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The Chinese leader says he is sure that Russia will be able to achieve even more success under the president’s continued rule

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has congratulated his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on his historic landslide victory in Russia's presidential election, which has paved the way for his fifth term in office.

According to the Central Election Commission, with almost all ballots counted, Putin had 87% of the votes. Voter turnout, unprecedented in the country’s modern history, exceeded 77%.

In a letter quoted by Beijing’s foreign ministry on Monday, the Chinese leader noted that Putin’s victory is proof that he enjoys the support of the Russian people, and expressed confidence that under his leadership, Russia “will be able to make greater achievements in national development.” Xi added that China attaches great importance to vibrant bilateral ties.

Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said that Beijing hoped that Russian-Chinese cooperation “will continue to move forward” under the strategic guidance of the two residents. “China and Russia are each other’s largest neighbors and comprehensive strategic partners in the new era,” Lin added.

During his victory speech on Sunday night, Putin pointed out that Russia-China ties are a “stabilizing factor” for the entire framework of international relations, expressing hope that these bonds would be maintained, in no small part due to “our good personal relationship with the president of the People’s Republic of China.”

The two countries have for decades enjoyed close economic and political ties, with Beijing refusing to support unprecedented Western sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict. The deep partnership between the two countries was further underscored by Xi’s historic visit to Moscow last March. Putin reciprocated, traveling to Beijing in October.

Xi was not the only world leader to congratulate Putin on his re-election. He was joined by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a host of leaders from post-Soviet republics, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Western countries have not sent any congratulatory messages to Putin amid the stand-off over Ukraine, with many calling the election “unfair,” a charge denied in Moscow.

However, Leonid Sevastyanov, the head of the World Union of Orthodox Old Believers, who says he is in contact with Pope Francis, noted that the pontiff had also congratulated Putin on his landslide victory.

The reported test comes after Pyongyang decried the latest joint drills held by the US and South Korea

North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea on Monday, the Yonhap News Agency has reported, citing senior South Korean military officials. The launches were carried out as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Seoul for a state visit.

The ballistic missile tests, Pyongyang’s first in two months, were detected between 7:44am and 8:22am local time, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) stated. The missiles traveled around 300km and landed in the East Sea (also known as the Sea of Japan), they added. 

“North Korea fired at least three missiles, and their trajectories were similar to those of [the] KN-24,” a senior military official was quoted as saying. The KN-24 is a solid-fuel ballistic missile with a range of up to 410km and an estimated payload of 400-500kg.

“We strongly condemn North Korea’s latest missile launch, which is a clear provocation that seriously threatens peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” the JCS said.

The Defense Ministry in Tokyo confirmed the launch, saying all three missiles had traveled about 350km before landing in waters outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 370km from the coast. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned the tests, adding that Japan was analyzing them while working with the US and South Korea.

The launches come after South Korea and the US wrapped up large-scale annual joint military drills earlier this month. The 11-day Freedom Shield exercises on the Korean Peninsula reportedly involved twice the number of troops compared to 2023 and carried out roughly double the number of field-training drills.

North Korea branded the exercises “reckless” and a “further escalation of military threats,” claiming they were preparation for “an invasion attempt.” Earlier this month, Pyongyang warned the US and South Korea to stop any further “provocative and destabilizing” actions, adding that “a nuclear war may be ignited even with a single spark.” 

Blinken arrived in Seoul on Monday to attend the Summit for Democracy conference hosted by President Yoon Suk Yeol. The event, an initiative of US President Joe Biden, is reportedly aimed at discussing ways to stop democratic backsliding and the erosion of rights and freedoms worldwide. Blinken is expected to meet his South Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, during the visit.

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The Russian leader has called the political situation in America a “catastrophe”

The US has become a global laughing stock by criticizing democratic processes in other nations while suppressing a presidential candidate in its own election, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has claimed.

Speaking to journalists in Moscow early on Monday morning, shortly after preliminary results indicated he would be reelected with 87% of the vote in the Russian presidential election, Putin stated that the “whole world is laughing at what is happening” in the US.

“We are behaving with more restraint than their opponents in other countries, but this is just a catastrophe, not a democracy – that’s what it is,” the Russian leader added.

Putin claimed that the current US administration is using all its resources to attack a candidate for this year’s presidential election, seemingly referring to Donald Trump. The former US leader is facing a litany of lawsuits despite being the presumptive Republican nominee for the vote in November.

In a pre-election interview earlier this week, Putin insisted that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections and will work with any elected US president.

“I think it’s obvious to everyone that the American political system cannot claim to be democratic in any sense of the word,” he said in an interview with journalist Dmitry Kiselyov. Putin refused to comment further on the current presidential campaign in the US, but described the atmosphere as becoming “increasingly uncivilized.”

The final day of the Russian presidential election coincides with the anniversary of the utterly meaningless move against the incumbent

One year ago, on 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued two politically important – to put it neutrally – arrest warrants, one for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the other for Maria Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, a position within the Office of the President.

The warrants reflected that the ICC, to be precise its Pre-Trial Chamber following the court’s Prosecutor Karim Khan, found what it considered “reasonable grounds to believe that President Putin and Ms. Lvova-Belova bear criminal responsibility for the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” Khan further argued that “these acts… demonstrate an intention to permanently remove these children from their own country.” In sum, the arrest warrants depicted an extensive kidnapping operation during wartime.

Public – and published – opinion in the West preponderantly celebrated the warrants as not only justified but salutary. They were supposed to promote the protection of civilians during war and put pressure on Russia by increasing its international isolation, a geopolitical aim that the West was struggling to achieve.

As the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, this was “the first time the leader of a nuclear superpower” was “called to account before the court, an independent institution established … to end impunity for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.” The American President, Joe Biden, thought the ICC operation made “a very strong point.” Not to be outdone, reliably extremist Senator Lindsey Graham and equally reliably conventional publicist Fareed Zakaria both displayed historical illiteracy by absurdly claiming that Putin was copying Hitler. Historian here: Hitler’s victims would have disagreed.

Some Western commentators warned that the warrants were unlikely to be enforced and that convictions were even less likely. Yet such reservations did not challenge the overall Western consensus that the ICC move was both correct and, in some way, useful, even if mostly in a “symbolic,” that is, really, political manner.

Russian officials, unsurprisingly, responded very differently. They rejected both the charges as “null and void” and the jurisdiction of the ICC. Russia, like the US, is (after withdrawing in 2016) not a signatory state to the 1998 Rome Statute, on which the court is based. Hence, the decisions of the ICC have “no meaning for Russia,” as Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs put it. Russia even started its own investigation against members of the ICC, and later Graham.

Russian commentators, as well as dissenting voices in the West, also denounced the ICC warrants as an abuse of judicial procedures for political purposes, amounting to a form of information war or lawfare against Russia. The Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo and Max Blumenthal, for instance, investigated the ICC’s evidence and found that it was fundamentally flawed. Their work was thorough, and their findings were detailed as well as, for the ICC and Karim Khan personally, deeply embarrassing.

The key point was that Khan had based much of his case on a report produced by the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at Yale University, an organization “funded and guided” by the US State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, an entity the Biden administration established in May 2022 to advance the prosecution of Russian officials.” In addition, the executive director of HRL, Nathaniel Raymond, started contradicting himself. Whereas he had initially made grandiloquent public statements in the Graham-Zakaria register – even including a bizarre reference to “genocide” – he greatly toned down his allegations once challenged by investigative reporters. No wonder, as the HRL report was weakly sourced, and its content actually contradicted Raymond’s inflammatory rhetoric.

In other words, the ICC prosecutor had relied on a tainted source that crudely served the information warfare purposes of Russia’s main geopolitical opponent, to such a degree that even its executive director ultimately got cold feet. That this badly undermined Karim’s case and his reputation as a professional needs no further belaboring. Washington will be Washington, but why should the ICC join it? If, that is, it seeks to be respected.

