Latest news with #Sevastopol
Russia Today
26-06-2025
- Business
- Russia Today
Russian region bans Musk's Starlink
The head of Russia's Lugansk People's Republic has banned all products from Elon Musk's company SpaceX, including equipment for the Starlink satellite internet system, citing security concerns. 'Starlink technology can be used by the enemy to coordinate its actions, transfer data and deliver strikes on our territory. We cannot afford to ignore this threat,' Leonid Pasechnik said Thursday on social media. The border region, formerly part of Ukraine, declared independence following the Western-backed 2014 coup in Kiev and later voted to join Russia. Russian officials have voiced concerns that Starlink is not a purely civilian technology and could be used for military purposes since before the ongoing crisis. Musk began supplying Starlink terminals to Ukraine after the conflict escalated in 2022. He claimed the service was resistant to Russian jamming efforts. Satellite communications via Starlink have enabled Ukrainian forces to weaponize industrial-grade drones that can carry the terminals and be piloted remotely from a large distance. Musk said back in 2023 that he had rejected a Ukrainian request to activate Starlink over Crimea, which he interpreted as preparation for strikes on the Russian naval base in Sevastopol. 'If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,' he said at the time. During the recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran, Musk faced calls to 'put the final nail in the coffin of the Iranian regime' by providing Starlink services 'to the Iranian people' – a scenario apparently intended to instigate an uprising. Musk replied with 'the beams are on.' Reza Pahlavi, the son of the pro-Western monarch of Iran ousted by the 1979 revolution who advocates for regime change in Tehran, responded, 'Thank you, Elon.' Subsequently, the US joined Israel in conducting airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. President Donald Trump subsequently urged both nations to agree to a truce.
Al Jazeera
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Ukraine's daring drone assault forces Russia to shelter, relocate aircraft
Russia's increased sense of vulnerability may be the most important result of a recent large-scale Ukrainian drone attack named Operation Spiderweb, experts tell Al Jazeera. The operation destroyed as much as a third of Russia's strategic bomber fleet on the tarmac of four airfields deep inside Russia on June 1. Days later, Russia started to build shelters for its bombers and relocate them. An open source intelligence (OSINT) researcher nicknamed Def Mon posted time-lapse satellite photographs on social media showing major excavations at the Kirovskoe airfield in annexed Crimea as well as in Sevastopol, Gvardiyskoye and Saki, where Russia was constructing shelters for military aircraft. They reported similar work at several airbases in Russia, including the Engels base, which was targeted in Ukraine's attacks on June 1. Another OSINT analyst, MT Anderson, used satellite images to show that all Tupolev-95 strategic bombers had left Russia's Olenya airbase in the Murmansk region by June 7. Much of the fleet remains intact but Ukraine 'demonstrated to Russia that they do not have a sanctuary any more on their own territory', said Minna Alander, a fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Programme at the Center for European Policy Analysis. 'In terms of taking the war to Russian territory, it was even more important than the Kursk incursion in the sense that Ukrainians managed to hit targets of high strategic value thousands of miles from the front lines.' Ukraine conducted a counterinvasion of Russian territory in August, catching forces in Kursk off-guard and seizing territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently argued that the war must return to Russia. Both the Kursk offensive and Spiderweb served that purpose. For the first time, Ukraine with its Operation Spiderweb claimed to have hit the Olenya airbase in the Russian Arctic, almost 2,000km (1,240 miles) from Ukraine, where all Tu-95 bombers were reported destroyed. Also reportedly struck were the Belaya airbase in Irkutsk, more than 4,000km (2,485 miles) from Ukraine; the Dyagilevo airbase in Ryazan, only 175km (110 miles) from downtown Moscow; and the Ivanovo airfield, 250km (155 miles) northeast of Moscow, where a rare early warning and targeting coordination A-50 radar aircraft was destroyed. Russia had historically based its strategic bombers at the Engels base in Saratov and the Ukrainska base in Amur province. It dispersed them to Belaya and Olenya bases in the past two years to protect them after Ukraine struck the Engels base with drones. Now Ukraine has again deprived Russia of any sense of security. 