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The Russian energy giant said it was cutting supply volumes to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline by roughly another third, after an initial reduction on Tuesday. Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Wednesday it would further reduce the capacity of gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to 67 million cubic meters (2,366 million cubic feet) per day. The decision comes into effect at 01:30 a.m. Moscow time on Thursday (2230 UTC on Wednesday), Gazprom said, adding that the halt was due to the "technical condition of the engine" at a compression station. The company had announced...

Day 110. Today, we discuss the latest updates from across Ukraine and Europe, look at how much money Russia has made from selling fossil fuels this year and discuss the history behind the policy of Russification in the occupied regions of southern Ukraine.

Russian forces have advanced in eastern Ukraine over recent weeks behind overwhelming artillery barrages, a shift in fortunes made possible by better access to rail lines delivering tons of ammunition and other supplies. Trains are the Russian military’s go-to method for moving troops and heavy weapons. In Ukraine’s industrialized Donbas region, dense rail networks have played to Moscow’s advantage. Russia’s military depends so heavily on trains that it maintains an elite Railroad Force, a service branch once common in countries through World War II. The unit has camouflage-painted armored train cars equipped with antiaircraft cannons and artillery to guard supply...

Ukraine 7 (vanity) It’s been nearly two months in this series of pro-Putin/pro-Russia vanity Ukraine threads. Things are progressing favorably for Russia in this special operation to liberate the pro-Russian Eastern sections of Ukraine. Although Ukraine is currently estimating a 10-1 kill ratio in favor of Ukraine, my pro-Russian sources are more accurately describing the 10-1 kill ratio in favor of Russia. Russia is accomplishing this with drones and superior artillery. A favorite source is Intel Slava on Telegram social media which posts about the war from Russia’s perspective. The motivations for the United States having this proxy war in...

Russian forces could be just weeks away from seizing control of the key Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine — as Ukrainian officials continued to appeal for more heavy weapons and ammunition from the West. An unnamed senior US defense official told The Washington Post that the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which have seen some of the fiercest battles in recent weeks, could fall to Russia in the coming days. Russia has been making steady gains in the strategically important Donbas region — comprised of Luhanks and Donetsk — by pounding the area with heavy artillery day after day and...

“The invaders renamed Freedom Square in Mariupol as Lenin Square and displayed their tricolor over it,” Andriushchenko wrote in a post on the Telegram messenger on June 11. He suggested that the Russians would like to replace the Ukrainian inscription “Mariupol” on the square with the Russian version (as they did to the monument at the entrance to the city). “Stop destroying Mariupol. Just rename it Zhdanov again,” Andriushchenko wrote. Earlier, the invaders changed the Ukrainian name of the city on the marker at the entrance to Mariupol to Russian. However, it was done so clumsily that the name of...

As the mournful notes of the cello brought the four minutes of The Dying Swan to a close at The Hague on January 24, 1931, the audience was in tears. Throughout the performance, there had been no dancer — only a moving spotlight emphasizing the absence of Anna Pavlova, the ballerina the world loved. She had died the day before, of a mysterious lung infection that began almost immediately after her train had left Paris. She'd told doctors she suspected she'd been poisoned. Unable to reach a diagnosis, they treated her symptoms but failed to save her. For Soviet émigrés...

Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Gab TV, GETTR Russia’s military has declared that its desired strategic “land bridge” connecting Russian national territory with the Donbas and Crimea is complete, according to statements given to CNN senior national security correspondent Alex Marquardt. The Tuesday Russian military statement said that “roads and rail lines between western Russia and Crimea are operational,” which marks that “the land bridge is complete.”“Conditions have been created for the resumption of full-fledged traffic between Russia, Donbas, Ukraine and Crimea on six railway sections,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said. “Automobile communication has been opened from...

This weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed with people in his inner circle the concept of a gradual departure from power and ways to ensure continuity in the change of regime leadership. The discussions did not remain an empty phrase, and the prospects began to acquire clearer contours. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, despite all his recent efforts to portray himself as the main "hawk", Putin is going to banally merge, offering him the post of ambassador to one of the countries of Southeast Asia. But before the leak, Dmitry Anatolyevich will have to play the role of a "scapegoat"...

Commander of the Russian Federation’s twenty ninth Army, Lieutenant General Roman Berdnikov. Commander of the Russian Federation’s twenty ninth Army, June 6th, unconfirmed reports state top Russian officer, Lieutenant General Roman Berdnikov commander of the 29th Army, serving as Second-in-command of the 1st Army Corps, Donetsk People's Militia was killed in Ukraine this morning in Severodonetsk, Luhansk, Ukraine. He now is the most recent death of highest-ranking Russian generals. Russian state television confirms that Major-General Roman Kutuzov was killed in eastern Ukraine June 5th, reports the Reuters news agency. The report did not provide more details and the Russian army...

