Alexander Kareevsky: Western Europe is becoming increasingly drawn into the war in Ukraine. Statements are already being made by our officials. Meanwhile, the news reports regarding EU’s preparations for war are raising more and more questions. How should we respond to this? To give an example, I’ll mention the news that the Germans have already produced 5,000 drones based on Ukrainian designs. It’s laughable to hear that, what Ukrainian designs? It is clear that the German defense industry is directly working on drones that are striking our territory. And do you remember the ‘Taurus’ affair? The Germans have made a clever move: they do not formally supply such weapons, and now they have apparently decided to harass us with drones, of which they are producing more and more. In time, defending against drones will become increasingly difficult. Of course, sooner or later a countermeasure will be found, but for now we can see that drones are far more dangerous than missiles, for instance. Although, of course, it depends on how they’re used. Nevertheless, the issue remains very complex, and the brazenness with which EU leaders behave, clearly feeling completely immune from punishment, suggests that a response is needed.

We have already responded. Sergey Shoigu, in particular, stated that there are legitimate targets on EU territory, and that the Ministry of Defense has published a list of the locations where these drones are being manufactured. And indeed, in response, European Commission spokesperson Anitta Hipper has already stated, and I quote: “The European Commission has no evidence of the Russian Federation’s claims.” In other words, in their view, we are apparently fabricating attacks on our cities, on our infrastructure, including civilian infrastructure, including strategic civilian infrastructure, and so on. And the countries that reported this, Finland and the Baltic states, are pretending they know nothing. Before that, let me remind you once more: they themselves said that “we saw something flying past here. We didn’t... It wasn’t heading our way, it was flying off somewhere else.” In other words, they’re playing dumb. And what are we to do about this? How can we make these Western Europeans see reason? Is there such a way, and at what level of confrontation are we actually at right now?

There’s still a great deal of news coming out of the Persian Gulf. It seems as though there is, and I emphasize this word, a certain easing of tensions, as they used to say in Soviet times. Moreover, there are a great many recent statements being made by Trump himself. It seems the Iranian side is also making a statement about opening the Strait of Hormuz. Incidentally, share prices are rising on this news and so on. But, in short, this is the situation at the moment; this is the picture that is currently emerging. Let’s return to Europe and, of course, discuss Iran.

As for the Western Europeans, the EU elites, they are utterly bankrupt. They have no grounds whatsoever to remain in power: no moral, political or economic grounds, they have failed on every front. They are whipping up military hysteria to divert attention from their own problems, but are also preparing for war. And this must be taken seriously. Let me remind you that, over the last five hundred years, Europe has generally been the source of all humanity’s major misfortunes, including most wars, including the two world wars. Therefore, we must not let our guard down.

It is important to realize that a world war has begun. It is being waged in Europe, largely by Western Europeans, whilst the United States of America, together with Israel, has begun to destabilize southern Eurasia.

So, we need to be absolutely clear that this is the situation we find ourselves in. What should the EU do? America is a separate matter, it simply needs to be firmly restrained and steered away from this situation. The EU must finally realize that it will be destroyed if the aggression continues. And the sooner it realizes this, the fewer of our people will die.

Therefore, it seems to me that the time will come when President [Vladimir Putin] must appoint a commander-in-chief in the theater of operations with the authority to use any type of weapon, and even the duty to do so, and incorporate into military doctrine a provision stating that, should war be waged against us, and it has been waged by an enemy that surpasses us in demographic and economic terms, we would have to use nuclear weapons. Naturally, not immediately. First, we can strike the targets indicated by our Ministry of Defense, or others. Most likely, these will be symbolic targets or communication hubs, which will be hit with conventional munitions. If they do not stop, we will have to move to a higher level.

These Western Europeans must be stopped; they have gone mad yet again. Moreover, if we do not stop them now, the situation will be worse in a few years’ time, because the level of anti-Russian propaganda is already exceeding that of Hitler’s era. And, consequently, the population is succumbing to it.

That’s why we must put a firm stop to the EU now. I would prefer this to be done without the use of nuclear weapons, and certainly without a massive strike; after all, Europe is part of our soul, our culture. But we must understand that Western Europe is the embodiment of all the major evils afflicting humanity and Russia. And it must be stopped. It has gone mad.

Alexander Kareevsky: Sergey Alexandrovich, you know, if we get down to specifics – because you’ve been talking about this for a long time, and rightly so, and the events unfolding confirm what you’ve been saying, namely that the EU will become even more brazen. It is clear that there are many proposals on how to ensure that they stop behaving the way they are behaving. Dmitry Medvedev has already stated that there are legitimate targets in Western Europe and so on. The list published by our Ministry of Defense. Let’s be honest: this is our last attempt to bring them to their senses, so to speak, to scare them, so that they make a decision. But even now, when I speak to my colleagues, everyone says: ‘What is this, another red line? If they wanted to, they would have struck long ago’. What do you say to that?

Sergey Karaganov: We have hoped for reconciliation for far too long; there was, and perhaps still is, a very strong pro-European sentiment in our society and among our elite, although I must emphasize that, in the current circumstances, pro-European sentiment and Western-leaning attitudes are a sign of foolishness and moral duplicity. So, we now need to act decisively, realizing that the EU must be stopped. If it is not stopped, there will be a major war, which will lead to the destruction of Europe anyway, but we do not need to lose our best people and risk our cities for the sake of the EU. It must be stopped. It has broken free from its chains once again, as has happened many times in history.

Let me repeat: we need to appoint a commander-in-chief in the theater of operations with the authority and responsibility to use nuclear weapons should Europe refuse to retreat or even surrender. We will soon be in a position to issue them an ultimatum if they continue to behave in this manner. This is a serious matter. It may be possible to reach an agreement with the Americans at some point; there are still sensible people there. In Western Europe, there are no such people left. Naturally, they exist on a normal, human level, but there are fewer and fewer of them, and they are being pushed aside. The EU’s elites are mad; they have completely degenerated intellectually. And on top of that, they are not afraid of us. We need them to truly fear us; we need to instill terror in them.

I think we will need to take tougher action: cut cables, and begin testing nuclear weapons, amongst other things. If that doesn’t help, we’ll have to strike targets in Western Europe, with the warning that if they continue, the next waves of strikes will be nuclear. Forget the nonsense that a nuclear war cannot be won, it can be won.

Alexander Kareevsky: Mr. Karaganov, you always speak your mind frankly, especially on live television. There is a great deal of talk going on among us ordinary people at the moment. We can see that at the top, part of the elite is precisely that pro-European, pro-Western crowd and so on, the Anglophiles and all the rest who have always been in Russia: we’ve always had Westernizers, Slavophiles and so on. And very many of this upper echelon of our elite want to keep things as they were before, to go back to Courchevel and so on. Perhaps we need to sort things out internally ourselves. And who is our enemy? It’s clear that the enemy is the Kiev regime; the lads are fighting them, it’s all clear. But we ourselves say that there is someone behind it. And who is that? We understand clearly: if it is the EU, then why are we selling gas, oil and everything else there? If it is not the enemy, and it is theoretically possible to come to an agreement with it, then that is a different policy. Perhaps we need to sort ourselves out: who are we and what do we want in the end? As a rule, the people support the president’s actions. But, in my opinion, not everyone in the elite does.

Sergey Karaganov: I repeat: under the current circumstances, pro-European sentiment is a sign of mental weakness, moral corruption and treason. It is ‘Vlasovism’. [this means treasonous – editor] We must treat people who are trying to negotiate with Europe once again in precisely this way. They must be driven out, by gentle means where possible, from our minds and from our ranks. And if gentle means fail, then harsh measures will have to be applied. I repeat: we are once again facing the threat of a major war. We must prevent it. The war has already begun. If we do not stop it now, and, unfortunately, we have been dithering for four years, things will only get worse. There will be more weapons, there may be new nuclear weapons, and there will be new swarms of drones. There will be an even more brutalized elite and an even more indoctrinated population. We forget that the propaganda in Western Europe today, particularly in North-Western Europe, regarding Russia is as bad as, or even worse than, Hitler’s propaganda during the Great Patriotic War, that is, the Second World War. We must take this as seriously as possible. The EU must be stopped. If we do not stop it, we will have to destroy it. We would prefer not to do this, because, after all, Europe is part of our culture.

Alexander Kareevsky: Mr Karaganov, that’s why I was smiling when you spoke: you seem a little kinder towards Europe today than usual. I wonder what’s behind that?

Sergey Karaganov: I’m kinder?

Alexander Kareevsky: Today, yes. You said: ‘Part of our soul lies there’. You didn’t used to say that.

Sergey Karaganov: I said it because I’ve been deeply engaged with this issue. We do, after all, have a presence there. If it weren’t for the European influence, we wouldn’t have Karamzin, we wouldn’t have Pushkin, we wouldn’t have Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Tolstoy, or even Dostoevsky, who as you know, was rather skeptical about Europe. Fair enough. So, Europe is the source of all evils, especially for Russia, both moral and military. Five hundred years of monstrous history, and even more, dating back to the time of Alexander Nevsky. We must put an end to our European history, and those who are eager to return to Europe, to their mansions or their capital, must be removed from our elite or expelled. However, some of them have already fled thanks to the military operation in Ukraine. But it is not worth continuing it indefinitely and wasting our best men on trying to persuade Western Europe to see reason. We must start striking back.

Alexander Kareevsky: Well,we keep trying to persuade Europe, appealing to whatever sense of reason they might have, and so on, but so far with very little success.

Alexander Kareevsky: People will object to you as follows. The Western Europeans keep saying: ‘It was you who started the war in Ukraine, and once you’ve ended it, we’ll be friends again, and everything will be wonderful; it’s not our fault. You were the first to start it’. What do you say to that?

Sergey Karaganov: The United States, by the way, we mustn’t forget about them either, and the EU began their aggression against Russia back when we wanted to become part of Europe and part of the West. That was in the mid-1990s, when they decided to expand NATO. I wrote and spoke about it – you probably still remember – that this would inevitably lead, sooner or later, to war. And they went ahead with it deliberately, consciously provoking us. We put up with it for far too long. That was our mistake. We cannot put up with it any longer. We must understand that, I repeat once again, if we have to put an end to North-Western Europe, it is a terrible choice, but it is a choice necessary for the whole of humanity. This ulcer must either be treated with medicine in some way, or simply cut out.

Alexander Kareevsky: You’re talking about Western Europe. But look at how the people of Hungary have been brainwashed. They want to live like they do in Western Europe, you see? Even though migrants are raping their own people in the underpasses, they say: ‘Bear with it, it might just blow over’, as they said in our film. They’ve reformatted their minds very quickly. And it seems to me that’s how it is everywhere in Europe. And they’re trying to push us in that direction too. Do you want it to be like that over there? Life there is brilliant.

Sergey Karaganov: Like what? It’s our misfortune that we think life there is brilliant. Life there is getting worse and worse. Of course, the Western Europeans are very angry with us, because we once, in the ‘50s, ‘60s and beyond, deprived them of their military superiority, and it was on this foundation that their ability to impose their culture, their political interests, colonialism, racism and, most importantly, to plunder the whole world was built. We undermined that foundation. That is why the Western European elites, perhaps not the entire population realizes this, hate us with a passion. And they are brainwashing their own people. Remember how our predecessors used to say: ‘Germany is a cultured country’. How could they? Well, now the Europeans are being turned into German fascists. That is why we need to stop them before they, having gone wild, plunge into a major, truly major war. They are waging war against us.

Sergey Karaganov: Yes. And declare a European theater of war.

We are not at war in Ukraine against the unfortunate, deceived Ukrainian people, even though there are a staggering number of people there who have been deceived and brainwashed. We are at war there against the collective West, and above all against Europe. We must bring this home to ourselves, understand it, acknowledge it, and stop pinning our hopes on ridiculous and foolish notions.

We don’t need a Europe like that. All the more so because the Europe we once loved is long gone. That was the Europe of the Renaissance, the Europe of great poets and great thinkers. Over the last few decades, it has degenerated. I assure you. I too was once a Europhile and even one of the founders of the Institute of Europe. When I got involved with it, I realized things were in a bad way.

Alexander Kareevsky: You know, I would advise our Europhiles in high offices to read Thomas Mann, his novel ‘The Magic Mountain’. It is a very long novel, it is true, and it contains several reflections by a Jesuit and a Freemason. Thomas Mann was an anti-fascist; he was not a fervent Russophobe. But through one of the main characters, he shows how they see us. That was a novel from 1924, dear friends. They have never regarded us as their equals, and they still do not.

Sergey Karaganov: Listen, that is our problem. How can we regard these (though there are decent people among them) morally corrupt individuals and bastards as our equals? It is ridiculous when we say that they treat us badly. Their elites are turning themselves into subhumans. Therefore, we must treat them accordingly. And to say that we are equals is humiliating for us. We are a great country, a great culture – incidentally, a culture that has continued and developed the finest traditions of European humanism. Look, we are at war in Ukraine, but we have no fierce anti-Ukrainian propaganda, even though, in principle, there ought to be some during a war. So, we’ve kept the best of Europe for ourselves. There’s nothing left of it there. That’s why we need to cut ourselves off from it, and if that doesn’t work, then destroy it.

Sergey Karaganov: We have forgotten that Europe is the embodiment of all humanity’s greatest evils: colonialism, racism, the most vile ideologies, and mass genocides across the globe. Not only the genocide of Jews and Russians, Soviets, but in Africa, and in India, and all over the world, peoples and entire continents were destroyed. So, we must understand that this is a plague from which we must isolate ourselves as far as possible. And if we cannot isolate ourselves, it must be destroyed.

Alexander Kareevsky: Is there still a chance after all? From your answer, I gathered that there isn’t. But I would still like to call once more for some sort of resolution. Hope dies last. And yet there are certain twists and turns, I don’t know, in the Persian Gulf with America, or something else,  so might this major war in Europe be pushed back significantly after all? In my view, countries aren’t ready to fight right now: neither they nor we. But this lack of readiness doesn’t determine or rule out this war. Is there still hope that all this will be postponed for the time being? Because at the moment, the feeling is that war will be here tomorrow.

Sergey Karaganov: And things will get worse. We need to act now; we should have acted yesterday and the day before. I’ve spoken about this. We even discussed it with you later. We’ve waited too long, hoped for too long, and been swayed by our Europhiles for too long. I’ve already said who they are now. So, I repeat: part of Europe, when it falls apart, I hope it does not perish under our nuclear strikes, although a significant part of it deserves it, part of this Europe, I think, will return to a normal life and to human values. This is southern Europe: Spain, Italy, Greece. This is a significant part of Central Europe. And we must isolate ourselves from the rest as from the plague, from contagion. Or destroy it. God forbid, because innocent people will perish after all. That is why I would very much like us to take decisive action to prevent a truly major nuclear war in Europe.

Alexander Kareevsky: I really would not want the situation to develop in this way. On the other hand, from what you’ve said – we’ve been talking for so long – it seems there is no way out.

Sergey Karaganov: And there shouldn’t be a way out. We must take a firm stand against the EU; if necessary, we must punish it. I repeat: we will gain nothing good from Europe anymore. We did gain something from it at one time. Although I would remind you that we did not receive Christianity from Europe, nor did we receive Islam from Europe, and there is a great deal else that we did not receive from Europe.

President Donald Trump was abruptly evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night after what authorities described as an unspecified security threat.

The Secret Service and other law enforcement personnel rushed into the ballroom as guests ducked under tables, according to footage from the scene. White House reporter Jeff Mordock said there were “several loud bangs” before Secret Service agents, with guns drawn, pushed reporters out of the room shouting, “Shots fired.”

Authorities had not publicly detailed the nature of the incident in the initial aftermath, and early reporting stopped short of definitively confirming a shooting. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Trump later wrote on Truth Social that “the shooter has been apprehended” and said Secret Service and law enforcement had done a “fantastic job,” acting “quickly and bravely.” 

Trump added that he had recommended officials “LET THE SHOW GO ON,” but law enforcement had requested that everyone leave the premises “consistent with protocol.”

The US president said he would hold a press conference from the White House briefing room. Trump added that the first lady, the vice president and all cabinet members were “in perfect condition,” and said the dinner would be rescheduled within 30 days.

According to footage from the scene, the incident triggered a major security response and immediate chaos inside one of Washington’s most high-profile political and media gatherings. The annual dinner, held by the White House Correspondents’ Association, had just begun when the disruption unfolded.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

A massive roadside blast tore through a bus and other vehicles on Colombia’s Pan-American Highway on Saturday, killing at least 12 people and leaving more than a dozen others wounded in what authorities called a terrorist attack.

The explosion struck the El Tunel sector in Cajibio, Cauca, blowing a huge crater into one of the country’s most important transport corridors and scattering wreckage across the road.

Videos from the scene show a bus completely torn apart, with its engine propelled with such force that it landed on another bus, while multiple other vehicles traveling along the same road at the time were also damaged.

Early official statements put the toll at seven dead and at least 17 injured, but later reporting said several of the wounded died from their injuries, pushing the death toll to 12, mostly local civilians and Indigenous people traveling on the bus.

Fue activado un artefacto explosivo en la vía Panamericana, en el sector de El Túnel, Cajibío, en un ataque indiscriminado contra la población civil que, de manera preliminar, deja 7 civiles muertos y más de 20 heridos de gravedad. Es una tragedia que nos desgarra como… pic.twitter.com/4BQ0r6CnUc

— OCTAVIO GUZMÁN (@OctavioGuzmanGu) April 25, 2026

Colombian President Gustavo Petro blamed the attack on dissident factions of the former FARC guerrilla movement operating under Ivan Mordisco. In a post on X, Petro called the perpetrators “terrorists, fascists and drug traffickers,” demanding a worldwide manhunt against what he described as a narcoterrorist structure.

🇨🇴 | URGENTE: Se reporta atentado terrorista en el suroccidente de Colombia en la Vía Panamericana, al suroeste del país, y que ha dejado al menos 7 muertos y más de 20 heridos. pic.twitter.com/j1g6UUTewa

— Alerta News 24 (@AlertaNews24) April 25, 2026

The bombing came amid at least 26 incidents in just two days across Colombia’s southwest, including attacks on police stations, military units, radar facilities, and infrastructure.

Siete personas perdieron la vida tras un at3ntado con un cilindro b0mba en una carretera de Colombia. La 3xplos1ón ocurrió en el sector El Túnel, afectando a un bus y otros vehículos. Videos difundidos en redes sociales evidencian la magnitud de los daños
📌Manténgase informado… pic.twitter.com/NfWLFIMjZU

— EL DEBER (@grupoeldeber) April 25, 2026

Petro and regional officials described the violence as part of a wider escalation in Cauca, a department long contested by armed groups fighting over cocaine routes, illegal mining, and territorial control.

Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez convened emergency security meetings and announced a reward for information leading to those responsible. Local leaders condemned the bombing as an indiscriminate strike on civilians designed to spread mass fear ahead of Colombia’s May 31 presidential election.

Heavy fighting erupted on the outskirts of Mali’s capital and in several major cities on Saturday after a wave of coordinated attacks claimed by regional al-Qaeda affiliate JNIM and the Tuareg-dominated separatist rebel group FLA.

Gunfire and explosions were reported around Kati, home to Mali’s main military base and the residence of President Assimi Goita. AP said the capital’s international airport area also came under attack, while witnesses cited by Reuters reported helicopters overhead and roads blocked by security forces. Witnesses also described heavy fighting in the central town of Sevare and the northern cities of Gao and Kidal.

The Malian army said it was fighting “unidentified terrorist groups” and later declared the situation under control, while admitting that sweeping anti-terrorist operations were continuing. Army spokesman Col. Souleymane Dembele said that at least 80 militants had been eliminated around the country.

The al-Qaeda-linked group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying it had targeted the residence of Defence Minister Sadio Camara, military positions in Kati, and Modibo Keita International Airport in Bamako.

The attack was coordinated with the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg-dominated rebel alliance, which separately claimed that it had taken control of Kidal, a strategically important city that Malian forces recaptured in November 2023 with the help of the Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner Group after more than a decade of rebel control.

The attacks came just days after the African Corps – a unit of the Russian Defense Ministry that replaced Wagner in the region last year – successfully freed two geological exploration workers who had been held hostage by JNIM in the Sahel for nearly two years.

Bamako has repeatedly accused Paris of “providing direct support to terrorists,” charges that France has consistently denied. Mali expelled French forces in 2022, a step later followed by Burkina Faso and Niger. The three Sahel states have since formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a mutual defence pact supported by Russia, and formally broken away from the West African bloc ECOWAS.

Moscow’s intelligence services have gone further, alleging that French President Emmanuel Macron authorized a plan to “eliminate ‘undesirable leaders’” in Africa. Ukraine has also faced accusations of providing intelligence and supplying kamikaze drones to the terrorist groups behind the deadly insurgency in Mali.

The EU will have to provide more money to Ukraine next year on top of the newly approved €90 billion ($105 billion), the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing diplomatic sources.

On Thursday, Brussels announced that the interest-free loan to Kiev has been finalized and that it will begin disbursements “as soon as possible” in the second quarter of 2026. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the development as “a good day for Ukraine and Europe.”

The approval came less than two weeks after the party of longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been vetoing the transfer of funds for months due to an energy dispute with Ukraine, suffered a defeat in the parliamentary election.

The WSJ reported in an article on Friday that the EU’s hopes that the money transfer will allow it to sustain Ukraine during the conflict with Russia until 2028 were likely in vain.

Diplomats who spoke to the outlet warned that the money allocated by Brussels “may not be enough.”

Ukraine requires an extra €19 billion to cover its budget next year, meaning that the EU could be forced to seek a new multi-billion loan in 12 months, the diplomats stressed.

European Council head Antonio Costa said that Ukraine would only need to pay back the money after it receives reparations from Russia following the conclusion of conflict. Moscow has repeatedly rejected such a scenario, saying that it's “detached from reality.”

Russian MP, Dmitry Belik, who sits on the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, told RIA Novosti that Costa understands perfectly well that Brussels is never getting its money back.

US President Donald Trump has abruptly canceled a trip by special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner to Pakistan. Tehran, however, denied that any talks were scheduled in the first place.

This decision comes just a day after the trip was promoted as a potential opportunity to revitalize negotiations with Iran.

“Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work! Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership’. Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!” he wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.

When asked by Axios if this means he plans to resume the war, Trump responded, “No. It doesn’t mean that. We haven’t thought about it yet.”

Talking to reporters later on Saturday, Trump asserted that Iran “offered a lot but not enough.” He also claimed to have received a more favorable proposal from Tehran just minutes after the cancellation, stating it came “immediately, when I canceled it, within 10 minutes.”

The sudden reversal highlights the confusion surrounding the administration’s recent diplomatic efforts and Trump’s frustration with negotiations not producing quick results.

The US president further raised the stakes by saying he had ordered the US Navy to “shoot and kill” any Iranian boats found laying mines in the waterway. Tehran considers the blockade a direct breach of the ceasefire and has argued that any talks are pointless as long as it remains in place.

Hundreds of Spaniards gathered in central Madrid on Saturday to protest against the US-Israeli war on Iran, the conflict in Gaza, and the presence of NATO bases in Spain.

Just a day earlier, Reuters reported that Washington was considering kicking Spain out of the military bloc for withholding access to military installations on its territory after the US and Israel attacked Iran in late February. However, a NATO official has asserted to the BBC that the bloc has no provisions for such an expulsion.

Saturday’s demonstration was organized by the Spanish “Stop the War” platform, which said simultaneous protests took place in more than 200 locations around the country.

Attendees shouted slogans and waved placards saying “We must stop the war in the Middle East,” “All people lose every war,” and “Trump ruins democracy.” They also protested against US NATO bases in the country, according to El Mundo and the Associated Press.

The rally was attended by local municipal officials and MEPs from the ruling Socialist Party (PSOE), some of whom gave speeches at the event, the newspaper reported.

US President Donald Trump fired his navy secretary after he failed to deliver a plan to build a new class of battleship on a “nearly impossible timeline,” the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing senior defense and administration officials.

In December, the US president unveiled plans for a futuristic new warship that would be armed with multiple cutting-edge weapons like laser combat systems, railguns, and hypersonic missiles. It would be called the Trump-class and anchor a new “Golden Fleet,” he said.

