happened

On Friday, Israel killed at least 13 people, including two children, in the Damascus countryside town of Beit Jinn.

The latest air raids came after locals tried to repel an Israeli military incursion into Beit Jinn, leading to clashes.

Israel claimed it was going after members of the Jamaa al-Islamiya, Lebanon’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, rubbishing the Israeli claim, the group said it was not active outside Lebanon.

Here’s everything you need to know about the attack in Beit Jinn and the context behind it.

What happened?

The Israeli army’s 55th Reserve Brigade raided Beit Jinn in the early hours of Friday morning, ostensibly to take three Syrians who live there, claiming they were members of Jamaa al-Islamiya and that they posed a “danger to Israel”.

However, the incursion did not go to plan. Locals resisted, and six Israeli soldiers were wounded in the resulting clashes, three of them seriously, according to the Israeli army.

Israel then sent in its warplanes.

“We were asleep when we were woken up at three in the morning by gunfire,” Iyad Daher, a wounded resident, told the AFP news agency from al-Mouwasat Hospital in Damascus.

“We went outside to see what was happening and saw the Israeli army in the village, soldiers and tanks,” Daher said. “Then they withdrew, the air force came – and the shells started falling.”

This was the deadliest of Israel’s more than 1,000 strikes on Syria since the fall of the Assad regime

Why were Israeli forces in Syria?

This was not the first time Israel raided Syrian territory.

Israeli officials and government-aligned media say Israel can no longer respect its enemies’ borders or allow “hostile” groups along its borders after the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel has sought to use force in other countries to create buffer zones around itself, in the Gaza Strip, Syria and Lebanon.

Since the fall of the Assad regime last December, Israel has launched frequent air raids across Syria and ground incursions in its south. It set up numerous checkpoints in Syria and detained and disappeared Syrian citizens from Syrian territory, holding them illegally in Israel.

It invaded the buffer zone that separated the two countries since they signed the 1974 disengagement agreement, setting up outposts around Jabal al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon in English).

The new Syrian government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, said it would abide by the 1974 agreement.

Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. A demilitarised zone was later established, but when President Bashar al-Assad was ousted, and his army was in shambles, Israel invaded to take outposts on Syrian-controlled land.

What did the Syrian government say?

That the attack is a war crime.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement, condemning “the criminal attack carried out by an Israeli occupation army patrol in Beit Jinn. The occupation forces’ targeting of the town of Beit Jinn with brutal and deliberate shelling, following their failed incursion, constitutes a full-fledged war crime.”

What is Israel claiming?

Israel’s public broadcaster said the operation was an “arrest raid” targeting Jamaa al-Islamiya members.

An Israeli army spokesperson said three people linked to the group were “arrested”.

Israel claims the group is operating in southern Syria to “recruit terrorists” and plays a role in what it calls the “northern front” – Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid reported from Syria that Israel has yet to offer any proof of the claim that the people it was after were involved with the group.

What is Jamaa al-Islamiya?

The group is the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was founded in 1956 and has a stable presence in Lebanon, though it has never been as popular as some of its regional counterparts.

It has one member of parliament and was historically aligned with the Future Movement, founded by former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

However, the group moved closer to Iran and Hezbollah politically in recent years. Its armed wing, the Fajr Forces, took part in some operations against Israel in 2023-24.

After Israel’s claims that it was involved in southern Syria, the group released a statement on Friday stating that it was “surprised” Israeli media had involved it in what happened in Beit Jinn.

Denouncing the attack, it said it conducts “no activities outside Lebanon”.

The group added that it has abided by and committed to the ceasefire agreement from November 2024 between Lebanon and Israel.

Has Israel claimed it was attacking this group before?

Yes.

In March 2024, Israel attacked al-Habbariyeh in southern Lebanon, killing seven emergency relief volunteers.

It claimed the attack targeted a member of the group, calling him a “significant terrorist”.

However, the alleged target was never named, the director of the Lebanese Emergency and Relief Corps’ Ambulance Association told Al Jazeera.

