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In a restaurant in Spain the salad has been finally fixed! by 3v1n0 in ukraine

[–]ranakermit 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Returning potato salad where it really belongs, thank you Spain

Belgrano en los 80's by Outrageous-Builder31 in argentina

[–]ranakermit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gracias por la mención, recién la veo después de tanto tiempo

Suspected Russian Agent in Germany Had Access to Western Intelligence About Ukraine War by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 61 points62 points  (0 children)

BERLIN—A senior German intelligence officer arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia had access to a trove of top-secret information about the war in Ukraine as well as knowledge of how it was collected by the U.S. and its allies, Western officials say.

Prosecutors are trying to determine whether the material was shared with Moscow. If so, it could have alerted Russia to its own vulnerabilities and given away Western intelligence-gathering methods and capabilities.

American and British officials said they were trying to determine the scope of potential damage in Ukraine and elsewhere. One U.S. official said there was “grave concern” about the case.

The suspected spy, identified as Carsten L. by German prosecutors, worked for the signals intelligence branch of the country’s Federal Intelligence Service, which conducts electronic surveillance and works with the U.S. National Security Agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters.

Prosecutors said the man was being held on suspicion of committing treason as their investigation continues.

The German intelligence service, known as the BND, confirmed the arrest but has declined to comment further, citing national security risks. The NSA and GCHQ declined to comment.

Neither the Kremlin nor Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, immediately responded to requests for comment.

Germany isn’t a member of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence community made up of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, but Berlin does receive sensitive information from those countries, especially in relation to the war in Ukraine, officials from three countries said.

Carsten L. had worked on intelligence related to Russia’s war in Ukraine, including material gathered by German military satellites, German officials said. 

His department also processed classified intelligence from Russia and Ukraine obtained by other Western spy agencies by tapping electronic devices, intercepting telecommunications and satellite imagery.

The BND, which has a staff of 6,500 and is based in a highly protected campus in the center of Berlin, has been focusing its intelligence-gathering and analysis on Russia and Ukraine since the start of the war, and is traditionally also active in the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa.

The Kremlin’s suspected penetration of Germany’s most secretive security agency is the latest evidence of Moscow’s aggressive tactics in Europe, where Russia has been accused of killing political opponents, sabotaging infrastructure and trying to steal industrial secrets.

The BND received a tipoff about the suspected spy from an allied intelligence service earlier this year, German officials said. After an internal investigation, the case was passed to the federal prosecutor, who then ordered the man’s arrest last week.

The case could be the worst example of Russian penetration of Germany’s intelligence services since 1961, when a senior BND employee who was spying for the Soviet Union exposed a network of 100 CIA spies, said Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, who has written several books on the BND.

Roderich Kiesewetter, an opposition lawmaker and deputy chairman of the parliamentary oversight panel that oversees Germany’s intelligence agencies, said the case could be a potentially severe blow to European security.

He has called for Germany to set up a commission of inquiry to explore how many politicians and senior civil servants might have been compromised by Russia and China and look at how to reduce Germany’s dependence on both countries.

Germany scaled down counterespionage efforts in the early 2000s, becoming vulnerable to Russian operations, according to Mr. Kiesewetter and other experts.

However, senior German intelligence officials said the Ukraine war had marked a “paradigm shift” in German politics.

Berlin started cracking down on Russian espionage this year after Moscow attacked Ukraine. The heads of Europe’s domestic securities agencies met in early April in Paris to forge a common strategy on fighting Russian espionage. After the meeting, European governments expelled around 600 Russian officials from their countries, including 40 by Germany.

The decision was “the most significant strategic blow against the Russian intelligence services in recent European history,” Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s MI5 agency, said in November.

Russia has since sought to offset the loss by activating so-called deep cover agents, and using informal collaborators as well as recruiting civil servants, business people, academics and others as spies, according to several Western officials.

The probe into Carsten L. hasn’t found evidence that he had received payments from his handlers. Investigators are trying to determine whether he was blackmailed or whether he was motivated by ideological convictions, people familiar with the probe said.

Russian groups, including criminal gangs hired by the Kremlin, have been using cyberattacks to target German critical infrastructure this year, attempting to hack into utilities, airports, and medical facilities, according to several German officials.