In legal terms, the cases have already been shown to be shoddy. They are unlikely to succeed, and not only because of practical and political obstacles, but, more importantly, because there is much more politics than evidence behind them. In terms of those politics, ironically, they have also failed: The warrants have not led to or increased the isolation of Russia or its president. If they have weakened anything, then it is the standing of the ICC, and, in particular, of its Prosecutor Karim Khan. The ICC is already struggling with a deserved reputation as a willing tool of Western geopolitics, while turning a blind eye to the West’s crimes. The attempt to engage in geopolitical lawfare on Russia during a Western proxy war against it has made this image problem worse. Whether a coincidence or not, the fact that one of the judges who issued the warrant for the Russian president has just become the ICC’s new president will only deepen this impression of bias.

Yet what has recently cast an especially harsh new light on the ICC’s campaign against Russia is a matter of comparison, namely between the ICC’s treatment of Russia and of Israel. And, to get a popular piece of nonsense out of the way: comparison is not “whataboutism.” Justice, and that is what courts are supposed to be about, cannot exist without consistency. To assess consistency requires comparison. The cry of “whataboutism” is merely the last refuge of the special pleaders, that is, those who want bias and thus injustice as long as it favors their own side.

As early as April 2023, another Grayzone piece of reporting found that Khan was stalling “the ICC’s case against Israel, frustrating human rights lawyers who represent the victims of grisly violence in the besieged Gaza Strip.” As critical lawyers pointed out even then, a court genuinely interested in the unlawful displacement of civilians, should have put decades of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians at the center of its activity.

In addition, the ICC stopped investigating American war crimes in Afghanistan. The US, in return, started displaying a favorable attitude – and offering generous financial support – to the ICC, which, previously, it had threatened with invasion in case it should ever dare prosecute Americans.

And all of that before Israel’s current genocidal campaign in Gaza, which began after the Hamas attack in early October 2023. Tel Aviv and its Western supporters – in criminal terms, which do apply here, accomplices – have pretended Israel has responded with a “war” on Hamas. But, in reality, everything – explicit Israeli statements, tactics, and, last but not least, the open display of sadism by many of its soldiers and civilians as well – show conclusively that this is not “war,” terrible as the latter is. Instead, this is a genocide executed with the purpose of ethnic cleansing, to be precise, the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza (at least).

Prompted by South Africa, even the International Court of Justice – in a sense, the ICC’s “sibling” organization – has already recognized that genocide is at least a plausible possibility. It is important to understand that ICJ cases take years to conclude. At this point, a finding of a plausible possibility of genocide is the worst imaginable outcome for Israel already. In view of the fact that Tel Aviv has since then resolutely disregarded all the instructions the ICJ issued to restrain its assault, it is all the more likely that, in the end, Israel will be fully convicted.

And yet while the ICJ deals with cases between states, the ICC tries individuals – and has been conspicuous by its reticence to charge Israeli citizens. Critics have pointed out that the court and Khan himself have, once again, been very slow in reacting to Israel’s crimes. Mick Wallace, an Irish member of the European Parliament, has denounced Khan as a “pawn of US Empire” who has displayed  pro-Israeli bias and cannot “be trusted to deliver justice.” Only Khan’s removal, says Wallace, could save the ICC from irrelevance. The BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement, a key player in Palestinian and international resistance to Israel, has even accused Khan of being an accomplice to Tel Aviv’s genocide and, unsurprisingly, also called for him to be fired.

Only recently, as we are now looking back on half a year of unrelenting Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians in Gaza (and, as a matter of fact, elsewhere, too) have Khan and the ICC slowly started stirring themselves. Yet even now their efforts appear disingenuous. For instance, when finally appointing a prosecutor to lead the investigation into Israel’s actions against the Palestinians, Khan managed to find perhaps the worst candidate imaginable. Andrew Cayley is obviously well-embedded in the British establishment. He used to serve as the UK’s chief military prosecutor. He is a committed and open Conservative, while claiming that that does not tarnish his objectivity. Last but not least, according to The Guardian, Cayley “played a key role in a process that resulted in” the ICC giving up on a “long-running investigation into allegations that UK military personnel committed war crimes in Iraq.” Ask yourself: If you were Palestinian, would you expect fair treatment from a man with this CV?

As if to make things even worse for its own reputation, the ICC has recently added arrest warrants against two high-ranking Russian officers. In their case, the essence of the charges is that they are held responsible for attacks on infrastructure in Ukraine that, the court alleges, went beyond what humanitarian law permits. Really? The same court that has never issued similar warrants against US officers, while the comprehensive devastation of infrastructure – on a scale that Russia has not matched in Ukraine – is routine in American warfare? The same court that is dragging its feet over Israel’s assault on Gaza, which is all about mass killing of civilians not “only” directly but by the deliberate and virtually total destruction and crippling of infrastructure?

The ICC is neither promoting nor protecting human rights and international law. In reality, its obvious and indecently manifest political bias is undermining both. Is it possible that, one day, the ICC will change course, abandon its current role as an instrument of Western geopolitics, and finally do its job: pursue justice without bias? Maybe. No one knows the future. But one thing is predictable: If the ICC continues in what we might call the Khan mode of flagrant subservience, then it will become irrelevant, and soon.

Kiev’s forces will soon be able to target only one in five incoming Russian projectiles, the paper has reported

Ukraine has told its Western backers that munitions for some of its air defense systems could be almost used up by the end of March, the Washington Post has reported, citing US officials.

According to the sources, representatives of Kiev made the warning during a security conference last month, the paper wrote in an article on Friday.

Ukrainian forces, which previously managed to shoot down four out of every five missiles fired by Russia, may soon be able to target only one in five, one of the officials claimed.

The lack of air defense missiles is going to “have a significant effect on life in Ukraine’s urban centers,” the source said.

Russia has been carrying out a large-scale missile and drone campaign against Ukrainian military targets, defense-industrial complex facilities and critical infrastructure since the fall of 2022. Russia Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said previously that the aim of the attacks was to “crush Ukraine’s military potential.”

On Wednesday, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said that a US-supplied Patriot air defense system had been destroyed by Russian forces in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region. Last week, it published a video of a successful strike on a Soviet-era S-300 air defense system deployed by Ukraine in Russia’s People’s Republic of Donetsk.

The US officials who talked to WaPo warned of “catastrophic breakdown of Ukrainian lines in the grimmest contingency and the likelihood of massive casualties in the best” if Kiev does not get more military assistance from Washington.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has been trying to push through another $60 billion in assistance for Ukraine since October last year, but has so far been unable to break the resistance of hardline Republicans, who are demanding increased funding to secure the border with Mexico.

READ MORE: Ukraine’s ammo shortage hurting US strategy – White House

Moscow has repeatedly warned that deliveries of weapons to Kiev by the US, EU and their allies will not prevent it from achieving the goals of its military operation and will only prolong the fighting, and may increase the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. According to Russian officials, the provision of arms, intelligence-sharing, and training of Ukrainian troops means that Western nations have already become de-facto parties to the conflict.

The US might never have another election if he doesn’t win in November, the former president has said

Former US President Donald Trump has warned of a “bloodbath” for the American automobile industry and the country as a whole if he doesn’t win a second term in the US election on November 5.

Trump made the remark during a rally in Vandalia, Ohio on Saturday while speaking about his plans to protect US carmakers from Chinese competition.

The former president addressed China’s leader Xi Jinping from the stage, saying that “you and I are friends, but… those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now… you’re going to not hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us, no.”

“We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected,” the presumptive Republican nominee in the election added.

Trump urged Americans to vote for him in the fall, saying: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it.”

Later in his address, he also cautioned the crowd that “if this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.”

Trump’s speech that evening was mostly improvised as he complained about not being able to use the teleprompter due to strong winds. “I can’t read this damn teleprompter. This sucker is moving. Like reading a moving flag in a 35-mph wind,” the 77-year-old said.

