PrairiePundit

 ISW: Likely Ukrainian forces conducted a drone strike near the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) building in Moscow on July 24. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) claimed that Russian electronic warfare (EW) suppressed two Ukrainian UAVs that detonated, damaging two non-residential buildings.[1] One drone detonated on Komsomolsky Prospekt within 500 meters of the MoD building and within 200 meters of a reported secret Russian General Staff Main Directorate (GRU) building.[2] Russian sources reported that the second drone hit a business center on Likhachev Prospekt.[3] CNN reported that an unspecified Ukrainian intelligence official confirmed that Ukrainian forces conducted the attack.[4] Ukrainian Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stated that unspecified UAVs attacked the capital and warned that more UAV attacks against Russia will occur.[5] Russian opposition source The Insider reported that Russian authorities banned Russian television channels from cov...

BBC: The German parliament has approved a resolution declaring that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One was a "genocide". Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their people died in the atrocities of 1915. Turkey says the toll was much lower and rejects the term "genocide". The vote heightened German-Turkish tensions at a time when Turkey's help is needed to stem the flow of migrants. Turkey has recalled its ambassador and its leader threatened further action. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the recall was a first step and that the government would consider further action it might take in response to the vote. "We will do whatever is necessary to resolve this issue," he said. ... Turkey's idea of resovling the issue is to deny that the event happened.  The leaders of Trukey deny the obvious everytime the issue is raised.  If they were really interested in putting the issue behind them, they would apologize of the ...

Jeff Jacoby: ... Talaat Pasha , the powerful Ottoman interior minister during World War I, certainly didn’t disguise his objective. “The Government . . . has decided to destroy completely all the indicated [Armenians] persons living in Turkey,” he brusquely reminded officials in Aleppo in a September 1915 dispatch. “An end must be put to their existence . . . and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to conscientious scruples.” US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, flooded with accounts of the torture, death marches, and butchery being inflicted on the Armenians, remonstrated with Talaat to no avail. “It is no use for you to argue,” Morgenthau was told. “ We have already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians . . . . The hatred between the Turks and Armenians is now so intense that we have got to finish them. If we don’t, they will plan their revenge. . . . We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia.” If some of them survived, it wasn’t for lack of effort by ...

AP: Pope Francis on Sunday marked the 100th anniversary of the slaughter of Armenians by calling the massacre by Ottoman Turks "the first genocide of the 20th century" and urging the international community to recognize it as such. Turkey immediately responded by recalling its ambassador and accusing Francis of spreading hatred and "unfounded claims." "The words of the leader of a church with 1 billion followers cannot but have a strong impact," he told The Associated Press.Francis issued the pronouncement during a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica commemorating the centenary that was attended by Armenian church leaders and President Serge Sarkisian, who praised the pope for calling a spade a spade and "delivering a powerful message to the international community." Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th ...

Image by The Aspen Institute via Flickr Eli Lake, Washington Times: U.S. diplomats concluded in late 2008 that the government of Armenia had supplied Iran with rockets and machine guns later used to kill American troops in Iraq , according to State Department cables disclosed by WikiLeaks . John D. Negroponte, deputy secretary of state at the time, wrote a December 2008 letter to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan expressing "deep concerns about Armenia's transfer of arms to Iran which resulted in the death and injury of U.S. soldiers in Iraq." The cable, based on U.S. intelligence, includes the text of a classified letter labeled "secret" from Mr. Negroponte. It says "in 2007 some of these weapons were recovered from two Shia militant attacks in which a U.S. soldier was killed and six others were injured in Iraq." ... The Armenian incident was part of a wider U.S. effort to block Iran's access to the global arms and weapons technolo...

NY Times: ... ... an animated gray-haired man had edged his way alongside the podium, and then he stepped onto it, sending whispers through the crowd. It was Garry Kasparov , the former world chess champion, who was in Sochi promoting the campaign of Mr. Pakhomov’s archrival, Boris Y. Nemtsov . Mr. Kasparov, born to an Armenian mother, had been sitting quietly, signing autographs, for nearly two hours. He was mobbed by admirers, men in their 40s and 50s who had loved him since childhood. When an organizer for Mr. Pakhomov’s United Russia Party tried to get Mr. Kasparov removed from the premises, saying his presence amounted to political campaigning, the head of the village’s administration glowered and snapped, “He is my idol!” Mr. Kasparov’s remarks began innocently enough. He made an offhand mention of Mr. Nemtsov, so subtle that it was easy to miss. Then he began to sling arrows at Moscow, saying Soviet Russia had supported Turkey at the time of the massacres. Mr. Pakhomov, standi...