Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Denis Sergeyev named as involved in suspected poisoning in Bulgaria in 2015 by website Bellingcat
A third suspect linked to the poisoning of the former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury has been identified as a high-ranking officer in Russian military intelligence by the investigative website Bellingcat.
Bellingcat reported that Denis Sergeyev, a graduate of the Military Diplomatic Academy, a training ground for intelligence officers, is the real identity of a man operating under the cover persona of Sergey Fedotov.
Russia condemns move as row escalates over Ukrainian church’s autonomy
Ukraine has stripped an Orthodox bishop of his citizenship and barred him from entering the country as a dispute escalates over the Ukrainian and Russian branches of the church.
Ukrainian border guards on Thursday said they had detained and then deported Bishop Gedeon, the abbot of a Kiev monastery, because he allegedly held dual Ukraine-US citizenship. The deportation was condemned by Russian officials, who called on the US to intervene.
Bulgarian PM says UK team is on ground to investigate suspected poisoning of local arms dealer
A team of British investigators is in Bulgaria looking into whether the 2015 suspected poisoning of a local arms dealer has links to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter last year in Salisbury.
“There is a British team here on the ground,” Bulgaria’s prime minister, Boyko Borisov, told the Guardian in an interview in Sofia. “They are jointly conducting an investigation with Bulgarian law enforcement authorities.”
Flabbergasted owner says EU must have been referring to his place when warning diplomats to avoid a Brussels restaurant
Eleven years since opening his restaurant in the shadow of the European commission’s vast Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels, Philippe Weiner can safely boast that the Meet Meat Steak and Wine House is a firm favourite of the better-fed Eurocrat.
Sharp-suited diplomats and officials flock to its minimalist dining room for lunch and dinner. The president of the European council, Donald Tusk, and his team have been known to enjoy the kitchen’s meat offerings, best served à point or saignant.
Moscow says temporary disconnection is a test of its cyberdefence capabilities
Russia is planning to temporarily disconnect from the internet as part of what it says is an experiment to test its cyberdefence capabilities.
According to a report on the Russian news site RBC, the planned disconnection is intended to analyse the country’s preparedness for a draft law mandating a “sovereign” internet.
Russian environmental authorities have deployed a team of specialists to a remote Arctic region to sedate and remove dozens of hungry polar bears that have besieged the people living there.
The move came after officials in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, with a population of about 3,000 people, appealed for help.
“There’s never been such a mass invasion of polar bears,” said Zhigansha Musin, the head of the local administration. “They have literally been chasing people.”
Former Olympic champion Tatiana Navka may have underreported income, claimed wrong status and owed unpaid property tax
Questions have been raised about the US tax affairs of the wife of Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, after records suggested she may have failed to declare her true income to US regulators and not disclosed foreign bank accounts.
Tatiana Navka, a former Olympic ice dancing champion, also appears to have wrongly claimed a potentially beneficial US tax status, according to an investigation by the Guardian.
Moscow announces move after US said on Friday it would withdraw from INF nuclear treaty
Vladimir Putin has said Russia will suspend its involvement in a cold war-era nuclear pact, following a similar decision by the US, and begin developing new nuclear-capable missiles banned by the treaty.
The move came a day after Donald Trump confirmed the US would exit the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty. The US had complained for several years that a Russian cruise missile violated the treaty, a claim that Russia has denied.
In a written statement, Trump said that the US would be suspending its compliance with the 1987 treaty on Saturday, and would serve formal notice that it would withdraw altogether in six months.
The Facebook accounts had garnered about 2 million followers and researchers say they amplified anti-west views
Facebook and Twitter both announced on Thursday they had taken down hundreds of accounts believed to have been part of coordinated influence operations from Iran, Russia and Venezuela.
More than 1,000 files shared confidentially appeared to have been uploaded to a filesharing site, according to court documents
Evidence gathered by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, was obtained by Russians and leaked online in an attempt to discredit his inquiry into Moscow’s interference in US politics, prosecutors said on Wednesday.