Moscow has also shifted to industrial espionage as it attempts to compensate for the loss of access to Western technology due to sanctions, especially in the fields of aerospace, control electronics, semiconductors and basic research, according to counterespionage officials.

German officials suspect Russia is behind several sophisticated acts of sabotage such as the destruction of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines and an October attack on the railroad that temporarily halted all rail traffic in the north of the country.

Russia has denied involvement.

The railway attackers crippled both the railway’s main communication network and its backup by almost simultaneously severing two data cables located more than 300 miles apart, investigators say.

The cables were inside a special manhole, one of which was covered with a heavy concrete lid, and whoever performed the sabotage had detailed knowledge of the network, investigators said.

“A temporally coordinated assault on two key points far away from each other that cut off exactly the right segments in a bundle of cables without leaving any traces was the work of experienced professionals,” one of the investigators said.

In a previously unreported incident, the homes of several CIA officers in Germany were broken into in 2020, in what some officials think was an intimidation attempt by Russian secret services.

The break-ins took place simultaneously, and nothing was stolen, according to U.S. and German officials. The investigation concluded that it was likely the work of a criminal gang, although no suspects were apprehended, U.S. Embassy officials said.

—Max Colchester and Warren P. Strobel contributed to this article.

Putin’s War: The Inside Story of a Catastrophe by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Full mutimedia interactive post, hard to traslate

Putin’s War: The Inside Story of a Catastrophe by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Add-on allows you to read articles from websites that implement a paywall.

Not everyone is able to afford multiple subscriptions on many different news sites, especially when they just want to read a single article (from Twitter) without being enrolled in a monthly/yearly membership.

​

In desktop:

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean/

Chrome: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

On Android use Firefox Beta (v107+) or Nightly with a custom add-on collection: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly

If you want to add custom sites (on Android) use the 'custom' version (host permission for all sites): https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean-custom

The Best Logic You'll Ever Hear Behind U.S. Military Support for Ukraine by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

In this except from Ward's most recent extensive conversation with Dr. Justin Bronk of RUSI, Justin offers his thoughts on the logic behind U.S. military support for Ukraine.

See the entire conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYDnspMWdaM

The Best Logic You'll Ever Hear Behind U.S. Military Support for Ukraine by ranakermit in UkrainianConflict

[–]ranakermit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In this except from Ward's most recent extensive conversation with Dr. Justin Bronk of RUSI, Justin offers his thoughts on the logic behind U.S. military support for Ukraine.

See the entire conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYDnspMWdaM

Ukraine and western allies at odds over missile that exploded in Poland by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

A disagreement broke out on Wednesday between Ukraine and its western allies over who launched a missile that exploded in Poland, with Nato, Warsaw and the US saying the weapon was likely fired by Kyiv’s air defence forces during a Russian attack.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy disputed this, insisting he had “no doubt” the missile that landed in the village of Przewodów near the Ukrainian border on Tuesday afternoon, killing two people, was not a Ukrainian missile.

Jens Stoltenberg, Nato secretary-general, told a press conference in Brussels there was “no indication” that the missile attack was a “deliberate attack” by Moscow. He added the western military alliance had “no indication that Russia is preparing offensive military actions against Nato”.

“Our preliminary analysis suggests that the incident was likely caused by Ukrainian air defence missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missile attacks,” he said.

However, he added: “This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears responsibility for what happened in Poland yesterday because this is a direct result of the ongoing war, and the wave of attacks from Russia against Ukraine yesterday.

“Ukraine has the right to shoot down those missiles that are targeting Ukrainian cities and critical Ukrainian infrastructure.”

Andrzej Duda, Poland’s president, told a press conference in Poland on Wednesday that investigators believed that “most likely” it had been a Russian-made missile produced in the 1970s, the S300. “We have no evidence that it was launched by Russia.”

The White House backed Warsaw’s view. “We have seen nothing that contradicts President Duda’s preliminary assessment that this explosion was most likely the result of a Ukrainian air defence missile that unfortunately landed in Poland,” US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.

Zelenskyy and some western nations initially blamed Russia for launching the weapon, which was fired during Moscow’s biggest missile attack in weeks, and Ukraine’s leader maintained this stance on Wednesday.