The team of US President Joe Biden interpreted Trump’s mentioning of a “bloodbath” as a threat of “political violence” from their rival. “He wants another January 6, but the American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence, and his thirst for revenge,” Biden’s campaign spokesman James Singer said in a statement.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt responded to the accusations later on Saturday, telling CNN that “crooked Joe Biden and his campaign are engaging in deceptively out-of-context editing.”

READ MORE: ‘A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin’ – Hillary Clinton

Leavitt clarified that the former president was speaking exclusively about the country’s car manufacturing industry. “Biden’s policies will create an economic bloodbath for the auto industry and autoworkers,” she said.

SpaceX reportedly signed a $1.8 billion contract with US intelligence services back in 2021

Elon Musk’s secretive Starshield project will allow the US military to track targets and support American and allied ground forces in real time almost anywhere on Earth, Reuters has reported, sharing new details of the billionaire’s dealings with the Pentagon.

SpaceX has been launching prototype military satellites alongside “civilian” payloads on Falcon 9 rockets since at least 2020, before eventually securing a lucrative $1.8 billion contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in 2021, Reuters wrote on Saturday, citing five unnamed sources familiar with the project.

The vast constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites will be able to track targets on the ground in real time nearly anywhere worldwide, the sources claimed. One of them boasted that Starshield would ensure “no one can hide” from the US government. The system also reportedly aims to be “more resilient to attacks” by rival space powers.

It remains unclear how many Starshield satellites are currently operational and when the system is expected to fully come online, with SpaceX and the Pentagon ignoring Reuters’ requests for comment. The NRO claimed it is developing “the most capable, diverse, and resilient space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system the world has ever seen,” but refused to comment on SpaceX’s role in the project.

The SpaceX CEO previously acknowledged the development of the military alternative to the “civilian” Starlink system, saying in September that it would be “owned by the US government” and controlled by the Department of Defense.

“Starlink needs to be a civilian network, not a participant to combat,” Musk said, referring to the use of the satellites in Ukraine throughout the conflict with Russia.

Musk donated around 20,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine shortly after Russia launched its military operation in February 2022. Since then, Kiev’s troops heavily relied on the system to maintain communications and operate combat drones along the front line.

While pledging support for Ukraine, Musk has repeatedly said he favors a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The billionaire has come under fire from US officials after refusing Kiev’s demands to use the Starlink network to aid strikes on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In turn, Musk argued that activating Starlink in Crimea would be in breach of US sanctions. In the absence of any direct orders from the US leadership, SpaceX opted not to contravene regulations despite Kiev’s request to do so, the tycoon explained.

Earlier this month, US lawmakers reportedly launched another probe into SpaceX, after Ukrainian claims that Russian troops had allegedly used Starlink satellite service on the conflict frontline. Musk has denied the allegations, insisting that “no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia.” The Kremlin has also insisted that the Russian military has never ordered Starlink terminals.

The act, like most of the bloc’s virtue signaling, is the opposite of what its name ought to herald

The EU’s new Media Freedom Act has now been voted into law, with 464 votes for, 92 against, and 65 abstentions.

There are some news outlets whose coverage of the vote I’d like to see. Like RT’s, where you’re reading this right now. But anyone who’s viewing this from inside the European Union’s bastion of democracy and freedom is likely doing so via a VPN connection routed through somewhere outside the bloc, to circumvent its press censorship.

Nothing in this new law suggests that this will change, or that there will be increased access to information and analysis for the average person. Such improved freedoms might lead to people making up their own minds rather than having various flavors of a similar narrative served up for mass consumption. As has become par for the course in so-called Western democracies, inconvenient facts and analysis will still be dismissed as “disinformation” and criticism of the establishment still qualified as an effort to sow division – as though dissent itself wasn’t supposed to be proof of a healthy and vibrant democracy.

So, now that we’ve gotten out of the way any hope of lifting the EU’s top-down censorship in the absence of due process, exactly what kind of lip service does this new law pay to the lofty notion of media freedom?

No spying on journalists or pressing them to disclose their sources. Well, unless you’re one of the countries that lobbied to be able to keep doing this – like France, Italy, Malta, Greece, Cyprus, Sweden, and Finland – so basically, a quarter of EU countries. Oh, but they have to invoke national-security concerns in order to do so. Which, as we know, they’re very discerning about. Like, they didn’t at all implement a virtual police state and extend its powers under the guise of fighting a virus with which French President Emmanuel Macron kept saying they were “at war.” Nor did Amnesty International point out the sweeping “Orwellian” trend across Europe, at least as far back as 2017, of exploiting domestic terrorist attacks to permanently embed what were supposed to be extraordinary powers into criminal law, via measures like “overly broad definitions of terrorism.” So, no doubt they’ll be equally reasonable when slapping the “national security threat” label on a journalist whose work they want to peek at.

At least now, under this new law, they do have to fully inform any targeted journalist of the steps being taken against them.

Another thing that changes is that there’s to be a centralized database into which “all news and current affairs outlets regardless of their size will have to publish information about their owners,” according to an EU press release. May we propose a first candidate for that? The NGO Reporters Without Borders has praised this new law as a “major step forward for the right to information within the European Union.” The same NGO also just launched a “Svoboda” (Russian for “freedom”) satellite package eventually consisting “of up to 25 independent Russian language radio and television channels” aimed at Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics. The launch took place at the EU parliament, in the presence of EU “values and transparency” commissioner (yes, that’s a real title), Vera Jourova, who has said in support of the new media law that “it is a threat to those who want to use the power of the state, also the financial one, to make the media dependent on them.” But she has also said about this new Russia-targeting initiative that the EU state needs to “use all possible means to ensure that their work, that facts and information can reach Russian-speaking people.” This is the same person who advocated in favor of banning Russia-linked media outlets in the EU.

Anyway, you first, guys. Show everyone else how it’s done. Also, does this mean that all financial interests in the form of advertising spending will also have to be declared by corporate media? Because state-backed media platforms are already transparent; it’s the much more discretionary interests underpinning the more commercial platforms that tend to be much less obvious to audiences. Audiences may not know or understand, for example, why a particular corporate media outlet might focus on a particular nation state with softball interviews, travel pieces, and fluffy documentaries, and treating it with kid gloves in news coverage, when in reality the same country is pumping a ton of ad revenues into the place.

In any case, Queen Ursula von der Leyen’s battalion of bureaucratic desk jockeys is set to grow in ranks now with a new “European Board for Media Services” coming online as a result of the new law. Because freedom isn’t going to police itself, pal.

The name itself Media Freedom Act really is the first clue that it’s probably not all that much about freedom. Kind of like how the “European Peace Facility” fund is used to buy weapons, or the “election” of the handpicked EU Commissioner is really just what any normal country would call a confirmation vote.

It’s a pretty safe bet that whenever the EU kicks the virtue-signaling into overdrive, using feel-good language to sell it, the reality is probably the opposite of what’s advertised.

EU leadership should “start trembling,” the Hungarian PM told a crowd at an event commemorating national revolution

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that he and his supporters are ready to march on Brussels to defend their country’s sovereignty within the EU.

Orban gave the warning on Friday in a fiery speech dedicated to an anniversary of Hungary’s unsuccessful revolution of 1848 against the rule of the Austrian Empire. “Brussels is not the first empire that has set its eyes on Hungary,” he stressed.

The conservative prime minister told a crowd of around a thousand of his supporters that he’s ready to do everything to protect Hungary from what he described as attempts by the EU to “force” the country into the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, to make it accept migrants, and to “re-educate” its children by imposing an LGBTQ agenda on them.

Powers in the Western world, of which the EU is a part, “start wars, destroy worlds, redraw countries’ borders and graze on everything like locusts,” Orban told his audience. “We Hungarians live differently and want to live differently,” he pointed out.

“If we want to defend Hungary’s freedom and sovereignty, we have no other choice but to occupy Brussels,” the PM said. “We will march all the way to Brussels, and will orchestrate change in the EU ourselves.”

