Glomixy Hub

  On 27 February, Putin ordered Russia to move nuclear forces to a ‘special mode of combat duty’, which has a significant meaning in terms of the protocols to launch nuclear weapons from Russia. According to Russian nuclear weapons experts, Russia’s command and control system cannot transmit launch orders in peacetime, so increasing the status to ‘combat’ allows a launch order to go through and be put into effect. Putin reminded the world that Russia “remains one of the most powerful nuclear states” and he threatened “consequences you have never faced in your history” for “anyone who tries to interfere with us,” a clear nuclear threat to anyone who might come to Ukraine’s aid. How many nuclear weapons does Russia have? Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads, the devices that trigger a nuclear explosion, though this includes about 1,500 that are retired and set to to be dismantled. Of the remaining 4,500 or so, most are considered strategic nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, or roc...

  Alexei Navalny was born on 4 June 1976 – 16 February 2024, was a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, anti-corruption activist, and a political prisoner. He organised anti-government demonstrations and ran for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia, and against President Vladimir Putin and his government.   Navalny was a Russian Opposition Coordination Council member. He was the leader of the Russia of the Future party and founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). He was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights. Alexei Navalny’s net worth Alexei Navalny had a net worth of $500 thousand at the time of his death. Though, it should be noted that it is difficult to accurately determine the exact net worth of Alexei Navalny as he did not publicly disclose his financial information. Additionally, the Russian government accused Navalny of financial wrongdoing and levi...

  No one can deny that Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act, allocating $816.7 billion to the U.S. Defense Department in 2022. The U.S. spends hundreds of billions of dollars both domestically and internationally to advance U.S. interests, but some of the biggest beneficiaries are also some of the world’s largest corporations. According to the Department of Defense (DOD), the top U.S. military contractors include Lockheed Martin Corporation, Raytheon Technologies Corporation and General Dynamics Corporation. Together, those companies account for $297.68 billion in market capitalization. Raytheon’s total revenue was $67.1 billion and the U.S. accounted for nearly 40% of that total, purchasing $25.4 billion from Raytheon. The arms business goes worldwide. The United States is the largest exporter of weapons, with its top buyers being Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. When war breaks out, milita...

  Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin was born on 1 June 1961, is a Russian oligarch and mercenary chief, and was a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until he launched an alleged coup in June 2023. Prigozhin is sometimes called "Putin's chef", as he owns restaurants and catering companies that provide services for the Kremlin. Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin has accumulated significant wealth over the years. His net worth is estimated to be around $1 billion. He has luxury property, a yacht and a private jet. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin became rich through his personal ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, winning lucrative catering and construction contracts with the Russian government while building a mercenary force known as Wagner. Lyubov Prigozhina Lyubov Prigozhina was born on June 26, 1970, is the spouse of Yevgeny Prigozhin and owner of Agat LLC, a subsidiary of Concord Management and Consulting LLC, which belongs to the Concord group, founded an...

  It is known that Taiwan is slightly smaller than Maryland and Delaware combined, with a population of 24 million. It is a small island about 100 miles off the coast of southern China. You have to know Taiwan first came under Chinese control in the 17th century when the Qing dynasty began administering it. In 1895, the Qing gave up the island to Japan after losing the first Sino-Japanese War. After Japan lost WW II, China re-took Taiwan, but a civil war broke out between nationalist government forces led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong’s Communist Party. When the Communists won in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist party, known as the Kuomintang, fled to Taiwan, where they ruled for the next several decades. Here are 7 practical reasons why China won't resort to using force: 1- Taiwan has natural defenses including a rugged coastline with few wide beaches suitable for landing enough troops to subdue 24 million people. The mountainous terrain is riddled with tunnel...

  Around 2000, FBI agents learned there were multiple sets of Russian spies in the United States, posing as Americans.   The spies were trained in Russia to assimilate into everyday American life by getting married, obtaining jobs and raising families, while also sending encoded messages back home. The spies lived double lives. Anna Chapman Anna Vasilyevna Chapman was born on 23 February 1982, is a Russian intelligence agent, media personality and model who was arrested in the United States on 27 June 2010. At the time of her arrest, she was accused of espionage on behalf of the Russian Federation's external intelligence agency, she had previously gained British citizenship through marriage, which she used to gain residency in the U.S. Anna Chapman, the Russian spy who was deported from the United States in 2010 after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges, has apparently combined her twin interests in international affairs and modeling into the most topical Instagram...

  After Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, the Obama Administration provided Ukraine nonlethal security assistance, such as body armor, helmets, vehicles, night and thermal vision devices, heavy engineering equipment, advanced radios, patrol boats, rations, tents, counter-mortar radars, uniforms, medical kits, and other related items. In2017, the Trump Administration announced U.S. readiness to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine. In 2022, the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have directed nearly $50 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, and military support. The historic sums are helping a broad set of Ukrainian people and institutions, including refugees, law enforcement, and independent radio broadcasters, though most of the aid has been military-related. Dozens of other countries, including most members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union, are also providing large aid packages to Ukraine. Muc...

