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Tag: unrest

  • Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

    Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

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    A senior Ukrainian official says that Russian forces’ “task number one” is to hold the southern front line.

    The Russians are digging in and sending more resources in hopes of holding off the Ukrainian forces pushing toward Kherson, said Oleksii Hromov, a top official with the military’s General Staff.

    “The enemy plans to fulfill this task with the help of the first wave of the partial mobilization and by increasing the number of their troops on the west bank of the Dnipro River,” he said, referring to a key waterway where fighting has recently taken place on both banks.

    Hromov suggested there were now more than 40 Russian battalion tactical groups in the Kherson region. Each group usually comprises some 1,000 personnel.

    Why this region is key:

    “For Putin’s regime, the south direction — Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv — has strategic meaning from the point of view of preserving the land corridor to Crimea and water supply to the peninsula, as well as creating a future bridgehead for the capture of Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, depriving Ukraine of the status of a maritime state,” Hromov said. 

    In his own statement, the Russia-backed head of Crimea stressed the region’s importance to Moscow and its appointed leaders in occupied Ukraine.

    “Our common position is that the protection of Kherson region will ensure the security of the Republic of Crimea. To that end, we will continue to take all necessary measures, including providing maximum assistance to the troops and law enforcement units on the front lines,” Sergey Aksenov said Thursday.

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  • Stalked, tortured, disappeared: Iranian authorities have a playbook for silencing dissent, and they’re using it again | CNN

    Stalked, tortured, disappeared: Iranian authorities have a playbook for silencing dissent, and they’re using it again | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Arman doesn’t sleep much anymore.

    “In my nightmare, I see someone is following me in the dark, ” he said. “I’m alone and no one is helping me.”

    He says his life was forever altered in early October, when he was arrested on the streets of Tehran for joining anti-government demonstrations, and then tortured by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – known as the Sepah – for four days.

    The abuse was psychological and physical, he told CNN, including electric shocks, controlled drowning and mock executions.

    The 29-year-old says he was held in solitary confinement and intermittently beaten, before eventually being placed in a room with roughly two dozen other protesters, including a woman with cuts across her face and neck who said she had been sexually assaulted by security forces.

    Arman, whose name has been changed for his safety, says he saw the IRGC’s emblem on a desk, and again on the uniform of one of the men guarding him – but that he doesn’t know exactly where in Tehran the center was located because he was tasered and had lost consciousness before being driven there.

    In order to leave the detention center, Arman claims he was forced to sign a false confession saying he received money from the US, UK and Israeli governments to go out and create “chaos” in Iranian society. He was then told that if he engaged in any more “activism” he and his family would be hunted down and arrested, he said.

    What Arman claims happened to him and those allegedly detained alongside him isn’t an isolated incident. Instead, it’s part of a tried and tested playbook used by the Iranian government to stalk, torture and imprison protesters, in an ongoing campaign to squash political dissent.

    In the months following Iran’s nationwide demonstrations in 2019, which were sparked by the government’s abrupt decision to increase the price of gas by 50% but snowballed into calls for the fall of the Islamic Republic and its leaders, widespread accounts of torture and thousands of arrests were documented.

    As Iranians from all walks of life unite to fight for their civil rights – in protests first sparked by the death of a young woman in religious police custody last month – it appears to be happening again.

    “We are now in the worst time of our life. Full of stress. Full of fear,” a 24-year-old female protester told CNN. She says several of her friends were tortured – and that one of them was also sexually violated – after being detained by the IRGC in Rasht last month.

    “Nothing has happened to me yet and I was able to escape. But it is possible at any moment,” she explained during a video call about the incident, her face covered to protect her identity.

    CNN has spoken to almost a dozen Iranians who have shared first-hand accounts of torture in either the 2019 and 2022 protests, or who have had loved ones die or disappear while in the custody of authorities.

    Some of those impacted shared photographs documenting their injuries as well as court records detailing the criminal charges they’re facing; others shared only their stories, which CNN cannot independently verify.

    CNN contacted the Iranian government as well as its permanent mission to the United Nations regarding the accounts of torture and arbitrary detention detailed by protesters but has yet to receive a response.

    A group of people look out from what appears to be a security van in Tehran, as an officer stands nearby.

    Farhad, a 37-year-old father-of-two, intimately understands the personal cost of speaking out against the Iranian government, but it hasn’t stopped him from joining the demonstrations which have continued for more than a month now and seem to transcend Iran’s social and ethnic divisions.

    In the November 2019 protests, he says he watched several of his friends die on the streets of Tehran after being gunned down by security forces, in what would be a four-day nationwide rampage to silence dissent that ultimately left more than 300 civilians dead, according to Amnesty International.

    It wasn’t until December 2, in the aftermath of the bloodshed, that Farhad says plain-clothes officers kicked down his door in the middle of the night to arrest him for his involvement in the demonstrations.

    Farhad, whose name has also been changed for his security, says the IRGC used footage of the protests from the BBC – which he has since shared with CNN – to identify him, effectively weaponizing the media coverage of the rallies to hunt down participants.

    Iranian police patrol in the capital Tehran on October 8, 2022.

    He claims he was tortured for 16 days in total and like Arman, that he knew the Tehran detention center in which he was being held was run by the IRGC because of a sign on one of its walls displaying its distinctive insignia.

    In Farhad’s telling, several hundred people were detained and tortured alongside him. He still hears their screams.

    “Hundreds of people were imprisoned with me. There was a bed, people were being tied to it and abused. There were rapes, torture with electric shocks and boiling water … they were hanging people from the ceiling to beat them,” he told CNN.

    Farhad’s last memory from his time in that dark room is when he was hung up and beaten senseless by plain-clothes officers before being thrown in the back of a car, driven to an undisclosed location and dumped on the side of the road.

    Days later he woke up in a medical clinic near his house in Tehran, he said. He doesn’t know how he got there but cites an extended family member with links to Iran’s government as a possible reason his life was spared.

    “My teeth were broken; my lip was completely torn off. Because my bleeding was so severe, I [think] they did not expect me to survive.”

    CNN has reviewed photographs of Farhad’s injuries and the scarring he lives with today.

    Farjad has since left Tehran with his immediate family for their safety, but says he still receives late-night phone calls from Iranian authorities threatening to rape his wife and kill his children, and that his bank account is periodically frozen.

    He also claims that in the months following his torture, his national identity card – the primary document used to access essential services in Iran – was wiped from the system.

    Despite the ongoing risks to his life and livelihood, Farhad’s commitment to the current demonstrations is unwavering.

    “My country and my people are suffering. The government of the Islamic Republic oppresses in the name of religion, I can’t see people [being] killed for their beliefs anymore,” he said.

    CNN spoke with four more protesters who were tortured while in detention and later imprisoned for taking part in anti-government demonstrations in 2019 – including a young single mother who says she has had to place her son in the care of her parents in order to serve prison time, and a 43-year-old father of two from Shiraz who says he suffers from acute post-traumatic stress disorder, after spending 48 days in solitary confinement.

    Their accounts all share striking similarities, most notably the ongoing harassment they say their families face from Iranian authorities via fake social media accounts, late-night phone calls, and local informants whom they believe monitor them for the IRGC intelligence service.

    Amin Sabeti is an Iranian cyber security expert who has spent years studying hacking groups with ties to the Islamic Republic, including the IRGC-affiliated ‘Charming Kitten’ group, which was recently sanctioned by the US government for “malicious cyber-enabled activities, including ransomware and cyber-espionage.”

    According to Sabeti, who is based in the UK, state-sponsored hackers have a tried and tested method in place to “dox protesters” once they’ve infiltrated their online groups using fake accounts, which involves “sharing photos of them on Twitter, Instagram or Telegram and asking others to share information about them,” while pretending to be concerned for their safety.

    “They used the same tactics in the November 2019 uprising,” Sabeti explained, which has led to more tech-savvy demonstrators identifying suspicious accounts and distributing warnings among their networks.

    At Tehran’s Ebrat Museum – a repurposed former prison – dramatic displays on the atrocities carried out against Muslim clerics by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s police during the revolution have long been used as a propaganda tool to celebrate the “freedoms” won in the Islamic Republic.

    And yet, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who was himself imprisoned in the 1970s during Pahlavi’s reign – and his security apparatus, have a decades-long legacy of also using mass arrests and torture to control and silence political dissidents – the hypocrisy of which is not lost on protesters today.

    The current movement – led and inspired by women – has united Iranians across generations, in what is shaping up to be the biggest threat the regime has faced to date. Notably, it has also survived weeks of rolling internet outages and violent crackdowns.

    But as chants of “woman, life, freedom” continue – a rallying cry that’s come to encompass the daily violence and control Iranian women are rising up against – more than 1,000 people have been arrested, according to state news IRNA.

    People gather next to a burning motorcycle in Tehran amid the protests on October 8.

    Looking ahead, analysts and exiled activists CNN spoke to are fearful that the authorities will ultimately employ whatever violent tactics they deem necessary to once again, regain some semblance of control.

    Already, almost two dozen children – some as young as 11 – were killed by Iran’s security forces during demonstrations in September, according to Amnesty International, in a chilling reminder that no life will be spared. Meanwhile, Iran’s Education Minister Yousef Nouri confirmed last week that student protesters are now being detained in what he termed “psychological institutions,” run by the state.