'These strategic bomber strikes were 'asymmetric genius',' said Seth Krummrich, a former US army colonel and vice president of Global Guardian, a security consultancy. 'Cheap drones smuggled deep into Russia destroy priceless and rare Russian strategic bombers. Ukraine is outthinking and outmanoeuvring the slow and large Russian military.' Three days before Operation Spiderweb, Zelenskyy had said he was seeking more European investment in Ukraine's long-range capabilities. 'Of course, we cannot publicly disclose our existing plans and our capabilities, but the prospect is clear: to respond symmetrically to all Russian threats and challenges,' Zelenskyy said. 'They in Russia must clearly feel the consequences of what they are doing against Ukraine. And they will. Attack drones, interceptors, cruise missiles, Ukrainian ballistic systems – these are the key elements. We must manufacture all of them.' Ukraine has already changed Russian threat perceptions several times during this war using long-range weapons, often targeting the Russian air force. In 2023, Ukraine started striking Russian airfields in occupied Crimea, forcing Russia to relocate its bombers. An unnamed White House official told Politico last year that '90 percent of the planes that launch glide bombs' against Ukrainian front-line positions have been moved back inside Russia. Ukraine has dealt Russia similar psychological blows at sea. In 2022, it sank the Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva using Neptune missiles. Its subsequent development of surface drones to strike other Russian Black Sea Fleet ships has forced the Russian navy to abandon Crimea for the shelter of Novorossiysk. In December, Ukraine adapted those surface drones to launch rockets, downing two Russian helicopters near Crimea. In early May, its Magura-7 unmanned surface drones successfully downed two Russian Sukhoi-30 fighter jets using AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles originally designed for air-to-air use. No military in the world had downed fighter jets from surface drones before. 'Russian missiles in many cases have ranges of thousands of miles. The bombers don't need to come anywhere near Ukraine to do what they do. The Arctic was a major base for attacking Ukraine even though they're thousands of kilometres from Ukraine,' said Keir Giles, Eurasia expert at the Chatham House think tank. Spiderweb involved 117 drones smuggled into Russia and launched simultaneously near Russian airfields where the bombers were parked. The drones used the Russian cellphone network but were controlled from Ukraine, Giles said. 'So they were piggybacking [on the radio network] and hiding in noise. They must have had people on site because they had an operational planning based in the country to assemble these components. … People were long gone by the time the operation happened, leaving poor, hapless Russian truck drivers trying to figure out what was going on,' he said. On June 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin put on a brave face, saying his country possesses the most modern nuclear triad in the world, but that may have been bluster rather than a threat, experts said. 'Ukraine likely destroyed the most operational segment of the fleet, evidenced by the fact that these aircraft were not undergoing maintenance at the time of the attack,' wrote Fabian Hoffman, a missile expert. 'Some were even fuelled when hit, indicating they were likely scheduled for use within the next 24 hours.' Will such strikes win the war? 'The cornerstone of this fight remains an infantryman's bullets, artillery shells, armour, and all the vehicles and transports logistically required to support a vast front line in a defensive war,' Krummrich said. 'Yes, drones significantly facilitate manoeuvre warfare in this conflict, but the drone does not win the fight.'
