For the past decade, China has consistently ranked last in the world for internet freedom due to its all-pervading online surveillance and content control system dubbed the “Great Firewall.”

But a new report out Wednesday shows that internet freedoms in China’s neighbor Myanmar are now just as lacking.

The report from Freedom House, a US government-funded NGO, found that global internet freedom has declined for the 14th consecutive year. China and Myanmar ranked joint last for 2024, with a score of nine out of 100.

Since seizing power in a 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military junta has violently cracked down on dissent, imposing restrictions on online access and speech including widespread internet shutdowns, and built “a mass censorship and surveillance regime,” said the authors of “Freedom on the Net 2024: The Struggle for Trust Online.”

The report points to censorship technology introduced in May that blocked most virtual private networks, or VPNs, “cutting residents off from tools they had relied on to safely and securely bypass internet controls.”

Myanmar’s throttling of internet freedoms was designed to “suppress the activities of civilian prodemocracy activists and armed resistance groups,” the report said.

Human rights groups and United Nations experts have long documented evidence to support the report’s claims. In 2022, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar said the junta was building a “digital dictatorship” to curtail online freedoms and ramp up surveillance of civilians.

Access to information online was “a matter of life and death for many people in Myanmar,” the UN report found, especially for “those seeking safety from indiscriminate attacks by the military and the millions trying to navigate a devastating economic and humanitarian crisis.”

Meanwhile in China, the Freedom House report found the government has continued efforts to “isolate China’s domestic internet from the rest of the world, blocking international traffic to some government websites and imposing huge fines on people using VPNs.”

In recent years, China’s internet watchdog has stepped up regulation of cyberspace as authorities intensified a crackdown on online dissent. China’s censors have reined in blogs, US search giants, and social media – even regulating “likes” of public posts.

In response to the report, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday that “Chinese citizens enjoy all rights and freedoms in accordance with the law.”

Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said “this so-called report is completely false and has ulterior motives.”

Elsewhere, the report paints a dim view of global internet freedom, with conditions for human rights online deteriorating in 27 out of 72 countries surveyed.

Of those covered by the report, almost 80% of people live in countries where individuals were arrested for posting their political, social, or religious views online. In a record 43 countries, people were physically attacked or killed in retaliation for their online activities, the report found.

It points to Thailand’s strict royal insult laws, that have ensnared hundreds of people in recent years, including one man who was sentenced to a record 50 years in prison in January for social media posts deemed damaging to the king.

The Central Asian nation Kyrgyzstan showed the biggest drop in internet freedoms, according to the report, as President Sadyr Japarov ramped up efforts to silence digital media and suppress online organizing.

Kyrgyz authorities blocked and later shut down investigative media website Kloop “after it reported on an imprisoned opposition figure’s allegations of torture in detention,” the report said.

Conversely, Iceland retained its status as having the “most free” online environment with a score of 94 out of 100.

The report also covers online disinformation campaigns and political interference in the run-up to elections, including harassment of independent researchers and fact checkers.

In the United States, pressure on independent experts “has left people less informed about influence operations ahead of the November elections,” the report said.

False allegations against such researchers “prompted a wave of litigation, subpoenas from top Republicans on the US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, and online harassment aimed at … participants,” which had a “chilling effect,” the report found.

Italy’s parliament made it illegal on Wednesday for couples to go abroad to have a baby via surrogacy — a pet project of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party which activists say is meant to target same-sex partners.

Since taking office in 2022, Meloni has pursued a highly conservative social agenda, looking to promote what she sees as traditional family values, making it progressively harder for LGBTQ couples to become legal parents.

The upper house Senate voted into law a bill proposed by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party by 84 votes to 58. The bill was already approved by the lower house last year.

The legislation extends a surrogacy ban already in place in Italy since 2004 to those who go to countries such as the United States or Canada, where it is legal, imposing jail terms of up to two years and fines of up to €1 million ($1.1 million).

