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NEW: We reviewed more than a thousand pages of Russian military documents left behind in a command bunker in Balakliia, Ukraine. The documents shed new light on Russia's chaotic retreat from the Kharkiv area in Sept. Thread with some of our findings 1/x
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The protesters are marching through Shibuya to protest outside the Shibuya police station
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NEW: We've spent several months investigating pro-Putin activists across Germany who are agitating for Berlin to cut aid to Ukraine and pursue peace with Russia. Here are some of our findings...
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The documents - some half burnt in a furnace in the bunker - show Russian troops anxious over the arrival of HIMARS and grappling with desertions and casualties. One soldier said it was like playing "roulette". Ukrainian strikes could land anywhere. reuters.com/investigates/s…
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Hello, I wrote about the EXTREMELY dystopian vibes inside the bubble at the Beijing Olympics. Exhibit A: Hotel bartenders making specialty cocktails in their full PPE gear reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
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Anyways I kind of suck at twitter and I forgot to number the thread but thank you for reading our @specialreports story. Grateful to work with such a superb group of indefatigable reporters and editors @m_tsvetkova @zverev_live @ChristianLowe4 @jmaclondon reuters.com/investigates/s…
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More photos from the command bunker. Propaganda posters warned that Ukraine would descend into Nazi rule if the Russian troops left. The furnace at the back of the bunker room was stuffed with documents. They left a plastic bag of more papers to be burned stuck to the furnace
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Another document, a spreadsheet, showed the pay discrepancy between Russian and Luhansk soldiers. A typical Russian sergeant was paid 202,084 roubles a month in salary plus bonuses, while a sergeant in the separatist force received just 91,200. So less than half.
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Morale was deteriorating. An officer wrote on July 24 that someone called Shtanko was a “bastard” facing disciplinary action because he “pulled back his platoon”. We found Shtanko and his dad. His dad said Shtanko refused an order to “send his men into artillery fire.”
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A mixture of soldiers from Russia and separatist Luhansk occupied the building. The head of a Luhansk flame-thrower company recorded in one document that eight of his subordinates had previous convictions - including one man for rape and sexual assault.
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From a roster of daily briefings and other documents seen in the bunker, here was the command structure in place in Balakliia. Ivan Popov headed the military grouping for "Balakliia". He's since been promoted to general, according to his wife. 3/x
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We have discovered, through interviews and a wide review of social media posts and other online information, that key figures in this campaign in Germany have links to the Russian state or to far-right movements. reuters.com/investigates/s…
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Today, I’m covering two protests in Shibuya, a Black Lives Matter rally and a march agaisnt police brutality in a case involving a Kurdish man from Turkey
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Throughout July, Russian officers in Balakliia were increasingly anxious about equipment shortages. They finally got 3 quadcopter drones on July 20 but they weren’t ready to fly because their software wasn’t installed yet. They also needed to train soldiers to operate them
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Finally, a hero calls it out for what it is
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Japan's Princess Mako, the emperor's niece, has married her commoner college sweetheart on Tuesday and left the royal family after a years-long engagement beset by scrutiny that has left the princess with PTSD reuters.com/world/asia-pac… @emlies16
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In July, Commander Popov got even worse news: the FSB had learned that Ukrainians were moving HIMARS to the area. Precise strikes followed. An Aug. 30 spreadsheet showed that the force was at only 71% of full strength. The 2nd assault battalion had 49 personnel instead of 240.
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In Sept the Balakliia bunker came under heavy attack. Locals saw soldiers throwing their guns and equipment away and retreating. In this telegram vid shared by @RALee85, you can hear Ukrainian soldiers talking about the complex being hit with HIMARS twitter.com/RALee85/status…
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"It all happened in an instant, I can't forget it even now," he says, weeping. I visited Otsutchi, a town hit by the 2011 tsunami and earthquake, to write about a poignant phone booth where survivors can call their lost loved ones widerimage.reuters.com/story/japans-t…
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A Ugandan Olympics athlete in Japan has gone missing, and the team's host city is conducting a search with police, Japan's top government spokesman said on Friday. NHK say it's a weightlifter, and that an official at the host city noticed he was missing during a PCR test.
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Locals in Balakliia were routinely detained and tortured. Relatives of detainees like Tetiana would petition a military commandant called V. "Granit" and try to get them released. He'd turn them away. Granit's office sat across from the police station, where people were tortured.
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NEW: Documents and other clues left behind by retreating Russian troops in Bucha point to the units behind the town's brutal occupation, including an elite, paramilitary force that reports up to Putin's former bodyguard reuters.com/investigates/s…
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“Just because Japanese people don’t believe there’s racism here doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” one protester tells me.
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I found this unsigned curfew card by Granit in his office across the street from the police station. His men also held people in the basement. His name shows up in daily briefing rosters in the command bunker and it appears he attended the meetings in person.
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These include organizers of several pro-Russia protests in Cologne who traveled together to Donbas last year to distribute aid. In a video of their trip, Elena Kolbasnikova and Max Schlund thanked the People's Front, a group headed by Vladimir Putin, for help organizing the trip.
Special Correspondent @Reuters. Get in touch: mari.saito@tr.com // DM for signal #