Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | October 11, 2026

After 23 years, US-led occupation forces are formally leaving Iraq. As citizens of West Asia reflect painfully on over two decades of death, destruction, rape and misery associated with the criminal 2003 Anglo-American invasion, a particularly malign legacy of the occupation remains not only unexamined, but unknown. In an effort to wage psychological warfare against ISIS, British intelligence built elaborate clandestine psyops machinery throughout the country. Leaked documents reveal Baghdad’s youth-oriented “social activism” platform Yalla is a flagship component of Britain’s covert Iraqi propaganda apparatus.

Ostensibly launched by young local journalists in 2015, Yalla is one of Baghdad’s largest news and social media platforms, boasting millions of followers within the country and wider region. Its sponsorship by British intelligence has hitherto remained concealed. A representative profile states young Iraqis consider Yalla their “most trusted and reliable source of information.” In a perverse irony, repeated reference is made to how Yalla “differs from other Iraqi media platforms” by being editorially and financially independent, and the challenges this supposed autonomy poses:

“Yalla now has over 5 million followers. 92% of its followers are inside Iraq and 35% of the followers are women. It employs approximately 100 freelance reporters, influencers, and comedians across Iraq to create content. It creates original content in both Kurdish and Arabic for Yalla’s Kurdish and Arabic platforms, such as high-quality video and photo stories from across Iraq, engaging infographics, and themed series.”

In reality, leaked files reveal Britain’s secret outlay is massive, with £4,300,000 sunk into Yalla in 2019/20 alone, and a further £4 million allocated for the next year. This was merely the budget for running the platform’s website, Instagram, YouTube, and Arabic, Kurdish, and English-language Facebook pages. Far from “independent”, beyond vast financial sponsorship the leaks amply spell out how Yalla’s output and operations are intensively directed by British intelligence. Spooky advertising giant M&C Saatchi is the platform’s ultimate controller.

In submissions to the Foreign Office, M&C Saatchi boasted of its “significant experience…implementing sensitive unattributable programming for government clients.” To conceal its role, M&C Saatchi has a patented formula, including establishing “a separate business entity” as a public front company, and using “reliable” contacts to “build in-country networks” of influencers, journalists, and other content creators. “Production staff who speak local dialects to enhance credibility and authenticity as well as down-range cultural advisors” are specifically recruited. In the Iraqi context, M&C Saatchi pledged:

“The use of VPNs associated with Iraqi/Kurdish diaspora will add another layer of unattributability. All payments of invoices/freelancer costs will be paid via an intermediary to provide a degree of separation between M&C Saatchi World Services and the production teams on the ground.”

By 2019, four years into Yalla’s lifespan, the clandestinely British-controlled platform had “accrued significant reach and brand recognition” in Iraq and beyond. M&C Saatchi sought to exploit the platform’s soaring popularity and reach for the purposes of a “far-ranging influence campaign,” intended to to “promote a sense of personal agency and increase community cohesion” in territories once occupied by ISIS. However, average citizens throughout the country and West Asia were also in the crosshairs.

‘Behaviour Change’

M&C Saatchi pledged to bombard target audiences with expansive multimedia psyops, intended to highlight and encourage “personal agency, community cohesion and national unity” among Iraqis young and old. Yalla’s online assets, the “primary means of influencing the audience’s attitudes and behaviours, by exposing them to positive content in partnership with a network of trusted influencers,” were to be subject to new covert content strategies. The objective was to “create a user experience which is similar to mentoring or life-coaching programmes”:

“Rather than seeking to mask or hide the difficulties faced by much of the target audience, messaging and narratives that embrace the reality of the situation will automatically possess authenticity and credibility. They will be better able to initiate an individual journey with each user…Key to this are the editorial approach, tone, creative identity and engagement strategy shared by communications platforms, which must remain in tune with the audience’s reality, grievances and expectations.”

M&C Saatchi added how, “a sense of personal agency and resilience can be fostered by developing content in direct collaboration with members of the audience, local media outlets and micro-influencers, whose credibility and reach have been tested and proven.” The intelligence cutout pledged to work with “youth psychologists and training experts to develop a range of evergreen modules, each comprising a series of social videos and interactive graphics that live across Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and that users can consume at their own pace.”

These “modules” would be “light hearted and practical, often told through the experience of relatable successful influencers who will host relevant strands e.g. ‘10 things I did to become a…’.” For example, “in order to frame the multiethnic history and heritage of Iraq as a potential source of political and economic strength, the creative team will develop a travel series with three comedians from the South, the North and from Baghdad”:

“Each of these influencers will be responsible for designing a travel itinerary for one of the others to explore the region they come from, giving the audience an insight into the lived experience of people in that region as well as its diverse historical and cultural heritage. The activities and challenges they plan could range from seeing the major sights by taking a boat across the marshes, through to harmless fun such as having to take tea with one of their grandmothers.”

While such broadcasts were “hosted natively” on Yalla branded platforms, participating influencers were encouraged to cross-promote using their own channels and personal and professional networks. Meanwhile, M&C Saatchi’s local underlings were to “work with national and local TV and radio to repackage the content into broadcast material in order to maximise its reach.” The intelligence cutout had cultivated “relationships with a wide range of media outlets across the country,” and anticipated leveraging this contact “to good effect”:

“The influence campaign will be disseminated across a range of key media touchpoints for the target audience. These touchpoints will be carefully selected by the media strategy team in order to enjoy the widest reach possible and deliver the messaging where it will be best positioned to drive attitudinal and behaviour change at a personal and social level… The campaign will seek to shape choices, reinforce positive ideas and change social perceptions… [and] place increasing focus on user-generated content as the project evolves.”

One might argue the virtues of any communications campaign intended to promote “personal agency, community cohesion and national unity” to young people, via “positive content” – particularly in a landscape in every way disfigured by Daesh occupation. However, on top of Yalla’s audiences being entirely unwitting about its output being effectively authored by the same elements that both masterminded the criminal Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and actively helped create ISIS, the scope for the platform’s abuse was and remains self-evidently massive.

‘Sustained Messaging’

M&C Saatchi’s project was intended to be deeply personally invasive for all concerned. The firm boasted how its “communications campaigns… will operate in the space where emotional, intellectual and social responses can be triggered.” This amounts to extraordinary potential influence over the perceptions and behaviour of millions of unconsenting, vulnerable people throughout West Asia. Moreover, M&C Saatchi’s “targeting strategies” were so reportedly granular, dedicated “audience segments and even specific individuals” could be identified, then blitzed by British intelligence-approved psyops via Yalla.

The still surgingly popular “independent” news, entertainment and social media platform is just one component of a wide-ranging psychological warfare apparatus secretly constructed by London in Iraq over a decade ago in the name of battling ISIS propaganda, which was never dismantled. Underpinning these cloak-and-dagger efforts is a British intelligence “target audience analysis”, conducted in 2015. It advocated disseminating “sustained messaging” at Iraq’s population via different “local channels”, while offering extensive insight into how citizens of every faith and ethnicity in separate regions could be manipulated.

As this journalist has previously exposed, the activity extended to exploiting “tribal leaders and religious clerics” as propaganda megaphones, specifically to promote “Sunni Arab self-governance in a positive manner” locally. Strikingly, M&C Saatchi also managed the operation. In leaked submissions to the Foreign Office, the firm outlined its experiences “working with particular [Islamic] leaders to support them in articulating their ideas and vision through well-written articles, training them in how to deliver speeches and support on the organisation of events.”

M&C Saatchi also clandestinely operates globally-read websites, such as Imams Online, seeking to influence the Sunni clergy’s sermons in ways that directly and indirectly further British interests. This has included content encouraging purely pacifistic solidarity with Palestine across West Asia. Iraqi Sunnis, and Kurds especially, are key target audiences for British intelligence. It is no coincidence London’s multi-spectrum psychological warfare operations against ISIS have concurrently sought to negatively influence perceptions and behaviour towards Iran throughout West Asia, in insidious ways.