“Motherhood is absolutely unique, it absolutely cannot be surrogated, and it is the foundation of our civilization,” Brothers of Italy senator Lavinia Mennuni said during the parliamentary debate. “We want to uproot the phenomenon of surrogacy tourism.”

Earlier this year, Meloni called surrogacy an ‘inhuman’ practice that treated children as supermarket products, echoing a position expressed by the Catholic Church.

On Tuesday, demonstrators gathered near the Senate voicing their outrage at the bill, saying the government was lashing out at LGBTQ people and damaging those who wanted to have children despite the fact that Italy has a sharply declining birth rate.

“If someone has a baby, they should be given a medal. Here instead you are sent to jail … if you don’t have children in the traditional way,” Franco Grillini, a long-time activist for LGBTQ rights in Italy, told Reuters at the demonstration.

Rainbow Families President Alessia Crocini said 90% of Italians who choose surrogacy are heterosexual couples but they mostly do so in secret, meaning the new ban would de facto affect only gay couples who cannot hide it.

The clampdown on surrogacy comes against the backdrop of falling birthrates, with national statistics institute ISTAT saying in March that births had dropped to a record low in 2023 — the 15th consecutive annual decline.

“This is a monstrous law. No country in the world has such a thing,” said Grillini, referring to the government’s move to prevent Italians from taking advantage of practices that are perfectly legal in some countries.

The United States has warned Israel it may stop supplying the country with weapons unless the humanitarian situation in Gaza improves.

This is not the first time Israel’s major ally has threatened to turn off supplies. In May, US President Joe Biden said he would halt some shipments of weapons to Israel if an invasion of the southern city of Rafah went ahead. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed on with the campaign – and the flow of US weapons continued.

The latest warning though, which says Israel has 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation on the ground, or risk violating US laws governing foreign military assistance, is a significant step up in pressure, suggesting US military aid could be in jeopardy.

While other countries have drastically reduced their military aid to Israel over the past year, the United States has not.

Here’s a breakdown of who supplies Israel with weapons:

The United States:

The United States is overwhelmingly the biggest supplier of arms to Israel. In 2023 69% of Israel’s arm imports came from the US, according to a report into international arms transfers by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Germany was the second largest, providing 30%, followed by Italy with 0.9%. The UK, France and Spain were among other minor contributors.

The US-imported weapons “have played a major role in Israel’s military actions against Hamas and Hezbollah,” the think tank reported, noting that at the end of 2023, thousands of guided bombs and missiles were delivered from the US to Israel. F-35 and F-15 fighter jets were also delivered to Israel from the US in January 2024.

The US also provides financial assistance to Israel, delivering over $130 billion in bilateral funding since 1948, according to the US State Department. In 2019, the two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding that ensured the US would annually provide Israel with $3.3 billion from the Foreign Military Financing program, and another $500 million for missile defense.

Germany:

While in 2023, Germany contributed 30% of Israel’s weapons, that supply has significantly reduced over the course of 2024.

Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice rejected a request from Nicaragua to order Germany to stop supplying military aid to Israel. One of their key reasons was that German military aid to the country had fallen from approximately €200 million ($220 million) in October 2023 to €1 million ($1.1 million) by the time of the judgement in March.

But on October 10, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the country had not stopped providing Israel with arms, noting that Germany “(has) supplied weapons and we will supply weapons.” He added that weapons will be delivered to Israel “in the near future.”

Israeli security has historically been a core element of German foreign policy due to the Nazi Holocaust against Jews during World War II.

Italy:

Italy has provided helicopters and guns to Israel, according to the SIPRI, and is a partner of the F-35 fighter jet program, helping to manufacture parts.

However, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told local media in late January that Italy had stopped arms shipments to Israel since October 7 last year. Any deals signed before then were still being honored, SIPRI said.

Pagella Politica, an Italian monitoring organization, said Italian companies had sold arms worth almost $129 million to Israel in the decade to 2022.

The United Kingdom:

The British government says its “exports of military goods to Israel are low.” It said it granted licenses valued at $23.42 million in 2023. However, the UK has suspended some licenses to Israel for military equipment over the past year.