It was not a good day for Dr. Phil.

Phillip McGraw, the genial celebrity psychologist who spent a career calling out the behavior of others and doling out zingers, found himself upbraided by a bankruptcy judge.

Merit Street Media, McGraw’s new network, had filed for bankruptcy protection in July, a little more than a year after he launched the media startup, and then sued its distribution partner, Trinity Broadcasting Network.

During a nearly three-hour hearing in Dallas last month, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Scott Everett said that he’d “never seen a case” like the Chapter 11 filing McGraw’s company was attempting.

Everett cited evidence indicating McGraw had “violated” a court order by deleting “unflattering” text messages that allegedly described his plan to use the bankruptcy to “wipe out” creditor claims.

“What makes this case unique, unfortunately, is that it has been plagued with the attempted destruction of relevant evidence and less than truthful testimony by some of the key players,” said Everett, alluding to McGraw and his associates in the case.

Everett ruled that Merit Street be liquidated.

Following the hearing, a spokesperson for McGraw’s production company vigorously denied the accusation that he destroyed evidence and said he is appealing the ruling.

“Dr. McGraw’s excellent record of integrity, success and service to millions over two decades speaks for itself,” said Chip Babcock, attorney for McGraw’s production company.

The unraveling of McGraw’s media venture was a gut punch for the celebrity therapist who has assiduously built a reputation — and tremendous personal wealth — as one of the most trusted voices on television. But his fortunes faded amid a dying market for syndicated TV and clashes with a distributor and partner.

After 21 years as host of the successful syndicated talk show “Dr. Phil,” McGraw went out on his own last year. He launched Merit Street Media in Texas, a company that he said would promote “family values” and serve as an antidote to “woke” culture, only to find that his ambitions collided with a new television reality.

Unlike “Dr. Phil,” Merit Street was untethered to the well-oiled machine of Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, where it was filmed, and top-tier distribution partner CBS.

Moreover, the sheer force of McGraw’s personality could not overcome the fact that linear TV is on the wane. Syndicated daytime TV shows are no longer the cash cows they used to be as most viewers consume content through streaming and other digital outlets such as YouTube and TikTok.

“By the time he put this new company together, the ‘Dr. Phil’ era had kind of ended,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “There is a shelf life to these characters and he reached his.”

An Oprah favorite

McGraw rose from clinical psychologist to an American living room staple and self-help guru in the late 1990s after Oprah Winfrey anointed him as her protégé.

Television’s then-reigning queen hired McGraw to prepare for her libel case brought by Texas cattlemen in 1997. They claimed her comments during an episode about mad cow disease disparaged them and caused beef prices to drop.

Winfrey prevailed, but it was McGraw, a former linebacker with the commanding presence of a sheriff from an old-time western, who emerged victorious.

Oprah Winfrey launched “Dr. Phil” after he advised her during her Texas cattlemen’s libel trial in the late 1990s.

(Christopher Smith / Invision / AP)

Much like books, pajama sets and certain chocolate brands, McGraw became one of Oprah’s favorite things. Recast as “Dr. Phil,” she featured him during weekly segments on her hugely popular talk show, starting in 1998. By 2002, a “Dr. Phil” spinoff began airing five days a week, produced by Winfrey’s Harpo Productions.

The show was distributed by CBS Media Ventures and filmed on a soundstage at Paramount studios on Melrose Avenue with a live audience, and it became the de facto voice for home viewers.

McGraw quickly earned a massive following for dispensing advice to cheating spouses, drug addicts, troubled teens, meddling in-laws, infamous criminals and celebrities. He delivered his no-nonsense, often blunt assessments wrapped in folksy Southern sayings such as “No matter how flat you make a pancake, it’s still got two sides.”