Then Navy Secretary John Phelan, also speaking at the announcement, promised “the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere.”

According to the Times, the billionaire investor turned naval administrator was to deliver the first battleship, expected to cost around $17 billion, by 2028.

On Wednesday, Trump fired Phelan after he “struggled to come up with a plan to deliver the ships on the nearly impossible timeline that Mr. Trump has demanded,” the newspaper wrote.

When Phelan realized this, he came to Trump suggesting that Washington approach European shipyards for help to meet the president’s timeline, the Times wrote. The president reportedly rejected this, having previously insisted that the vessel be built in the US with American steel.

Phelan’s ouster was accelerated by his “enemies in the Pentagon,” including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and his deputy Stephen Feinberg, according to the Times. Hegseth felt the billionaire had bypassed the chain of command too much by exploiting his personal relationship with Trump, Axios wrote on Wednesday.

The Zumwalt-class destroyer program, once intended to produce dozens of advanced stealth ships, was cut to just three vessels after costs rose sharply and technical issues emerged. The entire program cost US taxpayers around $24.5 billion, according to a 2018 GAO review.

Last week, a fire aboard the USS Zumwalt injured at least three sailors, USNI has reported. The extent of the damage to the vessel is still being determined, it wrote.

Special operations can fail for many reasons – from a tragic accident to a lack of information or a hasty decision. And the costs of such mistakes range from the sullen faces of officials and predatory reporters at the door, to the worst outcome – hundreds of victims. There is an old proverb that all intelligence agents should be taught: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost.”

The moral is that the smallest omissions can lead to fatal consequences. But the most common reason why military operations fail – the phrase that should be etched above the gates of hell – might well be the motto, “That’s good enough.” Plans based on the assumption that the enemy is deaf, blind, and stupid fail time and time again, yet intelligence agencies continue to build their strategies upon this shaky foundation. 

One of the textbook examples of such a failure was the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. This CIA-initiated attempt to swiftly eliminate the communist regime in Cuba turned into a bloody disaster on the battlefield and a complete political failure.

On January 1, 1959, socialist rebels led by Fidel Castro overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. The subsequent reality of life in Cuba proved difficult, and opinions on Castro’s rule were decidedly mixed. However, in 1959, the revolution signified liberation from a hated, deeply corrupt, brutal dictatorship that treated its citizens with disdain. Few mourned the departure of Batista, who fled the country with $300 million.

Initially, Castro didn’t intend to engage in a hostile confrontation with the West. However, his reforms took on a distinctly socialist character. He casually confiscated assets belonging to American and other Western citizens and nationalized land, industries, and enterprises. The Cuban Electric Company owned by an American holding company was seized, as was property belonging to the United Fruit Company, an American agricultural giant.

Under Batista, the United States had dominated the Cuban economy and owned nearly all industries. Politically, the American ambassador wielded as much, if not more, power than the official leader of Cuba. The island effectively functioned as a colony; the companies owned everything but bore no responsibility for anything. Batista, ruling the country with their blessing and support, cared only for his own comfort and wealth, and even collaborated directly with the mafia and engaged in gambling enterprises.

By the time relations between the US and Cuba soured completely, Castro had nationalized over 500 American private companies.

Astute US politicians recognized the underlying issues; in a speech addressing the Cuban crisis, John F. Kennedy bluntly acknowledged that the puppet regime had driven Cubans to the brink. The primary cause of the Cuban revolution, he argued, was the dictator and his cohorts, whose actions ricocheted back against the US as the nation that had armed and politically supported Batista.

Castro frequently reminded the public of Washington’s dark role in the affair, but the United States could not restore relations with Cuba after the widespread confiscation of American assets.

Castro’s attempts to establish relations with the US failed. Then US President Dwight Eisenhower refused to meet with him, while then Vice President Richard Nixon seemed more interested in testing the waters than seriously negotiating with Castro. 

Meanwhile, the US had a track record of orchestrating coups in countries it deemed unfriendly. For example, in 1954, with help from United Fruit, a coup was carried out in Guatemala; following it, a dictatorship was established there. A similar strategy was being considered for Cuba.

Initially, the Americans sought to weaken Cuba through a trade embargo that began with oil and later expanded to sugar. In response, Castro initiated yet another wave of expropriations of American-owned businesses. The Eisenhower administration retaliated by banning all exports to Cuba. In turn, Castro nationalized everything he could, offering compensation in the form of Cuban bonds.

At the same time, a secret struggle between intelligence services unfolded, which quickly turned brutal. In March 1960, the cargo ship La Coubre, carrying weapons and ammunition purchased from Belgium, exploded in Havana’s port, causing massive casualties. The explosion occurred inside the ship and is believed to have been an act of sabotage. Unsurprisingly, Castro blamed the US for this incident, and the CIA’s involvement remains plausible. In effect, these actions pushed Cuba to align with the USSR, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev eagerly offered support to Cuba.

As tensions mounted, it became clear that backing from Moscow would be essential. Cuba was already subjected to bombings from light aircraft piloted by Cuban exiles. They flew out of Florida and targeted Cuban plantations and businesses. However, the US didn’t intend to stop at that. 

CIA Director Allen Dulles began planning for Castro’s physical elimination and the overthrow of the Cuban government. His deputy, CIA officer Richard Bissell, took on the direct management of the operation aimed at replacing Castro with a “more acceptable” regime. The details were being developed by the same team that had orchestrated the Guatemalan coup.

One key condition set by Eisenhower was “plausible deniability” – concealing America’s role in the operation.

The Americans had supporters in Cuba. First of all, there were plenty of people who had lost power and wealth due to Batista’s ousting. While Batista’s regime was undoubtedly mob-infested, the mafia was largely made up of officials and businessmen interested in regaining their status and fortunes. One such figure was Félix Rodríguez, who would later become a legendary CIA agent and one of the key participants in Che Guevara’s capture and execution. Rodríguez was the nephew of one of Batista’s ministers, and his father had been a landowner whose property Castro had seized.

Then, there were people who had supported the Cuban revolution but turned against Castro after witnessing how things had unfolded after the revolution. Disillusioned when Castro canceled elections and began political purges, many who had initially backed the revolution were now outraged. They argued that Castro had betrayed the original democratic goals of the revolution. One such figure was Manuel Artime, who participated in Castro’s uprising but quickly fell out with the leader, deeming Cuba’s leftward shift too extreme.

Brigade 2506: a proxy army of ambition, poor training, and illusion

Nevertheless, Americans managed to assemble a combat unit made up of Cuban exiles, named Brigade 2506.

The number 2056 referred to one of the fighters who had died in an accident during training. Manuel Artime was regarded as the political leader of the group, while Pepe San Roman headed the military unit. San Roman was an intriguing character – a professional soldier trained in the US who had commanded a company against Castro’s rebels but became disillusioned with Batista’s regime and was arrested for plotting to assassinate the dictator. After the revolution, he was released and joined the new armed forces. However, he helped the former officers of Batista’s army flee Cuba, and eventually had to escape from the new authorities.

Brigade 2506 trained at a camp near Miami, and additional training facilities were later opened. According to the initial plan, the exiles were supposed to launch a guerrilla war in Cuba to destabilize Castro’s regime. However, it was soon decided that a classic amphibious assault would be a more reliable method to topple the government.

Brigade 2506 had many issues. Of the 1,500 members, only about 135 were experienced soldiers; most members (brigadistas) received little to no proper training despite having ample time to prepare. Structurally, the Brigade was organized as light infantry, and was primarily armed with rifles and carbines, along with machine guns, mortars, hand grenades, and recoilless rifles. Their most formidable weapons were five Walker Bulldog light tanks. Moreover, they had 16 WWII-era bombers for support, and several transport planes. All equipment and armaments were, of course, supplied by the United States.

To obscure US involvement in the invasion, efforts were made to avoid using weapons unique to the US army. For similar reasons, the CIA rented landing vessels from a private shipping company owned by a Cuban. Even the soldiers were fed a story about a wealthy Cuban supposedly orchestrating the operation, but this clumsy deception fooled no one.

The plan Kennedy couldn’t stop

In the meantime, elections were held in the US, resulting in the victory of the energetic and charismatic John F. Kennedy, who ‘inherited’ the planned operation. As Eisenhower handed over power to Kennedy, he convinced the new president of the operation’s viability. They agreed that restoring Batista was not the goal; instead, they hoped a strong leader would emerge who would personally confront Castro. José Miro Cardona was envisioned as a good candidate for this role. Cardona was also a revolutionary – though notably, not a communist – and after serving as Prime Minister of Cuba and ambassador to Spain, he had fled to the United States.

The mission was named Operation Pluto. The US chose the Bay of Pigs, located on Cuba’s southern coast (southeast of Havana) as the landing site. Several factors influenced this decision. The area was sparsely populated, surrounded by forests and swamps, and had an airstrip. The troops were supposed to land at three dispersed locations. 

In reality, the plan had many flaws. About 1,500 men were supposed to land in separate groups that wouldn’t be able to support each other quickly if needed. The distance between Playa Larga, the northernmost landing point, and Playa Girón was 30 kilometers, with another eight kilometers to the third point to the east. The challenging terrain favored those who knew how to survive, maneuver, and fight in it.

Castro’s army included many partisans – soldiers and commanders who had fought against Batista, but in the brigade of exiles, only about 15% were experienced soldiers. Moreover, the brigade’s leadership didn’t have experience commanding so many troops in combat. San Román had some military experience, but only as a company commander. Moreover, rumors about the brigade were already circulating, so the element of surprise was lost.

Meanwhile, the CIA was full of unwarranted optimism. It believed that within days, volunteers from all over Cuba would flock to join the Brigade. Cardona seemed to have been intoxicated by his own propaganda, insisting that thousands of new recruits would join the military unit. The CIA officers clung to this belief not because it was true, but because they wanted it to be true. 

Castro was notified about the recruitment of exiles into the brigade and formed a new Cuban army. Though it lacked training and equipment, the Soviet Union helped with the latter, supplying firearms and vehicles. While these were WWII-era tanks and self-propelled guns, they could still become formidable weapons in skilled hands. The USSR also sent military advisors to bolster Castro’s forces – a group of aging Spanish leftists who had fled to the USSR after the Spanish Civil War. These weathered veterans of both the Spanish Civil War and WWII were also valuable because they spoke both Spanish and Russian. Furthermore, the USSR provided Cuba with intelligence data. Lastly, Castro had his own network of informants in Miami, and some details had even leaked to the press. So the Cubans were well-prepared.

Chaos on the beaches

The assault began early in the morning on April 15, 1961. The Brigade’s bombers targeted Cuban airfields, but the impact was limited. In a bizarre twist, the CIA even managed to stage a comedy: one plane was deliberately slightly damaged by CIA personnel while on the ground; then it flew to Miami and requested an emergency landing. The pilot used a fictitious name and claimed to have deserted from the Cuban Air Force.

On April 17, the operation began for real. The plan to land at the farthest eastern beach was abandoned, and the forces landed at two points – Playa Larga in the north and Playa Girón in the southeast.

At Playa Girón, a Cuban militia patrol spotted people in the water. Assuming these were fishermen in need of help, the patrol approached them. The “fishermen” opened fire, killing one of the militia members. This was the first victim of ground combat. Meanwhile, at Playa Larga, the landing force exchanged gunfire with local militias, killing them; however, the latter managed to alert the others about the invasion. The landing operation was slow; boats transporting the troops from the ships to shore encountered coral reefs. Coincidentally, something “unusual” was spotted along the shore before the operation, but the stains on aerial photographs were mistaken for seaweed. Now, that very “seaweed” trapped the landing craft.

The paratroopers fared even worse. Some parachutists landed in swamps. Some of their ammunition and gear sank into the mire. Others managed to land and took fire control over several roads that could be used by the advancing troops. However, the critical question remained: would the soldiers stay loyal to Castro, and would Cubans join Brigade 2506?

It turned out that Castro had little to worry about. He had already arrested everyone suspected of disloyalty, while the majority of people rallied around his banner. The idea of fighting against their government alongside the CIA did not sit well with the Cuban people.

By morning, Cuban planes attacked The Houston (the transport ship used by the exiles), forcing it aground on the western shore of the bay. This part of the landing force lost most of its weapons and ammunition and could not take part in further action. Meanwhile, Cuban aviation struck a supply transport vessel loaded with munitions, food, medical supplies, and fuel. The explosives detonated, completely destroying the ship.

Among the lost equipment was a relay station; as a result, communications between the two landing zones and the paratroopers were disrupted. Unified command of the operation was no longer possible. As the invaders struggled to unload their cargo, the Cubans mobilized reinforcements toward Playa Larga. A fierce battle raged in the air as Cuban forces shot down several invading bombers. Despite facing losses, the exiles had no choice but to pull the ships further out to sea. Two vessels attempted to flee from Cuban shores. One ship was forced to turn back when CIA operatives burst into the engine room and assaulted the crew, while the other successfully escaped.

The situation was in a state of uncertain balance. Castro had already taken decisive action, launching vigorous attacks against the invading forces. Now, it was only a matter of time before the brigadistas ran out of ammunition. Late in the evening, Soviet T-34 tanks launched an assault on Playa Larga. One T-34 tank was hit, but that was it. The soldiers and militia did not halt their advance during the night, but only intensified efforts. Members of the Brigade attempted to pit their light tanks against Castro’s T-34s. Although they later reported numerous destroyed tanks and many Cuban soldiers lost in the fighting, only one burned-out Cuban T-34 tank was actually photographed, while another was found in a ditch, seemingly damaged by a mechanical failure or a track loss.

In addition to the tanks, Castro had artillery supplied by the USSR. The 122mm towed guns may not have looked as impressive as the tanks, but they delivered overwhelming firepower, consistently pressuring the invaders who lacked the means to counterattack.

The relentless pressure began to pay off: after a night of fighting, the brigadistas started retreating from Playa Larga toward Playa Girón.

The invaders’ biggest loss was a transport plane carrying ammunition and fuel, which was shot down during the day. San Román decided to hold his position on the shore, hoping for the Americans to arrive. But they never came. Kennedy received a clear message from Khrushchev indicating that the USSR would not allow American forces to intervene in Cuba. Although the Soviet leader didn’t explicitly mention “war,” Kennedy understood the implication, and the Americans chose not to get involved.

The invaders’ aviation remained active and managed to bomb a column of Cuban troops heading to Playa Girón. However, this was their last ‘success’. The Americans deployed CIA pilots in an attempt to support the invasion, but two planes were shot down, resulting in the deaths of four Americans. By April 19, the Cubans had forced the brigadistas to retreat to the beaches. 

San Román tried to flee into the forests surrounding Playa Girón. Some soldiers from the brigade managed to swim to American ships, but the overwhelming majority remained on the beaches, where they surrendered in the following days.

In total, Brigade 2506 suffered at least 114 fatalities, while the Cubans lost 176 men. Additionally, four Americans were killed. A total of 1,202 exiles were captured, including San Román, who surrendered to the militia on April 25, and Manuel Artemio, the political leader of the group, who emerged from the swamps and laid down his arms on May 2. The paratroopers that remained in the rear and the landing force that disembarked from The Houston were quickly captured. The brigadistas and the Americans claimed enormous Cuban losses, inflating figures to several thousand casualties, but these were clearly exaggerations intended to soften the blow of defeat.

Uncle Sam found himself knee-deep in blood and mud. The alliance with the USSR had become Cuba’s only option, and was the direct result of US policy in Cuba. The accounts of the prisoners confirmed that the US had played a dirty game and suffered a spectacular defeat. Che Guevara even taunted Kennedy by sending him a letter: “Thanks for Playa Girón. Before the invasion, the revolution was weak. Now it’s stronger than ever.”

Soon after, the US assessed what went wrong. Of course, Kennedy wouldn’t publicly hold himself accountable, so the blame fell on the CIA leadership. Allen Dulles, along with his deputy Richard Bissell and a couple of lower-ranking officers, were forced to resign.

Before long, Cuba would find itself at the center of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which nearly plunged the world into nuclear war.

Relations between Cuba and the US remain hostile to this day.

The operation in Cuba failed on every level. The whole plan hinged on the idea that the invasion would trigger a rebellion against Castro, which was a blatant case of wishful thinking. The brigade was poorly trained, and the complex task of a sea landing proved nearly impossible for it. The CIA, responsible for planning the operation, was not competent enough to develop military combat strategies. The concept of “plausible deniability” severely limited American support for the invasion, especially in dealing with the Cuban air force. Moreover, some specific decisions were highly questionable: the brigade stood no chance of defeating a large army in open combat, yet there was no backup plan in place. As a result, the brigade directly confronted the Cuban military and, predictably, was utterly defeated.

Special military operations are always a gamble. However, the more elements left to chance, the higher the likelihood that, instead of victory, the ‘knights of cloak and dagger’ will face unforeseen disgrace.

The US rescue operation inside Iran earlier this month was actually a botched attempt by Washington to seize Tehran’s enriched uranium, geostrategic analyst Christopher Helali has said.

He gave an exclusive interview to RT on Saturday from a site outside the city of Isfahan where the Iranian authorities displayed the wreckage of American aircraft destroyed in the area on April 3-5.

Washington confirmed the loss of two MC-130J Hercules transport planes, four MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, an A-10 Thunderbolt and an MQ-9 Reaper drone during what US President Donald Trump called “one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History” to recover the pilot of an F-15E Strike Eagle, which had been downed by Iran.

Helali insisted that the rescue mission was just a cover up for “an enrichment uranium extraction operation by the US special forces.”

“The scale of destruction of all of the equipment left behind showed that this was a major operation – probably weeks and months in planning – and clearly it absolutely failed,” he said.

He filmed himself with the debris of the US aircraft, which he said included “multiple parts of different MC-130s… and the Little Birds – those small helicopters that are used in special operations.”

Judging by the footage, the display attracted thousands of visitors, who carried Iranian national flags and chanted anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans.

“The people have gathered here to celebrate the defeat of the US in this operation and overall Iran’s victory so far in this ongoing war of aggression,” Helali said.

Among those who gathered, “the feeling is one of energy, one of resilience, one of dignity, and clearly the people are coming out in full force to show their support for their country,” he stressed.

US allies are no longer sure that Washington is a “reliable” partner, French President Emmanuel Macron has said.

Speaking during an informal summit in Athens on Friday alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Macron was asked whether Europe was “becoming a bit irrelevant” given the various conflicts around the globe, including the war against Iran.

“Everybody sees that the number one power, the US, could be an ally for certain countries, but this ally is not so much certain... and nobody is totally sure if this alliance is reliable,” the French president said, arguing that this makes the EU appear as a more stable alternative.

“We used to live in an international order, and this international order is jeopardized by the two big powers,” he added.

The growing divide between European NATO nations and Washington has worsened since the US and Israeli attacked Iran in late February, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly criticizing bloc members over their reluctance to join the war.

Washington is trying to shift the burden of “containing Russia” onto its allies in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week. The broader Western goal is to “preserve and renew their hegemony,” but as their relative power on the international stage declines, internal frictions in the West are intensifying, he added.

American economist Jeffrey Sachs has sharply criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing that US President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran was heavily influenced by what he described as Netanyahu’s “fanatical” and misguided agenda.

Trump has repeatedly faced criticism, both domestically and internationally, for pursuing policies widely seen as closely aligned with Israeli interests across both his first and current presidential terms. Analysts and political opponents have often pointed to a broader shift in US foreign policy that allegedly favors the agenda of the Jewish State under Netanyahu.

“Trump’s decision basically led by Netanyahu,” Sachs told US conservative journalist and podcaster Tucker Carlson.

In a video interview published on Friday, the economist noted that Netanyahu has an agenda, stressing that the US president bought into what Sachs called the Israeli prime minister’s wrong understanding of the world.

“His agenda, in my mind, is fanatical and wrong, and has been mistaken for 30 years, and has cost America a fortune,” Sachs said. “I think the man is a disaster, I think he has the wrong framework of the world, just a wrong understanding.”

The comment comes as Trump extended the ceasefire with Tehran indefinitely on Tuesday to allow time for a potential deal, while keeping an American naval blockade of Iranian ports in place.

Kent, who resigned from his position last month in protest of the war, has claimed that intelligence agencies could not confirm Trump’s allegations that Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons.

Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, have framed the conflict as Trump betraying his “America First” agenda in favor of “Israel First.”

Last week, Carlson slammed Trump’s Middle East policies, claiming that the president’s true religion is “Israelism” rather than Christianity. Trump’s former supporter argued that the US had launched the war against Iran “on behalf of Israel” and “at the instigation of Israel.”

Hungary's incoming prime minister, Peter Magyar, has picked a blind lawyer to become the cabinet minister responsible for DEI affairs as part of a sweeping government overhaul following Viktor Orban’s election defeat.

Magyar made the announcement on X on Friday, naming Vilmos Katai-Nemeth, 52, alongside transport pick David Vitezy. “For the first time in Hungary’s history, a blind Hungarian citizen… will lead the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs – including responsibility for accessibility and equal opportunities,” he wrote.

Katai-Nemeth has struggled with vision problems since childhood and lost his sight at 16 due to a hereditary retinal atrophy disease. However, he went on to qualify as a lawyer, and is a practicing attorney. He also earned a black belt in aikido – the first blind master in this disciple in the world – and has developed a self-defense system for the visually impaired.

In his new capacity, Katai-Nemeth will be working on improving healthcare access, child protection reform, and equal opportunities.

Some local media reports, however, have sounded skepticism over the appointee, pointing to his limited political experience and lack of familiarity with government machinery. According to Hungarian Conservative, a local media outlet, there is a possibility that Katai-Nemeth’s role will be reduced to that of a “figurehead,” with Bodis Krisztina, a veteran social policy expert and Magyar’s advisor, holding much more real power.

During his campaign, Magyar – who is generally considered a conservative – vowed to rebuild relations with the EU, but avoided open advocacy of LGBTQ rights, saying only that he wants a country where “no one is stigmatized for thinking or loving differently than the majority.”

However, earlier this week, the EU’s top court found Hungary’s 2021 ‘child protection’ law – which banned portrayals of homosexuality and gender reassignment in children’s media – “illegal.”

Later, Hungarian authorities received a request to register the first-ever LGBTQ-themed television channel in the country, reportedly dubbed Rainbow TV.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has ruled out Ukraine’s immediate accession to the European Union, instead calling for a phased approach to integration, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Friday.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg cited an unnamed EU official as saying that leaders had signaled preliminary conditions are in place for Ukraine to begin the first stage of the membership process, with talks potentially starting in the coming weeks or months.

“It is clear to everyone that an immediate accession of Ukraine to the EU is, of course, not possible,” Merz said as cited by the news agency after an EU summit in Cyprus. “I also want to enable closer integration into the European institutions, for example through participation in European councils without voting rights.” 

The comment comes as European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in a joint statement, called for immediate “opening of negotiation clusters” on Ukraine’s EU membership.

At the same time, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky rejected any lesser form of membership, insisting on full accession and saying his country is “defending common European values.” He has repeatedly urged Brussels to set a concrete date, arguing it should come no later than 2027.

Von der Leyen, who granted Ukraine candidate status within weeks of its 2022 application, has previously rejected the idea of setting a firm date, telling Zelensky in February: “From our side, dates by themselves are not possible.”

The country’s accession has been consistently opposed by Slovakia and by Hungary under the outgoing government of Viktor Orban. They argue that Ukrainian membership could draw the EU into an open conflict with Russia and undermine the bloc’s economy.

Moscow says it does not oppose Ukraine joining the organization, but has criticized what Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called its transformation into an “aggressive military-political bloc” and an “appendage of NATO.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also warned that Ukraine’s accession could undermine the EU and even lead to its collapse.

Two British fighter jets that scrambled from a Romanian air base received a green light to shoot down Russian drones flying not far from the border with the NATO country, Romania’s Defense Ministry has said. Romanian and UK officials have stressed that the warplanes never entered Ukraine’s airspace, or opened fire on Russian UAVs.

