to 41 months in prison. He was granted early release in March 2023, after spending a total of 27 months behind bars, 11 of them in solitary confinement.

Chansley was released shortly after TV host Tucker Carlson aired a video, previously undisclosed by the government, showing him peacefully walking around the Capitol on January 6, with a police escort. In the video, Chansley can be heard telling the protesters that Trump “asked everybody to go home” and that they should do so, having made their point.

Elon Musk, who had just acquired Twitter, was one of the more prominent voices condemning the federal government’s treatment of the “shaman” at the time.

“Chansley was falsely portrayed in the media as a violent criminal who tried to overthrow the state and who urged others to commit violence. But here he is urging people to be peaceful and go home,” Musk wrote on the platform.

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https://www.rt.com/news/587193-capitol-riot-shaman-congress/

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The Election Integrity Partnership, an online “disinformation group” created by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and operated through a network of think tanks and academic institutions, was deliberately set up to censor conservative speech during the 2020 campaign season, a report published by the House Judiciary Committee on Monday revealed. 

The group directed almost all of its censorship efforts against “true information, jokes, and political opinions” posted by conservative social media users while leaving false information posted by liberals alone, the report claimed, describing the partnership’s true goal as “censor[ing] Americans engaged in core political speech in the lead up to the 2020 election.” 

Prominent figures whose posts were flagged as “misinformation” included then-President Donald Trump, Senator Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) and Thomas Massie (Kentucky), satire site the Babylon Bee and conservative media outlet Newsmax, according to the document.   

While the DHS acknowledged in May 2020 that it could not legally “openly endorse” a system to flag disinformation, officials discussed establishing a Misinformation Reporting Portal in a call with Facebook two months before the EIP was launched on DHS orders under the aegis of Stanford University’s disinformation center, called the Stanford Internet Observatory.

At least four students working at the EIP through the Stanford Internet Observatory were simultaneously employed at the Cybersecurity and Internet Security Administration, a DHS subsidiary, even using their government email accounts to communicate with others involved in the partnership, according to the report. A senior director with the pro-NATO think tank Atlantic Council, whose Digital Forensics Research Lab was also part of the EIP, confirmed his organization had helped establish the EIP at DHS’ request.  

The report highlights these relationships as proof that “what the federal government could not do directly, it effectively outsourced to the newly emerging censorship-industrial complex,” arguing the purpose of the EIP was to circumvent First Amendment speech protections.

The EIP’s employees, it explains, took in “misinformation reports” – thinly veiled content takedown requests – from government agencies and other “external stakeholders,” searched the internet for examples of similar content to censor across other social media platforms, and forwarded the most significant examples to those platforms with specific advice on how to limit the content’s visibility. 

CISA’s executive director Brandon Wales denied his agency had ever “censored speech or facilitated censorship” in a statement to Fox News Digital on Monday.

A federal appeals court last month upheld an earlier ruling limiting CISA and several other government agencies including the White House under President Joe Biden from communicating with Big Tech platforms, affirming the agencies had likely violated Americans’ rights when they colluded behind the scenes to suppress constitutionally protected speech.

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https://www.rt.com/news/586779-election-integrity-homeland-security-censorship/

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The UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution condemning the glorification of neo-Nazism, racism, and other forms of hatred, despite opposition from Western countries – including the US, UK, and Canada. 

The resolution condemning “the persistence and resurgence of neo-Nazism, neo-Fascism and violent nationalist ideologies based on racial and national prejudice” was adopted on Friday by a vote of 111-50, with 14 abstentions. 

Without singling out any country, the document further expresses “deep concern” about the glorification of Nazi figures and movements, including former members of the Waffen SS and other units that fought against the anti-Hitler coalition during World War II. 

Lisa Carty, US envoy to the UN Economic and Social Council, argued that the resolution sponsored by Russia and 35 other countries was “not a serious effort to combat Nazism,” but “a glaring attempt by Russia to further its geopolitical aims.” 

“This is more egregious now, when Russia uses false accusations of Nazism to try to justify its war of aggression against Ukraine,” Carty said in a statement. 

Moscow has repeatedly drawn attention to open celebrations of SS veterans and the members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose members collaborated with Nazi Germany, in present-day Ukraine. 

“The marches of neo-Nazis and the torchlight processions in honor of those, who actively worked with the Nazis and were accomplices in their crimes, are taking place on the streets of cities in the center of Europe,” Russian diplomat Grigory Lukyantsev said in a speech at the UN on Friday. Ukraine was one of the countries that voted against the resolution. 

Multiple Jewish groups and several countries, including Russia and Poland, strongly condemned the standing ovation given to Ukrainian SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka by Canada’s parliament during a visit of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in September. The incident prompted the resignation of Canadian House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota, who claimed that he was unaware of Hunka’s past.

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https://www.rt.com/news/586544-un-resolution-nazism-west/

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US President Joe Biden has decreed that safeguards be put in place to prevent artificial intelligence (AI) technology from perpetuating racial discrimination in housing, the criminal justice system and other aspects of American life.

Provisions for “advancing equity and civil rights” were among the guidelines that Biden included in an executive order issued on Monday to set standards for AI safety and security. He called for providing “clear guidance” to landlords, federal contractors and public benefits programs to prevent AI algorithms from being used to “exacerbate discrimination.”

The order also includes guidance for developing “best practices” on the use of AI in law enforcement and the criminal court system, as well as a directive for federal prosecutors and civil rights offices to crack down on “algorithmic discrimination.” The Biden administration previously issued a guide for preventing automated systems from infringing civil rights – called the “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” – and directed federal agencies to combat discrimination in automation technology.

“Irresponsible use of AI can lead to and deepen discrimination, bias and other abuses in justice, health care and housing,” the White House said in a statement on Monday’s executive order.

Biden has made race a centerpiece of his administration since taking office in January 2021.

He has boasted the most “inclusive”administration in US history and has issued multiple executive orders on equity and inclusion. In fact, Biden’s Domestic Policy Council is charged with embedding “equity principles” in everything the federal government does. For instance, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg launched a $1 billion program last year to combat racist roadways.

