Writer of written things. Visual biographer of stick figures. Analyst. Activist. Digital Gardener. On BlueSky.
Joined May 2019
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VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
My extended interview with President Trump:
youtube.com/watch?v=m2aC8lAO…
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
A devastating investigation by The Insider has exposed how Russian military intelligence and the FSB used an American fugitive to manufacture disinformation, interfere in US elections, and manipulate Western public opinion.
The Insider obtained leaked correspondence from John Mark Dougan, a former US police officer who fled to Russia in 2016 and became a key figure in the Kremlin's Storm-1516 disinformation network.
Dougan operated hundreds of fake news websites designed to mimic legitimate Western publications, using AI-generated content and fabricated stories to deceive Western audiences and give Russian propaganda the appearance of credible journalism.
The leaked messages reveal direct cooperation with Russia's GRU military intelligence, including Unit 29155, notorious for covert operations and sabotage abroad.
Dougan helped manufacture stories about Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories and spread fabricated sexual abuse allegations against Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz during the 2024 US election.
Some of these fabrications reached millions of Americans and were amplified by prominent political figures.
But the investigation also reveals how badly things ended for Dougan. By 2026, he was complaining about being broke, earning less than a Russian delivery courier, and growing furious over the Kremlin's internet censorship.
After years of spreading Russian propaganda, he was increasingly turning against the very government he had served.
The Insider's investigation provides remarkable firsthand evidence of how Russian intelligence manufactures disinformation and injects it into Western political discourse.
theins.ru/inv/299369
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
In Moscow, Putin is increasingly trapping young people inside gated communities, then, one by one, putting them on buses and shipping them off to war.
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
Putin is 'waging a hybrid war on Ireland' ahead of the European Political Community summit in Dublin - The Sunday Times
Irish intelligence agencies suspect Russia is behind a wave of hoax bomb threats that have disrupted at least 50 flights to and from Ireland, the UK and continental Europe, The Sunday Times reports.
"The modus operandi points to Russian involvement. These incidents are interconnected and coordinated in a way that allows us to conclude that a state actor is involved," an Irish intelligence source told the newspaper.
Hundreds of schools on both sides of the Irish border, supermarkets and media outlets have also received bomb threats in recent weeks. On Friday, similar messages were sent to national broadcaster RTÉ, prompting an evacuation, and to British broadcaster Sky. In addition, hackers breached the refrigeration systems of Irish supermarket chain SuperValu.
The attacks come as Ireland prepares to host the European Political Community summit in Dublin on Thursday, November 12. Around 50 European leaders are expected to attend, including Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.
Police have described the security operation for the summit as the largest in Ireland’s history. Parts of central Dublin will be closed to traffic, and a no-fly zone for drones will be imposed.
"We know that Russia is involved in this kind of activity," Irish Minister of State for European Affairs and Defence Thomas Byrne told the newspaper.
A new wave of bomb threats has affected at least 18 flights across nine European countries, as well as media outlets in Ireland and British broadcaster Sky.
All aircraft landed safely, and no explosives were found during inspections. Danish police are also investigating a threat targeting Copenhagen Airport.
The threats concerned flights to or from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Hungary, Cyprus, Romania, the United Kingdom and Portugal. They caused some disruption to air traffic, although the affected flights accounted for just 0.0674% of the 26,709 flights scheduled across Europe on Friday.
In Ireland, a separate series of threats forced media outlets to interrupt broadcasts and evacuate staff. Police searched offices and newsroom premises.
Investigators have found no evidence linking the hoax threats to terrorist groups or state actors, including Russia or Iran. Some of the threats were reportedly linked to members of the Male State, a Russian far-right movement. The investigation is ongoing.
📹️️️️️️: The Guardian
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
3/7 The 393k. Is ONLY confirmed deaths, not total losses. No wounded/disabled/MIA none of that's in. Total losses can run x3–x5 the death toll
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
1/7 Our @ROSSTAT hack revealed Russia's killed in action. A minimum of 393,881 Russian-side deaths in the war with Ukraine. Source: Rosstat leak, 2022–Aug 27 2026. Here's how we did it and what it actually means 🧵
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
Layer two: the ring.
