Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained the members of a radical Islamic group, which recruited fighters for Islamic State and planned a terror attack in the southern Volgograd Region.

Five perpetrators were detained by the FSB, with assistance of the local police, in the town of Pallasovsk, Volgograd Region, the security agency said.


The detained were members of the so-called 'Pallasovsky Jamaat' group, which "was involved in recruitment... of residents of the region to participate in activities of Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS] international terrorist organization," the FSB added.

The Islamist group Jaysh al-Islam admitted to using chemical weapons against Kurdish militias in Aleppo. It also uses human shields and publishes execution videos - yet it has a delegation at the UN-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva.

Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), formerly known as Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam), is a coalition of Salafist Islamist militant groups based in the Douma and Eastern Ghouta neighborhoods of the Syrian capital Damascus.

1 Who supports it

Jaysh al-Islam is one of the two major militant groups in Syria supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and is part of a larger coalition called the Islamic Front. The coalition seeks to make Syria a country ruled by sharia law, exactly what its rival Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) aims to achieve.

Originally appeared at Politika, translated by A. Djurich/А. Ђурић exclusively for SouthFront

It was discovered that about 140 politicians from more than 50 countries is connected directly or indirectly with fictitious companies in 21 tax haven - Name of Vladimir Putin is not mentioned in the documents
Munich daily newspaper "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" yesterday has succeeded to shake the world with the help of numerous media partners by releasing part of the documents revealing that there are hundreds of heads of state, kings, politicians, athletes, officials, business people, celebrities and their relatives and close friends who have, through a Panamanian law firm "Mossacka Fonseka", founded the companies in so-called tax havens, mostly in order to avoid paying taxes, but also to verify the origin of the money.

Analyzing 11 million documents obtained by the "Sueddeutsche Zeitung", about 400 journalists members of the international research team have identified 140 politicians from more than 50 countries that are linked directly or indirectly with companies in 21 tax havens.

That integrity is a foreign land where Washington is concerned is an inarguable fact. In the latest example, the failure to complete the construction of a nuclear disposal plant agreed with Russia once again leaves Washington's credibility in tatters.

Underlying this issue is the attempt by the US federal government to alter the terms of the agreement it signed with Russia in 2000 for the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium, with each country building industrial plants with this specific objective in mind. Russia has kept its side of the bargain and, at no small cost, built the facility required to dispose of its excess nuclear material in the manner agreed.

The US on the other hand is now looking at an alternative method of disposal, which amounts to storing said material in a process that allows it to retain its "breakout potential" - i.e. its ability to be converted back into weapons grade plutonium.

Given the record of subterfuge and double-dealing on the part of successive US governments when it comes to its failure to honour treaties and agreements, nobody should be surprised. Indeed, this subterfuge is so common where Washington is concerned that you could be forgiven for considering it a quintessentially American trait.

Since 2000 alone, the record in this regard makes stark reading. The willfully false assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of WMD, for example, was used as justification for one of the most disastrous wars ever unleashed, certainly in modern times, which only succeeded in plunging Iraq and the wider entire region into a dark night of terrorism and sectarian bloodletting. It is a state of affairs that shows no evidence of abating anytime soon, 13 years later.

Following on from that, when Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, he did so as the supposed antidote to the arrogance and mendacity that typified the Bush years before him. One of his very first pledges upon taking office was that he would close of the controversial US prison facility, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, during his first term in office. It was a pledge and an announcement that met with support across the world, given that along with rendition, waterboarding and torture, the very name Guantanamo conjured up his predecessor's "war on terror," which replaced international law with might is right as the cornerstone of global affairs.

The "Panama Papers" affair has the unmistakable hallmarks of a net-centric hybrid war operation: a disparate group of apparently non-state actors, seemingly operating without central direction, carry out an information attack which just happens to dovetail nicely with US international policy objectives and not resulting in a black eye for any prominent US actors. Given the level of corruption of the US elite and the degree of offshoring engaged by US financial institutions, it seems all too fortuitous that the targeted firm did not do too much business with US clients, due to a variety of US laws which specifically prohibit offshoring through Panamanian firms. It's as if someone in the US decided to use Snowden's act of civil disobedience and attempt to disguise a US information operation as a similar act by a civic-minded individual.

The Source of the Papers

Really, there are only two. One is a disgruntled former employee who, Snowden-style, amasses a treasure trove of sensitive information and then passes it on to the media. There are a couple of problems with that explanation so far. First, we don't know who that individual would be. To have that level of access to information covered by client-attorney confidentiality (one of the sacrosanct Western values, at least as far as Western propaganda is concerned) one would have to be a highly placed employee of Mossack-Fonseca, for example a member of its Information Technology department with amazing hacking skills or appropriate security clearance. No individual has so far come forward, the firm in question has not identified any such employees, and if such an individual exists, why not come forward? He/she would be an instant global celebrity, the polar opposite of Edward Snowden whose revealing of US criminal wrongdoing earned him what might be a lifetime in exile, several rounds of condemnation by a variety of "liberal" politicians in the US, and not a few credible death threats. Whoever did this has every incentive to go public, go on speaking tours, write books - in short, become a celebrity.

Food parcels belonging to the US Pentagon were discovered in Beiji oil refinery in Salahuddin province in Northern Iraq after the refinery and the nearby city were taken back from the ISIL terrorist group in mid-October.

The Food parcels were discovered by a group of Iranian documentary filmmakers, including Vahid Farahani and Seyed Hashem Moussavi, who were in Iraq in October to prepare a documentary on the Iraqi army's military advances against the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group in Salahuddin province, specially in Beiji city North of Baghdad.

The documentary, 'Conquest of Beiji', provides a complete account of advances by the Iraqi army and volunteer forces against the ISIL terrorist group in Beiji.

A major part of the 'Conquest of Beiji' focuses on the discovery of ammunition and food parcels that all carry Pentagon labels.

Vahid Farahani and his team put on display some of the parcels and emptied their contents at a meeting at Fars News Agency upon their return from Iraq.

The photos of the food parcels will be released on FNA in coming hours.

Beiji lies at a crossroads between several frontlines and control of the area is seen as the key to progress in other regions, including Anbar province where forces were also closing in on ISIL strongholds.

We have to tip our proverbial shapka-ushanka to the Brookings Institution, the only American think tank brave enough to admit that Vladimir Putin is not connected in any way to the financial shenanigans documented in the "Panama Papers":

Despite the headlines, there is no evidence of Putin's direct involvement—not in any company involved in the leak, much less in criminal activity, theft, tax evasion, or money laundering. There are documents showing that some of his "friends" have moved "up to two billion dollars" through these Panama-based shell companies.

This week we on the Truth Perspective, we discussed the Panama Papers, the progress of the war in Syria, potentially explosive developments in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Dutch referendum on Ukraine's EU Association Agreement, the recent spate of people going on naked rage rampages, and more. Tune in, ask questions, and stay informed!

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that the Russian president has instructed the foreign ministry to develop a new, revised edition of Russia's official foreign policy framework.

Speaking to the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a nonpartisan organization committed to improving Russian-American relations, on Saturday, Lavrov said that as "the period of uncertainty in world affairs continues, trying to respond in one fell swoop to all outstanding issues, or to try to create some sort of 'magic formula' to solve any possible problem would be impossible."

At the same time, the minister added, "a general trend, of course, can be observed, and is something that we are working to reflect in our fundamental doctrinal documents."

Russia Defense Report: Countermeasures of Hybrid War