For example, this journalist has previously revealed how “within hours” of Iranian Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani’s January 2020 assassination, MI6 cutout Global Strategy Network activated its Aleppo-based network of citizen journalists and media production facilities to produce a video depicting residents of Atarib “handing out sweets in celebration.” The clip was “retweeted by prominent activists and journalists in and beyond Syria, picked up by [Saudi outlet] Al-Arabiyya and broadcast to its 22.5 million followers, and retweeted by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.”

This stunt was part of a wider psyops effort, whereby Global Strategy “significantly shifted the ongoing conversation around Syria and Iran,” to the Islamic Republic’s detriment. Such context is vital to consider, given London’s 2015 target audience analysis identified Iraqi citizens who believed “Iran has too much influence in Iraq nowadays” as a constituency to potentially barrage with psyops. Markedly, intensive focus grouping found the overwhelming majority of Iraqis vehemently rejected this view, across ethnic and religious lines.

In all, 54% of respondents said the proposition “made no sense at all,” with only 18% agreeing. However, 68% of Sunnis surveyed, many of them Iraqi Kurds, concurred. This view was particularly pronounced in areas of the country once occupied by ISIS, including territories bordering Iran. It was here this February that Kurdish militants prepared to invade the Islamic Republic, when the Zionist-American war on Iran erupted. Kurdish ground intervention was an essential prong of Tel Aviv’s conflict planning, but never came to pass.

It was possible to mobilise them because, as British intel’s 2015 Target Audience Analysis found, certain Iraqi Kurds believe their country’s borders “should be changed,” and support seizure of Iranian territory by force. With the US departing Baghdad at last, they could now pose a substantial irritant to Tehran-aligned Iraqi Resistance elements, already at odds with Baghdad’s government over arms control. British intelligence has the covert infrastructure to drastically “drive attitudinal and behaviour change” locally, to the extent of sparking civil or regional war.

Europe is shortening the time it takes to wage a major war. Military transport approvals are meant to take hours rather than days, intelligence to feed more quickly into strike decisions, and a new generation of missiles to bring targets deep inside Russia within reach. Behind the forward garrisons, Europe is building transport networks, reserves, and ammunition production capacity. Taken together, these measures point beyond deterrence to practical preparations for waging war against Russia, including operations deep inside its territory.

The dates 2027, 2028, and 2030 in European rearmament programs can easily suggest that there is still time. But they mark a schedule for building military capabilities, not a guaranteed period of peace. The central question for the coming months is not whether armies will finish rearming in time, but whether a clash can be avoided before they do.

Estonia: A Narrow Front, a Deep Strike

Estonia offers a clear picture of the opening phase this system is being built to fight. The country’s military budget rose 42% in 2026 to €2.4 billion, or 5.4% of gross domestic product. Arms procurement accounts for €1.27 billion – more than half the total. Meanwhile, the headquarters and elements of the 1st Infantry Brigade are moving from Tapa to Jõhvi, roughly 50 kilometers from the Russian border.

A €20.5 million base is under construction in Narva, with €19 million coming from the European Union. Completion is scheduled for summer 2028. Its permanent garrison will number around 200, but it will accommodate up to 1,000 troops in a crisis. The gap between those figures reveals a base designed for rapid expansion. A small garrison is being equipped to receive reinforcements quickly, right on the border.

Holding that ground requires more than barracks. Procurement programs call for nine American HIMARS and nine South Korean Chunmoo multiple-launch rocket systems, both capable of firing ballistic missiles. The relevant munitions have stated ranges of up to 300 and 290 kilometers, respectively. The new concept combines holding the border with deep strikes from the first day of an invasion.

The scale of the response could far exceed that of the opening clash. A battle for a border town could lead to strikes on targets hundreds of kilometers away. Tallinn wants to deny its opponent the option of fighting a small war by preparing to expand its geographical scope.

This also changes what allied assistance means. Allied planning must account not only for how long a small army can hold out until reinforcements arrive, but also for how far the fighting may spread before they reach the front. A missile can be launched before a major formation completes its deployment. Allies may arrive to find that the conflict has already widened.

In such a situation, Estonia and the other Baltic states could serve not only as defensive positions but also as staging grounds for attacks on Russian territory. For Moscow, the issue is no longer simply the size of Estonian units, but the depth of the strikes they envisage. Tallinn, in turn, faces the question of who will sustain its forward forces if the first battles fail to decide the outcome. Sustaining such a war would require support from beyond Estonia. One national budget and a handful of batteries cannot carry that burden.

Germany: An Industrial Base Behind the Garrison

On October 5, Martin Jäger, head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, told the Bundestag: “The point of no return has been passed in the war with Ukraine, and NATO is considering a scenario involving a limited Russian military clash with the Baltic states.” He linked the more immediate danger to limited Russian action in the Baltics that could test the allies’ response. He said intelligence had seen no signs of preparations for a major attack on NATO. The discussion therefore concerns not only a major war after rearmament is complete, but a smaller confrontation capable of triggering an allied response.

In the Baltic scenario, Berlin is publicly discussing the risk of a clash while its forward force is still taking shape. The brigade’s readiness date is not the date on which the threat begins.

In Lithuania, Germany is building a permanent heavy brigade as one element of that support. Full readiness is scheduled for the end of 2027, with 4,800 military personnel and 200 civilian employees. Its core consists of the 122nd Panzergrenadier Battalion, the 203rd Tank Battalion, and a multinational battle group. Until the formation is complete, the Germany-based 37th Brigade is to provide support.

The forward formation is thus tied to forces farther inside Europe. Civilian infrastructure underscores the permanence of the deployment. A school for the children of Bundeswehr personnel opened in Vilnius in September 2025. Units are not simply moving in – families are settling down. A political commitment acquires a permanent address, and the safety of German personnel becomes part of any future crisis in the host country.

Münster, October 1, 2026. Rutte describes a headquarters capable of commanding 50,000 troops and responsible for NATO forces in Estonia and Latvia. Behind the talk of forward battalions lies corps-level command capacity

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But a permanent garrison needs a steady supply of ammunition. Rheinmetall’s new plant in Unterlüß is scheduled to reach an annual output of 350,000 artillery shells in that same year, 2027. The nearly €500 million facility was built in 15 months. Across its entire production network, including overseas sites, the company is targeting roughly 1.5 million shells a year from 2027.

The brigade answers the question of who will enter the fight. The factories answer how to keep fighting once stockpiles run down. The 2027 target is for strengthening this system, not creating it from scratch. Reaching the factory’s planned capacity determines future supply volumes, but it does not set a date before which a clash is impossible. Initial stocks sustain the opening phase of combat. Regular deliveries determine whether its intensity can be maintained.

Between the factory and the front lies the transport network. Europe’s military mobility proposal calls for cross-border transport permits to be processed within three working days, with an emergency procedure taking no more than six hours. A proposed €17 billion would fund the relevant infrastructure under the 2028–2034 budget. For Germany, a transit country, that means bridges, railways, and the capacity of routes leading east.

On October 7, European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius called for this work to accelerate, saying Europe was not yet able to deter Russia. Unlike an exercise, infrastructure upgrades remain after the columns return to barracks. A stronger bridge and a faster permit procedure create a lasting ability to concentrate forces.

A border battle thus gains industrial and logistical depth. But sustaining one’s own forward forces is only half the military equation. The other half is disrupting opposing forces’ supply and command systems. That requires more than additional railcars loaded with shells. It requires weapons with much greater reach.

Britain: A European Deep-Strike Arsenal

London is driving precisely this part of Europe’s preparations. On July 8, 2026, it announced an initiative bringing together roughly a dozen partners to invest more than $50 billion in long-range strike capabilities over ten years. The stated range bracket runs from 300 to more than 2,000 kilometers. Britain’s own commitment within the initiative is £3 billion by 2030.

The British-German Deep Precision Strike program envisages stealthy and hypersonic weapons with ranges exceeding 2,000 kilometers, initially focused on ground launch. Britain is investing £770 million over four years, with entry into service expected in the 2030s. Another £1.4 billion over four years is earmarked for Stratus, a program with France and Italy covering strikes against high-value targets and ships, as well as the suppression of air defenses.

