Comment on this storyComment

Russian authorities blocked access to key news sources and information related to the Wagner mercenary group as it advanced towards Moscow on Saturday, adding to the confusion as rumors and misinformation about the events surfaced.

According to nonprofit group NetBlocks, which monitors internet censorship, news aggregator Google News was blocked by Rostelecom, Russia’s largest digital operator, along with at least four other major internet service providers, as of Friday night. According to NetBlocks, Google News was only available about half the time via Moscow city phone service MegaFon.

Other observers reported that Telegram, a messaging, news and social networking program widely used in Russia, is experiencing significant outages in cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as at points on the route from the southern city of Rostov to the capital came. on the Don, which Wagner troops controlled.

Though observers said the internet as a whole remained largely operational as of Saturday night, Russia’s government news agency Tass reported that searches for Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on Yandex, Russia’s Google equivalent, revealed some results were hidden in accordance with federal laws became. According to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, the Russian social network VKontakte also blocked content related to Prigozhin.

One of the blocked VKontakte groups, with nearly half a million subscribers, was used by Wagner to post job vacancies and promote the group as an effective military force in Ukraine.

The speed at which Russia blocked Wagner-related content showed that in the 16 months since the start of the Ukraine war, the country has become much more in control of what messages its residents have access to.

Shortly after the start of the war in February last year, major international digital services such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok were blocked in Russia, except for those using virtual private networks that obscure locations. Yandex and other local companies have come under increasing scrutiny from Russia’s Internet regulator Roskomnadzor.

With an international user base and headquarters outside of Russia, Telegram is a particularly important source of information about events in Ukraine. It has had many Russian users since it was founded ten years ago by Russian entrepreneurs who are now in exile.

But on Saturday it was full of false information, including on some channels claiming affiliation with the Wagner group managed by Prigozhin supporters. An account with more than 40,000 subscribers denied that Prigozhin reached an agreement to halt his march on Moscow, although others confirmed this. A similar report accused Prigozhin of betraying Russia by withdrawing.

Meanwhile, some Twitter accounts popular for following the war claimed that Putin fled Moscow on his private plane — reports that have not been confirmed. Others made him crouch in a bunker.

Conflicting information is a natural part of the warlike actions of Prigozhin, one of the world’s most famous propagandists who gained international attention through his Internet Research Agency, a troll farm largely responsible for rigging the 2016 US presidential election. The St. Petersburg-based IRA is also believed to have been involved in campaigns to disrupt elections in several other countries.

Prigozhin was among the Russians charged by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III with election interference. The Justice Ministry halted prosecutions against one of Prigozhin’s companies, Concord Management, in 2020 on the grounds that the hearing of the case was linked to the disclosure of national security information. But prosecutors said at the time that they would continue to pursue Prigozhin and others named in the case.

Understanding the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Check out 3 more stories

The 65-year-old man, an experienced hiker and avid mountaineer, disappeared in January during an expedition in California’s Mount San Antonio region.

Five months later, the mysterious and tragic disappearance could be solved. Human remains were discovered Saturday, June 24, by hikers in the Mount San Antonio region of California, near the area where British actor Julian Sands was reported missing, local authorities announced on Sunday.

They were taken to the coroner’s office for identification. The identification process is expected to take several days and could be completed next week. Julian Sands, 65 at the time of his disappearance, is best known for his role in the 1985 James Ivory film A Room with a View. He disappeared in January atop 10,000-foot Mount San Antonio, locally called Mount Baldy, just outside of Los Angeles.

A series of violent storms

Julian Sands was an experienced hiker and avid mountaineer who said he was happiest when he was “near the top of a mountain on a gloriously cold morning.” “Mountaineering and filmmaking are closely related,” he told the Yorkshire Post in 2013 during an expedition to the Swiss Alps. “There is always another mountain. And ultimately, mountaineering is about the mountain itself. And I think that goes for the actor’s experience as well.”

California had been hit by a series of severe storms in December and January, accompanied by heavy snowfall in mountain ranges including Mount San Antonio. The peak where Sands disappeared is the highest in the San Gabriel Range and a popular destination for Los Angeles residents.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff said at the time that the route was becoming increasingly dangerous and eight deaths were known between 2017 and 2022. The actor’s brother Nick said two weeks after the search began he accepted Julian Sands’ disappearance. “He has not yet been declared missing, he is believed to be dead but I know in my heart that he is gone,” he admitted, according to local English media from Yorkshire, where the two brothers grew up.

Russian state television broadcasts a documentary about Silvio Berlusconi during the uprising of the Wagner mercenaries and fears of a possible coup. This was reported by BBC journalist Francis Scarr, who monitors Russia’s state information channels, which are also being relaunched by Sky News.

General Bertolini: “Prigozhin and Wagner cannot win alone, they need the armed forces”

Suicide pact, two sisters take their own lives at the age of 23 and 24: “One was an atheist and the other a lesbian, the family rejected her”

They send children to school with cockroaches and bugs in their backpacks, parents are arrested. The teachers: “They crawled out, they were everywhere”

The documentary on the state channel Rossiya 24

“Russia’s state news channel Rossiya 24 is not entirely ignorant of events, but the fact that it is currently airing a documentary about Silvio Berlusconi says a lot,” the reporter tweeted, posting a photo of the show.

Read the full article
on Leggo.it

Moscow-. The group of Russian western troops prevented four attempts by the Ukrainian army to conduct a troop rotation at the front in the Kupyansk region, spokesman for this group Sergey Tsybinsky reported today.

As reported by the military spokesman on his Telegram channel, the group’s artillery prevented Ukraine’s attempts to rotate units on the front line of the settlements of Dvurechnoye, Sinkovka and Novosiolovskoye near Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region.

Zybinski added that units of the Msta-S artillery system also killed two Ukrainian mortar crews near the towns of Kislovka and Tabayevka.

In the Kupyansk area, Western Aviation Group 11 Ka-52 and Mi-28 attack helicopters and Su-25 attack aircraft launched attacks against nine concentration areas of personnel, weapons, military and special equipment of the 14th Mechanized Brigade and the 103rd Territorial Defense Brigade Regiment , he said.