Author: Steven Sahiounie

Moscow says its forces also destroyed two armored personnel carriers Russia’s armed forces have reported that its troops opened fire on a “Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group” that attempted to cross into the country, killing five servicemen and destroying their vehicles. In a statement issued on Monday, military chiefs said that “a unit of the Southern Military District, alongside a border patrol by the Russian Federal Security Service, prevented a sabotage and reconnaissance group from violating the Russian state border from the territory of Ukraine.” Five Ukrainian soldiers were killed and no Russian servicemen were injured during the firefight, they reported. The ministry…

Ukrainian forces shelled multiple settlements overnight in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in Ukraine’s southeast, according to the DPR mission to the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination on the ceasefire regime (JCCC). The Ukrainian forces attempted to attack the positions of the People’s Militia of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), but suffered losses and retreated, the people’s police of the LPR said on Sunday. “At around 5 am on 20 February, fighters of the 79th Airborne Assault Brigade made an attempt to attack the positions of the People’s Militia in the area of the settlement of Pionerskoye, crossing…

Western officials and media have spent months accusing Russia of preparing to “invade” Ukraine, recently claiming that the incursion would start on 16 February. Instead of Russian aggression, the past several days have witnessed a dramatic deterioration of the security situation in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine, which is wracked by civil war. Russia has no plans to invade anyone, and given its history is the last country in Europe which wants to even speak the word “war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov has said. “We are calling for reason. We are urging [the West] to ask itself the question: What…

The incident reportedly occurred amid a flare-up between Kiev and two of Ukraine’s breakaway regions A local TV channel operating in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine said on Sunday that its reporters came under fire amid an ongoing military escalation between Donbass rebels and Kiev. Union TV, which is run by the local authorities, said the incident occurred in the village of Sakhanka in the rebel-held area. The channel’s head, Nikolay Cherkashin, said reporters managed to escape unharmed. Nor did it provide any video or picture evidence of the alleged incident. The channel also didn’t say where…

Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator Riad Salameh is splitting Lebanon into those who defend him, and those who demand he leave his job as governor of the central bank of Lebanon, Banque du Liban (BDL). France, Germany, Switzerland and Luxemburg have all sent letters to Beirut requesting information on the personal finances of Salameh, which support the credible accusations of money laundering and fraud. Salameh has been on the job for 30 years and holds the secrets of the state, as well as secrets of the political elite who stand accused by the public for the economic meltdown which…

The breakaway eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk have been placed on high alert amid reports of hundreds of violations of the Minsk ceasefire by Ukrainian troops firing artillery, mortars, and anti-tank weapons across the line of contact over the past 48 hours. Authorities in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic have discovered an explosive device under a bridge being used by buses evacuating civilians from the region to Russia, a source affiliated with the security services has told Sputnik. The device was said to be found outside the town of Malogvardeysk, on route toward the Izvarino border post. This…

On February 19, a convoy of the US-led coalition was intercepted by soldiers from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) while moving in the northern countryside of al-Hasakah. The soldiers stopped the coalition’s convoy, which consisted of four Oshkosh M-ATV MRAP [Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected] vehicles, in the outskirts of the town of Tell al-Dahab. After a brief stand-off, the soldiers forced the convoy to retreat. The Syrian state TV shared footage showing US-led coalition armored vehicles only a few meters away from the SAA’s checkpoint on Tell al-Dahab entrance. This was the second such confrontation in less than a week. On February…

On February 19, warplanes of the Russian Aerospace Forces carried out more than 70 airstrikes on ISIS’s areas of influence in Syria’s central region, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The London-based monitoring group said that the airstrikes targeted hideouts of the terrorist group in the following areas: The outskirts of the town of al-Sukhnah in the eastern Homs countryside;The Hama-Aleppo-Raqqa triangle;The western desert of Deir Ezzor. According to the SOHR, this was the largest wave of Russian airstrikes to hit ISIS cells in central Syria in February. The previous wave of airstrikes on the region, which…

A shell has exploded in the Rostov Region of Russia, one kilometer away from the Russian-Ukrainian border. TASS reported that the explosion occurred in the morning of February 19 at about 4:00 Moscow time. The shell exploded near the village of Mityakinskaya in Tarasovsky district, 300 meters from a house. Employees of law enforcement agencies are working at the scene. There were no injuries or damage as a result of the shell explosion. Head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation Bastrykin instructed to initiate a criminal investigation into the fall of a Ukrainian shell on Russian territory. UPDATE…

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) intelligence obtained a plan for a Ukrainian offensive operation against the republics, Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for the DPR militia said on Saturday. “The purpose of the Ukrainian offensive operation is to ‘cleanse’ the territory of the people’s republics of the Russian-speaking population, squeeze it into the territory of Russia, and gain control over the entire territory of the people’s republics’,” Eduard Basurin said. “During the course of the hostilities, it is planned to encircle and block the large cities of Donetsk, Lugansk, Gorlovka and Alchevsk,” Basurin added. Kiev’s planned offensive involves…