In a statement on Saturday, the Romanian Defense Ministry said that RAF Eurofighter Typhoon jets deployed at the 86th Air Base in Fetesti lifted off at 2 AM and established radar contact with a target 1.5 km from Reni, a Ukrainian port town on the bank of the Danube, barely a stone’s throw from Romanian soil.

“The pilots had authorization to engage the drones,” the ministry said, adding that multiple explosions were subsequently reported in Reni.

“Because that specific target did not breach the Romanian airspace, it could not be fired upon. The mission remained one of surveillance, deterrence, and readiness to respond if required,” the Romanian Defense Ministry stressed.

Officials in Bucharest also reported that a falling object in the area of Galati – a Romanian city directly across the Danube from Ukraine, adding that drone fragments damaged an outbuilding and an electricity pole, with no casualties.

Romanian officials subsequently accused Russia of “irresponsible” actions and the “lack of respect for the norms of international law and endanger[ing] not only the safety of Romanian citizens, but also the collective security of NATO.”

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the Danube River has emerged as an important logistical route between Kiev and its European backers, with media reports suggesting the artery could be used for weapons deliveries.

Moscow has consistently condemned Western assistance to Ukraine, saying that NATO members are directly involved in hostilities. However, in September 2025, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia “never attacks civilian facilities” and “never directs our drones and missiles at states located in Europe and NATO Alliance countries.”

Nine people were injured early on Saturday when a Ukrainian drone hit a residential building in central Ekaterinburg, about 1,700 km (over 1,000 miles) inside Russia, according to regional Governor Denis Pasler. He added that fifty residents were evacuated due to safety concerns.

Moscow has repeatedly highlighted that Kiev is attacking civilians because it cannot halt Russian advances on the battlefield.

One woman was hospitalized following the attack, Pasler said. He added that none of those who sought medical help were in serious condition and that most were diagnosed with mild smoke inhalation; they have continued to receive care.

The governor noted that emergency services were working at the scene, stressing that a “carpet” emergency plan had been introduced in the region and that air defense systems were operating.

Russia’s aviation authority earlier reported temporary restrictions on arrivals and departures at the city’s Koltsovo Airport.

The Russian Defense Ministry has stated that 127 Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight over several regions.

The remote-controlled aircraft were shot down over Crimea, Tatarstan, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kaluga, Kursk, Orel, Smolensk, Rostov, Volgograd, Astrakhan, Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions, as well as over the Black Sea.

Moscow has accused Kiev of resorting to terrorist tactics and inflicting damage to third parties not involved in the conflict between the two nations.

The Kremlin has also noted that US-mediated talks with Ukraine had been placed on hold due to the war in the Middle East.

Major US networks have turned a blind eye to an explosive undercover video in which a senior Pentagon official spoke about Ukraine’s rampant corruption and civilian casualties resulting from the war on Iran, O’Keefe Media Group journalist Michael Casey has told RT.

Speaking to RT on Friday, Casey weighed in on footage that O’Keefe Media Group released earlier this week, apparently showing Andrew Hugg, a Pentagon nuclear safety officer, revealing secrets to a woman he met on a dating app.

The official was recorded confirming that US airstrikes did cause collateral child casualties in Iran, discussing nerve agents stored in Maryland, and alleging that Ukrainian officials had pocketed US taxpayer funds going back to the Obama administration.

Casey underscored the fact, saying that he was “surprised” by the lack of reporting on the subject. “Why have CNN, NBC, ABC not covered the story? I think they’re afraid of James O’Keefe, if you want the truth. They’re scared of being his next target.” 

Casey also noted that it was “baffling” that a senior Pentagon official had spilled the beans on “very sensitive things regarding American foreign policy” to a complete stranger. “That opens the question: who else is he talking to? And it’s a very big national security issue,” he said, pointing to Hugg’s scramble to erase his digital footprint as a de facto admission of wrongdoing.

The journalist also singled out Hugg’s claims about the Ukraine corruption, saying that while they were “the most interesting parts of the exposé,” they were also “one of the least surprising.”

“It sounds like millions of taxpayer dollars dating back to the Obama administration were misused and taken into by Ukrainian oligarchs… Many people, specifically on the right, have for years been blowing the whistle, saying that money is being misused in Ukraine. Far too often, it has been dismissed as conspiracies,” he said.

O’Keefe Media Group was founded by controversial journalist James O’Keefe, whose modus operandi is to send undercover reporters on dates with their targets in order to record candid conversations. His former organization, Project Veritas, however, was repeatedly accused by critics of selectively editing footage to further a conservative agenda.

Four decades after a failed experiment in Soviet Ukraine led to a world-shaking radiation disaster and made Chernobyl infamous, the psychological safeguards protecting nuclear facilities from military action are weaker than ever.

In March and April of 2026, bombs landed near the Busher Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in Iran. Russia’s Zaporozye NPP was deliberately firebombed by Ukrainian troops in 2024, as part of Kiev’s attempts to prevent Moscow from operating the contested facility. The Chernobyl wreck itself was targeted by a mystery projectile on the eve of a key international security event in 2025.

Nuclear weapons are so destructive that only an existential crisis should warrant their deployment. The taboo against nukes has been tested on several occasions since the technology’s iconic status was established by the US bombing of Imperial Japan, – including off the coast of Cuba in 1962, in the Middle East in 1954 and again in 1973. Each time, nerves held.

Nuclear facilities, particularly power plants with their large hot reactors and on-site storage of spent fuel, borrow some of that aura to become almost untouchable, as radiation fallout is strongly associated with both the weapons and technological disasters.

How to bomb a nuclear reactor

Attacking Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant risks “another Chernobyl,” a senior official in Tehran warned, after airstrikes killed 10 people, including a German engineer involved in the project on the Persian Gulf coast. The year was 1987, and the attacker was Saddam Hussein – no longer a ‘good guy’ in the eyes of the Western public, but still fighting the ‘bad guys’.

Tehran’s invocation of the then-recent Soviet nuclear catastrophe was an exaggeration. The Bushehr facility was still under construction when Iraqis targeted it six times, beginning in 1984. An attempt to deter Baghdad by reportedly bringing in a small amount of nuclear fuel didn’t work.

In 1980, at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran bombed the under-construction Osiraq nuclear reactor at the Tuwaitha research center near Baghdad. The Israelis struck the French-provided project a year later. So did the Americans during the 1991 Gulf War – allegedly weeks before it would finally go online.

In 2007, Israel bombed a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria. Years later, the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, confirmed that suspicions were correct and the clandestine facility was still being built when it was obliterated.

The pattern of preemptive attacks was upheld by non-state actors. Rodney Wilkinson, a South African fencing champion and anti-apartheid activist, carried out the bombing of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station just before it went online in 1982, taking care to ensure that there would be zero casualties and no radiation leaks.

Turning Back the Clock to: 1982. Rodney Wilkinson planted four bombs at the Koeberg nuclear power plant north of Capetown, South Africa. #WorldHistory pic.twitter.com/UtrU6rD7Ym

— History Then (@then_history) December 19, 2020

In major conflicts between India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed powers, there were no military strikes on nuclear facilities. In short, the conventional wisdom has long been: you don’t risk another Chernobyl.

Ukraine throws rules out of the window

Like many other norms, respect for the IAEA’s seven pillars of nuclear safety seriously eroded during the Ukraine conflict. Russian forces took over the Zaporozhye NPP on March 3, 2022 during a lighting offensive. The site has since become the focus of a PR war built around a string of attacks in the plant’s vicinity.

Ukraine’s story about the military action has morphed over the years. First it claimed Russia kept heavy weapons at the nuclear site, making it a legitimate target. Then Russia was accused of conducting false flag operations to discredit Ukraine. After the IAEA dispatched an observer mission in September 2022, Kiev claimed Moscow was thwarting inspector rotations – though provocations stopped in 2025, after the international agency decided against travelling through territory controlled by Kiev. 

Arguably the most serious incident took place in August 2024, when incendiary drones caused a major fire at one of the Zaporozye plant’s cooling towers. Kiev claimed it was Russian self-sabotage, which just happened to virtually coincide with the launch of a Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region.

Ascribing logic-defying economic masochism to Moscow is a trope of pro-Kiev messaging. The 2022 blasts that destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipelines were initially framed in the media as Russia putting pressure on Germany by blowing up its own infrastructure. Now the only mystery remaining about that attack is whether Ukraine carried it out alone, with assistance from some NATO nations –  such as Poland or the US – or simply created a distraction so that the West could claim plausible deniability.

Chernobyl propaganda dud

An even more emblematic example of brinkmanship serving Ukrainian interests came in February 2025, when Kiev accused Russia of flying a single kamikaze drone into the shelter covering the Chernobyl plant’s contaminated site.

The incident took place on the eve of the Munich Security Conference. But in Germany, US Vice President J.D. Vance stole the spotlight that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky was undoubtedly hoping to get. Vance shocked the audience with his speech roasting perceived Western European degradation and casting doubt on America’s protection of NATO allies.

Consequently, the Chernobyl incident caused barely a ripple in media coverage and left an ugly tear in the New Safe Confinement – the shelter constructed in the 2010s with mostly foreign funding.

US and Israel tear down the window, the wall, the building

In a field where Zelensky merely played fast and loose, US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swung like a wrecking ball.

In 2024, the two leaders teamed up to strike Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, claiming the 12-day bombing campaign ended Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. This year, Iran was somehow supposedly again weeks away from building the bomb and had to be attacked again.

As the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster approaches, the world has yet to learn how much economic damage the Iran War will cause it. But it has already dealt a blow to nuclear non-proliferation.

The 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) guarantees signatories the right to, and support for, the peaceful use of nuclear technology in exchange for accepting the IAEA’s controls to prevent weaponization. Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea all rejected the deal in order to acquire nuclear weapons, secretly or openly. 

Washington declares that there is no NPT deal for Iran, period. The religious prohibition of nuclear weapons by Israel-assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, now seems like a fig leaf.

Trump’s threat to annihilate all Iranian power plants unless it concedes defeat – potentially including Bushehr, now fully operational – may never materialize. A commando raid deep into Iran to capture “nuclear dust” – Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that it has no intention to give up – remains in question either.

But what is beyond doubt is that the risk of a major radiological incident is at the moment higher than ever. That’s the inevitable cost of nuclear brinkmanship.

Tehran has denied that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s trip to Islamabad will include new talks with Washington, pushing back on reports that US President Donald Trump is dispatching envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan to restart negotiations.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said in a post on X early Saturday morning that “no meeting is planned to take place between Iran and the US” during the visit and that Tehran’s views would instead be conveyed to Pakistan.

Araghchi himself said he was embarking on a “timely tour” of Islamabad, Muscat, and Moscow in order to “closely coordinate” with partners on bilateral issues and consult on regional developments. Iranian state media said the three-leg trip is part of Tehran’s ongoing diplomatic effort to secure an end to US-Israeli aggression.

Embarking on timely tour of Islamabad, Muscat, and Moscow.

Purpose of my visits is to closely coordinate with our partners on bilateral matters and consult on regional developments.

Our neighbors are our priority.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) April 24, 2026

The denial came after the White House announced that Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would travel to Islamabad for a new round of talks, while Vice President J.D. Vance would remain on “standby” and could still be dispatched if negotiations progress far enough to justify his involvement.

Washington indefinitely extended the ceasefire with Iran earlier this week, expecting a “unified” proposal from Tehran while keeping the US blockade of Iranian ports in place. The standoff around the Strait of Hormuz has rattled global markets, pushing Brent crude above $100 per barrel, while Trump has made clear that there is no firm timeline for ending the war.

Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow, Kazem Jalali, told RT that Iran is not seeking war but is ready to respond, insisting the country remains open to diplomacy if Washington abandons its bullying. Iranian officials, including Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, have previously accused the US of trying to turn negotiations into “a table of surrender” after failing to achieve victory on the battlefield.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he has undergone treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, admitting that he delayed publication of the medical report for two months during the war with Iran.

According to Netanyahu’s annual medical report published on Friday, the tumor was found at a “very early stage,” with no spread or metastases, and the problem has now been fully treated. Hadassah Hospital oncology chief Aharon Popovtser said follow-up imaging and blood tests showed that “the disease has disappeared.”

Netanyahu said he had asked for the information to be withheld from the public so it would not be released “at the height of the war” against Iran and fuel what he called “more false propaganda against Israel.”

“You already know me. When I’m given information in time about a potential danger, I want to address it immediately. This is true on the national level and also on the personal level,” he wrote in a post on X.

The 76-year-old leader previously underwent surgery for an enlarged benign prostate in 2024 and had since been under routine monitoring, during which the tumor was discovered. It remains unclear exactly when the treatment took place, and his office said the rest of the medical report showed him to be in good health.

אומרים שאני מה? צפו >> pic.twitter.com/ijHPkM3ZHZ

— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) March 15, 2026

The disclosure comes after weeks of speculation about Netanyahu’s health after he missed multiple consecutive security cabinet meetings during the early phase of the US-Israel war with Iran.

In March, he released a bizarre video of himself waving his hands during a visit to a Jerusalem cafe in an apparent effort to quash rumors that recent videos of his public appearances were AI-generated.

The US will re-adopt the use of firing squads, electrocution, and gas asphyxiation for executing criminals convicted of the worst federal offenses, the Justice Department said in a statement on Friday.

The department said it is “readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump Administration,” and expanding it to include “additional manners of execution,” and “streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases.”

After returning to office last January, Trump said he would direct the DOJ to “vigorously pursue” the death penalty to protect Americans from “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”

The decision reverses the approach taken by former President Joe Biden, whose administration paused federal executions. In December 2024, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people on federal death row, converting them to life without parole and leaving only three federal inmates still facing execution.

The United States is currently the only country in the Americas that actively carries out executions, while more than two-thirds of the world’s countries have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

Russia retains the death penalty in law but has observed a moratorium on executions since 1996. A recent poll found that nearly half of Russians now favor bringing it back, but lawmakers have argued that doing so would be legally impossible because the ban was imposed by the Constitutional Court, whose decisions cannot be overturned.

Welcome to America’s next public health crisis, which is being underwritten by big business and ignored by the US government.

Nitrous oxide (N₂O) has been around since the end of the 18th century and is used in a variety of products, including whipped cream canisters and car engines, to give them an extra power boost. It is also popularly known as ‘laughing gas,’ which dentists administer to their patients for pain relief. In the 19th century, laughing gas parties were popular among the middle and upper classes.

Late 20th century drug culture rediscovered nitrous oxide, in the form of ‘whippets’ (from whipped-cream chargers) and laughing gas balloons. However, only lately has nitrous oxide, marketed under the name of ‘Galaxy Gas,’ exploded in popularity among today’s youth in search of a cheap buzz.

Although ostensibly marketed as a culinary product, Galaxy Gas is sold in colorful bottles with alluring flavors, such as Mango Smoothie, Strawberry Cream and Vanilla Cupcake.

Meanwhile, the product (Galaxy Gas is just one of dozens of brands selling nitrous oxide) has been popularized on social media, where influencers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have led millions of teens astray in search of a quick and affordable jolt of euphoria.

Various brands of nitrous oxide canisters can easily be bought online from major marketplaces including Walmart, Amazon and eBay. Though most companies require purchasers to be over 18 to order them, they’ve still found their way into the hands of many teens (Following reports of abuse, Galaxy Gas has paused direct sales from their website and is facing regulatory action due to health risks).

Across the US, more than 25 million people over the age of 12 may have tried inhalants, according to a survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. And data shows adolescents from 12-17 more commonly use whippets than those who are 18 and older.

In February 2023, Ellen Mercer, 24, died in a British hospital two weeks after she was left bedbound by burning her legs with a nitrous oxide canister. According to the coroner’s report, Mercer’s death was caused by her substance abuse and a blood clot. The young woman, clearly addicted to the inhalant, was said to have inhaled two to three “big bottles” of the gas per day.

Meg Caldwell is another individual who lost her life due to her addiction to Galaxy Gas. Caldwell began inhaling the gas during the pandemic. With everyone locked down and little to do, it seemed that a few harmless hits of nitrous oxide wouldn’t hurt. According to the young woman’s family, her addiction quickly spiraled out of control and wrecked her life. She died at the age of 23 of an overdose in a parking lot outside of a smoke shop where she purchased the gas. The Caldwell family has filed a lawsuit against Galaxy Gas and several other companies, alleging that they marketed the substance for recreational use while disguising it as a culinary product.

One reason the inhalation of Galaxy Gas has become so dangerous is people are inhaling the gas directly from the nozzle of the bottle.

“In medical use, nitrous oxide is given in conjunction with a pretty high flow of oxygen,” says Dr. Bryan Baskin, Co-Director of Operations of the Cleveland Clinic’s Emergency Services. “That helps to keep people safe from some of the dangerous effects of the gas. People using it recreationally aren’t taking those precautions. They’re just getting straight shots of it, which can be harmful, particularly with repeated use.”

The nitrous oxide that enters your body starves the brain of oxygen, creating a dizzy, heady feeling that can last anywhere from a few seconds to five minutes. The user takes a hit, enjoys the feeling, and then wants more of the same, leading to abuse of the product. Chasing the high again and again deprives the brain and other organs of the oxygen they need for normal bodily function. At the very least, users may lose consciousness while inhaling the gas, thereby sustaining physical injuries like concussions. But there are other worse side effects.

Long-term users of nitrous oxide report major nerve problems, impaired memory, loss of concentration and loss of coordination. The brain and spinal column could become inflamed, leading to cases of full-blown paralysis. 

So what is the US government doing about the problem? Sadly, almost nothing. The level of regulation of nitrous oxide in the US is shockingly bad. There’s no official FDA certification; there’s no mandatory purity tests to ensure no contaminants of even more harmful substances; there are no size limits on the canisters; there are no import controls for cheaper, less regulated variants from other countries like China; there’s no guaranteed standardization of manufacturing or the content inside of these bottles. There literally could be anything inside, like heavy metal residue or hydrocarbons. In other words, a sticker saying it’s safe doesn’t make it safe. The same way that putting a ‘do not inhale’ warning on a canister won’t stop people from doing it. 

Even the bottles themselves are dangerous. Keep in mind, these are pressurized metal canisters, weighing up to two or more kilos. Effectively pipe bombs that people can get a buzz from. Due to the pressure inside of the canisters, manufacturing defects, heat or poor handling can result in explosive decompression. A loosely fitting valve or a poorly fitted seal on the canister could mean the difference between life and death.

Perhaps worst of all is how the product, with its playful packaging, is targeted at a younger audience that is less able to differentiate between what is healthy for them and what is potentially fatal.

It’s time for the US government to get involved and crack down on the peddlers of this dangerous product before it kills anyone else.

Ukraine’s military has been hit by a starvation scandal after disturbing images surfaced of frontline soldiers so badly emaciated that relatives said some were fainting from hunger and drinking rainwater to survive.

The men, identified in Ukrainian and Western reporting as troops from the 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade operating near Kupyansk on the left bank of the Oskol River, had allegedly gone days without food and were relying on drone deliveries in one of the most dangerous sectors of the front.

The scandal erupted after relatives posted the images online and accused commanders of ignoring desperate pleas for help. Ukraine’s General Staff swiftly responded to the viral post, saying it had launched an investigation, replaced one commander, and demoted another.

Ukrainian and some Western outlets have framed the case as a result of brutal frontline conditions, with near-constant Russian drone strikes making logistics so dangerous that even food and medicine have to be flown in. Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force, however, described the case as a “horrible management shame,” saying commanders had failed to report the real situation up the chain of command.

Kiev has cycled through multiple defense ministers during the conflict. The only one to have any military experience, Aleksey Reznikov, was ousted in 2023 after procurement scandals that included overpriced military food contracts. Since then, corruption allegations have continued to plague senior wartime officials, and lower-level abuses have been tied to Kiev’s increasingly brutal military conscription drive.

Ukraine’s police chief has admitted that many citizens are now afraid to call law enforcement because they believe officers might help draft officials seize their relatives. Earlier this week, an alleged kidnapping ring was busted in Odessa, in which conscription officials, aided by police informants, targeted affluent men and threatened them with forced mobilization unless they paid bribes.

The US government has profited an estimated $27 billion in unrealized gains from its Intel investment as the chipmaker’s shares have more than doubled since the beginning of this year alone.

Intel shares jumped more than 20% on Friday after the company reported better-than-expected results. The Silicon Valley firm revealed on Thursday that it had generated $13.6 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, up 7% year-on-year and above forecasts.

The results, along with a stronger outlook for the next quarter, put Intel on track for one of its biggest single-day gains in decades. The stock was trading at $82.50, up about 125% since the start of the year, making it one of the top performers in the S&P 500, helping lift the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, and nearing levels last seen during the dot-com boom.

“The next wave of AI will bring intelligence closer to the end user, moving from foundational models to inference to agentic. This shift is significantly increasing the need for Intel’s CPUs, wafers, and advanced packaging offerings,” said CEO Lip-Bu Tan.

Intel’s rebound follows a steep decline in 2024, when its shares plunged 60% to less than $19 in their worst year on record, alongside leadership changes including the departure of then-CEO Pat Gelsinger.

The European Union made a “big strategic mistake” by severing all communication with Russia after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama told Politico in an interview published on Friday.

The bloc intensified its sanctions pressure and cut off diplomatic engagement with Moscow in 2022, moving to back Kiev with hundreds of billions of dollars in financial and military aid.

“Europe has to be always, always, always talking to everyone,” Rama told Politico at the Delphi Economic Forum in Greece, arguing that the EU shot itself in the foot when it “cut every channel with Russia.”

The “more we postpone it, the less we’ll have a say at the end, because Russia – however this war ends – Russia is not going anywhere,” he said, adding that he was being frank because his country has no “dependence on Russia.”

However, three rounds of negotiations have so far failed to bear fruit, with Ukraine rejecting key Russian demands. Both Moscow and Kiev have admitted that the talks are effectively frozen due to Washington’s preoccupation with the war on Iran.

The EU has already “completely discredited itself” as a mediator, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last month, rejecting French and British plans to deploy troops in Ukraine as part of security guarantees for Kiev.

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, European leaders deliberately make demands that they know are “utterly unacceptable to Russia” in order to sabotage US peace efforts and blame the collapse of the talks on Moscow.

New Delhi “never stopped buying Russian crude” despite US sanctions on two of Russia’s biggest oil firms, Deepak Bhojwani, India’s former ambassador to several Latin American countries, including Colombia, Venezuela, and Cuba, told RT on Friday.

Washington imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil in October, which were temporarily lifted last month after the US war on Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz wreaked havoc on global fuel supplies. The US Treasury extended the sanctions waiver last week.

This allowed India to import more than $5 billion in oil in April, Bhojwani said.

“No matter what [US President] Donald Trump does, even if he levies sanctions and threatens, we will buy oil from Russia,” he said, stating that New Delhi has “called Trump’s bluff.”

“India isn’t powerless. India doesn’t have zero recourse,” the career diplomat stressed. “It has agreements with other countries, the EU most recently, and Trump realizes that he could lose more than he could gain by sanctioning India.”

“It’s a horrendous proposition to think that this could go on for a few weeks more,” he said. “[Trump] has spent blood, American blood and American treasure on a wasted war, which he has lost already.”

The US president’s allies in Europe “are beginning to realize that he’s a losing proposition,” Bhojwani said, adding that he suspects New Delhi is “waiting his term out.”

Watch the full interview below.

A newly announced extension of the Lebanon ceasefire has been described by Israel’s UN envoy as “not 100%.” RT’s correspondent in Beirut, Steve Sweeney, says the remarks by Ambassador Danny Danon reflect the situation on the ground, with monitors recording repeated violations by West Jerusalem. 

The 10‑day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, initially announced by US President Donald Trump last week, was extended by another three weeks on Thursday. 

According to Sweeney, Israeli forces have used the lull to occupy swathes of southern Lebanon and impose a Gaza‑style “yellow zone” covering around 55 towns and villages where residents are barred from returning. He described the area as “in effect a kill zone,” pointing to reports that troops have been told to open fire on anyone entering and to the destruction of homes, hospitals, ambulances, schools, and other civilian infrastructure since the escalation in March, which has left nearly 2,500 people dead. 

