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☆ Afghan women prosecutors once seen as symbols of democracy find asylum in Spain
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

[1/5] Afghan prosecutor S.M., who left her 4 years old daughter with her grandmother in Afghanistan while escaping to Peshawar, looks down in Islamabad, Pakistan, September 22, 2022. "Most Afghan women and girls that remain in Afghanistan don't have the right to study, to have a social life or even go to a beauty salon," Sharar said. due to fears over her safety and who specialised in gender violence and violence against children said, "I was the only female prosecutor in the province... The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it was not in a position to comment on specific cases. "The Government of Pakistan has not agreed to recognise newly arriving Afghans as refugees," UNHCR said in a statement.

☆ Putin says Russia faces German tanks, just like at Stalingrad, but hints that this time Moscow has nukes
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( John Haltiwanger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Putin made another veiled nuclear threat on Thursday as the Ukraine war rages on. This came as the Russian leader likened the war to the battle of Stalingrad during WWII. But in the case of Stalingrad, Russia (then part of the USSR) was being invaded — not doing the invading. It's incredible but it's a fact: we are again being threatened with German Leopard tanks with crosses on them," Putin added. The Leopard tanks will be operated by Ukrainians, and Germany joined the US and the UK in offering battle tanks to aid Ukraine in regaining territory it has lost since Russia invaded almost a year ago.

☆ Here's how a wildly outgunned US Navy pilot outfoxed one of the Soviet Union's best jets, scoring a string of kills in a legendary dogfight
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Jake Epstein | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

An outgunned US Navy pilot downed four Soviet MiG-15 jets in a legendary dogfight over 70 years ago. This swept-wing Soviet aircraft was considered to be superior to the straight-wing American Panther in terms of overall performance. A Grumman F9F Panther fighter jet fires its guns during an attack on the North Korean port of Hungnam. "In the moment I was a fighter pilot doing my job," Williams said in an account of the fight, according to Pacific Fleet. Williams' dogfight isn't the only example of US planes battling enemy aircraft that are superior on paper.

☆ The tragic story of the only 3 cosmonauts who died in space
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Lloyd Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

This Soviet crew had spent 23 days in space, setting a new record for human space flight endurance, and were finally coming home. They gathered existing equipment and hastily put together a space station that was launched on April 19, 1971. A treadmill was installed on the Salyut 1 and the cosmonauts forwent their space suits in the space station and Soyuz. But a few missteps on the ship and by the Soviet space program led to the tragic deaths of the cosmonauts. According to Siddiqi, the death of the three cosmonauts had a lasting impact on the Soviet space program afterward.

☆ In a small Russian town, a pensioner's street art denounces Ukraine conflict
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

REUTERS/Evgenia NovozheninaSummarySummary Companies This content was produced in Russia, where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine. But on March 25, just over a month after Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, Ovchinnikov created a new work, one that would place him in serious legal jeopardy. The mural fell afoul of new laws passed by the Russian government effectively criminalising opposition to the military campaign in Ukraine. For Ovchinnikov, opposition to the conflict in Ukraine is underpinned by a family history of Soviet-era repression. "This topic of political repression and the closed nature of this topic, the wiping of historical memory, is one and the same thing as what is happening with Ukraine," Ovchinnikov said.

WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Thursday's release of U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner in exchange for a convicted Russian arms dealer has resurfaced an old question: Do prisoner swaps do more harm than good? The details of Griner's release highlight the painful trade-offs confronting the Biden administration. In one such case in 2016, North Korea detained American college student Otto Warmbier during a dispute with the international community over that country's missile launches. Many of the families argue that the U.S. should be willing negotiate and discount the argument that prisoner swaps lead more countries to grab Americans. Those hard choices meant Washington could either leave Whelan in Russian custody or else return empty-handed after months of negotiations.

