A Forbes report on alleged Russian army casualties in Ukraine citing a dodgy Russian website has sparked a media and Twitter storm. Some said Russia had "finally slipped" with the leak on its troops in Ukraine; others were baffled by the "fake publication." RT decided to investigate.


A Forbes contributor, Paul Roderick Gregory, published an article on Wednesday citing a Russian web source called "Delovaya Zhizn" (translated as Business Life), which was said to reveal "official figures on the number of Russian soldiers killed or made invalids in eastern Ukraine."

The report, dated March 2015 and entitled "Increases in Pay for Military in 2015," was altered, with the relevant information being removed, after the Forbes publication came out. However, the original copy was webcached by Google.

The cache shows that the website, which has articles on Russian finance, markets and leisure, claimed that the Russian government had paid monetary compensation to Russian soldiers who "took part in military actions in Eastern Ukraine."

Without citing a source, the article claimed that as of February 1, more than 2,000 families of soldiers killed in Ukraine had received compensation of 3 million rubles (about $50,000) and those crippled during military action - a half million rubles (about $25,000). It added that another 3,200 soldiers wounded in battle had received compensation of 1,800 rubles for every day they were in the conflict zone.

The Forbes contributor accused "Russian censors" for "quickly removing the offending material."

The Forbes report was picked up by Western media and independent journalists. The International Business Times reported that the Russian article had "accidentally published the leaked figures."


An article by The Independent on Wednesday called Delovaya Zhizn a "respected news site in Russia," and cited the head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, James Nixey, who said that the report is a "nail in the coffin" in proving Russia is engaged in military action.


Another media outlet piling on was was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which claimed it had received a response from some Anatoly Kravchenko from Delovaya Zhizn, who said the website had "received the casualty figures from relatives of dead servicemen as well as 'insider information' from the Russian Defense Ministry." However, they added that the website's representative had "declined to identify any specific sources."

In a recent op-ed for Czech online newspaper Nova Republika Slovak-Ukrainian politician, writer and political analyst Sergei Chelemendik suggested that it's time for Russia to stop playing the game of geopolitics according to the rules established by the West.

The writer began his piece by noting that "today there is an elementary truth that is being ignored by philosophers in both Russia and Europe: that history gains a new impetus for development when one of its participants puts forth new rules of the [geopolitical] game, forces the rest to play according to these rules, and begins to emerge victorious, using these rules."

Looking to history for examples, Chelemendik recalled that "this is how all the great conquerors and empires acted, long before the globalists and neoconservatives and even before Genghis Khan."

Investigative reporters have discovered that IMF bailout funds intended for Ukraine have mysteriously found their way to a Cyprus bank account controlled by notorious Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi.

A huge chunk of the $17 billion in bailout money the IMF granted to Ukraine in April 2014 has been discovered in a bank account in Cyprus controlled by exiled Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the German newspaper Deutsche Wirtshafts Nachrichten [DWN] reported on Thursday.

In April last year $3.2 billion was immediately disbursed to Ukraine, and over the following five months, another $4.5 billion was disbursed to the Ukrainian Central Bank in order to stabilize the country's financial system.

"The money should have been used to stabilize the country's ailing banks, but $1.8 billion disappeared down murky channels," writes DWN.

Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the former governor of Dnipropetrovsk, is one of Ukraine's richest businessmen, with a business empire that includes holdings in the energy, media, aviation, chemical and metalwork industries. At the center of Kolomoyskyi's wealth is PrivatBank, Ukraine's largest financial institution, which claimed the bulk - 40 percent - of the bailout money which had been earmarked for stabilizing the banking system.

"Theoretically, the IMF should retain direct control over the distribution of funds. In fact, it seems that the banks chose their own auditors."

Two Indian warships entered an Iranian port on Thursday as part of a "goodwill visit to strengthen the bilateral relations" between the two countries, the Indian government said on Friday.

The ships, INS Betwa and INS Beas, docked at Bandar-e-Abbas port for a five-day stay in Iran, according to the India Ministry of Defense. They are scheduled to undertake various professional interactions with their counterparts in the Iranian Navy, including exercises at sea.

"It has been India's national objective to ensure a secure and stable regional environment, which is conducive for economic and social development not just at home, but also in immediate and extended neighborhood," the Defense Ministry said in a release.

"The Indian Navy, while shouldering its security responsibilities, is committed to these objectives and has been contributing towards humanitarian assistance, capacity building and capability enhancement of friendly foreign countries when so needed."

Russia has recently published her new official Naval Doctrine. The full document can be downloaded from the Presidency's website here (in Russian).

To be honest, there is nothing earth shattering in this document. The document explains the purpose of this doctrine, the missions of the Russian Navy and includes a region by region review of the challenges and opportunities for Russia on the world's oceans, including the Arctic and Antarctic regions. But there is one sentence which, I think, deserves a lot of attention. On page 20, in the section 54 it says:

"Определяющим фактором в отношениях с НАТО остаются неприемлемость для Российской Федерации планов продвижения военной инфраструктуры альянса к ее границам и попытки придания ему глобальных функций".

