A Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine with his aircraft in 2023 has been found dead in Spain, according to the main military intelligence agency in Kyiv, the GUR. Spanish media said Maksim Kuzminov was found shot 12 times on a car park ramp underneath an apartment block in the town of Villajoyosa in Alicante on the Mediterranean coast.
Here in France, French media personalities relay the discourse of Russian power in the media or on social networks. Often close to the far right, these agents of influence are part of the Kremlin's information strategy. The French authorities have identified 193 sites designed purely to spread Russian disinformation.
Recently, a large-scale cyberattack disrupted Sweden for several days and Russian hackers are suspected of being behind. A data center of the Swedish-Finnish IT services group Tietoevry was targeted.
After the meeting in Munich, the EU is on a war footing. Denmark announced it donating all of its artillery to Ukraine. Sweden just announced it was contributing US$680MM to the war effort. France and Belgium are talking about creating special forces, France already has soldiers in the Baltics.
Russia is exploring every advantage it has to mount new attacks (just minutes ago it was announced that Russian troops have carried out 435 strikes against 19 settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region), and, right now, its trump card (pun intended) is the complicit weakness of the corrupt MAGA/Republican party. In the 50s and the 60s, the FBI was investigating and arresting people for less than what I have seen reported in media.
The distance between Kyiv and Berlin is less than that between New York and Saint-Louis — about 800 miles. As yourselves: would you be comfortable with Russian tanks only 800 miles from where you live? The US media are not framing this correctly and the indifference of most people is appalling.
What are we waiting for to act?