While the three‑week extension may offer some relief to Beirut after weeks of bombardment and Trump “seems to think he could work a longer‑term peace deal,” for people on the ground – particularly in southern Lebanon – “it seems a very distant hope,” Sweeney says. 

Watch the full report from Beirut below.

Moscow will continue supplying Cuba amid the US blockade squeezing the island, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.

In late March, Russia delivered 100,000 tons of crude to the island, which has faced severe fuel shortages and power cuts since late last year, when Washington began to escalate its decades-long trade embargo into a full-blown oil blockade. Russian Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilev has indicated that a second tanker is on its way.

“We will continue to provide humanitarian aid to our Cuban friends during this difficult period,” Zakharova said in a press briefing.

Cuba has faced nationwide blackouts and severe fuel shortages in recent months, since Venezuela, at one point the island’s main oil supplier, stopped crude shipments under pressure from Washington.

However, late last month, after a Russian oil tanker bypassed the US blockade, he told reporters that Washington doesn’t “mind having somebody get a boat load” into the island, as “they need to survive.”

According to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, the island relies on imports for between 40-60% of the seven million tons of fossil fuels it needs per year.

Cuba has had to lean more heavily into renewable energy sources like solar and biofuels due to the blockade, which has had a “tremendous impact on health systems,” education, transportation, and civilian infrastructure like water distribution, he said in an interview with journalist Breno Altman in Havana on Wednesday.

The jury of the Venice Biennale, an annual international cultural exhibition, will not give awards to artists from countries whose leaders are facing charges of crimes against humanity, according to a statement issued on Thursday.

It affects Russia and Israel, whose leaders are subject to International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants, something both countries have rejected.

The five-member jury announced the decision despite the event’s stated policy of non-exclusion. One member, Marta Kuzma, professor at the Yale School of Art, is of Ukrainian descent.

The move effectively introduces a separate criterion within the event, creating a divide between the Biennale’s institutional stance and the position taken by its own judges.

Although the statement does not explicitly mention Russia and Israel, it says the “jury will refrain from considering those countries whose leaders are currently charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

An ICC arrest warrant was issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023 over alleged deportations of Ukrainian children. Moscow, which does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction, has dismissed the charges as politically motivated.

It comes as the European Commission said it was slashing a €2 million ($2.3 million) grant to the event over Russia’s participation. The Biennale has welcomed Russia back for the first time in four years despite the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, saying the exhibition is “an open institution” that “rejects any form of exclusion or censorship of art.”

However, the jury criteria are tied specifically to ICC charges, which are not uniformly applied across all conflicts.

US President Donald Trump has threatened lethal force against any Iranian boats suspected of laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, claiming that Washington now has “total control” over the key waterway until Tehran agrees to a deal. 

The warning comes amid a maritime standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial transit route that accounts for approximately 20% of global oil and gas flows. Traffic has largely come to a standstill following the US-Israeli campaign against Iran and Tehran’s subsequent retaliation. 

Despite the fragile ceasefire that Trump extended indefinitely earlier this week, the US has maintained its blockade of Iranian ports.

“I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat … that is putting mines in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote in a social media post late on Thursday, adding that US mine-sweeping operations are ongoing.

Trump claimed the US has “total control” over the strait. “No ship can enter or leave without the approval of the United States Navy. It is ‘Sealed up Tight,’ until such time as Iran is able to make a DEAL!!!” he wrote.

Tehran has pushed back, saying it has “the right” to act in the waterway if its national security is threatened and making the lifting of US restrictions a condition for resuming talks. 

Tensions in the strait have escalated following recent maritime incidents. This week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released footage showing the interception of two container ships in the waterway, while US forces have reported stopping and redirecting multiple vessels they described as suspected of violating sanctions.

The Hormuz disruption has rattled global markets, pushing Brent crude above $100 per barrel. International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol warned of “the biggest energy security threat in history,” while aid groups flagged risks to global food security as fertilizer and agricultural supply chains are hit. 

Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow, Kazem Jalali, told RT that Iran is not seeking war but is ready to respond, insisting the country remains open to diplomacy despite the escalation.

Russia and Ukraine have conducted a prisoner of war exchange involving nearly 200 servicemen from each side, the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced on Friday. The United Arab Emirates and the US provided mediation, the ministry said. 

In a statement on Friday, the MOD announced that “193 Russian servicemen have been returned from the territory controlled by the Kiev regime” and in exchange, the same number of Ukrainian Armed Forces prisoners were also transferred.  

The Russian soldiers are currently in Belarus and are receiving psychological and medical assistance. They will later be transported to Russia for treatment and rehabilitation. 

The previous POW exchange took place earlier this month during a temporary ceasefire for Orthodox Easter. The two sides exchanged 175 service members each. The swap also involved the return of seven civilians from Kursk Region, said to have been the last hostages taken in the Ukrainian incursion last year. 

Since the resumption of direct Russia-Ukraine talks in May 2025, the two countries have regularly carried out exchanges of POWs, as well as of the bodies of fallen troops. 

The British Foreign Office has closed a special unit that had been keeping a record of breaches of international law by Israel in the Gaza Strip, The Guardian has reported.

The shutdown happened despite UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper saying in a speech earlier in April that support for international law is a “core British value” and that it would be the focus of the department under her leadership.

The termination of the operations of the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) cell also means that funding will be cut for the Conflict and Security Monitoring Project run by the Center for Information Resilience (CIR), The Guardian said in an article on Thursday.

British officials have been warned that because of this, the Foreign Office will lose access to a database of 26,000 verified violations by Israel put together by the Conflict and Security Monitoring Project, the report read.

The closure of the IHL appears to be driven by the UK cabinet’s decision to reduce the overseas aid budget to 0.3% of GDP, The Guardian noted.

The advocacy manager at Campaign Against Arms Trade, Katie Fallon, told the paper that the shutdown was aimed at making sure that the British government could “obscure unimaginable violations and crimes committed against the most vulnerable people in conflict and sustain arms sales at any cost.”

Over 72,000 people have been killed and over 172,000 wounded by Israel’s airstrikes and ground campaign in Gaza so far, according to figures from the Palestinian health authorities.

American tech giants Meta and Microsoft are set to cut up to 10% of staff as both companies face rising costs linked to their expensive investments in artificial intelligence (AI), the Financial Times has reported.

The Facebook parent company is expected to lay off 10% of its workforce, or roughly 8,000 employees, and close about 6,000 open roles, according to an internal memo sent to staff and leaked on Thursday. Meta specified that the layoffs will start on May 20.

The move comes as the company invests billions of dollars in AI infrastructure, including costly data centers, while recruiting top talent to catch up with major tech rivals such as Google and OpenAI in developing advanced AI models, the newspaper noted.

In January, Meta said it expects capital expenditure for 2026 to reach $115 billion to $135 billion, driven largely by infrastructure costs, including payments to third-party cloud providers, higher depreciation of its AI data center assets, and rising operating expenses.

According to Microsoft’s chief people officer, Amy Coleman, the offer is intended to provide these employees with “the choice to take that next step... with generous company support.” 

It follows Microsoft’s decision to cut more than 15,000 jobs in 2025. Earlier this year, the company committed to spending $140 billion in capital expenditure, having pledged to accelerate the development of its own advanced AI models.

Job cuts linked to the development of AI are becoming increasingly common in the US labor market, raising concerns over the technology’s impact on employment. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that the number of layoffs due to the implementation of AI in the country’s tech sector exceeded 52,000 in the first quarter of the year.  

A poll conducted earlier this year showed that 57% of Americans think the technology is advancing “too fast” and 79% are concerned the government has no plan to protect workers from job losses.

Israel is waiting for a go-ahead from the US to resume the campaign against Iran and bomb the Islamic Republic back to “the Stone Age,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has stated.

The message comes after US President Donald Trump extended the ceasefire with Tehran indefinitely on Tuesday to allow time for a potential deal, while keeping American naval blockade of Iranian ports in place.

”Israel is prepared to renew the war against Iran,” Katz said on Thursday. “We are awaiting a green light from the United States… to complete the elimination of the Khamenei dynasty… and to return Iran to the Dark Age and the Stone Age” by destroying its key energy facilities and economic infrastructure, he said.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several members of his family were killed on the first day of the Israeli-US campaign. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was appointed as his successor.

In the days leading up to the attack on February 28 there were indirect talks and reports of extended rounds of discussion between the US and Iranian delegations in Oman. Oman’s foreign minister even suggested that peace was within reach and that diplomacy should be allowed to do its work.

The “Stone Age” rhetoric was first used by Trump on April 1, roughly five weeks into the fighting. At the time, he warned that US forces would “hit [Iran] extremely hard” and could “bring them back to the Stone Ages” within “two to three weeks” if Tehran refused US demands, including reopening the Strait of Hormuz and agreeing to a deal imposing stricter limits on its nuclear activities.

Tehran has rejected the demands, refusing to stop nuclear enrichment, which it says it needs for civilian purposes, including energy production and medical applications.

The US is allegedly weighing unprecedented measures to punish NATO members it believes failed to support its war against Iran, Reuters reported on Friday, citing an internal Pentagon email. The options are said to include the possible suspension of Spain from the bloc, according to the outlet.

The document, reportedly circulating at high levels in the Department of War, expresses deep frustration with European NATO members who denied the US access to their bases and airspace during the war that started in late February, an American official familiar with the document told Reuters.

Among the measures under consideration are suspending “difficult” countries from key positions within the bloc, as well as temporarily revoking Spain’s NATO membership. While admitting that such a move would have a limited impact on US military operations, the Pentagon email argues it would carry significant symbolic weight.

However, a NATO official has stressed to the BBC that no provisions for member states to be suspended or expelled from the bloc actually exist. The only way a country can leave is by voluntarily invoking Article 13, which requires one year’s formal “notice of denunciation.”

Commenting on the Reuters report, Sanchez brushed aside the threat, stating he was “absolutely not worried” about being suspended from the bloc, stressing that Spain is “a reliable member within NATO.”

Another option reportedly being considered by Washington is reviewing US diplomatic support for the UK’s claim to the Falkland Islands (Malvinas), which have long been disputed with Argentina. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially refused to join the US-Israeli war on Iran, although the UK later allowed “defensive missions” from its bases in the region.

Since the launch of the unprovoked attack on Iran, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly pressed NATO members to join the campaign and help secure the vital Strait of Hormuz. 

When Spain and other European nations refused, Trump denounced NATO as a “paper tiger” and warned that the US could withdraw from the bloc.

More than 500 people, including children, were killed in mass disorder after Tanzania’s disputed election last year, according to an official report published on Thursday.

Violent protests erupted across the East African country after the October 29 vote. President Samia Suluhu Hassan, one of only two female heads of state in Africa, won 97% of the votes, granting her a first full five-year term as an elected head of state. She initially assumed the presidency in March 2021 following the death of former President John Magufuli.

A commission set up to investigate the unrest announced that at least 518 people died from “unnatural causes,” including 197 who were shot dead. More than 2,000 people were injured, with 833 suffering gunshot wounds, the report said, adding that the toll could rise due to undocumented burials and missing records.

“Of the 518 deaths, 21 were children. In this group, 15 were children aged between 15 and 17 years, four were aged between seven and ten years, and two were under five years of age,” the commission’s chairman, retired Chief Justice Mohamed Chande Othman, said on Thursday.

The report also stated that 245 people remain missing and that 39 families reported seeing the bodies of relatives in morgues before they later disappeared. While the commission did not assign responsibility for the deaths, it recommended further investigation into the use of firearms during the unrest.

The authorities imposed an internet shutdown during the unrest. In November, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) reported that hundreds of people were killed, with an unknown number injured or detained. It condemned the alleged use of “unnecessary or disproportionate force,” including lethal weapons, against protesters by the police.

A 208-page report released on Monday by the Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition also documented claims of mass graves, citing accounts of bodies being taken from morgues and buried in undisclosed locations.

“The information and evidence confirm that there were people roaming around in various places… inciting and recruiting various people to participate in violence during and after the general election,” it stated.

The commission said its findings will guide constitutional reforms and the creation of an investigative body to pursue accountability for those involved in the turmoil.

South Africa’s national police commissioner, Fannie Masemola, has been suspended following allegations of corruption linked to a 360 million-rand ($21 million) contract for health and wellness services, the presidency confirmed on Thursday.

Masemola appeared in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, facing four counts of violating the Public Finance Management Act. Prosecutors allege that the contract was awarded unlawfully, with some police officers receiving bribes from the winning bidders.

The charges against Masemola stem from his role as the accounting officer for the police service.

He has denied the accusations but has yet to enter a plea. Businessman Vusimuzi Matlala, whose company Medicare24 secured the controversial contract, has yet to enter his plea along with 15 others accused of corruption, fraud, and money laundering. The case has been postponed until May 13.

In a statement on Thursday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he has decided to place Masemola on “precautionary suspension” pending the conclusion of the case.

The decision is necessary “in consideration of the seriousness of these charges and the critical role of the National Commissioner in leading the fight against crime,” Ramaphosa stated.

The suspension comes amid growing concerns over corruption within South Africa’s law enforcement agencies. Last year, Ramaphosa took similar actions against Police Minister Senzo Mchunu following allegations that he had conspired with a criminal network and interfered with investigations into political assassinations.

Ramaphosa placed Mchunu on immediate leave and set up the Madlanga Commission of inquiry to investigate the allegations, which were brought forward by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.

He said the newly appointed acting National Commissioner is expected to urgently address weaknesses in police procurement and “sustain the momentum” of Pretoria’s “fight against crime and corruption.”

Moscow has condemned the EU’s decision to withdraw a €2 million ($2.34 million) grant from the Venice Biennale after the prestigious event allowed Russia to return.

The Italian cultural exhibition announced in early March that Russia would participate again this year, prompting the European Commission to warn it could lose funding. On Thursday, commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier confirmed that the EU would follow through, urging the Italian authorities to take action.

“This move by Brussels is disgraceful and shows that claims by the European establishment about being open to dialogue with Russia are empty,” Mikhail Shvydkoy, a Russian presidential aide for international cultural cooperation, told RBK on Friday.

“This is also blatant interference in Italian domestic politics, since cultural policy remains under national purview in the European Union,” he added.

Russian officials and commentators questioned whether the funding cut would have any meaningful impact. Shvydkoy described the €2 million grant as significant but not essential for an institution of the biennale’s scale.

Art critic Elizaveta Likhacheva echoed that view, arguing that EU leaders were overestimating their leverage. “They are making a mistake by trying to use financial pressure,” she told BFM.ru, suggesting the funding represents only a small portion of the event’s overall resources – enough “for pencils and sweets.” According to Likhacheva, both Rome and Brussels must realize that their influence is limited.

There are multiple government programs supporting Ukrainian culture in Russia. Unlike Russian in Ukraine, Ukrainian is an official language in some Russian regions.

More than 400 migrants have been rescued off Libya’s eastern coast this week, after they were found at risk of drowning, the Libyan Red Crescent Society announced on Thursday.

The route via the Central Mediterranean is considered one of the world’s deadliest, with more than 1,300 people lost along it in 2025, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Missing Migrants Project.

The IOM also said earlier this week that 4,407 migrants had been intercepted and returned to Libya in 2026. 

The rescue operation was carried out in coordination with the UN refugee agency, the Red Crescent reported. A total of 404 migrants of various nationalities were taken off ten overcrowded boats near the eastern city of Tobruk, about 1,600 km from the capital, Tripoli, after enduring difficult conditions that put their lives in danger.

Libya has become one of the main transit points for refugees from Africa and the Middle East trying to reach Europe via the Central Mediterranean. They are fleeing armed conflict, political instability, and economic hardship in countries such as Sudan and Nigeria, and parts of the Sahel.

The boats are usually overcrowded and unsafe, and many sink or capsize before reaching European waters.

In February, the IOM stated that at least 53 migrants, including two babies, had died or gone missing after a boat capsized off the coast of Libya. 

“These tragedies are preventable. Urgent action is needed to protect lives and ensure safe, regular pathways on the Central Mediterranean route,” the agency said in a statement on Facebook.

The Middle East crisis has been caused by the aggression of the US and Israel, Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said.

Georgy Borisenko told RT India in an exclusive chat on the sidelines of the BRICS Middle East and North Africa (MENA) consultations that the bloc’s members discussed the situation in Iran.

“It was a very good and fruitful discussion,” Borisenko told RT India on Friday. “Many of our friends supported this [Russia’s] position and we hope that with joint efforts we will be able to overcome current problems in the region.” 

The conflict is causing hardship on a global scale due to the disruption of transportation routes and the rising prices of oil and gas, Borisenko added.

❗️BRICS MENA Meeting Kicks Off In New Delhi Brings Iran, UAE, India, & Russia Representatives Together

India is represented by MEA Secretary (South), Dr Neena Malhotra, while the Russian delegation is led by Deputy FM Georgy Borisenko.

The meeting has brought together… pic.twitter.com/tradrncTdr

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) April 24, 2026

Russia believes it is a necessity for the international community, “including all BRICS members” to make their best efforts to overcome the situation, he said.

Russia remains ready to assist in finding a solution, provided Iran’s right to develop a peaceful nuclear program is upheld, Lavrov said.

The BRICS MENA meet was convened to discuss regional security, specifically focusing on stability in the Gulf.

Iran’s special envoy for the Middle East, Mahdi Shoushtari, is also taking part in the conference.

French television channel M6 has aired a report comparing two unlawfully installed Christian crosses to an act of neo-Nazi vandalism, drawing sharp criticism, according to Tribune Chretienne.

The controversy followed a Wednesday broadcast in which sociologist Erwan Lecoeur drew parallels between the crosses and the work of right-wing vandals. The symbols of Jesus’s resurrection featuring the message “Ave Christus Rex” (“Hail Christ the King”) were recently installed on the Baou de Saint-Jeannet hill near Nice.

Lecoeur cited nearby graffiti reading “Nice is Germany,” a slogan associated with far-right groups and Nazism during World War II, framing the crosses as part of a broader ideological symbol system.

Critics said the parallel was unacceptable, arguing that the Christian cross is a religious symbol, while such slogans are tied to extremist ideology.

“Since when has the cross been a Nazi symbol?” French outlet Tribune Chretienne asked, condemning what it called an “indefensible media amalgam.” The outlet added that “confusing the two… amounts to trivializing one and denaturing the other: it is a true intellectual profanation.”

The crosses appeared in recent weeks on the hill, which is located within a protected natural area where unauthorized structures are prohibited. One was removed by authorities, while the other was later cut down, prompting a public debate over the legality of their installation under French secularism laws governing the use of religious symbols in public spaces.

Local reactions have been divided, with some residents describing the installation as provocative, while others have condemned the destruction of the cross as vandalism.

Similar controversies have surfaced in France in recent years involving perceived links between Christian traditions and Nazi imagery. In 2025, a France Televisions report suggesting a connection between Christmas markets and Nazism drew backlash and was withdrawn, according to Tribune Chretienne.

Historians have documented how the Nazi regime sought to appropriate Christian symbols, a legacy that continues to fuel debate.

Ukrainian conscription officers in Lviv have run over a woman as she desperately tried to prevent the forced mobilization of her son, local news outlets reported on Thursday, citing eyewitness video circulating on social media.

The incident comes as Kiev faces growing domestic and international criticism over increasingly aggressive conscription tactics adopted amid escalating manpower shortages and mounting battlefield losses in the conflict with Russia.

One video depicts at least four draft officers struggling with an unwilling conscript while a woman, restrained by another officer, tries to intervene. Other footage appears to show the same woman attempting to block the vehicle into which the man was forcibly pushed, moments before she was struck by it.

According to the Telegram channel Strana UA, police witnessed a draft officers’ vehicle strike a woman and immediately detained the driver. An investigation has reportedly been launched, while the regional conscription office later claimed to the channel the woman herself was at fault.

In recent weeks, local media have reported a rise in such incidents. In April alone, footage showed several separate events in Odessa, including pepper spray being used on a woman trying to prevent the mobilization of a man, the violent seizure and beating of an unwilling conscript, and an attack on a 16-year-old boy by draft officers.

In another widely shared video, a man is seen resisting several conscription officers with a metal chain, forcing them to withdraw and leave the scene.

Physical confrontations and tense altercations between draft officials and the public have recently led to violence against officers. Earlier this month, two conscription officers were stabbed by a passerby in Vinnytsia after a document check, while another draft officer was fatally stabbed in Lviv.

Moscow has accused Kiev of waging the conflict “to the last Ukrainian” in the interests of the West. Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov said Ukraine lost nearly 500,000 military personnel in 2025 alone, which he claimed has left Kiev unable to replenish its forces even through mandatory conscription.

A lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has said that he was detained by police for wearing a kippah with the Israeli and Palestinian flags on it.

Alex Sinclair said in a post on Facebook on Thursday that he had been sporting the kippah for 20 years due to “a messy ambivalence of my Jewish-Zionist identity” and it was never a problem.

But a few days ago, a man approached him at a cafe in his hometown of Modi’in in central Israel, telling him that his skullcap was illegal and that he was going to call the police, he wrote.

Officers arrived some five minutes later. “They immediately tell me that my kippah is against the law and that they are going to confiscate it,” Sinclair recalled.

The lecturer said he refused to give up his head covering as it “meant so much” to him and he ended up being detained. He was swiftly released, but the police tried holding on to the kippah.

When he demanded it back, a female officer returned it to him only after cutting the Palestinian flag out of the head covering, the educator wrote. The symbol is not illegal under Israeli law.

זו המדינה שאנחנו חיים בה: ד"ר אלכס סינקלר ישב בבית קפה במודיעין. לקוחה אחרת הבחינה שעל הכיפה שלו יש דגלי ישראל ופלסטין ביחד, סמל לשלום, והזמינה את המשטרה. המשטרה הגיעה והודיעה לו ש"הכיפה שלו נגד החוק". משסירב להסירה, נקלחה הכיפה בכוח, והוחזרה לו אחרי שדגל פלסטין נגזר ממנה. זהו. pic.twitter.com/cqCik3dUov

— Alon-Lee Green - ألون-لي جرين - אלון-לי גרין 🟣 (@AlonLeeGreen) April 23, 2026

"It’s hard not to say that this is the kind of thing that fascist regimes do,” Sinclair stressed, adding that he is “worried and anxious and frankly devastated that this is the direction that Israel is moving in.”

The police confirmed that they had briefly detained a man for wearing a Palestinian flag, but refrained from further comments.

Since Israel started its military operation in Gaza in response to a deadly incursion by Hamas in October 2023, the powers of the police to enforce public order have been vastly extended, with multiple incidents of officers removing and seizing Palestinian flags being reported.

More than 72,000 people have been killed and over 172,000 others injured by Israeli attacks in Gaza over the past three years, figures from the Palestinian health authorities show.

India’s central bank has warned of rising inflation risks as part of the fallout from the Middle East conflict.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cautioned in its latest assessment that “upside risks have increased” on the inflation front.

“Though inflation remains contained within the tolerance band, upside risks have increased, driven by supply-side disruptions, including weather-related uncertainties,” the bank said in a bulletin on Thursday.

The RBI is taking a cautious approach but does not rule out the risk of inflation if the war persists, a top aide told the Economic Times.

Deputy Governor Poonam Gupta told the newspaper that the ⁠central bank’s assumption ​is that the conflict will be resolved in ​a few months, with “supply chains being restored subsequently and demand-supply normalizing thereafter.”

There is no evidence now of “second-round effects on inflation expectations,” she said, citing this as the reason the central bank “decided to watch and wait.”

The exact impact on the energy price would depend on the “duration of the West Asia conflict and how quickly normalcy returns to energy markets post conflict,” Gupta added.

Efficient coordination between monetary and fiscal policies has resulted in better management of inflation, she said.

The probability of El-Nino is unlikely ​to have a significant impact ​on ⁠agriculture, which has become more resilient to shocks, she noted.

Her comments come amid concerns that the Indian economy is expected to face inflationary pressure from rising petroleum product prices, following state elections.

On Thursday, HSBC downgraded India to underweight from neutral, a month after downgrading it from overweight.

The projections are in sync with the estimates of the Indian government and various multilateral agencies, the Mint newspaper reported.

The World Bank has projected India’s FY27 growth at 6.6% amid higher energy prices and supply chain disruptions. Despite this, New Delhi remains among the fastest-growing major economies, it said.