  The concept of war crimes is a recent one. Before World War II, it was generally accepted that the horrors of war were part of the nature of war, and recorded examples of war crimes go back to Greek and Roman times. Before the twentieth century armies frequently behaved brutally to enemy soldiers and non-combatants alike and whether there was any punishment for this depended on who eventually won the war. There are two different kinds of crime relating to war. The first is the crime of aggression, which is a crime of resorting to war without a legal basis. The second is a war crime, which is a crime relating to conduct in the war in other words, how to fight. There is an important question "Is killing civilians during a war always a war crime?" The answer is "Not always." There are several different rules at stake. The first and most obvious is you can’t target civilians. The only exception to that is if the civilian is directly participating in hostilities. 1...

  As large-scale war in Ukraine enters its fortieth week, America and Western governments must support Kyiv as it resists a Russian invasion that is destroying much of the country and raise the costs of aggression to Moscow. On the other hand, they have to minimize risks of the war spiraling into a wider confrontation between Russia and NATO. In the face of Ukraine’s resistance, Russia has turned to ever more brutal tactics. Zelenskyy has asked the U.S. to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine to diminish the Russian bombardment continuing to devastate the country. A no-fly zone would require American forces to police the airspace over Ukraine, which would almost certainly lead to a direct conflict between the U.S. and Russia. President Biden has drawn a red line that no U.S. forces will fight in Ukraine. Western leaders should, as they have done so far, avoid tactics, like a no-fly zone that would be tantamount to war with Russia. Read more:  7 reasons why sanctions won’t hu...

  Russia earned over US$110 billion in 2021 from oil exports, twice as much as its earnings from natural gas sales abroad. Russia produces close to 11 million barrels per day of crude oil. It uses roughly half of this output for its own internal demand, which presumably has increased due to higher military fuel requirements, and exports 5 million to 6 million barrels per day. Today Russia is the second-largest crude oil producer in the world. About half of Russia’s exported oil roughly 2.5 million barrels per day is shipped to European countries, including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria. Nearly one-third of it arrives in Europe via the Druzhba Pipeline through Belarus. China is another large buyer: It imports 1.6 million barrels per day of Russian crude oil. Half comes via a special direct pipeline, the Eastern Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline, which also services other customers via a port at its end point, including J...

Sanctions are often viewed strictly in terms of the amount of economic havoc they cause, in which case they do have a strong record of success, but if sanctions are seen as a coercive tool to pressure governments into changing their policies, then their record is not as impressive. There are many reasons why sanctions have proved such a disappointing instrument of Western policy towards Russia: 1- the Russian economy is large enough to absorb the impact of even the most severe sanctions. The central bank holds USD$630 billion ($878 billion) in foreign currency and gold reserves. The sovereign wealth fund accounts for another US$190 billion. Russia is a global strategic supplier of oil and gas. And public debt is a very modest 20 per cent of GDP. Fortified by this resilience, the Kremlin’s reaction to the threat of further and tougher sanctions is “bring it on”. It is especially confident that Russia can absorb more pain than the Europeans, some of whom remain heavily dependent on Russi...

  In only few months a full scale panic about Russia invading Ukraine has been sold to the Western media. There will be all kinds of threatening gestures and special military operations, but Russia will not occupy Ukraine. What does Putin want? A security framework in Europe favorable to Russia based on pre-1997 conditions, in which NATO agrees to cease all expansion and Ukraine remains well disposed to Moscow. 1-  Putin wants respect and treatment as a peer. He wants to expand the buffer between NATO and the European Union through Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. He is applying intimidation to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accommodate Russian demands to cease its western impulses to join NATO that almost certainly never will occur. Read more:  The 11 reasons why America supports Israel 2-  Moscow is only a six-hour drive up highway from Ukraine’s northern border. NATO has been alert enough to Russian sensitivity on this topic not to invite Ukraine to...

Trump's supporters always repeat that after the result of election "It's not over until it's over. There's still the courts. If ever there's ever a time to expose widespread fraud, this is the president to do it. The media doesn't decide who wins the presidency. The legal voters of this country decide." A Virginia-based former high-level Trump campaign staffer is crowdfunding an effort to use a call center to fish for accounts of voter fraud in Pennsylvania and other swing states. 1- We’re focusing on areas with exceptionally high Democratic turnout. This is an effort to better establish whether the election was legitimate. 2- Voter ID proponents and other conservative political groups have long struggled to produce hard evidence of mass voter fraud. But  his group was using a call center to track down people who moved or were otherwise nominally inactive voters, asking them to confirm if they cast a ballot in order to detect possible identity ...