- Moscow will confiscate EU assets if Brussels ‘steals’ frozen Russian funds, Putin ally says Reuters.com
- Russian parliament speaker threatens to confiscate European assets in Russia Yahoo News
- Moscow to retaliate in kind if EU uses profits from frozen Russia assets: Putin ally POLITICO Europe
- Moscow Will Confiscate EU Assets If Brussels ‘Steals’ Frozen Russian Funds, Putin Ally Threatens Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
- EU leaders endorse plan to use frozen Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine, but fight not over Yahoo News
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Tag Archives: Ally
Videos of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechen Leader and Vladimir Putin Ally, Emerge After Death Rumors – The Daily Beast
- Videos of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechen Leader and Vladimir Putin Ally, Emerge After Death Rumors The Daily Beast
- Ukraine’s National Security Council chief suggest Kadyrov might have been poisoned Yahoo News
- Putin’s Aide & Chechen Warlord Quashes Kyiv’s ‘Coma’ Claims; ‘Healthy’ Kadyrov Shares New Video Hindustan Times
- Russia says it has ‘nothing’ to reveal on Ramzan Kadyrov health rumours Al Jazeera English
- Kremlin spokesman Peskov dodges press questions about Ramzan Kadyrov’s health, says Putin administration ‘can hardly be expected’ to comment Meduza
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Ally Maki on Playing a Messy Character in Randall Park’s Anti-Rom-Com ‘Shortcomings’ – Variety
- Ally Maki on Playing a Messy Character in Randall Park’s Anti-Rom-Com ‘Shortcomings’ Variety
- ‘Shortcomings’ Could Be This Generation’s ‘High Fidelity’ Rolling Stone India
- The Office Fame Randall Park’s Directorial Debut Is Inspired By Greta Gerwig & Her Husband Noah Baumbach’s Work But Confesses Can’t Tackle A Movie As Big As Barbie Koimoi
- Where to Watch and Stream Randall Park’s ‘Shortcomings’? High On Films
- ‘The Interview’ actor Randall Park’s directorial debut ‘Shortcomings’ premieres at Sundance Film Festival, The Economic Times
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Trump ally Zeldin appears with DeSantis at New York law enforcement event – The Hill
- Trump ally Zeldin appears with DeSantis at New York law enforcement event The Hill
- DeSantis team fires back at Eric Adams after he offers to teach Florida governor about NYC ‘values’ Fox News
- Protesters greet Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on visit to Chicago area: ‘Illinois is a place where we say gay. We’re proud of it.’ Chicago Sun-Times
- Ron DeSantis sure sounds like a presidential candidate during Staten Island speech (opinion) SILive.com
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visits Chicago suburb in support of police union WGN TV Chicago
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Putin ally Medvedev warns NATO of nuclear war if Russia is defeated in Ukraine
MOSCOW, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, an ally of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, warned NATO on Thursday that the defeat of Russia in Ukraine could trigger a nuclear war.
Striking a similar tone at what he described as an anxious time for the country, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church said trying to destroy Russia would mean the end of the world.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Medvedev has repeatedly raised the threat of a nuclear apocalypse, but his admission now of the possibility of Russia’s defeat indicates the level of Moscow’s concern over increased Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine.
“The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger a nuclear war,” Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Putin’s powerful security council, said in a post on Telegram.
“Nuclear powers have never lost major conflicts on which their fate depends,” said Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012.
Medvedev said NATO and other defence leaders, due to meet at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday to talk about strategy and support for the West’s attempt to defeat Russia in Ukraine, should think about the risks of their policy.
Russia and the United States, by far the largest nuclear powers, hold around 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads. Putin is the ultimate decision maker on the use of nuclear weapons.
Asked if Medvedev’s remarks signified that Russia was escalating the crisis to a new level, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “No, it absolutely does not mean that.”
He said Medvedev’s remarks were in full accordance with Russia’s nuclear doctrine which allows for a nuclear strike after “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened”.
While NATO has conventional military superiority over Russia, when it comes to nuclear weapons, Russia has nuclear superiority over the alliance in Europe.
