Russia

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/HE8CUtF.jpg

Kyrill Ies'kov
The Last Ringbearer
History of Middle Earth – through the eyes of the Enemy

:wink:

[Witness]

That was easy. :)

https://www.enjoyyourcooking.com/soup-r ... rscht.html

Very funny.

I never doubted the existence of Lithuanian borsht (or Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Slovenian… for that matter). But you wrote:

borsht is really Lithuanian

Which implies, I think, that it originated there or, at the very least, that it's rare outside of Lithuania (ha!).

Now waiting for a source for that, as I'm genuinely interested.

[ed]

Suspected Russian cannibal arrested after severed penis found in garden

https://nypost.com/2020/04/22/suspected ... in-garden/

In fairness, it seems to me that the Post is jumping to conclusions. The random severed penis does not strike me as sufficient cause to jump to hurling the "cannibal" epithet. There might be perfectly innocent explinations for their presence in his garden, a possibility not explored by this main stream outlet in it's persuit of lurid headlines.

... "headlines" see what I did there?
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Witness]

Russian communists defy lockdown with Red Square parade for Lenin's 150th

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Dozens of Russian communists defied Moscow’s coronavirus lockdown on Wednesday by marching across Red Square to lay flowers outside Vladimir Lenin’s tomb to mark 150 years since the birth of the Bolshevik leader.

Led by Gennady Zyuganov, head of Russia’s Communist Party, a small group of people, some holding red flags, marched to the granite mausoleum where Lenin’s embalmed body lies to pay their respects.

The ritual, which is observed annually on April 22, comes with Moscow in its fourth week of a lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of the new virus.

Muscovites are only allowed outside to buy food or medicine nearby, receive urgent medical treatment, walk the dog or take out the trash.

A policeman guarding Red Square, which has been closed off to the public and was otherwise empty as it snowed on Wednesday, told Reuters the communists had received special permission to stage the event.

The Moscow police and the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Speaking to reporters on Red Square, Zyuganov said the Russian authorities’ efforts to contain the virus were no match for the Soviet approach to fighting a smallpox outbreak in Moscow in 1960.

“Now they can’t even produce masks in three months,” he said, referring to the current Russian authorities.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-leni ... SKCN22423L

And the trains were on schedule? :mrgreen:

[Witness]

Russian city removes “untruthful” plaque commemorating thousands of Poles murdered by Soviets

On the building that once housed the local headquarters of the Soviet secret police in the Russian city of Tver, where 80 years ago thousands of Polish prisoners of war were murdered, plaques commemorating the victims of Stalinist crimes were today removed.

The prosecutor’s office sought the removal of the plaques last year, arguing that they had been placed on the building “unlawfully” and that “the information presented on them does not reflect the actual truth”, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

The removal itself was carried out by the leader of a local nationalist movement and the deputy rector for security at the medical university now housed in the building, according to Alexander Guryanov of Memorial, a Russian society that commemorates the Soviet Union’s totalitarian past.

Guryanov told Polish website RMF24 that there was “no legal basis” for the action. He noted that the university’s security official is someone usually appointed by the FSB, Russia’s state security agency.

https://notesfrompoland.com/2020/05/07/ ... y-soviets/ for details on the Katyn massacre and how its memory irks the local nationalists.

[Witness]

Russia calls Ukrainians in Crimea ‘foreigners’ and forces them to sell or lose their land

Russia’s new move to strip Ukrainians of their own land in Crimea is in flagrant violation of Ukrainian and international law and will bring consequences, both for Russia and for those Russians who ‘buy’ land illegally expropriated from Ukrainians.

At a joint briefing on 6 May, the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office, Office of the President’s Representative on Crimea and human rights groups spoke of methods to protect Ukrainians from losing their land following the illegal decree issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 20 March 2020.

As reported, the decree makes amendments to a list of “coastal territories” which “foreign nationals, stateless persons and foreign legal entities” cannot have land rights to. The list includes most parts of occupied Crimea, except for three regions without access to the Black Sea. Since Russia, as invader and occupying state, is treating Ukrainians as ‘foreign nationals’, the decree effectively strips Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians who have not taken Russian citizenship of their land rights.