After the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc, US military hegemony and the dominance of the world’s reserve currency turned the United States into a global center for the capitalization of resources – the supreme beneficiary of the outflow of capital, brains, and ambitious youth from across the world. Only twenty-five years have passed since the apotheosis of the food-chain “finalists” was captured in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History, and already the desperate Donald Trump, calling to “Make America Great Again,” has drawn a line under Pax Americana.

What, then, happened?

A different country

Over the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the twenty-first, the population of the United States grew by one hundred million people. Yet this impressive growth conceals a deep deficit: the United States is experiencing a decline in the production of life itself.

Since the 1970s, the American population has increased only due to immigration. Within the country’s own social space, the number of births has steadily fallen while mortality has risen. The story of religious salvation and the shine of economic success have turned into their opposites: a stream of seekers of the “American miracle,” inflated by financialization of GDP and the Pyrrhic victory of globalization, continues to pour in – but life itself is ebbing away from America.

In 2023, the number of births in the US dropped to the level of 1979, when the nation’s population was a third smaller than it is now. Fertility has declined to 1.6 children per woman (see chart below), and among white Americans to 1.5. Depopulation now affects all major demographic groups – not only whites, but also African Americans and Hispanics.

Because immigrants are predominantly from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, those communities continue to grow in the US, while the share of white Americans has plummeted. In the United States that, together with the USSR, won World War II, white Americans of European descent made up almost 90% of the population. In 1990, they still accounted for 80%; in 2010, for 72%; and by 2020 their share had dropped sharply to 62% (see maps below).

Spread of white American population over time

According to the 2020 census, whites became a minority in America’s three largest cities: New York (31%), Los Angeles (25%), and Chicago (31%), as well as in Washington, D.C. (38%). The 2020 demographic map clearly shows that the phrase “a different country” is no exaggeration – it merely records a demographic, genealogical, and ethnocultural transformation.

It is certain that since 2020 this transformation has only intensified, especially after President Biden effectively opened the border with Mexico. According to estimates from his opponents, another 10 million immigrants have moved to the United States.

Meanwhile, the 2020 census not only documented the declining proportion of white Americans but also recorded something unprecedented: for the first time in US history, the absolute number of white Americans decreased, by 5.1 million people in ten years.

The accelerating decline of the white population – a bitter hangover from the “end of history” – indicates that the elite of the “golden billion” is rotting at the root. The inflow of culturally different immigrants deepens the decay of the American nation but is not its primary cause. In a striking paradox, the inhabitants of the world’s most privileged summit have stopped reproducing and, even more strangely for a highly developed country, have begun dying more often.

Depression of the nation

Anne Case and Angus Deaton documented and analyzed the rise in mortality among Americans during the first two decades of the 21st century – particularly among white people aged 45–54 – due to alcoholism, suicide, and opioid addiction. In their study titled Deaths of Despair, the authors indict large pharmaceutical corporations, their lobbyists in Congress, and collaborators in the medical community who, in pursuit of profit, have cultivated widespread dependence on dangerous and addictive painkillers.

Another “progressive” way of combating alcoholism and mass depression has been the legalization of soft drugs. This created a legal and rapidly growing marijuana market worth $50 billion annually, a market now being exploited by fast-food giants as a related line of business. According to some estimates, the lion’s share of marijuana production remains under the control of drug cartels; since legalization, it has become much harder for police to maintain any semblance of order.

Scientific data add to the picture: over the past 30 years, the content of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the main psychoactive component of cannabis – has quadrupled in the US supply.

The lobbyists for marijuana legalization promised it would reduce alcohol consumption. Marijuana has indeed “defeated” alcohol in the sense that its use now exceeds alcohol consumption in the US – but that does not mean alcohol use has declined. At the end of the yellow-line curve on the relevant graph, there is only a minor rebound after the spike in alcoholism during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Doctors warn that cannabis consumption – especially with THC levels four times higher than in the past – dramatically increases the risk of psychosis. Half of American teenagers now exhibit symptoms of depression, and dissatisfaction with life among US teens has doubled in the past decade. Psychologist Jean Twenge links this surge in youth depression to the pervasive internalization of digital social networks, and she is right. Yet it is also striking how closely her depression-trend graph mirrors the rise in marijuana use.

Many such “spikes” of problematic growth can be seen across US social data: symptoms of depression among youth have doubled; the number of daily marijuana users has reached 18 million people; 42% of the population is now overweight; the share of the LGBT community in the US has grown to 5.6%, and among Generation Z (born 1997–2002) to 15.9% of adults. (Gallup, notably, interprets this not as a problem but as a “progressive trend.”)

Growing anomie

The phenomena observed in recent years – the unprecedented decline of the native-born population and the growth of replacement immigration; the simultaneous increase in alcohol and marijuana use amid opioid addiction and mass obesity; the unnatural depression among youth alongside an unnatural transformation of sexual identity – all this, taken together, indicates that the United States has entered a phase of social anomie. To test this hypothesis, let us examine data on crime and homicide rates.

In 2020, there were 21,570 murders in the US – an immediate 30% increase compared to 2019, the largest single-year rise ever recorded in the country. Explaining this by the socioeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic seems unconvincing, since all countries faced pandemic-related challenges, yet this dramatic surge in murders occurred specifically in the United States.

It is enough to compare the US trend with that of Russia, which under Putin has been moving steadily away from the dire criminal records of its post-Soviet collapse.

As can be seen, the number of homicides in Russia continues to fall, reaching historical lows for the country, while in the US, after the 2020 surge, the homicide rate stabilized at a much higher level.

The frequency of murders naturally correlates with overall crime levels. And since everything is known by comparison, let us again compare the US with Russia – which, to be fair, still remains far from the safest country in the world. The chart from 2020 shows the rates of murders, assaults, robberies, and rapes per 1 million residents in both nations.

The diagram is quite telling. One could assume that in Russia many assaults or rapes go unreported, but it’s hard to imagine the same about robberies. So if Russia’s crime rate, though still high, has declined, then the US is currently experiencing a true crime wave.

In addition, the United States has been swept by a surge of spontaneous street violence: the number of aggravated assaults in 2020 rose by 100,000 cases from the previous year, reaching 922,000 incidents.

The trigger for the police crisis and the sharp rise in crime in 2020 was the high-profile case of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin. Floyd – who died during arrest while under the influence of a large drug dose – became the icon of the Black Lives Matter protest movement. The police officer Chauvin, who detained Floyd and was charged with his death, became the scapegoat of liberal crusaders against alleged police violence and was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.

The vilification of police and the tolerance of street crime, elevated to public policy, became a vivid expression of social anomie and a factor in its amplification. Thus, the post-2020 rise in crime is entirely logical. Here are a few notable examples:

Freight train raids have grown in arithmetic progression. In 2023, US shippers reported 1,183 cases of cargo theft, causing total losses of $694 million per year. The West Coast and California’s Central Valley are especially affected; in California, 54% of passing freight trains are attacked.

Union Pacific, the nation’s largest railroad company, considered rerouting because theft in Los Angeles County was harming business. In the three months preceding the holiday shopping season, an average of 90 containers per day were broken into, and over 100 arrests were made – but local courts treated these as petty offenses and released offenders within 24 hours, as the company’s letter to the Los Angeles district attorney complained.

Metal thieves have gone from raiding bridges, Tesla charging stations, and traffic lights to cutting main telephone lines, including those used by emergency services. In Washington State, 2-3 incidents of copper cable theft occur weekly, with each requiring up to 48 hours of repair and costing at least $100,000 per episode.

In New York, moped robberies have sharply increased. Gangs of illegal migrants enter cafés and restaurants, rob patrons, and escape before police arrive. In 2023 there were 32 such incidents, and in just the first six months of 2024 – 116.

When mass aggressiveness combines with a policing crisis, both criminal violence and broader social irresponsibility increase. Another manifestation of social anomie is reckless behavior on the roads and a rise in traffic fatalities. And since road mortality has long been a painful issue for Russia, let us again compare.

We see that traffic-death rates in the US follow the same upward trend as murder rates, reflecting the general rise in crime. In fact, the US level of these negative phenomena has now surpassed that of the Russian Federation.

Destruction of civil cohesion

Particular attention should be paid to the fact that the rise of anomie in the United States coincides with the degeneration of productive social inequality into counter-productive social divergence. Inequality, when moderate, is necessary for social order and development – but it always carries the risk of destroying civic unity and marginalizing the poor. Therefore, the state must constantly keep inequality within bounds that allow the competition of private interests to coexist with national cohesion.

The consolidation of the nation during World War II and the subsequent rise of the United States in its rivalry with the Soviet Union would have been impossible without the so-called egalitarian revolution – an unprecedented reduction of inequality during the war and the thirty post-war years that followed. Franklin Roosevelt’s and later Dwight Eisenhower’s progressive taxation on super-incomes – at rates from 72 % to 94 % – together with a progressive inheritance tax, subsidized retraining for demobilized servicemen, and the broad democratization of education, as well as Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty programs in 1964, all reduced inequality in the United States to its historical minimum and ensured the flourishing of the American middle class.

The radical liberalism that triumphed under Ronald Reagan launched the reverse process – an elitist counter-revolution, the essence of which was the financialization of capitalism and the concentration of financial assets in an ever-narrower elite. What came of it? “The Triumph of Injustice” – that is how economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman titled their analysis of the long, bipartisan policy of lowering taxes for the rich and for corporations, and of tolerating large-scale tax avoidance through the practical abolition of the inheritance tax and the rise of a whole industry helping corporations hide profits in offshore accounts. As a result, the US tax system became regressive. During Donald Trump’s first presidency, for the first time in a century, billionaires paid a smaller share of their income in taxes than steelworkers, teachers, or pensioners. And this, note, is not a purely American phenomenon: in this matter the Browns, Macrons, and Trumps of the entire globalized West agree with one another.

The calculations of these cited authors may be debated – but the objective reality cannot. Hyper-concentration of capital eliminates democracy: the American middle class has disappeared, and in nine cases out of ten, children no longer live better than their parents. To confirm this, let us look at the distribution of household wealth in the US:

Percentile GroupShare of National Wealth (%) 1990 Q4Share 2024 Q3Top 1 %14.922.080–99 %43.746.860–80 %18.214.640–60 %12.68.720–40 %7.54.70–20 %3.13.1

Source: Federal Reserve System, “Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989.”

From these figures we can conclude the following. The concentration of wealth in the United States has risen even further over the past thirty-three years. In 1990, the wealthiest fifth of households owned 58.6 % of all assets; by 2024, that figure had reached 68.8 %, while the remaining 80 % of households share only 31.1 %.

The bottom two quintiles (40 %) of poor households became even poorer: their meager share of assets fell from 10.6 % in 1990 to 7.8 % by 2025. The next two quintiles (another 40 %), representing the traditional middle class, suffered the greatest losses: their share shrank from 30.8 % to 23.3 %.

Even within the top fifth, wealth is highly unevenly distributed: of the 68.8 % of all household assets held by the top 20 %, nearly one-third belongs to the richest 1 %. And among that top 1 %, wealth is growing faster than for anyone else: from roughly 15 % to 22 % of all assets. In essence, almost all growth in American wealth now fits within the “golden” boundaries of this one-percent elite.

Ranked globally by the decile coefficient (DC) – the ratio of the income share of the richest 10 % to that of the poorest 10 % – the United States, with a value of 13.7, holds 96th place, showing more inequality than any other developed nation except Israel (14.5) and the United Kingdom (13.8).

The COVID-19 pandemic and the economic recession it triggered drastically worsened the condition of low-income groups. Looking at the enormous number of COVID deaths in the United States – over 1.138 million – it is important to note that in poor counties, people died from the virus nearly twice as often as in wealthier ones. At the same time, large-scale government spending drove up stock and housing prices, which, in turn, further enriched the wealthy while deepening poverty. A radical manifestation of mass pauperization is the rise in homelessness: according to the Institute of Global Homelessness, the US has 653,100 homeless people.

Income and educational polarization strongly correlate with racial and ethnic composition, leading to territorial segregation between states, counties, and cities – rich and white on one side, poor and non-white on the other. This is clearly visible on CNN’s detailed map “Race and Ethnicity Across the Nation.”

Segregation is most dramatic in the largest metropolises, where ultra-wealthy white districts border impoverished Black and Latino neighborhoods. This extreme polarization breeds anomie – vividly illustrated by New Year’s scenes of looting amid the ashes of elite Los Angeles villas. Perhaps it was not just looting: a viral video showing an arsonist suggests that the causes of California’s “most expensive wildfire” were as much social as natural.

If we compare the racial-ethnic map of Greater Los Angeles with a map of California wildfires, we can see that the fires engulfed areas of expensive real estate owned by the white minority. On the map, white population clusters are marked in blue, and the fire zones outlined in green overlap them.

In recent years, “Latino” sectors on the US map have clearly expanded. There are now over 60 million Latinos – roughly 20 % of the population – and they have become the predominant ethnic group in California and Texas. When migrants fill up the areas they have already settled, they move into neighboring ones, and former residents quickly move out. A more radical method of “redistribution” is the fire.

In the US, people now openly talk about civil war, and Hollywood has even portrayed it on screen. Everything suggests that, in Marxist terms, the agenda now includes a class war – with a racial dimension. Whoever writes the script, the villas of Hollywood seem destined to become a theater of combat.

Another terrifying manifestation of social breakdown was the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, a crime that defies the usual American categories of violence: psychopathic mass shootings, criminal feuds, killer cops, or partisan hunts for autocrats. The disinterested killing of the head of one of America’s largest companies, and the public sympathy for his 26-year-old killer Luigi Mangione, strongly recalls the social-revolutionary pathos of Russia’s early-twentieth-century “storm petrels.”

The black-hole effect

Luigi Mangione’s act would never have resonated so widely were it not for the public’s perception of health-insurance executives as people who turned medicine into a cynical business built on human suffering. Even those who condemn the murderer are compelled to acknowledge that they understand his motives and share his resentment toward the existing insurance-based healthcare system.

Let specialists debate the details of how that system functions; for assessing social well-being, what matters most are the cost and the result.

Healthcare in the United States is both a major component of the economy and an embodiment of the American spirit: private providers deliver medical services whose high cost is partly reimbursed through competing insurance systems, including public programs, while the rest is paid directly by patients. As a result, US medical spending is roughly twice the OECD average, amounting to about 18 percent of the nation’s GDP – the largest in the world.

Roughly half of that astronomical sum consists of government spending (federal and state budgets), and the other half comes from private sources (insurance premiums and out-of-pocket payments).

And regarding the growth of US GDP: the share prices of health-insurance corporations keep climbing, as do the prices of medical services, equipment, and pharmaceuticals. The flip side of this growth is grim: 66.5 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the country are linked to medical expenses. In the realm of “medical bankruptcies,” the United States is an unmatched world leader.

The nation’s achievements in increasing life expectancy, however, are far more modest. Despite leading the world in healthcare spending, the US does not rank among the top 30 developed countries where average life expectancy reaches or exceeds 80 years. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the US even fell below China in global life-expectancy rankings.

According to the data, US life expectancy stopped rising after 2010, never reaching 79 years. In China, the indicator continues to grow; in Russia, after a post-COVID dip, it has already surpassed the pre-pandemic level. But in the United States, life expectancy has not returned to pre-pandemic figures.

Another universal indicator of a healthcare system’s quality is infant-mortality rate. This metric reflects not only medical standards but also the state’s commitment to social responsibility and the overall culture of preserving life. And by this measure, the world’s top spender on healthcare looks unimpressive: the US ranks 48th in infant-mortality, between North Macedonia and Uruguay.

In the 2020s, the US infant-mortality rate has not decreased – it has even risen, reaching 5.6 deaths per 1,000 live births. By 2016, Russia had already overtaken the US on this metric and continues to lower infant mortality; China, according to recent data, has now surpassed the US as well.

But nowhere is the failure of the American healthcare system more vividly exposed than in comparison with Cuba: the island’s GDP per capita is six times smaller, yet its infant-mortality rate (3.94) is significantly lower than that of the transcontinental “American democracy.”

The lag of the United States behind China and Russia in manufacturing, agriculture, and several high-tech sectors is no longer news. But what is important is to grasp the general trend and the historical scale of transformation. Today, the metropolis of the globalized West has become a hotbed of social anomie, its viability sustained solely by assimilating external resources – every resource it can reach. As long as the American ruling elites continue to think of themselves as the subject of “global law,” the social well-being of the United States – and of the rest of the world – will remain a zero-sum game.

A total of 2,500 people have registered on a new Russian portal designed for skilled foreign nationals seeking expedited relocation, with 170 applicants having already submitted all the documentation, the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) has reported.

ASI established the Headquarters for Support of Repatriation and Adaptation in late 2024, following an order from Russian President Vladimir Putin to streamline the relocation of skilled foreigners.

The body brings together representatives from the Presidential Administration, the State Duma, federal ministries, state corporations and pilot regions to coordinate the effort.

Russian officials presented the figures on Wednesday at a meeting of ASI’s headquarters, covering the first nine days since the “Time to Live in Russia” portal launched on April 15.

“We managed to develop and launch a mechanism to attract foreign specialists who are of interest to Russia in a fairly short time,” ASI head Svetlana Chupsheva said. She noted that the new process provides a clear path for talented foreigners who want to contribute to the country’s development.

Coordination is led by the Agency for Attracting Foreign Talent (APIT). The head of the agency, Irina Korotkova, said 54% of applicants who submitted full documentation are in-demand specialists, 16% are students and 15% are scientists; the average age ranges between 40 and 45.

Russia’s Interior Ministry has issued the necessary orders to implement the decree, First Deputy Head of the Migration Service Konstantin Bukreev said. Under a separate program, the ministry has already received nearly 3,400 applications for temporary residence permits from citizens of Western countries, he added.

Alexander Vaino, the headquarters’ secretary, said 14 of the 40 planned measures have been completed, including allowing visa issuance at any Russian consulate and simplifying access to state services.

Officials also approved an updated “Regional Standard” for adapting foreign arrivals. The framework formalizes a federal operator, introduces the term “repatriate” and is due to be rolled out across 14 regions, including Moscow and Kaliningrad.

New Delhi has hit back at US President Donald Trump’s controversial social media repost of a commentary that called India and China “hellholes.”

The US president on Thursday reposted a letter from American conservative political commentator and radio host Michael Savage describing immigrants from India as “gangsters with laptops.”

In a response posted on X, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal termed the remarks as “obviously uninformed, inappropriate, and in poor taste.” 

“They certainly do not reflect the reality of the India-US relationship, which has long been based on mutual respect and shared interests,” Jaiswal posted.

Our response to media queries regarding a social media post ⬇️

🔗 https://t.co/m9qhUcH9XP pic.twitter.com/bJJHid8g3i

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) April 23, 2026

The US Embassy in New Delhi reacted to Trump’s controversial post by praising US-India ties. “The President [Trump] has said India is a great country with a very good friend of mine [Prime Minister Narendra Modi] at the top,” an embassy spokesperson said.

Podcaster Savage’s message criticizing the US birthright citizenship laws also claimed that immigrants have done more damage to US than “all the mafia families put together.” It also alleged bias in internal hiring mechanisms, claiming they are “run by Indians and Chinese.”

US Congressman Ami Bera, a Democrat and son of Indian immigrants, called Trump’s post “offensive, ignorant, and beneath the dignity of the office he holds.” “They reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of who we are as a nation. America has always been strengthened by generations of immigrants who come here, work hard, and contribute to our country,” he wrote.

The fresh diplomatic row comes ahead of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s scheduled visit to New Delhi later this month, in what is seen by foreign policy commenters as an attempt to ease tensions amid ongoing turmoil in the Middle East as a result of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Trump earlier courted controversy by claiming he was instrumental in preventing a nuclear war between India and Pakistan during a military standoff last year. New Delhi has denied that Washington brokered a ceasefire.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has dismantled a neo-Nazi cell that was plotting to assassinate officials from the country’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor. The suspects, some of whom were minors, were allegedly directed by Ukrainian intelligence to prepare car bombs and gather personal data on the agency’s top brass.

The ringleader was killed in a shootout, and investigators seized weapons, grenades, homemade explosives, and neo-Nazi imagery from the hideouts. A total of seven group members were apprehended in raids across multiple Russian cities.

The suspects testified that they were gathering and sharing personal information about Roskomnadzor head Andrey Lipov and his deputies and discussed ways to attack their cars.

Among the suspects are several minors, who have regularly been the target of recruitment efforts by Ukrainian intelligence services in recent years using grooming and blackmail, often through the Telegram messenger.

RT correspondent Murad Gazdiev has compiled a full report on the investigation, Ukraine’s continued recruitment activities, and Russia’s efforts to get Telegram to take action against destructive content on its platform.

Watch the full report below.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has likely participated in embezzlement involving the country’s top officials, Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC), has claimed.

Kiev has been rocked by several corruption scandals in the last few years, with the most notable occurring in November 2025 when anti-graft agencies uncovered a $100 million kickback scheme at the state nuclear operator Energoatom.

The investigation implicated Timur Mindich, a close associate of Zelensky, as the mastermind of the criminal operation. The scandal led to the resignations of several high-ranking officials, including the Ukrainian leader’s influential chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, and Energy Minister German Galushchenko, who was later arrested.

In her interview with Ukrainska Pravda last week, Kaleniuk said that there is “a high probability” that Zelensky was “directly involved” in corruption, despite him repeatedly denying any knowledge of any schemes by members of his government.

“All of his closest friends and most likely he himself built homes for themselves” since he came to power, the head of the Ukrainian NGO, which has been around since 2012 and receives funding from the EU and US, stressed.

“The anti-corruption bodies that are doing their job can stop doing their job at any moment,” Kaleniuk warned.

The Ukrainian leader already tried putting NABU and SAPO under his control last summer, but was forced to reverse course after backlash from Kiev’s foreign backers and protests in the streets.

Despite the ongoing corruption scandals, the EU approved another €90 billion ($106 billion) for Ukraine on Thursday, with the European Council saying that it would begin disbursements “as soon as possible” in the second quarter of 2026.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharov insisted previously that the US and EU, which “coddled” Zelensky, should share the responsibility for the corruption in Ukraine.

Once the Nazis were done, quite a few people started scratching their heads. Obviously one thing to baffle any sane observer was the sheer enormity of their crimes, accomplished, moreover, with frenetic, really start-upish drive and ambition in a mere 12 years: World War? Check. Genocides? Check. Bad hairstyle? Check.

But then, there also was another puzzle: How could their self-besotted visionary-in-chief, hobby philosopher (with a bent to sinister German stuff), and obviously mentally less-than-stable wannabe genius of a leader have gotten a whole nation of, apparently, reasonably educated people to go along? And not just go along, but go along to the very, very bitter end.

That question was all the more disturbing in view of the fact that Adolf Hitler had not been shy about displaying his insanity and extremely bad intentions well before conservative elites installed him in power in 1933. Hitler’s book-length – indeed two-volume – manifesto of German fascism (AKA Nazism) Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and 1926, sold more than 12 million copies and was translated into over a dozen languages.

Those ready to brave its pathological me-me-me-and-HISTORY narcissism, daft hodge-podge ramblings about the better and the lesser parts of humanity, and brownshirt-bro bombast could not say that the future Leader had been concealing where he intended to lead Germany and, really, the world.

Indeed, Hitler’s manifesto could have served as an all-alarms-howling, bright-red-lights-flashing-everywhere, get-the-straitjackets-now warning. The main points of Nazi Germany’s evil to come were all there, laid out in general but with stunning honesty: empire building with industrial-strength brutality, extermination or at least slavery for those considered inferior and superfluous, and last but not least, eternal primacy of one master country, to be achieved and maintained by all and any means, because that country – in Hitler’s case Germany – was defined as superior to all others and called upon to lead the world, forever.

It is one of those bitter ironies of history that Alex Karp, CEO of the very peculiar software company Palantir, who regularly refers to his Jewish family background and what it would have meant for him under the Nazis, has recently released a manifesto that also should serve as a warning to the rest of us. A summary of his longer tract ‘The Technological Republic’ (co-authored with Nicholas Zamiska) the 22-point X post has provoked a great backlash.