    None of the Iranians CNN spoke with were naive to the fact that their lives – and the lives of their families – are on the line as the uprising rages on, with most going to extreme lengths to protect their personal information online and avoid unnecessary risks while taking to the streets.

    Arman still receives threatening phone calls and messages for his activism, but he says he won’t be deterred.

    “They torture us, and they are lying to the world, to the international community … Iranians want freedom,” he said. “We don’t want dictatorship. We want to connect with the world.”

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  • ‘People are just hitting their heads against the wall’: Democrats fret another Johnson win | CNN Politics

    ‘People are just hitting their heads against the wall’: Democrats fret another Johnson win | CNN Politics

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    Rhinelander, Wisconsin
    CNN
     — 

    Tom Nelson can hardly believe it.

    In just a matter of two months, Democrats went from expecting to knock off the unpopular GOP incumbent, US Sen. Ron Johnson, to seeing their party’s nominee, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, scrambling to catch up.

    Already, the finger pointing has begun.

    “The national party did him a grave disservice by not closing the gap, by not being a stopgap measure in August and September to hit Johnson hard on good, effective negative ads, at the same time building up Mandela,” Nelson, a local county executive from central Wisconsin and former Senate Democratic candidate, told CNN. “The national party has totally failed us, and so it’s gonna come down to Wisconsin Democrats.”

    Of possibly seeing Johnson, 67, win a third Senate race, Nelson said, “People are just hitting their heads against the wall. How do we let this happen?”

    Over the summer, Barnes’ top Democratic opponents dropped out, clearing the way for him to win the primary and fully shift to attacking Johnson. Yet Barnes’ slim lead collapsed in September, when Republicans spent nearly $6 million more than Democrats on the air slamming Barnes primarily on crime. In August, a Marquette Law School poll of likely voters showed Barnes leading Johnson 52-45. By early October, those numbers reversed.

    What’s happening in Wisconsin resembles Democratic struggles across the country. They’ve seen their leads evaporate in key House and Senate races as outside money floods in to hammer Democrats over crime and inflation, while they’ve tried to rail against Republicans over their opposition to abortion rights. In several key battleground states – Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida – GOP candidates and groups spent roughly $25 million more than their Democratic counterparts on air in September alone, according to data from AdImpact, which tracks ad spending.

    In states like Wisconsin, the outside money has forced Barnes to go on defense, and air several ads accusing Johnson of lying in the attack ads.

    Many of his supporters believe that is not enough.

    “Oh, I’m terrified,” said Mary Hildebrand, a voter here in this small northern Wisconsin town. “His campaign seems to be faltering,” she said of Barnes.

    In an interview, Barnes dismissed the polls showing him down in the race. Democrats are heartened that the same Marquette pollster tested a larger universe of voters – registered voters – and found the race there essentially a dead heat.

    “Polls go up, polls go down,” Barnes, 35, told CNN. “The reality is we’re showing up, talking to everybody.”

    “All they can do is try to distort my record and try to make people live in fear,” he added, rejecting the notion that he was caught flat-footed. “But that’s not what this is about. It’s about making sure that people know better is possible.”

    Democrats have already reserved $2 million more in ads than Republicans in the final three weeks of the campaign, according to AdImpact. And officials with Democratic outside groups – namely the Senate Majority PAC and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – reject the criticism that their ad campaigns have been ineffective.

    “Wisconsin is one of the top Senate battlegrounds because voters in the state are tired of Ron Johnson looking out for himself at their expense,” said Amanda Sherman Baity, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has ramped up its spending since the August 9 primary and has spent over $4.8 million in the race so far, including a $1 million ad buy coordinated with the Barnes campaign.

    Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and its affiliated group have been on the air since May, having dropped $22 million in the state, with $6.2 million planned in the final three weeks.

    “We have just under three weeks left to defeat Johnson and defend our Democratic Senate majority—that’s what we’re focusing on, and we strongly encourage our fellow Democrats to do the same,” said Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Veronica Yoo.

    On the air, Republicans have had a near singular focus, hammering Barnes for violent crime and for previously advocating for shifting police funding to other social services in the community. Outside groups like Wisconsin Truth PAC and the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, have said he supports “defunding” the police, a slogan he rejects.

    Of the GOP attacks, Marilyn Norden, a voter in northern Wisconsin, said: “They seem to be working. Yes, I’m very concerned.”

    After a speech at a packed diner here in Oneida County, Barnes defended himself, telling reporters that the issue is personal for him since he’s lost friends to gun violence. He said he wants “fully funded” schools and “good-paying jobs,” and to prevent “dangerous weapons” from getting in the hands of criminals. He said that Johnson “is only playing politics with our safety.”

    “Nobody is asking about interviews from six years ago, people are asking why Ron Johnson continues to leave them behind,” he told CNN when asked about recent reports he spoke out against police brutality on RT, a Kremlin-backed network, in 2015 and 2016.

    Barnes is attempting to be the first Black person to become a US senator from Wisconsin, and his supporters see a racial component to the attacks.

    “These ads have gone from crime ads to just blatant racism,” Nelson said. “This is something that Wisconsin has never seen before.”

    Barnes’ attacks have mostly focused on the accusations that Johnson enriched himself while in office, an accusation the GOP senator rejects, and over his support for banning abortion.

    Sen. Ron Johnson greets people during a campaign stop at the Moose Lodge Octoberfest celebration earlier this month in Muskego, Wisconsin.

    Asked why he hasn’t focused on other issues during his paid media campaign – namely Johnson’s downplaying of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, and sowing doubt over the Covid-19 vaccine – Barnes said there was plenty of controversy to choose from.

    “We actually have focused on January 6th to an extent, but the reality is there are many different fronts to address Ron Johnson’s failures,” Barnes told CNN. “And it’s important for us to highlight where Ron Johnson has failed people right at home and at the dinner table.”

    Johnson has remained behind closed doors this week. His campaign refused to disclose his campaign schedule this week or make him available for an interview. But he has appeared on Fox this week, including pleading for donations during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s show Tuesday night. The Barnes and Johnson campaigns have each spent over $23 million so far on the race, but the lieutenant governor outraised the senator last quarter, $19.5 million to $11.6 million.

    “I think so many people think this is won,” Johnson said to Hannity. “My fundraising is weaker. I rely on your audience.”

    There are signs that Democrats are broadening their attacks. The Senate Majority PAC and End Citizens United launched Wednesday a new ad featuring a retired Madison police officer calling out Johnson for describing the January 6 attack on the Capitol as largely a “peaceful protest.” On Tuesday, SMP aired another ad attacking Johnson on China, for working to sweeten a tax break for companies connected to his donors and himself, and for his anti-abortion rights position.

    At a speech here on Tuesday, Barnes attacked Johnson for not supporting federal legislation to codify same-sex marriage, for at one point facilitating an effort to contest the 2020 election and for later downplaying the January 6 riot.

    Johnson’s supporters in the ultimate swing state have twice sent him to the Senate, drawn to his brash attitude, businessman background and conservative values. The Wisconsin Republican has also benefited from running in election cycles when the political environment favored his party, first in the 2010 tea party wave, then in 2016 as Donald Trump stunned the world and narrowly took Wisconsin on his way to the White House, and now in 2022, when inflation and a deteriorating economy threatens Democrats’ control of Congress.

    Andy Loduha, Republican party chairman here in Oneida County, said Barnes doesn’t understand the economic issues that have come to the forefront of the race.

    “I think abortion is another example of how the Democrats don’t really have anything to run on,” said Loduha. “They’re running on emotional issues like abortion, but they don’t want to try to touch inflation, crime, drugs.”

    Wisconsin Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki is frustrated with the Democratic bedwetting, even though he said recognized the “tough national political environment.”

    “I just think there’s too many Democrats wringing their hands and thinking this thing is like gone or on its way to being gone,” Zepecki said. “Guys, run through the tape. You’re right there, despite the f***ing onslaught that Barnes had to weather … And he’s still right there.”

    Asked if she believed Barnes would win, Wisconsin Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, who ran against Barnes before dropping out, told CNN, “If there’s one thing we know about Wisconsin, it’s we live by close elections, and we never press our luck.”

    To get there, Barnes will be campaigning next week in Milwaukee with former President Barack Obama, in a bid to energize voters. But there are no plans yet to campaign with the current President, Joe Biden, whose unpopularity remains a liability here.

    Asked if Biden should run for reelection, Barnes told CNN: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. We still gotta get through November 8, 2022.”

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  • Russia ramps up relocation of civilians in Kherson. It may soon lose one of the biggest prizes of its war | CNN

    Russia ramps up relocation of civilians in Kherson. It may soon lose one of the biggest prizes of its war | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Russian-installed leaders in Ukraine’s Kherson region on Wednesday began massively ramping up the relocation of up to 60,000 people amid warnings over Russia’s ability to withstand a Ukrainian counter-offensive.

    Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of generating “hysteria” to compel people to leave. Residents in the city of Kherson began to receive text messages on Wednesday morning from the pro-Russian administration.

    “Dear residents,” it read. “Evacuate immediately. There will be shelling of residential areas by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. There will be buses from 7:00, from Rechport [River port] to the Left Bank.”

