Quote:A hacking group linked to the Russian government has been attempting to breach the U.S. power grid, Wired reports. The hackers have been tracked by security experts from the non-profit group the Electric Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) and security firm Dragos. They warn that the hacking group has been probing the grid for weaknesses, searching for ways that they could access the systems.

Quote:Russian officials on Tuesday contradicted an announcement from President Trump that the Kremlin has “removed most of their people” from Venezuela, Reuters reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters this week that most of its military specialists were still working in Venezuela, despite Trump's tweet on Monday that Russia told the U.S. otherwise. ADVERTISEMENT “By all appearances, it’s a circumstantial reference to newspaper sources of information, because there was no official message about this from the Russian side and there couldn’t be one,” Peskov said, according to Reuters. “There really are [Russian] specialists who service hardware that’s been previously delivered and that process is going according to plan.”

Quote:Unbeknownst to the hipsters at the time, they had become the latest target of a group of “healthy-living” vigilantes going by the name of “Leo against.” The brainchild of a neo-Nazi called Maxim Lazutin – the name come’s from Lazutin’s Zodiac sign – the group’s idea is as primitive as it is ironic: protecting Russia’s public and moral order by attacking anyone they see smoking, drinking or using foul language... 

Their methodology is as well-worked as it is well-monetised. The group film their “public order” raids, which usually end in punches and pepper spray. Then, they post their videos on YouTube, earning significant advertising revenue from their nearly two million subscribers in the process. The group have been active at some level since 2014, but in recent months they have stepped up their operations.

Quote:Russia is seeking to bolster its presence in at least 13 countries across Africa by building relations with existing rulers, striking military deals, and grooming a new generation of “leaders” and undercover “agents”, leaked documents reveal. The mission to increase Russian influence on the continent is being led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman based in St Petersburg who is a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. One aim is to “strong-arm” the US and the former colonial powers the UK and France out of the region. Another is to see off “pro-western” uprisings, the documents say.

Quote:The Russian Air Force has repeatedly bombed hospitals in Syria in order to crush the last pockets of resistance to President Bashar al-Assad, according to an investigation by The New York Times. An analysis of previously unpublished Russian Air Force radio recordings, plane-spotter logs and witness accounts allowed The New York Times to trace bombings of four hospitals in just 12 hours in May and tie Russian pilots to each one.

Quote:It was the equivalent of a V-sign cheerfully flashed at his critics. The day after his landslide election victory, Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds dropped into a caviar-fuelled Christmas party in London hosted by former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny. During the campaign Johnson had stubbornly refused to publish the Russia report, written by the last parliament’s intelligence and security committee. Its contents have still not been revealed. But it is understood to examine the extent of Moscow influence on British politics – and the way in which the Russian elite has established a powerful lobby in the UK through lavish expenditure and networking...

Johnson’s decision to call in on the Lebedevs might be explained as an act of political homage. The Lebedevs own the Evening Standard. Over the summer the newspaper, edited by Osborne, endorsed Johnson to succeed Theresa May. It backed him again last month as the best candidate to be prime minister, an opinion at odds with the left-leaning, Remain-backing Londoners who form its target audience.

What lies behind the prime minister’s reluctance to publish the Russia report has yet to be explained. He has dismissed the suggestion of Kremlin interference in the EU referendum vote. And yet on a busy day laced with history, Johnson chose to celebrate with a foreign intelligence officer with the rank of a lieutenant colonel, who graduated from the KGB’s Red Banner Institute.

As London mayor, Johnson made repeated trips to the Lebedevs’ luxurious palazzo in Ronti, Italy, and to Evgeny’s parties in London in 2010. He was one of an array of celebrities and actors who flew out to the villa for lavish weekends, complete with a Michelin-starred private chef and a dressing-up box filed with exotic costumes. Evgeny’s pet wolves – one of them called Boris – would pad around as the great and the good enjoyed themselves.