For more than two decades, “Dr. Phil” was a top-rated syndicated daytime talk show — 11 of those seasons at No. 1 — garnering 31 Daytime Emmy nominations. He was catapulted to stardom, appearing everywhere from late-night talk shows to sitcom cameos, even a character on “Sesame Street,” Dr. Feel. In 2020, he received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Dr. Phil McGraw with his wife, Robin McGraw, his son Jay McGraw and his wife, Erica Dahm, as well as their two children, London and Avery, at the ceremony celebrating Dr. Phil receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

(Getty Images)

McGraw leveraged “Dr. Phil” as a launching pad for his ever-growing empire of bestselling books and various ancillary businesses, including a virtual addiction recovery program, a telemedicine app and production company, Stage 29, with his son Jay McGraw that produced shows like daytime’s “The Doctors.”

But as McGraw’s popularity and influence grew, so did the controversies.

The family of Britney Spears criticized him after he visited the troubled pop star when she was hospitalized on a psychiatric hold and issued a news release saying she was “in dire need of both medical and psychological intervention.”

A spokesperson for the Spears family said, “Rather than helping the family’s situation, the celebrity psychologist caused additional damage.”

McGraw later told viewers on his show that “I definitely think if I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn’t make any statement at all. Period.”

Claims of conflict

Questions were also raised that McGraw used his show to promote businesses and products connected to his family and affiliates, sometimes without fully disclosing those ties.

In 2006, McGraw settled a lawsuit for $10.5 million with consumers who alleged that he defrauded them by making false claims about a line of nutritional and weight-loss supplements that he endorsed on “Dr. Phil.”

He faced a Federal Trade Commission investigation into false advertising and the line was eventually discontinued.

McGraw denied the allegations and did not admit to wrongdoing or misrepresentation in the settlement.

“Dr. McGraw’s career stands among the most successful in television history,” Babcock said. “His programs always have been completely transparent, with all brand integrations under full network oversight and full FCC compliance.”

The on-air promotion of McGraw’s family businesses, such as his wife Robin McGraw’s skincare line and lifestyle brand and his son Jay McGraw’s books during “integrations,” also drew scrutiny.

Dr. Phil McGraw and son Jay McGraw.

(Jason LaVeris / FilmMagic)

“Dr. Phil” episodes frequently featured guests suffering from addiction who were often offered the opportunity to check into a treatment facility at the end of the episode.

In 2017, an investigation by STAT News and the Boston Globe alleged that the show highlighted specific treatment facilities in exchange for those recovery programs purchasing various products affiliated with McGraw.

A spokesman for the show had denied the allegations, saying that “any suggestion that appearances on Dr. Phil’s show are linked to the purchase or use of this program is false.”

McGraw’s wattage remained undimmed. He continued to branch into new ventures. He launched a podcast in 2019, “Phil in the Blanks,” and prime-time TV shows like “Bull,” a legal drama on CBS based on his experiences as a trial strategist, and another CBS legal drama, “So Help Me Todd.”

The “Dr. Phil” show has said that since its premiere, it has provided $35 million in resources to its guests after they appeared.

During the last years of “Dr. Phil,” staffers and viewers noticed that programming began to shift away from advising relationships, parenting and money issues to more conservative and cultural issues such as immigration and transgender athletes.

“He took a political slant already, but once COVID hit, [the show] skewed more and more political,” said one former longtime “Dr. Phil” staffer who declined to be named out of fear of retaliation.

During an appearance on Fox News in April 2020, McGraw said that pandemic lockdowns would be more fatal than the virus, drawing a widespread backlash on social media.

McGraw later posted a video saying he supported CDC guidelines but was concerned about the mental health effects of long-term quarantine.

“He was very good about getting big stories, but we had no input, and believe me, if we ever wanted to or tried, we’d be just told ‘no,’” said a former executive at CBS, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Starting over in Texas

In 2023, McGraw announced that he was leaving CBS and returning to Texas to launch a new venture and broaden his audience, citing “grave concerns for the American family” and that he was “determined to help restore a clarity of purpose as well as our core values.”

Merit Street built a studio in a former AT&T call center in Fort Worth. Many of the staffers were veterans of “Dr. Phil” or had worked on McGraw-related content and relocated from Los Angeles to Texas.

