Latest news with #Crimea
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Russian soldiers are 'killed by poisoned bottled water' in 'suspected Ukrainian sabotage'
Russian troops on the war frontline have been 'fatally poisoned by bottled water' in a suspected Ukrainian 'sabotage operation'. The soldiers suffered 'seizures, loss of consciousness, and death', say reports. At least four soldiers died in agony after drinking the bottled water, according to Russian reports. Multiple others are reported to be in a serious condition. Distressing footage shows soldiers writhing in pain after drinking from 'spiked' bottles, as a military medic sought to assist the moaning victims. In one video, a voice is heard saying: 'He is so unwell.' The soldier is asked: 'Have you taken some water on the way?' But the man 'can't even say anything. He is really bad.' The alleged poisoning happened in the area of Panteleimonivka in Donetsk region, and the water was supposedly supplied to the troops in a humanitarian consignment. The drink, branded 'Our Water', reportedly came from Simferopol, the capital of Russia-annexed Crimea. An investigation is underway into the reported poisoning as war channels have flashed warnings to other troops not to touch the suspect water amid high temperatures. Pro-Kremlin Tsargrad media reported: 'The situation requires a thorough investigation - who supplied the water, how it got to the front line, and who could have poisoned it? 'One thing is clear – soldiers should be extremely careful with any drinks.' Military-linked channels suspected a 'Ukrainian sabotage operation' to poison the Russian troops, but there was no clear evidence of this. A Ukrainian source hit back: 'It's unclear whether this was actual poisoning or drug overdoses, with commanders possibly using the 'poisoned water' story to cover up drug-related incidents.' It came as Vladimir Putin staged a massive bombing of Ukraine overnight - but avoided major strikes on the capital Kyiv, where Donald Trump's special envoy, Keith Kellogg, is present all week. In a visit to a plant making unmanned planes, he praised Ukraine for 'incredible innovations'. He posted: 'In this new era/type of warfare, they are leading. Their speed of innovation and adaptability is astounding.'
The Sun
9 hours ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Putin's soldiers killed ‘in mass poisoning by laced bottles of WATER' in suspected Ukrainian sabotage operation
VLADIMIR Putin's men were reportedly killed by poisoned water bottles in a suspected Ukrainian sabotage operation. At least four soldiers were said to have died in excruciating pain after drinking from bottles labelled "Our Water", allegedly supplied to the front line in a humanitarian consignment. 8 8 8 8 Several others are said to be in critical condition in another major blow to Mad Vlad's invasion of Ukraine. The deadly incident, which unfolded in the Panteleimonivka area of Donetsk, has sparked horror and fury across pro-Kremlin military channels. Distressing footage seen by The Sun shows poisoned troops convulsing, moaning in agony, and slipping into unconsciousness as medics scramble to help. In one chilling clip, a soldier is heard asking a stricken comrade: 'Have you taken some water on the way?' — but the man is too far gone to respond. 'He is so unwell,' another voice says. The water reportedly came from Simferopol, the capital of Russian-annexed Crimea, and was distributed under the guise of aid. Now, it's feared to have been a Trojan horse of death. Investigators are combing through the supply chain, desperate to uncover who tampered with the water — and how it reached frontline troops. Pro-Kremlin outlet Tsargrad demanded answers: 'The situation requires a thorough investigation – who supplied the water, how it got to the front line, and who could have poisoned it?' They warned: 'One thing is clear – soldiers should be extremely careful with any drinks.' The poison panic has spread fast, with Putin's mouthpiece channels flashing urgent warnings to not drink the water amid soaring summer temperatures. While some Russian-linked media are already blaming a 'Ukrainian sabotage operation', hard evidence is yet to emerge. A Ukrainian source hit back, suggesting: 'It's unclear whether this was actual poisoning or drug overdoses, with commanders possibly using the 'poisoned water' story to cover up drug-related incidents.' Putin's firestorm As poisoned soldiers writhed on one front, Putin launched a merciless aerial onslaught across Ukraine — striking shopping centres, apartment blocks, and industrial targets in a scorched-earth campaign that continues to defy global warnings. In the town of Dobropillia, a 500kg glide bomb dropped by Russian forces ripped through a busy shopping centre, killing two and wounding at least 25. Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the strike as 'horrendous, dumb Russian terror', accusing Moscow of trying to kill as many civilians as possible. At least 54 shops and 13 residential buildings were hit. 8 8 Officials fear more victims remain buried under the rubble as rescue teams battle fires and dig through twisted metal. This isn't the first time Dobropillia has been attacked — a March missile and drone strike killed 11, including five children. And the terror continues: from kamikaze drone attacks in Dnipro that left the city choking in smoke, to deadly barrages on Nikopol, Kharkiv and Sumy. In Nikopol, Russian forces pulled a grotesque double hit — striking a cargo truck, then targeting emergency responders when they arrived. Even as Russia unleashes devastation, Ukraine is punching back. Overnight, drones reportedly struck key military-linked manufacturing targets deep inside Russian territory, including a chemicals plant in Tula and an aircraft repair facility in Smolensk. In Belgorod, three civilians were reported killed and 17 wounded, while in Voronezh, drones slammed into a tower block — injuring at least three children. 8 8 Trump's ultimatum The poisonings and bombings are unfolding as geopolitical tensions spike — with Donald Trump firing a 50-day peace ultimatum at Putin, threatening to hit Russia with 100 per cent tariffs unless it agrees to a ceasefire deal. The US President, who has sent special envoy Keith Kellogg to Ukraine this week, expressed fury over Russia's continued targeting of civilians. He promised to back Kyiv with 'everything' in America's arsenal — including JASSM cruise missiles — to force Putin back to the negotiating table. But the Kremlin is snarling back. Russian sources scoffed at Trump's ultimatum, reportedly saying it might make Moscow demand more territory, not less. And Putin appears unfazed. Touring a drone factory, he bizarrely praised Ukraine's 'incredible innovations', even as his forces flattened civilian centres.
Russia Today
a day ago
- Politics
- Russia Today
Russian demographer says fewer school years could deliver more babies
A senior Russian demographer has proposed cutting the number of years children must attend school in order to promote earlier parenthood and reverse a national trend towards lower fertility, TASS reports. Sergey Rybalchenko, head of the Public Chamber's Demography Commission, has argued that bold steps are necessary to prevent Russia's population from shrinking. In recent years, the country has seen negative natural population growth, falling from 149 million in 1993 to 146 million in 2025 despite an influx of immigrants and the unification of the country with Crimea in 2014 and four former Ukrainian regions in 2022. The country's population is poised to decrease to 138.8 million people in 2046, according to the base-case scenario developed by the federal statistics agency Rosstat. 'A shorter education period would enable young people to reach adulthood and plan to have children for two years earlier,' Rybalchenko told TASS, explaining the initiative. Getting married and having children at a higher age is linked to a longer period of social maturation, the demographer pointed out. Young people only start to think about children by the age of 27, as they spend 17 years getting an education and dedicate an additional three years to social adaptation after finishing university, he explained. It is possible to cut the number of years spent in school from 11 to 10, so that students can dedicate five years to getting a higher education without sacrificing quality, the expert noted. Students completing 10 grades have demonstrated equivalent knowledge to those completing 11 grades, he said. Russian MP Vitaly Milonov, who is known for his staunch support of 'traditional Russian values' and his vocal opposition to the 'child-free' ideology, said that the idea was underdeveloped. Russians, like many in East Asia, Europe and North America, have begun to postpone parenthood. The average age at which women first had children was 26.2 years in Russia in 2023, according to Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, compared to 23 in 1995. To address the demographic challenge, the government has increased financial incentives for families with children, taken steps to promote traditional family values, and in 2024 outlawed the promotion of the 'child-free' ideology. Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously emphasized the importance of creating favorable economic and social conditions to encourage people to have larger families and increase the birth rate.