Foreign Minister David Lammy suspended around 30 licenses out of 350 to Israel upon the Labour government taking office in July, with an official assessment finding there was a clear risk that the weapons could be used “to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

The suspensions impacted the supply of some parts for drones and F-35 fighter jets. However, the UK government did not suspend supply of material not used in the Israel-Hamas conflict – for example, for training purposes.

Spain:

In February, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation issued a press release noting that the government had not issued any arms sales to Israel since October 7 last year.

On October 11, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez condemned what he described as an “unacceptable” Israeli offensive in Lebanon and urged the international community to stop arms exports to Israel.

“We are emphasizing the urgency for the Israeli government to cease its hostilities which are violating international law by invading a third country, in this case Lebanon, as well as International Humanitarian Law, as has even been questioned by the International Court of Justice,” he said.

France:

While France has historically provided Israel with arms, in recent weeks the relationship between the two countries has become strained as French President Emmanuel Macron called for an end to arms exports to Israel to try and push for a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza.

On October 5, Macron called for the complete suspension of the sale of arms “used in the war in Gaza,” and stressed that France had not been involved in their supply. According to SIPRI, its data does not show any French exports of major arms to Israel from 2019-23, but it notes that France did supply components for arms.

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic material that some readers may find disturbing.

Bodies strewn across dusty streets, entire roads destroyed by Israeli strikes, people starving. This is the picture painted of Jabalya, northern Gaza, by the emergency services chief in the area.

“Stray dogs who are hungry are eating these bodies in the street… It makes it difficult for us to identify the bodies,” he said.

Afana said that there are “thousands of children” and pregnant women stuck in the besieged area, where the Israeli military has carried out aerial and ground attacks in three neighborhoods over the past 12 days.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it is targeting Hamas’ renewed presence there.

At least 50,000 people have been displaced from the Jabalya area, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Sunday. The 400,000 who remain in northern Gaza are stalked by hunger and face thunderous bombardment.

The UN has accused the Israeli military of forcing residents of northern Gaza to choose between starvation or relocation.

“Civilians are given no choice but to either starve or leave,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said in a statement on Monday. “In Gaza, too many red lines have been crossed. What might constitute war crimes can still be prevented.”

The Israeli agency that manages the flow of aid into Gaza said that 30 trucks entered the north on Monday, insisting that Israel “is not preventing the entry of humanitarian aid.”

Afana said that on Monday Israeli forces had fired on hungry residents searching for food at a warehouse aid center run by UNRWA. “The situation is getting worse,” he said.

UNRWA said that an artillery attack at its Jabalya food distribution center on Monday reportedly killed at least 10 people and injured another 40.

“For the paramedics, it is also very dangerous to reach this area… as a result of the roads being blown up and direct fire from the Israeli military on our vehicles,” Afana said.

He said ambulances had been hit by shrapnel from Israeli artillery shelling near Yemen al-Sa’eed Hospital, in Jabalya, sharing a video of the aftermath that showed an ambulance with crushed tires and bullet marks.

“What is happening in northern Gaza is a real genocide,” he added. “We can’t do our job normally.”

At least 342 Palestinians have been killed in parts of northern Gaza since the Israeli operations started earlier this month, Gaza’s Government Media Office reported on Monday, adding that hundreds of “civilians, children and women” have been injured. On Tuesday, at least 17 people were killed in northern Gaza, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense.

The toll is expected to rise from the blast, which happened late evening local time on Tuesday in Majiya, a village in Jigawa state.

“The driver lost control and the tanker somersaulted and spilled fuel into a drainage ditch,” Jigawa police spokesperson Shiisu Lawan Adam said.

“As a result, residents rushed to scoop the fuel when the explosion happened.”

Adam said at least 50 people were seriously injured, adding that the death toll was provisional.

The blast comes a month after at least 48 people were killed in a similar accident in the north-central Niger state.

Fuel tanker explosions are not unusual in Africa’s most populous country, where oil supplies are frequently dispatched by road.