Dr. Phil and President Trump at the National Day of Prayer event at the White House in May.

(Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)

The network, whose name was derived from meritocracy (with shades of main street), premiered in April 2024.

“Merit Street Media will be a resource of information and strategies to fight for America and its families, which are under a cultural ‘woke’ assault as never before,” McGraw said in a statement.

McGraw aired “exclusive” interviews with Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his flagship, “Dr. Phil Primetime.”

Programming consisted of a slate of news, entertainment and conservative commentary programs with former syndicated television stars Nancy Grace and Steve Harvey, whose Steve Harvey Global had a 5% stake in the company, according to Merit’s bankruptcy filings.

In January, McGraw made headlines when he taped interviews with Trump’s top border policy advisor Tom Homan during controversial immigration raids by ICE agents in Los Angeles.

But Merit struggled to find an audience; only 27,000 viewers tuned into the network weekly during 2024, placing it at 130 out of 153 U.S. channels, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

“It’s totally false to say Merit had bad ratings,” Babcock said. “For a startup, it was like a rocket ship; at one point it passed CNN in the first few months of its existence.”

Merit soon scrapped the live audience for “Dr. Phil Primetime” and eventually production on its original programming came to a halt.

Four months after the network’s debut, the company cut 30% of its staff, including workers who had relocated from Los Angeles.

Facing mounting debts, Merit filed for bankruptcy protection in July, listing liabilities of at least $100 million.

“You could see the writing on the wall,” said the former CBS executive. “Ratings for syndication were dropping.”

While still a household name, McGraw was part of a waning breed of TV syndication stars — Judge Judy, Maury Povich and Ellen DeGeneres among them — whose shows were fast becoming nostalgic relics.

Former McGraw staffers from his CBS days said it appeared that he thought he could simply translate his name recognition and longtime popularity to the new venture, but failed to grasp the new digital media landscape.

“The programming model that he launched in 2024 was more appropriate two decades earlier,” said Syracuse University’s Thompson.

Merit Street faced internal strife as well, according to former staffers and court filings.

Former employees described tensions between Los Angeles transplants and less experienced nonunion crews.

“It was total disorganization,” said one former field producer who had worked for the “Dr. Phil” show and then relocated to Texas to work for Merit Street, who declined to be named out of fear of retribution. “Everyone kept saying this was a startup, and maybe it was. People made decisions but had no idea what they were doing,” the producer added.

A representative of McGraw’s production company conceded the startup had growing pains.

“The company thought they could produce the same quality production with less people,” he said.

Compounding matters, relations between Merit and its business and broadcast partner TBN also soured.

Merit alleged in its lawsuit that TBN provided “comically dysfunctional” technical services, with teleprompters and monitors blacked out during live programs before a studio audience.

The suit further alleged that TBN failed to pay TV distributors and had reneged on its promise to cover $100 million in production services and other costs.

McGraw, through his production company, bankrolled the struggling enterprise from December 2024 to May 2025, lending it $25 million, according to Merit’s lawsuit.

For its part, TBN accused McGraw and his production company Peteski Productions of “fraudulent inducement,” alleging in a countersuit that it had invested $100 million into Merit and that McGraw and Peteski had failed to bring in promised advertising revenue.

TBN said McGraw reached out to the company as a potential replacement for CBS as a distribution partner during the latter half of 2022.

“McGraw specifically represented to TBN that he wanted to change networks because of what he perceived to be CBS’s censorship of the content aired on the ‘Dr. Phil Show.’ As McGraw put it, ‘I don’t want snot-nose lawyers telling me what I can and can’t say on TV,’” the lawsuit states.

Instead, they claimed in their complaint, McGraw and his company engaged in a “fraudulent scheme” to fleece TBN, a not-for-profit corporation.

In a statement to Variety, a spokesperson for McGraw and his production company called TBN’s lawsuit “riddled with provable lies.”

