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As soon as 2023, the United States military could have a new spacecraft to transport troops to space and low Earth orbit locations anywhere in the world within three hours. Colorado-based aerospace company Sierra Space announced Sept. 8, 2022 that it signed a research and development contract with the U.S. Transportation Command to develop options to transport military crews and cargo around the world using the “Dream Chaser” space plane. The Dream Chaser space plane is a 7-passenger winged shuttle-like plane that launches to space on a rocket and flies back to Earth, landing on a runway. It’s designed to...

The Cuban government has exposed a Russian trafficking operation used to lure Cubans into the war against Ukraine, Cuban authorities announced Monday. “The Ministry of the Interior has detected and is working to neutralize and dismantle a human trafficking network operating from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens living there, and even some from Cuba, into the military forces participating in war operations in Ukraine,” the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday. The authorities are taking legal actions against the traffickers, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.

U.S. officials told media outlets on Thursday that they believe the plane presumed to be carrying mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was deliberately taken down, though there was some disagreement as to how exactly the plane was destroyed. Russian air authorities have said Prigozhin, his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin, and eight other people were on the private plane that crashed with no survivors north of Moscow on Wednesday. Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that it was likely a surface-to-air missile originating from inside Russia shot down the plane. The officials stressed that the information was...

The Zambian student was serving a jail sentence at a medium security prison on the outskirts of Moscow after being convicted of contravening Russian law, Kakubo said, without specifying the offense that occurred in April 2020. “The Zambian government has requested the Russian authorities to urgently provide information on the circumstances under which a Zambian citizen, serving a prison sentence in Moscow, could have been recruited to fight in Ukraine,” Kakubo said. It was not clear how the prisoner was recruited and by whom.... ussia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the circumstances of...

If this is the end of the coup attempt, talk about anti-climactic. Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Wagner Group, a Kremlin-backed mercenary army, seemed poised to create a political crisis when his troops began to march north toward Moscow from southern Russia. They had reportedly seized some cities in the Lipetsk province. Putin reportedly fled Moscow earlier this morning while security forces were on high alert. Most of Russia’s forces are bogged down in Ukraine, which made this situation more perilous for Putin and his allies. Prigozhin has close ties to the Russian president, nicknamed “Putin’s chef,” due to his catering...

Do not let these transparently corrupt political grifters like Republican strategist Steve Cortes raise your blood pressure; instead, mock them mercilessly wherever and whenever you see them.Former Trump ally Steve Cortes announced today he has taken a job with the Never Back Down PAC that supports Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. As a result, he is reversing all his prior points of advocacy to endorse Ron DeSantis for 2024.[Pictured left, Cortes with fellow grifting scumbags John Cardillo and Matthew Tyrmand (the architect of the Project Veritas attack on O’Keefe) as they attend a pro-Desantis effort earlier this year.]The shallow character of...

His private army is pushing hard to give Russia a battlefield win in Ukraine, but mounting evidence suggests the Kremlin has moved to curb what it sees as the excessive political clout of Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary group. Prigozhin, a 61-year-old ex-convict, has grabbed headlines in recent months over his bloody role in Ukraine and is sometimes portrayed in the West as a real-life James Bond villain. Shaven-headed and fond of coarse language, he has made a splash in Russian-language media too where he has revelled in being sanctioned by the West, publicly insulted Russia's top military...

The armed forces have destroyed a militant who previously killed people in Syria and Libya and wrote the book "#theyarenotthere". As Censor.NET reports about it with reference to the "Myrotvorets" center. According to the Center, the pro-Kremlin mercenary is the author of the autobiographical book "#theyrenotthere", which tells about his participation in hostilities in Ukraine, Syria, and Libya. "Orlov was so eager for fame that until the last day he posted photos and videos of his participation in the fighting in Ukraine, while merging the dispositions of orcs in the Donbas. Using even these data, the Ukraine Armed Forces...

Mali’s army spokesperson has said Russian soldiers have deployed to the northern city of Timbuktu to train Malian forces at a base vacated by French troops last month amid persistent insecurity in a country where large swaths of territory are out of the government’s control. The Malian government said late last year that “Russian trainers” had arrived in the country, but Bamako and Moscow have so far provided few details on the deployment, including on how many soldiers are involved or the Russian troops’ precise mission. On December 23, a group of Western countries led by former colonial power France,...

PARIS — Marat Gabidullin's face is lined from years of exposure to the elements, and his hair is thinning. But at 56, he has the trim physique and muscular arms of a man 30 years younger. He wears a chunky ring bearing the image of a skull.The skull is the symbol of the Wagner Group — a private Russian mercenary force believed to be financed by an oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. The group is fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. And it's widely believed that at least some of the "little green...

