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Russia is advancing a new law allowing it to take control of the local businesses of western companies that decide to leave in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, raising the stakes for multinationals trying to exit. The law, which could be in place within weeks, will give Russia sweeping powers to intervene where there is a threat to local jobs or industry, making it more difficult for western companies to disentangle themselves quickly unless they are prepared to take a big financial hit. The law to seize the property of foreign investors follows an exodus of western companies,...

Italy says it’s working to intervene diplomatically with Russia to allow Ukrainian ports to open amid a growing global wheat and food supply crisis, given some 30% of the world’s wheat comes from war-ravaged Ukraine and Russia. This culminated in a Thursday phone call between Prime Minister Mario Draghi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, wherein the Italian leader is believed to have pressed Putin to order his military to unblock Black Sea ports. A statement from the Kremlin following the call said “Vladimir Putin emphasizes that the Russian Federation is ready to make a significant contribution to overcoming the food...

Russian state television declared Friday night that its conflict in Ukraine can now "safely be called World War III." "What it's escalated into can safely be called World War III – that's entirely for sure," Russia 1 television host Olga Skabeyeva said, according to a translation of Friday night’s broadcast by Britain's Metro News. "Now we're definitely fighting against NATO infrastructure, if not NATO itself. We need to recognize that."The remarks on the Russian state sponsored station come a day after Russia's flagship, the Moskva, sank in the Black Sea on Thursday. While the Russians claim the sinking was the...

Ukraine has disabled 20 Russian battalions, Western officials said today, as a Kremlin army chief hinted that Moscow may scale back its attack on its neighbour and instead focus on 'liberating' the eastern Donbas region. Russia's defence ministry also updated its losses in Ukraine to 1,351 soldiers, adding that 3,825 soldiers had been wounded - figures that are far lower than Western intelligence estimates that put Moscow's losses in the tens of thousands. In a military update today, Moscow attempted to put a positive spin on its disastrous invasion saying that the first phase of its military campaign in Ukraine...

Most elected Republicans and the base are moving in a different direction from the pro-Putin and anti-anti-Putin crowd. How far can Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn go without breaking the silo? Bill Kristol joins Charlie Sykes for this weekend’s podcast.

Last night was our monthly prepping zoom call with preppers from all around the country participating. This group consists of about 300 preppers ranging from complete novices to grizzled veterans. Of course the subject of Ukraine/Russia conflict was the main point of discussion. The first speaker is a well-established prepper in the group who has family ties back to Ukraine. His report was sobering. He has family in various parts of Ukraine that he has managed to stay in touch with you during this almost 2 week crisis. It is his take that people that are in the cities are...

Conscription was introduced in Germany back in 1956, with all men over the age of 18 expected to serve at least one year in the army (although they could claim exemption for moral reasons). But the draft was scrapped to save money, as Germany’s military endured a long post-war decline. But Moscow’s increasingly aggressive posture on the global stage has given the Germans reason to reverse this decline.In recent days, German politicians have called for a revival of some form of mandatory military service, according to France24. Wolfgang Hellmich, a politician for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), called...

The second round of talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine is set to take place Wednesday evening, Russian News Agency (TASS) reported, citing Alexey Arestovich, advisor to the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office. The scheduled talks are set to take place in Belovezhskaya Puscha, Belarus, according to TASS. The Kremlin hinted at Russia's readiness to resume the peace talks with the Ukrainian side Wednesday, AFP reported, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin's aide Vladimir Medinsky is to remain the top negotiator on behalf of Russia during the talks.

Although national security decisions should not be driven by emotional events, we cannot help but be moved by what we are bearing witness to: the slaughter of innocent Ukrainian civilians under the pretext that Ukraine is a puppet state of NATO threatening Russia and exterminating ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine. The answer to the question of whether to stand by and let things unfold or intervene is complicated and not something that nations throughout history have handled evenhandedly and consistently. I'm not even going to attempt to address that. But I think there is a middle ground that might provide...

