Guards beat Russian mathematician Azat Miftakhov on the soles of his feet, threatened him with rape and shocked him with electricity in Kharp, the Arctic prison where Navalny died.
His global fame both shields him and marks him as a target inside — The Moscow Times. 1/
Police raided a Moscow State University dormitory in February 2019 and detained Miftakhov, then 25 and a fourth-year graduate mathematics student, with 11 others.
At the police station he slit his wrists to avoid abuse. Officers tortured him with a screwdriver anyway. 2/
Prosecutors never found explosives. They convicted him over a smoke bomb at a United Russia office, then jailed him twice more on fabricated charges.
Three prosecutions in five years left him serving four years in a maximum-security colony, branded a terrorist and extremist. 3/
Kasparov: With Trump, it is hard to separate reality from fantasy because he constantly blurs that line.
If the Iran deal is signed in the form being discussed, it would not be a peace breakthrough, it would be a catastrophe for America and Israel. 1/
Kasparov: Such a deal may be a tactical gift to opposition forces in America and Israel, but strategically it is a defeat for both countries.
For America, it shows that all the talk about U.S. power has turned out to be empty noise. 2/
Kasparov: Trump is bankrupting America.
A man with six business bankruptcies behind him is now producing geopolitical bankruptcy, a collapse of credibility, deterrence and power that the United States will not easily recover from. 3/
Zelenskyy: Trump said very right things about Crimea today. That this war started in 2014, with the occupation of Crimea, and if the leadership had been better then, the war wouldn’t have started.
We agreed to meet in the coming days. Also with Europeans and G7.
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Zelenskyy: The UK arrested a Russian shadow fleet tanker today. This year, Europeans arresting Russian tankers has become a tradition.
Oil must stop. To stop the war in Ukraine. Thank you UK!
Snyder: The U.S. is not just unreliable, it is behaving strangely.
Allies like Romania, Poland, Taiwan and South Korea expect America to save resources for serious moments, not waste munitions, reputation and focus on wars it cannot explain. 1/
Snyder: Trump wants to be Putin but cannot. He wants Putin’s money, Putin’s ability to fight wars, Putin’s power.
But he lacks the patience, attention span and competence and he is afraid of American public opinion. 2/
Snyder: Putin does have a vision for Russia. It is terrible, totalitarian and built on a false past where Russia and Ukraine were supposedly one.
He wants to be remembered as a ruler who brought more territory into Russia. 3/
Snyder: Right-wing populism claims to defend the nation, but often hurts it by pulling the country away from the European Union.
What looks like nationalism often becomes cooperation with far-right oligarchy across borders. 1/
Snyder: The foreign policy of right-wing populists is predictable: Trump, AfD, Orban, again and again, they are pro-Putin.
That is not in Romania’s interest, or in the interest of any state threatened by Russian imperial aggression. 2/
Snyder: If Romania cares about its national interest and survival, the conclusion is obvious: support Ukrainian territorial integrity, a strong Ukrainian state, and Ukraine’s military effort against Russia. 3/
Sen. Mark Kelly: Odessa’s port is critical, around 40–50% of Ukraine’s economy goes out through it.
Russia is aggressively attacking Odessa because that port is a huge source of revenue, and Crimea gives Moscow easy access to strike it. 1/
Kelly: The night I spent in Odessa, five Shahed drones came in and all were intercepted.
We toured a bunker at the port; 48 hours later Russia hit it with a drone or cruise missile. Being there shows what Ukrainians live through every day. 2/
Kelly: Russia’s attacks on Moldova and Romania look intentional.
They are trying to tell neighboring countries: you are not safe, and we can hurt you if we want. These strikes are threats, not accidents. 3/