Russia’s new move is in breach of the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians which expressly prohibits the destruction or expropriation of property by occupying powers. The trouble is that Russia is brazenly violating all international treaties with its ongoing occupation of Crimea, and simply stating this will not help the Ukrainians who now face having to sell their land, or have it forcibly sold, almost certainly for very little money, by 20 March 2021.

http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1588801601

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/rwpux9E.jpg

[Witness]

Destroyed by Stalin (I posted the pic), rebuilt 1995 – 2000, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow:

https://i.imgur.com/mrxYscs.jpg

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/qniefel.jpg

Yeltsin in Rostov, 1996.

[Witness]

Malta seizes $1.1 billion worth of counterfeit Libyan currency printed in Russia

Malta has seized $1.1 billion worth of counterfeit Libyan dinars earlier this week, the U.S. State Department said Friday.

The counterfeit money was "printed by Joint Stock Company Goznak – a Russian state-owned company – and ordered by an illegitimate parallel entity," the State Department said in a statement, commending Malta for successfully confiscating the fake dinars.

"The influx of counterfeit, Russian-printed Libyan currency in recent years has exacerbated Libya’s economic challenges," the statement added.

The U.S. said the incident again highlighted "the need for Russia to cease its malign and destabilizing actions in Libya."

Russia is a staunch supporter of putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar, whose Libyan National Army (LNA) fights against the internationally-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) for control over the Libyan capital Tripoli. An estimated 800 to 1,200 fighters from Russia's Wagner Group are backing Haftar's offensive.

https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/mal ... ussia/news

[Witness]

Russian Police Colonel Being Treated For COVID-19 Falls From Moscow Hospital Window

A female police lieutenant colonel has fallen from a window on the fifth floor of a Moscow hospital treating coronavirus patients, Russian media reported.

The reports said the incident occurred at Moscow City Clinical Hospital No. 24 on the evening of May 30.

The woman, identified as 45-year-old Yulia B. by Komsomolskaya pravda, was described as a senior expert at the Forensic Center of the Interior Ministry.

The newspaper reported that the police lieutenant colonel died on the spot, but Russian media organization RBC said she survived the fall and was placed in an intensive-care unit.

Komsomolskaya pravda said the police colonel left her ward to go into the corridor, then "fell" from the fifth floor window, and landed on the grass below.

...

The incident comes after three physicians in Russia fell out of windows amid mysterious circumstances during the coronavirus outbreak.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-police- ... 46886.html

[Witness]

Rogue Russian Priest Seizes Convent With Cossack Brigade, Sparking Public Showdown With Church

https://i.imgur.com/gQMyt1r.jpg

MOSCOW -- The Russian Orthodox Church is struggling to wrest back control of a convent in the Urals after a cleric it suspended for disobeying its coronavirus-prevention policies occupied the compound with help from Cossack guards.

Father Sergiy Romanov, the abbot of a nearby men’s monastery who has praised Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and called the coronavirus a Western plot, commenced the standoff with church authorities on June 16 after he took over the Sredneuralsk Women’s Monastery and called on his followers to join him.

Local media reported that a group of Cossacks, members of a paramilitary group with deep historical roots in Russia, surrounded the convent until its abbess and nuns decided to vacate it.

In a statement on June 17, the Yekaterinburg diocese said that Romanov had shown disobedience to Russian Orthodox Church authorities and called on him to seek penance for his actions while a clerical court investigates his conduct.

“The Yekaterinburg diocese encourages prayer for the sake of bringing Father Sergiy around, so he uses the time until the next hearing of the ecclesiastical court to change his ways and repent,” it said.