Orban stressed that he and his supporters are experienced people who know what needs to be done in order to properly restructure the bloc, of which Hungary has been a member since 2004. It’s time for the EU leadership to “start trembling,” he said.

In power for 14 years now, Orban is being criticized by Brussels over allegedly undermining the rule of law, infringing on press freedoms and clamping down on gay rights. The EU has been withholding funds from Hungary for years over these and other issues.

Brussels is also unhappy about the stance taken by Budapest on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, a neighbor to which it has refused to provide arms, unlike other fellow EU member states, while at the same time maintaining economic and political ties with Moscow. Orban insists that there’s no military solution to the crisis and that it should be settled through diplomacy.

READ MORE: EU state blasts Biden’s ‘dictatorship’ remarks

During his speech, he reiterated that “Hungary can only benefit from peace, we do not want war.” However, Brussels has brought the conflict to its doors, he said, referring to the ongoing fighting. “We have been deceived, it is time to rise up,” he stated.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda will meet with Arvydas Anusauskas on Saturday

Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas has handed in his resignation to Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, the government’s press office said in a statement on Friday. Anusauskas was also scheduled to meet with President Gitanas Nauseda on Saturday, according to the agenda of the head of state.

Journalist Edmundas Jakilaitis launched a wave of speculation on Friday evening, when he wrote on Facebook: “Thanks to Arvydas Anusauskas. We'll see how Laurynas Kasciunas will do.”

Anusauskas jokingly directed all questions to Jakilaicius after the post.

“I promised him to refer all interested parties to him for that message, so go ahead, call, ask,” he said.

Earlier this week, the Lithuanian media predicted that MP Laurynas Kasciunas could succeed Anusauskas as defense chief.

The Lithuanian daily “15 min” reported that the defense minister had requested a meeting urgently, which could signal disagreements between him and Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte. The latter allegedly disapproved of statements he had made in the United States, which he visited this week.

Lithuania’s upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for October, could also be a source of political tension. According to the polls, Anusauskas is the most popular member of the conservative Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats party.

According to Lithuanian law, a cabinet minister must submit a resignation statement to the prime minister, and the prime minister must hand it over to the president.

A NATO member state since 2004, Lithuania has been actively supporting Ukraine since the start of its conflict with Russia. The Baltic country has also been beefing up its own defenses over the past two years.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) last month, Lithuania’s ambassador to Sweden Linas Linkevicius warned that Russia’s western exclave of Kaliningrad would be “neutralized first” if Moscow “dares to challenge NATO.”

Russia has consistently made it clear that it considers NATO’s military buildup close to its Western borders to be a threat to its national security.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also said that Moscow has no plans to attack NATO, stressing that his country “has no interest… geopolitically, economically or militarily” in doing so.

Berlin has so far refused to provide Kiev with Taurus cruise missiles

European countries intend to create yet another “capability coalition” to supply Ukrainian forces with long-range weapons, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, echoing an initiative floated by French President Emmanuel Macron.

During a joint press conference with Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin on Friday, the German chancellor stated that the countries have agreed to expand their own production of military equipment and “procure even more weapons for Ukraine, on the overall world market.”

“We are establishing a new capability coalition for long-range rocket artillery,” Scholz told journalists. The German leader provided no specifics and took no questions, so it remains unclear whether he meant something new, or was referring to a “long-range” initiative announced by Macron last month.

Following a summit of Ukraine’s backers in Paris, Macron said that France would lead a new coalition that aims to provide Kiev with “medium and long-range missiles and bombs.” Much like many previous Western “capability coalitions” focused on drones, artillery, air defenses and others, the new group seeks to unite those who want to boost Ukraine’s specific ability to “carry out deep strikes,” the French leader said at the time.

It remains unclear what new types of weapons Kiev’s foreign sponsors could supply, as the UK and France have already been providing their Storm Shadow and SCALP-EG long-range cruise missiles since last year, with Macron pledging another 40 missiles in January. The US also sent some of its ATACMS missiles, but Kiev has already depleted the limited supply, and has repeatedly called for additional weapons amid the suspension of American aid.

Scholz has so far refused to send German-made Taurus missiles to Ukraine in order to avoid the risk of a direct conflict with Russia, resisting pressure from foreign partners and some politicians at home. 

On Wednesday, Scholz again insisted that the delivery of Taurus missiles was “a line that I don’t want to cross as chancellor.” He explained that such a shipment would inevitably require the presence of German military personnel on Ukrainian soil – a development that is “out of the question.”

By providing military aid to Kiev, the US has strained its own arsenals; the Congressionally approved money pot has run dry

The US Defense Department has asked the nation's  Congress to allocate at least $6.5 billion to replenish its stocks, which have been depleted after two years of constant weapon deliveries to Ukraine, according to a document seen by Bloomberg.

The Pentagon alerted Congress that spending on replenishment was a high priority in the proposals it submitted last month, the outlet reported on Thursday.

The shopping list reportedly includes a wide range of weapons, ammunition and critical components for the production of 155mm shells, HARM anti-radar missiles, Patriot interceptors, GMLRS rockets and anti-tank TOWs.

While the Pentagon estimated the price of its immediate replenishment needs at $6.5 billion, multiple US media reports suggested earlier this week that the total deficit could be at least $10 billion. Unless the shortfall is compensated, the “ongoing hole” will put a strain on the US military, one source told Politico.

READ MORE: Ukraine’s ammo shortage hurting US strategy – White House

Washington had provided more than $75 billion in cash and equipment for Ukraine’s war effort by the end of last year, far surpassing other Western donors, but the deliveries stopped after the Congressionally approved money pot ran dry.

The White House has requested over $60 billion in supplemental Ukraine assistance, but the Republican-controlled House has stonewalled repeated calls by US President Joe Biden to release the money. Biden has blamed US lawmakers for Kiev’s recent battlefield losses, including last month’s fall of Avdeevka to Russian forces.

Despite running out of money, the White House has found enough “unanticipated savings” at the Pentagon to announce a new aid package valued at up to $300 million this week. The Pentagon still has the authority to send some $4 billion worth of aid to Ukraine, but Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has so far been reluctant to tap into that fund, with no assurances the money will be replaced by US lawmakers.

The social media influencing campaign was intended to foster ‘paranoia’ among top leaders in Beijing, Reuters reported

Former US President Donald Trump authorized a secret CIA influence campaign aimed at smearing the Chinese government and turning public opinion against its leaders, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing ex-officials with knowledge of the operation.

According to the report, the CIA formed a team of operatives in 2019 who used fake internet identities to spread “negative narratives” about President Xi Jinping’s government and leak “disparaging intelligence” to foreign news outlets.

Among the narratives spread by the CIA on Chinese social media platforms were allegations that members of the ruling Communist Party were hiding money overseas. The Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure development strategy, was also framed as “corrupt and wasteful.”

The US officials who spoke to Reuters said the effort by the Trump administration was intended to “foment paranoia among top leaders” and force the government in Beijing to expend resources chasing up intrusions into its internet space.

“We wanted them chasing ghosts,” one former official said. The sources described the operation as an American response to “years of aggressive covert efforts by China aimed at increasing its global influence.”

A CIA spokesperson contacted by Reuters declined to comment on the existence of the program.

A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the outlet that the revelation proved that Washington uses public platforms “as weapons to spread false information and manipulate international public opinion.”

During his time in office, Trump orchestrated a shift in US foreign policy from the Middle East to China, with the Pentagon branding China as Washington’s top “strategic competitor” in its 2018 National Defense Strategy. Trump also waged a large-scale trade war against Beijing for much of his term.

In 2020, the president also tried to block access to the Chinese-owned TikTok platform through an executive order, arguing that it was a threat to national security.

Amid recently renewed efforts by Congress to ban the app, Trump, now the 2024 the Republican presidential frontrunner, told CNBC this week that he chose to back away from efforts to ban the platform due to its popularity among young Americans and concerns that it would strengthen rival social media giant Facebook, which he described as “an enemy of the people.”

