Important Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iran’s president on Friday, at a time when Tehran is supplying weapons for Moscow’s war in Ukraine and concerns are growing over escalating attacks between Israel and Iran and its militant allies.
- “We have many opportunities now, and we must help each other in our relationships. Our principles, our positions in the international arena are similar to yours,” Pezeshkian said at the start of his meeting with Putin.
- Pezeshkian said that Israel’s “savage attacks,” on Lebanon are “beyond description.”
- Both countries were accused this week by Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, of carrying out a “staggering” rise in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes on U.K. soil.
- McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the U.K. if conflicts in the Middle East deepen.
- Speaking Friday as the forum opened, Putin said he wants to create a “new world order” of Moscow’s allies to counter the West, according to video provided by the Kremlin`
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Important Takeaways:
- The Kremlin has issued yet more warnings following reports that the Biden administration could soon greenlight long-range attacks by Kiev forces on Russian territory using US-supplied arms.
- Both the UK and Canada are on board, we reported earlier, and British Prime Minister Ken Starmer is visiting Washington where he’s directly lobbying Biden to jump on board and grant Zelensky’s urgent request to lift all restrictions on Western weaponry.
- However, The New York Times suggests that saner minds are prevailing at this point. “President Biden’s deliberations with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain about whether to allow Ukraine to attack Russia with long-range Western weapons were fresh evidence that the president remains deeply fearful of setting off a dangerous, wider conflict,” the publication writes.
- Let’s hope this is the case, given this is arguably the most dangerous moment and decision-point of the war to date.
- Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov on Friday added to prior Kremlin warnings, telling Rossiya 24 channel that he fears American leadership and the people are under “illusion”.
- He said they seem to think that “if there is a conflict, it will not spread to the territory of the United States of America.”
- Antonov continued by stressing that Americans can’t hide from nuclear war if this unthinkable happens. “I am constantly trying to convey to them one thesis that the Americans will not be able to sit it out behind the waters of this ocean. This war will affect everyone, so we constantly say – do not play with this rhetoric,” Antonov stated according to state media translation.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia’s move to expel British diplomats ratchets up tensions between Moscow and London, hours before Starmer lands in Washington to advance talks on getting the green light from U.S. President Joe Biden for Kyiv to use Britain’s Storm Shadow missiles, which have a range of more than 250 km (155 miles), inside Russia.
- President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the West would be directly fighting with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles, a move he said would alter the nature and scope of the conflict.
- The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin had delivered what it described as a clear and unambiguous message to the West which it was sure had been heard.
- Washington and London see Iran’s delivery of ballistic missiles to Russia to use against Ukraine, announced by Washington this week, as a dramatic escalation and it had sped up talks on Ukraine’s long-range missile use, three Western sources said. Russia and Iran have denied any such deliveries.
- Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the activities of the British embassy in Moscow had gone well beyond the Vienna diplomatic conventions.
- “More importantly, it is not just a question of formality and non-compliance with declared activities, but of subversive actions aimed at damaging our people,” Zakharova said on Telegram.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine unleashed more than 140 drones on Russia overnight, officials said Tuesday, killing a woman near Moscow, grounding flights and setting off air defenses in several parts of the country.
- Russia’s ministry of defense said in a statement it had shot down 144 Ukrainian drones overnight – ’72 UAVs over Bryansk region, 20 over Moscow region, 14 over Kursk region, 13 over Tula region’, and 25 more over five other parts of the country.
- Moscow regional governor Andrey Vorobyov said in a Telegram post that a 46-year-old woman had been killed and several people wounded when a UAV damaged at least two high-rise apartment building in the Ramenskoye district of Moscow region, some 30 miles southeast of the Kremlin.
- The latest wave of drones came just a week after Ukraine suffered one of its darkest days after two ballistic missiles killed at least 51 people and injured 219 on September 3.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine attacked Moscow on Wednesday with at least 11 drones that were shot down by air defenses in what Russian officials called one of the biggest drone strikes on the capital since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
- The war, largely a grinding artillery and drone battle across the fields, forests and villages of eastern Ukraine, escalated on Aug. 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers over the border into Russia’s western Kursk region.
- Two Russian citizens who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said the foiled drone attack simply showed how well defended Moscow now was, and that Ukraine was “playing with fire” by attacking Russia both in Kursk and in Moscow.
- Russia meanwhile is advancing in eastern Ukraine, where it controls about 18% of the territory, and battling to repel Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region, the biggest foreign attack on Russian territory since World War Two.
