A scandal is unfolding in Croatia after it was revealed it had bought Soviet-era MiG-21 jets - now unable to fly - that were assembled from dubious parts by Ukraine. The Croatian defense minister has threatened to shoot himself if any wrongdoing in the deal is proved.

Croatian security services and the Defense Ministry have launched an investigation into a 2013 military deal with a Ukrainian company, which is said to have undermined the air force's combat capabilities.

Under the contract, Croatia paid over $21 million to repair and modernize seven Soviet-era MiG-21 fighter jets at Ukrainian plants, and to purchase another five aircraft of the same type there.

But those five MiG-21s were never sold by the Ukrainians "as such," Jutarnji List newspaper has revealed. In fact, the aircraft were reportedly assembled from dubious obsolete parts coming from all over the world.

Russia does not want war and has no intention of sending troops to European countries, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov has said, adding that mass media must stop spreading 'scare stories' about the Russian military 'threat.'

"We should stop the spreading of these scary tales alleging that Russia intends to send tanks to the Baltic countries, to Sofia or Budapest. No one has any intention to do this. There are no such plans. Russia wants no war. Any statements that say that Russia intends to launch a war are simply ridiculous," Antonov said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.

"It is a very old trick in the Baltic states - to shout 'Russians are coming! Save yourselves while you still can!' It works, it has proven its effectiveness in getting more defense spending for governments and in getting financial aid from such countries as Germany, France or Italy," the Russian official noted.

Speculation over potential Russian aggression against its neighbors in Eastern Europe as well as other nations has appeared frequently over the past few years. Russian officials have rejected such reports as scaremongering and as attempts to hide real problems behind fiction.

Since the Turkish Army began its operation against Kurdish militia in December, there has been an escalation of violence and "clear use of heavy weaponry" in residential areas, Andrew Gardner, a Turkey expert with Amnesty International, told RT. Gardner said the curfew imposed in the areas inhabited by Kurds is an "unacceptable limitation of rights of the people" there, limiting their ability to access food and necessary services each day.

Earlier this month, RT launched a petition calling for a UNHRC-led investigation into claims of alleged mass killing of Kurdish civilians said to have been committed by the Turkish military during Ankara's crackdown on Kurds in the southeast. Amnesty International promised to examine the facts outlined in RT's petition calling for a probe into alleged mass killings of Kurdish civilians by the Turkish military after the NGO's "selective" approach was criticized by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

On Monday, Gardner commented to RT that, just like any other international observers, Amnesty International monitors were not allowed access to the curfew-affected areas.

The bombings in Brussels on Tuesday appear to have targeted Americans in Belgium, according to the top lawmaker on the US House Intelligence Committee.

"From my vantage point, it does look like an attack on Americans. It looks like it was targeted toward Americans to some degree," Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California) told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Nunes said his suggestion was based on where the suicide bombers decided to detonate their explosives: The blast at the Brussels airport took place near stands belonging to US airlines American, Delta and United. The blast at the Metro station, meanwhile, was near the US Embassy.

"With all that said, if you're going to pick some locations where you might hit Americans, those would be the locations," he said, as quoted by The Hill newspaper.

A video purportedly made by an Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) follower threatens London with a terror attack, and claims British transport and political hubs Heathrow, Gatwick and Downing Street "are next."


The video shows a man in a balaclava addressing the camera with a British accent.

"Belgium, Brussels airport... Big boom went off, innit! Heathrow, Gatwick, Downing Street... You're next," he says.

The unverified video comes just days after an Islamic State suicide bomb attack on Brussels killed 34 people and injured more than 200. The attacks were carried out at Zaventem Airport and Maakbeel Metro station in central Brussels. Both took place during the morning rush hour.

Russia's Dmitry Rogozin believes western sanctions are forever. Henceforth Russia and the west will always be at odds. Russia will continue to insist on its own path in internal development and external affairs and the west will never stop penalizing it for it.

Speaking at a conference on development of the arctic he explained:

"All the time we have to read reports that the EU and the U.S. are considering to lift sanctions and then they suddenly automatically extend them. I think we should lose interest in it."

"We should stop taking care of what they say about the sanctions in Brussels or Washington. It should be kept in mind that sanctions now will always be against us."