“Those Cuban-CIA men (Bay of Pigs vets) were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding,” wrote legendary anti-communist mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare, commander of the “Wild Geese,” in his book Congo Mercenary. ''This is the history of a failure,'' said the oddly frank opening lines of Che Guevara’s Congo Dairies. “I stood above Che Guevara, my boots near his head, just as Che had once stood over my dear friend and fellow 2506 Brigade member, Nestor Pino. ‘We're going to kill you all," Che said to Pino.’ Now, the situation...

This is how Trump handled Russians. Mike Pompeo, the head of the CIA and President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state, confirmed on Thursday that the US military killed hundreds of Russians in an intense fight in Syria. The US had previously only confirmed killing 100 or so pro-Syrian regime forces, but multiple outlets reported the number was as high as 300 and that the soldiers were Russian military contractors.

The Novaya Gazeta newspaper has shared a short video showing a convoy of military trucks and armored vehicles moving towards the Russian border. Official Minsk fears that Russia may take advantage of the instability in the country and carry out the Ukrainian scenario to occupy part of the territories ahead of August’s presidential election. The state-controlled Belta news agency said last week that Belarus has arrested dozens of Russian mercenaries after receiving information that more than 200 fighters had entered the country to destabilize it before a presidential election. The mercenaries worked for Wagner, Russia’s best-known private military contractor

Wagner Group mercenaries are leaving Africa en masse for Eastern Europe, The Daily Beast reported. The Wagner Group is reportedly funded by an ally of Vladimir Putin. Russia has amassed troops and weaponry at its border with Ukraine, with the US warning of an invasion. Russian mercenaries are being pulled from Africa and redeployed to Eastern Europe, as Moscow amasses forces at Ukraine's border, The Daily Beast reported. Twenty soldiers with the Wagner Group, a private military organization that's been described as "Putin's private army," left the Central African Republic in January, with more preparing to leave, officials in the...

August 11, nine Chinese workers were killed in a blast in Pakistan, the latest in the string of attacks targeting Chinese citizens. The incident highlighted the vulnerability of Chinese nationals and assets abroad and the need to improve protection and security for workers in foreign countries. As a solution, China has come to see private military companies (PMC) as an eminently necessary tool. PMCs and Chin Though first emerging in the 1990s, the need for Chinese PMCs became clearer from the 2000s onward. This is because threats to China’s international ambitions grew in tandem with the country’s economic impact and...

Russian mercenaries have taken command of at least one EU-trained battalion in the Central African Republic (CAR) to help "predate" the mineral-rich country, according to a leaked report. "Today, most deployed FACA units are operating under direct command or supervision by WG mercenaries. WG has also established a solid influence on the FACA general staff and other government institutions," the EU foreign service's report, dated 15 November and seen by EUobserver, said. FACA refers to the Forces Armées centrafricaines, CAR president Faustin-Archange Touadéra's main army of some 12,500 men. WG stands for Wagner Group, a Kremlin-linked paramilitary force. EU military...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the first-degree murder conviction of a former Blackwater security contractor, ordering a new trial for the man prosecutors say fired the first shots in the 2007 slayings of 14 Iraqi civilians at a crowded traffic circle in Baghdad.</p>

Nicolás Maduro, the embattled leader of Venezuela, said Monday that authorities in Caracas captured 13 “terrorists”—including two U.S. citizens-- in a failed invasion attempt that he said was no doubt orchestrated by the Trump administration. Maduro made a nationwide broadcast on state television and held up a pair of U.S. passports that he said were recovered. He read off the names and birthdays of the two Americans.

A former Green Beret has taken responsibility for what he claimed was a failed attack Sunday aimed at overthrowing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and that the socialist government said ended with eight dead. Jordan Goudreau’s comments in an interview with an exiled Venezuelan journalist capped a bizarre day that started with reports of a pre-dawn amphibious raid near the South American country’s heavily guarded capital. An AP investigation published Friday found that Goudreau had been working with a retired Venezuelan army general now facing U.S. narcotics charges to train dozens of deserting Venezuelan soldiers at secret camps inside neighboring Colombia....

I first met Qassem four years ago, at the height of the European refugee crisis. The BBC had sent me to capture the stories of Mideast migrants, thousands of whom would daily wash ashore on the Greek isles. He was around 15, malnourished and clearly traumatized. As we sat together in a cabin at a ­migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, his hunched body rocked backward and forward. His marginal life amounted to a speck of dust amid the geopolitical earthquakes that were remaking the region at the time. Yet the story he told opened a window onto the...