The World Blog by humble servant.

Russia’s armed forces destroyed the Ukrainian president’s ‘elite assault battalion’ and dozens of fighters from the notorious Kraken neo-Nazi formation, Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday. Providing an update on the progress of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, Konashenkov said that on July 28, at the Krasnoarmeysk railway station in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Russian military conducted a direct strike “with a high-precision air-based weapon” on a train transporting “an elite assault battalion of the 1st Separate Brigade of the President of Ukraine.” “More than 140 nationalists were killed on the spot. About 250 more militants received injuries of varying severity. All military equipment that was in the echelon was disabled,” Konashenkov stated. The next day, in the area of Bogodukhov in Kharkov Region, Iskander missiles hit the hangars of a meat processing plant where the Kraken nationalist formation had set up a temporary...

Russia wants Vadim Krasikov, a Russian national convicted of murder in Germany last year, to be included in a potential prisoner exchange with the US, CNN reported on Friday, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. The channel reported earlier that the US was willing to swap Viktor Bout, who was convicted of arms trafficking in the US a decade ago, for former US Marine Paul Whelan and basketball player Brittney Griner, currently held in Russia on an espionage conviction and drug charges respectively. Krasikov was convicted by a German court in December for assassinating Zelimkhan Khangoshvili – a former Chechen commander who fought against Moscow – in a Berlin park in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison. The court ruled that Krasikov was acting at the behest of the Russian government, but the Kremlin denied that the state was involved. According to CNN, Moscow made the request to swap Krasikov last month through “an informal backchannel” used by the country’s chief domes...

Zelensky and US to blame for ‘bloodbath’ in Donbass – Russia The Ukrainian leader and his Washington backers are guilty of shelling POWs, Russia’s Defense Ministry has said According to the ministry’s statement, a missile strike using US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers on a prison near the village of Yelenovka killed 50 POWs, while 73 were hospitalized with severe injuries. The ministry added that the remains of 48 Ukrainian prisoners of war were found and extracted from underneath the rubble, while two inmates succumbed to their wounds on the way to a medical facility. “All political, criminal and moral responsibility for the bloodbath against Ukrainians is borne personally by Zelensky, his criminal regime and Washington, which supports them,” the statement reads. Kiev knew prison it shelled held Ukrainian POWs – DPR Earlier this week, Eduard Basurin, the spokesman for the DPR's army, said that Kiev knew exactly where the POWs were being held, because Kiev “itself de...

Washington is taking the unnecessary risk of creating a conflict between the two nuclear powers. Today, East Asia is the scene of a sharp confrontation between two major nuclear powers – the United States and China. The situation is worsening as the Americans execute plans to contain Beijing. The key point of contention fueling these tensions is the Taiwan Strait. In recent years, Washington has increased its supply of weapons and military equipment to the island, while assisting in revamping the armed forces of Taiwan and strongly encouraging the local government’s desire for independence. Taiwan holds extremely important geopolitical significance for the US and China, representing part of the ‘first island chain’ stretching from the Aleutian Islands in the north through Japan and the Philippines, to the Greater Sunda Islands in the south. It is this ‘Pacific frontier’ that both Washington and Beijing have defined as their main line of defen...