READ MORE: Ex-US Treasury Secretary reveals TikTok purchase plans

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to force the platform’s Chinese owner ByteDance to sell the app within six months or face a US ban – and on Friday, former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was building an investor group to buy TikTok.

Reuters said it was unable to determine what impact the secret CIA operation had in China or whether President Joe Biden’s administration has maintained it.

Macron’s latest sallies and the spat they’ve caused show that Western Europe must finally be honest about the causes of the Ukraine conflict

The current situation in the conflict between Ukraine – serving (while being demolished) as a proxy for the West – and Russia, can be sketched in three broad strokes.

First, Russia now clearly has the upper hand on the battlefield and could potentially accelerate its recent advances to achieve an overall military victory soon. The West is being compelled to recognize this fact: as Foreign Affairs put it, in an article titled “Time is Running Out in Ukraine,” Kiev and its Western supporters “are at a critical decision point and face a fundamental question: How can further Russian advances… be stopped, and then reversed?” Just disregard the bit of wishful thinking thrown in at the end to sweeten the bitter pill of reality. The key point is the acknowledgment that it is crunch time for the West and Ukraine – in a bad way.

Second, notwithstanding the above, Ukraine is not yet ready to ask for negotiations to end the war on terms acceptable to Russia, which would be less than easy for Kiev. (Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, reiterated in an important recent interview that Moscow remains principally open to talks, not on the basis of “wishful thinking” but, instead, proceeding from the realities “on the ground.”)

The Kiev regime’s inflexibility is little wonder. Since he jettisoned a virtually complete – and favorable – peace deal in the spring of 2022, President Vladimir Zelensky has gambled everything on an always improbable victory. For him personally, as well as his core team (at least), there is no way to survive – politically or physically – the catastrophic defeat they have brought on their country by leasing it out as a pawn to the Washington neocon strategy.

The Pope, despite the phony brouhaha he triggered in Kiev and the West, was right: a responsible Ukrainian leadership ought to negotiate. But that’s not the leadership Ukraine has. Not yet at least.

Third, the West’s strategy is getting harder to decipher because, in essence, the West cannot figure out how to adjust to the failure of its initial plans for this war. Russia has not been isolated; its military has become stronger, not weaker – and the same is true of its economy, including its arms industry.

And last but not least, the Russian political system’s popular legitimacy and effective control has neither collapsed nor even frayed. As, again, even Foreign Affairs admits, “Putin would likely win a fair election in 2024.” That’s more than could be said for, say, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Olaf Scholz, or Emmanuel Macron (as for Zelensky, he has simply canceled the election).

In other words, the West is facing not only Ukraine’s probable defeat, but also its own strategic failure. The situation, while not a direct military rout (as in Afghanistan in 2021) amounts to a severe political setback.

In fact, this looming Western failure is a historic debacle in the making. Unlike with Afghanistan, the West will not be able to simply walk away from the mess it has made in Ukraine. This time, the geopolitical blowback will be fierce and the costs very high. Instead of isolating Russia, the West has isolated itself, and by losing, it will show itself weakened.

It is one thing to have to finally, belatedly accepted that the deceptive “unipolar” moment of the 1990s has been over for a long time. It is much worse to gratuitously enter the new multipolar order with a stunning, avoidable self-demotion. Yet that is what the EU/NATO-West has managed to fabricate from its needless over-extension in Ukraine. Hubris there has been galore, the fall now is only a matter of time – and not much time at that.

Regarding EU-Europe in particular, on one thing French President Emmanuel Macron is half right. Russia’s victory “would reduce Europe’s credibility to zero.” Except, of course, a mind of greater Cartesian precision would have detected that Moscow’s victory will merely be the last stage in a longer process.

The deeper causes of EU/NATO-Europe’s loss of global standing are threefold. First, its own wanton decision to seek confrontation instead of a clearly feasible compromise and cooperation with Russia (why exactly is a neutral Ukraine impossible to live with again?) Second, the American strategy of systematically diminishing EU/NATO-Europe with a short-sighted policy of late-imperial client cannibalization which takes the shape of aggressive deindustrialization and a “Europeanization” of the war in Ukraine. And third, the European clients’ grotesque acquiescence to the above.

That is the background to a recent wave of mystifying signals coming out of Western, especially EU/NATO elites: First, we have had a wave of scare propaganda to accompany the biggest NATO maneuvers since the end of the Cold War. Next Macron publicly declared and has kept reiterating that the open – not in covert-but-obvious mode, as now – deployment of Western ground troops in Ukraine is an option. He added a cheap demagogic note by calling on Europeans not to be “cowards,” by which he means that they should be ready to follow, in effect, his orders and fight Russia, clearly including inside and on behalf of Ukraine. Never mind that the latter is a not an official member of either NATO or the EU as well as a highly corrupt and anything but democratic state.

In response, a divergence has surfaced inside EU/NATO Europe: The German government has been most outspoken in contradicting Macron. Not only Chancellor Scholz rushed to distance himself. A clearly outraged Boris Pistorius – Berlin’s hapless minister of defense, recently tripped up by his own generals’ stupendously careless indiscretion over the Taurus missiles – has grumbled that there is no need for “talk about boots on the ground or having more courage or less courage.” Perhaps more surprisingly, Poland, the Czech Republic as well as NATO figurehead Jens Stoltenberg (i.e., the US) have been quick to state that they are, in effect, not ready to support Macron’s initiative. The French public, by the way, is not showing any enthusiasm for a Napoleonic escalation either. A Le Figaro poll shows 68 percent against openly sending ground troops to Ukraine.

On the other side, Macron has found some support. He is not entirely isolated, which helps explain why he has dug in his heels: Zelensky does not count in this respect. His bias is obvious, and his usual delusions notwithstanding he is not calling the shots on the matter. The Baltic states, however, while military micro-dwarfs, are, unfortunately, in a position to exert some influence inside the EU and NATO. And true to form, they have sided with the French president, with Estonia and Lithuania taking the lead.

It remains impossible to be certain what we are looking at. To get the most far-fetched hypothesis out of the way first: is this a coordinated bluff with a twist? A complicated Western attempt at playing good-cop bad-cop against Russia, with Macron launching the threats and others signaling that Moscow could find them less extreme, at a diplomatic price, of course? Hardly. For one thing, that scheme would be so hare-brained, even the current West is unlikely to try. No, the crack opening up in Western unity is real.

Regarding Macron himself, too-clever-by-half, counter-productive cunning is his style. We cannot know what exactly he is trying to do; and he may not know himself. In essence, there are two possibilities. Either the French president now is a hard-core escalationist determined to widen the war into an open clash between Russia and NATO, or he is a high-risk gambler who is engaged in a bluff to achieve three purposes. Frighten Moscow into abstaining from pushing its military advantage in Ukraine (a hopeless idea); score nationalist “grandeur” points domestically in France (which is failing already); and increase his weight inside EU/NATO-Europe by “merely” posturing as, once again, a new “Churchill” – whom Macron himself has made sure to allude to, in all his modesty. (And some of his fans, including Zelensky, a grizzled veteran of Churchill live action role play, have already made that de rigueur if stale comparison.)  

While we cannot entirely unriddle the moody sphinx of the Elysée or, for that matter, the murky dealings of EU/NATO-European elites, we can say two things. First, whatever Macron thinks he is doing, it is extremely dangerous. Russia would treat EU/NATO-state troops in Ukraine as targets – and it won’t matter one wit if they turn up labeled “NATO” or under national flags “only.” Russia has also reiterated that it considers its vital interests affected in Ukraine and that if its leadership perceives a vital threat to Russia, nuclear weapons are an option. The warning could not be clearer.