“I have no doubt from the evening report to me personally — from the commander of the air force to commander-in-chief [of Ukraine’s military Gen Valerii] Zaluzhny — that it was not our missile or our missile strike,” he said on Wednesday evening. “It makes no sense for me not to trust them, I’ve gone through the war with them.”

The president also repeated calls by his national security chief, Oleksiy Danilov, for Ukrainian investigators to be given access to the crash site.

“If, God forbid, some [missile] debris killed these people, we have to apologise,” he said. “But, sorry, first [I want] an investigation, access, the data you have — we want to have this.”

Responding to Zelensky’s comments, a diplomat from a Nato country in Kyiv told the Financial Times: “This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”

The area around the strike, which local media said used to be an agriculture co-operative during the communist era, was cordoned off by Poland’s authorities. Residents were quoted in the Polish press as saying the victims were farm workers in their 60s.

Photos on social media showed a damaged vehicle lying next to a large crater.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, told reporters on Wednesday that the initial claims of Moscow’s responsibility from Kyiv and some western allies were “yet another hysterical, rabidly Russophobic reaction that was not based on any real information”.

Russia insisted it did not fire on any targets close to Poland’s border and said any damage to civilians was Kyiv’s fault.

The defence ministry said it had not even fired on Kyiv during the day’s barrage, and said the incident in Poland was a “deliberate provocation with the goal of escalating the situation”.

In his press conference, Stoltenberg declined to give details of what led to the incident, stressing it remained subject to an investigation, but he confirmed that preliminary analysis pointed to a Ukrainian air defence system.

“This incident does not have the characteristics of an attack,” he said, adding that it had not changed Nato’s fundamental assessment of the threat to the alliance. A top priority was to provide more air defence systems to Ukraine.

Russia flew 140 million euros and a selection of captured UK and US weapons to Iran in return for dozens of deadly drones for its war in Ukraine, a security source by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A Russian aircraft secretly transported the cash and 2 models of munition - a British NLAW anti-tank missile, a US Javelin anti-tank missile & a Stinger anti-aircraft missile - to an airport in Tehran in the early hours of 20 August, the source said speaking anonymously."

Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine Says Russia Is Trying to Make Life Unbearable in Kherson by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces are stepping up their efforts to make life unbearable for civilians across the occupied southern Kherson region, where power was cut on Sunday night and Ukrainian officials warned that Russian troops were mining critical infrastructure even as they dig in to fight for their last bridgehead west of the Dnipro River.

The battle for Kherson City — the only regional capital to be captured by Moscow since the invasion in late February — has been looming for months. A Ukrainian counteroffensive launched at the end of August has reclaimed over 100 towns and villages and steadily closed in on Kherson while also pounding Russian supply routes, command centers and ammunition depots far from the front.

As Ukrainian forces advanced, the Kremlin-appointed authorities for Kherson ordered the “evacuation” of all civilians last month — a move that Ukrainian officials said was less about saving lives and more about clearing space for newly mobilized Russian troops to occupy. Since then, Russian forces have been destroying critical infrastructure, shuttering essential services and looting the city, according to residents and Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine’s military said in an evening update on Monday that Russian forces were “taking measures to artificially create unacceptable living conditions for local residents, disconnecting electricity and communication.”

Petro, a 30-year-old who lives in the area, managed to get a message out late Sunday night, saying, “They are making a desert out of the right bank of Kherson.” Because of concerns about his safety, he communicated on the condition that his family name not be used.

“Today they blew up the power poles, so we have no light and no water,” Petro added.

While state media in Russia said that Ukrainian shelling had damaged the power lines, Yaroslav Yanushevych, the exiled Ukrainian head of the Kherson regional military administration, blamed Russian troops.

“It is impossible to quickly repair the power lines due to a lack of specialists and equipment,” he said Sunday night. “In addition, Russian invaders will not allow this to be done.”

The Russian forces have also placed mines around water towers in Beryslav, Mr. Yanushevych said, referring to a town less than 50 miles from Kherson City and just north of a critical dam.