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
19 Years Later, 'Final Reckoning' Retcons an Underrated 'Mission: Impossible' Sequel
Ethan Hunt's world-saving reign has finally come to a conclusion with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (now in cinemas), which concludes the story established in 2023's Dead Reckoning and wraps up 29 years of franchise lore all at once. The Final Reckoning ties back to the seven previous Mission installments in a number of ways. Still, the most notable aspect is how it retcons a key aspect of J.J. Abrams's Mission: Impossible 3 (2006). Here's everything you need to know about how The Final Reckoning ties back to M:I Final Reckoning picks up several months after the events of Dead Reckoning. In the meantime, the nefarious artificial intelligence known as the Entity has grown exponentially in power, taking control of cyberspace and the entire world's nuclear arsenal. To destroy the Entity, Ethan must locate its source code, which is stored on the sunken Sevastopol submarine at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. "In Dead Reckoning, you got the sense that the whole thing that made the Entity scary was that it could manipulate information, and basically erase truth," our review noted. "But in The Final Reckoning, it's just a mad computer program with the keys to all the nukes on planet Earth."M:I 3 found Ethan Hunt pursuing ruthless arms dealer Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), who possessed a device known as 'the Rabbit's Foot,' an unspecified piece of technology which threatened to bring an end to mankind. After Davian is captured and subsequently freed, he kidnaps Ethan's wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Ethan then delivers the Rabbit's Foot to Davian to secure Julia's release. It's revealed that IMF Director of Operations John Musgrave (Billy Crudup) was working with Davian to secure the Rabbit's Foot so that the IMF would have cause to attack Middle East countries in a bid to 'stop the terrorists overseas and spread democracy,' a particularly 2006 The Final Reckoning's marathon 24-minute cold open, Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell) are kidnapped by arch villain Gabriel (Esai Morales), who holds them hostage and monologues his evil motivation. In Dead Reckoning, Gabriel acted as the Entity's human emissary. But in the intervening months, the Entity has decided it doesn't need Gabriel's help to take over the world. Gabriel explains that the Rabbit's Foot was the core module which 'contained a malicious code' --or 'a primordial digital ooze,' if you will--which was used to build The Entity, 'a weapon that the West never could have made on its own.' Davian had previously wanted to harness the power of the code within the Rabbit's Foot, similar to Gabriel's role in Dead Reckoning as the Entity's human emissary. In the ensuing years, as The Entity became more self-aware, it realized it could dominate the world of its own accord and didn't need any puny humans. There was only one thing that could plausibly stop the Entity from achieving its goals: the Rabbit's Foot, then located on the Sevastopol submarine. So the Entity sank the Sevastopol, dooming its source code to a watery the events of M:I 3, the Rabbit's Foot was confiscated by the U.S. government, where it quickly fell into the hands of Director of National Intelligence Denlinger (Cary Elwes), whom Gabriel killed on the train car in Dead Reckoning. Denlinger hoped to use the Rabbit's Foot to eliminate foreign technology deemed a threat to the U.S. When he deployed its use on the Sevastopol, circa 2012, the Rabbit's Foot gained sentience and birthed the Entity. It then sank the Sevastopol. In the ensuing decade, the Entity operated covertly, gaining intelligence from world governments and taking full advantage of its human mouthpieces, greedy also-rans like Davian and Gabriel who hoped to harvest its power but were no match for the Entity the most interesting and least dwelt-upon detail in The Final Reckoning is that Ethan helped to create the Entity by giving Davian the Rabbit's Foot in exchange for Julia's life at the end of M:I 3. In the cold open, Gabriel tells Ethan and Grace that it was clear Julia was Ethan's only weakness, and his eagerness to see Julia freed resulted in his handing over to Davian. After Ethan killed Davian, he returned the device to the IMF, where Delinger got his hands on Impossible 3 never stated outright what the Entity was, but the implication was that it was a weapon of mass destruction. At one point in that film, Benji (Simon Pegg) refers to it as an 'anti-god.' But considering The Final Reckoning's reveal, the only way to make sense of M:I 3 would be to assume the characters themselves didn't know what the Rabbit's Foot was at the time. Abrams's 2006 sequel would suggest the characters were smarter than the audience, with no need to explain the central MacGuffin as it's so incredibly obvious to everyone at the IMF. But if that were the case, why didn't Davian's possession of the Rabbit's Foot raise more governmental alarms? Similarly, how did Denlinger's covert use of the device go undetected for so long? It's a pretty silly plot device, one which undermines the proficiency of the IMF and Ethan Hunt himself, but it goes to show no one saw the possibilities of AI back in 2006.19 Years Later, 'Final Reckoning' Retcons an Underrated 'Mission: Impossible' Sequel first appeared on Men's Journal on May 24, 2025
