Russian mourners commemorated the founder and leader of Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin on the 40th day since his death, a Russian Orthodox tradition to honor those who have passed away. Prigozhin, along with commander Dmitry “Wagner” Utkin and eight others were killed in an Aug. 23 plane crash in …
Read More »Putin Must Not Be Insulted: Inside the Mysterious Kremlin Agency That Controls Russia’s Internet
by Mike Eckel, Daniil Belovodyev, and Anton Bayev In the first half of October 2022, employees of an obscure Russian government department working out of a small business center in northeast Moscow were worried about the weather. Not Moscow’s weather, but rather weather in four regions of Ukraine that President …
Read More »Attack on Kosovo Monastery: In Search of the Masterminds
RFE/RL Balkan Service Kosovar police have searched homes and buildings in a northern, ethnic-Serb-dominated district where an attack on an Orthodox monastery left four people dead, including a police officer. Roads into the village of Banjska, where the monastery is located, remained blocked by police on September 26, and authorities …
Read More »Mold, Sewage, and Rot in the Barracks: How Did the US Military Sink So Low?
ANALYSIS by John “Wolf” Wagner Mold, raw sewage, broken windows, and fire systems that don’t work. The Government Accountability Office recently highlighted these and other severe problems plaguing military barracks across the services. The problems also include non-existent maintenance and repairs, poor cleaning services, a lack of accountability, and more. …
Read More »In Cold War Moscow, a Moment of Hope at a Freezing Airfield
by Rick Kiernan, The War Horse On Oct. 28, 1991, I settled into an hours-long commercial flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Moscow. By year’s end, the iconic Soviet flag would fly over the Kremlin for the final time, silently signaling the collapse of the USSR after nearly seven decades. I …
Read More »Iranian Police Brutally Murdered Mahsa Amini; Her Death Remains a Rallying Cry
by Michael Scollon and Fereshteh Ghazi Sharmin Habibi recalls the circumstances of her husband’s killing at the hands of Iran’s security forces. But she could be talking about any number of the protesters who died across the country during a brutal state crackdown on dissent over the past year. “I was …
Read More »How The KGB Caught America’s ‘Volkswagen Spy’: A Story of Cold War Espionage
by Amos Chapple A photo album sitting on the shelves of Ukraine’s KGB archives reveals how an amateur U.S. spy was captured more than 60 years ago. In the summer of 1961, a quiet, serious American student named Marvin Makinen pulled up to the Soviet border in a Volkswagen car. The …
Read More »White House Says Iran Hostage Deal Is ‘Not Ransom’
The United States pledged to monitor how Iran spends $6 billion in funds unfrozen as part of a prisoner swap deal, after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said it was up to Tehran to decide how the money would be used. “If Iran tries to divert the funds, we’ll take action, …
Read More »Air National Guardsman Applied for Fake Hitman Job on Parody Website
by Susan Katz Keating Another member of the Air National Guard has been hit with criminal charges – this time, not for leaking classified documents. It has to do with murder-for-hire. A Tennessee man who serves in the Air National Guard agreed to kill someone for a client who actually …
Read More »Drug Mules Hate Submarines, But Chapitos Insist on Using Them to Smuggle Fentanyl
by Susan Katz Keating Smugglers for the Chapitos branch of the Sinaloa Cartel balk when ordered to pull “submarine duty” along the group’s fentanyl trafficking routes, a security official told Soldier of Fortune. “They hate the submarines,” the official said. “They don’t want to go near them. But the Chapitos …
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