RT India’s Runjhun Sharma has traveled to the country to see how life has changed under Taliban rule Afghanistan has marked five years since the Taliban swept back to power amid a chaotic US withdrawal. Celebrations have been held across the country, with officials describing Afghanistan as safer and “free.” The US invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 following the September 11 attacks, for which Washington identified Al-Qaeda as being responsible. The group’s leaders, including Osama bin Laden, were based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at the time. US forces withdrew as the country’s Western-backed government rapidly collapsed and the Taliban recaptured Kabul in August 2021. Once central to US foreign policy – with American taxpayers footing an estimated $2.3 trillion bill for the 20-year occupation – Afghanistan has since largely faded from Western attention. ...
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Tankers sailing with transponders off are reportedly helping prevent a sharper oil-price surge by moving crude through the disrupted strait Gulf states are covertly shipping oil through the Strait of Hormuz on tankers with their transponders switched off despite severe disruptions to normal traffic and intermittent attacks, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the shipments. The de facto closure to normal traffic through the strait due to the US-Iran conflict has affected a strategic waterway that has historically been the route for around a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade. The conflict initially sent global oil prices soaring to nearly $120 a barrel. Some energy experts have warned that oil prices could reach $150 over the coming months. The volumes shipped through the heavily disrupted passage exceed market estimates of 4 million barrels per day, people familiar with ...
RT’s Charlotte Dubenskij reports from Taybeh, where residents face near-daily assaults, property damage, and incursions onto their land A historic Palestinian village widely described as the last entirely Christian community in the occupied West Bank is facing near-daily Israeli settler attacks and growing restrictions, residents and activists have told RT. RT’s Charlotte Dubenskij visited the Kaa’bneh family, part of a Palestinian Bedouin community living in Taybeh, east of Ramallah, where she witnessed settlers approaching with sheep and goats at sunset, hurling rocks, and trying to breach the fences. The family says such incursions can happen several times a day. “They come and vandalize our property, cut through the fencing and bring their sheep onto our land,” Naif Kaa’bneh said. “They break the water tanks and cut off the electricity. If someone is filming, they b...
Thousands remain stranded in Ceuta following a massive influx from Morocco that has overwhelmed local authorities Hundreds of Moroccan migrants have protested in Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta, demanding asylum as thousands remain stranded in the area following mass border crossings last month. The crisis erupted on July 30-31, when an estimated 72,000 migrants entered Ceuta from neighboring Morocco – equivalent to roughly 70% of the enclave’s population of around 84,000. While most returned shortly afterward, an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 remain, straining reception centers, hospitals, and law enforcement. The influx has triggered a bitter dispute over the migrants’ fate. Ceuta Mayor-President Juan Jesus Vivas has called for asylum claims linked to the surge to be rejected and migrants returned to Morocco. Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska backed the hardlin...
A rare celebrity outburst has pierced Kiev’s climate of fear, exposing forced abductions, repression and a regime terrified of truth Except for the unfortunate victims of Western information blackouts and propaganda, it has long been obvious that Ukraine under its leader-beyond-elections Vladimir Zelensky is not a democracy, even by the real world’s low standards. Zelensky’s regime is extremely corrupt, authoritarian, and lethally vicious. Critics, for instance, are imprisoned and killed by a combination of torture and neglect, such as the late Gonzalo Lira , or locked away for 15 years for, in effect, the thought crime of calling for unity among Russian and Ukrainian workers , such as the socialist Bogdan Sirotyuk. Other targets of the regime are subject to assassination attempts , including abroad. Precisely because the Zelensky regime is so lawless, scary, and vicious, Ukrainians usually do n...
The Pentagon is reportedly considering next-generation mobile air defense radars modeled on Russia’s S-300 and S-400 The US is looking to Russia’s air defense technology as it develops a new generation of mobile radars following losses suffered during the war with Iran, Military Watch has reported. New THAAD radars are reportedly set to gain a mobile sensor platform function similar to those built into Russia’s S-300 and S-400 systems from the outset. According to a report published earlier this week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) destroyed more than $3 billion worth of American air defense radars during the first week of the war on the Islamic Republic launched by Israel and the US in late February. The losses reportedly included lower-value radars such as the AN/TPS-59, valued at around $70 million, as well as an AN/FPS-132 radar and two AN/TPY-2 X-band mobile radar sy...