The vile assassination of Darya Dugina, or terror at the gates of Moscow, is not really solved - as much as the FSB seems to have cracked the case in a little over 24 hours.

It's now established that the main perpetrator, Azov battalion asset Natalia Vovk, did not act alone but had an Ukrainian sidekick, one Bogdan Tsyganenko, who provided false license plates for the Mini Cooper she was driving and helped to assemble a crude car bomb inside a rented garage in the southwest of Moscow.

According to the FSB, Vovk followed the Dugin family to the Tradition festival, and detonated the car bomb by remote control. The only missing pieces seem to be when the bomb was placed under Dugin's SUV, and by whom; and whether such a sophisticated cross-border targeted assassination was aimed at both father and daughter.

As recalled by geopolitical analyst Manlio Dinucci, even the Los Angeles Times had made it public that "since 2015, the CIA has been training Ukrainian intelligence agents in a secret facility in the United States".

Russian intel was more than aware of it. In fact, in an interview to Italian media in December 2021, Darya Dugina herself, based on FSB information, revealed, "they had identified 106 Ukrainian agents who were preparing attacks and massacres in 37 regions of Russia."

Yet now a high-ranking member of Russian intel - who for obvious reasons must remain anonymous - has shed some information that, in his words, "will add the whole picture to this incident."

It goes without saying that this is as much as he's been allowed to reveal by his superiors. According to his analysis, "the tragedy was in the evening. In the next two days the FSB shared the whole data about SBU people who were involved with the incident. The majority of people think that it was a political kill. There are a lot of political kills in Ukraine but this tragedy has no political root. It is actually connected to organized crime money flow."

The source asserts, "Darya was inside the patriotic movement and had connections in Moscow and Donetsk area. As you know there is a large money flow to the Donbas to restore the economy. This huge money flow provides an extreme incentive for criminal activity. Donetsk crime organizations are more dangerous than others because they operate in the war territory. Thus, someone was afraid that Darya was going to compromise money flow schemes by making this public."

The source makes the important point that "Boris Nemtsov [a key actor in the liberal reforms imposed on post-Soviet Russia] was also killed by an organized crime group who was afraid that he might compromise some money flow schemes by making them public despite the fact that he was a quite powerful politician. Also [journalist] Anna Politkovkaya. She was given $900,000.00 in cash at Chubais election office during the election days for a political purpose. But some other guys knew it and grabbed the bag. She was slain."

Russia's UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya has called on the US to "return the money stolen from the Afghan people" rather than demanding others to contribute more to fund the reconstruction of war-torn Afghanistan.

"It is you who must pay for your own mistakes," Nebenzya said on Tuesday, addressing the US Permanent Representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who claimed during a Security Council (UNSC) meeting on Afghanistan that Russia contributed too little to funding the rebuilding of a country ruined in 20 years of war and occupation by the US and its allies.

"And, for starters, it is necessary to return the money stolen from the Afghan people back to them," the Russian envoy said. "We have been helping and will help Afghanistan. And we suggest that you focus on paying the bills to the Afghan people for the 20 years of [your] pointless occupation, which destroyed Afghanistan and which put its people on the brink of survival."

He will be remembered as the father of 'perestroika' but also for presiding over the fall of the Soviet Union

Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and only president of the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 91, in Moscow.

His death was reported on Tuesday night by the Central Clinical Hospital, which said in a statement that

"Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and prolonged illness."

According to the news agency TASS, Gorbachev was hospitalized at the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, at the request of his doctors, and had been under medical supervision ever since.

Gorbachev will be buried in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife, Raisa, who died in 1999, TASS revealed, citing a source familiar with the family's wishes.

A divisive figure, supporters credit him with having played a key part in bringing about an end to the Cold War, while opponents accuse him of aiding in the fall of the Soviet Union and a major loss to Moscow's prestige and global influence.

The president is pushing to ban the very weapons he says would be useless against the federal government.

In a speech on gun control, President Joe Biden taunted "brave right-wing Americans," telling them that if they want to defend themselves against the government, they'll "need an F-15." Biden was slated by his critics, who argued that the Taliban did perfectly well against the US without such weapons.

Speaking to supporters in Pennsylvania, Biden promised to ban "assault weapons," a poorly-defined term that Democrats in Congress claim covers the majority of semi-automatic rifles and pistols sold in the US.