A museum in New York claims to be the only collection focusing on the KGB’s espionage operations in the world. The newly opened exhibition hall, housed in a former warehouse on 14th Street, is home to 3,500 original period objects, which the designer of the museum, Julius Urbaitis, has gathered after 30 years of research around the world
Ofcom says ex-MP breached impartiality guidelines on radio show when casting doubt on Russian role
George Galloway breached broadcasting impartiality rules when he used his radio show to cast doubt on Russian involvement in the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal in Salisbury last year, according to media regulator Ofcom.
The former MP used his weekly programme on TalkRadio to repeatedly criticise claims of Russian involvement in the incident. He mocked those who agreed with the UK government that the Kremlin was behind the novichok nerve agent attack on the former Russian security agent and his daughter.
Democrats in Congress opposed move to lift restrictions
Deripaska is ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin
The Trump administration has lifted sanctions on three companies, including the aluminum giant Rusal, linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Democrats had led a push in Congress to continue the restrictions.
German journalist with links to Russia allegedly organised arson attack in Ukraine to stoke tensions, court told
The plot allegedly involved three Polish extremists and a German journalist with ties to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, as well as to a number of Kremlin-friendly Russian news outlets.
Their alleged task was to carry out a “false flag” operation in western Ukraine: burn down a Hungarian cultural centre, and make it look as though Ukrainian nationalists were responsible. The main beneficiary of the ensuing recriminations would be Russia.
Roger Stone has apparently called into InfoWars, the website-cum-radio show of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
The InfoWars website seems to be having some problems, so I couldn’t listen in. But Paul Joseph Watson, InfoWars editor-at-large and noted crank, says Stone told the website:
Stone says just before 6am 29 agents burst into home w weapons, allowed him to dress, scared death out of his wife, taken to FBI Miami Dade, where he says agents treated him very well, then did bond hearing - shackled hands and feet - Special Counsel and US atty there, $250k bail https://t.co/HyKA5Fmmlt
Of course, Roger Stone wasn’t the only Trump ally appearing in federal court this morning.
Around the same time Stone was shuffling into Fort Lauderdale court in chains, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was in the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington DC.
His eyes tired and his hair streaked with grey, Paul Manafort looked morose and walked gingerly, with a limp, during his first court appearance in months on Friday.
The former Donald Trump campaign chairman, imprisoned in Virginia as he awaits sentencing, wore a suit and was not handcuffed during the hour-long hearing at the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, which focused mainly on procedure.
The criminal indictment of Roger Stone is packed with the kind of colourful details one might expect from the flamboyant rogue, who has been dealing in dirty tricks for more than 40 years.
As ice melts and shipping lanes open up, geopolitical tensions are growing and old cold war bases are being reopened
The climate crisis is intensifying a new military buildup in the Arctic, diplomats and analysts said this week, as regional powers attempt to secure northern borders that were until recently reinforced by a continental-sized division of ice.
That so-called unpaid sentry is now literally melting away, opening up shipping lanes and geo-security challenges, said delegates at the Arctic Frontiers conference, the polar circle’s biggest talking shop, who debated a series of recent escalations.
Paul Whelan, ex-marine accused of spying, may have been unaware of possession
A Russian lawyer for Paul Whelan, the US citizen accused of spying on Russia, has said his client was carrying state secrets when he was arrested in Moscow but may not have realised it.
Whelan, an ex-marine, has been accused of an unspecified “act of espionage”, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Alexey Knedlyakovsky and Lusine Djanyan say they fear being arrested and beaten if sent home
Two Russian opposition activists denied political asylum in Sweden say they fear being arrested and beaten up if they are forced to go home.
“You never know when something will happen,” say Alexey Knedlyakovsky and Lusine Djanyan, who fled their home city of Krasnodar in March 2017 after what they say was a campaign of persecution by the secret police. They flew to Sweden with their two-year-old son and claimed asylum.