Previous fires have led to multiple casualties. In 2020, more than 500 people lost their lives in more than 1,500 fuel tanker accidents recorded that year, according to Nigeria’s road safety agency.

Residents, beleaguered by soaring living costs in the West African nation – where gasoline is scarce and expensive – often brave danger to scoop fuel from fallen tankers or damaged oil pipelines.

Gas prices have dramatically risen to more than six times their usual rate after the government said last year it would no longer subsidize gasoline.

Poverty remains rife in Nigeria despite its status as one of Africa’s largest oil producers.

In one of Gaza’s last standing hospitals, Tamara Al-Maarouf’s eyes well up with tears as she stands helplessly by her baby boy’s hospital bed. A tumor, now removed, has been compressing the 4-month-old’s tiny heart and he desperately needs treatment abroad.

Meanwhile, 84-year-old Oded Lifschitz, who was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 last year by Hamas militants, is still being held hostage in the enclave. His family is still desperately trying to bring him home.

The stories of two lives, those of a Palestinian infant and an elderly Israeli man, tell the tragic tale of the countless innocent lives trapped in a war they did not choose. Their fates are now tied up in politics and negotiations that have all but failed.

The baby, Jihad, can barely breathe or feed. His mother, Tamara, struggles to find ways to comfort him as he cries and wriggles around, with tubes sticking out of his mouth and nose.

Like thousands of other patients in Gaza, he is in urgent need of foreign medical treatment, but these evacuations have all but ceased since May, when Israel took control of the Rafah border crossing.

Israeli authorities have only allowed a fraction of the estimated 12,000 Palestinians awaiting transfer – many of whom are children – to leave Gaza for treatment.

More than a year of devastating Israeli strikes and the accompanying siege of the enclave have decimated the health sector, leaving medical workers with very little with which to save lives. Hospitals are not only overwhelmed with those injured in the conflict, but they’re now dealing with preventable diseases that are spreading at an alarming rate.

In August, an 11-month-old boy became the first person in Gaza in 25 years to be diagnosed with polio after Israel’s military campaign destroyed water and sanitation systems, leading to a resurgence of the deadly disease.

In September, the World Health Organization administered the first of two doses of the polio vaccine to more than half a million children aged below 10 in Gaza, with the second round of the emergency vaccination drive now under way, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF. The UN said it cancelled vaccinations at one school being used as a displacement shelter after it was damaged by an Israeli airstrike.

And there are many like Jihad who are suffering from serious conditions, chronic illnesses and cancer who cannot be appropriately treated in Gaza.

Her parents were longtime advocates for peace. In recent years, the elderly couple were part of a volunteer group of Israelis who would drive Gazans from the border to hospitals in East Jerusalem and the West Bank for treatment. Her father, Oded Lifschitz, kept his driving license so he could continue these missions, she said.

On the morning of October 7 last year, Oded and Yocheved were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, the site of one of the worst massacres of the Hamas attack on that day.

Yocheved, now 86, was abducted while still in her nightgown, thrown onto the back of a motorbike and taken to Gaza. At the end of October, she was released by Hamas on humanitarian grounds.

The last time Yocheved saw her husband of more than 60 years was last October 7. He was lying on the ground injured, after he was shot in the hand by the militants who stormed their home.

It is that kindness and generosity, as well as his ability to speak Arabic, that the family hopes will have helped a frail, elderly man with medical conditions survive in captivity.

They have now been waiting for his return for over a year. In May, Oded turned 84 in Hamas captivity.

Lifschitz wears a dog tag around her neck with a photo of her father and “84” engraved on it, along with the message, “Waiting for you at home.”

“Hamas took elderly, elderly people; they did not need them, and they could have returned them without a deal,” Lifschitz said. “There is no deal needed to return an 84-year-old man. There is no deal needed to return a 1-year-old baby. The fact that Hamas is using them to reach a deal is horrific.”