    Meanwhile on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he had signed a law introducing martial law in Kherson and three other Ukrainian regions the Kremlin claims to have annexed, in violation of international law. The other regions are Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk.

    In his first outing on Russian state television as the Kremlin’s new commander for Ukraine, General Sergey Surovikin said Tuesday evening that the situation in Kherson was “far from simple” and “very difficult.”

    “Our further plans and actions towards the city of Kherson will depend on the military and tactical situation on the ground,” he said.

    Ukrainian forces have been advancing through several parts of the Kherson region in recent weeks, capturing villages and farmland along the western bank of the Dnipro River, also known as the right bank.

    Russia’s ability to resupply its troops in Kherson has been severely hampered by frequent Ukrainian missile and artillery strikes on Russian-controlled bridges crossing the Dnipro. The explosion earlier this month that badly damaged the Kerch bridge, which connects Russia to Crimea, further bottlenecked Russia’s logistics.

    Last week the head of the Russian-backed administration appealed to the Kremlin to help with the evacuation of civilians near the frontline.

    On Tuesday, the rhetoric hit a new level. Just past 11 p.m. local time (4 p.m. ET), Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Russian-backed administration, posted a video to his Telegram channel.

    “The Ukrainian Nazis pushed by the West will start their attack on Kherson very soon,” he said. “We are strongly advising to leave the right bank area.”

    This morning, just after 8 a.m., he followed that up with: “Cross as quickly as possible onto the left bank [the eastern side] of river Dnipro.” Hours later, the Russian-backed administration went so far as to close off all entry to the right bank of the Dnipro River for seven days.

    Ukrainian officials believe that fewer than half of Kherson’s civilian population are left in the city – around 130,000 people.

    Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-backed leader in the Kherson region, told Russian state television on Tuesday evening that they planned to move 50,000 to 60,000 people from the right to the left bank of the Dnipro River.

    The Ukrainian leaders-in-exile of the Kherson region accuse the Russia leaders of drumming up “hysteria” to intimidate the population and enact “voluntary deportations” to Russia, where they’ve been promised help with housing.

    “On the one hand, we understand that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will liberate Kherson and the region – accordingly, there may be active hostilities, and this is a risk for the local population,” Yurii Sobolevskyi, deputy head of Ukraine’s regional council for Kherson, told CNN on Wednesday.

    “On the other hand, there are no guarantees that the evacuated people will be safe there and far from the front line. Now people make their own decisions – to leave or stay. It is difficult to say what decision they will make.”

    The “massive deportation of civilians” by Russia could, along with other alleged abuses, constitute crimes against humanity, according to a July report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In September, the UN Security Council also said Russia’s forcible deportation of 2.5 million people from Ukraine – including 38,000 children – constitutes human rights violations.

    Ukraine denounced Russia’s “filtration” scheme at a United Nations Security Council meeting last week. Deputy Ukrainian Ambassador to the UN Khrystyna Hayovyshyn said Ukrainians forced to head to Russia or Russian-controlled territory are being killed and tortured.

    Hayovyshyn told the Security Council that thousands of Ukrainian citizens are being forcefully deported to “isolated and depressed regions of Siberia and the far east.

    Ukrainian citizens are terrorized, under the pretense of a search for “dangerous” people by Russian authorities, Hayovyshyn said. Those who have different political views or are affiliated with the Ukrainian government or media disappear into a gray area. Children are ripped from the arms of their parents, the Ukraine representative declared.

    In the heady early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when confusion reigned, the capture of the southern city of Kherson was a key strategic and propaganda victory for the Kremlin.

    On just the seventh day of the war, Kherson’s mayor announced that Russian soldiers had entered his office, and the city had fallen.

    Geographically, it was vital: Kherson lies on the mouth of Ukraine’s central artery, the Dnipro River, and not far from the canal that supplies water to Crimea. Ukraine’s government had shut that canal down in 2014, when Russia illegally annexed the peninsula.

    It was the first major city Russia captured, and the only regional capital taken since February. (In addition to Crimea, Russian-backed forces have controlled Donetsk and Luhansk cities since 2014.) It’s the second-biggest population center that Russia has captured after Mariupol.

    Seventh months later, the Kremlin considers the Kherson region to be part of Russia, after claiming to annex it last month. And yet, everyone from Russia’s designated leaders in the region to the new commander of its entire Ukrainian war effort are sounding the alarm on their ability to withstand a Ukrainian offensive in the region.

    Russia’s puppet administration has promised that there is no plan to abandon Kherson city, and that once the military “solve all of the tasks,” normal life will return.

    In his remarks on Russian television, Surovikin, the Russian commander, repeated what has become a bit of a trope in Russian circles: That the Ukrainian military was preparing to shell Kherson’s city center, of even to strike the dam that’s part of a hydroelectric plant at Nova Kakhovka, and unleash floodwaters on low-lying areas downstream.

    Ukrainian officials have dismissed that idea as Russian propaganda. It will not be easy for Ukraine to retake Kherson city if Russia seriously contests it, and the Ukrainian military will be reluctant to attack an urban center where tens of thousands of civilians could remain.

    But Ukraine’s military brass remain bullish over the Kherson offensive.

    “We will make significant progress by the end of the year,” the head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, said on Tuesday.

    “These will be significant victories. You will see it soon.”

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  • Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

    Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

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    • Iran has sent military trainers to Crimea to train Russian forces to use drones
    • Analysis: Russia says it has expanded its nuclear sphere. What to make of its latest threats

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  • French company to pay nearly $778 million as part of plea deal to US charge of providing support to ISIS | CNN Politics

    French company to pay nearly $778 million as part of plea deal to US charge of providing support to ISIS | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A French cement company admitted Tuesday to making millions of dollars of payments that supported ISIS and another terrorist organization as part of an effort to maintain its operations in Syria as the civil war escalated.

    The company, Lafarge SA, is paying a financial penalty of nearly $778 million and pleaded guilty to a US federal count of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and another terrorist organization as part of a deal with the US Justice Department.

    It is an unprecedented corporate prosecution under the material support of terrorism law, according to the Justice Department. The company pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday.

    The cement company entered a revenue sharing scheming with ISIS and the al-Nusrah Front that produced millions for the terrorist groups, according to court filings from the plea deal the Justice Department reached with Lafarge.

    “Lafarge made a deal with the devil,” US Attorney Breon Peace, of the Eastern District of New York, said at a press conference after the court proceedings.

    Lafarge and Lafarge Cement Syria – a dormant subsidiary that is also a defendant in the prosecution – entered the conspiracy with “the explicit purpose of incentivizing ISIS to act in a manner that would promote LAFARGE’s and LCS’s security and economic interests,” court documents said.

    Payments that the companies made through intermediaries to the terrorist groups amounted to approximately $5.92 million. When Lafarge evacuated the cement plant in 2014, ISIS took over the plant and sold the cement it had produced for roughly $3.2 million, according to the Justice Department.

    “The defendants paid millions of dollars to ISIS, a terrorist group that otherwise operated on a shoestring budget – millions of dollars that ISIS could use to recruit members, wage war against governments and conduct brutal terrorist attacks worldwide,” Breon said.

    The court filings quote several emails and other documents from the company shedding light on the scheme, which revolved around a cement plant Lafarge was running in Syria.

    Among the communications was an August 2013 email from one executive to two other executives, in which the executive said that, “It is clear that we have an issue with ISIS and al Nusra and we have asked our partner” – referring to an intermediary – “to work on it.”

    A November 2013 agreement between ISIS and LSC, written on a document with ISIS letterhead, laid out a deal for ISIS to let trucks access the company’s cement factory for 400 Syrian pounds per truck, according to the new filings.

    “Relatedly, an ISIS vehicle pass dated April 26, 2014, and bearing ISIS’s letterhead and stamp, allowed LCS employees ‘to pass through after the required work. This is after they have fulfilled their dues to us,’” the court submissions said.

    A July 2014 email from one executive to two others referred to the revenue-sharing scheme as a “cake” to be shared: “We have to maintain the principle that we are ready to share the ‘cake,’ if there is a ‘cake,’” the email said, according to the new filings.

    Prosecutors said Tuesday that the executives sought to conceal the scheme by using personal, rather than company, emails to communicate about it. The executives also falsified documents to suggest that the company had terminated its relationship with an intermediary who was working with ISIS, according to the new filings.

    Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Tuesday that “corporate criminals” had “joined hands” with terrorists.

    “In its pursuit of profits, Lafarge and its top executives not only broke the law, they helped finance a violent reign of terror that ISIS and al-Nusrah imposed on the people of Syria,” Monaco said.

    The executives who participated in the scheme were located in France and countries in the Middle East, according to the DOJ’s investigation, and it did not involve employees of the company based in the United States. The conduct ended before the completion of Lafarge’s acquisition by Holcim, its current parent company, the court filings said.

    “Lafarge SA and LCS have accepted responsibility for the actions of the individual executives involved, whose behavior was in flagrant violation of Lafarge’s Code of Conduct. We deeply regret that this conduct occurred and have worked with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve this matter,” the company said in a statement.