Monday’s executive order includes a wide range of new AI safeguards, such as a requirement that companies developing systems that pose a risk to national security notify the federal government and share the results of their safety tests. Biden also called for expanding grants for AI research and conducting a study on how the government can help mitigate job losses resulting from the technology.

The administration has already consulted with dozens of allies on developing international guidelines to “govern the development and use of AI,” the White House said. Those efforts will accelerate under Biden’s executive order.

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https://www.rt.com/news/586212-biden-issues-ai-executive-order/

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Sunday’s anti-Semitic riot in Dagestan was inspired by Western intelligence services from the territory of Ukraine and is part of a broader effort to destabilize the world, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday.

“The events in Makhachkala were inspired through social networks, including from the territory of Ukraine, by agents of Western special services,” Putin said in his opening remarks at the evening meeting.

Telegram has already banned ‘Utro Dagestan’ (Dagestan Morning), the channel linked to Ukrainian intelligence which had called for storming the Makhachkala airport in search of “Jewish refugees.”Around 150 people took part in the riot. 

The Russian president brought up the horrific imagery coming out of Gaza as fueling an emotional response, noting that the “collective punishment” of civilians that Israel seems to have chosen is “absolutely not justifiable.”

However, he noted that the “ruling elite of the US and its satellites” are behind the current conflict in the Middle East and other places around the globe, in an effort to sow chaos and prevent the rise of a multipolar world order.

According to Putin, Moscow’s position on that conflict is clear – there can only be peace with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. 

“How do you help Palestine by attacking families?” the Russian president wondered, pointing to rioters in Dagestan waving Palestinian flags while storming the airport.

Putin argued that Russia is not just leading the effort to create a truly multipolar world of sovereign countries, but literally fighting for it on the battlefields of Ukraine – and that many volunteers from Dagestan are taking part in that struggle already.

Russia is the bulwark for all of those who fight for their independence and freedom, against those who spread chaos and conflict and their “useful idiots,” Putin concluded.

Ukraine was quick to declare the Makhachkala airport riot as “proof” of Russian bigotry and anti-Semitism. However, Russia’s Muslim leaders have condemned the riot as unacceptable, as has the head of Dagestan, Sergey Melikov. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saidon Monday that the unrest was “obviously” incited from abroad. 

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https://www.rt.com/news/586214-putin-speech-gaza-israel/

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Israeli airstrikes destroyed roads leading to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Sunday, the Associated Press reports. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed to be sheltering on the grounds of the hospital.

Residents of Gaza told the news agency that the strikes destroyed most of the roads leading to the hospital, which is the main referral hospital serving the Palestinian enclave.

“It seems they want to cut off the area,” a resident told AP, noting that Israel’s airstrikes over the past two days have been “the most violent and intense” since the war began.

The Shifa Hospital is located in Gaza City, in the northern half of the strip. The Israeli authorities have repeatedly instructed residents of the city to evacuate to the south of the enclave to be spared the airstrikes, although Israeli warplanes have bombed this supposedly safe region too, leveling homes in the cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.

Many civilians who stayed behind in Gaza City have taken shelter on the grounds of hospitals, including the Shifa facility. The Associated Press said that “tens of thousands” of people are currently camped out at the Shifa complex, which is also struggling to treat the high volume of patients inside.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed on Friday that the Shifa Hospital is “the main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity,” and that the militant group has constructed an elaborate network of tunnels and bunkers under the building. The IDF released a computer-animated video supposedly showing the layout of these tunnels, and published a video clip in which an interrogated Hamas fighter admits to the existence of the base. It is unclear, however, whether the militant was speaking under duress.

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari refused to rule out bombing the hospital, declaring that “in this war, all options are on the table.”

Israel has also threatened to bomb the Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a statement on Sunday morning. The organization said that Israeli forces ordered the “immediate evacuation” of the hospital “as it is going to be bombarded.” Palestinian news agency WAFA said shortly afterwards that hospital management refused to comply with the evacuation order.

The IDF refused to comment on either the evacuation order or the strikes near the Shifa Hospital when asked by AP.

Israel dramatically stepped up its air campaign against Gaza on Friday night, severing the enclave’s last phone and internet links with the outside world. The IDF followed the bombardment by deploying tanks and infantry to the strip, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a “second stage” in the war against Hamas.

More than 8,000 Palestinians, including 3,342 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s air campaign began, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry. Hamas’ rocket strikes and raids on Israeli territory earlier this month killed around 1,400 people, according to the IDF.

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https://www.rt.com/news/586113-israel-airstrike-gaza-hospital/

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By Jack Davis, The Western Journal Oct. 29, 2023

A new study called “Overcharged Expectations” claims that without federal subsidies, the real cost of fueling an electric vehicle would amount to $17.33 per gallon of gasoline.

The study from the Texas Public Policy Foundation said electric vehicles do not stand alone in comparison with other vehicles because of the “wide array of direct subsidies, regulatory credits, and subsidized infrastructure that contribute to the economic viability of EVs.”

“Adding the costs of the subsidies to the true cost of fueling an EV would equate to an EV owner paying $17.33 per gallon of gasoline. And these estimates do not include the hundreds of billions more in subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act,” the report said.

The study claims that a 2021 electric vehicle “would cost $48,698 more to own over a 10-year period without $22 billion in government favors given to EV manufacturers and owners” and said traditional gasoline-powered vehicles are cheaper than an electric vehicle without subsidies.

“It is not an overstate­ment to say that the federal government is subsidizing EVs to a greater degree than even wind and solar electricity generation and embarking on an unprece­dented endeavor to remake the entire American auto industry,” the report said.

According to the study, about $22 billion in various federal and state forms of aid have artificially lowered the price of a 2021 electric vehicle by almost $50,000.

The report further estimates that the cost to other people for the strain on the power grid from charging electric vehicles comes out to $11,833 over 10 years, funded by taxpayers and utility ratepayers.