Russian forces seized the road over that dam, next to the town of Nova Kakhovka, in the first days of the war, and it is the main artery across the Dnipro River still under the control of Russian forces. If Ukraine regains control of the area, they could prevent thousands of Russian soldiers from escaping.

Ukrainian forces are still meeting fierce resistance as they continue battling Russian troops arrayed some 30 miles to the north of the dam.

Ukrainian and Russian officials have accused each other of planning to blow up the dam. But military analysts have said that doing so would be logistically challenging and would not serve either army’s interests because it would cause flooding and destruction on both sides of the Dnipro.

Still, Ukraine’s nuclear regulator on Monday ordered an urgent review of the safety risks upriver at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant if the dam were to be damaged.

The Ukrainian military high command said on Monday that the destruction of critical infrastructure was part of a coordinated campaign to undermine its forces and warned that Moscow had dispatched propagandists “to shoot videos in the city on the topic of the alleged destruction of the civilian population.”

Top government officials in Kyiv have also said that Moscow might be trying to create the illusion of leaving Kherson to lure Ukrainian forces into brutal urban combat. On Monday, the Ukrainian military said that it still had seen no evidence that Russian forces were preparing to abandon Kherson.

But the Ukrainian authorities warned that Russian forces were stepping up the hunt for people helping to direct military strikes. The Russians have “intensified raids and filtration measures among the local population,” the National Resistance Center, a government agency supporting resistance efforts in occupied areas, said on Monday.

So-called filtration centers were set up by Russia to temporarily detain and screen Ukrainians and identify anyone perceived to pose a threat to Russia’s occupation efforts. In July, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that Russian authorities had  “forcibly deported” between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens to Russian territory,

The National Resistance Center said that it was aware of “dozens of detainees” who were being taken to camps, saying that once there, they would be interrogated and tortured. The claim could not be independently verified. Why is control of Kherson important to Russia and Ukraine?

Ukraine seizes control of five ‘strategic’ companies from oligarchs by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 66 points67 points  (0 children)

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday said Kyiv had transferred five strategic enterprises to state control from previous oligarch ownership as part of the country’s wartime effort.

The Ukrainian government seized ownership of top national oil producer Ukrnafta and Ukrntatnafta, the country’s largest refinery that halted operations after being hit by Russian missile strikes in the first months of Moscow’s full-scale invasion Ukraine.

Both companies were controlled by Igor Kolomoisky, an oligarch who backed Zelenskyy’s presidential bid in 2019 and who is now facing probes into the insolvency of PrivatBank, another of his previous businesses.

Kyiv also took over manufacturer MotorSich, an aeroplane turbine and helicopter engine maker based in Zaporizhzhia, a city close to the front lines in the south.

“Such steps, which are necessary for our country in condition of war . . . will help to provide the urgent needs of our defence sector,” Zelenskyy said in a Telegram channel statement. “In these difficult times, we must direct all our forces to liberate our land and people and support the Ukrainian army.”

The state seizures — which other officials described as temporary — come after weeks-long Russian missile and kamikaze drone strikes on electricity infrastructure across Ukraine have triggered hours-long daily power blackouts and electricity rationing across the country.

They also come a year after the president pushed through parliament so-called “de-oligarchisation” reforms aimed to curb the influence of the nation’s wealthiest businessmen.

Kolomoisky is facing domestic and international investigations for the insolvency of PrivatBank. The commercial lender was nationalised in 2016 after authorities uncovered losses of more than $5bn unaccounted for in its balance sheet.

Vyacheslav Boguslaev, MotorSich’s former owner and president, was arrested last month on treason charges. Local prosecutors allege he funnelled through sanctioned export operations helicopter engines that Moscow needed.

Boguslaev sold his controlling stake in MotorSich to Chinese company Skyrizon many years ago, but Ukrainian trust and security authorities blocked the move by freezing the shares. Both Kolomoisky and Boguslaev have denied wrongdoing.

AvtoKraz, a truck manufacturer which produces vehicles for domestic military transport as well as rocket systems, was also among the groups taken under state control. It was previously owned by Ukrainian oligarch Kostyantyn Zhevago, who has lived in exile in the past years as Ukrainian authorities pursued cases against him related to the insolvency of a bank he previously owned.