Russia now appears to have the initiative over Ukraine in the battle for the Donbas, in the country's east, the UK's Ministry of Defence has said. On the war's 100th day, the UK said Russia holds 90% of the Luhansk region - half of the Donbas - and is likely to complete control of it in two weeks. It said these tactical successes had been achieved "at significant resource cost" with the concentration of forces. On Thursday, Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Western nations must be prepared to support Ukraine over the long haul, as the conflict becomes a "war...

Deputy Head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev has said that Ukraine's refusal to recognize the new realities resulting from the Russian invasion of its territory and unwillingness to resume negotiations with Russia threaten its national sovereignty. Medvedev made the corresponding statement in an interview with the Arab TV channel Al Jazeera, according to the Russian propaganda agency Interfax. "Some time ago, Ukraine allegedly showed a desire to agree on key points, and on a relatively, in our opinion, realistic position," Medvedev said. According to him, it concerns Ukraine's refusal to join the North Atlantic Treaty...

“But what of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men who returned to the country to fight the Russians?” I objected.“They will find out that it is unpleasant to fight the Russians, as their grandfathers did during the Second World War. A few tens of thousands of them will be killed, and others will rot for some time in Russian prison camps as the Russians encircle and annihilate the main body of the Ukrainian army in the Donbass. Then they will join their families in Poland or Germany.”“But surely the Americans won’t stand for this!,” I protested.“About the Americans do...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that Russian forces now occupy about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, almost 100 days into the war. Zelensky spoke Thursday to Luxembourg’s legislature, saying Russian troops have invaded more than 3,600 “settlements,” but that Ukrainian forces have taken back more than 1,000 of them. He said Luxembourg’s motto, “We want to stay what we are,” is what Ukraine is currently fighting for.

The war in Ukraine is a trompe l’oeil. Behind the appearances of the unity of NATO and its consolidation by new members, several big players run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. In reality, all those who are not blinded by their own propaganda know that their side is going to lose and is already planning other enemies on other battlefields. Washington is making the best of a bad situation and using Russian pressure to close ranks. On the front of the stage, Nato assures that it has been strengthened by “Putin’s madness”. Ukraine, powerfully armed by the...

Very few parts of Russian society have drawn more interest than the so-called “oligarchs.” These are incredibly wealthy men with political connections to Putin’s inner circle because, in the totalitarian kleptocracy that is Russia under Vladimir Putin, if you don’t have political ties to Putin’s inner circle, wealth doesn’t bring you power; it brings you a one-way trip to a Siberian labor camp. The first generation of Russian oligarchs emerged from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, whose state control over the economy began to loosen under Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, or restructuring reforms. Gorbachev’s successor as president, Boris Yeltsin,...

Yesterday, at a prerecorded meeting of Russia’s Security Council, President Vladimir Putin sat listless and slumped in his chair, far away from his gallery of boyars, pretending to weigh their counsel before launching a pre-scripted war against Ukraine. He was not impressed when Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, stammered and flubbed his lines, confusing the present and future tenses. “Speak clearly, Sergei!” Putin admonished him. Then Naryshkin got ahead of himself, and everyone else, by saying he supported incorporating the Russian-occupied territories of Donbas, east Ukraine, into the Russian Federation. “That’s not what we’re discussing!” Putin...

The United States is not just dealing with mutations of COVID-19. Our government and our culture have been infected with mutated strains of collectivism and corporate authoritarianism, already engaged in censorship and moving swiftly toward perpetual surveillance and control over our property, our finances, our health care and our most personal decisions. And those who are busy cramming authoritarianism down our gullets are simultaneously maintaining the illusion of our meaningful participation in government. We're being led to believe that we have some control of our representative government and its policies. Meanwhile, our elected officials make backroom deals and ignore our...

On November 18, 1920, Soviet Russia became the first country to legalize abortion, marking the beginning of the legal killing of children in-utero worldwide. Russian history is a complex tale of political conflicts and tense governmental regimes, but the country’s deep-seated abortion culture is worthy of exploration. The consequences of a government distorting its people’s perceptions of human dignity through abortion legislation have made themselves apparent in various ways, such as in Russia’s falling birth rate and plunging population. In 2003, the BBC reported there were 13 abortions in Russia for every 10 live births. The United Nations reported in...

For generations, Jews lived in Russia and then the Soviet Union, suffering overt anti-Semitism, discrimination, and physical threats to their lives. This was commonplace under the Czars and was inherited by the Soviets. For the vast majority, there were no alternatives but to do their best to eek out a living, always under the threat of a pogrom that could leave many casualties. While the USSR was quick to recognize Israel in 1948, and “officially” provided equality for Soviet Jews, state sponsored anti-Semitism and discrimination was institutionalized in the Communist party and throughout Soviet society.Israel’s birth in 1948 gave Soviet...