Putin casts Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine as an existential battle with an aggressive and arrogant West, and has said that Russia will use all available means to protect itself and its people.
“ALARMING TIME”
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has triggered one of the deadliest European conflicts since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
The United States and its allies have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an imperial land grab, while Ukraine has vowed to fight until the last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said in a sermon: “We pray to the Lord that he bring the madmen to reason and help them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world.”
“Today is an alarming time,” state news agency RIA quoted him as saying. “But we believe that the Lord will not leave Russian land.”
NOT BACKING DOWN
Since a grim New Year’s Eve message describing the West as Russia’s true enemy in the war on Ukraine, Putin has sent several signals that Russia will not back down. He has despatched hypersonic missiles to the Atlantic and appointed his top general to run the war.
Putin said on Wednesday that Russia’s powerful military-industrial complex was ramping up production and was one of the main reasons why his country would prevail in Ukraine.
Washington has not detailed in public what it would do if Putin ordered what would be the first use of nuclear weapons in war since the United States unleashed the first atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns cautioned Putin’s spy chief Sergei Naryshkin in November about the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons by Russia, U.S. officials said at the time.
Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads while the United States has 5,428, China 350, France 290 and the United Kingdom 225, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Medvedev, 57, who once presented himself as a reformer who was ready to work with the United States to liberalise Russia, has recast himself since the war as the most publicly hawkish member of Putin’s circle.
He said that the nuclear risks of the Ukraine crisis should be obvious to any Western politicians who had “preserved at least some traces of intelligence”.
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow and Felix Light in Tbilisi; Editing by Mark Trevelyan
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Rep. Jim Banks, a Trump ally, announces bid for U.S. Senate in Indiana
Banks is seeking the GOP nomination to succeed Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who decided to run for governor of Indiana in 2024.
“Indiana deserves a conservative fighter in the United States Senate, but the radical Democrats and the spineless Republicans are going to do everything they can to stop me,” he said.
Banks, the former chairman of the hard-right Republican Study Committee, supported a Texas lawsuit that challenged Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory in several states. Banks also voted against certifying Biden’s electoral college win hours after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Banks was elected to the House in 2016.
As Republicans chose their leaders for their new majority last year, Banks lost his bid for whip to Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.). Banks also is close to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Banks isn’t likely to have the GOP field to himself in the Republican-leaning state. Others who have expressed interest in running for the Senate seat include Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.); Indiana’s current governor, Eric Holcomb (R); and former governor Mitch Daniels (R).
The race could shape up as a split between the far-right wing and the more establishment Republicans, who are likely to favor Daniels. He served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Banks immediately got the endorsement of the anti-tax Club for Growth.
“Jim Banks is a proven conservative and a champion for economic freedom, liberty, and opportunity — we are proud to endorse his campaign for Indiana Senate,” Club for Growth PAC President David McIntosh said in a statement. “Club for Growth PAC and Club for Growth Action are prepared to spend whatever it takes to help Banks secure the nomination and victory.”
Among the other early endorsers of Banks: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).
Russia is now fighting NATO in Ukraine, top Putin ally says
MOSCOW, Jan 10 (Reuters) – One of President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies said on Tuesday that Moscow was now fighting the U.S.-led NATO military alliance in Ukraine and that the West was trying to wipe Russia from the political map of the world.
Putin casts the war in Ukraine as an existential battle with an aggressive and arrogant West, and has said that Russia will use all available means to protect itself and its people against any aggressor.
Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev is seen by diplomats as one of the major hardline influences on Putin, who has promised victory in Ukraine despite a series of battlefield setbacks.
“The events in Ukraine are not a clash between Moscow and Kyiv – this is a military confrontation between Russia and NATO, and above all the United States and Britain,” Patrushev told the Argumenti i Fakti newspaper in an interview.
“The Westerners’ plans are to continue to pull Russia apart, and eventually just erase it from the political map of the world,” Patrushev said.
The United States has denied Russian claims that it wants to destroy Russia, the world’s biggest producer of natural resources, while President Joe Biden has cautioned that a conflict between Russia and NATO could trigger World War Three.