But Lifshitz, like many Israelis, still believes the only way out of this nightmare is a deal between Israel and Hamas that would stop the war and secure the release of the hostages.

She fears they are losing what feels like a race against time to bring them home alive.

“We are so exhausted and so heartbroken again and again,” Sharone said. “We are not giving up. We do not have the luxury of giving up.”

Hopes for a ceasefire deal and hostage release deal have been shattered repeatedly by failing negotiations. Both Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for derailing the efforts, leaving mediators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt scrambling to save talks that have stalled for months.

Hanging in the balance are the lives of more than 100 Israeli hostages and Gaza’s population of 2.2 million, all trapped in a besieged enclave that has become a “hell on Earth,” according to aid agencies which have been pleading for a ceasefire to save lives.

Those who survive Israel’s bombardment, which has killed more than 42,000 people, according to Palestinian authorities, face what Gaza residents like al-Maarouf describe as a slow death under siege, with conditions growing more catastrophic by the day.

Lifschitz said she thinks the mediators could do more to get a deal done. She wants Egypt and Qatar to put more pressure on Hamas but, for her, it is US President Joe Biden who could make this deal happen.

“I believe it is President Biden at this very moment that must do what it takes to bring them back home… I believe he is our best hope,” she said.

Lifschitz refuses to compare her own government’s position to that of a militant group like Hamas, but said: “Anybody who is interested in history sees people that are caught in the tide of time and political and military fanatical regimes that are putting their own agenda above human lives… Both nations are incredibly unlucky in the leaders that are guiding them at the moment.

For Israelis like Lifschitz, the race to save the lives of their loved ones took a more urgent turn in early September after the Israeli military retrieved the bodies of six hostages executed by Hamas.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had been “brutally” murdered “a short while” before Israeli troops were able to reach them. Hamas, meanwhile, issued a chilling threat that more hostages would return in coffins if Israeli forces tried to rescue them.

These were young people who had every chance of survival, and they survived for almost a year,” said an emotional Lifschitz. “It is a failure; we have failed them.”

The families of hostages fear for the safety of their loved ones, not only in relation to their captors, but also Israeli military operations, not least the relentless bombardment that has flattened much of Gaza.

Last month, the IDF confirmed that three hostages whose bodies were recovered in December were “most likely” killed in an Israeli strike. The military had previously admitted mistakenly shooting and killing three other hostages last year and said it was investigating the circumstances of the deaths of six hostages whose bodies were recovered in June.

While prospects of an agreement appear bleak, Lifschitz said she would not stop fighting for the release of her father and the other hostages.

Asked what she would tell her father if he could hear her, Lifschitz said, choking back tears: “Forgive us. Forgive us. We have tried so hard. And know that we hear your voice in our heads… You know, we tried the way he tried all his life. He tried for many years to avert this disaster.

“I hear him now saying, ‘work for peace, work for the possibility of humans in this region to live together,’” she added.

The spluttering roar of a propeller punctuates the perfect silence. Car headlights flick on, splitting the darkness. Their beams reveal not just a section of tarmac ahead, but one of Ukraine’s most top-secret weapons, controlled by its most clandestine agency.

Stuck to the nose of the gray machine is a yellow emblem of an owl, wings spread and grasping a sword – the unmistakable logo of Ukraine’s defense intelligence, the GUR.

Two pilots sporting the same owl patches on their fatigues make their final checks inside the car before a thumbs up: “Let’s go!”

A high-speed, 50-second chase ensues, before the 13-foot long, 23-foot wingspan AN-196 Liutyi drone disappears in an instant into the inky-black Ukrainian night.

The drone’s destination is a target deep inside Russian territory.

Only two people were authorized to speak on the record, and then only using their callsigns: Serge, the long-range drone operations commander of GUR, and Vector, unit commander. Serge said he had personally overseen more than 500 long-range drone attacks into Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Their target: an ammunition facility, specifically train carriages sitting inside the depot loaded with recently delivered Iranian missiles, according to the Ukrainians.

The facility sits on the outskirts of the tiny village of Kotluban, in the Volgograd region of southwestern Russia.