While everyone else pays more, state and federal subsidies shave $8,984, on average, from the real cost of an electric vehicle over 10 years, the report said.

“The stark reality for proponents of EVs and for the dream­ers in the federal government, who are using fuel economy regulations to force manufacturers to produce ever more EVs, is that the true cost of an EV is in no way close to a comparable,” the report said.

The report noted that consumers have taken to hybrid vehicles far more than electric vehicles, adding, “Perhaps if D.C. politicians and bureaucrats stop trying to force Americans to build and buy their preferred types of vehicles, the cleaner and brighter future that they imagine will actually materialize.”

“It’s time for federal and state governments to stop driving the American auto industry off an economic cliff and allow markets to drive further improvements in cost and efficiency,” the report stated.

In a release on the foundation’s website, study author Jason Isaac said that the cost on the sticker of an electric vehicle hides a lot.

“The Biden administration and leftist states such as California have pushed for widespread electrification in less than 20 years through government subsidies and coercive regulations, but the price you see in the lot is not the true cost of an electric vehicle,” he said.

“Electric vehicle owners have been the beneficiaries of regulatory credits, subsidies, and socialized infrastructure costs totaling nearly 50 thousand dollars per EV. These costs are borne by gasoline vehicle owners, taxpayers, and utility ratepayers, who are all paying a hefty price for someone else’s EV,” he added.

“Proponents of EVs have falsely pushed the claim that EVs will soon cost less than gas-powered cars. This study shows that EVs are still a long way from being competitive without massive subsidies,” study author Brent Bennett said.

“The Biden administration’s stringent fuel economy standards and regulatory manipulations are driving American automakers toward bankruptcy and adding thousands of dollars to the cost of every gasoline vehicle. Rolling back these subsidies and burdensome regulations would save consumers money and stop the auto industry from falling off a financial cliff,” he said.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/overcharged-major-study-reveals-alarming-true-cost-owning/

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The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was behind the assassination attempt on Oleg Tsarev, the BBC and several Ukrainian outlets reported on Friday citing a source from the agency.

“Tsarev is an absolutely legitimate target. He is not just a fanatic of the ‘Russian world’, but personally came together with Russian tanks to seize Kiev,” the SBU source told the BBC’s Ukrainian service.

Ukrainian outlets Babel, Ukrinform and Ukrayinska Pravda have also reported that the SBU was behind the attack on Tsarev, likewise quoting an anonymous agency official.

Tsarev was attacked on Thursday night at the sanatorium he runs in Yalta, Crimea. He was reportedly shot two times and had lost a lot of blood before being taken to hospital, where he remains in critical condition.

Russian authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the attack on Tsarev but have yet to attribute blame.

The 53-year-old former Ukrainian lawmaker had retired from politics and settled in the Russian peninsula several years ago. He had served as a deputy from the now-banned ‘Party of Regions’ in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada from 2002 to 2014. Following the US-backed Maidan coup in Kiev, Tsarev endorsed the rebellion in Donetsk and Lugansk and eventually became the speaker of the parliament of ‘Novorossiya’ – as the two Donbass republics dubbed their union at the time.

The BBC’s source in the SBU described Tsarev as “on the list of traitors who must answer for their crimes,” presumably referring to Ukraine’s notorious Mirotvorets (Peacekeeper) database. As a number of prominent journalists and other public figures featured on the website as “enemies of Ukraine” have been murdered over the years, it has been dubbed Kiev’s “kill list.”

The Mirotvorets page for Tsarev has been updated to blame Thursday’s attempt on his life on “Russian security services.” The site has made the same claim about the assassinations of journalist Darya Dugina and blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, which US spies later said were the work of Ukrainian intelligence.

Valentin Nalivaichenko, former head of the SBU, admitted to the existence of a secret assassination unit last month, in an interview with The Economist. The Washington Post published a lengthy featurelast week about the CIA support for the SBU, admitting that the US invested “tens of millions” of dollars into the Ukrainian intelligence and its military counterpart GUR, but insisting it had nothing to do with the “dozens of assassinations” that Kiev’s spies have undertaken.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/586011-ukraine-tsarev-assassination-attempt/

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Russian forces fighting on the front lines of the conflict with Kiev will soon be reinforced with a battalion consisting of former Ukrainian soldiers, RIA Novosti reported on Friday, citing the unit’s commander. The members either surrendered or were captured in battle before deciding to switch sides, according to the media outlet.

Named after Bogdan Khmelnitsky – a Ukrainian historical figure who started an uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century and led Ukraine to join Russia – the battalion has undergone three weeks of training at a Russian base, its commander, Andrey Tishenko, said. At the end of their training, they will officially take the oath, he added.

The former Ukrainian soldiers have already been equipped for battle, Tishenko said, adding that they received their uniforms, protective gear, and weapons before the training even started. The soldiers received guidance from battle-hardened, experienced instructors, he added.

The unit members told Sputnik news agency that they joined voluntarily after receiving Russian citizenship. TASS reported in March that around 70 former Ukrainian troops applied for Russian passports and expressed their wish to fight for Moscow. The size of the newly formed unit has not been made public.

According to Tishenko, the battalion will join the Kaskad operational-combat tactical group, which is under the command of the acting interior minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Colonel General Aleksey Dikiy. The location of its first combat deployment remains unknown.

The first reports regarding plans to form the unit surfaced in the media in February. In March, RT interviewed former Ukrainians soldiers who volunteered for the Russian Army, as around 100 Ukrainian POWs from Donbass reportedly wished to do so.

One of them told RT that he decided to volunteer because he has a family in a city in Donbass. “I wanted us to have peace… a future,” he said, adding that he and his family “could not have had it under the banner” of Ukraine.

“We have always been brotherly peoples,” another POW said at the time. “I’ve never wanted to fight against Russia.”

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https://www.rt.com/russia/585976-former-ukrainian-soldiers-join-russian/

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An estimated 2,100 Ukrainian officials have attempted to leave the country illegally this year, the spokesman for the national border guard service, Andrey Demchenko, told the TSN news outlet on Friday.

