28 Jul, 2023 07:57

EU refuses to subsidize Ukrainian grain exports – Reuters

Kiev is seeking financial aid from Brussels after the Black Sea grain deal collapsed

The European Commission does not have money to subsidize Ukrainian grain exports, while some members of the EU oppose the idea anyway, Reuters reported on Thursday.(Harnwell said the Ukraine head bank bragged last week, how they have $39 billion additional income in reservers. Probably from the West)

Last year, Brussels removed tariffs and quotas on Ukrainian products to support the country in its fight against Russia. In July 2022, Russia agreed to offer safety guarantees to commercial ships carrying Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea. The deal collapsed earlier this month, as Moscow did not get promised relief on sanctions on its own food and fertilizer trade.

Kievis looking for ways to compensate for the loss of Black Sea route andwants the EU to pay for it. In a letter to EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis last week, the Ukrainian government requestedfinancial aidto cover some of the transportcosts via so-called ‘Solidarity Lanes’, which ship Ukrainian products via the EU, Reuters said.

The requested compensation was estimated at between $30 and $40 per ton and was intended to cover the difference between the cheaper Black Sea route and the alternatives. Last year, roughly 40% of Kiev’s grain exports went through the now-defunct maritime scheme. The volume of goods shipped via Solidarity Lanes since May 2022, when they were established, stands at over 45 million tons.

“We have not found a solution yet to support the grain transport. People have been scratching their heads since last year,” a source told the news agency about the Commission’s problems.

Another source said additional funds could be allocated after the mid-term budget review, which would likely take months. However, some EU member states oppose the proposal in principle, citing the dispute over the current partial ban on exports of Ukrainian grain to the bloc. (I can’t believe they are even considering funding Kiev, Kiev cheated and created the collapse of the grain deal, and the EU and UN didn’t uphold what they promised Russia)

Five Eastern European member states saw mass protests by farmers after cheap Ukrainian food produce flooded their markets and drove down prices. In May, they pressured the Commission into approving temporary prohibitions, which they had imposed at national level, and paying compensation to affected agriculture producers.

The restriction is set to expire in mid-September, but the group intends to extend it until the end of the year. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky this week decried the effort as “un-European” and urged Brussels not to yield. (Note Ukraine is not part of EU or NATO)

(The first signs of EU losing interest and are tired of Zelensky’s unbelievable selfish requests…more progress to come. Election season in EU is seeing a rise of popularity of the “extreme right”, is deflating interest in Ukraine.)

https://www.rt.com/russia/580439-ukrine-grain-export-eu/

Breaking News

28 Jul, 2023 13:38

Major blast rocks southwest Russian city

A large explosion has occurred in the Russian city of Taganrog, with several civilians reported injured

A major blast occurred on Friday in Taganrog, a southwest Russian port on the Sea of Azov, injuring at least four people, according to early reports from the scene.

The explosion struck the city center, sending a large column of dust into the air, footage circulating online shows.

Several nearby buildings were damaged, with their windows shattered.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

https://www.rt.com/russia/580460-major-blast-taganrog/

28 Jul, 2023 02:17

Military foils drone attack on Moscow – mayor

A Ukrainian UAV was destroyed without causing any collateral damage, Sergey Sobyanin announced

Russian forces have destroyed a Ukrainian drone that was heading towards Moscow, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said in the early hours of Friday.

“There was an attempted attack by an enemy drone, which has been shot down,” Sobyanin wrote on his Telegram channel, adding that there were “no damage or casualties” from the overnight incursion.

The Russian Defense Ministry later released a statement saying the drone was aiming for “sites on the territory of Moscow Region” before it was neutralized by air defenses.

The incident represents the second UAV attack this week, after drones crashed into two non-residential buildings in the Russian capital on Monday.

Several UAVs were shot down or disabled earlier this month in the city’s southwestern suburbs.

Russian officials have condemned the raids as “acts of terrorism.”

Russia recently began striking port infrastructure of the Ukrainian city of Odessa in response to a naval drone attack on the bridge connecting Crimea with mainland Russia, which killed two people and injured a 14-year-old girl. Kiev accused Russia’s military of hitting civilian sites. The Russian Defense Ministry rejected this claim, stating that its troops were only striking military-linked targets.

https://www.rt.com/russia/580432-drone-attack-moscow-repelled/

>>19256641

This article was notabled yesterday, but I noticed Russia were targeting all things related to drones, storage facility and airfields, in response to the terrorist attacks on Russian territory. And Kiev has lost 90% of their drones due to Russia’s electronic war superiority. Someone should tell Kiev they will never win and to make peace.