Britain’s participation in PrSM (Precision Strike Missile), a precision-guided ballistic missile program with a stated range of up to 500 kilometers, adds another layer. The emerging capabilities span several range bands, from around 300 kilometers for the Estonian systems through 500 for PrSM to more than 2,000 for the British-German development. Although the programs are at different stages, they share a clear direction. Weapons for fighting at the border are being supplemented with weapons for striking deep behind it.

The missiles of the next decade show how far these strike capabilities are intended to expand. But the next crisis will unfold with whatever weapons are available when it begins. A 2,000-kilometer range is not a prerequisite for a clash in the Baltics. It changes the potential scale of the war, not the earliest date on which it can break out.

Turning national purchases into a combined capability requires a common framework for employing them. In July 2025, General Christopher Donahue outlined elements of eastern-flank planning built around compatible launchers, fire control, and data sharing. He cited Kaliningrad as an example of military capabilities that could be neutralized by ground-based means in an exceptionally short time: “We have already planned this. We have already developed this.”

The discussion also included cloud-based data sharing and Palantir’s Maven Smart System, purchased by NATO to analyze information and support command decisions. The aim is to turn disparate reports into a common picture more quickly. When several armies use compatible command systems, their arsenals gain additional value. Range puts the target within reach, while data sharing allows missions to be coordinated.

But the deeper the planned strikes, the harder it becomes to separate support for a border battle from an expansion of the war. To the attacking side, a target may be part of the other side’s military supply system. To the other side, hitting it may signal that the conflict has crossed a new threshold. The use of conventional weapons thus leaves unresolved how to deter a response that would overturn the assumption of a limited clash.

France: The Nuclear Limit of Europe’s Calculations

This is where France’s nuclear deterrent enters the European picture. On October 6, Le Vigilant conducted an acceptance firing of an M51.3 ballistic missile following its refit. The missile carried no nuclear warhead. In service since October 2025, the variant carries new TNO-2 warheads. The French Defense Ministry cites improvements in range, accuracy, and the ability to penetrate missile defenses.

Brittany, October 6, 2026. Le Vigilant launches an M51.3 without a nuclear warhead

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Macron stated the political message bluntly: “To be free, you must be feared. And to be feared, you must be strong.” France’s modernization adds a nuclear dimension to Europe’s conventional military buildup.

That European dimension is taking a more concrete form. On March 2, 2026, Macron outlined an “advanced deterrence” framework allowing partners to participate in French nuclear exercises and opening the possibility of temporary deployments of strategic forces on allied territory. Germany, Poland and Sweden were among the countries joining the dialogue. But the authority to use nuclear weapons – and to define the vital interests they protect – remains exclusively French. In the Baltic scenario, closer cooperation does not establish an automatic French nuclear response to a border clash. It leaves the decisive threshold in Paris, deliberately undefined.

After the First Clash

Taken together, these national programs suggest that the West is preparing not merely to deter Russia, but to build the capacity for offensive operations against it. In this reading, forward deployments, industrial expansion and deep-strike weapons are interconnected preparations for a war that could extend into Russian territory. They do not, by themselves, establish a single operational plan or prove a decision to initiate hostilities. Conventional forces are meant to make an opposing military operation prohibitively costly, while nuclear forces are meant to deter the most extreme escalation. The weakness is that neither side gets to decide how much damage the other will tolerate.

That problem is especially acute around Kaliningrad, where plans to suppress military infrastructure sit alongside the question of the region’s links to the rest of Russia. If actions during a crisis are perceived as an attempt to cut the region off by force, the argument will no longer be about intentions announced at a press conference. It will be about consequences the other side believes it must stop immediately.

The danger in the coming months lies in the gap between limited intent and an unrestricted response. Berlin is discussing localized action in the Baltics. Tallinn is preparing for deep strikes from day one, while foreign garrisons tie a border battle to allied involvement. Each side may consider its own move limited. Neither can count on the other side accepting its definition of what is permissible.

European capitals therefore need to define where military action would stop after the first clash, whether at the border or after strikes on depots, airfields or targets in Kaliningrad. The programs examined here spell out how to build military power, but offer no mechanism for ending the fighting. Missile range is not strategic foresight. Confidence that escalation can be controlled could turn a system of deterrence into a mechanism for widening the war well before 2030.

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Strategic Culture Foundation | October 9, 2026

The European Union is witnessing a full-blown social revolt. Governing political parties and their economic policies are held in open contempt as public protests and strikes escalate across multiple countries.

Protests, mass marches, and industrial strikes are spreading across the EU in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries. The grievances are various, from students and teachers over woeful education services, to healthcare professionals and transportation workers denouncing crumby wages and pension cuts.

But at the core is a warmongering, dehumanizing system of capitalist inequality.

Unbearable living costs for basic needs, from food to housing, are driving millions onto the streets in desperation and anger at the lack of adequate political response to their concerns. As one French student said: “Too young to be listened to, old enough to be tear-gassed.”

The entire political system is being brought into disrepute for its dysfunction and indifference towards meeting rudimentary human needs. Then, infuriating all the more, are lies from the elite rulers and their propaganda media about “national defense and threat of war from Russia.”

In Spain this week, an 87-year-old frail woman known as Maricarmen died in hospital after she was evicted from her Madrid home because she could not pay the extortionate rent increase. Her plight has come to galvanize a nationwide protest against Spain’s housing crisis, a crisis that is repeated across every European country. Protesters shouted furiously that the pitiful old woman was “murdered by the state and corporations.”

In France, the brutality of police against student protests has shocked the nation and the world. Nearly 7,000 young people have been arrested, as riot police tear gas and shoot at largely peaceful rallies. Students gathering at the Place de la Bastille in Paris and other cities vow that they will not back down. One student had his hand blown off by a police stun grenade while another teenager lost an eye from a rubber bullet fired at close range.

The Place de la Bastille is where the French Revolution manifested in 1798 against a hated aristocracy amid abject misery. Today, the tensions are boiling towards another momentous rebellion, this time inspiring again similar movements across Europe.

These protests and the inhumane suffering that underlie them are channeling uprisings all over the EU.

There is a palpable sense that populations en masse have had enough of decades of inequality and chronic deprivation inflicted by capitalist policies that enrich a few and are enforced by governments slavishly serving the interests of capital over the needs of the citizen majority.

Western media reports talk about “cash-strapped” governments under pressure from bond markets to reduce record debt levels while workers, students and pensioners demand more public investment and relief from economic hardship.

That is a misleading partial portrayal of the problem. Omitted is the crucial backdrop that European governments are directing vast economic resources towards militarism and the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. That is what is causing the “cash-strapped governments.” In other words, their declared fiscal straits are a policy choice, not some mysterious dilemma.

The social crisis sweeping across Europe is also seen in the United States and other Western-aligned nations. The background is a failed economic system that no longer provides a modicum of acceptable living conditions. The problem has been decades in the making from growing inequality and diminishing political representation. Today it is even questionable if Western states are democracies, controlled as they are by corporate oligarchies.

Nevertheless, the social crisis that is unfolding across Europe has been intensified and amplified by European political rulers operating in a relentless war mode against Russia.

The European Union has pumped hundreds of billions of euros into Ukraine over the past four years to prop up a NeoNazi regime run by a corrupt dictatorship – all for the objective of defeating Russia. The EU leaders – many of them unelected, like Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas and António Costa – are driven by an obsessive Russophobia. But that is only part of the explanation.

Other elected leaders and parties like France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz are also despised for their elitism and delusions of grandeur. Merz declares that he wants to make Germany the strongest military in Europe, in total tin-ear deafness to his nation’s economic and social problems and the sinister historical connotations of resurrecting Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, as his government suffers electoral defeat after defeat, European elites deprecate German voters as being blind because they dare to choose parties that are opposed to war with Russia.

There are many grounds for the Europe-wide contempt of ruling parties. Inequality, poverty, unemployment, soaring living costs, declining wages, deteriorating public services. Uncontrolled immigration amid the pressure on inadequate public resources is another cause for grievance. Europe’s complicity in the Israeli genocidal war on Palestinians, and Europe’s complicity in Trump’s aggression towards Iran, Yemen, Cuba, and so on, are other factors.