Second, here is the core Western problem that is now – due to Russia undeniably winning the war – becoming acute: Western elites are split between “pragmatists” and “extremists.” The pragmatists are as Russophobic and strategically misguided as the extremists, but they do shy away from World War Three. Yet these pragmatists, who seek to resist hard-core escalationists and reign it at least high-risk gamblers, are brought up short against a crippling contradiction in their own position and messaging: As of now, they still share the same delusional narrative with the extremists. Both groupings keep reiterating that Russia plans to attack all of EU/NATO-Europe once it defeats Ukraine and that, therefore, stopping Russia in Ukraine is, literally, vital (or in Macron’s somewhat Sartrean terms “existential”) to the West.    

That narrative is absurd. Reality works exactly the other way around: The most certain way to get into a war with Russia is to send troops to Ukraine openly. And what is existential for EU/NATO-Europe is to finally liberate itself from American “leadership.” During the Cold War, a case could be made that (then Western) Europe needed the US. After the Cold War, though, that was no longer the case. In response, Washington has implemented a consistent, multi-administration, bipartisan, if often crude, strategy of avoiding what should have been inevitable: the emancipation of Europe from American dominance.

Both the eastward expansion of NATO, programmed – and predicted – to cause a massive conflict with Russia and the current proxy war in Ukraine, obstinately provoked by Washington over decades, are part of that strategy to – to paraphrase a famous saying about NATO – “keep Europe down.” And the European elites have played along as if there’s no tomorrow, which, for them, there really may not be.

We are at a potential breaking-point, a crisis of that long-term trajectory. If the pragmatists in EU/NATO-Europe really want to contain the extremists, who play with triggering an open war between Russia and NATO that would devastate at least Europe, then they must now come clean and, finally, abandon the common, ideological, and entirely unrealistic narrative about an existential threat from Moscow.

As long as the pragmatists dare not challenge the escalationists on how to principally understand the causes of the current catastrophe, the extremists will always have the advantage of consistency: Their policies are foolish, wastefully unnecessary, and extremely risky. And yet, they follow from what the West has made itself believe. It is high time to break that spell of self-hypnosis, and face facts.

Steven Mnuchin told CNBC he is putting together an investor group to try to buy the short-video app

Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said he is building an investor group to acquire TikTok, a day after the House of Representatives voted to force the social media platform’s Chinese owner ByteDance to sell the app or face a US ban.

The House passed the legislation by a vote of 352-65 on Wednesday, citing national-security risks. The bill now goes to the Senate. US President Joe Biden previously said he would sign the bill into law if it passes both houses of Congress.

“I think the legislation should pass and I think [TikTok] should be sold,” Mnuchin, who leads Liberty Strategic Capital, told CNBC on Thursday. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” he stated.

Mnuchin, who served as Treasury Secretary under former President Donald Trump, did not specify who the other investors would be in such a deal or the potential valuation for the social media site.

“This should be owned by US businesses,” he stressed, adding “There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company own something like this in China.” 

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick was also shopping a potential deal to prospective partners. However, according to CNBC, it remains unclear whether the Chinese government would permit ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US buyer.

China has lashed out at an ongoing effort to ban the popular social media platform in the US, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin saying that such a step would violate international trade rules. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has implied that a sale is not an option.

While TikTok is the only application specifically mentioned in the document currently winding its way through Congress, it creates a framework for Washington to ban other platforms controlled by countries it considers “foreign adversaries,” experts warn. The list of nations labeled as such includes China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.

If inked into law, the bill would give ByteDance 165 days to divest TikTok, which has more than 170 million American users. If it fails to do so, US web-hosting companies would have to remove TikTok and other apps linked to ByteDance from their app stores.

Benjamin Netanyahu said the IDF is prepared to conduct the attack and evacuate the civilian population

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the latest truce and prisoner-exchange proposal by Hamas and has approved an IDF plan to launch an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Israeli media reported on Friday.

”The IDF is prepared for the operation and to evacuate the [civilian] population,” the PM’s office said in a statement, as cited by the Times of Israel.

Earlier in the day, Hamas announced on social media that it had presented its “vision” of a prisoner swap with Israel to Qatari and Egyptian mediators and was looking towards a ceasefire agreement which would involve the withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces from Gaza.

As reported by Reuters, which has seen the proposal, the Palestinian militants proposed the release of Israeli women, including female soldiers, children, the elderly and ill hostages, in exchange for Israel freeing between 700 and 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Once the prisoner exchange is complete, Hamas said it would be ready to negotiate a date for a permanent ceasefire.

The Jewish state, however, dismissed the proposal and accused Hamas of making “unrealistic demands.”

On Thursday, Netanyahu also reiterated Israel’s determination to complete its mission of “eliminating” Hamas.

Israel’s decision to proceed with a ground incursion into Rafah comes after repeated warnings from the international community, including the US and Egypt, not to enter the city where some 1.5 million Palestinians are currently sheltering.

READ MORE: The Last Stand: Israel is very close to breaking a key accord that defined the Middle East

After Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israeli settlements last October 7, which saw 1,100 people killed and 250 taken hostage, Israel has been conducting a relentless siege on Gaza. According to the latest information from Palestinian health authorities, at least 31,341 people have been killed and 73,134 others injured in Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in the enclave over the past half a year.

Potential delivery of German-made Taurus missiles to Kiev could undermine Berlin’s own security, Sahra Wagenknecht says

Lawmakers across the German political spectrum who are considering delivering long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine should realize that this would put the lives of millions of Germans on the line, veteran left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht has argued. The MP also pointed out to colleagues that this weapon cannot change the course of the Ukraine conflict.

Kiev has for months been requesting Berlin to supply it with the rockets, with Chancellor Scholz, however, repeatedly ruling out such a possibility. He has explained that Taurus’ long range would enable Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russian territory, increasing the potential for further escalation. Scholz has also said supply of these missiles, which are made in Germany, would inevitably imply the presence of Bundeswehr troops on Ukrainian soil – a scenario that is “out of the question.”

While the German parliament did vote against arming Kiev with the missiles on Thursday, critics from the opposition as well as from within the ruling ‘traffic light’ coalition have urged Chancellor Scholz to lift the self-imposed prohibition.

Addressing her colleagues in the Bundestag before the vote, Wagenknecht claimed that the “whole world outside of the German political bubble knows that Ukraine can’t win this war.”

“Taurus [cruise missiles] would not change anything at all there, the only [thing this] would change is that Germany would definitely become a party to the war in Russia’s eyes,” she explained.

According to the politician, who is also the leader of her party, what proponents of Taurus missile deliveries to Kiev are “carelessly toying with here is the security and, in the worst case, the lives of millions of people in Germany.”

Wagenknecht, who made a name for herself in German politics as one of the leaders of the Left party before leaving it last October, described as scandalous the fact that “German air force officers calmly debate how one can destroy Russian targets with German cruise missiles.” The MP was apparently referring to a leaked conversation between several German top brass made public by RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan earlier this month.

In the audio, whose authenticity was later confirmed by the German Defense Ministry, the officers theorized about a Ukrainian strike on the Crimean Bridge with the help of Taurus missiles.

Wagenknecht has been a vocal critic of Scholz’s policies toward Russia over the Ukraine conflict since the start of hostilities in February 2022.

The Palestinian group said it will discuss a permanent ceasefire with Israel after the exchange of prisoners, the outlet has reported

Palestinian armed group Hamas is calling for an exchange of prisoners and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza as part of a ceasefire agreement, Reuters has reported after reviewing the document.

Early on Friday, Hamas announced on social media that it had presented its “vision” of a prisoner swap with Israel to Qatari and Egyptian mediators. The group said it made the move as part of talks aimed at “stopping the aggression against our people in Gaza, providing relief and assistance to them, and [facilitating] the return of those displaced [by the conflict].”

Reuters later revealed details of the Hamas proposal, which it said envisages a two-stage road-map toward ending the fighting.

In the first stage, Hamas stated it is ready to release Israeli women, including female soldiers, children, the elderly and ill hostages, in exchange for Israel freeing between 700 and 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, around a hundred of whom are serving life sentences, according to the agency.