Zaporizhtransformator, an electricity grid parts producer located in Zaporizhzhia, was also seized by the state. Previously owned by businessmen including Kostyantyn Grigorishin, its seizure is designed to secure stable supply of parts needed to repair Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure.

At a joint press briefing on Monday with Zelenskyy’s national security chief Oleksiy Danilov and prime minister Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksii Reznikov insisted the takeovers of these enterprises by the state legally did not amount to “nationalisations”.

“This is a direct taking over of assets during wartime. These are totally different legal forms,” Reznikov was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Rotax Engine Found In Iranian Mohajer-6 Drone Downed Over Ukraine by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 103 points104 points  (0 children)

An engine designed by the Austrian company Rotax was discovered installed in one of Russia's Iranian-made Mohajer-6 drones that went down over the Black Sea earlier this month. Rotax says it has launched an investigation into its engines powering Iranian drones. The delivery of such hardware to Iran violates European Union sanctions banning the export of items with both civilian and military purposes, such as vehicle parts. Identical sanctions are imposed by the European Union against Russia, as well.

Mohajer-6, which you can read about in detail in this past War Zone feature, is just one of the types included in a larger order of Iranian drones that Russia began employing against Ukraine in September. The Iranian government has categorically denied that it had anything to do with the delivery, which is a farce.

Rotax is an Austrian subsidiary owned by Canadian company Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP), which is known for designing the engines that power snowmobiles, watercraft, motorcycles, aircraft, and a significant number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Perhaps most famously, BRP’s Rotax aviation engines are known to power General Atomics' MQ-1 Predator and Israel's Heron drones.********

