Everyone's Infidel.

Multiple signatures.

“There are a bunch of newsletters out there I have read. News Items is the one I want to read.” — Jane Metcalfe, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors, Human Immunome Project, Founder/CEO of neo.life, co-founder Wired magazine and Wired Ventures.

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1. Joby Warrick and Jarrett Ley, The Washington Post.

A few months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, satellite imagery captured unusual activity at a restricted military research facility nestled among the birch forests northeast of Moscow.

The Russian site, called Sergiev Posad-6, had been quiet for decades, but it had a notorious Cold War past: It had once been a major research center for biological weapons, with a history of experiments with the viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola and hemorrhagic fevers.

Satellite imagery over the next two years — collected by commercial imaging firms Maxar and Planet Labs — shows construction vehicles renovating the old Soviet-era laboratory and breaking ground on 10 new buildings, totaling more than 250,000 square feet, with several of them bearing hallmarks of biological labs designed to handle extremely dangerous pathogens.

There has been no sign such weapons have been used in the Ukraine conflict, but the construction of new labs at Sergiev Posad-6 is being closely watched by U.S. intelligence agencies and bioweapons experts amid worries about Moscow’s intentions as the conflict grinds through its third year.

The images showed multiple signatures that, when combined, indicate a high-containment biological facility: dozens of rooftop air handling units, layouts consistent with partitioned labs, underground infrastructure, heightened security features and what appears to be a power plant. (Source: washingtonpost.com….Editor’s Note: The best book on this subject — Demon In The Freezer — was written by Richard Preston. An excerpt from his book was published in The New Yorker in 1998. It’s well worth reading)

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2. Yaroslav Trofimov:

Several times over the past three months, swarms of as many as 150 Ukrainian drones flew hundreds of miles into Russia, slamming into missile storage facilities, strategic fuel reservoirs, military airfields and defense plants.

Once considered exceptional, these deep strikes now barely register in the news. Yet, Ukrainian officials and some of their Western backers increasingly see the pain that long-range attacks inflict as a game-changer that could force President Vladimir Putin into negotiating an acceptable peace.

“Our capacity to return the war back to its home, to Russia, is what fundamentally alters the situation,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said after one such attack last month. The attack, according to open-source intelligence analysts, destroyed some 58 warehouses and a railway terminal at an artillery and rocket arsenal northwest of Moscow.

After meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this week, Zelensky said Washington is readying an $800 million package to fund Ukrainian drone production. (Source: wsj.com)

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3. Russia’s central bank raised its key interest rate to the highest level since the invasion of Ukraine as it struggles to cool an overheating economy. The Bank of Russia on Friday lifted borrowing costs for the third straight meeting, to 21% from 19%. The key rate was last near that high in late February 2022 when the central bank countered a slump in the ruble that followed the start of a lengthening war on the country’s neighbor. (Source: wsj.com)

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