In line with the proposal, a deadline for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza should be agreed following the conclusion of the first stage, Reuters said.

Hamas revealed it would also be ready to negotiate a date for a permanent ceasefire after the initial exchange of prisoners, it added.

According to the agency, the group wants all detainees from both sides to be released in the second stage of the plan.

However, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu downplayed hopes of an imminent ceasefire on Friday, saying in a message on X (formerly Twitter) that Hamas continues to produce “unrealistic demands.

Netanyahu insisted on Thursday that Israel will complete its mission of “eliminating” Hamas. In order to do so, he stated that Israeli forces will enter Rafah on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, which has become the last refuge for more than a million displaced Palestinians.

At least 1,100 were killed and 250 taken hostage when Hamas carried out a surprise incursion into Israel on October 7. Many of the captives were released by the group during a week-long truce in November, but Hamas is still believed to be holding around 130 people.

READ MORE: UN report finds Israel deliberately targeted journalists – Reuters

The latest information from Gaza’s health ministry suggests that at least 31,341 Palestinians have been killed and 73,134 others injured in Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in the Palestinian enclave over the past half a year.

The UK needs to make “tough choices” to be able to counter the “threats” posed by Russia and China, Richard Dearlove has said

Britain is engaged in a “gray war” with Russia, but neither the authorities nor the public are taking the situation seriously enough, the former head of the famed spy agency MI6, Richard Dearlove, has warned.

The UK military isn’t getting enough money to be able to counter the “threats” posed by Moscow and Beijing, Richard Dearlove, who led the British Secret Intelligence Service between 1999 and 2004, said in an interview with Politico on Friday.

The statement followed last week’s announcement of the UK’s budget for the next financial year, in which there was no increase in defense spending. It remains at 2% of the country’s GDP.

”If you stopped anyone in the street here in the UK and asked them whether they thought Britain is at war, they’d look at you as if you were mad. But we are at war — we’re engaged in a gray war with Russia, and I am trying to remind people of that,” the former spy chief said.

The British authorities have “got to make some tough choices, and I’m afraid the tough choices are in front of us right now. We should be spending at least 2.5%” on defense, he insisted.

“We urgently need to be building more ships. We need a much bigger navy. And we need more boots on the ground, for God’s sake,” Dearlove stressed.

The fighting between Russia and Ukraine has shown the importance of manpower on the modern battlefield, the 79-year-old said. The size of the British army had been reduced by more than 26,000 since 2006, and currently has just over 74,000 full-time troops.

Last month, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov accused the UK of being “directly involved” in the conflict between Moscow and Ukraine. He was reacting to a report in The Times which claimed that the head of the UK armed forces, Admiral Tony Radakin, had “helped the Ukrainians with the strategy to destroy Russian ships and open up the Black Sea.” According to Peskov, it is “no secret” for Moscow that the British “provide different forms of support” to Kiev such as “people on the ground and intelligence.”

In February, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the UK has been “even more aggressive, more elaborate in its provocative assertiveness” towards Moscow than any other Western nation during the conflict.

READ MORE: Putin issues warning on US troops in Ukraine 

The UK has been one of the leading backers of Ukraine in Europe since the start of the fighting more than two years ago, pledging to provide Kiev with 12 billion pounds ($15.2 billion) in overall support, including 7.1 billion pounds ($9 billion) in military assistance.

The Taiwanese defense chief has confirmed US troops are training the island’s army, with some stationed 10km from mainland China

US special forces personnel are stationed on some of Taiwan’s outlying islands training its armed forces, the island’s defense authority chief Chiu Kuo-cheng confirmed to the press on Thursday.

The official was asked to confirm media reports of a permanent US army presence in Taiwan on the sidelines of a legislative hearing, the news website Focus Taiwan wrote on Thursday. Chiu stated that US service members are training Taiwanese troops, helping them identify weaknesses and blind spots.

Last week, the US military news site Special Operations Forces Report (SOFREP) wrote that America’s “Green Berets” were planned to be deployed to Taiwan to act as permanent training observers and prepare the island’s special units. This represents a departure from past practice that saw frequent but non-permanent visits by US personnel to Taiwanese training facilities, the report said. The permanent US forces, according to the article, would be situated on the Kinmen Islands, just 10 kilometers from mainland China.

Beijing sees the self-governing isle as part of China’s sovereign territory, and has repeatedly warned it against formally declaring independence. Although Taiwan has governed itself since 1949, most of the international community, including the US, does not officially recognize it as a sovereign state.

While the US does not officially support Taiwanese independence, it maintains security ties with the island. Under the ‘Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act 2022,’ to “deter People’s Republic of China (PRC) aggression against Taiwan” the US is authorized to spend up to $2 billion a year in military grants to bolster the island’s security up until 2027.

Mainland China has slammed the increased rotation of US military personnel to the island. The US always prioritizes its own interests, and Taiwan is merely a “pawn” it uses against mainland China, Beijing’s spokesman Chen Binhua stated on Wednesday. He claimed that by “closely aligning with the US to carry out so-called military training programs,” Taiwan’s political leadership is gradually “pushing the people of Taiwan into a crisis.”

“Any attempt to seek ‘independence’ through military means or rely on external forces for ‘independence’ will only lead to danger and ultimately result in self-destruction for Taiwan,” he warned.

Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric has expressed “concern” over attempted bombing of the Zaporozhye facility

The spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said all sides are responsible for maintaining security at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, after staff at the Russian facility accused Ukrainian forces of dropping a bomb near fuel tanks containing diesel for backup generators.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric was asked about the recent attack in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear plant during a press briefing on Thursday.

“We have stated over and again, and we’re very concerned about the situation around the nuclear power plant, and it’s incumbent on everyone to ensure and to guarantee its safety. One would hate to even think about what could happen,” Dujarric said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, told Russian media that it was aware of the incident, but offered no further comment.

The improvised bomb, composed of explosives wrapped in foil, was dropped just five meters away from the perimeter fence, plant director Yury Chernuk said in a video published on social media on Thursday. The attack caused no damage or casualties, but if the fuel tanks were to be destroyed, the plant’s “preparedness for emergencies would be reduced by orders of magnitude,” Chernuk said.

Europe’s largest nuclear power plant fell under Moscow’s control in 2022, early in the conflict with Ukraine. It was formally transferred to Rosatom management after Zaporozhye Region was incorporated into Russia following a referendum.

Russia has repeatedly accused Kiev of launching artillery, missile, and drone attacks against the facility, as well as repeatedly sending in special forces teams to try and seize it. The plant has suffered multiple blackouts and sustained minor damage to its support infrastructure, and has been placed in a dormant state in order to minimize the chances of a potentially catastrophic scenario.

The French leader again refused to rule out NATO deployments in Ukraine, after controversary over his recent remarks on the subject

French President Emmanuel Macron described Russia as “an adversary,” but stopped short of declaring it an “enemy,” during an interview with the France 2 and TF1 TV channels on Thursday.

He again refused to rule out NATO deployments in Ukraine, reiterating that Paris is ready to make any “decisions necessary to prevent Russia’s victory” – and noting that he sees no opportunities for negotiations with the Kremlin at this point.

”I am absolutely ready for discussions at any time, but we need someone sincere and peace-oriented to do that,” Macron said, adding that he hoped that the time would come one day to negotiate with a Russian president “whoever it might be.”

Noting Macron’s reluctance to engage in direct communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the interviewers wondered if the United States could potentially mediate such talks, especially if Donald Trump is reelected.

Macron brushed off the question, pointing out that Trump is not the current occupant of the White House.

Back in January, Macron said he would deal with whoever wins the US election, claiming “I’ve always had the same philosophy, I take the leaders that people give me.”

The French leader said there was “nothing personal” behind his decision to refrain from dialogue with Putin. “Undoubtedly, I am the head of the state that used to talk to him more than anyone else.”