- In Kursk, Russian war bloggers said intense battles were ongoing along the front in the region where Ukraine has carved out at least 450 square km (175 square miles) of Russian territory.
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Important Takeaways:
- Orban, a longtime Trump supporter, also visited Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing in the past two weeks on a self-styled ‘peace mission’ to end the Russia-Ukraine war which has angered Hungary’s NATO allies.
- Orban’s so-called peace initiative has irked many members of the European Union, whose rotating presidency Hungary took over at the start of this month.
- Hungary’s Viktor Orban has met with former US President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida where they discussed the “possibilities of peace”, the latest stop in the prime minister’s solo run to secure a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war.
- “It was an honor to visit President [Donald Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!” Orban said on X.
- On Friday, Germany’s foreign ministry said Orban had already caused damage in the first 12 days of his country’s rotating EU presidency.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said he was not informed by Orban of his onward trip to Russia, has dismissed the prime minister’s ambition of playing the peacemaker.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed an agreement Wednesday that pledges mutual aid if either country faces “aggression,” a strategic pact that comes as both face escalating standoffs with the West.
- Details of the deal were not immediately clear, but it could mark the strongest connection between Moscow and Pyongyang since the end of the Cold War. Both leaders described it as a major upgrade of their relations, covering security, trade, investment, cultural and humanitarian ties.
- The summit came as Putin visited North Korea for the first time in 24 years and the U.S. and its allies expressed growing concerns over a possible arms arrangement in which Pyongyang provides Moscow with badly needed munitions for its war in Ukraine, in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers that could enhance the threat posed by Kim’s nuclear weapons and missile program.
- Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest point in years, with the pace of both Kim’s weapons tests and combined military exercises involving the U.S., South Korea and Japan intensifying in a tit-for-tat cycle. The Koreas also have engaged in Cold War-style psychological warfare.
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Important Takeaways:
- The statement by Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and Vladimir Putin’s predecessor as president, came as the West sharply escalated sanctions on Moscow in efforts to degrade its ability to wage war in Ukraine.
- “We need to (respond). Not only the authorities, the state, but all our people in general. After all, they – the U.S. and its crappy allies – have declared a war on us without rules!” Medvedev wrote on his official Telegram channel, which has over 1.3 million followers.
- “Every day we should try to do maximum harm to those countries that have imposed these restrictions. Harm their economies, their institutions and their rulers. Harm the well-being of their citizens, their confidence in the future.”
- Diplomats say Medvedev gives a flavor of hardline and high level thinking in the Kremlin, though Kyiv and Kremlin critics play down his influence, casting him as a scaremonger whose job is to deter Western action over Ukraine.
- In his latest comments he spoke of the need to find critical vulnerabilities in Western economies, to target energy, industry, transport, banking and social services, and to stir up social tensions.
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Important Takeaways:
- Moscow concert attack survivors describe nightmare of fear and death
- The four armed men walked calmly towards the metal detectors at Crocus City Hall, firing their automatic weapons point-blank in short bursts at terrified civilians who fell screaming in a hail of bullets.
- Nearby, one witness named Natalya had just taken off her coat and was standing in line on Friday evening at the internal entrance to the 6,200-seat concert hall outside Moscow, where Soviet-era rock group “Picnic” was to perform its hit “Afraid of Nothing.”
- “The shots came from behind us,” Natalya, who asked for her surname not to be used, told Reuters.
- More than 143 people were killed and dozens more injured in the deadliest attack in Russia since the 2004 Beslan school siege. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
- The Federal Security Service (FSB) said 11 people – including the four alleged attackers – had been detained in the Bryansk region, about 340 km (210 miles) southwest of Moscow, as they headed for the border over which they hoped to escape to Ukraine. Kyiv has denied any involvement in that attack.
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Important Takeaways:
- VLAD VOWS REVENGE Putin says Moscow concert hall gunmen who killed 133 tried to flee to UKRAINE despite ISIS claiming terror attack
- In his speech Putin, declared March 24 a day of national mourning for the victims.
- Unblinking and tight-lipped, he said: “I am speaking to you today in connection with the bloody, barbaric terrorist act, the victims of which were dozens of innocent, peaceful people.”
- He continued: “All four perpetrators of the terrorist act who shot and killed people have been detained.
- “They were travelling towards Ukraine … We will identify and punish everybody who stood behind the terrorists, who prepared the attack.”
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