Romanov is a prominent figure among the faithful in and around Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, where some consider him a spiritual leader of the Tsarebozhniki, a breakaway sect of the Orthodox Church whose adherents worship Nicholas II, the last tsar, as a saint who suffered a martyr's death for them, and advocate a return to monarchy. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized the last tsar and his family in 2000, but not as martyrs killed for their faith.

https://www.rferl.org/a/rogue-russian-p ... 78343.html

:mrgreen:

[Witness]

Cossacks! :o

https://i.imgur.com/GY5LuLp.jpg

:wink:

[Witness]

Cossacks! :o

Couldn't resist. :mrgreen:

[Witness]

Sketches used by the police in the USSR to identify suspects based on race

https://i.imgur.com/FOWiEwX.jpg

Apparently it wasn't "race" but "nationality".

[Witness]

Russians grant Putin right to extend his rule until 2036 in landslide vote

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russians opened the door to Vladimir Putin staying in power until 2036 by voting overwhelmingly for constitutional changes that will allow him to run again for president twice, but critics said the outcome was falsified on an industrial scale.

Official results, after 98% of ballots had been counted, showed that the former KGB officer who has ruled Russia for more than two decades as president or prime minister had easily won the right to run for two more six-year terms after the current one ends in 2024. That means Putin, 67, could rule until the age of 83.

The Central Election Commission said 78% of votes counted across the world’s largest country had supported changing the constitution. Just over 21% had voted against, it said.

Ella Pamfilova, head of the commission, said the vote had been transparent and that officials had done everything to ensure its integrity.

Opposition politician Alexei Navalny had a different view and called the vote an illegitimate and illegal show designed to legalise Putin’s presidency for life.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russ ... SKBN24254A

[Witness]

Nearest country to you when in Russia:


https://i.imgur.com/bMNtTNY.jpg

[Witness]

Not the post Russia partition map? :BigGrin3:

Comrade, such a mindset will allow you to spend vacations – long vacations – in Siberia. :|

[Witness]

That's part of the United States.

Nothing like traditional cowboy songs, right?

[Witness]

[Witness]

Russian Police Major Falls From Window After Testifying Against Boss — Reports

A police major in Far Eastern Russia has fallen to her death from a window after testifying against her boss in a criminal extortion case, news outlets reported Thursday.

Security cameras reportedly captured the lifeless body of criminal investigation officer Yekaterina Mishkina, 37, near a nine-floor apartment building in the city of Khabarovsk more than 8,000 kilometers east of Moscow.

It was unclear who or what Mishkina, who was in plainclothes according to the Dvnovosti.ru news website, had been pursuing before plunging to her death from the fifth-floor window.

Dvnovosti and the Gubernia.com news website reported that security cameras showed Mishkina unsuccessfully attempting to gain access to the building’s rooftop, then descending a few flights.

Unconfirmed reports citing anonymous sources in law enforcement agencies say that Mishkina was a witness in a criminal case against her former boss, who’s suspected of extorting from subordinates. She was reported to have testified against him some time before her death.

Gubernia reported that authorities opened the criminal extortion case after Mishkina’s former boss retired.

The Khabarovsk regional police launched an internal inspection into Mishkina’s death, spokeswoman Yekaterina Tarasova told Gubernia, adding that the investigator was “on yet another vacation” at the time.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/07/ ... rts-a70895

[Witness]

Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine form Lublin Triangle to cooperate against Russian aggression

Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine have agreed to deepen cooperation to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression as well as to take joint action to counter the coronavirus pandemic.

In a declaration signed by the Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian foreign ministers in the Polish city of Lublin on Tuesday, the three countries committed to creating the so-called Lublin Triangle, a trilateral platform for political, economic and social cooperation, to achieve these and other goals.

The foreign ministers “decided to organise their regular meetings, also in the margins of multilateral sessions and with the participation of chosen partners”, the document reads. “They also decide to organise consultations of high-level MFA officials and establish liaison-officers within the Ministries of Foreign Affairs.”

The declaration emphasises “the multi-centennial historical and cultural links” between the three nations and notes “common threats in security area as well as [...] pandemic threats”.

“Taking into account the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine, they [the ministers] commit to coordinating their activities in order to uphold the international law” and “declare invariably their strong condemnation of the attempted annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol by the Russian Federation”.