TBN did not respond to a request for comment.

Merit also clashed with another partner: Professional Bull Riders, which in November 2024 canceled its four-year contract with Merit and pulled its content, claiming the company had failed to pay the fees it owed.

Professional Bull Riders claims Merit Street stopped paying its broadcast fees and is owed $181 million.

(Anadolu via Getty Images)

PBR, which later signed with Fox Nation and CBS, alleged in a separate lawsuit that Merit breached their contract and is seeking $181 million.

“We’re glad he’s being held accountable,” said Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of TKO Group Holdings, parent company of PBR, in a statement to The Times.

“Merit Street agreed to work out its differences with PBR in a confidential proceeding which is ongoing. We were therefore surprised that PBR would publicly accuse us of violating our agreement when the facts are in dispute,” the company said in an earlier statement.

Two weeks after Merit filed for bankruptcy, McGraw announced the launch of another new network, Envoy Media Co., that would include live, “balanced news,” original entertainment programming and “immersive viewer experiences,” as well as original programming from friend and former Merit stakeholder Steve Harvey.

Last month, Envoy struck a distribution deal with Charter Communications.

“Dr. McGraw remains deeply proud of his past work and the millions of people it has reached. He’s now turning that same purpose and energy toward Envoy Media,” Babcock said.

But the Merit legal drama is far from over.

TBN has since alleged that Merit Street filed for bankruptcy in bad faith as a way to secure funding for Envoy.

A spokesperson for Peteski called TBN’s allegation “blatantly false” and said Envoy is independently financed.

Earlier this month, Judge Everett rejected Merit’s motion to pause the company’s liquidation while his ruling is appealed. He cited deleted texts in which McGraw described plans by Merit to file for bankruptcy protection to “wipe out” debts from its main creditors, TBN and PBR.

“Candor to the court is critical,” said Everett during his original ruling, and then declared that Merit Street Media “was as dead as a door nail when the bankruptcy was filed.”

Naval mutinies have long captured the public imagination, but, for the most part, open rebellions on the high seas are consigned to the Age of Exploration, in centuries past. One notable exception occurred in the Soviet Navy 50 years ago this month and, based on available evidence, almost led to the use of nuclear weapons. The mutiny aboard the frigate Storozhevoy is all the more remarkable for the fact that the Kremlin attempted to cover up its existence, with details only emerging in public a decade after its bloody end.

The story was dramatic enough, and its potential implications were worrisome enough for it to be an inspiration for Tom Clancy’s iconic Cold War novel (which in turn led to the film), The Hunt for Red October. This is the story of the fictional Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius, who apparently goes rogue while commanding a highly advanced ballistic missile submarine.

In the real-life incident, the protagonist was 36-year-old Valery Mikhailovich Sablin, a political officer onboard the Storozhevoy, a Project 1135 anti-submarine warfare frigate, known to NATO as the Krivak I class, and with a displacement of around 3,000 tons. A representative image of a Krivak I is seen at the top of this story, at anchor.

At the time, this was one of the most advanced surface combatants in Soviet service. It had been commissioned in 1974, and it was assigned to the Baltic Fleet. The primary anti-submarine armament of the Krivak I was the quadruple launcher for URPK-4 Metel’ missiles (known to NATO as SS-N-14 Silex), located on the bow, each of which transported a torpedo payload. This feature led to the NATO mnemonic ‘Hot dog pack, smokestack, guns in back — KRIVAK,’ to aid identification.

Unlike Ramius, Sablin was seeking not to defect, but to urge a rethinking of the communist revolution, since he was convinced the Soviet regime had strayed dangerously far from the Marxist principles that he believed in.

Sablin’s plan was to take advantage of the excitement surrounding the anniversary of the 1917 revolution, celebrated every November 7. At the time, the Storozhevoy was moored in Riga, in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. Most reports agree that, apart from its primary anti-submarine missiles, the frigate was fully armed, including with surface-to-air missiles for point defense, anti-submarine torpedoes, and 76mm guns.