Asked about Patrushev’s remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said NATO and the United States were part of the Ukraine conflict.
“De facto they have already become an indirect party to this conflict, pumping Ukraine with weapons, technologies, intelligence information and so on,” Peskov told a regular news briefing.
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has triggered one of the deadliest European conflicts since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union and United States came closest to intentional nuclear war.
The United States and its allies have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an imperial land grab, while Ukraine has vowed to fight until the last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory.
RUSSIA ALONE
As a former Soviet spy who has known Putin since the 1970s, Patrushev’s views give an insight into thinking at the very highest levels of the Kremlin. He rebuffed CIA Director William Burns’ warnings in 2021 against an invasion of Ukraine.
In a Soviet-style analysis of the West, Patrushev cast Western political elites as corrupt and controlled by trans-national corporations and business clans which planned and executed “colour revolutions” across the world.
“The American state is just a shell for a conglomerate of huge corporations that rule the country and try to dominate the world,” Patrushev said.
The United States, Patrushev said, had sown chaos in Afghanistan, Vietnam and the Middle East, and had been trying for years to undermine Russia’s “unique” culture and language.
Russia, he said, was a victim of Western designs to push it back to the borders of 15th century Muscovy, and accused the West of bleeding Ukraine to undermine Russia.
“There is no place for our country in the West,” he said.
In response, he said, Russia would achieve economic sovereignty and financial independence while also building up its armed forces and special services to deter any potential aggressor.
Russian business and private capital, he said, needed to be more “nationally oriented”.
“The younger generation should be inspired by the ideas of creative work for the benefit of our Motherland, and not sit in the offices of Western corporations,” he said.
Editing by Gareth Jones
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Fire Emblem Engage ally activities on Somniel make Garreg Mach look stale
Fire Emblem Engage is just around the corner, set to launch Jan. 20. And on Thursday a trailer introduced the new hangout spot where you and your allies will spend downtime between battles: Somniel, a verdant floating fortress. In the trailer, the main character — with an enormous mane of Colgate-ass red and blue hair — runs through Somniel’s lush layout, showing off fun activities. Just like in previous Fire Emblem installments, this one promises fun shenanigans like Wyvern flying, shopping for cute outfits, getting your fortune read — and of course classic bonding activities like sharing meals and going fishing.
Somniel is chock full of places to prepare for your battles. In the game’s plaza you can buy armor and other items. There’s a ring room where you can store the rings you’ve collected and craft new ones — a new gameplay element that allows players to boost stats. You can also fight in the arena to gain experience, and do a series of battles in the Tower of Trials.
Most importantly, there are plenty of activities to do with your allies in Somniel, like sharing (probably many) meals at Café Terrace to boost your allies’ stats. You can also work out together, get your fortunes read, ride a Wyvern around in the sky through a course, and fish (of course). There’s a freakin’ farmyard where you can care for animals you’ve found on your adventures — the trailer shows a cat hanging out with a donkey, a beagle, and and a camel. There’s also a very cute creature named Sommie who has, “been here since time immemorial,” and will grant luck to those who are nice to it.
The trailer also showed off fashionable customization options — you can buy clothes and accessories like different shades for yourself but and your allies. You can also take a break by napping in your dank, enormous bedroom; but a cute ally of yours might wake up you up, sort of like an Animal Crossing: New Horizons villager showing up at your home.
Fire Emblem fans know how much of the series downtime between battles is spent chatting with allies and doing silly activities. In Fire Emblem: Three Houses players roamed Garreg Mach Monastery’s hallowed halls, spending activity points cooking fish skewers and eating what felt like 17 meals a day with students — all in the service of bonding with each other before shipping off to battle. You might swordfight with Felix at the training grounds, take Dorothea (and her silly little hat) to choir practice, or attempt to wake Lindhart from a nap.
Even Fire Emblem Warriors, the recent musou take on the franchise, gave players downtime activities to do with their students like tea parties, horseback riding, and dusting.
