Security

A former U.S. Army sergeant who carried a top secret security clearance was arrested on Friday for allegedly trying to give classified defense information to China, the Justice Department said. Joseph Daniel Schmidt, 29, who served in an Army intelligence unit from 2015 until 2020, offered U.S. defense information to …

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

by Mike Eckel The cloak-and-dagger uncertainty surrounding the funeral prompted a popular quip to circulate among Russian journalists: just as the Ukraine war has been euphemized by the Kremlin as a “special military operation,” Prigozhin’s funeral should be considered a “special burial operation.” For two months after launching the greatest challenge to …