27 Jul, 2023 16:32

Russia announces major airstrikes on key targets in Ukraine

A fresh cruise missile barrage has focused on important military infrastructure across the country

Moscow has launched fresh long-range strikes against Ukraine’smilitary infrastructure, targeting weaponry stockpiles, ammo and fuel depots, as well as several airfields, the Russian Defense Ministry announced in its daily briefing on Thursday.

The strikes, conducted over the past 24-hours, involved “long-range, air- and sea-based high-precision weapons,” the military said, without elaborating. The strikestargeted “command and control” centersof the Ukrainian military, as well asmultiple rear repair bases, storage sites and airfields, it added. The targeted storage facilities were used tostash “water drones, as well as missiles, weaponryand military equipment received from European countries and the US,” according to the ministry. All designated targets were successfully hit, the military stated.

Unverified footage circulating online showed multiple cruise missiles flying over western Ukraine. While Kiev routinely claims destruction of most incoming projectiles, President Vladimir Zelensky in this instance has made a rare admission,stating that “several hits” had been registered. He didn’t specify exactly which installations have been affected by the attack.

The strikes also affected multiple fuel depots, including an aviation-fuel storage facility in Ukraine’s western region of Khmelnitsky, as well as a major fuel and ammo stockpile in Zaporozhye Region, which has seen a sharp uptick in fighting over the past day…

https://www.rt.com/russia/580411-ukraine-airfields-missile-strikes/

Russia has major electronic warfare advantage – Ukraine

Kiev’s counteroffensive is being undermined by the disparity, a military spokesman has claimed

From Another Article:

“Russian electronic warfare superiority has been widely acknowledged. A study released by the Royal United Services Institute in London last November estimated that by the summer of that year,Kiev had lost 90% of the thousands of drones it possessed at the beginning of hostilities in February. Once Russian electronic warfare infrastructure was deployed, the life expectancy of Ukrainian UAVs over the battlefield dwindled to three flights for quadcopters and six flights for fixed-wing aircraft, it said”.…

https://www.rt.com/russia/580260-russian-electronic-warfare-advantage/

>>19256620

Second Breaking News Today

Kiev is violating their vow to the West they won’t target inside Russian Territory!

28 Jul, 2023 14:00

Explosion in Russian city center caused by missile – governor

The Russian city of Taganrog has been hit by a missile, with multiple civilians injured, the local governor has said

An explosion on Friday in the southwest Russian port city of Taganrog was caused by a missile strike, the governor of Rostov Region has said. The blast rocked the city center, damaging multiple buildings and vehicles.

Vasily Golubev said that at least 15 people received mild injuries from blast fragments, and are now being treated by medics.

“In the center of Taganrog… a supposed missile has exploded. Rescuers are at the scene. There are no fatalities, but there are several injured,” Golubev wrote on social media.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

https://www.rt.com/russia/580465-explosion-taganrog-missile/

>>19256758

Once Kiev kills a massive amount of civilians and civilian infrastructure, WWWIII is on, they have been warned many times. Instead on attacking Russian troops in Ukraine they are going to Russian towns

This is kek for sure!

28 Jul, 2023 10:09

Brazil refuses to hand over alleged Russian spy to US

Sergey Cherkasov is serving a jail term in Brasilia for using a fake ID

A request from the US to Brazil, for the extradition to Washington of a suspected Russian foreign-intelligence agent currently serving a prison term there, has been denied, the Latin American nation’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security has announced.

The ministry called the US petition “unfounded” because Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has already granted an equivalent request from Russia, according to its statement issued on Thursday.

Sergey Cherkasov was convicted of using a fake identity and is currently serving a 15-year sentence in a prison in Brasilia.Between 2012 and 2022, he had posed as a Victor Muller Ferreira. (Kek thats a long time to not have blown his cover)

In April last year, he was arrested in The Netherlands, where he had flown to take part in aninternship at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The country had reportedly been tipped off about his real identity.

Dutch authorities handed the suspect over to Brazil, where a court sentenced him in July 2022 on three separate counts of identity fraud during international travel.

The punishment was later reviewed, on the grounds that all three charges were related to the same crime committed over a decade. This week, a court in Sao Paulo handed down a final sentence of five years, two months and 15 days, newspaper O Globo has reported.