    The company’s dealings with the terrorist group were the subject of an internal investigation several years ago. At the conclusion of that probe, the corporation said that employees of a legacy company were paying off intermediaries without regard to the identity of the groups involved in order to keep operations running and the plant safe as violence escalated in the region.

    “[T]he combination of the war zone chaos and the ‘can-do’ approach to maintain operations in these circumstances may have caused those involved to seriously misjudge the situation and to neglect to focus sufficiently on the legal and reputational implications of their conduct,” Lafarge Holcim, as the company is now known, said in a public statement in 2017.

    Magali Anderson, a top executive at Lafarge, pleaded guilty on behalf of the company.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

    Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

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    Young men walk in front of a billboard promoting contract army service with an image of a serviceman and the slogan reading “Serving Russia is a real job” in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on September 29.

    Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

    The Kremlin said it has not set an end date for President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization order, despite as many as 40 regions having fulfilled their military draft quota as of Tuesday.

    The Russian Ministry of Defense sets the quota for each region which needs to be completed, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

    However, the fulfilment of the quota in these regions does not mean that mobilization is over. It can only end with a presidential decree.

    “There have been no such decisions on the end of mobilization,” Peskov said when asked about it, adding that “there can be no question” on surpassing the targeted figure of 300,000 soldiers “under current decree.”

    On Monday, Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced the fulfilment of the quota in the Russian capital.

    But Russian human rights group Agora said that Sobyanin’s statement does not mean partial mobilization is over.

    “As long as the partial mobilization is not completed by the official who announced it, its legality is preserved. That is, you need to wait for the presidential decree,” Russian human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov said on Telegram.

    Putin has defended his partial mobilization of Russians that began in September, telling reporters on Friday that it is expected to end in two weeks. Some 222,000 troops out of the planned 300,000 Russians have been drafted so far, he added.

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  • Four takeaways from Utah’s only Senate debate | CNN Politics

    Four takeaways from Utah’s only Senate debate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Evan McMullin, the independent challenging Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, said in their only debate Monday night that Lee’s actions around the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol were “a betrayal of the American republic.”

    Lee, meanwhile, said he accepted that President Joe Biden in 2020 had won the presidency in the “only election that matters – the election held by the Electoral College.” The senator defended his actions that day, pointing to his votes to certify states’ Electoral College results.

    Their clash came on the day elections officials in Utah began mailing ballots to voters.

    McMullin describes himself as conservative but has said he would caucus with neither party if he defeats Lee. He is attempting to unite a coalition of Democrats, independents and anti-Donald Trump Republicans – and he got an assist this spring when Utah Democrats opted to endorse him rather than field their own candidate. But in Utah, even that coalition might not be enough. Trump won 58% of the vote there in 2020.

    McMullin’s entrance into politics came in an effort to serve as an antidote to Trump. He ran for president as an independent against Trump in 2016. He drew 22% of the vote in Utah, well behind Trump’s 46% and Hillary Clinton’s 27%. Among those who voted for McMullin in 2016 was Lee, who said at the time that it “was a protest vote.”

    Here are four takeaways from their Monday night debate:

    McMullin’s sharpest attacks on Lee came after a moderator raised the topic of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

    “You were there to stand up for our Constitution. But when the barbarians were at the gate, you were happy to let them in,” McMullin said.

    Lee pointed out that ultimately, he accepted the Electoral College vote.

    “Yes, there were people who behaved very badly on that day. I was not one of them. I was one of the people who tried to dismantle that situation,” Lee said.

    McMullin, meanwhile, said Lee only voted to accept states’ electoral votes after no other plan to keep Trump in office materialized.

    “You voted to certify the election in the last moment,” McMullin said. “In the same way that someone knows that a plot that’s not quite working out ought to abandon it, that’s what you did.”

    McMullin repeatedly cited text messages reported by CNN in April between Lee and Trump’s then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in which the two communicated about efforts to overturn Biden’s victory for weeks.

    In early December 2020, Lee began texting Meadows about the idea that states could submit alternate slates of pro-Trump electors to Congress on January 6. Lee ultimately voted to certify states’ electoral votes.

    McMullin said Lee was working “to keep a president who had been voted out of office, according to the will of the people, in power despite the will of the people.”

    He pointed to Lee’s November 7, 2020, texts to Meadows asking him to help Sidney Powell – one of the most prominent attorneys fronting lawsuits that supported Trump and made accusations of widespread election fraud – get access to Trump.

    He mocked the pocket Constitution that Lee carries, telling the senator that it is “not a prop for you to wave about and then when it’s convenient for your pursuit of power, to abandon without a thought. That’s what you’ve done with that.”

    Lee shot back: “I disagree with everything my opponent just said, including the words ‘but,’ ‘and’ and ‘the.’ An information-free, truth-free statement – that’s something of a record.”

    “There is absolutely nothing to the idea that I ever would have supported or ever did support a fake electors plot,” Lee said. “Nothing. Not a scintilla of evidence suggesting that. Yet you continue to suggest that with a cavalier, reckless disregard for the truth.”

    In an effort to cast Lee as extreme, McMullin invoked Utah’s other GOP senator: Mitt Romney.

    Criticizing Lee’s approach to fiscal measures, McMullin said he “routinely votes against bills that would improve water infrastructure.”

    “Meanwhile, Senator Romney has worked hard and consistently over the last three years,” McMullin said. “He works with Republicans and Democrats, Senator Lee, to deliver for Utah. And he voted in favor of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that you voted against. And now tens of millions of dollars have already been directed to Utah to improve our water infrastructure.”

    Lee responded: “Yeah, I voted against that bill – a bill that spent well over a trillion dollars more than we have on all sorts of things that weren’t appropriately federal.”

    Romney has stayed out of the race.

    Lee, in an appearance last week on Fox, made a plea directed at Romney: “Please get on board. Help me win reelection,” he said. The move seemed designed less to win over Romney than to rile up Lee’s conservative base.

    Trump followed Lee’s pleas to Romney with a statement in which he called McMullin “McMuffin” and said that Lee was being “abused, in an unprecedented way” by Romney.

    Lee said he was “thrilled” with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had made abortion legal nationwide. He said he believes states should decide how to regulate abortion.

    “This is where it should remain, because it’s within the states that we can achieve the most consensus and protect the most babies,” Lee said.

    McMullin, meanwhile, sought to find a middle ground on abortion rights, saying that he opposes “abortion on demand” but also opposes state legislation to force young rape victims to carry their pregnancies to term.

    “Some of these bills that I see being passed around the country are extreme,” McMullin said.

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  • From protester to fighter: Fleeing Iran’s brutal crackdown to take up arms over the border | CNN

    From protester to fighter: Fleeing Iran’s brutal crackdown to take up arms over the border | CNN

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    Iraqi Kurdistan
    CNN
     — 

    A teenage dissident trailed behind a group of smugglers in the borderlands of western Iran. For three days, Rezan trekked a rocky mountain range and walked through minefields along a winding path forged by seasoned smugglers to circumnavigate the country’s heavily armed Revolutionary Guards. It was a trip too dangerous for respite of much more than a few stolen moments at a time.

    “I knew that if an officer spotted us, we would die immediately,” said the 19-year-old Iran-Kurdish activist, whom CNN is identifying by her pseudonym Rezan for security purposes. She was traveling to the border with Iraq, one of Iran’s most militarized frontiers, where according to rights groups, many have been shot to death by Iranian security forces for crossing illegally, or for smuggling illicit goods.

    She had fled her hometown of Sanandaj in western Iran where security forces were wreaking death and destruction on the protest sites. Demonstrators were arbitrarily detained, some were shot dead in front of her, she said. Many were beaten up on the streets. In the second week of the protests, security forces pulled Rezan by her uncovered hair, she said. As she was being dragged down the street, screaming in agony, she saw her friends forcefully detained and children getting beaten.

    “They pulled my hair. They beat me. They dragged me,” she said, recounting the brutal crackdown in the Kurdish-majority city. “At the same time, I could see the same thing happening to many other people, including children.”

    Sanandaj has seen the some of the largest protests in Iran, the biggest outside of Tehran, since the uprising began in mid-September.

    Rezan said she had no choice but to take the long and perilous journey with smugglers to Iraq. Leaving Iran through the nearest official border crossing – a mere three-hour car ride away — could have led to her arrest. Staying in Sanandaj could have resulted in her death at the hands of the security forces.

    “(Here) I can get my rights to live as a woman. I want to fight for the rights of women. I want to fight for human rights,” she told CNN from northern Iraq. After she arrived here earlier this month, she decided to change tack. No longer a peaceful protester, Rezan decided to take up arms, enlisting with an Iranian-Kurdish militant group that has positions in the arid valleys of Iraqi Kurdistan.

    A man walks past the carcass of a vehicle weeks after it was attacked by Iranian drones and missiles.

    Rezan is one of multiple Iranian dissidents who fled the country in the last month, escaping the regime’s violent bid to quash demonstrations that erupted after the death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa “Zhina” Amini during her detention by Iranian morality police for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly.

    The number of dissidents who have left Iran since the protests started is unknown. In the Kurdish-administered region of northern Iraq (KRG) — which borders the predominantly Kurdish west of Iran — many of the exiled activists keep a low profile, hiding in safe houses. They said they fear reprisals against their families back home, where mass detentions have become commonplace in Kurdish-majority areas.