I can’t wait to meet Fire Emblem Engage’s new allies, and enjoy on goofy excursions and activities with them — even if it must all come to a head on the battlefield.
FTX ally warned authorities days before Bankman-Fried arrest | Sam Bankman-Fried
One of the closest lieutenants of FTX founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, warned Bahamian regulators about improper trades at the cryptocurrency exchange in the days running up to its collapse, according to court filings.
The revelation came in papers published as part of the bail hearing for Bankman-Fried, FTX’s former chief executive, who was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday and charged in the US on Tuesday over alleged fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.
The filing refers to a warning from Ryan Salame, the co-CEO and chairman of FTX Digital Markets, the Bahamian-based portion of Bankman-Fried’s sprawling cryptocurrency empire, about transfers to FTX’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research.
On 9 November, Salame told the Bahamian securities commission that “clients’ assets which may have been held with FTX Digital were transferred to Alameda Research to cover financial losses at Alameda”, according to the court documents first published by the Financial Times.
In the filing, published as part of Bankman-Fried’s bail hearing, Christina Rolle, the commission’s director, added that Salame was clear only three people could have made the transfer: Bankman-Fried or his two co-founders, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang. “Such actions may be deemed criminal,” Rolle concluded.
The conversation between Rolle and Salame happened two days before FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, and the same day that Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, walked away from a non-binding offer to bail out the company after performing brief due diligence.
Salame has long been one of Bankman-Fried’s closest associates, just outside the innermost circle of the FTX co-founders. While Bankman-Fried built up a reputation as a mega-donor for the Democratic Party, using his newfound influence in Washington DC to push for friendly regulation, Salame was doing the same with the Republicans, ultimately giving more than $20m to various causes within the party.
Those donations are now under the spotlight, after criminal charges filed against Bankman-Fried in New York include campaign finance violations and money laundering offences.
According to the Department of Justice’s allegations, customer funds deposited at FTX were funnelled to Alameda, where they were then used to make political donations in both Bankman-Fried’s name and the names of other un-named “co-conspirators”.
Since the collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried has publicly maintained that he was largely absent from day-to-day decisions at Alameda, and has blamed the transfer of funds between the two companies on an oversight of a “hidden, poorly labelled internal account” containing $8bn that FTX’s internal records had failed to mark as being actually held in the name of the crypto hedge fund.
But while Bankman-Fried stepped down as chief executive of Alameda in 2021, with his former hedge fund colleague and sometime girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, eventually taking over as sole chief executive the following year, civil charges filed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission allege that he “maintained direct decision-making authority over all of Alameda’s major trading, investment, and financial decisions”.
The charges add: “This authority was exercised at least in part through Bankman-Fried’s regular, often daily participation in various in-person and mobile chat communications with senior personnel at Alameda.”
Putin Ally Yevgeny Prigozhin Turns on Russian Officials in Backstabbing Spree
In a shocking statement on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Vladimir Putin’s private army, spoke out about Russia’s relationship with American democracy. “Gentlemen, we have interfered, we do interfere, we will interfere,” he said.
It was just the latest sign of how the catering boss-turned-warlord—known as “Putin’s chef”—has become one of the most powerful voices in Russia, with a say in how Moscow deals with everything from the stumbling war in Ukraine to powerful adversaries in Washington.
But it’s not only Russia’s foreign rivals that should be worrying about Prigozhin—officials at home are not safe from his attacks either. Last week, Prigozhin accused the governor of Saint Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, of corruption.
Prigozhin’s company, Concord, published his appeal to the prosecutor-general of Russia, demanding an investigation into “the possible involvement of the governor Beglov in the creation of an organized crime group on the territory of St. Petersburg in order to plunder the state budget and enrich corrupt officials who are a part of his circle.”
This is an unprecedented situation in modern Russia. “Prigozhin going after governor Beglov is a sign of the species in power beginning to eat each other in a Darwinian way,” St. Petersburg deputy Boris Vishnevsky told The Daily Beast. “Putin’s men are running out of resources.”