These are not overreactions. Karp’s Palantir Manifesto really is an astonishingly open exploration of a very sick mind’s vision for the future of humanity, arguing, in effect, for an open-ended AI arms race, bringing back German and Japanese militarism, racism masked as realism about cultural backwardness (as it happens, also a Nazi “Kulturträger” move, which Karp should have heard about in his German years), and, last but not least, letting our brilliant billionaires and new elites in general off the hook when they mess up. How unselfish.

It is also painfully, criminally badly written in a style that combines mock-Oswald Spengler Götterdämmerung kitsch (“The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.”) with sheer non-sequitur inanity (Why, again, can’t we have economic growth and security without any of that “ruling class decadence”?).

There are passages that read like young Jordan Peterson – age 15 and on too much Diet Coke – trying to be deep, really, really deep for the first time: “Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed” and “our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.”

After the inimitable practice of America’s war idiot-in-chief Don Tzu of Hormuz, Alex and his Palantir friends are giving us their I Ching of the tech dim. Lucky us: So much American primacy and then we get Silicon Valley meta, too!

Yet farcical as Karp’s manifesto is, it is, of course, a deadly serious matter. After all, we live in a world where Palantir has already risen to far too much power. Founded as a CIA spin-off after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and backed by totally normal “transhumanist” and Antichrist-obsessive Peter Thiel, Palantir has grown into a bloody monster, combining, in true fascist style, the logics of efficiency and extermination with its software tools, such as Gotham, Foundry, or Maven, while mass-spying on everything and everyone it can, and systematically embedding itself in international business and government to become – or appear – indispensable.

But Palantir never rests. While deeply and proudly involved in genocidal slaughters and imperialist warfare, it also subverts peacetime societies pervasively. In Britain, for instance, a backlash has set in against the state’s reckless handing over of police powers and extremely sensitive data (for instance, in the spheres of finance and health) to the American CIA-offshoot gone rogue. In Germany, Palantir systems are used for policing in at least three of its federal states, Hesse, North-Rhine Westphalia, and Bavaria. In the US, Palantir has, of course, already so deeply invaded the state that it does not only help it fight its criminal wars abroad but also, for instance, terrorize its migrants and some non-migrants, too, at home.

Indeed, Palantir is so evil that even its own employees are beginning to wonder if they might, actually, be the bad guys. Hint: Yes, you are.

For the rest of us, that is, almost all of us on this planet afflicted by Silicon Valley: It’s time to believe them when they tell us to our faces that they are coming for us. Palantir is a clear and present danger. Its CEO is an extremely dangerous maniac, its mission is subversion, surveillance, and violence, and its only Achilles heel may be that old nemesis of the wicked: hubris. The sort of hubris that makes you announce your horrible aims in a manifesto we should call Alex Karp’s Mein AI.

A group of Russian neo-Nazis guided by Ukraine has been foiled while conspiring to conduct a bomb attack against the leadership of the Russian media regulator, Roskomnadzor, the Federal Security Service (FSB) reported on Friday.

A total of seven members of the network were targeted in a series of raids in Moscow, Ufa, Novosibirsk, and Yaroslavl last Saturday, the statement said. A man in his early 20s identified as the ringleader was killed in the Russian capital after opening fire at officers trying to apprehend him, the agency said.

According to footage released by the FSB, at least two of the suspects are female and all are young adults. In their interviews they said they were gathering and sharing personal information about Roskomnadzor head Andrey Lipov and his deputies and discussed ways to attack their cars.

At some addresses, officers seized neo-Nazi imagery, including hand-drawn swastikas and what appeared to be an Imperial Russian flag with a pattern associated with white supremacism, the video showed. Officers also found a collection of weapons, including a silenced handgun that the ringleader reportedly used during the firefight in which he was killed, a hand grenade, and a 1-kilogram homemade bomb.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who moved from Russia to the United Arab Emirates, is a vocal advocate of maximum free speech. His position has resulted in friction with many governments over the years, infamously including France, where he was charged with assisting crimes in which alleged perpetrators used the messenger to communicate.

The FSB’s long-standing position is that foreign messengers that fail to cooperate with Russian investigations are de facto tools of Ukrainian special services, used to radicalize the youth and recruit citizens susceptible to coercion for various crimes, including targeted assassinations.

A US Army Green Beret has been arrested on charges that he used classified information from the operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to place high-stakes bets on prediction markets already rocked by billions of dollars in suspiciously timed wagers during the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Prosecutors say Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke wagered some $32,000 on Polymarket and pocketed more than $400,000 by betting on Maduro’s removal from power, using insider knowledge from his role in planning and executing the January raid.

According to the Justice Department, Van Dyke faces charges including wire fraud, commodities fraud, and unlawful use of government information. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a parallel complaint, while Polymarket said it flagged the suspicious activity itself and cooperated with investigators.

During the US-Israeli war on Iran, prediction and traditional financial markets saw a flood of suspiciously well-timed bets tied to airstrikes, ceasefires, unexpected statements, and diplomatic twists.

Traders placed more than $1 billion in “perfectly timed” wagers, including an $850,000 bet just before US strikes on Iran and roughly $950 million in oil futures hours before US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, according to The Guardian. That announcement alone generated more than 413 million bets and over $100 million in wagers across prediction markets in just a few days, according to AP.

Reporter: There are also bets being placed on the Iran conflict. People suspect there is insider trading happening. Are you concerned?

Trump: Unfortunately, the whole world has become somewhat of a casino. I don't like it conceptually. It is what it is. pic.twitter.com/t1OPOUWHub

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 23, 2026

Scrutiny has also fallen on the Trump family’s links to the industry over potential conflicts of interest. The New York Times reported in January that Donald Trump Jr. had advisory ties to Polymarket and rival firm Kalshi, and had an investment in the former through his venture firm, 1789 Capital.

Trump himself downplayed the betting frenzy on Thursday, saying he was “not happy with any of that stuff” but adding that “the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino.”

Iran is not seeking war, but it is ready to keep fighting, Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow, Kazem Jalali, has told RT in an exclusive interview, arguing that the Islamic Republic has never been the side to abandon diplomacy despite repeated stabs in the back.

“The general policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is that if the other side is willing to negotiate, we will negotiate. If they want war, we will fight,” Jalali told RT on Thursday.

The ambassador stressed that Tehran has never “betrayed” or left the negotiating table, which is exactly what Washington did in February and earlier under US President Donald Trump.

“In the record of the US President, there was the tearing up of the JCPOA, and there have been two attacks against us while talks were ongoing,” he said.

“If they want to continue this trend, it is natural that the Islamic Republic of Iran will fight. But if they intend to negotiate, we are ready for systematic negotiations with strong guarantees to establish lasting peace and to preserve and protect Iran’s rights and compensate for our losses,” he added.

Tehran has pushed back hard on that narrative. In a coordinated show of unity on Thursday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf published near-identical statements declaring that there are no “hardliners” or “moderates” in Iran, only “Iranians and revolutionaries.” They vowed that the country’s “ironclad unity” would make the aggressor regret its actions.

The standoff continues around the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has tightened its grip on global shipping and the US has imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports, intercepting or turning away at least 30 vessels.

Trump further raised the stakes on Thursday by saying he had ordered the US Navy to “shoot and kill” any Iranian boats allegedly laying mines in the waterway. Tehran considers the blockade a direct breach of the ceasefire and has argued that any talks are pointless as long as it remains in place.

US President Donald Trump has said that he would like to see his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Miami, but expressed doubt that he would actually come.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the White House intends to invite Putin to the G20 summit in December, while a senior administration official said Russia would be welcome at both ministerial meetings and the leaders’ summit.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Pankin said there was already an invitation for Russia to participate “at the highest level,” but it is too early to say who will attend. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov likewise said Moscow will decide closer to the date who will represent Russia.

“I’m of the opinion that you talk to everybody. I’m not one of these guys who [says] ‘Oh, let’s not talk to him,’” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “If you’re a smart person, if you have control over your emotions… I’m somebody that believes in talking.”

“I don’t know that he’s coming. I doubt he’d come, to be honest with you,” he added.

The summit is scheduled for December 14-15 in Miami, with Trump set to host it at his Doral golf resort. Putin has not attended a G20 summit in person since 2019, initially because of the pandemic and later amid the fallout from the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Moscow, however, has little interest in the old G8 logic Trump keeps invoking. Peskov previously said the G8 “has lost its relevance” for Russia, while the G7 looks “bleak” and “ineffective” compared to the G20. He has also argued that the G7 no longer reflects the real balance of the global economy, whereas the G20 includes the major growth centers and “better reflects the economic locomotives of the world.”

US President Donald Trump has lashed out at a reporter who asked whether his threats to destroy Iranian civilization meant he was ready to use a nuclear weapon, dismissing the question as “stupid.”

The exchange took place at the White House on Thursday, where a journalist recalled Trump’s April 7 warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if Tehran did not accept his terms, a remark widely condemned as apocalyptic and potentially genocidal.

“Why would a stupid question like that be asked? Why would I use a nuclear weapon when we’ve totally, in a very conventional way, decimated them without it? No, I wouldn’t use it,” Trump said, adding that a “nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody.”

.@POTUS to Jim Acosta's girlfriend (@ElizLanders) when she asks one of the dumbest questions ever — if he'd use a nuclear weapon on Iran:

"Why would a stupid question like that be asked?... No, I wouldn't use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody." pic.twitter.com/U235920fwD

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 23, 2026

The US president used the occasion to once again boast about the scale of American military damage inflicted on Iran, while suggesting that any rearmament by Tehran during the ceasefire could be knocked out in “about one day” if necessary. He also said he could make a deal immediately, but wanted one that was “everlasting.”

Washington indefinitely extended the ceasefire earlier this week, expecting a “unified” proposal from Tehran, while keeping the US blockade of Iranian ports in place, even as follow-up talks with the Islamic Republic stalled and tensions persisted around the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has made clear there is no firm timeline for ending the war, telling Fox News on Wednesday that there was “no time frame,” and urging critics not to “rush” him again on Thursday.

“They did not achieve their goals through military aggression, nor will they through bullying. The only way forward is to recognize the rights of the Iranian nation,” Ghalibaf wrote on X on Thursday.

David Wilcock, a self-styled American UFO researcher and a prominent paranormal content creator and author, has been found dead in what has been ruled a suicide.

The incident happened days after US President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances of nearly a dozen American scientists starting in 2023. The researchers had access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded nuclear and space secrets.

In a statement on Monday, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office reported that at approximately 10:44 AM, a person called 911. The dispatcher suspected that the caller “was experiencing a mental health crisis.” When deputies reached the residence northeast of the town of Nederland, they encountered an armed man, who “used the weapon on himself” within minutes of their arrival, the statement said.

On Wednesday, the Office of the Boulder County Coroner identified the 53-year-old victim as David Wilcock.

He was a vocal member of the so-called disclosure movement, whose adherents believe that the US government is withholding information from the public regarding UFOs and aliens.

Wilcock had hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube and Facebook and authored a number of books, including such bestsellers as ‘The Source Field Investigations’ and ‘The Synchronicity Key’.

“I want you all to know how much I love and appreciate you,” Wilcock wrote.

His suspected suicide came amid increased public scrutiny into the deaths and disappearances of at least ten US scientists and researchers over the past few years. The puzzling circumstances surrounding their cases have spawned online speculation ranging from foreign espionage to a government cover-up of classified UFO research.

Speaking to reporters last Thursday, Trump announced that he had instructed the authorities to look into what he described as “pretty serious stuff.”

An unknown applicant has reportedly filed to register the first-ever LGBTQ-themed TV channel in Hungary.

It comes just two days after the EU Court of Justice struck down a law passed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban restricting or banning the “promotion” of homosexuality and gender change in media accessible to children. The 2021 legislation was found in violation of the values the EU is supposedly built upon, and the court ordered Budapest to repeal the law or face further action, including financial penalties.  

Shortly after the ruling was made public, an unknown entity filed an application to register the first LGBTQ-themed channel in the country, Hungarian outlet Media1 reported on Thursday, citing sources. The project, Rainbow TV, aims to reach a wider audience and will include a variety of content such as cultural programming, arts, music, culinary segments, talk shows, and interviews.

The EU court ruling came less than ten days after Orban suffered a decisive election defeat to his former ally and longtime rival Peter Magyar. The incoming PM has campaigned on mending ties with Brussels and securing more than €16 billion ($19 billion) of bloc funding for the country, withheld under Orban over allegations of corruption and rule-of-law issues. 

The incoming government will have to weigh the costs of a rapprochement with the EU and the risk of irking the country’s conservatives if it repeals the LGBTQ propaganda law. While Magyar largely kept quiet about sexual minority issues during his campaign, he pledged to shape Hungary into a country “where no one is stigmatized for thinking differently than the majority or loving differently than the majority.”

The fallout from the US‑Israeli war on Iran is spreading across the global economy, driving up costs, disrupting supply chains, and leaving consumers to absorb the impact as trade flows shift. A growing number of companies have warned of higher costs and weaker demand as disruptions to energy supplies and shipping routes linked to the Hormuz chokepoint ripple through global markets. 

Global businesses under pressure 

Higher fuel prices, shipping delays and more expensive raw materials are weighing on companies across industries. According to a Reuters review, more than 20 firms globally have cut or withdrawn financial guidance since the Iran war began, while 32 have signaled price increases and 31 have warned of a financial hit. Executives reportedly say the pressure is coming through higher freight bills, pricier oil-linked inputs and persistent uncertainty over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.  

Manufacturers are facing rising costs for oil‑based materials and transport. Leading tech company TE Connectivity said it would have to pass on higher freight and resin costs if the war drags on, while 3M warned that rising oil prices could lift product prices. British goods conglomerate Reckitt also flagged weaker margins due to higher energy costs. 

Supply disruptions spread 

Logistics disruptions are slowing deliveries and affecting production across sectors. French food group Danone has reported war‑related disruption to baby‑formula shipments, which it says could translate into temporary shortages or higher shelf prices in some markets. Elevator maker Otis has also warned of delays in equipment sales due to shipping issues and tariffs. 

Malaysia’s Karex Berhad, the world’s largest condom maker, has warned of 20-30% price increases as the conflict pushes up the cost of synthetic rubber, nitrile, packaging, and lubricants while doubling shipping times. “We have no choice but to transfer the costs right now to the customers,” chief executive Goh Miah Kiat told Reuters.   

Dulux paint maker AkzoNobel has said its “raw material basket” is set to increase by a high‑teens percentage as oil-based inputs and freight become more expensive, raising the prospect of more costly paints and coatings.  

Unexpected winners 

Attention is also increasingly turning to the Strait of Malacca, a key shipping lane linking the Indian and Pacific oceans and a critical route for energy supplies to Asia. The 900-km-long strait carries a large share of global maritime oil trade, with more than 20 million barrels passing through daily, making it one of the world’s most important chokepoints alongside the Strait of Hormuz. 

Consumers take the hit

Airlines and tour operators have raised fares and added fuel surcharges, while in some cases cutting capacity, making travel more expensive and less available. 

The latest S&P Global surveys show that across the euro zone economic activity has contracted while input costs have surged, driven by higher production costs and supply shortages.  

The European Commission has warned that the EU’s fossil‑fuel import bill has risen sharply since the conflict began and that energy markets are facing “months of uncertainty.”   

In the US, consumers are also adjusting as fuel prices surge, cutting travel or making people turn to alternatives such as electric vehicles and rentals.

Born out of the need for safety, Israel today finds itself navigating a reality defined by recurring conflict and persistent insecurity. As another Independence Day has passed, for West Jerusalem the sense of permanence it was meant to symbolize remains elusive. Military strength has grown, yet lasting security continues to slip out of reach.

Herzl’s promise, Israel’s reality

"Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency,” Theodor Herzl wrote in 1896 in The Jewish State, imagining a place where Jews would finally be safe.

”We should there form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. The sanctuaries of Christendom would be safeguarded by assigning to them an extra-territorial status, such as is well known to the law of nations.

We should form a guard of honor about these sanctuaries, answering for the fulfilment of this duty with our existence,” Herzl added, outlining not only a refuge for Jews but a broader civilizational mission.

In Herzl’s formulation, a Jewish state in Palestine would serve as both sanctuary and frontier – protecting its people while embedding itself within a wider moral and political order. Security, in this sense, was not meant to come at the expense of others, but to align with a system of guarantees extending beyond Judaism itself.

Yet the deeper aspiration – a stable and secure order consistent with the ideals its founders articulated – remains elusive. Israel today operates in a condition of permanent insecurity, shaped by recurring wars, threats, and cycles of violence that have defined its history. The shock of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel reinforced a sense that even overwhelming military power cannot fully prevent catastrophe.

At the same time, the broader vision Herzl sketched – of safeguarding not only Jewish life but also the sanctuaries of others – sits uneasily with recent realities. After more than two years of continuous military operations in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, which have claimed far more civilian lives than those of the Hamas and Hezbollah operatives Israel set out to eliminate, that ideal appears increasingly strained. 

This year, Israeli authorities blocked Jerusalem’s Catholic cardinal from observing Palm Sunday at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, prompting international outcry. In a separate incident, an Israeli soldier was reported to have destroyed a statue depicting the crucifixion of Jesus in a Catholic village in southern Lebanon. Episodes like these, whatever their immediate context, complicate the idea of Israel as a neutral guardian of a wider religious and civilizational space.

Embedded in Herzl’s vision was also a particular idea of Jerusalem: not merely a contested city, but a space where competing claims would be mediated through guarantees – including special protections for religious sites. That idea sits uneasily with the city’s modern political reality. Much of the international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem, viewing it instead as part of the territory of a future Palestinian state, while Israel considers the area annexed and has, over decades, consolidated its control through policies ranging from land expropriation to restrictive urban planning for Palestinian residents.

This year, that gap between vision and reality is especially hard to ignore. Israel enters Yom Ha’atzmaut amid war, with the trauma of the October 7 Hamas attack still shaping public life. Fireworks and ceremonies go ahead, but they do so alongside sirens, military operations, and the unresolved question of what security actually means.

For years before October 7, 2023, it appears, Israeli decision-makers operated under a working assumption: that Hamas was neither willing nor capable of launching a large-scale, coordinated attack on Israel’s territory. The group was treated as a contained threat – dangerous, but ultimately deterred, constrained by Israel’s military superiority, surveillance systems, and the tight control imposed on the Gaza Strip.

That assumption proved catastrophically wrong. The scale and coordination of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel exposed not only operational failures but also a broader conceptual one: the belief that a long-term status quo of blockade, fragmentation, and intermittent force could remain stable.

Warning signs, in retrospect, were not entirely absent. Israeli officials had reportedly obtained elements of Hamas’s battle plan more than a year before the attack, yet dismissed it as aspirational and too complex to execute. At the same time, internal accounts cited by the Jerusalem Post suggest that an intelligence analyst – a non-commissioned officer in Unit 8200, known publicly as “V” – repeatedly warned of the scope and seriousness of Hamas’s preparations, only to have those warnings disregarded by her superiors as unrealistic. 

According to the New York Times, more than a year before it happened, Israeli officials even obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the terrorist attack that outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people. Taken together, these accounts point not simply to a failure of intelligence collection, but to a failure of interpretation – a tendency to see what fit existing assumptions rather than what was actually unfolding.

Even after the attack, vulnerabilities within Israel’s security system have continued to surface. In May 2024 – seven months after October 7 – individuals posing as infiltrators were reportedly able to access an Israeli military base and collect sensitive information using false identities, highlighting persistent gaps despite the country’s emphasis on control and surveillance.

More strikingly, similar concerns have emerged at the structural level. This January, a major security breach exposed thousands of classified Israeli military documents online, according to the Haaretz. The leak, which included sensitive operational details, maps of military facilities, and even the full names of active-duty personnel – including air force pilots – remained accessible for nearly a week after being flagged. Some of the files were stored without any authentication, and search engines had indexed parts of the archive, making them easily discoverable. Military censors reportedly classified the exposed material as “life-threatening,” yet the delay in addressing the breach underscored systemic weaknesses that stand in tension with Israel’s image as a highly controlled security state.

In the aftermath, Israel’s response has been defined by an overwhelming reliance on military force, framed explicitly as an effort to prevent another October 7. The stated objective is clear: dismantle Hamas’s capabilities to the point where it can no longer pose a threat. Yet nearly two years into sustained operations in Gaza and Lebanon, the results suggest a far more ambiguous outcome.

On the ground, the war has produced extensive destruction and a severe humanitarian crisis. But beyond its immediate human cost, it has also failed to resolve the central strategic question: what comes next? Six months into a fragile ceasefire, the second phase of a US-backed peace framework remains effectively stalled. Key provisions – including a mutual and sustained halt to hostilities – have not been fully implemented. Israeli forces continue to maintain a significant presence in Gaza, controlling large portions of the territory and expanding what has been described as a buffer zone along its eastern edge.

At the same time, the political architecture meant to replace ongoing conflict remains undefined. Plans for a transitional Palestinian administration have not materialized, and proposals for an international stabilization force remain vague, with no clear commitments from potential participants. The question of governance – who will ultimately control Gaza – remains unanswered.

Central to this uncertainty is the issue of disarming Hamas. Israeli military assessments suggest that the group retains a substantial arsenal, including thousands of rockets of varying ranges. While there have been indications that Hamas might be willing to transfer some of these weapons to a Palestinian administrative body under international supervision, the framework for such a process is unclear. The proposed mechanisms do not specify who would receive the weapons, how compliance would be verified, or what guarantees would be offered in return.

Hamas has signaled that it is unwilling to disarm without credible assurances that Israel would uphold earlier commitments, including a lasting ceasefire and an end to restrictions on Gaza. Israel, in turn, continues to prioritize military pressure as its primary tool, viewing political concessions as secondary to security concerns.

This dynamic, in which military logic consistently outweighs political resolution, was not entirely unforeseen – Russian analysts had identified it earlier. Writing in the summer of 2024, Dmitry Maryasis, head of the Israel department at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, argued that for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political allies, who have remained in power for much of the period since 2009, Hamas has functioned as a “convenient partner.”

In this interpretation, Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist makes it possible to sustain the argument that a negotiated settlement is unattainable – since part of the territory of a potential Palestinian state is governed by an organization Israel defines as extremist. At the same time, rocket fire from Gaza provides a rationale for military responses, channeling the pressures of a security-oriented political and military establishment.

The ongoing rivalry between Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization further fragments the Palestinian political landscape, allowing Israeli policymakers to argue that internal Palestinian divisions must be resolved before any meaningful negotiations can take place.

More importantly, public sentiment among Palestinians suggests that the organization’s political position may not have been fundamentally weakened. Surveys conducted in the Palestinian territories in 2024 and 2025 indicate that a significant majority of respondents – around 81% – view the suffering caused by the blockade of Gaza as justification for Hamas’s actions on October 7. When asked about political preferences, the largest share – roughly 35% – express support for Hamas, with indications that this support has grown over time.

Israel’s approach results in a stalemate that is both political and strategic. A ceasefire exists in form but not in substance. Negotiations continue but produce no decisive outcomes. Reconstruction is discussed but remains largely theoretical, contingent on conditions that have yet to be met.

Making Lebanon pay the price  

Lebanon is far from being the only challenge Israel faces, but it is undeniably one of the most dangerous and persistently unresolved. Unlike Gaza, where Israel confronts a territorially contained adversary, Lebanon represents a far more complex and deeply embedded threat, one that Israel has struggled to address for decades without achieving a lasting solution.

The last major full-scale confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah, the 2006 war, ended with a fragile international arrangement. The United Nations called for a cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and, crucially, the disarming of Hezbollah.

In practice, however, these provisions were never fully implemented. Hezbollah did not disarm. On the contrary, it expanded its military capabilities significantly, transforming itself from a guerrilla force into what many analysts now describe as a hybrid army. By 2024, the group was believed to possess tens of thousands of fighters and an arsenal of more than 130,000 rockets, many of them capable of reaching deep into Israeli territory. Many of these weapons were reportedly stored within civilian infrastructure, further complicating any military response. 