The United States Embassy has told Americans in Russia to leave the country immediately while outbound flights remain available. In a security alert on its website Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Russia warned Americans to flee the country due to the continued cancelation of commercial flights. “An increasing number of airlines are canceling flights into and out of Russia, and numerous countries have closed their airspace to Russian airlines,” the alert said. “U.S. citizens should consider departing Russia immediately via commercial options still available.” The U.S. Embassy further reminded Americans in the country that the Department of State’s Travel Advisory...

Current DefConGeneral Says NATO Prepared to Respond to Aggression Should Deterrence Fail DEFCON 3 ROUND HOUSE Increase in force readiness above that required for normal readinessAir Force ready to mobilize in 15 minutes DefCon

Ukraine judge orders Joe Biden be listed as alleged perpetrator of crime in prosecutor’s firing Latest twist in Ukraine impeachment drama could stretch into Biden's fall campaign as fired prosecutor seeks legal remedy in courts.

As Democrats and the media remain fanatically obsessed with assembling some form of a “quid pro quo” from the infamous Trump-Zelensky phone call, new details have emerged regarding Burisma, the company for which Hunter Biden worked and the company that Ukraine’s top prosecutor had been investigating before Vice President Joe Biden had the prosecutor fired via a months-long pressure campaign. According to web archives, top Mitt Romney adviser Joseph Cofer Black, who publicly goes by “Cofer Black,” joined Burisma’s board of directors while Hunter Biden was also serving on the board. According to The New Yorker, Hunter joined Burisma’s board...

MSNBC host Chuck Todd called President Trump's attacks on Joe Biden's son, Hunter, "vicious" and said that the network was not going to "reward" the president by airing them. "President Trump held a campaign rally in Minnesota last night. There are parts of it we can't show you, or rather, there are parts of it we're not going to show you," Todd said Friday on MSNBC. "The president's red meat vitriol wasn't new. Neither was his use of profanity. "The president went further than he's ever gone before. So we are going further than we've ever gone before to say...

During a “press marathon” on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the topic of his famous July 25 phone call with President Trump, including one of the “favors” Trump mentioned: to look into “the whole situation” of Ukraine’s role in the 2016 U.S. election. “Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country,” Politico‘s Kenneth Vogel and David Stern wrote in a January 2017 report that has since been cited by multiple administration officials. “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness...

Remember that story Biden told about going to Kiev to get Shokin fired in March 2016? Well, Biden never went to Ukraine in March 2016. Poroshenko came to the WH https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog?page=29

A Ukrainian political leader said she received assurances from President Donald Trump that he would look out for Ukraine in its ongoing dispute with Russia, according to people briefed in the aftermath of a quick, informal conversation between the two political figures. Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had a momentary meeting with Trump just before he spoke to the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton on Thursday. Tymoshenko and a group of supporters who traveled with her from Kiev this week quickly relayed word of the exchange, telling allies in Washington that Trump had said he would not abandon...

<p>KIEV (Reuters) - A raid by a group of armed men in combat fatigues on a state-owned oil company in the Ukrainian capital Kiev caused uproar in parliament on Friday and thrust banking billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky into the spotlight.</p> <p>Two parliamentary deputies accused Kolomoisky of sending the masked men into the offices of UkrTransNafta late on Thursday night after it was announced that its chairman, an ally of the 52-year-old oligarch, had been sacked.</p>

01.06.14 11:44 Crimean students on graduation line choked the RUSSIAN anthem singing the anthem of Ukraine. Terrific VIDEO Crimea "One of the Yalta Graduates schools, enforced on the anthem of the Ukrainian anthem singing choked Rashi!" About this Facebook page says the employee program, ATP, Namatullaev Shevket Censor No. Source: http://censor.net.ua/n287988 source: http://censor.net.ua/n287988

There was scheduled prayer for peace in Ukraine! "Today prayer for peace in tent defeated. Somewhere at 13:30 for three cars arrived heavily armed separatist militants. They have set on alternating arms where priests broke and thrown into the river tent. It was heard orders were not to touch the crosses, Bibles, icons. After this, threatened to shoot everyone if we gathered together. Their claim for this was Ukrainian symbols (I personally Ukrainian flag pin on his shoulder.) One of our leaders went to the RSA to negotiate with them. One of the separatist said that he saw him as...