The statistic was revealed in response to a direct request by the outlet regarding draft dodging. Demchenko said there had been a slight decrease in attempts to use fake documents to cross the border at checkpoints, possibly because obtaining forgeries had become more difficult. He added, however, that there had been an increase in attempts to cross the frontier away from official checkpoints.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian SBU security service reported that it had busted three new schemes for mobilization avoidance through the falsification of documents in various parts of the country.

Two of the operations allegedly involved corrupt officials helping clients escape conscription, while in two cases forgeries were specifically intended to provide cover for leaving Ukraine, according to the agency. The SBU said people had paid between $1,000 and $8,000 for the illegal services.

Kiev is reportedly planning to ramp up mobilization efforts after sustaining significant casualties on the front line throughout the summer during attempts to reclaim territory from Russia. MP Sergey Rakhmanin, who sits on the parliamentary Committee for Security, Defense, and Intelligence, described numerous problems with the draft in an extensive interview with the national media on Wednesday.

The lawmaker claimed that Ukraine’s armed forces were currently not strong enough to allow frontline units to properly rotate troops. He also cast doubt on the government’s attempts to tackle corruption and abuse among draft officials through their blanket replacement, including by frontline officers.

“Snatching the commander of a battalion or a brigade and putting him in charge of the draft office – that results in an underperforming battalion or brigade, because you need to replace him. And the draft office will not just start enrolling 120% of the quota without violating people’s rights,” Rakhmanin argued.

The violations he was referring to involve officials using force to hunt down recruits, which has plagued the Ukrainian mobilization campaign.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/585954-ukraine-officials-draft-dodgers/

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The White House is attempting to spin continued support for Kiev as being beneficial to the US economy, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing sources in Washington. According to the magazine, US officials are concerned that they are “losing the messaging war on Ukraine.”

Politico interviewed unnamed officials and lawmakers, who said that aides from the administration of President Joe Biden have been distributing talking points among Congress members still willing to funnel money to Kiev.

According to Politico, one point states that the administration’s latest request for additional funds from Congress will not only support the US military-industrial complex, but will also result in “expanding production lines, strengthening the American economy and creating new American jobs.”

Last Friday, the Biden administration asked Congress for a new spending package totaling $105 billion, intended to cover the security needs of Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as address the tense situation on America’s southern border. The request came after the White House dropped Ukraine aid from a funding bill to avoid a government shutdown earlier this month.

Washington’s attempts to secure more funding for Kiev have been criticized by numerous Republicans, who have accused the White House of a lack of strategic vision and accountability.

In the early days of the Ukraine conflict, the White House argued that the hostilities were to blame for a range of economic woes facing ordinary Americans, including rising fuel prices and inflation.

However, some Republicans dismissed this rhetoric, with an unnamed GOP official suggesting in an interview with Politico that the administration “realized that their messaging on Ukraine specifically has been a disaster… and that they needed to change.”

Last week, Biden compared the Ukraine conflict to World War II, arguing that “patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.”

The apparent shift in messaging comes after a Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month found that 41% of US citizens agreed that Washington “should provide weapons to Ukraine,” while 35% disagreed. In a similar poll in May, 46% of Americans backed sending arms to Kiev, with 29% opposed to this policy.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/585844-white-house-losing-messaging-war-ukraine/

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The Russian Interior Ministry has placed Yaroslav Hunka, an elderly Canadian-Ukrainian Nazi veteran, on its official database of wanted individuals, multiple media outlets reported on Tuesday.

Hunka’s appearance at the Canadian House of Commons last month triggered a major scandal, when he was given a standing ovation by lawmakers, as well as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visiting Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

Then-speaker Anthony Rota described the 98-year-old as a “Canadian hero” who’d “fought the Russians” during World War II. Hunka volunteered to join the 14th Waffen SS Grenadier Division.

The Russian database does not provide details of the crime for which Hunka is wanted, merely stating his date and place of birth: April 13, 1925 and the village of “Ulman, Poland,” according to reports. The settlement is actually named Urman and is located in Ukraine’s Ternopil Region, which was part of the Second Polish Republic at the time of Hunka’s birth.

Last week, Russia’s Investigative Committee charged Hunka in absentia with genocide, claiming that archive documents serve as evidence that he and fellow SS Galicia members killed at least 500 civilians between February 23 and February 28, 1944.

The alleged atrocities took place in Guta Penyatskaya, a village in what is now Ukraine’s Lviv Region. The Ukrainian nationalists killed their victims, including Poles and Jews, with the goal of ethnically cleansing the area, which was in line with Nazi ideology, the Investigative Committee said.

Some Polish officials had previously called on the government to seek Hunka’s extradition for trial.

Ottawa apologized for lionizing Hunka after his past allegiance was highlighted by Jewish organizations. Rota stepped down from his position, accepting full responsibility for the scandal.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/585874-hunka-wanted-database-russia/

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The “vital signs” that signify the health of our planet are currently worse than at any time in human history, a team of scientists warned in a research paper published in the journal Bioscience on Tuesday.

The study is an update of a 2019 analysis that 15,000 scientists across the globe had supported and stated that 20 of 35 crucial indicators used to track anthropogenic climate change are at record highs.

“Without actions that address the root problem of humanity taking more from Earth than it can safely give, we’re on our way to the potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems and a world with unbearable heat and shortages of food,” said Dr. Christopher Wolf of Oregon State University (OSU), the lead author of the report.

In addition to surging greenhouse gas emissions, the study found that rising global temperatures and sea levels are key indicators of the Earth’s ill health. Other factors also include high human and livestock population levels. The researchers’ findings echo a separate report released last month, which concluded that Earth is “well outside the safe operating space for humanity.”

Researchers said the latest study comes during a year in which several climate records were smashed, including global air temperatures, ocean temperatures, and ice levels in the Southern Ocean. In July, scientists recorded the highest monthly air surface temperature ever registered – likely the hottest the planet has experienced in 100,000 years.