However, the bogus narrative that governments are “cash-strapped” is a cause for immense public disgust. There are plenty of economic resources to meet public needs. It’s a question of those resources not being permitted to create just and humane societies under the prevailing capitalist system with its priority of enriching a tiny elite class.

The conditions of “tight budgets” and “austerity for the masses” are created by deliberate policies of militarism and fuelling a proxy war in Ukraine.

European “leaders” and their NATO lobbyists like Mark Rutte demand hundreds of billions of euros to boost military industries while at the same time calling for draconian cuts in public spending and social welfare in order to pay for this reckless militarism. The EU is “lending” an additional €90 billion over the next two years alone just to prop up the corrupt regime in Kiev so that it can keep fighting a futile war with Russia. The perverse priority is driven by the military-industrial complex and its corporate investors. It is also driven by an ideological, propagandized mindset that demonizes Russia as an enemy. President Putin and other Russian voices have repeatedly stated that they do not want war with Europe. They say the conflict in Ukraine has root causes that can be resolved through diplomatic engagement. Why are European politicians implacably opposed to peace?

A major factor is covering for internal political and economic failure of the European system. The EU’s economies, as with those in the U.S. and other Western states, are bankrupt dystopias in terms of delivering on social and democratic needs. The failure has been compounded by the costs of war in Ukraine.

That failure is criminal and fatal for the politicians and governments who have overseen the policies. Thus, the political class, including the propaganda news media, cannot admit their criminal policies.

In the face of their own internal contradictions, the European political elites are seeking a solution by externalizing Russia as an enemy. This is the same modus operandi that European rulers have used for the past century and more, unleashing two world wars as a result.

These criminal politicians and their dysfunctional economic system are again pushing war as their escape plan for survival at the expense of millions of lives and at the risk of starting a third world war, one that this time around could involve catastrophic nuclear nemesis.

It is damning of virtually every European government, including primarily the British, that there are no calls for diplomacy and political settlement with Russia. They are committed to waging war on Russia to absolve themselves from the social devastation they are responsible for.

One positive thing, though, is that increasing numbers of people can see through the chicanery and lies. A German student placard summed it up: “We won’t fight your wars… Education not bombs!”

A day of reckoning is imminent. Criminal political leaders and their warmongering system are exposed like never before and in a way that demands total revolt as a proper solution. The consequences are not to be externalized this time. Chickens are coming home to roost, as Malcom X once said.

Montenegro has ordered the expulsion of Mikhail Zvynchuk, head of the pro-Kremlin military information network Rybar, and four other Russian citizens over national security concerns following a security operation targeting suspected Russian hybrid influence activities, Vijesti reported on 9 October.

Zvynchuk is the founder and head of Rybar, a prominent Russian military-focused information network known for its Telegram channels covering Russia's war against Ukraine. The network promotes pro-Kremlin narratives and has been associated with Russian propaganda and influence operations.

Montenegrin police announced on 9 October that the five Russians had their residence rights revoked and were ordered to leave the country on national and internal security grounds. 

Montenegro investigates suspected Russian hybrid activity

The operation involved Montenegro's police and National Security Agency (ANB), which seized drones, high-resolution recording equipment, cameras, and several mobile phones for further examination, according to Vijesti.

According to Montenegrin authorities, the five had arrived in the country less than two days before the operation. The investigation is being conducted with support from international partners.

Montenegrin police identified the five Russian citizens as Zvynchuk, his wife Valeria Zvynchuk, Sergei Belous, Pavel Lekatorchuk, and Kira Doroshenko. Authorities said the case had been referred to prosecutors in Podgorica and Kotor.

The European Union has sanctioned Zvynchuk over activities that undermine or threaten Ukraine's territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence. He has also been sanctioned by the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia, and Ukraine, according to Vijesti.

Suspected influence operation targeting EU integration

Vijesti reported, citing security sources, that Montenegrin authorities suspected the group of planning a documentary intended to undermine public support for the country's European integration.

According to the outlet, the planned material would portray Montenegro's expected alignment of its visa policy with EU standards as a politically imposed measure that threatens tourism, economic stability, and national interests.

Security services had monitored the group's arrival before carrying out the operation in Risan, in the Bay of Kotor area, Vijesti reported. The equipment seized from the group will undergo expert analysis to establish its intended purpose and use in Montenegro.

Medvedev threatens imprisoning “European and American idiots” for prisoner exchanges

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev responded to the operation by suggesting Moscow might need to expand its pool of prisoners to exchange for Europeans and Americans to secure Zvynchuk's return.

“We will probably have to replenish our pool of prisoners for exchange with European and American idiots,” Medvedev said, according to Vijesti.

Montenegro, a NATO member and EU candidate, has aligned itself with EU sanctions against Russia following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The expulsion comes amid broader European concerns over Russian intelligence activity, propaganda, and other forms of hybrid interference. 

Two Ukrainian defense-tech firms, The Fourth Law and Odd Systems, have joined forces to mass-produce thermal imaging sensors in Europe and the US, The Fourth Law told Militarnyi. The goal is to wean Western militaries off foreign suppliers, chiefly China, for the core part of every thermal camera.

Amid Russia's daily attacks, Ukrainian drone makers have been shifting production to allied countries. Linza and Zoom drones are now built in Germany, and another top manufacturer has taken its technology to Canada and Finland. Sensor plants would move a core component west, not just finished drones.

A Western answer to Chinese sensors

The project, called Project Foundation, will build long-wave infrared sensors, known as microbolometers. These chips register heat, so a camera can pick out a person or vehicle at night or through smoke. The aim, The Fourth Law said, is to "ensure the sovereignty of Western countries in the field of thermal imaging technology."

Plants in Europe and the US from 2027

The project will run two sites, First Foundation in Europe and Second Foundation in the US, from a headquarters in Eindhoven, a Dutch semiconductor hub. Mass production is due to start in 2027. Within three years, the partners want to quadruple Europe's output of these sensors and double America's.

Why Europe's supply isn't enough

Ukraine's front line burns through sensors faster than Europe can make them. "Europe currently produces less than 500,000 such sensors per year, while Ukraine consumes this amount in about five months," Odd Systems co-founder Yaroslav Azhniuk said in February, when he first announced plans for a plant able to make one million sensors a year. European sensors cost about five times as much as Chinese ones and are hard to buy at all, because Europeans need them too, he added.

Factories working for Ukraine abroad have already become sabotage targets. In March, an arson attack in Pardubice, Czechia, destroyed nearly all the production capacity of a plant making drones and thermal sights for Ukraine's army. Czech investigators are looking into a possible Russian trail behind the attack.

Sortes diferentes para as duas tenistas portuguesas de 19 anos, que ultrapassaram a ronda inaugural do III International Ladies Open.
Angelina Voloshchuk voltou a vencer em dois sets e está nos quartos-de-final do torneio da categoria W35, que decorre no Clube de Ténis e Padel de Lagos.

Frente à holandesa Isis Louise Van Den Broek (619.ª), Voloshchuk (333.ª) teve um início hesitante no início de cada set, mas terminou forte ambas as partidas, superando a adversária em uma hora e 43 minutos, com os parciais de 6-2, 6-4.

“Senti-me bem apesar de não ter entrado tão bem, estive a ganhar por 2-0, depois ela entrou mais no jogo e eu, se calhar, baixei um bocadinho, mas acho que consegui manter um bom nível no primeiro set. No segundo, baixei logo no início, podia ter feito algumas coisas diferentes e estar mais focada na minha tarefa, mas depois consegui encontrar o meu caminho”, disse a autora de seis duplas-faltas.

“No início senti nervosismo no serviço que é uma das coisas que tenho tentado de melhorar, mas ao longo do encontro consegui soltar um bocadinho mais e ficar mais tranquila a servir. Foi mais no início dos sets” – argumentou.

A próxima adversária de Voloshchuk é a sétima mais cotada do torneio, a espanhola Celia Cervino Ruiz (587.ª), no segundo encontro do Court 1, cuja jornada tem início às 11 horas. “Nunca a defrontei, mas ainda tenho oportunidade de ver um bocadinho do jogo dela e preparar da melhor maneira para dar o meu melhor e ir o mais longe possível”, adiantou a número três portuguesa.