Sablin wanted to take control of the Storozhevoy and sail east, to Leningrad, where he would arrive alongside the museum ship Aurora (the cruiser that was and remains a potent symbol of the 1917 revolution), and incite something like an uprising against the current regime, under Premier Leonid Brezhnev.

The mutiny began on November 8, 1975, by which time Sablin had already convinced a 20-year-old naval rating, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Shein, and other sympathetic crewmen to assist him.

With a third of the 194-man crew on shore leave, Sablin and Shein surprised and locked up the ship’s commanding officer. The remaining officers were summoned to a meeting, where Sablin explained the situation. Shein stood outside the door armed with a pistol. Those officers who refused to join the mutiny were also locked up.

In the meantime, two crew members had managed to escape the frigate, climbing onto a mooring buoy, then attracting attention. However, their story was not initially taken seriously.

When Sablin became aware that his plan had likely been revealed, he gave up on the idea of reaching Leningrad and instead decided to sail out into international waters, from where he could transmit the speech he had prepared and, he hoped, trigger a new revolution.

Traveling radio silent, with no radar turned on, the Storozhevoy could not move as quickly as usual, since navigation was degraded. Nevertheless, at around 2:50 a.m., the frigate moved out into the Gulf of Riga.

Once it was noticed that the frigate had set sail, a response was launched but seems to have been somewhat slowed down as a result of the effects of copious alcohol consumed in the course of the weekend’s revolutionary celebrations.

Still, 45 minutes after the Storozhevoy sailed, other ships began their pursuit.

Unfortunately for Sablin, the Soviet authorities were now convinced that he must be poised to defect to the West.

Early on the morning of November 9, a large flotilla was ordered to find the Storozhevoy, including warships sailing from Liepaja, also in the Latvian SSR. Among them were small missile corvettes, faster than the Krivak I.

It seems the first vessels to sight the Storozhevoy were torpedo-armed patrol boats from the Soviet Border Troops, who ordered the frigate to stop, but their signals were ignored. They were then ordered to fire upon the rogue warship, but this order was rescinded before they could open fire.

The reason for the change of plan was that the incident had now been passed higher up through the chain of command, and news of it had reached Moscow.

In the meantime, Sablin had sent an encrypted telegram to the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy, laying out his demands. These included declaring the shop a free territory, permission to make a radio and TV broadcast, safe anchorage in Soviet waters, and more. The navy rejected the demands and instead called for Sablin to return the Storozhevoy to port.

A furious Sablin then tried to broadcast a message, outlining the reasons for the mutiny, on an open channel. Unbeknownst to Sablin, the radio operator tasked with the job again used the encrypted channel.

At around 6:00 a.m., the Soviet premier was woken and informed of the situation. Terrified by the prospect of the modern Krivak I class falling into an adversary’s hands, Brezhnev now called for the destruction of the Storozhevoy at all costs. This fear seems to have entirely overridden any concern to hear out the demands of the mutineers, if they were even taken seriously.

Several efforts were made to attack the frigate.

First, it had to be located.

On the morning of the 9th, two Il-38 May maritime patrol aircraft, flying out of Riga, began to look for it. One of them found it at around 8:05 a.m. in the Irben Sound, the main exit out of the Gulf of Riga and into the Baltic Sea.

Ultimately, the commander of Naval Aviation of the Baltic Fleet called for Tu-16K-10-26 Badger-C bombers to strike the Storozhevoy with K-10S (AS-2 Kipper) anti-ship cruise missiles, including authorizing the use of nuclear-armed weapons. Nine of these bombers were launched from Bykhov Air Base in the Belarusian SSR at 8:30 a.m. At least one of the aircraft appears to have been carrying a nuclear-tipped version of the K-10S missile. As well as a single K-10S, the Tu-16K-10-26 sub-variant of the Badger was able to carry two KSR-2 (AS-5 Kelt) or the more modern, supersonic KSR-5 (AS-6 Kingfish) anti-ship cruise missiles, but available accounts don’t mention that the aircraft were loaded with these.