    According to eyewitnesses and social media videos, the people in those regions have endured some of the most heavy-handed tactics used by Iran’s security forces in their brutal campaign to crush the protest movement.

    In Kurdish-majority regions, evidence of security forces indiscriminately shooting at crowds of protesters is widespread. The Iranian government also appears to have deployed members of its elite fighting force, the Revolutionary Guards, to these areas to face off with demonstrators, according to eyewitnesses and video from the protest sites.

    Iran’s Revolutionary Guards typically fight the regime’s battles further afield, namely in Iraq and Syria, propping up brutal dictatorships as well as fighting extremist groups such as ISIS.

    The Iraq-based Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) says they have no hand in the protests that have gripped Iran over the last month, but says they are prepared to help Kurds in Iran's west and northwest take up arms.

    For the Kurds, the intensified crackdown in the country’s west underscores decades of well-documented ethnic marginalization by Iran’s central government. These are grievances that Iran’s other ethnic minorities share and that precede clerical rule in Iran.

    The nearly 10-million strong Kurdish population is the third largest ethnic group in Iran. Governments in Tehran — including the regime of the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was overthrown in 1979 — have eyed the group with suspicion because of their long-standing aspirations to secede from the state and establish a republic alongside Kurdish communities in neighboring countries.

    Crouched under the shade of a tree in a dusty valley alongside her sisters-in-arms in northern Iraq, Rezan clasps her AK-47 rifle, her faltering voice betraying a lingering fear of Iranian reprisals. After she fled Iran, the authorities there called her family and threatened to arrest her siblings, she said.

    But her family supports her militancy, she said, with her mother vowing to bury every one of her children rather than hand them over to the authorities. “I carry a weapon because we want to show the Iranian Kurds that they have someone standing behind them,” Rezan said from one of the bases of her militant group, the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK). “I want to protect the Kurds there because the Kurds are protecting themselves with rocks.”

    Protesters across Iran are largely unarmed. Yet Iran blames Kurdish-Iranian armed groups in Iraqi Kurdistan for instigating unrest in Kurdish-majority areas. It has repeatedly struck Iranian-Kurdish targets in Iraq with drones and missiles since the protests began, killing scores of people.

    Gen. Hussein Yazdanpanah, who heads the Kurdistan Freedom Party, accuses Tehran of using him as a 'scapegoat' for the protests that have gripped Iran.

    Last Saturday, Iran’s Armed Forces chief accused the Iraqi Kurdistan region – which has a semi-autonomous government – of harboring 3,000 Iranian-Kurdish militants, and vowed to continue to attack their bases unless the government disarms the fighters.

    “Iran’s operations against terrorists will continue. No matter how long it takes, we will continue this operation and a bigger one,” said Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces.

    PAK and other Iraq-based Kurdish-Iranian armed groups say they have not supported the protests in any concrete way. But they have called on the United States to intervene on behalf of the demonstrators, and have said they are prepared to help Kurds in Iran take up arms in case of a further escalation in Iran’s crisis.

    “What’s happening on the streets with the protesters was not engineered at my base,” PAK’s leader, Gen. Hussein Yazdanpanah, told CNN. He was speaking from one of the group’s barracks that was blown up by Iranian missiles and drones on September 28, killing eight militants.

    On September 28, one of the militant barracks of an Iranian-Kurdish armed groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan was attacked by Iranian drones and missiles.

    “(Iran) is using us as a scapegoat for the protests in Iran and to distract media attention from Iran,” said Yazdanpanah, who believes that he was the target of that attack.

    “I won’t hide the fact that I am a military support for my people,” he said, standing amid the destruction at his base near the town of Altun Kupri. The stench of two militants slain in the attack, but whose bodies have not yet been recovered, rises up from the rubble.

    “For a revolution to succeed there has to be military support for the people,” he added. “(Iran) wanted people to question this principle. (By bombing the base) they wanted to say to them that there is no military support to protect you.”

    Across the country, protesters with a variety of grievances — namely related to the dire state of Iran’s economy and the marginalization of ethnic groups — have coalesced around an anti-regime movement that was ignited by Amini’s death. Women have been at the forefront of the protests, arguing that Amini’s demise at the hands of the notorious morality police highlights women’s plight under Islamic Republic laws that restrict their dress and behavior.

    Kurds in Iran also saw their grievances reflected in Amini’s death. The young woman’s Kurdish name — Zhina — was banned by a clerical establishment that bars ethnic minority names, ostensibly to prevent sowing ethnic divisions in the country. Amini also was crying for help in her Kurdish mother tongue when morality police officers violently forced her into a van, according to activists.

    An out of focus images of a family who last month fled the western Iranian city of Saqqez -- the hometown of Zhina Mahsa Amini -- where Iranian security forces have tried to violently quell protests. The family says they fear the long arms of Iran's regime, even in the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan where they now live in hiding.

    The first large protests in Iran’s current uprising erupted in Amini’s Kurdish-majority hometown of Saqqez in western Iran, which has also been subjected to a violent crackdown. “When we were in Iran, I joined the protests with friends. Two days later, two of my friends got kidnapped and one of them got injured,” said one man who fled Saqqez to Iraqi Kurdistan, who CNN is not naming for security reasons.

    Seated on carpet under a tree to avoid any identification of their safe house, the man and his family said they worry about the long arms of Iran’s regime. The family cover their faces with medical masks, the man wears long sleeves to cover identifying tattoos and a plastic tarp is hung up to obscure them from the ever-present fear of incoming Iranian drones.

    He and his family decided to leave Iran when he saw security forces kill his friend near a mosque in the first days of the uprising, the man said. “How can they claim to be an Islamic Republic when I saw them murdering my friend outside a mosque?” he asked in disbelief.

    Freshly dug graves draped in the Kurdish nationalist flag where six of the eight militants who were killed in the September 28 Iranian attack were laid to rest. Two of the bodies have not yet been recovered.

    He said the community could not retrieve his friend’s body until night fell, after which they secretly buried their dead. His testimony is similar to multiple accounts CNN has heard since the start of Iran’s uprising. Many in the Kurdish areas of Iran report opting not to receive medical care for injured protesters in hospitals, for fear of arrest by authorities. Eyewitnesses also say some have even avoided sending their dead to morgues, for fear of reprisals against family members.

    Since they fled, dissidents in Iraqi Kurdistan say they remain in contact with the loved ones they left behind. Every phone call to their families comes with news of an intensified crackdown, as well as reports of people defying security forces and continuing to pour into the streets.

    “From what I know, my family is part of the revolution and the revolution continues to this day,” said Rezan. “They are ready to die to get our rights.”

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  • Kanye West to acquire conservative social media platform Parler | CNN Business

    Kanye West to acquire conservative social media platform Parler | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Kanye West is acquiring Parler, the alternative social media platform favored by many conservatives.

    Parler’s parent company announced the deal on Monday morning, saying West had made “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”

    The acquisition comes after West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, had his account temporarily locked by Twitter this month over an antisemitic tweet.

    Exact terms of the Parler deal weren’t disclosed, though Parler said it must still enter into a definitive agreement with West and expects to close in the fourth quarter. Parler’s parent, Parlement Technologies, would remain involved by providing technical services and cloud support.

    Buying Parler could make West the latest celebrity owner of a social media platform after former President Donald Trump’s bid to win over conservatives with Truth Social and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition of Twitter. It also highlights how a small group of wealthy men, some of whom were banned or suspended themselves for incendiary remarks, are looking to own social media platforms in an effort to bolster what they call “free speech.”

    “In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” West said in a release by Parler.

    As part of the announcement, Parler linked to West’s account on the platform, which appeared to have launched simultaneously. As of early Monday, the account had roughly 500 followers.

    For Ye, the deal comes during a particularly controversial period. West has made headlines in recent weeks for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt in public and defending his use of the slogan — a phrase the Anti-Defamation League has linked to white supremacy groups — as “funny” to Fox News host Tucker Carlson. After the shirt incident, the apparel company Adidas this month said it was reviewing its partnership with West. In September, West also said he was abandoning a two-year partnership with the clothing retailer Gap.

    Speaking on CNN Monday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO, called Parler a “haven” of hate.

    Parler was founded in 2018 and saw rapid growth surrounding the 2020 election. Billing itself as a loosely moderated free-speech haven, the app became popular with conservative politicians and media figures, peaking at an estimated 2.9 million daily users, according to the market research firm Apptopia. But since then, its fortunes have dimmed, with Parler’s estimated daily user count slipping to just 40,000, Apptopia told CNN on Monday. (Twitter, by comparison, has more than 237 million daily active users.)

    In the weeks following the Jan. 6 riots, Parler was removed from both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for what the companies said was a failure to adequately moderate violent rhetoric on the platform. Documents provided to the House committee investigating the Capitol riots have shown how the Secret Service was aware of posts on Parler that suggested the possibility of violence surrounding that day. Separately, Parler has written to Congress claiming that lawmakers’ interest in the app’s role in the riots has been intended to “scapegoat” the app.

    Parler has since been restored to both app stores after making changes to its content moderation practices.

