ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

SOURCE: twitter.com/topspb_tv/ On December 28, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin declared  the explosion in a store in the city of St. Petersburg a “terrorist attack”.  According to the latest reports, 13 people were injured in the attack that took place on December 27. The president ordered to act in accordance with law when detaining those responsible for the crime adding that if there is a threat to the lives of law enforcement officers, they need to “act decisively.” “I have instructed the director of the Federal Security Service… to act within the framework of the law during detention [of suspected terrorists.] But if there’s a threat to a police officer’s life and health, our officers need to act decisively, take no prisoners, kill the assailants on the spot,” Putin said. The blast was caused by a homemade explosive device filled with lethal fragments. Security forces are investigating the incident.

FILE PHOTO: Sanaa, Yemen © Khaled Abdullah / Reuters Saudi-led coalition airstrikes killed 68 Yemeni civilians in one day, the UN humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said on December 28. The incident took on December 26. The first airstrike hit a “crowded popular market” in the province of Taiz and killed 54 civilians including eight children and wounded 32 others. Separately, airstrikes killed 14 people in the province of Hodeida. In November and December, the Saudi-led coalition intensified its air and ground campaign against the Houthis in western and northern Yemen. The Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the city of Hodeida are two main targets of the ongoing operations.

IMAGE: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised a “tremendous firepower” of the Israeli Air Force and sent a warning to Iran and the Palestinian movement Hamas. “ The air force is as its peak today, with the best tools, technologies, planes and pilots in the world. With defensive and offensive capabilities and tremendous firepower, the air force has the ability to reach short distances and faraway destinations as required,”  Netanyahu said  at an Israel Air Force Flight Academy graduation ceremony at the Hatzerim Air Base outside Beersheba on December 27. “ We are meeting major challenges in the north, in the south and in the east. On all the fronts there are centers and branches of radical Islam that have already caused a heavy calamity in our region, but now to our country . We are an island in this stormy region and have a clear policy of protecting our security.” The prime minister continued saying that  Israel “will not al...

Written by  Peter Koenig ; Originally appeared at  Global Research Pyonyang’s urban skyline, competing with Manhattan and the Trump Tower? The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is being choked into submission if not starvation by the UN Security Council, by a vote of 15 : 0; i.e. unanimously.  None of the 15 UNSC states, let alone the five permanent members, have had the guts to say no to a killer Resolution , drafted and proposed by the United States of America, a name that increasingly stands for international rogue and crime nation. The New York Times reports on 22 December 2017: “President Trump has used just about every lever you can use, short of starving the people of North Korea to death, to change their behavior,”  the White House homeland security adviser, Thomas P. Bossert, said Tuesday.  “And so, we don’t have a lot of room left here to apply pressure to change their behavior.” Two immediate questions come to mind –  firs...

Illustrative image A user of  the Russian military forum Lostarmour.info  has found an interesting example of the Pentagon’s magic math used in the coverage of the US war on ISIS in Afghanistan. In March, 2017 the US military claimed that there were about 700 ISIS members in the country. “We believe that there are approximately 700 members of ISIS, perhaps even less now based on the operations, that are still contained to less than three districts down in southern Nangarhar,”  Breitbart quoted  Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, the Kabul-based spokesman for the US-NATO mission in Afghanistan. In December, 2017 Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the top American and NATO commander in the war-torn country, said that 1,400 operations and airstrikes had “removed from the battlefield” more than 1,600 members of ISIS since March. Thus, since March, the US-NATO mission in Afghanistan had eliminated 2.28 times more members of ISIS than there were in the country.

Written by  Patrick J. Buchanan ; Originally appeared at  buchanan.org In the run-up to Christmas, President Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of some surprisingly good news and glad tidings. Sunday, Vladimir Putin called to thank him and the CIA for providing Russia critical information that helped abort an ISIS plot to massacre visitors to Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Monday found polls showing Trump at his highest in months. Stocks soared 200 points at the opening bell in anticipation of pre-Christmas passage of the Republican tax bill. The Dow has added a record 5,000 points in Trump’s first year. And the Russiagate investigation may have busted an axle. Though yet unproven, charges are being made that Robert Mueller’s sleuths gained access to Trump transition emails illicitly. This could imperil prosecutions by Mueller’s team, already under a cloud for proven malice toward the president. Recall: Daniel Ellsberg, who delivered the Pentagon Papers to ...

Director of National Security James Clapper told a House panel Sept. 10 that cyber threats to U.S. military, civilian, corporate and financial infrastructure are growing exponentially, as well as becoming much more sophisticated. In  testimony [PDF]  before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Clapper said threats from cyberattacks and hacking to U.S. national and economic security “are increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication and severity of impact.” “Overall, the unclassified information and communication technology (ICT) networks that support US Government, military, commercial, and social activities remain vulnerable to espionage and/or disruption,” Clapper said. While the threat of “Cyber Armageddon” remains small at the present time, the DNI nevertheless said the intelligence community foresees “an ongoing series of low-to-moderate level cyber attacks from a variety of sources over time,” which he says will cost the U.S. in terms of “eco...

Illustrative image On December 25, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) reportedly acheived another strategic victory in the coutnryside of Damascus. According to pro-government sources, units of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and other armed groups operating in the Beit Jinn pocket accepted a withdrawal agreement and declared their readiness to surrender their positions to the SAA. Negotiations between the local militants and the SAA started in the pocket last week  after government forces had cut off the road between Beit Jinn and Maghar al-Mir and entered the village of Maghar al-Mir itself. If the surrender of militants in the Beit Jinn pocket is confirmed, this will be a major vicory for the Syrian military that eliminates one of the few remaining militant-held pockets in the Damascus countryside and secure and this important area near the Golan Heights. Click to see the full-size map