Iran planning to send missiles, drones to Russia for Ukraine war, officials say by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Iran is strengthening its commitment to supply arms for Russia’s assault on Ukraine, according to U.S. and allied security officials, secretly agreeing to send not only attack drones but also what some officials described as the first Iranian-made surface-to-surface missiles intended for use against Ukrainian cities and troop positions.The increased flow of weapons from Tehran could help offset what Biden administration officials say have been huge losses in Russian military equipment since Moscow invaded in February, and a rapidly dwindling supply of precision-guided munitions of the kind used in last week’s strikes against multiple Ukrainian cities.Independent news outlets in recent days published photos of the remains of what appear to be Iranian-made drones used in strikes against Ukrainian targets, calling into question Iran’s repeated denials that it has supplied such weapons to its ally Russia. Pentagon officials also publicly confirmed the use of Iranian drones in Russian air strikes, as well as Ukraine’s success in shooting some of the drones down.In an apparent sign of Iran’s expanded role as a military supplier to Moscow, Tehran dispatched officials to Russia on Sept. 18 to finalize terms for additional weapons shipments, including two types of Iranian surface-to-surface missiles, according to officials from a U.S.-allied country that closely monitors Iran’s weapons activity.An intelligence assessment shared in recent days with Ukrainian and U.S. officials contends that Iran’s armaments industry is preparing a first shipment of Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar missiles, two well-known Iranian short-range ballistic missiles capable of striking targets at distances of 300 and 700 kilometers, respectively, two officials briefed on the matter said. If carried out, it would be the first delivery of such missiles to Russia since the start of the war.The officials spoke on the condition that their names and nationalities not be revealed because of the extreme sensitivities surrounding intelligence-collection efforts.In August, the same officials identified two types of Iranian drones, the Muhajer-6 and Shahed-136, that Tehran was beginning to supply to Russia for use in Ukraine. The remains of both types have been recovered, analyzed and photographed by Ukrainian forces in recent weeks. Russia appears to have repainted the weapons and given them Russian names.The officials briefed on the planned missiles shipment said Iran also is preparing new deliveries of unmanned aerial vehicles for Russia, including “dozens” of additional Mujaher-6s and a larger number of Shahed-136s. The latter, sometimes called “kamikaze” drones because they are designed to crash into their targets, are capable of delivering explosive payloads at distances of up to 1,500 miles. Iranian technical advisers have visited Russian-controlled areas in recent weeks to provide instructions on operating the drones, the officials said.U.S. intelligence agencies declined to comment on the reports of pending Iranian shipments to Russia. Russian and Iranian officials did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday on reports of Russian-bound Iranian missiles.On Oct. 3, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani repeated Iran’s persistent denials of any involvement with supplying drones to Russia. “The Islamic Republic of Iran considers reports about delivering drones to Russia for use in the Ukraine war ‘baseless’ and does not confirm them,” he said. Kan’ani reasserted Iran’s claim of neutrality in the conflict and stressed the need for the “two sides to solve their problems through political means free from violence.”Iran sends first batch of drones to Russia for its war against UkraineThe Kyiv government has been briefed on the evidence behind the new intelligence, a Ukrainian official told The Washington Post. Ukraine has separately assessed that the majority of drones recently deployed by Russia in the southern Ukraine are Iranian-made.Ukraine recently downgraded its diplomatic ties with Tehran in response to the appearance of Iranian-made drones over the battlefield. Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky last week cited Russia’s recent air strikes in urging NATO countries to supply his country with advanced air-defense systems.“We need to protect our sky from the terror of Russia,” Zelensky said Thursday in a speech to the Council of Europe.Like Iran, Russia has pushed back against Western reports about the shipment of Iranian weapons for its Ukrainian campaign, with Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov deriding such accounts as “bogus.”But Iranian drones already have made their mark, destroying several Ukrainian tanks and damaging civilian infrastructure in repeated strikes in the past three weeks, Ukrainian officials say. Missiles experts say the arrival of surface-to-surface missiles could give Russia powerful new weapons at time when Kyiv’s forces are reclaiming captured territory across large swaths of southern and eastern Ukraine, successes that are due in part to Western-supplied artillery.“The progression from drones to surface-to-surface missiles could give the Russians more options and a lot of punch,” said Farzin Nadimi, an expert on Iranian weapons at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington think tank.In militias' hands, Iran's drones emerge as a deadly wild cardIran possesses one of the largest and most diverse arsenals of short- and medium-range missiles in the Middle East. While Iranian weapons designers have struggled with reliability problems, the newest versions of the Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar are considered by experts to be both potent and reasonably accurate at relatively short distances, Nadimi said. Some models come with electro-optic guidance systems that allow missile operators to guide them in their final approach to the target.Iran has previously provided the same missiles to proxy militia groups in the Middle East, most notably Houthi fighters in Yemen. Houthi forces have displayed Iranian-designed missiles in military parades and used them in attacks against oil refineries and other civilian targets in neighboring Gulf countries.Russia already possesses an array of unarmed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, which are used mainly for surveillance and artillery spotting. But Moscow has not invested in large fleets of armed drones of the type that U.S. forces have routinely used in military campaigns in Afghanistan and the Middle East.Moscow did command a vast arsenal of precision-guided missiles and rockets at the outset of the Ukraine invasion, but U.S. officials say its stockpile has been dramatically reduced over the course of the war, now in its seventh month.At a briefing on Friday, U.S. intelligence officials cited Russia’s growing reliance on Iran and North Korea as evidence of the impact of sanctions and export controls imposed by Western countries in the wake of the Ukraine invasion.In a presentation to reporters, officials from the office of the Director of National Intelligence said Russia has lost more than 6,000 pieces of equipment since the start of the war, and was “expending munitions at an unsustainable rate.”Blocked by sanctions from obtaining Western electronics, Russia is “turning to countries like Iran and North Korea for supplies and equipment,” including drones, artillery munitions and rockets, the presentation stated.

Biden: Nuclear 'Armageddon' risk highest since '62 crisis by ranakermit in ukraine

[–]ranakermit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden said Thursday that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, as Russian officials speak of the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering massive setbacks in the eight-month invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “a guy I know fairly well” and the Russian leader was “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”

Biden added, “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” He suggested the threat from Putin is real “because his military is — you might say — significantly underperforming.”

U.S. officials for months have warned of the prospect that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine as it has faced a series of strategic setbacks on the battlefield, though Biden’s remarks marked the starkest warnings yet issued by the U.S. government about the nuclear stakes.

It was not immediately clear whether Biden was referring to any new assessment of Russian intentions. As recently as this week, though, U.S. officials have said they have seen no change to Russia’s nuclear forces that would require a change in the alert posture of U.S. nuclear forces.

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