Já Milana Ivantsiv (1465.ª) não conseguiu ganhar mais do que três jogos à espanhola e sexta cabeça de série Maria Martinez Vaquero (496.ª), que se impôs por 6-1, 6-2.

A jornada de sexta-feira termina com as meias-finais de pares, onde a segunda melhor dupla do torneio, formada pela portuguesa Ana Filipa Santos e a indiana Vasanti Shinde, vai disputar um lugar na final de sábado com as cabeças de série n.3, a chinesa Min Liu e a italiana Carlota Moccia.

Colaboração do Gabinete de Imprensa do III Internacional Ladies Open W35

The United Kingdom on Thursday sanctioned 12 oil tankers it identified as part of Russia's shadow fleet, including the 22-year-old Dakar that is currently making an unusual late-season voyage on the Northern Sea Route.

By Drago Bosnic | October 8, 2026

London insists that “the growing economic toll reflected the central role of cyber attacks in Russian and other states’ efforts to inflict damage while remaining below the threshold of conventional conflict”. Once again, the UK’s almost unimaginable level of hypocrisy becomes all the more apparent with such claims. As previously mentioned, what should Moscow do when UK-sourced missiles and drones hit Russian oil refineries, natural gas facilities, civilian infrastructure and civilians themselves?

Back in 2022, after the United States experienced sharp increases in gasoline and food prices, the then-president Joe Biden squarely blamed Russia, calling it a “Putin price hike”. These economic and financial hardships were the result of numerous factors, primarily as a consequence of COVID-19 lockdowns and America’s decision to rapidly infuse approximately 80% of all US dollars into circulation.

The resulting inflation caused the aforementioned price hikes. As the consequences largely coincided with the start of Russia’s strategic counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Ukraine, the Biden administration thought it was the perfect opportunity to pin it all on President Vladimir Putin. Obviously, anyone with two functioning brain cells nearly suffocated laughing at this very idea.

Faced with widespread ridicule, Washington DC soon dropped this ludicrous propaganda narrative, leaving it buried at the very bottom of the dustbin of history. Or so we thought. Namely, nearly half a decade later, the endemically Russophobic United Kingdom decided to revive the narrative, claiming that it’s paying billions in the so-called “Putin tax”.

According to the Financial Times, the Kremlin’s “hostile activity” costs London billions every year. Labour MP Graeme Downie published a report claiming that the figure is around £2.5 ($3.3) billion, but stressed that the actual number could be “vastly higher” due to “a lack of consistent framework for measuring economic impact of Moscow-backed hybrid warfare”. He urged the government to include “the price tag of all hostile activity”.

Downie, the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament, titled the report “The Putin Tax” and tallied “the cost of disruption, recovery and investment in resilience” resulting from what he called “Russian hybrid warfare against the UK”. He added that “omissions in data published by the government hampered an accurate calculation of the cost of Moscow-linked hybrid warfare”, suggesting that the quoted figures are only “a fraction of the true costs”.

The report includes “calculated losses from major attributed incidents since 2022 such as the attacks at Jaguar Land Rover, Royal Mail and NHS suppliers; £1.47bn in losses from Russia-linked cyber attacks, based on industry analysis and threat intelligence; and £250mn-£500mn from damage to subsea communications cables and related infrastructure”.

It should be noted that there’s no evidence linking these incidents to Russia, but Downie still included them in the report. Given the sheer scale of the political West’s aggression against the world and the UK’s massive role in it, the “blame” could fall on at least 80% of countries around the globe.

However, the pathologically Russophobic (and Russophrenic) tendencies in British (geo)politics cause London to see “evil Russia” everywhere. Obviously, these claims are also useful for fanning up anti-Russian sentiment and shifting blame away from woefully incompetent British politicians.

Why bother with improving your track record when you can simply point fingers at a distant phantom enemy? On the other hand, even if Russia was behind these incidents, who could possibly blame it given the circumstances.

Namely, the scale of British involvement in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict is such that it could effectively be viewed as a declaration of war. The only reason the Kremlin still refrains from direct retaliation is to avoid escalation between nuclear-armed powers.

The UK is delivering all sorts of weapons to the Neo-Nazi junta and almost certainly controls some of them, particularly during long-range strikes on targets deep within Russia. Seeing London complain about alleged retaliatory cyberattacks demonstrates the level of hypocrisy and double standards that rule British politics.

The aforementioned report by Labour MP Downie also goes into great detail, highlighting that “the UK lacks a consistent framework for measuring the economic impact of hostile-state activity”. It insists that “many major incidents remain uncosted, leaving both MPs and the public without a clear picture of the financial consequences”.

Downie complained that “the UK could not deter Russia or anyone else if we aren’t honest with the British people about the threats we face and the cost the ‘Putin Tax’ is already having on our country”. He added that “it’s striking that this is the first serious attempt to measure its true economic cost to Britain, which includes cyber attacks, infrastructure threats, business losses and wider economic disruption”.

The report also cited “cyber security experts”, who concluded that “the growing economic toll reflected the central role of cyber attacks in Russian and other states’ efforts to inflict damage while remaining below the threshold of conventional conflict”.

Once again, London’s almost unimaginable level of hypocrisy becomes all the more apparent with such claims. As previously mentioned, what should Moscow do when UK-sourced missiles and drones hit Russian oil refineries, natural gas facilities, civilian infrastructure and civilians themselves?

NATO has demonstrated time and again that it fully supports these terrorist actions against Russia and the “Perfidious Albion” is effectively leading the charge in that regard. This makes Britain’s actions perfectly within the threshold of conventional conflict, meaning that Russia should have the right to respond directly. And once again, the only reason it doesn’t is to avoid escalation. However, the Kremlin’s patience is running out faster than ever before.

Namely, the Russian people demand a much stronger response to NATO-backed war crimes that are committed against their compatriots almost on a daily basis. Thus, if anyone is faced with a “tax”, it’s Russia and its people. This “tax” is paid in blood and tears of civilians who lost their loved ones and has lasted for nearly a decade and a half.

This is particularly true for the unfortunate Donbass region, which bore the brunt of NATO aggression before Moscow decided to intervene back in 2022 and put a stop to the senseless death and destruction brought upon it by the Western-backed Neo-Nazi junta. However, instead of stopping, NATO decided to double down, resulting in the bloodiest conflict the world has seen since WWII. Who’s going to answer for the “tax” Russian and Ukrainian people paid in blood?

---

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

A Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Pryluky, a town in northern Ukraine's Chernihiv Oblast, killed 22 people on 7 October, regional police reported on the morning of 8 October. Five of the dead were children: three one-year-old boys, an eight-year-old boy, and a 13-year-old girl, police said.

Russian strikes on Pryluky, Kremenchuk, Oleksandriia, and Kyiv killed 28 people on 7 October, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said. For the town, it was the second deadly missile strike since May. Behind the toll are families like this one: three generations hit by a single strike.

A family visit that ended under rubble

Three-year-old Zlatoslava is now in the Chernihiv Oblast children's hospital, Pryluky district police chief Vladyslav Stoianov told. Her mother, Kateryna, is hospitalized too. The two had come on the evening of 6 October to visit Kateryna's sister, police officer Yuliia Malysh. The girl's father stayed home in Lynovytsia, a village 15 km away.

Yuliia was wounded and is in hospital, Stoianov said. Her husband, Oleh Malysh, was killed. Until recently, Oleh had fought at the front in the Chernihiv Oblast police rifle battalion. The sisters' mother, Liudmyla, had also come over that evening, and she died too. All the family details come from Stoianov, who was describing a colleague's family.

Footage of an emergency worker carrying a little girl from the ruins reached almost all media, Vyhivskyi wrote in the same post. Suspilne first reported that the filmed rescuer had carried Zlatoslava. It then corrected itself: he had carried a different child, five-year-old Zoriana. Vyhivskyi also gives the girl's age as five, and he named the rescuer as State Emergency Service section commander Pavlo Levchenko. With colleagues, Levchenko freed the girl and her mother after the blast threw them out of the building.