Israel changed its approach after October 7, focusing on degrading Hezbollah’s capabilities through targeted operations instead of negotiating. However, tactical success has not translated into strategic resolution. Hezbollah remains intact, and is still deeply embedded within the country’s political and social system. It holds seats in parliament, operates hospitals and schools, and exercises de facto control over large parts of southern Lebanon. At the same time, it maintains close ties to Iran, functioning as a central component of what Tehran describes as its “axis of resistance.”

The current situation reflects this unresolved tension. A ten-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, announced by US President Donald Trump and implemented last week, has only temporarily halted direct hostilities. The main problem remains unchanged: the Lebanese government has no power over Hezbollah, yet the latter is not a part of negotiations. 

More than 1.2 million people have been displaced across Lebanon, and many of them may have grown critical of Hezbollah. Yet they found themselves displaced, bereaved, and impoverished all the same. This is why the simple frame of “Israel versus Hezbollah” obscures so much: Hezbollah is not Lebanon, but too often it is Lebanon that is being made to pay the price.

The graves of independence

On the eve of Israel’s Independence Day, the country marks Yom HaZikaron – a day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. The sequencing is deliberate. It is meant to remind the country that independence was not given, but paid for in a continuous struggle for survival.

Ceremonies at military cemeteries, including the one on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, are not only acts of mourning but also reaffirmations of the state’s founding narrative: that security must be defended, often at a high cost.

This year, that cost has become harder to ignore in purely symbolic terms. Israeli media reports suggest that the military cemetery on Mount Herzl is nearing full capacity, strained by a sharp rise in casualties since October 7. According to Ministry of Defense data, more than 1,200 Israeli soldiers’ remains have been transferred since the start of the war, with hundreds buried at Mount Herzl alone. Emergency measures have already been approved to expand burial space, with new areas being prepared to accommodate the growing number of graves.

While it’s hard to question the importance of remembrance, the proximity of memory and celebration also invites a more difficult reflection: not only on what has been paid, but on whether the price continues to rise – and why.

Israel has achieved some of its immediate military objectives in the current cycle of conflict. Iran, its most formidable regional adversary, has been weakened by the war with Israel and the US, and Hezbollah’s capabilities have been significantly degraded. Yet even these gains remain partial and unstable. A comprehensive and durable peace framework, including those between the US and Iran, has yet to materialize. Across Gaza, Lebanon, and the broader region, the underlying political questions remain unresolved.

More than a century ago, Theodor Herzl imagined a state that would guarantee safety to a people long denied it, where vulnerability would be replaced by sovereignty and stability. Israel has, undeniably, achieved independence. It has built a powerful state capable of defending itself in ways its founders could scarcely have imagined.

But independence alone does not resolve the question Herzl sought to answer. As Israel marks another anniversary under the leadership of Netanyahu, it faces a different challenge: whether its current strategy brings it closer to lasting security, or to another catastrophe.

France and Poland are preparing joint military exercises simulating conventional and nuclear strikes on Russia and Belarus, according to Polish media. Moscow has claimed that NATO will practice the blockade and seizure of Russia’s Kaliningrad Region at the same time. 

The Wirtualna Polska (WP) news outlet reported on Thursday, citing sources within the military, that the nuclear drills are set to take place “soon” over the Baltic Sea and northern Poland, and are meant to develop a “Polish-French military arm… outside of NATO bureaucracy” to deter supposed Russian aggression.  

Moscow has consistently dismissed the claims as nonsense, stressing it has no intention of attacking any foreign states and accusing NATO of openly preparing for a military confrontation.  

Under the scenarios, reportedly discussed during French President Emmanuel Macron’s meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk earlier this week, Polish F‑16 jets will conduct long‑range reconnaissance and target identification, and will strike “high‑value targets in the vicinity of St. Petersburg” using conventional JASSM‑ER cruise missiles.  

French Rafale B fighters, armed with ASMP missiles carrying nuclear warheads, will also fly from France to the Budapest‑Kaliningrad line and simulate nuclear strikes on targets in Russia and Belarus.  

Responding to the reported French-Polish nuclear drills, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that they “show Europe’s aspiration for further militarization and nuclearization” and warned that such steps “do not contribute to stability and predictability on the European continent.” 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko also said on Thursday that NATO’s UK-led Joint Expedition Forces (JEF) has been practicing scenarios of a naval blockade and seizure of Russia’s Kaliningrad Region and is “deliberately pursuing a path of increasing confrontation.” 

Meanwhile, the Finnish parliament took up a bill to allow the import and storage of nuclear weapons on the country’s territory. The move would overturn legal barriers that had banned such devices in the country since the 1980s.  

Moscow has warned that any deployment of nuclear weapons in Finland would be a direct threat to Russia and would trigger retaliatory measures.

Speaking exclusively to RT on Thursday, Andrey Kartapolov, chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, warned that Finnish lawmakers would be making a “big mistake” if they voted in favor of the bill. The arrival of foreign nuclear weapons in the Nordic country would significantly undermine its own security, according to the senior Russian MP.

The relevant military installations on Finnish soil would inevitably end up on Russian strategic forces’ priority target list, Kartapolov predicted.

The US Department of Justice has settled a lawsuit brought by Carter Page, an aide to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, over secret surveillance by the FBI amid the Russiagate investigation.

Page filed the suit in 2020, claiming he was a victim of “unlawful spying.” The ex-aide also alleged a series of irregularities by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in their 2016 and 2017 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on him on suspicion of acting on Russia’s behalf.

During the 2016 election cycle, the FBI eavesdropped on members of Trump’s campaign in a controversial probe partially based on the so-called Steele dossier – a mix of allegations about Trump’s connections to Russia, funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and compiled by a former British intelligence officer.

Page has long denied having any improper ties to Russia and was never charged with any wrongdoing. The suit was repeatedly tossed out by lower courts and eventually made it to the Supreme Court. The Trump administration informed the court that it had reached a settlement with Page over his claims against the federal government.

In recent months, the Department of Justice has been dealing with a Biden-era backlog of suits filed by Russiagate victims, as well as probing former officials involved in the 2016 anti-Trump campaign.  

Late in March, the DOJ settled a lawsuit brought by Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump, who argued he was unfairly targeted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Flynn reportedly agreed to a similar payout of approximately $1.2 million, a fraction of the $50 million he had originally sought. The DOJ described the Flynn settlement as “an important step” to correct a “historic injustice” linked to Russiagate-related prosecutions.

The Second Open Dialogue ‘The Future of the World. A New Platform for Global Growth’ will be held at the National Center RUSSIA in Moscow from April 27 to 29.

Participants can expect lectures by international experts, pitch sessions and idea presentations by essay authors, networking and exchange of experience, as well as discussions with participants from more than 40 countries around the world.

One of the speakers and jury members will be Moroccan researcher Younes Bennane, director of the Institute for Social and Media Studies. Last year, he presented a bold idea for a transcontinental corridor linking Asia and Africa via the Northern Sea Route, with its southern link centered on the Dakhla Atlantic port.

In 2026, he is presenting an initiative to create a pan-African carbon exchange that would allow the continent to control its own environmental and economic resources.

“For me, participation in the Open Dialogue is a strategic opportunity to present this research to the professional community and to show that researchers from the Global South are capable of proposing solutions to the key problems of the 21st century,” Bennane said.

“We are observing their accelerated development, but now we are talking about a qualitatively different model: African states are striving for multiple sovereignty. This is no longer the logic that underpinned Africa’s post-colonial ties with Western countries,” Bennane added.

The dialogue’s program is built around four strategic tracks: “Investment in People: human capital development, education, demography”; “Investment in Technology: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and smart cities”; “Investment in the Environment: human-centered territorial development, ecology, and the circular economy”; and “Investment in Connectivity: the future of trade, digital currencies, infrastructure, and logistics.”

More than 300 essays from around the world devoted to ideas for the development of the global economy made the Open Dialogue longlist.

Registration for the Open Dialogue is still open, and applications can be submitted on the official website.

Political hit-jobs in Cyprus and Slovenia are just the tip of an election interference iceberg in Europe, involving a dark nexus of Israeli spies, defense chiefs, and tech companies. The threat is real, but the EU is staying silent

Targeting the EU: Israeli spy firm’s open admission

A week after Cyprus assumed the EU’s rotating presidency in January, a video appeared on social media – from a relatively obscure account named 'Emily Thompson – showing President Nikos Christodoulides’s brother-in-law, a former energy minister, and a major construction magnate discussing influence-peddling arrangements between Christodoulides and foreign investors. Across a series of surreptitious recordings, the three also allege that Christodoulides took cash bribes during his 2023 campaign, and was taking cash to block EU sanctions against Russian business figures.

Can't even describe what I just received!
🚨 BREAKING BOMBSHELL VIDEO EXPOSES CYPRUS PRESIDENT'S SHADOW CASH MACHINE!
President Nikos Christodoulides allegedly SMASHED the €1M campaıgn fınance cap vıa a sneaky family network!
Brother-in-law Charalambos Charalambous (Director of… pic.twitter.com/B9YDR1Y3T3

— Emily Thompson (@EmilyTanalyst) January 8, 2026

Cypriot authorities immediately declared that the video bears all “the characteristics of organized Russian disinformation campaigns.” Anonymous EU diplomats told Euractiv that Brussels viewed Moscow as the prime suspect, and authorities in Nicosia said that they had reached out to the US and Israel for assistance in identifying the video’s source. AP and Euronews headlined likely Russian involvement.

The release of the video undermined Christodoulides – triggering the resignations of his most senior aide and his charity director wife – and put a black mark on Cyprus’ stint at the helm of the EU.

The ‘Videogate’ scandal simmered in the background until last week, when Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence agency, admitted that it had recorded and edited the video. The company said that it had compiled the video on behalf of a private client – not a state actor – and that it “has cooperated with the Cypriot authorities and expresses confidence that they will establish the truth and bring those responsible to justice.”

What is Black Cube?

Founded in 2011 by “veterans of Israel’s elite intelligence units,” Black Cube describes itself as “the world’s leading human intelligence firm,” capable of finding “hard evidence otherwise impossible to obtain” in support of “high-profile litigations, arbitrations, and white-collar crime cases.”

The term ‘Human Intelligence’, or ‘HUMINT’, is key here. Unlike open-source intelligence (OSINT), which relies on uncovering publicly-available information, HUMINT is gathered through covert surveillance, interrogation, and the management of sources and informers through bribery, blackmail, or intimidation. It is the kind of illegal or quasi-legal tradecraft usually practiced by state intelligence agencies.

Black Cube co-founders Dan Zorella and Avi Yanus are veterans of this underworld. Zorella served in the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) military intelligence directorate, and Yanus was a strategic planning officer in the IDF. The company’s board is a who’s who of the Israeli intelligence and defense establishment, and includes:

• Meir Dagan (now deceased), former Mossad director

• Efraim Halevy, former Mossad director

• Yohanan Danino, former Israeli Police commissioner

• Major General Giora Eiland, former Israeli National Security Council chief

• Asher Tishler, dean of the College of Management Academic Studies, and consultant to the IDF

Black Cube’s client list is long and controversial. The company was hired by US President Donald Trump’s aides in 2018 to undermine the Iran Nuclear Deal; worked for then-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila, to spy on his political opponents; and spied on journalists investigating NSO Group – another Mossad-linked Israeli tech company, best known for its ‘Pegasus’ spyware.

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein hired Black Cube in 2016 to silence and discredit numerous women accusing him of sexual abuse. Weinstein was encouraged to hire Black Cube by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein who co-founded Paragon Solutions, yet another spyware and surveillance company.

Israeli spy-tech infiltration of EU?

Zorella, Eiland, and two other Black Cube employees arrived in Ljubljana in late December, where they met with former Prime Minister Janez Jansa, according to a report by the 8 March Institute, a liberal Slovenian NGO. Jansa, a conservative, was running for election against liberal Prime Minister Robert Golob at the time.

The purpose of the visit became clear in early March, when – just like in Cyprus – a series of covertly-recorded audio and video files hit social media. They showed associates of Golob’s Svoboda party discussing penny-ante corruption within the Slovenian government with undercover Black Cube employees posing as foreign investors. The officials bragged about their influence over the media, their connections to Golob, and their ability to offer access to the prime minister for a fee.

Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) held the videos up as proof of corruption within Golob’s government, and the scandal almost won him the election. Ultimately, Svoboda beat SDS by a margin of only 0.67%.

Jansa initially denied, but later admitted to, meeting with Black Cube. He has not admitted to hiring the company, however. Slovenia’s Intelligence and Security Agency (SOVA) has since determined that Black Cube “intended to discredit individuals politically, which may pose a threat to national security and influence democratic elections.” SOVA added that “this interference was most likely commissioned from within Slovenia,” but it is still not completely clear by whom.

Does Black Cube work for Israel?

Nobody has accused Israel of ordering Black Cube to intervene in the Cypriot election, but in this case, Netanyahu’s interests and the interests of the Cypriot opposition overlap.

Black Cube is one of many defense and intelligence startups filled with ‘former’ Israeli spooks and security chiefs. Although these companies are private, profit-making enterprises, their leaders are often more loyal to Israel than to the bottom line, as another example from Slovenia demonstrates.

Two weeks before the election, Golob’s government chose not to join the ICJ genocide case against Israel. Slovenian Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon told reporters that the government had no other option: “Many of the country’s cyber defense systems are of Israeli origin,” she explained, adding that to join the lawsuit “would jeopardize Slovenia’s national security.”

Fajon confirmed that she had been pressured into making this decision. “It is clear that these pressures exist, we are all subjected to them by superpowers, and ultimately this must be taken into account when deciding,” she said.

We welcome the Slovenian government’s responsible decision not to join South Africa’s fabricated blood libel proceedings against Israel at the ICJ

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) March 20, 2026

It is unclear whether the continuation of Black Cube’s campaign against Golob was a part of the pressure campaign, or whether Fajon was threatened by the Israeli state or the companies responsible for the country’s cyber defense systems. Regardless, the message is clear: Israeli companies are willing to interfere in EU elections, and by relying on Israeli technology, EU countries are trading sovereignty for security – neither of which they will get.

What is the EU doing about Israeli interference?

However, when it comes to the activities of Black Cube in Cyprus and Slovenia, Brussels has stayed silent.

Slovenian authorities urged European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to probe the company’s work in the runup to last month’s election, arguing that “such interference by a foreign private company poses a clear hybrid threat against the European Union and its Member States,” according to a letter published by Politico.

The commission has not even publicly acknowledged receiving the letter.

Yet there are far more cases of Black Cube and its ilk interfering in European elections. RT will look at these cases in depth over our 'Wired for War' series and ask, why is the EU so willing to ignore blatant meddling happening within its own borders?

A draft enforcement squad in the Western Ukrainian region of Volyn has reportedly shoved an unwilling recruit off the roof of a private home where he was apparently trying to evade capture, according to local media and eyewitness footage circulating online.

The incident is said to have taken place in the village of Strymovka outside of Lutsk. Eyewitness videos depict a Territorial Recruitment Center officer demanding that a man on the roof of a single-story building get down of his own accord. The draft enforcer then addresses the onlookers who are shooting the video, saying: “Youths, we will get all of you who are filming – I’m telling you – we’ll come over to you, too… Put down your cameras!”

The conscription officer then leans a ladder against the porch roof while telling his colleague to “get the gun” and threatening to shoot the unwilling recruit in the legs.

In a separate video, the official is seen struggling with the man on the roof for some time before eventually pushing him to the ground and tumbling off the sloping surface himself. Two other draft enforcers quickly grab the man by the arms and legs and haul him away, apparently toward their vehicle waiting outside.

The Volyn Territorial Recruitment Center has confirmed that the press gang, together with police officers, was patrolling the area when they spotted a vehicle whose driver attempted to flee after seeing the officials, as quoted by local media. The authorities claimed that the man, who climbed up to the roof, then supposedly asked the draft enforcers to rescue him due to a “fear of heights.”

According to the regional Territorial Recruitment Center, the man ended up admitting to being a draft dodger and was subjected to a medical checkup in short order.

The practice, commonly known as “busification,” involves military-age men being captured on the streets, at their places of work, as well as in residential areas, then taken to recruitment centers against their will and reportedly dispatched to the front almost immediately, after only cursory training.

AI developer Anthropic insists it has no backdoor or “kill switch” for its Claude AI once it is deployed in classified Pentagon military networks, according to a new court filing.

The US military and the tech firm found themselves embroiled in a policy dispute earlier this year, with the Pentagon insisting on using the system for “all lawful military purposes,” while the company stood by its AI safeguards related to mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons use.

The Pentagon ultimately ended its partnership with Anthropic, designating the tech firm a “supply chain risk,” a rare label typically reserved for entities linked to Washington’s foreign adversaries. The designation bars the company from not only working with the US government directly but also any other contractors from using its products as well.

In a new filing to a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, Anthropic disputed the key US administration claim that the firm still retained some degree of control over Claude AI once it was deployed to classified systems and effectively granted itself an “operational veto.” The firm said it has “no back door or remote kill switch,” while its “personnel cannot log into a department system to modify or disable a running model.”

Anthropic was formally designated a “supply-chain risk to national security” on February 27, while US President Donald Trump accused it of being run by “leftwing nut jobs.” The company challenged the label in court, with the legal battle yielding thus far mixed results.

Earlier this month, the DC court rejected Anthropic’s request for a pause on the supply chain risk designation. In a parallel case in California, however, a court sided with the company, temporarily blocking the administration decision. With the split decision, Anthropic remains barred from working with the Pentagon but can still continue its partnerships with other agencies while the legal battle goes on.

The Seychelles is facing a sharp drop in tourist arrivals amid the war in the Middle East, but hopes to offset losses with an increase in Russian visitors, President Patrick Herminie has said.

Speaking to RT, the head of the African state noted that the island nation has seen “the drastic reduction in tourism arrivals by 40%,” a downturn that is hitting the economy hard, as “tourism is the mainstay of our [Seychelles’] economy.”

He linked the decline to disruptions in regional air travel following the start of the conflict triggered by US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February. Multiple countries across the Middle East have imposed airspace restrictions, forcing airlines to reroute or cancel flights, while airports in the region were also affected.

The disruption has been compounded by rising aviation fuel costs, driven by instability around the Strait of Hormuz, a key global oil route. Amid a deepening fuel crisis, several African carriers have raised fares or introduced surcharges, including Kenya Airways, Air Mauritius, Ethiopian Airlines, and RwandAir.

At the same time, the president pointed to Russia as a growing and stable source of tourists, noting that Russians already account for more than 22% of arrivals.

The government is now preparing additional steps to boost this trend, including plans to strengthen its diplomatic presence. “We’ll be setting up an embassy here with a tourism ambassador so that we can know on hand what exactly must we do… to get more tourists from Russia to Seychelles,” he stated.

Moscow has also signaled an interest in expanding tourism ties. During a meeting with Herminie on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said there is potential to further increase tourist flows from Russia to the Seychelles.

Following the talks, Russian authorities indicated they are ready to consider new flight connections, including a possible route linking Dar es Salaam, Victoria, and Moscow.

Watch the full interview.

Veteran German politician Sahra Wagenknecht has lashed out at Chancellor Friedrich Merz after a €90 billion ($106 billion) emergency loan to Ukraine, which Berlin had been actively promoting, was approved by the bloc.

On Thursday, the European Council announced that the interest-free loan has been finalized and that it will begin disbursements “as soon as possible” in the second quarter of 2026. A day earlier, EU ambassadors agreed the transfer of funds to Vladimir Zelensky’s government, just hours after Kiev resumed the flow of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia via the Druzhba pipeline.

The financial package had previously been vetoed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who rejected Ukrainian explanations about the pipeline being damaged in a Russian strike and insisted that Kiev halted oil supplies in January deliberately to influence the outcome of the election in Hungary. Orban’s Fidesz party ended up losing the April 12 vote to the pro-EU Tisza party led by Peter Magyar.

“Merz, who bears significant responsibility for this madness, has turned his own citizens into cash cows for Ukraine. A chancellor could hardly fail more miserably,” the politician, who served in the Bundestag for more than 15 years and founded the Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht party, wrote.

Merz repeatedly called for the loan to be swiftly issued to Ukraine to serve as “a signal from Europe to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

Germany, which is the EU’s largest economy, has already provided almost €44 billion ($52 billion) to Kiev since the escalation between Russia and Ukraine in 2022. According to the current budget, Berlin’s aid to Zelensky’s government will be increased to around €11.5 billion ($13.7 billion) this year.

The approval of the package by Brussels is “another step towards the complete loss of sovereignty by the European capitals,” Shoigu stated.

The number of billionaires worldwide is expected to climb to nearly 4,000 by 2031, rising about 25% from current levels as the pace of wealth creation accelerates, according to global property consultancy Knight Frank.

There are currently 3,110 billionaires globally, and the figure is projected to rise by about 25% to 3,915 over the next five years, the firm said in a report on Thursday.

Liam Bailey, the estate agent’s head of research, said wealth among billionaires and millionaires had been “supercharged” by profits in the technology sector, particularly artificial intelligence.

“The ability to scale a business has never been higher,” he said. “That has fed into the ability to make big fortunes quickly, supercharged by tech and AI.”

Saudi Arabia is expected to see the fastest growth in billionaire numbers, more than doubling to 65 by 2031 from 23 in this year, the research found. Poland’s billionaire population is also forecast to more than double to 29 from 13, while Sweden is set to see an 81% increase to 58 from 32.

Russia also remains a major center of billionaire wealth, with Forbes counting 155 billionaires in 2026, up from the previous year, and their combined fortunes rising to a record of roughly $696 billion, driven largely by gains in commodities and metals.

The number of multimillionaires is also rising rapidly, with those worth at least $30 million increasing to 713,626 globally from 551,435 in 2021 – an addition of more than 160,000 people in five years, Knight Frank said, highlighting the strong pace of wealth creation led by the US and driven in part by growth in China and India.

The outlook comes amid widening global inequality, with the World Inequality Report 2026 showing that fewer than 60,000 people – about 0.001% of the world’s population – hold three times as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity.

Russian forces deployed in Mali have rescued two employees of a Russian geological exploration company who had been held hostage in the Sahel for nearly two years, the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced on Tuesday.

According to an official statement, the freed captives – Russian citizen Oleg Greta, 64, and Ukrainian national Yuri Yurov, 56 – were abducted by the Al-Qaeda affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), in 2024 in Niger’s Tillaberi region.

“As a result of a special operation conducted by the Africa Corps in the Republic of Mali, employees of a Russian geological exploration company captured in July 2024 in Niger by the terrorist group… were freed,” the Russian Defense Ministry wrote in its Telegram channel.

The ministry said both men were found in poor health and suffering from severe physical exhaustion following their detention. After initial medical checks at an Africa Corps facility, they are to be flown to Moscow for further treatment and rehabilitation, it added.

The African Corps – a unit of the Russian Defense Ministry – replaced the private military company (PMC) Wagner Group, which officially withdrew from the Sahel in June 2025.

Ukraine has also faced accusations of providing intelligence and supplying kamikaze drones to the terrorist groups behind the deadly insurgency in Mali.

Earlier this month, Abdul Niang, a senior Malian media executive, told RT that defense cooperation with Russia has helped Mali and its AES allies strengthen their armed forces, reclaim strategic ground, and intensify operations against jihadist groups.

A French soldier who was gravely wounded in an attack on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon last week has succumbed to his wounds, President Emmanuel Macron has said.

Another French peacekeeper was killed in the incident and two more were injured; their patrol came under small-arms fire in the village of Ghandourieh in southern Lebanon on Saturday, according to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

In a post on X on Wednesday, Macron said that one of the wounded troops, Chief Corporal Anicet Girardin, who had been evacuated to France a day earlier, had died.

The president expressed his condolences to Girardin’s relatives and to the families of the other servicemen injured in the attack, which he blamed on the Lebanese movement Hezbollah.

Hezbollah said in a statement on Saturday that it “denies any connection to the incident,” calling for “caution in making judgments and assigning responsibilities” pending an investigation by the Lebanese military.

More than 2,300 people have been killed and over 1.2 million have been displaced due to the fighting on the ground and IDF airstrikes in Lebanon, according to the authorities in Beirut.