US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are set for a rematch in November, with recent polls showing Trump leading his incumbent rival by between two and nine percentage points. Trump has promised to end the Ukrainian conflict “in 24 hours” if voted back into office, without specifying how peace could be achieved. Meanwhile, Russia is holding its own presidential election this weekend, in which Vladimir Putin faces three opponents.

READ MORE: Polls open in Russian presidential election

The Western European bloc’s representatives no longer try to understand those who disagree with them, instead they deliver lectures dripping with arrogance

A recent incident in which a group of ambassadors from EU states refused to attend a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov perfectly encapsulates the state of European diplomatic culture today. The reason is simple – over the past 30 years, the need to be diplomatic in the traditional sense of the word has almost disappeared.

Despite the fact that the envoys of EU countries in Moscow are relatively well-educated and not stupid, these individual peculiarities no longer count for much. Everything is determined by their dogmatic world view, which has become the opposite of what is necessary for civilized relations between states.

Those observers who question why in today's world each EU state needs its own separate ambassador in Moscow have merit in their arguments. After all, the envoys really do not decide anything and cannot fulfil their duties in the traditional accepted way. It would be much easier for everyone if these people – both great and not so great – would return to their countries for a while.

There are several reasons why Western Europeans have ventured so far on the road to their own, different world. First, they experienced a colossal upheaval just over 30 years ago. Since the 16th century, these states had been neighboring Russia, which they could not defeat.

Dominic Lieven, a fine British scholar of the Russian Empire's origins, wrote that the Russians were the only people Western Europeans had to deal with who were capable of fighting for their special, independent niche in the modern world with boundless courage, perseverance, and self-sacrifice.

Consider these words – we are the only civilization against which the West has attempted to act aggressively, and failed to achieve its goals. All the rest – the Great Empire of China, the ancient civilization of India, and many others – were unable to withstand the decisive thrust of the West, which for 500 years had been expanding the frontiers of its power by fire and sword. They were beaten, even if they were able to restore their statehood after some time.

Our country was never defeated. But let’s try to put ourselves in the Western Europeans’ shoes and understand their emotional state. For centuries, they have been living with a trauma called ‘an independent Russia’. However, we ourselves have never had the opportunity to understand what it is like to have a permanent enemy that can never be conquered.

So, when the USSR suddenly collapsed in 1991 and the unified state disintegrated, Western Europe found itself in a situation it had never experienced before. Overnight, the most unfulfilled wish of generations of European politicians and military leaders came true. All by itself, without a decisive military clash, and with the Russians’ full of desire to join the ‘European family’, even as pupils. Such a shock could not pass without serious consequences for the psyche of the statesmen and ordinary citizens of these Western European states.

Their entire foreign policy culture was based on the fact that Russia would never be pushed around or told what to do. Suddenly, the West felt it had won the Cold War without firing a single shot. In a state of fantastic emotional upheaval, the Western Europeans began to build relations with Russia as if it had finally been defeated. For several years, Moscow accepted the rules of the game that the West imposed. It took into account the wishes of the Western Europeans in the economic sphere and developed its foreign relations with an eye to how this would affect the main goal – which was gradual ‘integration’ with the EU.

In the new circumstances, the bloc found itself in the position of a demanding teacher, offering numerous ‘partnership’ programs with two simple objectives. First, to secure the interests of Western European business and make the Russian market even more open to it. Second, to ensure that Moscow was complying with its instructions.

European diplomats became equally demanding teachers. For several generations of EU ambassadors in Moscow, the main task was to monitor how well Russia was honoring its many commitments. As part of this ‘honorable’ mission, a tradition of communication with Russians at various levels has developed. And while there have been talks at the level of heads of state or foreign ministers, there has been no trace of normal diplomacy below that level.

EU ambassadors did not simply become the executors of the will of their masters back home (which is perfectly normal) – they gradually became technical workers entrusted with the task of observing Russia and pointing out errors in its behavior.

And the level of their intellectual ability was no longer measured by their competency in playing a subtle diplomatic game. The main measure was the degree of hysteria with which they pushed through a very simple agenda. All the more so as their individual will and intelligence were increasingly integrated into the system of rules and requirements common to all NATO and EU representatives abroad.

As a philosopher wrote in the last century, “in any collective, individual agency becomes the servant of the collective interest.” And gradually, we should add, it disappears in the sense that is a sign of agency in the first place – the ability to analyze a situation independently and to make decisions. This problem has become so total for Western European diplomacy and politics that it has gradually ceased to be noticed.

All the more so because European politics was also changing rapidly. Having found themselves, through no fault of their own, in the position of ‘winners of the Cold War’, Western Europeans felt a deep sense of moral superiority over the whole world around them. Except, of course, towards the Americans, who they are simply afraid of. 

We have repeatedly seen examples of the European Union interfering in the purely internal affairs of key partners such as China, or the still-very-friendly India. Not to mention states of lesser size and importance. Last year, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron made a scene with the Brazilians over their treatment of their forests. 

To be fair, part of the problem is that other countries have long been unwilling to make these Western Europeans aware of the inadequacies of their behavior. As a participant in global diplomacy, the EU has gone very far down the road to a place from which there is no return to reality.

However, a reasonable question arises – why does Russia care at all about our Western neighbors' loss of their ability to adapt to the world around them? It seems that if the current political-military crisis is temporarily accompanied by a downgrading of our diplomatic relations with EU countries, we might still benefit from understanding the reasons.

Firstly, if we exclude tragic scenarios for everyone, the bloc will remain Russia’s neighbor and we will have to resume diplomatic dialogue with it. Even if we take into account the fact that the main reason for Western European inadequacy has been of a fundamental nature – the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR – we could have been more demanding with them earlier. For their own – and our common – good. It is therefore necessary to understand where they have major weaknesses that deprive them of the ability to engage in normal diplomatic interaction. 

Secondly, we must recognize the tragic errors of replacing diplomacy with political lectures. As Russia develops relations with the Global South and our neighbors in the former Soviet space, it is useful to be extra vigilant and make sure that we ourselves do not also start displaying signs of European arrogance.

This article was first published by ‘Vzglyad’ newspaper, translated and edited by the RT ream 

Since the conflict began, Ukraine has destroyed multiple Russian naval vessels with the help of Western weaponry

Ukraine has used NATO-supplied missiles to strike Russian Navy vessels in the Black Sea, the bloc's secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, acknowledged on Thursday, adding that he considers the area to be of “great strategic importance.”

Earlier this month, Ukrainian forces struck a Russian Navy ship off the coast of Crimea with the help of several seaborne drones. 

Similar incidents have taken place during the course of the conflict, with Kiev’s biggest hit to date being the Moskva, the former flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which sank on April 14, 2022. Some of the attacks have involved air-to-surface cruise missiles, with some military experts speculating that British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles could have been used. 

At a press conference on Thursday, Stoltenberg said that “one of the big victories that Ukraine has achieved is actually to be able to push back the Russian Black Sea Fleet and to destroy many other ships,” ensuring an “open corridor from Odessa all the way to the Bosporus.”

He noted that “some of the missiles, some of the systems that have been so critical in opening this corridor have been, of course, provided by NATO Allies.” 

His comments come as Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, warned on Wednesday that the situation has reached the point where high-ranking US officials are saying the West needs to help Ukrainians “strike deep in Crimea.” In other words, he said, “the direct involvement of the United States in the conflict has been officially recognized.” 

Antonov noted that the direct participation of Ukraine’s Western backers in the conflict would have the “most unpredictable consequences” for the world.   

The ambassador was responding to a comment made by CIA Director William Burns during a hearing at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Monday. Burns argued that additional funding would allow Ukraine to conduct more “deep penetration strikes in Crimea,” continue targeting Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and eventually “regain the offensive initiative.”

Also on Monday, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), Kirill Budanov, announced that Kiev’s recent attacks on the peninsula are paving the way for a “serious operation in Crimea.”