Russia is concentrating missiles on a smaller, more specific set of targets, and its jet-powered attack drones are part of the reason, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed. Its combined attack overnight on 7 October killed 22 people in Pryluky, the State Emergency Service (SES) said as of the morning of 8 October. Russian milbloggers noted the shift the same day.

Russia often uses concentrated drone and missile strikes to overwhelm localized Ukrainian air defenses and destroy urban centers, ISW noted. Pryluky, where the strike killed children, was one of the areas a Russian channel says drew a significant share of the Kh-101s that night. With winter close, ISW expects the same pattern against Ukraine's energy grid, with jet drones partly letting Russia keep its missiles for priority targets without firing many more.

Missile waves on a few areas, Russian channels claim

Russia launched 48 Kh-101, Iskander-K, and Kalibr cruise missiles overnight on 7 October, Ukraine's Air Force reported. It also fired ballistic missiles, Zircon and Oniks anti-ship missiles, and 130 strike and decoy drones, 46 of them jet-powered Shahed-type models.

Russian milbloggers claimed the same day that Moscow had grouped a large part of its missile salvo into repeated waves on a few areas, while other weapons kept stretching Ukraine's air defenses elsewhere. The pro-war Russian Telegram channel Dva Mayora described the change as a switch from striking with splayed fingers to a series of hits with missile "fists." Defenders must then absorb a sharply rising load around one chosen site as one wave follows another, the channel claimed.

Citing Ukrainian monitoring channels, it claimed that roughly 30 or more Kh-101 cruise missiles flew toward Pryluky, Kremenchuk, Svitlovodsk, and Oleksandriia in Chernihiv, Poltava, and Kirovohrad oblasts. It put the Kremenchuk group at up to 15 missiles, Kh-101s and Kalibrs among them, aimed at the area of Kremenchuk and its hydroelectric plant.

Jet drones take some of the load off Russia's missiles

ISW said the jet-powered versions penetrate Ukrainian air defenses deeper and more reliably than propeller models. In ISW's assessment, that partly lets Russia concentrate cruise and ballistic missiles on priority targets without significantly raising missile use. Russia builds about 3,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet drones a month, Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) told Militarnyi in August.

ISW expects Russia to apply the pattern in a likely brutal winter campaign against energy infrastructure. Russia likely intends to make city life untenable and force Ukraine to capitulate to its demands, ISW assessed. Such tactics have not worked before and are unlikely to work now, analysts added.

They called cheap countermeasures to jet drones and small cruise missiles vital, alongside Western air defense aid such as US-made Patriots, which can stop ballistic missiles. Ukraine has already paired a Soviet-era Kub launcher with American RIM-7 interceptors to catch jet drones.

The Conservative Party Conference was slick and professional, says Ellie Hodges, but Reform's conference, while more chaotic, had the kind of passion that you don't get from a fancy lanyard.

The post You Can’t Put Passion on a Fancy Lanyard appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei

Press TV – October 7, 2026

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei says the United States and the Israeli regime have a history of manufacturing false-flag incidents only to clean up their messes around the world.

In a Wednesday post on his X account, the Iranian official said such scenarios would not save them from the quagmire of the aggression against Iran.

Baghaei said telling lies about Iran and accusing it of having a role in security incidents would fail to justify the US-Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic.

“In a world where the American and international public is weary of an unlawful war of aggression against Iran, and where the aggressors have no honest way to justify a war of choice, even a raft made of lies can look like salvation to those who are drowning,” he said in the post.

The post also included a video elucidating previous US and Israeli false-flag operations, including massive US media campaigns denoting the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which led to the invasion of the country in 2003, and Israel’s involvement in a case in Egypt in 1954, known as the Lavon Affair.

“False flags are an old craft: manufacture the incident, assign the blame, and harvest the consequences,” said Baghaei.

The post came after officials in the US and allied countries suggested that Iran may have had a role in recent security incidents, including on a Flydubai flight from the United Arab Emirates to the Israeli-occupied territories and in a suspected plot against an American base in Britain.

Iran has roundly rejected the accusations, calling them a pretext for launching renewed aggression against the country, months after the US and the Israeli regime were forced to end a previous offensive under a ceasefire reached in mid-April.

Kyiv is bolting two Soviet-era missile systems together to knock down Russia's fastest Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones. Ukraine's 156th Maksym Kryvonis Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment has downed about 20 air targets using a Kub launcher firing under the radar and fire control of a Buk unit.

Russia has switched to jet-powered Gerans, faster drones that Ukraine's cheap interceptors struggle to catch, so more of them reach their targets. The damage from Russian strikes is set to reach up to $10 billion this year, according to Ukraine's Economy Ministry.

Meanwhile, Western resupply has thinned too. Deliveries of air defense missiles from partners fell threefold in the first half of 2026 against 2025, even though those partners hold the missiles, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.

So crews stretch what they have. In the Kub-Buk hybrid, a Kub launcher cannot aim on its own, lacking a radar to light up a target for its missile, according to Militarnyi. A Buk has that radar, so the two fire together, the Kub sending its 3M9 missile where the Buk points. The pairing is possible because both come from the same Soviet design line.

Western missiles in Soviet launchers

The same regiment reaches for a second workaround as Buk missiles run short. Its crews have rewired launchers to fire American RIM-7 interceptors, a Soviet-Western mongrel that troops nicknamed Frankenstein and the US calls FrankenSAM.

The patchwork earns its keep. One crew commander said some of these machines have more than 34 air kills each, and a single launcher has sent up RIM-7s 131 times, Ukrainian troops said.

A layered answer

The hybrids are one thread in a wider web. Ukraine is stitching together a layered defense against the jet-powered Gerans, leaning on electronic jamming, fighter jets, and a new class of homegrown interceptor drones. Each tool has limits, and the newest interceptors still bring down only the occasional jet drone.

The bet now is on numbers. Ukraine aims to build up to 400 interceptor drones a month by the end of October to chase the faster Gerans, Zelenskyy said on 2 October. Until that scale arrives, improvised launchers like the 156th Regiment keep filling the gap.

A Russian missile attack on Kyiv overnight on 7 October destroyed warehouse premises in the Podil district and badly damaged a book warehouse of Ukrainian publishing house Knyholav, the publisher said. Tens of thousands of books were lost, but no staff were hurt. It was the second time this year that Russia has destroyed Knyholav's stock.

Russia has destroyed Ukrainian books since the start of its invasion, seizing them from libraries in occupied areas and burning them in boiler houses. Since spring, it has also been aiming missiles and drones at the industry that makes them—printing houses, publishers' warehouses, and bookshops—destroying books by the millions. Each strike takes out not only stock but the reprints, new titles, and textbooks Ukrainian readers were waiting for, at a time when publishing in Ukrainian is part of how the country holds onto its identity.

Tens of thousands of books lost

The publisher can't yet say how many books were destroyed or can no longer be saved, it said, but tens of thousands were lost. The final count will be possible only once staff get full access to the warehouse and check the state of every book.

The losses include new titles Knyholav received over the past two months. They also include reprints of books Russia had destroyed in July at its previous warehouse. Knyholav had moved its rebuilt stock to this new warehouse after a Russian strike on 19 July destroyed its previous one outside Kyiv, along with about 250,000 books.

"This is a tangible blow for us. These are books we created, printed, and prepared for you," the publisher wrote. "But despite everything, we are holding on!"

The strike hit Kyiv's Podilskyi district, where a Russian attack caused a fire and the partial collapse of the floors of an office and warehouse building, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The same overnight attack killed people in Pryluky, Kyiv, Kremenchuk, and Oleksandriia.

Millions of books burned

Russia's attacks destroyed more than 1.5 million books in July alone, Culture Minister Tetiana Berezhna said. On 1 August, a strike on the logistics center of publisher Ranok and the distribution center of the KnyhoLand bookshop chain in Kharkiv destroyed 8 million books, including 628,000 new school textbooks. Over three months, Russia burned about 13 million Ukrainian books, nearly a third of everything the country printed in 2025. In August, Russian missiles also hit Kyiv's largest book market.