“By 2100, as many as 3 to 6 billion people may find themselves outside Earth’s liveable regions,” Dr. Wolf explained, adding that increasingly large numbers of people “will be encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates.”

The report also states that “for several decades,” the scientific community has been sounding the alarm about humanity’s impact on worsening climate conditions. “Unfortunately, time is up,” it says.

The scientists also highlighted severe flooding in China and India, as well as a powerful Mediterranean storm that led to the deaths of thousands of people in Libya, as further examples of deteriorating climate conditions.

As for potential actions to mitigate the worsening effects of climate change, the paper calls for removing fossil fuel subsidies, increasing forest protection, and moving towards a more plant-based diet for wealthy individuals. It also calls for phasing out oil and gas and gradually reducing the human population via family planning.

“Life on our planet is clearly under siege,” concluded Prof. William Ripple, also of OSU. “It is a moral duty of scientists and our institutions to alert humanity of any potential existential threat and to show leadership is taking action.”

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https://www.rt.com/news/585715-climate-vital-signs-worsening/ .....

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The assassination of Russian journalist Darya Dugina was one of multiple killings carried out by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) despite denials from Kiev, the Washington Post reported on Monday. The newspaper claimed that the CIA has played a key part in empowering the Ukrainian agency, as well as its military counterpart, the GUR.

The post interviewed dozens of Ukrainian and Western officials for an article which offered fresh claims about the murder of Dugina, who was killed by a car bomb just outside Moscow in August 2022. Newly reported allegations include the use of a secret compartment in a cat cage to smuggle parts of the bomb into Russia.

Darya Dugina’s father, Aleksandr Dugin, was allegedly the intended target of the Ukrainian plot, and the Post noted that both had been expected to travel in the car which was blown up. The murder was said to be on the “extreme” side of Kiev’s program of targeted assassinations, in which dozens of civilians have been killed for allegedly being Russian collaborators.

According to the Post, one Ukrainian security official described the killing of Dugina as “very cynical,” but claimed that dissenting voices are a minority in Kiev. Another official said the victim was “the daughter of the father of Russian propaganda,” and claimed that Kiev should promote the narrative that “punishment is imminent even for those who think they are untouchable.”

A philosopher and Russian nationalist, Aleksandr Dugin has been dubbed “the brain” of Russian President Vladimir Putin by some Western media. The Post used the moniker too, without explaining how it measured his supposed influence on Russian politics.

Sources told the newspaper that neither the SBU nor GUR proceeds with operations unless they have received clearance – “tacit or otherwise” – from Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

The country has fully embraced “liquidations” as a weapon of war, and “carried out dozens of assassinations against Russian officials in occupied territories, alleged Ukrainian collaborators, military officers behind the front lines and prominent war supporters deep inside Russia,” according to the report.

Apart from the assassination of Dugina, Ukrainian intelligence was behind the killing of Russian war blogger Maksim Fomin (best known by the pen name Vladlen Tatarsky), sources told the Post. The blogger was killed in April in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg, where he was holding a meeting with his readers. More than 40 other people were injured in the blast.

Much of the report was dedicated to the CIA’s investment of tens of millions of dollars in the Ukrainian special services. The US agency created an entirely new directorate in the SBU, while the GUR was reportedly rebuilt “from scratch” for American goals. A former US intelligence official who worked in Ukraine called the military agency “our little baby,” while Washington helped build a new GUR HQ and taught tradecraft to Ukrainian agents, the Post wrote.

The CIA is legally banned from participating in political assassination operations, and according to the Post, Ukraine keeps the US in the dark about any such plans.

Washington, however, was forewarned about the plot to damage the Crimean Bridge with a truck bomb in October last year, the newspaper claimed. The operation was hatched by the SBU and was allegedly designed to sacrifice the driver who unwittingly carried the deadly cargo. The bombing killed multiple civilians.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/585598-dugina-murder-plot-cia/

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The CIA has spent “tens of millions” of dollars on transforming Kiev’s Soviet-style spy services into “potent allies against Moscow,” The Washington Post reported on Monday, citing multiple sources in the US and Ukrainian intelligence communities.

The US foreign intelligence service has been heavily involved in Ukrainian affairs since at least 2015, according to the report. The agency maintains a “significant presence” in Kiev amid the conflict with Russia.

“The agency has provided Ukraine with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at sites in Ukraine as well as the United States, built new headquarters for departments in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency,” the report reads. The CIA has been aiding Ukraine’s SBU domestic intelligence service, as well as its military counterpart, the GUR.

The collaboration with the SBU was originally focused on creating units “capable of operating behind front lines and working as covert groups” to spy on and take “active measures” against Donbass militias, which rebelled against Kiev in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup.

The missions by the CIA-reorganized Ukrainian intelligence, however, later turned lethal, with Ukrainian operatives assassinating “at least half a dozen Russian operatives, high-ranking separatist commanders or collaborators,” according to the report. The activity was “often attributed to internal score-settling but in reality was the work of the SBU,” unnamed Ukrainian officials told WaPo.

The targets included Yevgeny Zhilin, the founder of a Ukrainian anti-Maidan movement and leader of the Kharkov separatist group Oplot, who was killed in Moscow in 2016, as well as Mikhail Tolstykh, a prominent Donbass militia commander, best known by his nom de guerre Givi, who was killed in an explosion in early 2017. The assassinations have continued during the current conflict, with the SBU involved in the murder of journalist Daria Dugina, the daughter of Russian nationalist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, the paper said.

“Over the past 20 months, the SBU and its military counterpart, the GUR, have carried out dozens of assassinations against Russian officials in occupied territories, alleged Ukrainian collaborators, military officers behind the front lines and prominent war supporters deep inside Russia,” the article states.

The WaPo’s sources, however, insisted that US spies were not directly involved in Ukrainian clandestine operations. “We had a lot of restrictions about working with the Ukrainians operationally,” a former US intelligence official said, claiming it was more about “secure communications and tradecraft” and seeking new ways to get intelligence from Russia “rather than ‘here’s how you blow up a mayor.’”