Alexander Cherkasov, the chair of the Nobel Prize-winning human rights agency Memorial, told The Daily Beast that it is now up to the prosecutor-general to decide whether to investigate Beglov or ignore Prigozhin’s request by passing it on to a different law enforcement agency.
Prigozhin himself, meanwhile, seems immune to such accountability.
“When Memorial filed our request to investigate a violent murder by Prigozhin’s men in Syria, the authorities simply ignored it,” Cherkasov told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “We had a video for investigators showing how militia beat the person to death and then burnt the body but our video did not seem enough evidence for the investigators.”
Prigozhin has been regularly attacking top Russian officials in recent weeks, lambasting the Russian military for poorly managing the war in Ukraine.
His soldiers, meanwhile, are building a “Wagner Line” of fortifications near the border with Ukraine, which is now controlled by the Russian Federal Security Service.
Last month, RIA FAN, one of the news websites linked to Prigozhin, reported “some problems” with local authorities who were trying to stop the construction of the fortifications in the Belgorod region. The governor of Belgorod himself, Vyacheslav Gladkov, then went so far as to personally ensure the construction work continued.
“Everything seems to be allowed to Prigozhin these days, he can even arm local men in Belgorod or Kirov regions,” Olga Bychkova, a longtime observer of Kremlin politics, told The Daily Beast. “But this is a very dangerous situation: today Prigozhin criticizes local governments, arms locals and tomorrow somebody who thinks they control the situation in Russia, won’t be able to control it.”
“Nobody is going to dare to stop this criminal. He is a brutal leader.”
Just as his catering company is trusted to keep the ultra-paranoid Putin regime fed, Prigozhin has seemingly been given free rein in Russian politics, foreign policy and the the war in Ukraine. In another dangerous twist, the Wagner commander, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in the 1980s for theft, fraud and assault, has recently been filmed recruiting thousands of prisoners around Russia’s corrective labor colonies and prisons, promising inmates freedom in exchange for fighting in Ukraine.
Gabidulin said he did not enjoy working under Prigozhin during his time with Wagner. “His Wagner Group should not exist, it’s criminal and he is not spending much of his own money on it,” Gabidulin told The Daily Beast in a recent interview. “He sends untrained soldiers, including criminals, to die in the slaughter on the front.”
“For as long as Prigozhin is loyal to Putin, nobody is going to dare to stop this criminal. He is a brutal leader,” Gabidulin added.
Some experts who spoke to The Daily Beast even suggested that Prigozhin was trying to take over Putin’s presidential chair. “Prigozhin’s catering company feeds Putin and his men, so he has a huge network of agents in the Kremlin, always giving data on where the wind blows, what Putin dislikes. Prigozhin does not miss any of Putin’s signals,” one of the world’s leading Kremlinologists, Vasily Gatov told The Daily Beast.
During Russian operations in Ukraine, Syria and in Africa over the past eight years, 61-year-old Prigozhin apparently went to great lengths to keep his underground role in the Wagner mercenary group secret. Three journalists were killed in 2019 trying to investigate operations by Prigozhin’s men in the Central African Republic.
But recently, it appears that Prigozhin has decided to let loose. In late September, he started boasting about his achievements, admitting he had founded the Wagner Group in 2014. “I went to training grounds… and tried to throw money around in order to collect a group that would go and defend Russians,” he bragged on his Telegram channel, Prigozhin’s Cap.
Sources who spoke with The Daily Beast about Prigozhin were all skeptical about his efforts to rock the boat and become a leading voice in Russia, with many saying that he could be dangerous for Putin’s “stability” in Russia.
As for the hierarchy of Russian military power and law enforcement agencies, Prigozhin does not seem to occupy any top positions—at least not yet.
“There are commanders responsible for much bigger armies, including the Special Operation Forces and Putin’s personal security, the FSO,” Gatov told The Daily Beast.
Olga Romanova, the founder of Russia Behind Bars—an independent group monitoring Russian prisons—believes that though the situation could soon change, Putin’s authority in Russia is still unchallenged.
“Putin is the main criminal boss,” she told The Daily Beast. “Everybody understands that.”