    Parler has faced more competition in recent months as the burgeoning right-wing digital media ecosystem has expanded. Truth Social launched in February on Apple’s app store, and was approved for Google’s app store on Oct. 13. Truth Social saw a spike of downloads last week due to its appearance on the Google Play Store, Apptopia said, and before then had been hovering at 144,000 daily active users.

    Musk’s move to buy Twitter, if the deal goes through, also has the potential to upend Parler and similar services. Musk has repeatedly called for eliminating permanent bans and rethinking Twitter’s approach to content moderation, which could once again make the much larger platform a home for some of the users who jumped to small services like Parler.

    It could also effectively mean that Musk and Ye, who are said to be friends, are now competing with each other. After Ye’s antisemitic tweet sparked an outcry, Musk tweeted: “Talked to ye today & expressed my concerns about his recent tweet, which I think he took to heart.”

    One week later, Ye’s deal to buy Parler was announced.

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  • Arizona Attorney General’s office asks for federal investigation of conservative nonprofit True the Vote | CNN Politics

    Arizona Attorney General’s office asks for federal investigation of conservative nonprofit True the Vote | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Arizona Attorney General’s office has asked for a federal investigation related to potential violations of the Internal Revenue Code by the conservative nonprofit True the Vote, which claims to be trying to expose voter fraud.

    An investigator in Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office, Reginald Grigsby, said in a letter that the group has “raised considerable sums of money alleging they had evidence of widespread voter fraud” but has failed to provide any evidence to its office, despite publicly indicating they had shared the information with law enforcement agencies.

    “Given TTV’s status as a nonprofit organization, it would appear that further review of its financials may be warranted,” the letter, released on Friday, reads in a striking move for an office overseen by a Republican. Brnovich had sought to win over former President Donald Trump and his supporters in his unsuccessful bid for the nomination for Senate earlier this year.

    Grigsby detailed three meetings representatives from the attorney general’s office had with Catherine Engelbrecht, who founded the Texas-based nonprofit, and Gregg Phillips, who is a contracted partner.

    The meetings were spread out over a year – the first took place in June 2021 and the following two occurred in April and June of this year. Grigsby said prior to each meeting, Engelbrecht and Phillips said they would provide the attorney general’s office with information to support their claims of voter fraud but they never provided any so-called evidence.

    In a statement, True the Vote called the letter “false” and said it “smacks of retribution for the AG’s own decision to ignore suspicious voting activity.” The statement also countered that its hard drive of data is “available to any law enforcement agency which issues a lawful subpoena for the data” and said that it “has documentary records of correspondence with the State of Arizona and the FBI, detailing the evidence and its limitations.”

    In its letter, the attorney general’s office stated that it had requested the information by electronic and US mail and by leaving voicemails after the latest in-person meeting, but it did not indicate whether it had formally subpoenaed the data.

    An IRS spokesperson told CNN, “Due to privacy regulations, the IRS will not comment on the status of an individual or organization.”

    True the Vote and Engelbrecht have advanced claims of election-fraud for years. But the group recently gained new prominence through the film, “2000 Mules” produced by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. It claims “mules” were used to illegally collect and deliver ballots to drop boxes in key states in the 2020 election.

    True the Vote has said it purchased cellphone geo-tracking data to identify devices that went repeatedly near drop boxes and certain nonprofits ahead of the election to advance the argument that illegal ballot harvesting occurred in key swing states.

    Multiple fact-checkers have debunked those claims. And in testimony that aired during a hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, former Attorney General William Barr called the film’s premise flawed.

    The film has been touted by Trump and some Trump-aligned candidates. Earlier this year, the former President hosted a screening of the film at Mar-a-Lago, his waterfront Florida resort and home.

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  • Kyiv’s air raid sirens ring out as Russia launches kamikaze drone strikes | CNN

    Kyiv’s air raid sirens ring out as Russia launches kamikaze drone strikes | CNN

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    Kyiv, Ukraine
    CNN
     — 

    A wave of kamikaze drone attacks pummeled Kyiv early Monday, killing at least one person and setting off warning sirens across the Ukrainian capital as commuters headed to work.

    The attacks on Kyiv appear to be part of a wider assault involving drones and cruise missiles. The Ukrainian Air Force said it had destroyed 37 Iranian-made kamikaze drones and three cruise missiles in south and east of the country early Monday. The attacks in the east targeted crucial infrastructure.

    Kamikaze drones, or suicide drones, are small, portable aerial weapon systems that are hard to detect and can be fired at a distance. They can be easily launched and are designed to hit behind enemy lines and be destroyed in the attack.

    In Kyiv, blasts were heard as early as 6:45 a.m. local time, including one in the city’s Shevchenkivskyi district. As of 9 a.m., Kyiv had been hit four times, authorities said. One of the strikes hit close to Kyiv’s main train station, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs. Authorities have asked people to stay indoors.

    “Kamikaze drones and missiles are attacking all of Ukraine,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said. “The enemy can attack our cities, but it won’t be able to break us. The occupiers will get only fair punishment and condemnation of future generations. And we will get victory.”

    It’s unclear how many casualties there have been, but one person was found dead under the rubble of a destroyed building in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Another remains trapped, Klitschko said.

    Monday’s assault comes a week after Russia began an intense, two-day nationwide bombardment of Ukraine that killed at least 19 people and leveled civilian targets, drawing global outrage. The strikes also caused major damage to power systems across Ukraine, forcing people to reduce consumption during peak hours to avoid blackouts.

    On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said there was no need for more “massive” strikes for now. However, a series of Russian attacks over the weekend killed 11 civilians – eight in the eastern region of Donetsk, two in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and one in the northeastern region of Kharkiv.

    The city of Zaporizhzhia was attacked with kamikaze drones and missiles on Saturday, while Kyiv was hit by an apparent Russian rocket.

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  • January 6 committee member says panel will ask former Secret Service agent to testify again | CNN Politics

    January 6 committee member says panel will ask former Secret Service agent to testify again | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, told CNN on Sunday the panel will ask former Secret Service Assistant Director Tony Ornato to testify again.

    “We’re in a position in the very near future to call the witnesses from the Secret Service back in for a few additional questions,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom,” explaining that the panel had wanted to “get through all the documentary evidence … over a million documents,” which they’ve now done.

    The House select committee has made clear it believes Ornato was a central figure who could provide valuable information about former President Donald Trump’s movements and intentions leading up to and on January 6.

    Not only did Ornato once run Trump’s detail, but he also made the unprecedented move of joining White House staff as the deputy chief of staff in December 2019 on a temporary assignment and eventually returned to the Secret Service to run its training program.

    To this point, Ornato has met with the panel on two occasions – in January and March – as part of its investigation.

    It’s not clear whether Ornato will end up testifying related to the claims from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson specifically testified that Ornato had told her about Trump lashing out in anger and lunging at a member of his protective detail as he demanded to be taken to the Capitol on January 6.

    Asked Sunday who else from the Secret Service would be called back to testify, Lofgren also mentioned the head of Trump’s Secret Service detail, Robert Engel, “and a few others,” but did not specify whom.

    “We want to make sure that we’re getting the straight story. Some of the testimony received doesn’t seem to align with some of the documents, so we have a need to understand that better from them,” she said.

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  • Gunmen kill 11, wound 15 in attack on Russian military recruits | CNN

    Gunmen kill 11, wound 15 in attack on Russian military recruits | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two gunmen opened fire on Russian military recruits at a training ground in Russia’s Belgorod region, killing at least 11 people and wounding another 15, Russia’s state news agency TASS reports.

    The attack took place Saturday during a training session at the Western Military District, according to TASS, which cited the Russian Defense Ministry. The gunmen were said to be from former Soviet states. Russian officials have branded the attack an act of terrorism.

    “As a result of a terrorist attack at a military training ground in the Belgorod region, 11 people were killed, 15 were injured and are receiving medical assistance,” TASS reported.

    “The incident occurred during a shooting training session with volunteers preparing for a special operation. The terrorists attacked the personnel of the unit with small-arms fire.”

    According to TASS, two individuals who committed the “terrorist act” were killed in retaliatory fire at the training ground.

    The Russian Investigative Committee has launched a criminal investigation into the incident, according to a statement published on Sunday.

    “The Main Military Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia initiated a criminal case on the fact of criminal acts in the Belgorod region,” the statement said.

    The Belgorod region is in western Russia on the border with Ukraine.

    The Governor of Belgorod city said later that no civilians had been killed in the attack.

    “Yesterday, something terrible occurred on our territory, on the grounds of a military unit. A terrorist act was committed. Many servicemen were killed and wounded,” Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on his Telegram channel.

    “There are no residents of Belgorod region among the wounded and dead,” the governor added.

    Gladkov also offered his condolences to the families of the victims, adding that all of those wounded are “being administered care.”

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  • Iran denies supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine | CNN

    Iran denies supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Iran has denied supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine, saying it “has not and will not” do so.

    The denial, reportedly made in a phone call between Iran’s Foreign Minister and his Portuguese counterpart on Friday, follows claims by Kyiv and US intelligence that Russia is using Iranian-made “kamikaze drones” in its attacks on Ukrainian territory.

    The Iranian government said its Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian emphasized in the call “once again” that Tehran “has not and will not” provide any weapon to be used in the Ukraine war.