A senior US military official admitted on Monday that Ukrainian forces may have struck the area around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, but insisted that this was only in response to Russian fire allegedly coming from the area. Earlier in the day, the Russian authorities said a Ukrainian artillery shell damaged the roof of the building storing reactor fuel.

The unnamed official told reporters during a background briefing at the Pentagon:

"What I know for sure is that the Russians are firing from around the plant. I also know that there are rounds that have impacted near the plant."

The official said it was "hard to explain, I guess" how the US was monitoring the situation around the nuclear power plant, Europe's largest.

"And I don't want to say that the Ukrainians haven't fired in that vicinity either because I think there's probably a likelihood that they have, but in good - in a number of cases, it's returning fire of the Russians who are firing from those locations."

Russian forces established control of the Zaporozhye NPP in early March. National guard and nuclear protection specialists secured the site while the Ukrainian staff continued to operate without hindrance. The government in Kiev claims that Russian forces turned the plant into a military base from which they were attacking Ukrainian targets, but also that Russian troops were shelling themselves in a false-flag ploy to make Ukraine look bad.

A senior FBI official in the bureau's Washington field office has abruptly resigned after coming under congressional scrutiny for suspected political bias in handling the investigation of Hunter Biden's laptop computer.

The Washington Times learned that Timothy Thibault, an assistant special agent in charge, was forced to leave his post. The information came from two former FBI officials familiar with the situation.

Mr. Thibault was seen exiting the bureau's elevator on Friday. He was escorted by two or three "headquarters-looking types," according to eyewitness accounts provided to one of the former officials. It is not clear whether Mr. Thibault left on his own accord or was forced out of the bureau. The 25-year FBI veteran was on leave for at least a month over revelations about political statements he made while leading the public corruption unit.

The FBI declined to comment. Attempts to contact Mr. Thibault were unsuccessful.

Western Europe's policy of rejecting Russian energy, even in the absence of suitable alternatives, could lead to systemic collapse when the public is left without heat this winter, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto warned on Monday.

Szijjarto explained to a meeting of his country's diplomats, according to the Sputnik news agency:

"All these statements ... from Western Europe on the issue of energy supply simply do not work at all with winter approaching. While ideological, political, communication statements with effective support from the international media can easily inflate balloons that cover people's eyes, all the ideology in the world won't keep EU citizens warm when winter approaches.

"It is very difficult to explain to someone in winter that they are not cold when there is no heating."

Insisting that Hungary had not yet fallen into this trap, he warned that pressure from other EU governments would only get worse, as the current world order "is approaching a huge collapse, almost at the speed of an asteroid." Russian sources are integral to European energy security, he argued, implying that without them, social discontent could lead to systemic collapse.

Head of GCHQ rebuffed late-night request from National Security Agency amid strained relations in Five Eyes intelligence coalition

The US National Security Agency (NSA) tried to persuade its British counterpart to stop the Guardian publishing revelations about secret mass data collection from the NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, according to a new book.

Sir Iain Lobban, the head of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), was reportedly called with the request in the early hours of 6 June 2013 but rebuffed the suggestion that his agency should act as a censor on behalf of its US partner in electronic spying.

The German Army needs its weapons stocks to be able to guarantee national defense, Christine Lambrecht has said

The German Armed Forces can't send any more weapons to Ukraine if they want to retain their ability to defend their own nation, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht told the German government on Tuesday. As the defense minister, her focus is Germany's national security, she added.

"I have to admit, as the Minister of Defense, ... we are reaching the limits of what we can give away from the Bundeswehr [stocks]," Lambrecht told the cabinet during a meeting on Tuesday. The German Armed Forces - the Bundeswehr - must be able to "guarantee" security at the regional and national levels, she said, vowing to ensure that this "continues to be the case."

President Joe Biden's latest pick for his Intelligence Advisory Board is an MSNBC pundit who was among dozens of former intelligence officials to sign a letter in 2020 claiming, without evidence, that the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation operation.

Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff at the CIA and Pentagon, was picked by Biden to be part of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board on Friday. Bash, along with roughly 50 other ex-intelligence officials, signed a letter in October 2020 claiming the Hunter Biden laptop saga had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation," while Bash himself suggested on TV that the laptop story was "Russian disinformation."