Long-range drone attacks have become an increasingly prominent part of the Russia-Ukraine war. As the land war has become more attritional, the air war has gathered speed, with the major development being in drone warfare.

In September, the unit’s drones hit a Russian ammunition depot between Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Tver region. The attack on Toropets, the Ukrainians claimed, resulted in the destruction of a depot storing Iskander tactical missiles, as well as aerial glide bombs and artillery munition. The strike caused massive explosions, visible for miles.

And in July the Ukrainians say they hit an oil refinery on Russia’s Black Sea coast, causing a major fire there.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned, however, that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack, singling out a mass launching of drones as one potential example.

Vector said many of Russia’s airfields, the origin-point of many of the air raids it conducts against Ukraine, are out of range. His drones, while highly effective, are not always that efficient – swarms of them are required to ensure their targets are hit. “Of course, we can send the UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), and we destroyed many places. But it’s not enough,” Vector says.

“We’re not asking only about the permission to send the missiles anywhere in Russia, we speak about the weapons which can help us to move this war from our territory,” Vector adds.

Inside the mission

Serge and Vector have been leading their unit’s attempts to hurt Putin at home.

Regardless of targets, their missions follow a rigid set of operating procedures that include meetings at various locations across Ukraine.

In an underground office with dark brown, seemingly never-ending Soviet corridors, Serge sits across from Vector in a white-walled room. No pictures hang on the wall, even the whiteboard remains blank. The meeting is to the point.

“There will be about 12 drones,” Serge says to Vector, who has a map in front of him detailing the target and range of the Russian air defense and electronic warfare systems.  They then agree the target approach time of around 3 am and the launch intervals for the drones.

Vector scribbles two notes before standing abruptly and saying, “Everything is clear. Ready to complete the task.”

As dusk draws in, the convoy pulls into a compound, articulated lorries lined up. A tiny room with a desk and two sets of bunk beds serves as the only light source for miles around.

Men dressed in black, balaclavas over their faces, wait to hear their orders. Vector delivers a short brief, adding that this mission will also involve other units. He orders his men to start preparing the routes and hands over a small USB key containing the information for the mission ahead.

“Any questions?” he asks. “None? Okay. Let’s get working.”

He points to the quality of Russia’s air defenses, especially over the past 12 months. “We’re successful guys and we find the windows,” he says, but it’s a challenge.

Each drone will be programmed with more than 1,000 different waypoints, to evade Russia’s comprehensive air defense systems. There is tacit acceptance from Vector that some of this resembles a video game.

“It looks like we play with them,” Vector says jokingly, “but it’s not a game. It’s a war.”

Serge adds that not all men in his unit are career soldiers like him. He has served more than 20 years in the Ukrainian army and began flying drone missions in 2014 as Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions split away from Kyiv.

Decoy machines

In a warehouse, a Liutyi drone, produced predominantly in Ukraine, wingless for the time being, stands surrounded by green camouflage-painted crates containing multiple Rubaka kamikaze drones.

Vector explains that these smaller drones are crucial to the success of any mission. The aim is simple: to overwhelm the air defenses and draw Russian fire away from the Liutyi, which often carries a payload as great as 250 kilograms (550 pounds).

“They’re very simple, and we can use them with and without payloads,” he says of the smaller drones.

Cracking open one of the crates, he pulls out one of the decoy machines. Strips of metal foil have been added to the wings to fool Russian radar.

“We try to mix them, and we try to send them from different distances, different launch places… they try to destroy them. They send helicopters and missiles, they turn on the radio electronic warfare,” Vector explains.

Their targets are only military targets, Vector states. “Russia came inside our country. They destroyed a lot of electricity, a lot of houses, cities, villages.” But, he adds, “not all of them are stupid, and when they understand that war can come to them like they come to us, they will change something in their country. They will change the politics.”

One of the many articulated lorries has backed up for loading. In near darkness, drone bodies, followed by wings, are loaded three per truck by men whose faces are totally covered by balaclavas, and strapped down, ready to be taken to their launch sites.