    “We believe that the arming of each side of the crisis will prolong the war, so we have not considered and do not consider war to be the right way either in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Yemen,” Amir-Abdollahian said, according to an Iranian readout of the call.

    The Portuguese government said its Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho had expressed concerns about the “recently reported evidence on the use of Iranian drones by the Russian Federation in Ukrainian territory” and “stressed the need for the Iranian authorities to ensure that this equipment is not supplied to Russia.”

    Ukrainian authorities say Russia has used Iranian-supplied kamikaze drones in strikes against Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and other cities in recent weeks, and has pleaded with Western countries to step up their assistance in the face of the new challenge. The Ukrainians themselves have been using kamikaze drones to strike against Russian targets.

    Drones have played a significant role in the conflict since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, but their use has increased since the summer, when the United States and Kyiv say Moscow acquired the drones from Iran.

    On Saturday, just hours after the call between the foreign ministers, the Ukrainian military said the city of Zaporizhzhia had been hit by four kamikaze drone strikes overnight.

    Kamikaze drones, or suicide drones, are a type of aerial weapon system. They are known as a loitering munition because they are capable of waiting for some time in an area identified as a potential target and only strike once an enemy asset is identified.

    They are small, portable and can be easily launched, but their main advantage is that they are hard to detect and can be fired from a distance.

    The name “kamikaze” refers to the fact the drones are disposable. They are designed to hit behind the enemy lines and are destroyed in the attack – unlike the more traditional, larger and faster military drones that return home after dropping missiles.

    US officials told CNN in July that Iran had begun showcasing Shahed series drones to Russia at Kashan Airfield south of Tehran the previous month. The drones are capable of carrying precision-guided missiles and have a payload of approximately 50 kilograms (110 pounds).

    In August, US officials said Russia had bought these drones and was training its forces how to use them. According to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia has ordered 2,400 Shahed-136 drones from Iran.

    According to Portuguese accounts of the foreign ministers’ call, the pair also discussed the protests that have been sweeping Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died after being detained by morality police in September and accused of violating the country’s conservative dress code.

    Amini’s death has sparked an outpouring anger over issues ranging from women’s rights and freedoms in the Islamic Republic to the continuing and crippling impacts of sanctions.

    “Minister João Cravinho reiterated that the existence of Iranian legislation repressive to women’s rights is at the basis of the recent events in that country and appealed to the Iranian authorities to give a positive signal in the promotion of women’s rights,” read the Portuguese readout of the call.

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  • January 6 panel asks Secret Service for information about contacts between agents and Oath Keeper members | CNN Politics

    January 6 panel asks Secret Service for information about contacts between agents and Oath Keeper members | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Investigators with the House select committee probing the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol have asked the United States Secret Service for information about contacts between its agents and members of the far-right Oath Keepers group.

    The inquiry comes after it was revealed during court testimony that members of the group, including leader Stewart Rhodes, claimed to be in contact with Secret Service agents prior to rallies for former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election. Members of the Oath Keepers are currently on trial for charges relating to the Capitol attack, including seditious conspiracy.

    Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed to CNN that the January 6 panel had reached out to the agency and “a verbal briefing was provided to the staff.”

    NBC News first reported the inquiry.

    Guglielmi told CNN the Secret Service would provide records of contact between the Oath Keepers and Secret Service agents.

    Members of the Oath Keepers occasionally reached out to the Secret Service prior to January 6, 2021, with questions about permissible items for rallies, an official with the agency told CNN earlier this week. Further, when agents learned the group planned to attend events, agents reached out and met with members.

    While it’s not uncommon for law enforcement agents to maintain contacts with groups that are of investigative interest, the relationship with the Oath Keepers has come under increased scrutiny during the trial.

    John Zimmerman, a former North Carolina leader of the Oath Keepers, testified earlier this month that to prepare for the rally, Rhodes said he was in contact with a member of the Secret Service who offered advice on what weapons were allowed near the rally. Rhodes also repeatedly represented he was in touch with an agent, said Zimmerman, who noted that he had not heard the entire conversation.

    CNN has asked the Secret Service for dates of contacts and names of Oath Keepers contacted, as well as whether the contacts were documented at the time.

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  • October 15, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news | CNN

    October 15, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news | CNN

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    Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Russian Armed Forces service personnel who took part in operations in Syria, including Sergey Surovikin, at the Kremlin on December 28, 2017.

    Russian Presidency

    There’s a new general in charge of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s devastating war on Ukraine — and he has a reputation for brutality.

    After Ukraine made gains in its counteroffensive in recent weeks, Russia’s Ministry of Defense named Sergey Surovikin its new overall commander for operations in the war.

    Notably, he previously played an instrumental role in Russia’s operations in Syria as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces. During these operations Russian combat aircraft caused widespread devastation in rebel-held area.

    CNN spoke to a former Russian air force lieutenant, Gleb Irisov, who served under him in Syria.

    He said Surovikin was “very close to Putin’s regime” and “never had any political ambitions, so always executed a plan exactly as ​the government wanted.”

    Analysts say that while Surovikin’s appointment is highly unlikely to change how Russian forces are carrying out the war, it does speak to Putin’s dissatisfaction with previous command operations. It is also, in part, likely meant to placate the nationalist and pro-war base within Russia itself, according to Mason Clark, a Russia expert at the Institute for the Study of War think tank.

    Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has called for Russia to “take more drastic measures” including the use of “low-yield nuclear weapons” in Ukraine following recent setbacks, welcomed the appointment of Surovikin.

    Praise from Kadyrov, who is ​a key Putin ally, is significant, perhaps, as he himself is notorious for crushing all forms of dissent.

    “They hated him”: As the commander’s one-time subordinate in Syria, Irisov said he saw Surovikin several times during some missions and spoke to high-ranking officers under him.

    “He made a lot of people very angry – they hated him,” Irisov said, describing how the “direct” and “straight” general was disliked at headquarters because of the way he tried to implement his infantry experience into the air force.

    Just two days after Surovikin’s appointment last Saturday, Russia launched its heaviest bombardment of Ukraine since the early days of the war.

    Surovikin is “more familiar with cruise missiles, maybe he used his connections and experience to organize this chain of devastating attacks,” Irisov said​, referencing reports that cruise missiles have been among the weapons deployed by Russia.

    But Clark, from the Study of War think tank, suggests the general’s promotion is “more of a framing thing to inject new blood into the Russian command system” and “put on this tough nationalist face.”

    You can read Sarah Dean’s full report here.

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  • Lions rescued from Ukraine make Colorado sanctuary their forever home | CNN

    Lions rescued from Ukraine make Colorado sanctuary their forever home | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Nine lions that were rescued from Ukraine have arrived safely at their new home in Colorado.

    The big cats were “urgently relocated” from Bio Park Zoo in Odessa, Ukraine, when the Russian invasion first began, according to a news release from The Wild Animal Sanctuary.

    A convoy transported the lions from Odessa across Moldova to Romania; their journey stretched for over 600 miles, says the sanctuary. They arrived at the Targu Mures Zoo in Romania’s Transylvania region on May 24.

    The lions spent months at the zoo waiting for an emergency travel permit so they could board a rescue flight, according to the sanctuary. They finally arrived in their final homes on September 29.

    Seven adult lions and two cubs from the rescued pride are now being cared for by The Wild Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit based in Keenesburg, Colorado. The lions will live at an extension of the sanctuary called The Wild Animal Refuge, which consists of almost 10,000 acres of land near Springfield, Colorado. The facility is not open to the public, according to the sanctuary’s website.

    Another two lions were sent to the Simbonga Game Reserve and Sanctuary in Eastern Cape, South Africa, says the release. On Facebook, the South African reserve said they received two lions, Mir and Simba, who had been rescued from Ukraine and then stayed in Romania.

    Pat Craig, The Wild Animal Sanctuary’s executive director, highlighted the complexity of the feline rescue mission.

    “International rescue operations are almost always more complex in nature, but then you are factoring in a variety of foreign governments and timelines for permitting, some of those with active war zones,” Craig said in the release. “We are thankful we could get all the lions out in time and save them. That’s what matters. They will live out the rest of their lives in pristine, large, natural habitats.”

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  • ‘They hated him.’ Former subordinate recalls serving under Russia’s new top commander in Ukraine | CNN

    ‘They hated him.’ Former subordinate recalls serving under Russia’s new top commander in Ukraine | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Russian President Vladimir Putin’s devastating war on Ukraine is faltering. Now, there’s a new general in charge – with a reputation for brutality.

    After Ukraine recently recaptured more territory than Russia’s army took in the last six months, Russia’s Ministry of Defense last Saturday named Sergey Surovikin as its new overall commander for operations in the war.

    Notably, he previously played an instrumental role in Russia’s operations in Syria – during which Russian combat aircraft caused widespread devastation in rebel-held areas – as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

    CNN spoke to a former Russian air force lieutenant, Gleb Irisov, who served under him in Syria.

    He said Surovikin was “very close to Putin’s regime” and “never had any political ambitions, so always executed a plan exactly as ​the government wanted.”