☆ Putin's war in Ukraine looks more and more like a failure. Past Russian leaders haven't survived similar mistakes.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Joy Neumeyer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Instead, Russia's failing war effort has raised doubts about Putin's hold on power. For now, Putin looks secure, but past Russian leaders have suffered at home for blunders abroad. By the following summer, the Germans had taken huge swathes of Russian-controlled territory and a million Russian soldiers were dead. Captured Russian soldiers after the defeat at Tannenberg, in present-day Poland, on August 30, 1914. After an ineffectual troop surge, Gorbachev gave up on trying to improve the situation, and the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February 1989.

[1/3] Members of the pro-Ukrainian Chechen battalion check an area, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Bakhmut, Ukraine November 11, 2022. Maga, his nom-de-guerre, is part of a unit of Chechen fighters helping Ukraine battle Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. "We're not fighting just for the sake of fighting," said Maga, who declined to give his real name for security reasons. That has not extinguished hope among Kadyrov's opponents, including Chechens fighting Russian forces in Ukraine, that the authoritarian "power vertical" which Putin has built could crumble if Moscow lost in Ukraine. "The armed forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria are being renewed here today," he told the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Oct. 24.

☆ Russia beat, starved, and electrocuted people from a captured Ukrainian nuclear power plant in a web of underground prisons, escaped workers say
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Charles R. Davis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russia has been torturing workers at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, former employees say. The plant in occupied southeastern Ukraine is Europe's largest nuclear power facility. Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant soon after the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. He and other workers described being beaten, starved, and electrocuted by their interrogators; some were also shot, with at least one employee being tortured to death. Energoatom, Ukraine's state-run nuclear power company, said at least 200 workers have been detained, the Journal reported.

The frozen Russian assets were 6 billion pounds more than the amount reported across all other British sanctions regimes. It does not include physical assets such as real estate or assets held in Crown Dependencies such as Guernsey and Jersey. The European Union, a 27-nation bloc with an economy five times larger, said in July it had frozen 13.8 billion euros ($13.83 billion) of Russian assets over the war in Ukraine. While Russian assets are currently only frozen, there are discussions on what options are available to seize them. In the first test of Britain's approach to enforcing sanctions, Russian billionaire Petr Aven is challenging in a London court allegations that he evaded sanctions.

☆ A failed war helped bring down the Soviet Union. Now Putin's failing war in Ukraine might set Russia up for a bleak future.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Joy Neumeyer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

The Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan and Russia's current war in Ukraine have obvious similarities in their disastrous planning and execution. In the 1990s, Afghanistan veterans' sense of aggrievement fused with that of veterans returning from Boris Yeltsin's war in Chechnya. Putin's war, Russia's futurePutin meets soldiers at a military training center outside the town of Ryazan in October. While glasnost-era revelations about the Soviet war shocked the country into supporting withdrawal, these days there is little left to expose. Public self-criticism surrounding the Soviet war in Afghanistan, however brief and contested, shows that reassessment of imperial ambitions is possible.

☆ Putin's time in the KGB taught him 'how to lie' and to think like a terrorist, ex-spies say
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-05 | by ( John Haltiwanger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Putin's time in the KGB helps explain his worldview and brutal approach to warfare, ex-spies say. A former KGB agent told Insider the biggest thing Putin learned from the Soviet spy agency was "how to lie." But ex-spies and Russia experts told Insider that Putin's time in the KGB — the Soviet Union's primary and much-feared security agency — played an instrumental role in shaping his mindset. "Putin's KGB background tells us a lot about how he thinks and how he sees the war. He is a creation of the KGB, and the KGB was a terrorist organization," John Sipher, a former CIA officer who served in Russia, told Insider.