“I never got the sense that we were that involved in designing their ops,” the ex-spy insisted. Still, the officials who spoke to the Post admitted the boundaries were “occasionally blurred” when working with the Ukrainians.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/585595-cia-helped-ukrainian-intelligence/

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The current US-led world order has “sort of run out of steam,” but Washington will shape the system that replaces it, US President Joe Biden told supporters on Saturday. Leaders in Moscow and Beijing, however, have argued otherwise.

Speaking at a campaign reception in Washington, Biden bragged about how he convinced Japan and South Korea to send financial aid to Ukraine, and how he signed a rail and ports deal with the EU, India, and Saudi Arabia at the G20 summit in New Delhi last month.

“So, I think we have an opportunity to do things, if we’re bold enough and have enough confidence in ourselves, to unite the world in ways that it never has been,” Biden declared.

“We were in a post-war period for 50 years where it worked pretty damn well, but that's sort of run out of steam. Sort of run out of steam. We need a new, new world order in a sense,” he continued.

The world order that emerged following the Second World War was a bipolar one, with the US and USSR vying for influence and geopolitical supremacy. The collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in a unipolar world order, with the US the sole superpower. As the USSR disintegrated, then-US President George HW Bush proclaimed victory in the Cold War and the dawning of a “new world order” in his 1991 State of the Union address.

Three decades later, and with Washington scrambling for funds to fight two foreign wars, American dominance is less assured. China’s economy was the world’s eleventh largest in 1991, but is now second to only the US’. With Beijing expanding its nuclear arsenal and modernizing its military, President Xi Jinping has referred to the US-led West as “declining” on multiple occasions, and hailed the emergence of a “multipolar world,” in which international relations are governed by laws and treaties, rather than US-enforced “rules.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also spoken at length about building a multipolar world, describing such an order as one in which individual “civilization-states” are free to pursue their own interests free from the dictates of a hegemonic power like the US. Russia, China, and their partners in the BRICS group and across the Global South all share this goal, Putin told China Central Television (CCTV) last week.

“We proceed from the fact that all people are equal, everyone has the same rights, the rights and freedoms of one country and one people end where the rights and freedoms of another person or of an entire state start. This is how a multipolar world should gradually be born,” Putin told the Chinese network.

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https://www.rt.com/news/585492-biden-new-world-order/

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This country and this world are on fire. So many bad things are happening, my head is spinning. I can’t even keep track. Can you?

The open border…the decline of the middle class…massive inflation…crime exploding…failing schools…protests all over America by Jew haters…wars in Ukraine and now the Middle East…1,400 Jews slaughtered in Israel by terrorists…threats from Iran that could turn this into World War 3… brain-dead Biden giving billions to Iran so they can spread terrorism all over the world…China getting ready to move on Taiwan…and in the middle of it all…crazed, obsessed Democrats trying to send President Trump to prison for life.

I’m dizzy just listing all the moving pieces of the intentional destruction of America. All of this is a communist takeover of the USA. How do I know? Because it’s all right out of the communist playbook. Divide the country…make everyone hate each other…censor your opposition…weaponize the government…and distract the masses with nonstop propaganda, chaos and crisis.

But with all these WMD’s (weapons of mass distraction) you might have missed the good news…

It’s not working anymore.

The people aren’t buying. The American people despise Joe Biden and the Democrats. At least the legal US citizens who work for a living, who pay taxes into the system. The people that matter. The producers and makers, not the lazy losers and takers.

Yes, Democrats have poor people trapped on welfare and food stamp…felons…illegal aliens…transgenders…abortion obsessed feminists…and the ultra-liberal, intellectual, brainwashed wackjobs who graduated from elite colleges…most of whom can’t decide if they’re a man, or a woman.

But pretty much all the normal people of America have had enough. They’re overwhelmingly on our team now. Here’s some good news for a change. These are the signs of “the Great Awakening” and “the Great American Divorce” converging…

The latest Morning Consult Bloomberg Poll shows Trump leading in almost every battleground state.

The latest Emerson College poll shows Trump leading in Pennsylvania by a 9-point landslide.

And in the latest Rasmussen poll, 35% of Democrats and 50% of black voters are considering voting for Trump.

All of this while Trump is indicted four times, facing life in prison, with more indictments almost certainly on the way. And rigged New York courts claiming he’s a fraud and trying to take all his assets away.

With all of that…the people are sticking with Trump!

That’s incredible. That’s amazing. David Copperfield couldn’t pull that rabbit out of his hat! The people aren’t fooled anymore. The distractions aren’t working. The propaganda is backfiring.

Wait, there’s more. Did you hear only 2% of Americans have taken the new Covid booster shot. TWO PERCENT. Pfizer stock is collapsing, and Pfizer is announcing layoffs. Americans don’t want your dangerous, deadly, experimental jab anymore. The propaganda doesn’t work anymore. No one trusts government or the mainstream media anymore.

We’re winning.

And then there’s the biggest proof of all. Americans are voting with their feet. They’ve moving out of Democrat-run states by the millions. Everyone is running away from deep blue states like they have the plague. Like those states are giving out cancer. That’s because they are.

The American people see Democrat policies as a cancer that’s killing America and American exceptionalism.

All the stats are in from a hundred directions. People have woken up. And “The Great American Divorce” I’ve predicted for almost 20 years is happening. And the more Democrats talk, and govern…and the more Americans see the results…the more Americans choose to run for their lives.

Americans are voting with their feet. And the winner is…Red State America. Americans are moving by the millions away from high-tax, high-regulation blue states. And moving to red states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina. Or in some cases, like my home state of Nevada, although it’s a purple state, they’re moving here because the income taxes are zero and the property taxes are among the lowest in America.

Just in the month of August over 6,000 Californians moved to Las Vegas. In one month!

Why is the whole California moving here? We have a brand new Republican Governor (Joe Lombardo). One of his first acts was declaring that no child in the state of Nevada will be forced to take the Covid vaccine to attend school. There it is. Freedom.