Russia attacked Kyiv and 12 oblasts overnight on 7 October with about 70 missiles, many of them ballistic, as well as Shahed drones, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The strikes killed at least 20 people, with the deadliest hit on an apartment block in Pryluky in Chernihiv Oblast. Russia also hit Kremenchuk, Oleksandriia, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia, while Poland scrambled its jets.

Moscow has likely begun its winter strike campaign earlier than usual, aiming to make civilian life in Ukraine unbearable, and UN figures already show civilian casualties running 55% above last year's.

Update: Pryluky death toll rises to 14, including four children

The death toll from the Russian strike on Pryluky has risen to 14, including four children, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said on the afternoon of 7 October. Fifty people were injured, seven of them children, and rescuers pulled 15 people from the rubble, including a child.

Russia attacked Pryluky with cruise missiles, and one scored a direct hit on the five-story apartment building, Chernihiv Oblast head Viacheslav Chaus said. Earlier in the day, he reported that 27 of the injured had been hospitalized, three in serious condition. The search-and-rescue operation was still under way.

Morning repoting: five dead in Pryluky

A Russian missile struck a five-story apartment building in Pryluky early in the morning, while residents were still asleep, Chernihiv Oblast head Viacheslav Chaus said. The strike completely destroyed one sectkion of the building, killing five people and injuring 26, including five children, Ukraine's National Police reported. Rescuers pulled three people from the rubble, including a child, and more people may still be trapped, Chaus said.

"Today, for Putin's birthday, the Russian army 'gave' him the destruction of an apartment building in Pryluky in Chernihiv Oblast. It was an ordinary five-story building," Zelenskyy said.

Kyiv, Kremenchuk, and Oleksandriia

In Kyiv, Russian missiles hit non-residential buildings and warehouses in the Obolonskyi and Podilskyi districts, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Strikes also hit the Shevchenkivskyi district, and debris burned in the Darnytskyi district, he added. In the Darnytskyi district, a missile set fire to a garage cooperative, where firefighters rescued two people and found two men dead, Klitschko wrote. Police and rescuers worked to defuse an unexploded ballistic missile that fell among apartment blocks in the same district, the National Police said.

In Kremenchuk, Russian missiles hit a densely populated residential area, killing two people and injuring seven, Poltava Oblast head Vitalii Diakivnych said. Zelenskyy later put the number of injured at eight and said four high-rises were damaged.

In Oleksandriia in Kirovohrad Oblast, Russia hit an enterprise. One person was killed, three injured, and two were out of contact, Kirovohrad Oblast head Andrii Raikovych said. Zelenskyy later put the death toll there at two.

Drones and other targets

In Dnipro, Russian strikes damaged an industrial enterprise, apartment buildings, and a sports club, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha said. In Nikopol district, the attacks injured a 65-year-old woman and a 64-year-old man. Russia also struck Lozova in Kharkiv Oblast with a missile, and a drone hit an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, police said.

In Zaporizhzhia, Russia attacked a transport infrastructure facility, acting oblast head Mykhailo Semikin said, a day after a strike on one of the city's bridges over the Dnipro halted traffic. In Kyiv Oblast, three production and warehouse buildings were damaged in Obukhiv district, with no casualties, the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration said.

Air defense downed five ballistic missiles, 39 cruise missiles, and 117 drones, while missiles and drones hit 18 locations, the Air Force said. Polish military aircraft took off and Poland put its ground-based air defense on alert during the attack, Poland's Operational Command said.

Russian ballistic missiles remain the biggest challenge, Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine is searching daily for Patriot missiles.

Strikes across the front over the past day

Russian attacks killed one person and injured 11 in Kherson Oblast over the past day, the Kherson Oblast Military Administration reported. Russia injured 12 people in Donetsk Oblast on 6 October, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin said. Two people were injured in Kharkiv Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov said.

Bridges and a maternity hospital in Russia's sights

Russia has stepped up strikes on Kyiv's bridges and has now extended them to Zaporizhzhia. In September, a Russian ballistic and hypersonic missile attack on Kyiv damaged a maternity hospital.

Russia launched a large-scale missile and drone attack across Ukraine overnight into 7 October, killing at least 11 people and injuring more than 30. Kyiv, Pryluky, Kremenchuk and several other cities were struck as Moscow used ballistic and cruise missiles alongside 130 attack drones, with energy infrastructure among the principal targets.

Russia fired 70 missiles and 130 drones at Ukraine during one of the largest combined aerial attacks of recent months, striking Kyiv and at least a dozen regions between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at least 11 people had been killed and 34 wounded in the attacks. He said energy infrastructure was among Russia’s principal targets and described ballistic missiles as the most difficult element of the assault for Ukrainian air defences. Reuters reported the remarks and casualty figures.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force’s preliminary assessment, the attack began at about 6pm on 6 October and involved a mixture of ballistic, anti-ship and cruise missiles launched from Russian territory, aircraft and the Caspian Sea. Russia also deployed 130 Shahed-type, Gerbera and decoy drones, including 46 jet-powered attack drones.

By 9am, Ukrainian forces said they had destroyed or electronically suppressed 161 aerial targets: 117 drones, 39 cruise missiles and five ballistic or other high-speed missiles. Six additional cruise missiles were still being assessed. Missile and drone impacts were recorded at 18 locations, while debris from intercepted weapons fell at another five.

The main directions of attack were the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Residential buildings hit in Pryluky and Kyiv

Some of the heaviest civilian casualties were reported in Pryluky, in Chernihiv region, where a missile struck a multi-storey residential building. Emergency officials initially reported four people killed and 20 injured, including three children. Rescue teams continued searching the damaged structure on Wednesday morning. Associated Press reported on the rescue operation and casualties.

In Kyiv, ballistic missiles reached the capital during the night, with explosions reported shortly after 3am. Two people were killed. A non-residential building in the Podilskyi district was hit and caught fire, while garages burned in Darnytskyi district. The wider Kyiv region was simultaneously attacked by missiles and drones, damaging three production and warehouse facilities in the Obukhiv district.

Two people were also killed and seven wounded in Kremenchuk, in Poltava region, where missiles and drones struck the city and surrounding district. Damage was reported to residential buildings and an industrial facility. Further strikes were recorded in Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Oleksandriia.

Zelenskyy said Russia had deliberately sought to inflict serious damage on Ukraine’s energy system. “One of the key targets was our energy infrastructure,” he said, adding that further air-defence supplies had become an immediate requirement.

The attack came only hours after the Ukrainian president said intelligence services had obtained information indicating that Russia was preparing another major aerial operation. In his address on Tuesday evening, he urged Ukrainians to respond to air-raid warnings and said the country’s ability to withstand the expected attack would depend partly on the availability of Western-supplied defensive systems. His latest statements are available through the official presidential website.

The scale and composition of Wednesday’s barrage again exposed the pressure being placed on Ukraine’s layered air-defence network. EU Today has previously examined the shortage of Patriot interceptors capable of engaging ballistic missiles, which travel considerably faster than cruise missiles and drones and leave defence crews much less time to respond.

Russia’s use of different weapons within the same attack also forces Ukraine to employ several types of interception simultaneously. Cheap drones can be engaged by mobile fire groups, electronic warfare and interceptor drones, while ballistic missiles generally require more sophisticated systems such as Patriot.

Moscow’s Defence Ministry said its forces had carried out a “massive strike” using long-range precision weapons and drones against Ukrainian military-industrial facilities. It claimed that missile and drone production and storage sites, as well as port and ship-repair infrastructure, had been targeted. Those claims could not independently establish the nature of individual sites hit. Ukrainian authorities meanwhile documented damage to homes, businesses, energy facilities and other civilian infrastructure.

The overnight assault follows several weeks of intensified strikes as Ukraine approaches another winter under pressure on its power network. During German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit to Kyiv at the weekend, Berlin announced a new assistance package of more than €1.3 billion, including military support and funding intended to help protect and repair the country’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter.

Wednesday’s attack demonstrated why those two areas — air defence and the resilience of the electricity system — have become increasingly closely connected. Even with more than 160 incoming weapons intercepted or suppressed, missiles and drones reached targets across several regions, leaving casualties and damage hundreds of kilometres apart.

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 6, 2026

Ian Proud’s arrest by secret police at a London airport marks a new low in how far the deep state can go to control a false narrative. But it also shows a new level of fear.