Vogue
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
The Lesson in Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko Novels
What are these reading projects we set for ourselves? Acts of recompense? One began for me when an advance copy of Martin Cruz Smith's 2023 novel Independence Square hit my desk at Vogue. I felt a pang of something. My father had loved spy stories and police procedurals set in far-flung, wintery locations, and there had been at least one worn hardback in my family's house by Smith, a thick novel called Gorky Park that had drawn my attention as a boy (as all my dad's books did). Gorky Park's subject matter—murders in Moscow, the Cold War, the Soviet Union—were appealing points of reference for my father, a money manager who read thrillers at a steady clip and listened to them, too. After the markets closed, he'd come home from the office and sometimes linger in his car outside our house, letting his audiobook run. I valiantly read some of my dad's John le Carré in my early teenage years, some Robert Ludlum, some Frederick Forsyth, some Tom Clancy. But his copy of Gorky Park, with its forbidding heft, stayed on the shelf. So that spring of 2023—my father dead some 12 years from cancer—I whipped through Independence Square as if making up for lost time. The novel was a breeze, an investigation of a missing anti-Putin activist set between contemporary Moscow, Kyiv, and the Crimean peninsula, and it introduced me to Arkady Renko, an investigator in a prosecutor's office in Moscow. Renko has a querulous relationship to authority, and strikingly, in Independence Square, he begins to stumble and walk unsteadily. He's diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Another pang: Parkinson's is the condition my mother has lived with for 30 years. An unlikely convergence had formed, private and galvanizing—my father and mother, long divorced, never fully reconciled, brought together in the pages of a Martin Cruz Smith thriller. As I said, reading projects are personal, and this one had begun in earnest. Over the course of the next 18 months, I would read every Arkady Renko novel; there are 11. I completed this task on a recent Sunday afternoon, devouring Hotel Ukraine, the final one, released just this month by Simon & Schuster. Five days later, news broke that Smith had died.
News.com.au
a day ago
- Politics
- News.com.au
‘He didn't fool me': Four words from Donald Trump that say so, so much
Three quotes here, all uttered by Donald Trump after he took office in January, and all referring to Vladimir Putin. 'I believe he wants peace. I mean, I know him very well. Yeah, I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn't.' 'I think he'll keep his word. I've spoken to him, I've known him for a long time now, you know? I don't believe he is going to violate his word.' 'I believe him. I think we're doing very well with Russia, and right now they're bombing the hell out of Ukraine. I'm finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine.' And here is another, from this week, which came as Mr Trump finally lost patience with Putin's doublespeak. 'He's fooled a lot of people. He fooled Bush, he fooled a lot of people. He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden. He didn't fool me.' A bit shameless, isn't it? This man's capacity to revise history so blatantly, and to expect everyone to accept it, as though we have neither eyes, nor ears, nor functioning brains. Putin did fool George W. Bush, who after meeting the Russian leader, claimed to have gotten 'a sense of his soul' and said he was 'very trustworthy'. He did at least somewhat fool Barack Obama, who got then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton to pose for a stunt with an obnoxious red 'reset button', representing the relationship between America and Russia. That predictably doomed move fell over when Crimea happened. Joe Biden? Hmm. He did agree to attend a summit with Putin during his presidency, which felt naive at the time. But the Biden administration was unequivocal about Russia's intentions in the lead-up to its invasion of Ukraine. So there is plenty to criticise in other US presidents' approaches to the Putin regime. But that last part, the 'he didn't fool me', takes some goddamn cheek. Nothing any of the presidents above said or did comes close to rivalling the credulousness with which Mr Trump has approached Putin, one of the most nakedly malicious leaders on the planet, since he first took power in 2017. And this goes right to the heart of the eternal, perhaps unanswerable question about Donald Trump: Does he actually believe his own rhetoric? When he says something brazenly false, as is his habit, is he doing it cynically, with the knowledge that enough people will believe him anyway? Or has he convinced himself it's the truth? Put in context: does Mr Trump genuinely think Putin did not outfox him, did not string him along with fake talk of peace for months? Or is the American President saying such nonsense with full self-awareness, to cover up his own embarrassment? The shift in stance from the Trump administration this week is an improvement. It's a recognition, seven years after Mr Trump met Putin in Helsinki and took his word over that of his own country's intelligence agencies, that the murderous Russian dictator with a record of breaking nearly every pledge he makes might not be trustworthy. So in relative terms, OK. Good, even. If American policy towards Russia is on a spectrum, with exploitable innocence on one end and cynicism on the other, we are at least heading in the right direction. In absolute terms though? Pissweak. A 50-day deadline, after which new sanctions might be imposed unless Putin agrees to a peace deal. Why not impose those sanctions now? The man has lied to you for months, Donald. At no point has he displayed anything resembling good faith. Why give him the leeway of a delay? Do it now. We've already seen Putin bomb Ukraine again since Mr Trump's announcement. He hardly seems worried. And honestly, why should he be? He's dealing with a serial flip-flopper, whose record indicates he'll sooner push back a deadline than enforce it. And he's dealing with an American President who seeks to project strength, but even in his own telling comes off as credulous and manipulable. 