But it’s not just people running away from California to Nevada. Even California’s sports teams are moving here. First the Oakland Raiders abandoned California for Las Vegas. Now the Oakland A’s major league baseball team is moving to Las Vegas. What’s next? Maybe the Oakland City Hall will relocate here!

Everyone has chosen. They want Trump as President running the country- even if he’s campaigning with an ankle bracelet. And they want low taxes, low regulation, smaller government, more freedom, with no masks and no vaccines. Liberal Democrat ideas and policies have failed. No one wants them.

We have this never-ending debate in America and especially in Washington DC about what works- left or right, liberalism or conservatism, capitalism or socialism.

Well, there’s no need to debate anymore. “The Great Awakening” is happening. And “The Great American Divorce” is on. The answer is in. We won!

Now the only question is, will 2024 be rigged? Do the votes matter anymore?

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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/wayne-root-finally-some-good-news-great-awakening/

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be granted honorary citizenship of Rome, city councilor Antonella Melito said on Tuesday. She added that the process will be completed after all the necessary paperwork has been done.

Assange, 52, has been incarcerated at the high-security Belmarsh Prison in London since 2019 as he fights extradition to the US, where he could face a life sentence over the 2010 release of highly sensitive US Army intelligence information related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to Melito, by granting Assange citizenship, Rome intends to send a message of “solidarity and support to all those who are unjustly detained and convicted in violation of their fundamental rights.”

The motion to confer honorary citizenship on the Australian activist was presented by a former mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi. On Wednesday, Raggi posted on social media that “an important step was taken in the protection of Julian Assange, as a person and as a symbol.” She added that the Wikileaks founder’s case shows that “freedom of the press must always be defended.”

In June, Assange’s wife Stella visited the Vatican and met with Pope Francis. Later, in an interview with the Catholic Herald magazine, she said that Francis had sent a letter to her husband in March 2021, which was a “significant event” at a particularly low point for him. At the time, a lower court in Britain had ruled that Assange’s treatment in the US “would not be humane,” but decided not to grant him bail.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in August that he was frustrated by the lack of a diplomatic solution to end Assange’s detention. He said he would continue to press the US to cease its prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder, despite US Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejecting all previous pleas from Canberra to ensure his wellbeing.

“This has gone on for too long. Enough is enough,” Albanese told reporters at the time. “We remain very firm in our view and in our representations to the American government and we will continue to do so.”

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https://www.rt.com/news/585419-assange-become-honorary-citizen-rome/

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US President Joe Biden on Wednesday argued that the Hamas attack on Israel was worse than the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and vowed that America would “forever” stand with the Jewish state.

At least 31 Americans were among “more than 1,300 innocent Israelis” killed by Hamas on October 7, Biden told the audience in Tel Aviv, from the music festival near the Gaza border to the nearby villages and kibbutzes. 

“Children slaughtered. Babies slaughtered. Entire families massacred. Rape, beheadings, bodies burned alive,” Biden recited, comparing Hamas to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and their atrocities to “pure unadulterated evil” that cannot be rationalized or excused.

“Since this terrorist attack took place, we have seen it described as Israel’s 9/11. But for a nation the size of Israel, it was like fifteen 9/11s,” Biden said. “The scale may be different, but I’m sure those horrors have tapped into some kind of primal feeling in Israel, just like it did and felt in the US.”

The US leader urged Israelis to not get “consumed” by the “all-consuming rage” they surely feel, noting that the Americans were also enraged after 9/11, “and while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

Biden noted that Hamas “does not represent the Palestinian people,”who are “suffering greatly as well.” The people of Gaza “need food, water, medicine, shelter,” and the US has asked Israel to agree to humanitarian deliveries from Egypt to the Palestinian territory – so long as they are inspected and do not go to Hamas.

The US has pledged $100 million in new humanitarian assistance to both Gaza and the West Bank, to support more than a million displaced and conflict-affected Palestinians, Biden announced.

According to Biden, peace will only come with a “two-state solution”and the recent attacks have only strengthened his “commitment and determination” to get that done.

“You are not alone. As long as the United States stands – and we will stand forever – we will not let you ever be alone,” Biden told the Israeli audience, concluding, “Israel will be a safe, secure, Jewish, and Democratic state today, tomorrow, and forever.”

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https://www.rt.com/news/585281-biden-hamas-911-israel/

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The launch of Moscow’s military campaign in February of last year was not the starting point of the Ukrainian conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin has argued. He explained in an interview that the underlying cause of the current hostilities dates back a decade.

In an interview with China Media Group published in full on Monday, Putin noted that the “hostilities in Ukraine did not start with our special military operation, but way before – in 2014.”

He recounted how Western countries, who had acted as guarantors of an agreement between then-President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovich and the opposition, reneged and instead “supported a coup d’état.” According to the Russian head of state, while Yanukovich may well have made certain mistakes in those years, those should have been addressed “through democratic procedures, rather than by means of militants in the streets.”

Putin went on to accuse the West of starting the conflict in Donbass“by proxy of the Kiev regime,” which resulted in the deaths of women and children. He also insisted that, unlike Russia, Ukraine did not honor the Minsk Agreements, which put an end to the fighting in the east of the country. 

“Therefore, the start of the special military operation was not the start of a war, but an attempt to end it,” the Russian head of state argued.

In addition, Putin pointed out that Moscow has always been ready to negotiate peace with Kiev as long as its “legitimate security interests”are respected. He added that Russia reached an agreement with Ukraine in Istanbul last year, but Kiev pulled out of it and has since effectively ruled out any such dialogue.

During the interview, the Russian head of state also lamented America’s untrustworthiness, citing its exit from the Iran nuclear deal under President Donald Trump, and its promises made earlier to Russia that NATO would not expand eastward. 

President Putin also dismissed the idea of the Western ‘rules-based order,’ characterizing it as colonialism in disguise. He noted no one has ever seen those rules, with Washington apparently modifying them as it pleases, depending on the situation.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/585072-putin-ukraine-conflict-started-2014/

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The US government is not doing enough to counter the messaging of Russia and Venezuela in Latin America, a senior Pentagon official has claimed. Washington should “do better” in the “informational domain,” four-star general Laura Richardson believes.