Sometimes Johnson took his wife Marina Wheeler, from whom he is now divorcing, with him. But in April 2018, at the height of the crisis over the poisoning of Russian former spy Sergei Skripal, Johnson flew to Perugia on his own. He was foreign secretary. In a highly unusual move, he left his security detail behind. The following morning he was spotted queuing at the airport for an Easyjet flight home, crumpled and hungover.

Quote:French police believe the killing of a Chechen opposition blogger in a French hotel last week was “politically motivated,” an official briefed on the case told Business Insider. Imran Aliev, a 44-year-old blogger who was vocally opposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, died when his throat was cut in Lille, France, last week. Police said they were hunting for Aliev’s traveling companion, who disappeared shortly after the killing. The man had traveled with Aliev from Belgium to Lille on January 29, the day before Aliev was found dead. Aliev had been under police protection in Belgium because of “threats out of Russia and Chechnya over his opposition blogging,” the official told Business Insider.

Quote:The Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny is in a coma and on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit after suffering a suspected poisoning. “We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed into his tea,” his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, tweeted. “That was the only thing he drank this morning. The doctors say that the toxin was absorbed more quickly because of the hot liquid. Right now Alexei is unconscious.” An outspoken critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Navalny was returning to Moscow by plane from Tomsk in Siberia when he began to feel ill. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk and he was taken to hospital. A mobile video shot on the plane showed medical personnel rushing onboard as a man screamed in agony. 

Even as he lay in a coma in hospital, there were signs of pressure on the opposition leader’s family members and political allies. Navalny’s civil wife and a personal doctor had been barred from visiting him by hospital officials because Navalny, who is unconscious, had not given them permission, Yarmysh said. Hospital staff had also refused to show them the results of his analyses that would indicate a poisoning, she said. Meanwhile, investigators who said they wanted to check for medicines or other potential toxins had also seized his belongings, she said... Yarmysh drew a parallel with an incident last year in which Navalny suffered an acute allergic reaction one doctor said could have resulted from poisoning with an unknown chemical. “One year ago, Alexei was poisoned when he was in jail,” she wrote. “Clearly the same thing has happened again.”

Quote:The Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny is merely the latest Kremlin critic suspected to have been poisoned in murky circumstances. Over the past century a series of political opponents have fallen mysteriously ill. Many have died.

Quote:The wife of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has appealed directly to Vladimir Putin to allow her husband to be evacuated to a clinic in Germany to receive treatment for a suspected poisoning. Doctors treating Navalny in the Siberian city of Omsk have refused to release him for evacuation to a clinic abroad, sparking a standoff with his family and aides who say his life is in danger in Russia.In a letter addressed to the Russian president’s administration, Yulia Navalnaya wrote that her husband “needs qualified medical assistance” and asked for permission to transport Navalny to Germany. A Kremlin spokesman had previously said he would provide assistance in evacuating the opposition critic, if asked directly. 

The appeal followed a day of dramatic developments at Omsk’s emergency hospital No 1, where the head doctor, Alexander Murakhovsky, said Navalny had not been poisoned but had been diagnosed with a metabolic disease caused by low blood sugar. He said that may have caused the opposition figure’s collapse onboard a flight to Moscow on Thursday, although it would not explain why he has not regained consciousness more than a day later.

• Low blood sugar, yea, right...
  

Quote:A Russian journalist has died after setting herself on fire in front of the local branch of the interior ministry in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, a day after her apartment was searched by police. Prior to her self-immolation, Irina Slavina wrote on her Facebook page: “I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death.” Slavina worked as editor-in-chief at Koza Press, a small local news outlet that advertised itself as having “no censorship, no orders ‘from above’”. A day before her death, she wrote on Facebook that police officers and investigators had searched her apartment, and that they were looking for “brochures, leaflets and accounts” from the Open Russia opposition group, which is financed by the Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky. She said they seized notebooks, her laptop and other electronics, as well as her daughter’s laptop and her husband’s mobile phone.