    Analysts say Surovikin’s appointment is highly unlikely to change how Russian forces are carrying out the war but that it speaks to Putin’s dissatisfaction with previous command operations. It is also, in part, likely meant to “mollify” the nationalist and pro-war base within Russia itself, according to Mason Clark, Russia Lead at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think-tank.

    Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has called for Russia to “take more drastic measures​” ​including the use of “low-yield nuclear weapons” in Ukraine following recent setbacks, welcomed the appointment of Surovikin, who first saw service in Afghanistan in the 1980s before commanding a unit in the Second Chechen War ​in 2004. Praise from Kadyrov, who is ​a key Putin ally, is significant, perhaps, as he himself is notorious for crushing all forms of dissent.

    “I personally ​have know​n Sergei very well for almost 15 years. I can definitely say he is a real general and warrior, experienced, headstrong and foresighted commander who always takes patriotism, honor and respect above all,” Kadyrov posted on social media, following news of Surovikin’s appointment last Saturday. “The united army group is now in safe hands,” he added.

    Irisov, Surovikin’s former subordinate, left his five-year career in the armed forces after his time in Syria because his own political views conflicted with what he experienced. “Of course, you understand, who is right and who is wrong,” Irisov said. “I witnessed a lot of stuff, being inside the system.”

    Irisov then began what he hoped would be the start of a career as an international journalist, as a military reporter with Russian state news agency TASS. His wife worked there and he felt at the time it was “the only main information agency” that tried to ​cover news in an “unbiased” way, with “some opportunity of freedom of speech,” he said.

    Gleb Irisov is pictured at the beginning of his military career, during winter military training near Moscow, Russia.

    Gleb Irisov is pictured during his service with the Russian Air Force in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave.

    “Everything changed” on February 24, 2022, when Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began and TASS received orders from the FSB security service and defense ministry “that everyone will be prosecuted if they don’t execute the propaganda scheme,” Irisov said.

    He had family in Kyiv, hiding in bomb shelters, and told CNN he knew “nothing could justify this war.” He also knew from his military contacts that there were already many casualties in the first days of the war.

    “For me it was obvious from the beginning,” Irisov recalled. “I tried to explain to people this war will lead to the collapse of Russia… it will be a great tragedy not only for Ukrainians but also for Russia.”

    Irisov fled Moscow with his pregnant wife and young child on March 8, 2022, after standing against the invasion. He had quit his job at TASS and signed petitions and an open letter against the war, he told CNN. After traveling to Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and finally Mexico, where they contacted the US embassy to ask for help, they are now working to start a new life in West Virginia.

    Gleb Irisov is pictured with his wife, Alisa Irisova, in the last photo taken before they left Russia by air for Armenia, in March 2022.

    While serving at Latakia air base in Syria in 2019 and 2020, the 31-year-old says he worked on aviation safety and air traffic control, coordinating flights with Damascus’ civilian airlines. He ​says he saw Surovikin several times during some missions and spoke to high-ranking officers under him.

    “He made a lot of people very angry – they hated him,” Irisov said, describing how the “direct” and “straight” general was disliked at headquarters because of the way he tried to implement his infantry experience into the air force.

    Irisov says he understands Surovikin had strong connections with Kremlin-approved private military company the Wagner group​, which has operated in Syria.

    The Kremlin denies any connections to Wagner and insists that private military companies are illegal in Russia.

    Surovikin, whose military career began in 1983, has a checkered history, to say the least.

    In 2004, according to Russian media accounts and at least two think tanks, he berated a subordinate so severely that the subordinate took his own life.

    And a book by the think tank the Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation says that during the unsuccessful coup attempt against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, soldiers under Surovikin’s command killed three protesters, leading to Surovikin spending at least six months in prison.

    CNN has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment on Surovikin’s appointment and regarding allegations about his harsh leadership.

    In a 2020 report, Human Rights Watch named him as “someone who may bear ​command responsibility” for the dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian objects and infrastructure in violation of the laws of war​” during the 2019-2020 Idlib offensive in Syria. ​The attacks killed at least 1,600 ​civilians and forced the displacement of an estimated 1.4 million people, according to HRW​​, which cites UN figures.

    Vladimir Putin (left) toasts with then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev next to Sergey Surovikin after a ceremony to bestow state awards on military personnel who fought in Syria, on December 28, 2017.

    During his time in Syria, the ​now-56-year-old was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation.

    In February this year, Surovikin was sanctioned by the European Union in his capacity as head of the Aerospace Forces “for actively supporting and implementing actions and policies that undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine as well as the stability or security in Ukraine.”

    Irisov believes there are three reasons why he has been put in charge in Ukraine now: his closeness to the government and Putin; his interbranch experience with both the infantry and air force; and his experience since the summer commanding Russian forces in the southern Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea. These are areas that Putin is trying to control “at any cost,” said Irisov.

    Just two days after Surovikin’s appointment on Saturday, Russia launched its heaviest bombardment of Ukraine since the early days of the war.

    Surovikin is “more familiar with cruise missiles, maybe he used his connections and experience to organize this chain of devastating attacks,” Irisov said​, referencing the reports that cruise missiles have been among the weapons deployed by Russia in this latest surge of attacks.

    But Clark, from the ISW, suggests the general’s promotion is “more of a framing thing to inject new blood into the Russian command system” and “put on this tough nationalist face.”

    His appointment “got widespread praise from various Russian military bloggers as well as Yevgeny (Prigozhin), who’s the financier of the Wagner Group,” Clark said.

    He believes what’s happening now is a reflection of what happened in April, when another commander, Alexander Dvornikov, was appointed overall commander of the operations in Ukraine.

    “Similarly, he before then was a commander of one of the groupings of Russian forces and had sort of a master reputation in Syria much like Surovikin for brutality, earning this sort of name of the ‘butcher of Aleppo,’” Clark said.

    Dvornikov was also seen at the time as the commander “that was going to turn things around in Ukraine and get the job done,” he added. “But an individual commander is not going to be able to change how tangled Russian command and control is at this point in the war, or the low morale of Russian forces.”

    Colonel General Sergey Surovikin, then-commander of the Russian forces in Syria, speaks at a briefing in the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow, on June 9, 2017.

    Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, also told CNN this week that Surovikin’s appointment “reflects the ascendancy of a lot of hardline voices inside Russia… calling on Putin to make changes, and to bring in someone who would be willing to execute these ruthless attacks.”

    Clark reasons that “from what we’ve seen, it’s highly ​probable that Putin is involved in decision-making down to a very tactical level and in some cases bypassing the senior Russian military officers to interact directly on the battlefield.”

    Surovikin personally signed Irisov’s resignation papers from the air force, he says. Now, Irisov sees him put in charge of operations in Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine – but what impact the general will or can have is not yet clear.

    According to Clark, “there isn’t a good Kremlin option if Surovikin doesn’t perform or if Putin decides that he is also not up to the task. There aren’t many other senior Russian officers and it’s just going to lead to a further degradation of the Russian war effort.”

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  • Secret Service reached out to Oath Keepers ahead of January 6 riot | CNN Politics

    Secret Service reached out to Oath Keepers ahead of January 6 riot | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Secret Service agents were in contact with members of the Oath Keepers prior to January 6 an official with the agency tells CNN, as part of standard intelligence and response duties.

    The official said members of the Oath Keepers occasionally reached out to the Secret Service with questions about permissible items for rallies. Further, when agents learned the group planned to attend events, agents reached out and met with members. The official noted that is common when groups plan to demonstrate.

    The Washington Post first reported the agency’s outreach to the Oath Keepers ahead of January 6, 2021.

    “We are aware that individuals from the Oath Keepers have contacted us in the past to make inquiries,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told CNN last week.

    It’s not uncommon for law enforcement agents to maintain contacts with groups that are of investigative interest. The Oath Keepers and other extremist groups that traveled to Washington for rallies after the 2020 election had numerous contacts with local and federal law enforcement agencies, testimony gathered in congressional and federal investigations has shown.

    The relationship between the Oath Keepers has come under increased scrutiny after testimony last week revealed the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, purported to be in touch with agents.

    John Zimmerman, a former North Carolina leader of the Oath Keepers, testified that he believed Rhodes was in touch with a Secret Service agent in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.

    Zimmerman, who has not been charged with a crime, said members of the Oath Keepers – who are currently on trial for charges relating to the January 6 US Capitol attack, including seditious conspiracy – gathered in September in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for a campaign rally for former President Donald Trump

    Members of the Oath Keepers were recruiting at the rally and working as personal security details, he said.

    To prepare for the rally, Zimmerman testified, Rhodes said he was in contact with a member of the Secret Service who advised the leader on what weapons were allowed near the rally. Zimmerman said he did not hear the entire conversation, but that Rhodes repeatedly represented he was in touch with an agent.

    Rhodes allegedly told other members of the Oath Keepers in a group chat that if Trump called upon them as a militia, he believed the US Secret Service would be “happy” to have their help, according to evidence presented in court Thursday.

    The text was presented during the seditious conspiracy trial of Rhodes and four other defendants. All five have pleaded not guilty.

    “If he calls us up as a militia I think the secret service would be happy to have us out there,” Rhodes wrote, according to prosecutors. Rhodes went on to say this conclusion was based upon numerous positive contacts between Oath Keepers and the Secret Service before several Trump rallies before January 6.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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