Geek Tyrant
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Tom Cruise Faced Real Torpedoes and a Risky Trap in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING — GeekTyrant
Tom Cruise has made a career out of redefining what's physically possible for an action star, but Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning might've delivered his most intense brush with danger yet, and yes, it involved actual torpedoes. In a recent episode of The Empire Film Podcast, stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood broke down the grueling submarine sequence from the film, which I've already seen three times, where Cruise's Ethan Hunt navigates through the wreckage of the Sevastopol to retrieve the Entity's source code, and in true Cruise fashion, the production team didn't fake it. Eastwood said: 'The easiest thing in the world to do would have been to have Tom swim through and react to CG torpedoes. That would have been the way. But then you get CG bubble trails and you've got to match plate shots. 'You've done this whole amazing sequence [for] real, and suddenly you're swimming through and some of the audience are like, 'Nah, we can see that's CG. I'm disconnected.'' That disconnection is exactly what Cruise wanted to avoid. He's not just performing these stunts for spectacle, he's doing it to keep the audience locked into the experience. As Eastwood put it: 'Tom does not want an audience disconnected. He doesn't want them to be cheated… He just wants to do it for real as much as he can. As an actor, he wants to react to these things, you know?' Director Christopher McQuarrie pushed things even further, asking Eastwood to increase the number of torpedoes in the scene. They landed on five. Each one was heavily tested, because as Eastwood made clear: 'If it's uncontrolled, we're not doing it.' Still, no amount of control guarantees zero danger, and Cruise learned that firsthand. 'He got trapped once. It wasn't bad, because Tom can hold his breath for a long time. Before he had even finished being trapped, I was already pulling the thing off him.' It's just another reminder, when you buy a ticket to a Tom Cruise movie,. you're not just signing up for a movie. You're signing up for the closest thing to live-action death-defying theater. Cruise wants to do it all for real, he's in it, body and soul… and apparently, with torpedoes.
Russia Today
04-06-2025
- General
- Russia Today
Woman arrested for gathering intel near Crimean Bridge
A woman has been arrested in Russia for allegedly collecting intelligence on air defense systems near the Crimean Bridge for Kiev, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Wednesday. Another woman suspected of operating on behalf of Ukraine was also detained, according to the statement. The suspected Ukrainian assets, both reportedly residents of Crimea in their late 30s, are said to have acted independently but each volunteered to work with Ukrainian security services, according to the FSB. One suspect, identified as a resident of the port city of Sevastopol, allegedly cooperated with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) starting in late 2022. In 2023, she allegedly committed arson at a power transformer substation. She told the FSB that she also photographed Russian air defense positions near the city of Kerch. The city sits at the eastern tip of the peninsula and is connected to Russia's Krasnodar Region by the Crimean Bridge, which is Europe's longest. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly identified the destruction of the bridge as a priority goal. Kiev has launched numerous attacks against it using car bombs, Western-supplied cruise missiles, and unmanned maritime drones. On Tuesday, the SBU released video footage it claimed showed the latest attempt to destroy the bridge. The agency said it spent months planting an explosive device near one of its pillars, describing it as equivalent to 1.1 tons of TNT. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the incident Wednesday, saying Kiev's claims of serious damage were unfounded, and that the bridge remained fully operational. The second suspect was described by the FSB as a resident of the Nizhnegorsk district in northeastern Crimea. Authorities allege she contacted Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) and conducted surveillance of Russian military targets. The FSB claims her tip led to a Ukrainian strike on a Russian fuel depot. Both women face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of treason, the agency said. Earlier this week, the FSB also reported the arrest of a 59-year-old man in Crimea who allegedly assembled an improvised explosive device in his garage under instructions from Ukrainian handlers.