They also call on Russia to withdraw its troops from the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and reaffirm their support to Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the country's NATO aspirations as well as political and economic reforms.

The ministers also “commit to providing mutual support in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic”.

https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/1 ... aggression

[Witness]

UK Names Media Mogul Yevgeny Lebedev to House of Lords

Russian-British media owner Yevgeny Lebedev has been appointed to the House of Lords in Britain.

Queen Elizabeth II conferred Lebedev’s lifetime peerage on Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office said.

Lebedev owns Britain’s Independent and Evening Standard newspapers. His father, Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev, is co-owner of the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper in Russia.

In summer 2019, then-Prime Minister Theresa May's government launched an investigation into his sale of a 30% stake in the Evening Standard and Independent to a Saudi investor.

That summer, he was reported to have entertained then-Foreign Secretary Johnson at a party in his family’s villa in Italy.

Alexander Lebedev, an ex-KGB agent turned business tycoon, was reportedly one of the figures investigated as part of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee report on alleged Kremlin interference in country’s 2016 Brexit referendum.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/07/ ... rds-a71035

[Witness]

Russian YouTuber Arrested for Obtaining State Secrets

https://i.imgur.com/7AGbQdU.jpg

A Russian YouTuber famous for exploring abandoned sites was arrested and charged with obtaining state secrets last week, authorities and activists said Wednesday.

Andrei Pyzh has uploaded hundreds of videos showing his visits to industrial sites and abandoned bunkers to his YouTube channel, which has about 800,000 subscribers.

He faces up to eight years in jail if found guilty of illegally obtaining and disseminating state secrets.

A Moscow court ruled Aug. 6 that Pyzh remain in pre-trial custody until October, Reuters cited the court as saying.

It is unclear if Pyzh denies the charges against him.

Pyzh’s lawyer said his client’s arrest was not linked to his blogs. However, news outlets pointed to anonymous comments on the vlogger’s past Instagram posts promising “big trouble” for gaining access to a functioning radar station that Russia uses for its nuclear strike early warning system.

Friends and family said they have lost contact with Pyzh since Aug. 5 and reports said his court-appointed lawyer did not inform them of his detention either.

“He was in total isolation without understanding or support,” a member of Moscow’s public monitoring commission told the Podyom Telegram channel.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/08/ ... ets-a71137

[Witness]

Top officials at Russian universities embroiled in plagiarism scandal

It's been described as the 'tip of the iceberg' when it comes to unethical practices in Russian academia.

Seventeen of the senior-most officials at Russian universities, known as rectors, have published plagiarized papers in international predatory journals, according to a new report. Thirteen other senior officials, who work as either deans, vice-rectors or directors of universities are also guilty of the practice, the report says.

Described as “damning” by researchers familiar with Russian science, the report brings to light 259 papers that it claims contained text pulled from various works published in the Russian language. The papers under scrutiny appear to have been translated into English from existing texts from already published Russian-language academic studies and online articles, and passed off as new work.

Some of the original Russian works were themselves recycled from other sources, such as dissertations.

The report focuses on 94 journals, investigating plagiarism and fake collaborations, where several researchers based at different institutions who have never co-authored papers with one another in the past suddenly produce studies together.

The report says 37 journals had examples of manuscripts listing fake collaborations and 61 contained instances of plagiarism.

Since 2010, there have been nearly 23,700 papers by scholars in Russia published in the 94 journals in question, the report found.

Published on 12 August, the report was produced by the Commission for Counteracting the Falsification of Scientific Research, a group appointed by the Russian Academy of Sciences to investigate Russian research practices.

https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/t ... sm-scandal for the rest.

[Witness]

Russia’s Navalny in coma, allegedly poisoned by toxic tea

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, one of Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, lay in a coma Friday at a Siberian hospital, the victim of what his allies said appeared to be a poisoning engineered by the Kremlin.

