HANOI, April 8 (Reuters) – U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Vietnam next week, Senator Jeff Merkley told a news conference in Hanoi on Saturday, as part of Washington’s efforts to move diplomatic relations with Hanoi on to a higher level this year.

tion?” Kofman warned that Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov is “exhausting the force with an ill-timed, feckless set of offensive operations, whose gains will not change the strategic picture for Russia, but could leave Russian forces more vu

nable. Kofman said he believed that “the Russian military likely has the manpower and reserves to mount a stubborn defence” against a Ukrainian counter-offensive, with “minefields and trenches” at its

MailOnline has obtained the final picture he took before being held which shows the 23-year-old Miles Routledge (left) giving the thumbs up while standing next to a member of the Taliban who is holding an automatic rifle

field. The outcome will depend “on the speed and scope of Western deliveries and the ability of Russian air defences to intercept this kind of weaponry”, said Igor Korotchenko, editor of the Moscow-based National Defenc

The Taliban PR is not an official mouthpiece of the country’s rulers but have been posting about Routledge since March 15 and first suggested he was last seen in an area close to the Chinese border on March 6.

osses. “Even if Bakhmut falls, the Russian invasion will fall well short of seizing control of Donetsk Oblast, one of its main territorial objectives”, the Washington-based Hudson Institute said in its latest milita

oscow. As spring arrives, the two armies are deadlocked with troops stretching from the shores of the Black Sea to northeast Ukraine — and the Kremlin has once again been forced to take the long view after failing to make a bre

value. The Russian mercenary outfit Wagner has been spearheading the attack and claimed Monday that it had captured Bakhmut city hall — but Wagner’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has said his forces are still sufferi

In the video – which has been watched more than a million times – Miles is seen firing the weapon indiscriminately into the sand flanked by grinning members of the Taliban, or as Miles calls them: ‘Good guys.’

The former physics student from Birmingham was arrested on March 2 by fighters from the extremist Islamic group that once again controls Afghanistan alongside two Polish nationals and is being held for questioning amid fears for his safety.

Daniel Kebede (centre) has been outspoken on his political stances – including a statement after threats from Russian president Vladimir Putin against Ukraine where he criticised Nato involvement in the conflict

He even claimed to have shouted at invading Russian troops while wearing a mask of Russian despot Vladimir Putin on his face and that ‘friendly’ Ukrainian troops in Donetsk had given him a military uniform to wear. 

And go back he did. In April 2022, he claimed to have invested £15,000 in a trip to the Taliban-controlled country to rescue a tour guide and his family – but accused the guide of pulling out at the last minute, leaving him stuck.

Now MailOnline has obtained the final picture he took before being held which shows the 23-year-old giving the thumbs up while standing next to a member of the Taliban who is holding an automatic rifle.

Accompanying the photograph – which was sent from his phone or laptop on March 8th – was a short message downplaying the seriousness of his plight, even though the Taliban are notorious for torturing and murdering prisoners.

His adventures have cultivated him a large social media following and he was even interviewed by disgraced influencer Andrew Tate – prior to his arrest on money laundering and people smuggling charges. Tate has since been released on house arrest. 

The book titled ‘Lord Miles in Afghanistan’ contains many more claims about the student’s time in Kabul including that he had attempted to hide the fact he was western by using a Burkha as a ‘disguise’. 

However, he dismissed those critics and said: ‘I’d say I wish them all the best but truthfully they were never my audience and for every seething comment made against me, behind it was my friends and I eating popcorn and laughing at them.

Other clips of his trips to the country showed him blasting automatic rifles with a Taliban fighter and visiting a weapons market in the city of Jalalabad, a stronghold for terrorists affiliated to Islamic State. 

The fearless traveller said Ukraine was still ‘safer than London or Birmingham’ at the time and previously boasted of visiting the country in 2019 to see Chernobyl – the site of the world’s most deadly nuclear meltdown disaster in 1986. 

It’s the first time the social media star, dubbed ‘Lord Miles’, has found himself jailed during his ‘self-destructive’ jaunts to the world’s most deadly areas – which include South Sudan and Brazil’s lethal ‘Snake Island’.