The bombers were in the vicinity of the Storozhevoy shortly after 09:00 a.m. For around an hour, the Tu-16s repeatedly dropped below the cloud base and made passes of the frigate, with the aim of forcing Sablin to surrender. Warning shots were fired using the bombers’ 23mm defensive cannons. The Badger-C had a fairly heavy cannon armament, with two 23mm AM-23 cannons each in remotely operated dorsal and ventral turrets and a crewed tail turret, but they were not designed for engaging surface targets.

When the cannons didn’t have the desired effect, the Badger crews instead took to flying very low over the warship, selecting full power on their twin turbojets, and successfully forcing the ship to deviate from its course.

By 10:05 a.m., the Storozhevoy was headed west, toward the Swedish island of Gotland, though Sablin always insisted his original plan was not to enter Swedish waters.

Such evasive action only increased the concerns of the Soviet authorities, who now called into action the Yak-28 Brewer tactical bombers based at Tukums, in the Latvian SSR. Armed with free-fall bombs, these were a more flexible option than the Tu-16s. The Yak-28 unit was informed that they were to attack a foreign warship that had penetrated the Gulf of Riga. However, the unit was also unfamiliar with attacking naval targets and initially failed to locate the Storozhevoy. There was also no coordination between the (Air Force) Yak-28 unit and the (Navy) Il-38 and Tu-16 units.

By 10:00 a.m., there were around 20 Yak-28s in the air and, by 10:20 a.m., these had begun to attack, from a height of around 1,500 feet. Unfortunately for the Air Force, it was the wrong target: The Brewer crews had misidentified a Soviet cargo ship, onto which fragmentation bombs now rained. The ship’s crew radioed for help, and the attack was called off, with no injuries.

At 10:28 a.m., the Yak-28s located the rogue warship and were ordered to hit it, with no warning shots this time. Again, however, bombs were dropped on the wrong target, namely the Komsomolets Litvy, a Project 50 or Riga class frigate, and the lead ship in the flotilla that was chasing the Storozhevoy. The ship launched signal rockets, which were misidentified as anti-aircraft fire, before the pilots realized they had again hit the wrong ship.

The Soviet commanders then called upon the Tu-16 units once more. The pursuit flotilla was ordered to move, and the bombers tasked with holding station behind the Storozhevoy, from where K-10S missiles would be launched.

The order then came at 10:16 a.m. to launch a missile, including the protocol for the use of nuclear weapons. The Tu-16 flown by the commander of the unit, Colonel Arkhip Savinkov, took position.

By this stage, other members of the frigate’s crew understood that their time was nearly up. A group of them freed the captain and other detained officers, who then armed themselves and stormed the bridge. In the confrontation that followed, Sablin was shot in the leg and was then locked up. The freed captain then sent a message that the mutiny was over.

With the Tu-16 preparing to launch, the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet received an urgent message that the Storozhevoy had surrendered. Orders went out to stop the attack, but Savinkov, the Tu-16 unit’s commander, either didn’t receive them or ignored them, perhaps determining that they were meant for the Yak-28 unit.

For another two tense minutes, after the crew had messaged their surrender, the Tu-16 unit was still hunting the Storozhevoy with the intention to destroy it. Savinkov then reported a radar malfunction. Whether this was true, or a result of him not wishing to unclear a nuclear strike (especially against his countrymen), or that he was now too close to the target to launch a missile, he called off his attack. Puzzlingly, another two Tu-16s from the same unit briefly continued their attack plan. It’s unclear if these Badgers carried Kipper anti-ship missiles armed with conventional warheads, if there was some kind of breakdown in communication between the formation, or if all the bombers involved actually had no real desire to attack the warship.