Navalny’s organization was scrambling to make arrangements to transfer him to Germany for treatment; a German group said it was ready to send a plane for him and that a noted hospital in Berlin was ready to treat him.

The 44-year-old Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk on Thursday and was taken to a hospital after the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on Twitter.

She told the Echo Moskvy radio station that he must have consumed poison in tea he drank at an airport cafe before boarding the plane early Thursday. During the flight, Navalny started sweating and asked her to talk to him so that he could “focus on the sound of a voice.” He then went to the bathroom and lost consciousness, and has been in a coma and on a ventilator in grave condition ever since.

...

“We are sure that the only people that have the capability to target Navalny or myself are Russian security services with definite clearance from Russia’s political leadership,” Pyotr Verzilov, a member of the protest group Pussy Riot who ended up in intensive care after suspected poisoning in 2018, told The Associated Press. “We believe that Putin definitely is a person who gives that go-ahead in this situation.”

https://apnews.com/c7a5c4e5ff2ce454a0a99400e8016005


Time to drag out that old pic:

https://i.imgur.com/BYMJjIO.jpg

:mrgreen:

[The Atheist]

I always thought Navalny had both the biggest balls and smallest brain on the entire planet.

Taking on a supreme oligarchical dictator who's well known for having opponents disappear, then staying in the country, is fucking nuts.

The equivalent would be Salman Rushdie deciding to go and live in Teheran in 1989.

[Witness]

Russian doctors allow Alexei Navalny's transfer to Germany

The German medical team has ascertained Navalny is fit enough to be airlifted to Berlin. Russian doctors have now given permission for his transfer which is expected to occur on Saturday.

https://www.dw.com/en/alexei-navalny-po ... a-54645234

France's Macron says ready to give Russia's Navalny all support

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that France was ready to give Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny all necessary assistance, including asylum.

Macron also said that France and Germany were ready to provide Navalny medical help.

Navalny was fighting for his life in a Siberian hospital on Thursday after drinking tea that allies said they believe was laced with poison.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fran ... SKBN25G25P

[Bad formatting corrected.]

[Churchill]

I don't blame Navalny's family not trusting Russian doctors with his medical case. They tend to fall out of windows if they do not tow the party line.

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/fMcA6cj.jpg

Urban fishing. :)

[Witness]

Alexei Navalny: Russian opposition leader was poisoned, German hospital suggests

‘His health is serious, but there is currently no acute danger to his life,’ statement says

Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned, the German hospital treating him has said.

The Charite hospital in Berlin said that the team of doctors who have been treating him since he was admitted on Saturday had found the presence of “cholinesterase inhibitors” in his system.

Cholinesterase inhibitors are a broad range of substances found in several drugs but also in pesticides and nerve agents. Common side effects include vomiting, muscle cramps, headache and hallucinations.

Doctors at the hospital said that the specific substance to which Mr Navalny was exposed is not yet known.

“The patient is in an intensive care unit and is still in an induced coma. His health is serious but there is currently no acute danger to his life,” the hospital said in a statement.

Berlin police and federal agents were posted at the downtown hospital where Mr Navalny has been undergoing treatment following his arrival in Germany after the chancellor, Angela Merkel, personally offered the country’s assistance

“It was obvious that after his arrival, protective precautions had to be taken,” Ms Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters. “After all, this is a patient who, with a certain degree of probability, was poisoned.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 85821.html

[Witness]

Russian military expands in Africa by building bases in six countries

The Russians are trying to expand their influence in Africa. To this end, they are signing military agreements with some of the continent’s more authoritarian regimes.

The German daily newspaper Bild citing a leaked secret German Foreign Ministry report wrote that the Russians are building military bases in six African countries. The report says that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made “Africa a top priority.” The bases are part of the Russians’ new African ambitions.

Bild cited the report which states that “since 2015, Russia has concluded military cooperation agreements with 21 countries in Africa.” It added that there were only four prior military cooperation treaties across the continent.

The report said that by courting some of the continent’s most dictatorial regimes, the Kremlin was “contractually assured” it would “be allowed to build military bases in six countries.” These countries are the Central African Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Sudan according to the Foreign Ministry’s leaked document.