Brazilian authorities believe that 36-year-old Cherkasov is a Russian agent who spent a decade developing his cover story. Moscow, which has denied that he is a spy, sought his extradition on drug-related allegations, with Brazil granting that extradition request in March. The US applied for his extradition in April, citing espionage charges.

Cherkasov’s defense has proposed he should be allowed to serve the rest of his term in a semi-restricted environment. The Russian consulate in Sao Paulo could offer him accommodation, the lawyers have indicated.

Brazilian Justice Minister Flavio Dino stressed that the Russian national is to remain imprisoned in South America for the time being.

The Wall Street Journal had singled out Cherkasov as a likely candidate for a prisoner swap, after the arrest in march by Russian authorities of the Journal’s correspondent Evan Gershkovich, for alleged espionage.

Gershkovich was accused of using his journalistic credentials as a cover for collecting classified information about the Russian defense industry. Both the newspaper and the suspect have denied the claims.

https://www.rt.com/russia/580444-brazil-extradition-russian-spy/

>>19256810

This guy was embedded in the US for 10 years but domestic radicals are “our biggest problem!”

He came to D.C. as a Brazilian student. The U.S. says he was a Russian spy.

Johns Hopkins graduate Victor Ferreira was unmasked as GRU operative Sergey Cherkasov, according to a federal indictment and Western security officials

By Greg Miller

March 29, 2023 at 2:00 a.m. EDT

THE HAGUE — Like anyone who gets into his dream college, Victor Muller Ferreira was ecstatic when hewas admitted to Johns Hopkins University’s graduate school in Washington in 2018.

“Today we made the future — we managed to get in one of the top schools in the world,” he wrote in an email to those who had helped him gain entry to the elite master’s program in international relations. “This is the victory that belongs to all of us man — to the entire team. Today we f—ing drink!!!”

The achievement was even sweeter for Ferreira because he was not the striving student from Brazil he had portrayed on his Johns Hopkins application, but a Russian intelligence operative originally from Kaliningrad, according to a series of international investigations as well as an indictment the Justice Department filed in federal court Friday.

His real name is Sergey Cherkasov and he had spent nearly a decade building the fictitious Ferreira persona, according to officials and court records. His “team” was a tight circle of Russian handlers suddenly poised to have a deep-cover spy in the U.S. capital,positioned to forge connections in every corner of the American security establishment, from the State Department to the CIA.

Using the access he gained during his two years in Washington, Cherkasov filed reports to his bosses in Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, on how senior officials in the Biden administration were responding to the Russian military buildup before the war in Ukraine, according to an FBI affidavit.

After he graduated, he came close to achieving a more consequential penetration when he wasoffered a position at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He was due to start a six-month internship there last year —just as the court began investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine — only to be turned away by Dutch authorities acting on information relayed by the FBI, according to Western security officials. Officials in the Netherlands put him on a plane back to Brazil, where he was arrested upon landing and is now serving a 15-year prison sentence for document fraud related to his fake identity.

The details that have since emerged provide extraordinary visibility into highly cloaked aspects of Russian intelligence, including the Kremlin’s almost obsessive effort to infiltrate Western targets with “illegals” — spies who operate as lone agents with no discernible link to their home service — rather than diplomats with the legal protections that come with working out of an embassy.

The case has revealed lingering vulnerabilities in Western defenses more than a decade after the FBI arrested 10 Russian illegals in a sweep that made global headlines and spawned a popular television series, “The Americans.” U.S. officials acknowledge that the bureau discovered Cherkasov’s identity and GRU affiliation only after his arrival in Washington. The FBI declined to comment on the case.

The revelations have also exposed serious lapses in Russian tradecraft. Authorities have mined Cherkasov’s computer and other devices and found a trove of evidence, according to court records and security officials, including emails to his Russian handlers, details about “dead drops” where messages could be left, records of illicit money transfers, and an error-strewn personal history that he appears to have composed while trying to memorize details of his fictitious life.

His arrest last April came at the outset of an ongoing roll-up of Russian intelligence networks across Europe, a crackdown launched after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that officials say has inflicted greater damage on Kremlin spy agencies than any other effort since the end of the Cold War.

The FBI and CIA have played extensive behind-the-scenes roles in this wave of arrests and expulsions, according to Western officials. The charges filed Friday followed a multiyear investigation in which FBI agents gained access to devices seized by authorities in Brazil, according to the indictment, and were permitted to meet with the accused spy face-to-face in São Paulo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/29/russian-spy-brazilian-student-washington/