Which I would translate as follows:

"A defining factor in (our) relations with NATO remains that for Russia the following is unacceptable: the alliance's plan to move its infrastructure to the borders of Russia and the attempts to give the alliance a global role".

The intensity of the Ukrainian conflict continues to rise. There's a non-stop flow of statements by high-level U.S. government officials suggesting Russia is the top threat to American national security or portraying Vladimir Putin as Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gadhafi and Osama bin Laden all rolled into one. (Some like Hillary Clinton also add Hitler to this pack.) And Russian bombers buzz American airspace with growing frequency.

For those of us who lived through the hardships of the Cold War, there is an uneasy feeling that the United States and Russia are quickly edging towards direct military confrontation.

This is why it is important to make brief historical excursion into the not-so-distant past.

Those who witnessed - and especially those who helped bring about - the momentous changes in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and in Russia in the early 1990s, remember only too well the overwhelming euphoria of those times.

The dark years of totalitarian communism were receding into the past, and the Russian people were ready and eager to join the great family of Western civilization and enjoy its basic values like human rights, the rule of law, democracy, freedom, a market economy and other real or imaginary benefits associated with them.

That was the time when fresh from the yoke of communism, the Russians were eager to embrace all of these ideals, and confidently expected them to materialize with the help, first and foremost, of the United States.

Hillary Clinton has over one million fake Twitter followers, more than any other presidential hopeful

Donald Trump also has more than one million fake followers, but a higher percentage of real followers on the social media platform

Almost half of Joe Biden's followers are fake

Among those running for president, Bernie Sanders has the highest percentage of real followers with 92%

Fake followers are a 'mix of inactive Twitter users , completely fake users that are created for the sole purpose of following people, and spam bots'

Clinton and Trump still have far more followers than anyone else running for president

Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are not polling well when it comes to their social media fans.

An analysis of the pair's Twitter accounts has revealed that over one million of Clinton's followers are fake, while only 53% of Biden's social media fans are real.

Also polling poorly is Donald Trump, who like Clinton has over one million fake followers.

Yahoo Tech analyzed the Twitter accounts of the presidential hopefuls, and while Clinton and Trump both have the highest number of fake followers, their percentage of real followers is comparatively good at 66% and 69% respectively.

The AP has sued the US Department of Justice over the FBI's refusal to provide public records on a case when the agency created a fake news story to trap a suspect. A former FBI agent told RT that respect for the First Amendment is falling in the agency.

The Associated Press filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, AP reported on Thursday. It follows last year's disclosure, revealed by another Electronic Frontier Foundation request, of how the FBI had tricked a 15-year-old boy, who later pleaded guilty to making bomb threats, with the help of a fake article.

The lawsuit concerns a 2014 Freedom of Information request to obtain documents in the case of a 15-year-old boy who was suspected of making bomb threats to his school in the state of Washington. The FBI decided to send a web link to the MySpace profile of the suspect which led to a fake article on a bogus Seattle Times website. By clicking on stories with headlines such as "Bomb threat at high school downplayed by local police department" and "Technology savvy student holds Timberline High School hostage," the teenager infected his computer with surveillance software that helped reveal his location and Internet address.

The possibility of a new peace deal agreement that could improve the situation in Eastern Ukraine is off the table, says Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko, as a contact group meeting in Minsk ended with a proposal to ensure a stable ceasefire.

The existing peace deal is good enough and simply needs to be implemented, said Poroshenko at a press conference in Brussels accompanied by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.


The Trilateral Contact Group for Ukraine came to agreement to end all military operations and ensure a ceasefire along the whole contact line by September 1 at a meeting in Minsk on Wednesday. The matter is especially important now with the new school year just around the corner.

Information on the location of all educational facilities close to the contact line will be available to both sides, OSCE special envoy Martin Sajdik told journalists in Minsk. Moscow hailed the proposal.

The North Caucasus district military court on Thursday sentenced the former mayor of Dagestan's capital Makhachkala, Said Amirov, to life in jail for terrorism, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom.

"Amirov's guilt has been proved. On several counts, by applying cumulative punishment the court finally ruled to sentence Amirov to life imprisonment," the judge said.

The judge said Amirov will serve his sentence in a high-security penal colony. The other defendants were jailed to between 9 and 22 years, the judge said. Among them is Amirov's nephew Yusup Dzhaparov and also Magomed Akhmedov. The court ruled to increase the time they will spend in jail to 18 and 11 years, respectively.

Amirov, who had been the mayor of Dagestan's capital for 15 years, was arrested in June 2013 on suspicion of having organized a contract killing. In July 2014, the court sentenced him to 10 years behind bars for a plot to assassinate his political rival by shooting down the man's plane with a Strela 2M anti-aircraft missile.

According to investigators, the defendants were involved in organizing a terrorist attack, attempt at life of an acting head of a territorial investigative authority and also other severe crimes.