Putin is competing with not only the West but also with China in spreading Russian influence on the huge continent (Africa is three times the size of the United States).

Sudan particularly interests Putin and Russia as it sits on the strategic Red Sea waterway.

https://sofrep.com/news/russian-militar ... countries/

[Witness]

Russia asks Germany for help with Navalny case

Russia's top law enforcement official has requested official assistance from German authorities. German doctors have said leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny fell ill last week as a result of contact with poison.

Russia's attorney general has submitted a request to German authorities for judicial assistance with regards to the suspected poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Berlin-based Welt am Sonntag reported on Sunday.

The newspaper said Germany's Justice Ministry had confirmed receipt of the request, in which Moscow asked for analysis and preliminary medical diagnoses to be sent.

Russian authorities suggested that a preliminary probe into the incident has yet to produce evidence of criminal activity. However, Russian media reports said that the investigation would likely be extended until September 20.

The Russian hospital that treated Navalny before his transfer to Germany said he likely fell ill as a result of low blood sugar.

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-asks-germa ... a-54759864

[Witness]

Alexei Navalny: Russia opposition leader poisoned with Novichok - Germany

There is "unequivocal proof" that Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, Germany has said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said he was a victim of attempted murder and the world would look to Russia for answers.
Mr Navalny was flown to Berlin after falling ill on a flight in Siberia last month, and remains in a coma.
His team says he was poisoned on President Vladimir Putin's orders. The Kremlin has dismissed the allegation.
The Kremlin spokesman called on Germany for a full exchange of information and foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova complained the Novichok allegations were not backed up by evidence. "Where are the facts, where are the formulas, at least some kind of information?" she asked.

A Novichok nerve agent was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK in 2018. While they survived, a British woman later died in hospital. The UK accused Russia's military intelligence of carrying out that attack.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned the latest attack as "outrageous". "The Russian government must now explain what happened to Mr Navalny - we will work with international partners to ensure justice is done," he tweeted.

After the government in Berlin released results of toxicology tests carried out at a military laboratory, Chancellor Merkel said there were now "serious questions that only the Russian government can and must answer".
"Someone tried to silence [Mr Navalny] and in the name of the whole German government I condemn that in the strongest terms."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54002880

[Witness]

Russia’s ‘slow-motion Chernobyl’ at sea

https://i.imgur.com/7uNMPQM.jpg

Beneath some of the world’s busiest fisheries, radioactive submarines from the Soviet era lie disintegrating on the seafloor. Decades later, Russia is preparing to retrieve them.

...

With a draft decree published in March, President Vladimir Putin set in motion an initiative to lift two Soviet nuclear submarines and four reactor compartments from the silty bottom, reducing the amount of radioactive material in the Arctic Ocean by 90%. First on the list is Lappa’s K-159.

The message, which comes before Russia’s turn to chair the Arctic Council next year, seems to be that the country is not only the preeminent commercial and military power in the warming Arctic, but also a steward of the environment. The K-159 lies just outside of Murmansk in the Barents Sea, the richest cod fishery in the world and also an important habitat of haddock, red king crab, walruses, whales, polar bears and many other animals.

At the same time, Russia is leading another “nuclearification” of the Arctic with new vessels and weapons, two of which have already suffered accidents.

Decaying legacy

During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union built more than 400 nuclear-powered submarines, a “silent service” that gave the adversaries a way to retaliate even if their missile silos and strategic bombers had been taken out in a sudden first strike. Just 60 miles (97km) from the border with Nato member Norway, the Arctic port of Murmansk and surrounding military bases became the centre of the USSR’s nuclear navy and icebreakers, as well as their highly radioactive spent fuel.