Across other parts of Ukraine roughly 80 other GUR operatives are preparing 90 other drones, not all the Liutyi, for flight.

Some 30% of all the drones being launched will be on decoy missions, Serge says. The drones have been programmed to fly anywhere between 450 and 550 miles, with the Liutyis being the spearhead, destined for the small town-turned-ammunition hub of Kotluban.

The men load the warheads carefully into the bodies of the drones. Each compartment is then sealed with the squeal of a drill.

Serge and Vector, now in full combat uniform, observe the final preparations. This launch is one of the largest Serge has ever conducted, he says.

“Maybe (the Russian people) don’t understand what’s going on in Ukraine, but when these UAVs arrive, they understand clearly what we have been living (with) for the past 10 years,” Vector chimes in.

Tracking the drones’ flight

In total darkness, the drones are pushed into position. The car with the pilots moves in behind. The propeller spurts into life and the pilots ensuring a smooth takeoff begin their high-speed chase down the tarmac. Once airborne the fully autonomous drone starts ticking off the myriad waypoints.

Vector hurtles after the drone before slamming on the brakes and proclaiming “perfect.” He turns the car around and blasts a patriotic song from his radio.

Back at the planning base, the hours tick by and Vector, Serge and others keep tabs on the drones via trackers.

The success of the mission is monitored in three ways, they say: through human intelligence on the ground, the messages seen on Russian Telegram groups and, later, analysis using satellite technology. Only once all three have been assessed can a mission be deemed a success or not.

As the 3 am arrival window nears, Serge starts reading out messages he is seeing from Telegram channels across Russia. The widespread nature of this attack starts to become clearer. Various cities in southern Russia – Voronezh, Yesk, Rostov and Volgograd – all start reporting drones arriving in their airspace.

One video from Voronezh shows one of the decoy drones whizzing overhead. An audio clip of a woman in clear distress at what is happening above her head leaves Vector laughing.

Through these Telegram channels, he says, “we understand that we are having some success.”

Initial satellite imagery of the ammunition depot in Kotluban shows scorched fields, a result of burning grass, but seemingly little evidence of major explosions within – apparent signs of a near miss.

The video, sped up, shows 11 explosions all occurring in a 56-minute timeframe between 2:22 and 3:18 am – exactly the period during which the drones arriving from Ukraine were expected to land.

The image shows a number of objects scattered around the building and a building badly damaged.

The mission to destroy Iranian-delivered missiles was a total success, the Ukrainians insist.

Chinese and Russian defense officials vowed to strengthen their cooperation during meetings in Beijing this week – in the latest sign of deepening alignment between the neighbors that’s been closely watched by the US and its allies.

The two countries have “common views, a common assessment of the situation, and a common understanding of what we need to do together,” defense chief Andrey Belousov told Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, according to Russian state media Tass.

Their task is to “strengthen and develop” their strategic partnership, the Russian defense chief added.

The visit has been cited by Russian state media as Belousov’s first to China since his appointment in May and comes days ahead of an expected visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Russia.

Russia and China have been bolstering their security coordination in the face of shared frictions with the West. That’s included ramping up joint military drills in recent months – part of what experts say is an effort to signal to Washington that, while the two are not allies, neither stands alone.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Zhang repeated rhetoric voiced by Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling for the two militaries to “deepen and expand military-to-military relations, safeguard their respective national sovereignty, security and development interests, and jointly safeguard international and regional peace and stability,” according to a readout from China’s Defense Ministry.

Belousov also held talks a day earlier with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun, who ranks below Zhang in China’s military hierarchy.

The Russian defense chief’s trip comes ahead of an expected visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Kazan, Russia next week for a summit of BRICS, an economic grouping Moscow and Beijing see as their answer to the US-backed Group of Seven (G7).

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not confirmed Xi’s travel plans, but the Kremlin last month quoted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as confirming the leader’s attendance. The trip would be Xi’s second to Russia since Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the fifth face-to-face with Putin in the same period.