A set of Spanish-language channels that forward the hub, co-post with it and host it. According to our analysis, between Oct 20 and Nov 5 their content was viewed around 16 million times inside Spain's information space alone.
How we know it is one system and not a coincidence: identical texts posted seconds apart with no forward mark, a nightly automated promotion of Russian state media at 23:01, joint live broadcasts, and a shared "news selection" digest that lists the channels as one editorial block.
35 synchronized clusters in 16 days. That is a distribution system with a shared feed.
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
Today @cpartisans and SilentCrow took down Russia's Federal State Statistics Service — the nerve center behind every socioeconomic number this regime produces.
Full breakdown below 👇
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
Hahahaha. “Ukraine's strikes on Russian oil infrastructure have been greeted with a ‘shrug’ in Washington, according to a U.S. official who spoke to the Kyiv Independent. Another figure close to the administration told the Kyiv Independent that much of the administration's rhetoric around Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure was aimed at a domestic audience, pointing out that the CIA was still supplying Ukraine with intelligence on Russian air defense dispositions that helped facilitate Ukraine's deep-strike campaign.”
kyivindependent.com/ukraine-…
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
This map shows quite clearly what the Russians had in mind in terms of a successful conquest of Ukraine: annexation of about 40% of the country and subordination of the rest.
It's from a leaked presentation of May 2022, circulated by the closely Putin-linked oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, describing the absorption of southern and eastern Ukraine into Russia and the systematic redistribution of its ports and industries among Russian oligarchs.
Russia seems to have intended to seize most of the industrialised areas of Ukraine, leaving the less valuable (and more Ukrainian-speaking) rural and agricultural regions under the control of a rump, landlocked Ukrainian state governed by a pro-Moscow regime. It's safe to assume that Russia would also have taken over Moldova at some point.
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
"Putin will wage war. I don’t know when, but he will. And you, Europeans, will be surprised to discover that this war is aimed at you, too... You think that what is happening in Moscow has nothing to do with you—that it’s our problem.
Putin hates people like me, certainly. But through us—in Russia, or through the revolutionaries in Ukraine or Georgia—it is you he hates: your democracy, your society, your freedoms.
Do you think his regime is merely a threat to us? Your awakening will be brutal."
Anna Politkovskaya, in Paris, 2005.
She was assassinated in the lobby of her apartment building on October 7, 2006—Putin’s birthday.
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
Russian forces have begun taking civilians from occupied Oleshky to Russia, apparently disregarding previously announced agreements governing the operation.
The operations are being conducted by the Russian military, without American representatives or teams from either side’s ombudsman office present. Russia’s state news agency TASS is openly filming the operation.
There is no indication that civilians are being given a choice of where they wish to go. No buses or other vehicles designated to transport evacuees to Ukrainian-controlled territory are visible.
The operation raises serious concerns that Russia is once again exploiting a humanitarian evacuation to forcibly transfer Ukrainian civilians.
The parallels with the evacuation of Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant are disturbing. Once again, Moscow appears to be disregarding agreed procedures while controlling the fate of Ukrainian civilians.
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
‼️Oha. - Ganz so "irrelevant" scheint das AfD-Leak wohl doch nicht zu sein. - ZDF heue Exklusiv:
"Regelmäßig haben Mitarbeiter des Abgeordneten als "VS-NfD" ("Verschlusssache - Nur für den Dienstgebrauch") eingestufte Dokumente an Frohnmaiers private AOL-Mailadresse weitergeleitet. Darunter waren viele Papiere mit Russland-Bezug: etwa Dossiers zur OSZE-Konferenz in Berlin im Juli 2018, Protokolle des Auswärtigen Amtes zu Ukraine-Verhandlungen, der Lage im syrischen Bürgerkrieg oder zum von Russland verübten Skripal-Giftanschlag im März 2018 in Großbritannien.