After the Iron Curtain fell, the consequences came to light. For instance, at Andreyeva Bay, where 600,000 tonnes of toxic water leaked into the Barents Sea from a nuclear storage pool in 1982, the spent fuel from more than 100 submarines was kept partly in rusty canisters under the open sky. Fearing contamination, Russia and Western countries including Britain embarked on a sweeping clean-up, spending nearly £1bn ($1.3bn) to decommission and dismantle 197 Soviet nuclear submarines, dispose of strontium batteries from 1,000 navigation beacons and began removing fuel and waste from Andreyeva Bay and three other dangerous coastal sites.

As in other countries, however, Soviet nuclear waste was also dumped at sea, and now the focus has shifted there. A 2019 feasibility study by a consortium including British nuclear safety firm Nuvia found 18,000 radioactive objects in the Arctic Ocean, among them 19 vessels and 14 reactors.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2020 ... submarines for the rest.

[Witness]

China, others to join military exercises in Russia

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese and Russian forces will take part in joint military exercises in southern Russia later this month along with troops from Armenia, Belarus, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan and others, China’s defense ministry announced Thursday.

The “Caucasus 2020” drills will deploy wheeled vehicles and light weaponry to be flown to the drill location by China’s latest transport aircraft, the ministry said in a statement.

The exercises running Sept. 21-26 will focus on defensive tactics, encirclement and battlefield control and command, the ministry said.

The exercises have special meaning for China-Russia ties “at this important moment when the whole world is fighting the pandemic,” it said.

https://apnews.com/0d2f7ebbf673fccf3f2c643cc495a177

[Anaxagoras]

Jesus arrested

https://cbsnews3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r ... 124253.jpg

[Witness]

Russia Seizes Kremlin Critic Navalny’s Apartment

Russian authorities have seized Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s apartment days after he was discharged from German hospital where he was being treated for poisoning by Novichok, his spokeswoman said Thursday.

Kira Yarmysh said court marshals came after Navalny’s three-bedroom apartment in southeastern Moscow to enforce a $1-million court ruling in favor of catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin. The businessman has earned the nickname "Putin's chef" from his close ties to President Vladimir Putin.

Prigozhin last year won 88 million rubles ($1.1 million) in damages against Navalny and his close associate, who blamed Prigozhin for a dysentery outbreak among Moscow schoolchildren linked to contaminated lunches.

Prigozhin previously vowed to “ruin” Navalny if he survives the poisoning.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/09/ ... ent-a71542

[Witness]

Russian cleaner sweeps to power in surprise village vote

For the past four years, Marina Udgodskaya has scrubbed and mopped the offices of the local administration building in Povalikhino in rural Russia.

Now the 35-year-old cleaner is downing her dusters to move into the boss's seat, after winning an election earlier this month that she only entered to in order to get him reappointed.
When no-one in the village signed-up to challenge Nikolai Loktev, who's from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, he persuaded Ms Udgodskaya to register as his "rival" to ensure the minimum requirement of two candidates.
That plan backfired when the cleaner beat him by a landslide.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54338785 for the rest.

[Witness]

The 'Caspian Sea Monster' rises from the grave

Beached on the western shores of the Caspian Sea, it looks like a colossal aquatic beast -- a bizarre creation more at home in the deep than above the waves. It certainly doesn't look like something that could ever fly.
But fly it did -- albeit a long time ago.
After lying dormant for more than three decades, the Caspian Sea Monster has been on the move again. One of the most eye-catching flying machines ever built, it's completing what could be its final journey.
In July of this year after 14 hours at sea, a flotilla of three tugs and two escort vessels maneuvered slowly along the shores of the Caspian Sea to deliver their bulky special cargo to its destination, a stretch of coast near Russia's southernmost point.
It's here, next to the ancient city of Derbent, in Russia's republic of Dagestan, that the 380-ton "Lun-class Ekranoplan" has found its new, and most likely definitive, home.
The last of its breed to sail the waters of the Caspian, "Lun" was abandoned after the 1990s collapse of the Soviet Union, condemned to rust away at Kaspiysk naval base, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) up the coast from Derbent.
But before it could fade into oblivion, it's been rescued thanks to plans to make it a tourist attraction right at a time when this unusual travel concept could be poised to make a comeback.

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