"Russia needs to be strong and not to bend under the pressure." In this context, Deputy Prime Minister recalled the previous statements of the President of Russia.

"While President Putin set the task solely to create the material basis of national identity, freedom, and independence of the country in its foreign affairs, it will always be accompanied by a resistance of the leading global powers against Russia."

Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked. Brazil is living through one of those moments: it is dreamland for social scientists; a nightmare for everyone else.

Dilma Rousseff was elected President in 2010, with a 56-44 per cent majority against the right-wing neoliberal PSDB (Brazilian Social Democratic Party) opposition candidate. She was reelected four years later with a diminished yet convincing majority of 52-48 per cent, or a majority of 3.5 million votes.

Dilma's second victory sparked a heated panic among the neoliberal and U.S.-aligned opposition. The fourth consecutive election of a President affiliated to the centre-left PT (Workers' Party) was bad news for the opposition, because it suggested that PT founder Luís Inácio Lula da Silva could return in 2018. Lula had been President between 2003 and 2010, and when he left office his approval ratings hit 90 per cent, making him the most popular leader in Brazil's history. This likely sequence suggested that the opposition could be out of federal office for a generation. The opposition immediately rejected the outcome of the vote. No credible complaints could be made, but no matter; it was resolved that Dilma Rousseff would be overthrown by any means necessary. To understand what happened next, we must return to 2011.

The simmering war between Turkish academics and their increasingly repressive government came to a boil last week with arrests and an escape. It began in January with the firing of dozens of academics, many of them scientists, from Turkey's universities. All had signed an online petition by a group calling itself Academics for Peace that is critical of the government's treatment of the Kurdish minority group. The firings sparked protests and statements from scientific organizations, including the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, calling on the government to respect freedom of speech.

The standoff held until 13 March, when Kurdish separatists set off a car bomb in the capital, killing 37 people. The next day Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced that the definition of "terrorism" should be expanded to include all who provide support in the form of "propaganda" and specifically called out academics.

Within hours of the president's speech, police arrived at the homes of four Turkish researchers. Three are now imprisoned; Turkish academics fear that many more arrests will follow. But Meral Camcı, a literary scholar who had been dismissed from her faculty position at Yeni Yüzyıl University in Istanbul, had gone to France on vacation just days before.

An RT Documentary crew filming in northern Syria has seen Islamic State (IS, ISIS/ISIL) documents abandoned by retreating terrorists and found by the Kurds that, along with captured IS recruits, provide a stunning insight into the alleged Turkey-IS oil trade links.

Shortly after the outbreak of the Syrian war, IS became a game-changer in Iraq and, in particular, Syria. Beheadings on camera, mass killings, and enslavement, as well as apparent connections to the Paris and Brussels attacks had become synonymous with the terror group, giving it wide publicity.


Running a viable militant organization with such remarkable capabilities would be impossible without some logistical and financial support from the outside.

Turkey, which has been actively engaged in the Syrian war since the outset, has repeatedly denied claims that it is aiding IS. However, while Ankara insists that it is the jihadist group's sworn enemy, facts on the ground often tell a different story.

RT has spoken to several witnesses who were involved in Islamic State's trade activities and accessed the terror group's documents, which provide insight into how and where foreign militants enter Syria to join the terrorist "state."
Detailed oil invoices

The RT Documentary team did most of its filming in the town of Shaddadi, located in the Syrian province Hasakah, which has been partly overrun by IS jihadists. Following the liberation of Shaddadi, which is home to some 10,000 people, RT filmed Kurdish soldiers walking around what used to be the homes of IS fighters and examining piles documents that had been left behind.

Some of the files seized at the scene turned out to be detailed invoices used by IS to calculate daily revenues from their oil fields and refineries, as well as the amount of oil extracted there. All the documents had Islamic State's symbol at the top.

Brussels suicide bombers Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui were planning attacks on Belgian nuclear power stations, Dernier Heure newspaper has reported.

The newspaper exclusively reported that the arrest of Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam accelerated the plans of the terrorists.

The brothers planted a hidden camera in front of the home of the director of the Belgian nuclear research program, the paper said.

Evidence obtained by the authorities shows that the same terrorist cell was behind the Paris attacks in November that killed more than 130 people and this week's Brussels bombings, which claimed the lives of 31 people and injured over 270, the paper wrote.