Regardless, at 11:00 a.m., the fire-damaged Komsomolets Litvy reached the Storozhevoy. With an Il-38 and more Tu-16s patrolling overhead, and several other patrol boats in the vicinity, the boarding party of 15 men took over the vessel. The frigate changed course and was then anchored off the island of Saaremaa. The crew was then returned by boat to Riga. Here they were interviewed, with the 12 sailors identified as mutineers — among them, Sablin and Shein — were arrested and taken to Moscow.

The incident had highlighted the poor combat readiness and inefficient chain of command within the Baltic Fleet, and efforts were immediately made to cover it up, including the destruction of documents.

Nevertheless, details leaked out, and some presumed details of the mutiny began to be published in the Western media. A key source of information was Swedish military intelligence, which had monitored the events via signals intelligence (SIGINT). Early Western reports included erroneous accounts that as many as 15 sailors had been killed aboard the Storozhevoy and that 35 more were killed on the ship that was accidentally attacked — the Komsomolets Litvy.

As for the two ringleaders, Shein was imprisoned, while Sablin was sentenced to death for treason and executed in August 1976.

In retrospect, the idealistic Sablin’s plan was likely always doomed to failure. It remains fortunate, however, that his was the only life lost in an incident that could have had much more serious repercussions. Indeed, the available evidence that has emerged since the mutiny suggests that, back in November 1975, only a few minutes stood between the Soviet Navy launching a nuclear strike against one of its own vessels.

Ultimately, perhaps, Colonel Arkhip Savinkov, as commander of what appears to have been a nuclear-armed Tu-16, might have been the one responsible for preventing what could have been a catastrophe. Ironically, the fact that he didn’t launch his missile, for whatever reason, meant that he would be viewed with suspicion by the Soviet military leadership for the rest of his career.

The author is indebted to the work of Michael Friedholm von Essen, whose authoritative account of the mutiny aboard the Storozhevoy is published by Helion & Company.

Contact the author: [email protected]

A man asked ‘what would you do’ if you were faced with this situation, and many admitted they would be thrilled to find themselves sitting in this seat…

It’s always nice to have pleasant seatmates when travelling by plane. You’re in a tight space at 35,000 feet in the air, so someone polite, perhaps even sweet, is the ideal situation – especially if you’ve drawn the short straw and you’re sitting in the middle seat.

But one man asked, “What would you do” if you were flying and your seatmates were his three adorable cats.

“Sponge Cake, Donut, and Buttercream all love chin scratches!” he wrote as the caption to the adorable video, which had people desperately wanting to meet the threesome. “What would you do if you were stuck with three furbabies on a flight to Paris?” he penned over the top of the clip, which amassed almost 20,000 likes.

Then, the camera panned to Sponge Cake, Donut, and Buttercream, who were all wearing the most adorable French costumes, complete with berets and striped shirts.

One of the cats was gazing out of the window, probably wondering when their next meal was, and then the next shot saw two of the cats grooming each other, politely sitting in their seat.

In the comments, the cats were showered with praise. One woman wrote: “These sweet guys on planes are always so cute. People who get to ride with them are blessed. What fun that would be. I love them”.

Another wrote: “They are so beautiful and well-behaved. They need their own private jet”.

“I’d pay extra to sit next to them,” a cat lover admitted, and many others likely feel the same.

Somebody pointed out that they’re all “dressed beautifully,” with one Instagram user saying: “That’s the best thing ever! I’d be happy to sit next to them!”

There are different rules for different airlines as to whether you’re allowed to travel with dogs or cats in the cabin.

On the Flight Centre UK website, they explain that cats and dogs are usually the only types of animals allowed to travel on airlines, and most others are required to be shipped or freighted by road.

Usually, they warn that your pet will be placed in the cargo hold under the main cabin seating or sometimes in the front or rear of the plane, depending on the aircraft.

However, if you have a small pet, you may be able to take it on board as carry-on.

They write: “While there are currently no airlines from the UK that offer this service, it is possible on some flights in the United States and Europe, depending on the airline”.

They also note that pets are supposed to stay in their carrier at all times, but it’s important that you speak to a travel consultant beforehand so you can figure out the best course of action for you and your pets.