In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin visits the Valaam Monastery on Valaam island in the northern portion of Lake Ladoga, on August 1, 2025. [AFP] The United Kingdom’s recent sanctions against Russian individuals running affairs in Europe and African countries that it considers spies have turned out to be a blow to Vladimir Putin’s information manipulation strategy on the African continent. The mid-July sanctions by the UK against ‘spies running a campaign to destabilise Europe’ spread to an online news agency, African Initiative, which The Standard reported in July as a…
Author: By Wellingtone Nyongesa
Rescuers observe before transporting a fragment of Russian cruise missile outside a residential building in Kyiv on August 1, 2025, partially destroyed following a Russian missile strike morning on July 31, 2025, amid Russian invasion in Ukraine. [AFP] The latest attack on Ukraine’s Capital – Kyiv, where the number of those killed rose to 31 by early Friday, according to Kyiv Independent, came more than ten days after Russia’s propaganda media released a video revealing large drone factories tucked away in one of the republics of the Federation. On July 20, Russia’s military-controlled Zvezda TV reported what had previously been…
Tetiana reacts as she pays tribute on the birthday day of her son Sergiy Voityshyn, who was killed in 2024 fighting Russian troops in the Donetsk region, at a makeshift memorial for the fallen Ukrainian and foreign fighters on the Independence Square in Kyiv on March 1, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP) When, in May, international human rights bodies addressed Russia’s continued killing of civilians in its war against Ukraine, the entities were unknowingly digging out Moscow’s methods which it employs whenever it has waged war to expand territory. Historians who have…
“Alabuga Start” is a programme aimed at training and employing foreign nationals in Russia. [Courtesy] Russia’s Special Economic Zone (SEZ), described by independent Russian and Western media as an exploitative cheap labour push to staff Russian war factories, has upped its publicity campaign weeks after a damning rights group report. Engaging new methods of generating marketing messages and spreading them through new media, the SEZ programme known as Alabuga Start seemed to put up a fight following the 8 May report by Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GIATOC). The GIATOC report corroborated earlier media reports that revealed thousands of…