'I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done,' he said of Putin, and a peace deal, while speaking to reporters after completing the flip-flop. 'And I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call.' And then missiles are launched into Kyiv, or some other (Ukrainian) city. And I say, 'Strange.' 'And after that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything.' No s***. He has retold a version of that anecdote several times, with First Lady Melania Trump usually serving as the unlikely snap back to reality. 'We thought we had a deal. Numerous times. I'd get home, I'd say, 'First Lady, I had the most wonderful talk with Vladimir. I think we're finished.'' As in, finished hammering out a viable path to peace between Russia and Ukraine. 'And then I'll turn on the television. Or she'll say to me one time, 'Wow, that's strange, because they just bombed a nursing home.' I said, 'What?'' What's the fictional equivalent here? Mon Mothma gets off the holo-phone with Emperor Palpatine. 'That was a really wonderful talk I had with Palpatine,' she tells some other rebel bigwig. 'Wow, that's strange, because he just blew up Alderaan,' her colleague replies. To which Mothma, would-be leader of the free worlds, offers an impotent: 'What!?' Before proceeding to publicly insist she was the only rebel leader to never be fooled by Palpatine. (Do watch Andor. Wonderfully written show, regardless of your politics. No I will not stop sneaking TV recommendations into serious rants about serious politics.) Look, there are two elements here. One is US policy towards Russia, which has improved a bit. Second is Mr Trump's personality, which at the age of 79 is probably set in carbonite. The man's hatred of his political opponents, or for anyone who dares to criticise him, is one thing. Plenty to dissect there. But the shamelessness with which he can lie through his teeth to his own supporters, and mock the intelligence of the people who gave him the power he now wields? That, more than anything he could ever say or do to the Democrats or the media, speaks to his character. Twice this week, we have seen it in action, once with the Putin backflip, and again with his attitude towards the Jeffrey Epstein case. 'I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody,' Mr Trump said today when asked about the backlash against his sudden indifference within MAGA. 'It's pretty boring stuff. It's sordid, but it's boring. And I don't understand why it keeps going. I think, really, only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.' Boring, is it? The years-long, unchecked, unprosecuted sex trafficking of minors to the rich and powerful? You find that boring? Only Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were charged. All their clients are free without consequence. An election campaign last year in which Mr Trump and his associates eagerly fed the conspiracy theories. And now Mr Trump cannot comprehend why people still talk about it. Nor can he understand the dissatisfaction of those who were promised a reckoning by his own confidants – Vice President J.D. Vance, Attorney-General Pam Bondi, head honchos of the FBI Kash Patel and Dan Bongino – only to be told to 'move on' without any result. The blow-up over Epstein, this past fortnight, is of Mr Trump's making. His handpicked officials said they were practically drowning in Epstein-related material never before seen by the public. His officials released what they called 'phase one' of documents to selected right-wing influencers, implying more phases were coming. His Attorney-General said the Epstein 'client list', long sought by the cranks, was on her desk for review. Now they say there never was any client list, and no more material will be released, and no third parties will be pursued, and Mr Trump's contemptuous reaction boils down to: 'Why do you even care?' It's insulting. And so is his rhetoric concerning Putin. Mr Trump told his supporters he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office, if not before. He has since sought to brush that off as a joke, as though we all have the memory of a goldfish, and cannot recall the dozens – no, sorry, hundreds – of times he said it without a hint of humour. It's the Trump playbook now, apparently. Say something ridiculous. Have it blow up in your face. Pretend it never happened. Assume your followers will accept it unquestioningly. 'Look, it's clear from what the President himself has said – although he wouldn't put it this way – that he got played by Putin, and dragged on for months,' the longtime chief political analyst for Fox News, Brit Hume, said this week. 'And he was being jollied along under the impression, that Putin had obviously given him, that Putin wanted to end the war, and was prepared to negotiate from where we are. 'And it's pretty clear now that Putin didn't want to end the war where we are. He had more conquests in mind, and perhaps wanted his whole original purpose of taking Ukraine.' We all bloody knew it, the whole time. Hume knew it, I knew it, you probably knew it. Putin certainly knew it. The only man in the dark, the only man of actual consequence fooled, was the one with genuine power to act.