As mad as it sounds, it does appear that Western European nations at least are preparing themselves to go to war with Russia at some point in the not-too-distant future. What is particularly worrying is there seems to be a distinct vacuum in all areas of what we could broadly call ‘media’ in questioning this narrative. Thirty years ago it was considered normal for journalists to be the source of vexing questions towards state actors and to generally be a pain in the arse as they questioned every decision made and every idea presented. It was our job to be anti-establishment and to take a very cynical view of “policy”. There was nothing remarkable about this. It was what we did. Being despised by the greater powers was part of the job; working anti-social hours and having few friends also came with it.

Today there are no journalists in what we call ‘mainstream’ media doing this. They have been replaced by younger, more social-media-savvy ‘content creators’ who believe that journalism is more or less a grammatical role, where the raw material is handed to you with all the information therein, and the role of the journalist is simply to refine it to the style of the day for mass consumption.

The danger of this transition is that nearly all of what we are being presented with as news is actually fake, or at best heavily redacted to keep the masses where the elite want them to be: restrained, prepped and misinformed.

The Ukraine war is an excellent example. The main reason why people in the U.S. and UK are so fabulously biased against Russia and are so sympathetic towards the corrupt elite in Kiev is that for years they have been brainwashed with ‘news’ about Russia which has been negative and which cunningly feeds a racist bias – a prejudice which has been cultivated over at least a decade, if not more. The result is that now a number of lies have become established in newsrooms where journalists, even those who know, simply navigate around nuance and present a fairy-tale story, designed to be understood by the masses who have no other sources of information to even question it.

Just recently, Western news outlets reported a “plague” in Russia, with stories about a “lockdown”, following a case of a worker in a laboratory dying of pneumonia in circumstances which are still not certain. Western media, as part of their role to keep Russia-phobia at its peak, are so locked and loaded that their ‘hair-trigger’ reactions to bad news stories from Russia are understandable. They are also hungry for clickbait, and such stories feed a starved audience which has already had its first fix of such COVID hysteria stories and wants more. The truth is entirely immaterial. Hysteria and lies are what’s being fed at a feverish rate by ‘content creators’ red in tooth and claw, foaming at the mouth with their desire to serve the deep state and the elites who have invested so much in an agenda.

The contrast between Russia and the West is interesting, though, when we look at media. In Russia just recently, the BBC correspondent based in Moscow made the internet buzz on social media with his short interview with Russia’s foreign minister, who was kind enough to answer his loaded question about Russia’s war ideology with Ukraine. What absolutely no one noted was how Russia is happy to accommodate foreign journalists who have such a distinct agenda to feed the Russia-phobia back home, while Russian journalists have been banned in those EU capitals for years. Old Europe, which once held such values as a free press so dearly, has adopted the Soviet model, while Russia is actually more advanced when it comes to such tenets of what we expect in a democracy. Russia has no fear of the awkward questions, unlike the West.

We should be asking ourselves who really benefits from a war with Russia.

Is it too sceptical and ‘conspiracy theorising’ to assume that the industrial military complex has been successfully lobbying for such a war for AT LEAST a decade, and critically, it succeeded in convincing the intelligence and military establishment in the UK to use its leverage with media to provide journalists with the raw material which enhances a prejudice against Russia?

Normally such an idea could be dismissed as pure nonsense. But just consider how far the UK, for example, has gone to eradicate all media coverage which could be deemed as at least leaning towards Russia – or even simply just holding the UK government to account by asking the questions that British journalists have stopped asking. If the elite in the UK who control the loss-making newspapers (think about that) are so sure of their rationale that Russia is the enemy whom we must go to war with, why are they so terrified of journalists – or anyone, for that matter – simply holding a view which questions the narrative?

I can’t be the only Western pundit who believes that double agents Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were not poisoned with nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in 2018, which was reported at the time as “sparking a huge diplomatic crisis between Britain and Russia”. Isn’t the real story that British security chiefs decided, upon discovering that Sergei Skripal was actually a triple agent who was feeding information back to Moscow, that he was dispensable? And what better way to supposedly teach the Russians a lesson, while blaming Moscow for his death, than to murder him and his daughter using a nerve agent which either was Novichok – which a British lab just down the road from where the Skripals lived had conveniently sitting in a fridge – or a similar poison? What’s important to note about Novichok is that the victims usually die instantly upon contact with it. What is likely is that the Skripals were not poisoned by the Russian drug but a British version of another nerve agent. It is a shocking example of how poor British journalism is that hacks in the UK simply report the Skripal incident of Novichok poisoning without a single shred of evidence to back it up. They don’t even add a note of scepticism in their reporting about the drug and who is “claiming” that it is Novichok.

We see the same shocking level of atrocious, biased reporting about the Ukraine war, which the British public were simply told through the media narrative was an “invasion” by Putin’s army. No background, no nuance, no glimpse of Russia’s perspective, as no one can cope, it would seem, with the story being clouded by facts.

And it’s the same with the Russia “plague” story, as it was with the RAF base “attack” story recently, which was probably just local thieves buying contraband gasoline from corrupt U.S./UK soldiers looking to make a quick buck at the UK base. Notice how quickly Trump used the story as a basis to move all U.S. bombers off the base and back to U.S. soil, where they are completely useless in his so-called Middle East war. For Trump it was an opportunity for another media stunt which keeps him on the front pages and everyone guessing. He was probably grateful to the British for being offered the raw material. Another problem of this new generation of journalists is how compliant they are to report “news” which isn’t news at all, but just material used as a distraction, one day at a time. Trump is a master at manipulating media with this game, usually saying something so stupid and so controversial, which draws journalists away from doing real journalism. If you can occupy journalists with writing up stories about the latest idiotic comment or statement by Trump, then you control them as you control their time.

Just look at how the Epstein story is not being reported and investigated. How Trump got off scot-free, as since February 28th journalists’ attention was diverted to the war with Iran – which is one of the reasons why Trump keeps this story alive with constant troop movements and talk of a massive attack after midterms. People have not made the link with the Epstein material being leaked and the war with Iran kicking off practically on the same day.

For the British, the “Russians are coming” story has no cynical write-up by journalists who are 100 percent compliant with its erroneous narrative. The fear of elites in London is palpable, though, that it will always be questioned by fringe actors taking up bandwidth on social media. In the past this was the RT correspondent in London, who was able to ask difficult questions and generally be a thorn in the side of the Westminster village which controlled journalists like rats held in a basket. The main reason why RT was kicked out of the UK was that it offered a style of reporting on UK politics which had since left us thirty years ago – such is the murky world of the deep state and how it saw how in Brussels journalists could be manipulated until they become stenographers for it.

Yet even with this new Stalinist style of media control in the UK, the state is wobbly. Even with the impressive set-up it has now of total media dominance, where journalists pump out total garbage about the Ukraine war or what they are told to write about the Middle East, still the fear is there.

The example of video blogger Ian Proud, a former UK diplomat once based in Moscow, is worrying but poignant. Simply going to Moscow to attend a conference where Putin was speaking was enough to have him get the full Stasi treatment at Heathrow airport – detained and all digital content seized.

Proud’s YouTube interviews, with his dowdy style of presenting, are proving to be popular as he simply offers a more sober view of both Russia and the UK Foreign Office, his former employer. These interviews are getting the attention of UK spooks, who are so nervous about the truth getting out about Russia and the shameful lies which are being packaged now for the British public, that they had to give Proud the American prison ‘shake down’ routine. Britain, a country which once was a beacon for the world with its view of liberty and in particular its passion for free speech, has fallen to a level which we can only compare to a West African country which has just had a new dictator installed, complete with black aviators and epaulettes. What the Proud Heathrow airport case shows is that this new regime in power will stop at nothing to control a narrative, and that the last bastion of free speech – YouTube podcasts – is the next target. The more successful Proud’s channel becomes, the more inevitable it is that he will be forced to leave the UK and settle in Russia to continue practising free speech. The shoulder tassels of Britain’s deep state will not sleep well until the country has a media narrative which would make Joe Stalin blush – and British journalists are helping them with this goal.