France, Germany and Italy sold hundreds of millions worth of arms to Russia 

They sold military kit to the Kremlin for years despite an EU embargo banning it

They were three of at least 10 countries to use a loophole to get past the ban 

France alone sold €152million out of a total €350million (£293million) exported

Three EU-based firms are suspected of trying to smuggle arms to Belarus and Russia, in what might be the tip of a larger black market.

Czech firm Česká zbrojovka tried to export over 100 rifles and pistols via Moldova to Russia in 2020, according to a Moldovan document seen by EUobserver.

Mo, een gekleurde bekende van de politie, wordt op 25 april 2020 door de politie in Hilversum aangehouden. Hij zou de corona maatregelen hebben overtreden omdat hij met drie niet gezinsleden in de auto zat. Tijdens het uitschrijven van de bekeuring ontstaat er een woordenwisseling tussen Mo en agent Richard van der V. Van der V. zegt tegen Mo dat hij “een dikzak” is. Mo vindt dit niet oké en maakt de agent daarop uit voor “sukkel”. Vervolgens wordt Mo met geweld aangehouden. Hij en zijn medepassagiers worden niet meer beboet voor het overtreden van de coronamaatregelen.

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Nog geen 5 jaar na de invoering van de nieuwe inlichtingenwet blijkt deze alweer te krap, en klinkt de roep om de bevoegdheden te verruimen. Hiermee lijkt de geschiedenis zich opnieuw te herhalen, waarin de wet telkens wordt opgerekt om illegale operaties van inlichtingendiensten te legaliseren.

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Op maandag 21 februari werd ik plots gebeld door iemand van de politie die zich voorstelde als Nico Lefferts en die aangaf in gesprek te willen met mij als onderdeel van AFA Noord over de komende verkiezingen en te verwachten spanningen tussen partijen als het Forum voor Democratie en ons als antifa beweging.

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Since 2014, the news media and other observers have provided accounts of weapon sourcing to armed formations operating in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. To date, efforts  to verify these claims have relied largely on examinations of open-source photos and videos of weapons and ammunition, rather than systematic field-based investigations.

To fill this evidentiary gap, CAR undertook a three-year field investigation of materiel recovered from the self-declared DPR and LPR. This report presents the findings to help shed light on the extent to which these armed formations depend on external supplies.

The evidence confirms that factories based in what is today the Russian Federation produced most of the militias’ ammunition and nearly all their weapons, from assault rifles and precision rifles, grenade launchers, precision-guided munitions, and landmines to anti-tank guided weapons. The findings also indicate that these armed formations field weapons previously captured by Russian forces, such as Polish anti-aircraft missiles seized in Georgia in 2008.
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The tough future of Russia’s attack drones

The rapid development of military drones around the world has raised a natural question time and time again-why is Russia so backward in design and production? In most cases, the main reason for this is the lazy thinking of the military and engineers. However, one of the most important and completely unreported problems lies in a completely different level-the technical level. Today we are going to analyze the real reason why Russia has fallen behind in attacking drones.

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Editor’s Note

When we published the key points of the report “Weapons of War in Ukraine” by the UK-based investigative organization Conflict Armament Research, it caught our eye that between 2014 and 2018, the drone manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries supplied a sanctioned Russian defense company with UAV components produced by various European and US manufacturers, thus providing a loophole for sanctions evasion.

To understand whether it is used now, we reached out to military expert Mykhailo Samus, Director of the New Geopolitics Research Network, and found out how exactly Israeli technologies are helping Russia today, when western companies decided that it’s not worth the risk supplying war technologies to Russia, and that, paradoxically, Ukraine is still under an unofficial arms embargo from countries of Western Europe.

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The surveillance drones contained computer chips and components made in the United States and Europe