Private Mailkonten für Verschlusssachen: Streng verboten
Dutzendfach leitete sein Büro auch die eingestuften wöchentlichen Unterrichtungen des Bundesverteidigungsministeriums zur Sicherheitslage bei Auslandseinsätzen der Bundeswehr ans private Konto weiter."
zdfheute.de/politik/deutschl…
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
Another mass surrender of Russian forces near Kupiansk - resulting from Ukraine's ongoing operations clearing out old soviet gas pipeline networks.
This is the town Putin claimed only 45 days ago Russia had "liberated".
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
🇪🇪 ✊ Estonian Prime Minister refuses to tone down his rhetoric toward Russians: “I’m not going to hold back”
“Putin is a dictator who kills women and children. And he will continue to do so until he is forced to change course,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said.
Speaking to Delfi, he said he had received no direct requests from the US to soften his rhetoric. The politician added:
“Appeasing dictators only leads to humiliation, and freedom will ultimately be lost anyway.”
🇺🇸 The US has urged the Baltic states to “keep it down” and stop making harsh statements about Russia. Wait, what?
Reuters reports, citing sources, that US officials have approached Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in recent weeks.
Washington believes that strong rhetoric about the Russian threat could escalate tensions and undermine European security.
Among the remarks that reportedly caught Washington's attention was a claim by European leaders that Russia has been “cornered like a rat” by its war against Ukraine and is resorting to increasingly desperate measures.
Apparently, they've been asked not to say things like that anymore.
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
Stanford University student Elsa Johnson became a target of the Chinese Communist Party in 2024.
Elsa attended a private school as a child with a heavy focus on foreign languages and became fluent in Mandarin Chinese while still in elementary school. Years later after she was accepted to Stanford, she studied international relations and researched Chinese industry and military tactics while working at the Hoover Institution on campus.
She soon came to the attention of members of the Chinese Communist Party, which has a heavy presence at Stanford and throughout Southern California. There are currently more than 1,000 Chinese students attending Stanford each year, and the university has received more than $64,000,000 in private donations from Chinese individuals and organizations since 2010.
In June 2024, a man claiming to be a fellow Stanford student named Charles Chen contacted her online. She was not initially suspicious as they had many mutual associates, and his photos and posts appeared to be centered on campus. But his questions and requests quickly put her on edge as he invited her on a paid trip to China. And he seemingly knew details about her that she had never shared with him.
When she tried to disengage with him, she began receiving threatening phone calls by Chinese speakers. Elsa contacted Stanford administrators and the FBI, who told her Charles was likely affiliated with the Ministry of State Security, had been posing as a Stanford student for years, and had targeted at least ten other female students since 2020 in a similar manner. They also told her she was under physical surveillance on campus by the Chinese Communist Party.
Elsa wrote articles in the Stanford Review and The Free Press about Chinese influence on campus, and in March 2026 testified about espionage threats on college campuses before the House Committee on Education and Workforce.
For episode 270 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I spoke with Elsa about being targeted by a foreign government right in the middle of a US college campus. The episode is available now.
#stanford #college #student #china #hooverinstitute
open.spotify.com/episode/6KO…
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
BREAKING: The U.S. cancels plans for a photo with top G20 diplomats after Europeans objected to standing beside Russia, AP sources say. apnews.com/article/g20-rubio…
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
NEW: Russia is actively supporting Houthi operations to disrupt global energy markets by providing the Houthis with satellite imagery of Saudi oil and military infrastructure. Russian satellites have routinely been positioned above major Saudi energy and military sites in the days prior to and after Houthi attacks on those sites since July 2026. (1/2)
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
В Турции задержали 85 членов банды Далтонс, которая подожгла Starlink в Польше.
Группировка управляется из России. Занимается убийствами, вымогательством и наркоторговлей.
Лидер "Кан Далтон" задержан в России в 2024, но не экстрадирован в Турцию.
Потому что Кремль — это ОПГ.
VelvetBIade 🧃🍥 retweeted
German soldier led local branch of Putin-linked Night Wolves biker club for years, The Insider finds
Dual German-Russian citizen Alexander Sautner was only dismissed from the Bundeswehr on Feb. 5, 2026.
theins.press/en/news/298842