The commander of United States Southern Command complained about the popularity of media outlets critical of US foreign policy during an event hosted by the neocon think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) last week.

“I’d say we are in a conflict in the information domain. In Latin America, we have over 31 million followers with Sputnik Mundo, Russia Today Espanol and teleSUR,” she said.

She was referring to two Russian Spanish-language news outlets, the latter of which is properly called ‘RT en Espanol’, and a Venezuela-based regional broadcaster.

“They don’t run justification or verification journalism. They spread disinformation that undermines democracies across the hemisphere, and we’ve got to do better than that,” Richardson claimed.

We’ve got to get something in the region that is very specific, promulgating democracies and how democracies deliver for people.

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan responded to the remarks by saying that undermining the kind of “democracies” that Washington wants to have all over Latin America is “our job.”

In March, Richardson told the US House Armed Forces Committee that her department was fighting “false narratives about its invasion of Ukraine” spread by RT en Espanol and Sputnik Mundo, calling it a national security goal for the Pentagon.

US media have a long-established presence in Latin America, a region that Washington considers its “backyard” and has meddled in for decades. The list includes both corporate-owned networks such as CNN en Espanol, and outlets directly dependent on the US government like Voz de America (Voice of America).

In May, an expert who was called to testify before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged the legislators to allocate more money to counter Russian media on the continent.

“On TikTok, RT en Español is among the most popular Spanish-language media outlets. Its 29.6 million likes make it more popular than Telemundo, Univision, BBC Mundo, and El Pais,” Jessica Brandt of the Brookings Institution think tank warned at the time. “Likewise, on Facebook, RT en Español currently has more followers than any other Spanish-language international broadcaster.”

She claimed the popularity of alternative news sources in Latin America reflected a “resource prioritization problem” in Washington, citing the relatively larger budgets that Voice of America gets for divisions in other places.

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https://www.rt.com/news/585059-russian-media-latin-america/

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President Vladimir Zelensky has allegedly ordered Ukrainian journalists to avoid reporting on corruption, the editor-in-chief of the Zerkalo Nedeli (‘Mirror of the Week’) news outlet has claimed.

The Ukrainian president told journalists not to mention the issue until the end of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to a leading Kievb outlet.

Speaking at the National Media Talk 2023, Yulia Mostovaya said that she had learned of Zelensky's demand from colleagues who had attended an off-the-record meeting with him.

The president reportedly made the request after the Ukrainian press published reports about inflated food prices paid by the country’s armed forces.

According to Ukrainian media reports, including Zerkalo Nedeli, the Defense Ministry had been buying food and clothing for its service members at prices two to three times higher than the market price. For example, the ministry paid up to 17 hryvnia ($0.47) for a single egg and 22 hryvnia ($0.60) for a kilogram of potatoes, while the average prices for those goods at stores in Kiev at the time were about seven hryvnia ($0.19) and eight hryvnia ($0.22), respectively.

Mostovaya stated that Zelensky’s request to avoid the topic of corruption in media publications was something the Ukrainian press may have considered if Zelensky had presented it in a “balanced manner” and explained that reporting on such issues could affect Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities.

“We would accept these conditions if the president had said: ‘Here is a person. Here’s his phone number. If you have substantiated facts, please provide them to this person, he will immediately pick up the phone. And give us a week to respond. If there is no reaction within a week, send it to print.’”

However, no such proposal was put forward by Zelensky, Mostovaya claimed, noting that instead the president told reporters to “remain silent until victory.”

“If we remain silent, there will be no victory,” the editor-in-chief said.

The issue of corruption in Ukraine has repeatedly been brought up by journalists and officials, both within the country and in the West.

Last week, the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, stated that Ukraine will likely be unable to join the EU anytime soon because it is “corrupt at all levels of society.” He also urged Brussels not to make any “false promises” to the Ukrainian people who are already “up to their neck in suffering.”

Ukraine has for years been seen as among the most corrupt countries in Europe and was ranked 116th out of 180 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index for 2022.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/584929-ukraine-gags-media-corruption/

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The US will lead the “capability coalition” to develop Ukraine’s air force, including the training of Ukrainian pilots on flying F-16 fighter jets, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday.

“I’m proud to announce that the United States will step up again to help lead the coalition of countries working with Ukraine to develop its Air Force,” Austin told reporters in Brussels, Belgium. He added that the US would “coordinate closely with Ukraine and other partners with a focus on developing Ukraine's F-16 fighter aircraft capability.”

This shows “American leadership matters,” Austin said.

The head of the Pentagon did note that Denmark and the Netherlands would “be co-leading this coalition together with us,” naming the countries that actually stood up the F-16 initiative in early July, without Washington.

Once the US came on board, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that Ukraine would not get the jets from the Pentagon, but “likely from European countries that have excess F-16 supplies.”

After many delays, the US gave Denmark and the Netherlands permission to donate F-16s to Kiev in August. A total of 11 countries have committed to training Ukrainian pilots. The US has promised to start classes at the Morris Air National Guard Base in Arizona later this month, once the candidates pass an English exam.

The F-16 was designed in the 1970s by General Dynamics, and is currently in limited production by Lockheed Martin. Ukraine asked for them after running out of the MiG-29 fighters donated by Slovakia and Poland, in the heavy fighting against Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that if F-16s are sent to Ukraine, they “will burn” just like other Western hardware supplied to Kiev. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the potential deliveries as an escalatory move, noting that the jets can carry nuclear weapons.

According to Austin, the earliest Kiev can expect to receive the Danish and Dutch jets is “next spring.” Belgium has also promised to donate some of its F-16s to Ukraine by 2025, assuming it can get permission from the US and whichever government wins the June 2024 election.

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https://www.rt.com/news/584696-pentagon-ukraine-f16-coalition/

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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/update-death-toll-hamas-terrorist-attack-rises-700/

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