Despite the pomp, Russia-Iran ties are a marriage of convenience dictated by "pragmatism,” Nikita Smagin, an expert on Russia-Iran ties and best-selling author, told me. “They don’t like each other.” https://t.co/77pRPs7DjX
In Donbas, separatists torture and kill pro-Ukrainian activists or businessmen who refuse to "share" their wealth. But Chinese businessmen don't have to worry - at least 17 Chinese companies operate in the Russia-occupied areas. https://t.co/gFBc0YVETN
Prison wardens said a Tajik man will be placed in a cell with HIV-infected inmates who'd gang-rape him unless he “volunteered” to fight in Ukraine. “They said, ‘Oh, you’ll put on a skirt now, you’ll be raped,’” he told me. https://t.co/zgu6QX0gmJ
What’s really harrowing is to hear two or three drones at once – I sardonically call it “stereo” and “Dolby surround” – while the arrhythmia of bass drum-like air defence explosions coincides with your heartbeat. https://t.co/MYfZmeB0Lf
“I’m here, in the heart of Russia – if it still has a heart,” #Zelenskyy joked in 2014 near the #Kremlin. “You can say, ‘hail #Ukraine’ in #Moscow, and nothing serious will happen to you. Nothing that can’t be handled by modern medicine.” https://t.co/GQpRszPR1t
“We have a [technological] leap. [#Russians] have a leap. And then they begin to scale it all up because over there, everything is on a government level. They have unreal budgets.” #Ukraine#drones
https://t.co/72e1D8IHzx
“My mum is happy that I found myself. And I did find myself here. Found friends, colleagues, brothers and sisters,” a "#Bucha Witch" who trains to shoot down Russian drones told me. #Ukraine https://t.co/oQoOWnkMhA
The commanders “abandoned us, don’t give a damn about us, left us to die”, one of the captured conscripts said #Kursk#Ukraine#Russia#Putin https://t.co/78YAZD5w9x
“Only recently, my son stopped being frightened by the sound of planes. The daughter sometimes weeps at night, wants to go back to her past life, to her pillow with [the images of] cats,” a woman from #Mariupol told me #Ukraine#Russia#Zelenskyy#Putin
https://t.co/u4tVNkUG2j
“We dug out a guy, alive, but his family – a wife and an eight-year-old daughter – were dead," an emergency worker told me in #Kharkiv after a Russian missile killed ten and wounded 60. #Ukraine#putin
https://t.co/oDBmEsu8Se
#Russia's films propagating #Crimea's annexation, #Donbass separatists and the #Ukraine war flop because of the ideological void in the Kremlin and corruption in the Russian film industry. https://t.co/EMYMDazX4V
“A drone hangs in the sky, and he watches [Russians] crawl across the forest. And he kills them. And then they crawl again” towards ruins, trenches and tunnels, fields and forest studded with landmines, explosion craters and remnants of Russian soldiers.
https://t.co/x5bzAi1ptW
If #Muslim migrants refuse to enlist and eventually end up in #Ukraine, they face the “threat of deportation of families from #Russia, the planting of drugs, an intolerable atmosphere for business.” https://t.co/GR0u25ZSPD