☆ Putin says West sows nonsense about history
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Friday said the West had hammered historical nonsense into the heads of millions of people, including about the real course of World War Two and the Soviet Union's role in the victory over Nazi Germany. Without citing evidence, Putin repeated a claim that Poland has not abandoned dreams of taking over parts of Ukraine. Poland has repeatedly denied such Russian claims, and says such statements are disinformation spread by Moscow in an attempt to sow discord between Warsaw and Kyiv. Reporting by Guy FaulconbridgeOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Russia's attack on Ukraine shows that the US and Europe have to relearn how to fight an industrial war
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Alexander Clarkson | World Politics Review | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

The military effort to support Ukraine shows how US and European defense priorities have been distorted. The war is a reminder that the US and Europe must fundamentally reassess how they prepare for war. The military responses Western states formulated toward these perceived threats were shaped by wider neoliberal policy approaches shaped by the impact of globalization. This greater reliance on private-sector actors to develop and administer key military functions also reflected a period of tightening defense budgets. An airman secures a GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munition on an aircraft at Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2014.

☆ Analysis: What is Russia's policy on tactical nuclear weapons?
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Guy Faulconbridge | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

WHAT ARE TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS? Academics and arms control negotiators have spent years arguing about how to define tactical nuclear weapons (TNW). The clue is in the name: they are nuclear weapons used for specific tactical gains on the battlefield, rather than, say, destroying the biggest cities of the United States or Russia. The atomic bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 was about 15 kilotons. The president is the ultimate decision maker when it comes to using Russian nuclear weapons, both strategic and non-strategic, according to Russia's nuclear doctrine.

☆ Analysis: China faces its "Sputnik" moment as US export curbs deal a blow to its chip ambitions
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

The measures are set to undermine China's efforts to develop its own chip industry aimed at reducing its reliance on foreign-made chips. These are the questions," says Marco Mezger, a consultant in Taiwan who tracks the global memory chip sector. Washington is also scrambling to tackle unintended consequences of its new export curbs, people familiar with the matter said. Hours before the new restriction took effect, South Korea's SK Hynix (000660.KS) said it got U.S. authorization to receive goods for its chip production facilities in China without additional licensing imposed by the new rules. Yet business at toolmaking firms servicing Chinese customers has already slowed dramatically, leaving their staff with little work to do but creating an opening for Chinese equipment makers seeking to catch up with western rivals, sources said.

☆ Old men helped cause the Soviet Union's collapse. Historians say it's a warning sign for the United States.
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-26 | by ( John Haltiwanger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

The Soviet Union became a gerontocracy in its final years, contributing to its collapse. And Reagan was right: Soviet leaders had consistently died on the job. "It doesn't matter whether it's the Soviet Union or the United States — there's always a clash" between older and younger generations, Grunewald said. They were afraid to let it go," said Zubok, the author of "Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union." And that did become a central factor in the demise of the Soviet Union."

☆ Everything you need to know about silovarchs — Russia's security elites — and the power they wield
▼ + stars: | 2022-04-10 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Russia's security elites are silovarchs, a term combining "oligarch" and "siloviki" ("people of force.") Analyst Hugo Crosthwaite said silovarchs are closer to President Vladimir Putin than oligarchs. According to Treisman, oligarchs do not hold a great deal of political influence, while silovarchs are more powerful. Table of Silovarchs Viktor Ivanov – former chair of the board for Almaz-Antei and Aeroflot – had a career in Soviet KGB and Russian FSB. Rashid Nurgaliev– former interior minister and deputy secretary of the Security Council – is Army General and worked for the FSB.

☆ The 10 most bizarre weapons of World War II
▼ + stars: | 2015-07-22 | by ( Alex Lockie | Lloyd Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

World War II brought many successful innovations in technology including weapons. From explosive rats to a 155-foot-long gun, here are some of the most bizarre weapons from WWII. During World War II, the world's major powers set their sights on advancing technology, medicine, and communications in order to be efficient and fearsome in battle. PanjandrumThe Panjandrum, a rocket-propelled explosive cart, was one of the more curious weapons to have come out of World War II. Explosive ratsDogs were not the only unfortunate animal victims of experimental war weapons.

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