Worldcrunch
In a quarter of a century under the regime of the former KGB agent, members of the Russian security forces have imposed their growing stronghold on politics and the economy. But the Russian presidential election is also an admission of their weakness with their president failing to build a state strong enough to carry on without them.
With private military companies (PMCs) multiplying in Russia, on the model of the Wagner Group, the billionaire Rotenberg brothers, friends of Putin, are creating their own private army of football fans.
On Jan. 29, Armenia granted asylum to Salman Mukaev, a Chechen who was tortured in his homeland due to suspicions of being gay. In an interview inVazhnyye istorii, Mukaev recounts his four-year ordeal, and reveals the depth of anti-LGBTQ hatred in the Russian republic.
The Russian Orthodox Church has long supported Russia’s ongoing war effort in Ukraine. Now, clergy members in other countries are suspected of collaborating with and recruiting for Russian security forces.
Russia failed to respond in time to an attack in the Belgorod region, close to the Ukraine border. Now, independent Russian news outlet Vazhnyye Istorii/Important Stories reveals hears from Russian security forces and military analysts about what this week’s brazen incursion reveals about the vulnerability country’s defenses.
A fourth physicist from the Novosibirsk Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been detained on treason charges. The scientists’ research is linked to the development of hypersonic missiles, and an open letter now warns that Moscow’s arrests of its top researchers will cause Russia to fall behind in the development of such weapons.
The war in Ukraine has launched an epidemic of denunciations in Russia: 145,000 individual reports to the security services in just the first six months of the war. It’s the latest evidence of the current regime’s Stalinist approach.
A perfect storm must come together of deepening troubles on the battlefield in Ukraine, Kremlin insiders turning on Putin, popular opposition and (not least of all) ideas for what comes after. More and more signs of all these factors are starting to show up.
MOSCOW — Russian intelligence services are pursuing a network of Islamic State (ISIS) militants operating in Russia as the country faces an increase in terrorist activity, in response to Moscow’s recent air campaign in Syria. Kommersant has learned that a group of terror suspects, said to be trained in Syria, were detained after a raid […]
Kommersant has learned that a former professor arrested last week in the Donbass region by Ukraine has been named as a Russian FSB agent.