Regular high-level diplomacy and increased security coordination between China and Russia have come under close scrutiny from the US and its allies, who have accused Beijing of enabling Russia’s war through the provision of dual-use goods like machine tools and microelectronics.

Joint patrols

Beijing has defended what it calls its “normal trade” with Russia and claims neutrality in the conflict. The two countries reached record levels of trade last year as China emerged as a key economic lifeline for Russia, which is strapped by war-related international sanctions.

In recent weeks, Chinese and Russian coast guards conducted what Beijing described as their first joint patrol in the Arctic Ocean, while their navies separately practiced anti-submarine warfare in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, Russian state media said.

The patrol followed a raft of joint exercises over the summer, including near Alaska – where US and Canadian forces intercepted Russian and Chinese bombers together for the first time – and in the South China Sea, a vital waterway claimed almost entirely by Beijing in which geopolitical tensions are rapidly rising.

Belousov’s arrival in Beijing Monday coincided with China’s military flying a record number of fighter jets and other warplanes around Taiwan during large-scale military drills.

China said the drills were intended as a “stern warning” to what it described as pro-independence forces in Taiwan. The drills came days after the island’s new president, Lai Ching-te, gave a speech vowing to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty in the face of challenges from Beijing, which claims the self-ruling democracy as its own.

Twin bomb threats hit Indian airliners on opposite sides of the globe on Tuesday, forcing an emergency landing in the Arctic and fighter jets to scramble in Asia – the latest in a series of similar hoax scares for the country’s airlines.

Indian airlines have faced “a number of threats in recent days,” all of which have been found to be hoaxes, flag carrier Air India said in a statement Tuesday, as authorities in New Delhi and around the world investigate the string of false bomb warnings.

On Tuesday, an Air India flight from New Delhi to Chicago made an emergency landing in Iqaluit, Canada’s northernmost city. All 211 passengers and crew were relocated to the airport, Canadian police said.

Air India flight 127 was the “subject of a security threat posted online” and diverted “as a precautionary measure,” the airline said.

In a separate incident Tuesday, Singapore scrambled two Air Force F-15 fighter jets to escort an Air India Express passenger plane away from populated areas before landing at the city state’s Changi Airport, the Singaporean defense minister said on social platform X.

Flight AXB684 was enroute to Singapore from the southern Indian city of Madurai when the airline received an email that there was a bomb onboard, minister Ng Eng Hen said.

The threat prompted Singapore to activate its ground-based air defense systems and explosive ordnance disposal, and the plane was handed to airport police upon arrival, Ng said, adding that investigations are ongoing.

Multiple flights by Indian carriers have been delayed or diverted due to false bomb threats since Monday. They include domestic flights on low-cost airlines as well as international flights. The threats have appeared to come from emails or social media posts.

Low-cost carrier SpiceJet also said it received a bomb threat to a flight to Mumbai from the northern city of Darbhanga on Tuesday.

“The aircraft landed safely at Mumbai Airport and was directed to an isolation bay as a precautionary measure,” SpiceJet said in a statement, adding that after security checks the flight was cleared for further operations.

Though it remains unclear whether the threats are connected, or what the motive may be, Air India said they could not be dismissed.

“As a responsible airline operator all threats are taken seriously,” the airline said, adding it was working with authorities to ensure the perpetrators are “held accountable for the disruption and inconvenience caused to passengers.”

The Air India emergency landing in Canada comes as tensions rise between the two countries after Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner, on Monday.

Canada has accused agents of the Indian government of being linked to homicides, harassment and other “acts of violence” against Sikh separatists in the country. India called the accusations “preposterous” and in turn expelled six Canadian diplomats.

While there is no indication that the bomb hoaxes are linked to the diplomatic spat, threats to Air India flights in Canada have revived painful memories of the 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182 by Sikh extremists, the worst terrorist attack in Canada’s history. The flight from Montreal to New Delhi exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people on board, including more than 250 Canadians.

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