Free Republic

Deliveries of all-new Russian aircraft have been delayed by two years due to safety concerns ... The publication said that, for example, the weight of the new MS-21 passenger aircraft has increased by 5.75 tons, compared to the previous version, which used foreign components and Western engines. This means its flight range and altitude have been significantly reduced. One of Kommersant's sources said that, if Russia is unable to reduce the weight of the aircraft, it will be impossible for authorities to make the plane achieve the desired performance characteristics. "It's impossible to increase engine thrust by 20 percent," the...

A representative of the company told Russian news outlet RBC that the decision was made after Roscosmos lost almost 80 percent of its export income after losing orders and key partners due to the war in Ukraine. This year, it intends to sell its "non-core" assets ... Borisov said in December that the company had lost contracts worth 180 billion rubles ($1.9 billion) out of 230 billion ($2.5 billion) as a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and subsequent sanctions imposed on Russia by Kyiv's allies... In October last year, Roscosmos appeared to admit that Russia's Luna-25 mission failed...

Germany is facing its second winter without gas deliveries from Russia. But analysts say that for gas shortages to really bite, a lot of things would have to go wrong. Germans themselves are optimistic. In the first year of it's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow tried to capitalize on concerns that energy would become scarce in Europe during the cold winter months. The Russians even made a short video to feed these fears, featuring tales of how Germans would freeze without supplies from Russia's Gazprom. The Russian state-owned company halted all gas deliveries to Germany in late August 2022. But...

The country's state energy giant Gazprom said in its latest report that gas production in the first half of 2023 was 179.45 billion cubic meters (bcm). Gazprom added that this represents a year-on-year decrease of nearly a quarter (24.7 percent), and a 26.5 percent drop in gas supplies to the domestic and foreign markets... The invasion also pushed Europe to cut purchases of Russian oil and gas drastically. The continent overcame an energy crunch last winter, in part by reducing energy consumption and finding other suppliers, such as sellers of seaborne liquefied natural gas (LNG)... Independent Russian-language news outlet Agentstvo...

sanctions imposed because of the war in Ukraine has led to a lack of spare parts for Russian airlines which have Airbus or Boeing planes. There have been several emergency landings in recent months. In the latest incident, a Ural Airlines Airbus 320 was flying from the Black Sea resort of Sochi to the city of Omsk in southwestern Siberia on Tuesday when the aircraft sounded an alarm, according to the Telegram channel Baza... Independent Russian news outlet Agentstvo said that the plane was among those that Russian airlines had refused to return to their owners after Putin's full-scale invasion...

Pro-Russian hacking outfits Killnet, REevil and Anonymous Sudan have allegedly formed an alliance to launch a concerted cyberattack on the Western financial system, particularly targeting the SWIFT wire transfer system, according to CyberKnow.Forged in the underground hacking forums, the groups stated their “no money – no weapons – no Kiev regime” formula to cut off the pipeline of Western aid to Ukraine.Their primary target is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system, which powers most international money and security transfers, failure of which could potentially cripple the Western financial system.Other targets in their crosshairs include European and US...