A total of three French troops have lost their lives in the current Middle East conflict. One soldier also died and several more were wounded in a drone strike on a French-Kurdish base in northern Iraq in mid-March.

At the moment, some 700 French troops are deployed in Lebanon as part of the UNIFIL, which includes 7,505 peacekeepers from 47 nations.

What makes a prosperous nation?

The West has one answer: money.

For decades, Western institutions have measured things like GDP, sustainability and ‘human development’ to show which countries are doing well in the world.

But do these things indicate what is truly important for humans as a species and a society? Heavily skewed towards individual consumerism, they downplay tradition and paint the growth of human population as a problem – to the point where family is seen as an atavism and ‘child-free’ appears to be the lifestyle of the progressive future.

Such views are very clearly filtered through the prism of the modern liberal West – so much so that they serve as soft-power tool for promoting Western ‘values’. If your country scores high on a Western index of well-being or development, it doesn’t really mean it’s ‘doing well’ by itself – it simply means it is aligned with a certain world-view.

The emerging new multipolar world order needs new benchmarks, which is why RT is introducing the Social Well-Being Index – a new and unique way to measure the status of nations, which takes into account the most fundamental and objective criteria of societal health to create a deeper understanding of global development trends.

Why we need the Social Well-Being Index

In recent years, the topic of the sustainability of nations has emerged from the oblivion into which it had sunk decades earlier, during the era of the confrontation between capitalist and socialist world systems. While Marxism-Leninism didn’t view nations as actors in historical processes, the main alternative to the communist ideology of the USSR and China was Western liberal universalism that emerged in the latter half of the 20th century.

Western capitalist elites won the ideological battle by presenting mass consumption as the solution to social well-being. Emerging victorious, the West dictated the terms of globalization. However, it soon became clear that globalized capitalism, like the global communist movement before it, did not ensure national sovereignty or the sustainability of nations, since this limited the power and profits of the globalist elite.

The influence of this elite is maintained not only through the dollar and NATO’s military strength but also through intellectual dominance—i.e., the promotion of “correct” concepts when it comes to the challenges and goals of human development. This led to the establishment of a binary development paradigm (“Sustainable Development” + “Human Development”), which imposed a universal “environmental” and “humanitarian” agenda on all countries while largely ignoring the sustainability of nations.

The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN shortly after the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc stemmed from the Limits to Growth report published by the Club of Rome. Along with ecological and social responsibility, it promoted the need to reduce the human footprint, presenting population growth in the Global South as a catastrophic “demographic explosion” and recommending population control as a prerequisite for sustainable development. Simultaneously, “green investing” mechanisms were employed to restrain developing nations and reinforce the dominance of the post-industrial West.

At first glance, it looks like the HDI evaluates countries, but in fact it evaluates and compares average individuals rather than nations, ethnic groups, or communities within which the Homo sapiens has always existed. This approach implies that human society is merely a collection of rational individuals, and that individuals are primary and society is secondary. By turning individualism into a methodological principle, the HDI not only showcases the West’s economic leadership but also emphasizes its “humanitarian” superiority, thus becoming another tool of global Westernization.

The Western idea of globalization has gained considerable traction beyond the “golden billion” partly because it claimed to promote the spread of Western models of prosperity and individual self-expression. The proliferation and maximization of what has come to be regarded as human well-being and development have led to the following results.

In the West and among those nations that embraced Western individualistic values and consumerist ideals, rising living standards and education levels resulted in a dramatic decline in birth rates, leading to the shrinking and aging of the population. These trends have become so pronounced that they now appear irreversible.

Against the overall demographic decline of the modern world, the country that particularly stands out is the US. It is now the third largest world country in terms of population which keeps growing because of immigration. Apparently, the US isn’t eager to get a taste of its own medicine and implement population control.

However, America’s once-mighty “melting pot” is struggling to cope with the influx of immigrants, and the mass migration of poor, diverse peoples poses a major challenge for the country. In Western Europe, the situation is even more critical – immigrants from different cultures, who were supposed to fill gaps in the labor market left by the declining native population, have only exacerbated the systemic crisis.

This modern “migration period” is intensifying the internal crisis of the Western civilization, which, without any wars or disasters, has encountered unprecedented desocialization. We are witnessing the dismantling of nearly all established social structures, including the family unit, which has long served as the foundation of human society.

Meanwhile, the commonly accepted “human development” and “quality of life” indexes, utilized by international organizations and national governments, fail to recognize these alarming trends and either consciously or unconsciously overlook the fundamental paradox of modern human development: that the cult of maximizing individual well-being and self-expression is undermining human society.

The humanitarian paradox seen above appears to be universal, affecting nearly all countries in today’s globalized world, and particularly the most “advanced” nations, which form the “core” of the modern world system. To illustrate this point, let’s consider some of the wealthiest and most developed Western countries – specifically the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, and Australia – which top the UN Human Development Index. Now, let’s take a closer look at the statistics on murder rates (number of homicides per 100,000 people) and birth rates (total fertility rate) in these supposedly prosperous societies.

The commonly held belief that highly developed Western countries represent a model of social well-being does not reflect reality. The “golden billion” is grappling with deep issues that can no longer be masked by high living standards; in fact, these problems often emerge as the darker side of consumerism. This shows the heavy price paid for prioritizing individual comfort and hedonism as the ultimate goals of human existence. Meanwhile, desocialization trends which are emerging in the West, such as the dissolution of the family and the shift towards child-free lifestyles, are presented as the pinnacle of progress. These ideas are spread through globalization and can be even more destructive in nations undergoing “modernization” than in the West.

In this context, countries that strive to build a new world order urgently need an effective strategic framework to assess the genuine well-being of nations for the purpose of planning and evaluating sustainable development.

What the Social Well-Being Index measures

The Social Well-Being Index is a tool for measuring and comparing the well-being of historically established human communities: localities, peoples, and nations. In defining human well-being and measuring it, we imply the following fundamental principles.

The highest good for any person is life itself. This fact is universally acknowledged by all religions, civilizations, and cultures. Thus, human well-being as such first of all supposes procreation, or the production of new life. Consequently, any indicators of human development that fail to consider this aspect cannot accurately assess human well-being.

While the production of offspring is an essential part of human well-being, it is not sufficient in itself. Human existence from birth until death inevitably involves suffering. If life itself is the supreme good, then other things that ensure well-being are essentially means of alleviating suffering. Therefore, human well-being implies not only producing new life, but also organizing life in such a way as to help alleviate suffering. What does this mean? To reduce human suffering means to minimize life threatening situations and eliminate extreme forms of human oppression.

The methodology of the Social Well-Being Index can be summarized in the following key points:

The production of offspring. Biologically, viability is a vital condition for the sustainable development of human communities, and this is ensured by the reproduction of the population. The key indicator of this is the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) – the average number of children born to a woman throughout her lifetime. This must be at least 2.1 to avoid depopulation.

For communities that do not face a danger of overpopulation or a depletion of resources, an optimal TFR is around 3.0. This figure indicates balanced population growth, with the next generation one and a half times larger than the previous one. A stable economy can support overall prosperity at such a demographic growth rate. A TFR above 4.0 is currently typical for the poorest countries of Africa, where economic growth cannot keep up with demographic expansion.

For Russia, given its demographic, geo-economic, and geopolitical realities, a TFR of 3.0 indicates sustainable development, whereas a TFR of 2.1 or lower poses an existential threat.

A TFR index below 2.1 not only signals a declining population but also shows that the idea of the family unit – which naturally produces new life and serves as the fundamental structure of society which teaches the basics of moral social behavior – is in danger. Therefore, the preservation of the family is essential for the reproduction of human society – both in terms of population and civilization. An important indicator of the condition of the family structure in society is the ratio of households comprised of couples with children.

The lack of relevant statistics in many countries prevents us from using the ‘family’ indicator when calculating the global Social Well-Being Index. However, given the significance of assessing the state of the family – especially for nations undergoing a “second demographic transition” – we will conduct ongoing monitoring and use this indicator to compare the situation in different countries and in the regions of Russia where such data is available.

The preservation of life. In order to minimize threats to human life, the natural right to life must be ingrained in the public consciousness, and certain institutional guarantees must ensure this right. This includes accessible and effective healthcare, public safety, and the promotion of a healthy, social lifestyle. These conditions create a culture of life preservation, which can be measured by means of three indicators: low infant mortality rates, high average life expectancy, and low mortality rates from external causes.

Infant mortality rates reflect not only the effectiveness of the healthcare system but also cultural standards, lifestyle choices, and parental responsibility. The key statistical measure is the infant mortality rate (IMR) – the number of deaths of children under the age of one per 1,000 live births.

A crucial indicator of a country’s well-being is the longevity of its residents. Life expectancy at birth serves as the primary measure for comparing countries and calculating the Social Well-Being Index. In many highly developed and prosperous nations, average life expectancy remains stable at 85 years, which apparently represents the maximum human life expectancy at this point.

Another crucial indicator of a culture of life preservation is the mortality rate from external causes (MEC). This refers to premature deaths resulting from socially determined factors such as homicides, suicides, traffic accidents, poisonings, and various infrastructure and technical accidents. These causes, along with the overall rate of premature mortality, reflect the safety of the social environment which is determined by the effectiveness of governmental institutions, social discipline, mutual respect, and solidarity. Conversely, the lack of such safety is driven by social alienation and hostility.

Regrettably, many countries don’t have adequate MEC statistics. Therefore, to calculate the Social Well-Being Index we focused on the homicide rate per 100,000 people. Homicide is one of the most severe crimes, and the number of premeditated murders is a major indicator of societal distress.

In our view, addressing poverty to preserve social unity and health requires not only the eradication of extreme poverty that leaves individuals on the brink of survival but even more importantly, the reduction of the widening gap between the rich and the poor, which serves as a social catalyst for oppression. In order to determine and compare income inequality, which largely determines social unity, we employed the Decile Dispersion Ratio which presents the ratio of the average income of the richest 10 percent of the population by that of the poorest 10 percent.

Children’s education can be assessed through statistics on the enrollment of children in secondary education institutions, derived from national censuses and surveys that reflect the percentage of individuals who have completed secondary education or higher. While this data is far from perfect, it shows education levels in different countries and the corresponding trends.

The Social Well-Being Index has been calculated using the following methodology. First, individual indexes for each country were calculated for each of the following: Birth Rate (BR), Infant Mortality (IMR), Life Expectancy (LE), Homicide Rate (HR), Income Inequality (II), and Children’s Education (CE).

Each index was calculated using the formula: (N-min)/(max-min)*100, where N represents the indicator’s value, max is the upper threshold, and min is the lower threshold. The upper threshold indicates the goal that society should strive for to achieve well-being, while the lower threshold serves as a point of reference that should be avoided as social development progresses.

Threshold values are typically determined based on the maximum and minimum values of each country’s or region’s respective indicators in the current era of human development (i.e. since the start of the 21st century). In cases where negative indicators are extremely high and difficult to verify (such as homicide rates or the income ratios between the top and bottom deciles of the population), the lower threshold is set at double the global average.

Thus, if a country’s or region’s indicator is close to or equal to the minimum, its index will approach zero; conversely, if it is near the maximum, the index will be close to 100. Similar to the methodology used for calculating the Human Development Index, if a country or region exceeds the upper threshold, its social well-being index will still be 100.

Then, the overall Social Well-Being Index (SWB Index) is calculated as the arithmetic mean of the six individual indicators:

SWB Index = (BR Index + IMR Index + LE Index + HR Index + II Index + CE Index) / 6

The Social Well-Being Index has been calculated for 146 countries for which relevant statistics are available.

What the Social Well-Being Index shows

At first glance, the ranking of countries based on the Social Well-Being Index might come as a surprise. It significantly differs from GDP per capita rankings, which reflect the material prosperity of nations, and from the Human Development Index (HDI) which considers not only income but also longevity and education levels.

Interestingly, there is no major distinction between the GDP per capita rankings and the HDI rankings. The most notable difference between GDP and “human development” occurs only in certain non-Western countries like Qatar, Kuwait, and Brunei, where wealth is heavily dependent on hydrocarbon extraction. Other top performers in the GDP per capita rating tend to score well on the HDI too, and vice versa. This supposedly reinforces the notion that Western and Westernized nations consistently emerge as global leaders in development – a point that proponents of the HDI set out to prove in the first place

The Social Well-Being Index, which takes into account the production of offspring and ranks nations based on their success in preserving human life, providing children with a complete secondary education, and reducing income inequality, paints a very different picture of the world – one that gives a richer, more nuanced and dynamic idea of global development.

To take a more detailed look at RT's Social Well-Being Index, complete with all the statistics, analytical articles, and real-time monitoring of relevant trends from around the world, check out the dedicated website, available in English and in Russian. You can also find a pinned link to it at the very top of our website's front page.

The European Union has formally approved a €90 billion ($105 billion) emergency loan for Ukraine for 2026–2027 and adopted its 20th package of sanctions against Russia, the bloc’s presidency said on Thursday.

European Council President Antonio Costa said in a statement that increasing pressure on Russia was part of a strategy “to achieve a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”

EU ambassadors approved the loan and sanctions package on Wednesday after Hungary lifted its veto following the election win of pro-EU politician Peter Magyar, who is slated to soon take over the government.

The controversial loan to Kiev was the focus of a months-long standoff with Hungary. Viktor Orban, the outgoing head of the Hungarian government, froze the disbursement of Ukrainian funding in retaliation for the halting of oil supplies via the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline in January. He called it a politically motivated ploy aimed at supporting Magyar’s party in the April 12 parliamentary election. 

Cypriot Finance Minister Makis Keravnos, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, said the disbursement of the funds would start “as soon as possible.” 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU “will move to swiftly implement on both fronts,” stepping up pressure on Russia and ramping up aid for Kiev. 

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on X that the bloc would provide Ukraine “what it needs to hold its ground.”

The approval came after Ukraine restarted the flow of Russian oil to the EU via the Druzhba pipeline under pressure from Hungary, Slovakia – heavily reliant on Russian energy – and its EU backers. Kiev had halted supplies, claiming the infrastructure was damaged by Russian strikes, an accusation Moscow dismissed as “lies.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned the funds could be misused by corrupt Ukrainian officials, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the EU was “digging into the pockets of its own taxpayers” to prolong the conflict.

Ukrainians are increasingly afraid to engage law enforcement because they believe doing so could result in themselves or others being drafted, according to the country’s police chief.

The National Police, a civilian force, is tasked with assisting military authorities in enforcing mandatory conscription, a policy that has generated widespread resentment due to incidents of violence and alleged corruption.

“People lately are questioning whether they should call the police,” Ivan Vygovsky said in an interview with RBK Ukraine published Thursday. “They think: ‘If I call this in, the police will come and take away me, my family or someone else.”

Ukraine aims to mobilize roughly 30,000 recruits per month to sustain its numbers at the front. Hundreds of videos circulating online show tension and confrontations between the Defense Ministry’s press gangs and members of the public, with officials routinely resorting to force against their uncooperative targets and bystanders.

Police image tarnished too

Two recent high-profile incidents have tarnished the force’s reputation. In one case, draft officials were accused of a kidnapping scheme aided by police informants. In another, police officers were filmed fleeing the scene of a shooting, leaving civilians unprotected.

The alleged kidnapping ring was busted in Odessa on Tuesday. According to investigators, military officials working at a local conscription office targeted affluent men, threatening them with forced mobilization unless they paid bribes. Media reports said several police officers had supplied tips about people with expensive property or vehicles.

Public anger intensified after footage showed the officers running away as a civilian fell on the ground after apparently being struck by a bullet. The press contrasted their actions to those of one of the victims, a street cleaner, who died while shielding a child from gunfire.

Rebranding instead of solutions

The Defense Ministry is considering reforms to the conscription system, including rebranding draft centers and expanding police involvement in enforcement.

Lawmaker Roman Kostenko has criticized the proposal, arguing it is designed to shift public anger with the draft onto the civilian authorities without addressing the underlying problem.

Kiev argues harsh methods are lamentable but necessary to supply reinforcements to frontline units. Vladimir Zelensky’s government has said it intends to continue fighting despite the cost, claiming that no compromise with Moscow can be reached.

Landlords across London and the south-east of the UK have been illegally advertising properties exclusively for Muslim tenants, in an apparent breach of Britain’s equality laws, according to an investigation published by The Telegraph on Wednesday.

Listings on Facebook and Telegram posted across multiple groups were found to include phrases such as “Muslim only,” “only for Muslims,” “for 2 Muslim boys or 2 Muslim girls,” and “suitable for Punjabi boy.” Some adverts also demanded Punjabi or Gujarati speakers, or tenants from specific Indian regions.

As noted by the outlet, the postings appear to violate the UK’s Equality Act 2010, which explicitly prohibits discrimination based on religion or belief, race, and other protected characteristics. Landlords can face civil action and fines of up to £7,000 ($9,445) for discriminatory listings. 

The Telegraph found the adverts posted across multiple parts of the British capital. The outlet contacted several landlords, all of whom refused outright to consider non-Muslim tenants. One man, advertising a room for £850 ($1,150) a month, told reporters to “go away.”

A government spokesperson told The Express that any discrimination is “illegal, including in the rental sector,” and that landlords violating the law should face consequences. However, the authorities have yet to announce a concrete response to the scandal.

The controversy comes amid a wider demographic shift in the UK, with Muslims now numbering approximately 4 million, or about 6.5% of the total population. In parts of London, the figure exceeds 40%. 

The name Muhammad has also been the most popular boys’ name in England and Wales for two consecutive years, with over 5,000 boys given that name in 2024 alone, according to the Office for National Statistics.

At least 20 people have been killed in coordinated attacks by suspected Boko Haram militants in two remote communities in northeastern Nigeria, local officials have reported.

The violence marks the latest in a series of brutal assaults in the ongoing security crisis that has plagued Africa’s most populous nation. Earlier this month, the US warned its citizens to avoid Nigeria, pointing to the growing danger.

Gunmen riding motorbikes raided the villages of Pubagu in Borno and Mayo-Ladde in Adamawa, opening fire on residents and overpowering local vigilantes, Mada Saidu, chairman of Askira-Uba local government area, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Mada confirmed that 11 people, including four vigilantes, were killed in Pubagu, and two others were injured. The insurgents also set fire to a church, along with several homes and properties. In Mayo-Ladde, which lies on the border between Borno and Adamawa states, nine people were killed, he added.

“Pubagu is one of the locations in our council area that had never suffered such an attack until yesterday,” Mada said after the burial of the victims on Wednesday, AP reported.

On April 9, the two armed groups targeted the headquarters of the 29 Task Force Brigade in Benisheikh, located in Borno State, killing an army general and several soldiers.

Last October, the administration of US President Donald Trump placed Nigeria on its list of “Countries of Particular Concern” amid allegations of “genocide” against Christians in the country. Abuja has denied claims that they are the only group being targeted, saying the violence affects Nigerians of all faiths.

US President Donald Trump has shared a letter deriding India and China as “hellholes.”

Trump reposted the letter from former radio host Michael Savage’s podcast Savage Nation on Truth Social on Wednesday.

The post was a criticism of the US birthright citizenship laws, which referred to India, China and other countries as “hellholes” while fiercely advocating changes to American policy regarding nationality.

“A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet,” the letter said.

It charged that these immigrants have done more damage to “this nation than all the mafia families put together.”

It added, “In my un-humble opinion. Gangsters with laptops. They’ve robbed us, blind, treated us like second-class citizens, let the turd world triumph, stepped on our flag, et cetera.”

The letter also said that “white men need not apply” for jobs, and alleged unsubstantiated bias in internal hiring mechanisms, claiming they are “run by Indians and Chinese.”

The order directs federal agencies to deny citizenship to children born on US soil if neither parent is an American citizen or a lawful permanent resident.

The controversial repost by Trump comes a day after he falsely claimed in an interview with CNBC that “no country in the world” offers birthright citizenship other than the US.

Canada and most Latin American nations provide birthright citizenship.

The US president recently courted controversy after posting and later deleting an AI‑generated image of himself depicted as Jesus on Truth Social, triggering a worldwide backlash.

Earlier this month, he threatened to destroy Iranian civilization overnight in response to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, but later backed down.

Iran’s seizure of two container ships in the Strait of Hormuz was not a ceasefire violation because they were not US or Israeli-owned, the White House has said, after the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released footage of the operation.

The seizures were reported between April 22 and April 23 in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint for global trade and a central flashpoint in the confrontation between Tehran and Washington since US-Israeli strikes on Iran began in late February.

The IRGC footage shows armed personnel boarding from fast boats and taking control of the vessels. The IRGC Navy said the ships were targeted over alleged “maritime violations” and escorted to Iranian waters, according to media reports.

Technomar, the management company of the Liberian-registered and India-bound Epaminondas, confirmed the vessel was “approached and fired upon by a manned gunboat” off the coast of Oman, adding that its bridge sustained “extremely wide damage.” The company said the ship’s 21 Ukrainian and Filipino crew members were safe.

A second cargo ship, the Panama-flagged MSC Francesca, came under fire hours later and was forced to stop, though no damage or injuries were reported. Panama condemned what it called the “illegal seizure,” calling it a serious threat to maritime security.

While the incident is widely seen as retaliation for US pressure and a naval blockade of Iranian ports, Washington said the seizures did not breach the ceasefire.

.@PressSec: "Iran has gone from having the most lethal navy in the Middle East to now acting like a bunch of pirates. They don’t have control over the Strait—this is piracy that we are seeing on display, and the naval blockade that the United States has imposed continues to be… pic.twitter.com/yCnQGfIe2c

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 22, 2026

“These were not US or Israeli ships, these were two international vessels,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News, adding that the naval blockade that the US has imposed “continues to be incredibly effective.”

The US had earlier seized two Iranian vessels ahead of ceasefire talks scheduled to take place in Pakistan.

The conflict has already driven up global energy and food costs, with Brent crude climbing above $100 a barrel, roughly 35% higher than pre-conflict levels, adding to inflationary pressures worldwide.

Italian officials have rebuked a US proposal for their national football team to replace Iran at the upcoming FIFA World Cup.

Italy lost the chance to participate at the World Cup for a third successive time after a humiliating penalty shootout defeat to Bosnia and Herzegovina in a playoff last month, triggering widespread backlash at home and leading to the resignation of the head of the national football federation.

However, an American proposal to give Italy Iran’s spot at the World Cup, which will be co-hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico this summer, sparked indignation in Rome.

The proposal is impossible and inappropriate, Sports Minister Andrea Abodi told the Italian news agency La Press, stressing: “You qualify on the pitch.” Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti called the idea “shameful.”

The possibility of a swap was raised by Paolo Zampolli, an Italian-American who heads the Office of Global Partnerships at the US State Department, and who described his lobbying efforts to the Financial Times and Corriere della Sera. Zampolli argues that “Italy, not Iran, should go to the World Cup,” and says he would be disappointed if he couldn’t see Italian players “on home soil.”

FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who is Swiss-born and also holds Italian citizenship, has maintained that Iran is expected to compete in the US. The international association referred to his remarks, when asked about Zampolli’s pitch.

The media described the envoy’s lobbying as an attempt to repair newly strained US-Italy relations. Tensions escalated after President Donald Trump criticized Pope Leo and later Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who rebuked him for targeting the pontiff.

According to Corriere della Sera, securing the participation of Italy – who are four-time World Cup winners – could also carry domestic political benefits for Trump, potentially boosting Republican support among Italian-American voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Separately, media reports last week stated that Trump’s special envoy for combating anti-Semitism, Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, warned European officials they could face travel restrictions during the World Cup in retaliation for alleged lapses in addressing the issue.

The number of immigrants in the European Union reached a record 64.2 million in 2025, a study by the Berlin-based Center for Research and Analysis on Migration (RFBerlin) shows, citing Eurostat and UN data. Of this total, approximately 46.7 million were born outside the EU.

The total rose by more than 2 million year-on-year and from about 40 million in 2010.

Germany remains the bloc’s largest host of foreign-born residents at nearly 18 million, while Spain has recorded the fastest recent growth, adding about 700,000 people – roughly one-third of last year’s EU-wide increase.

The study highlights an uneven distribution of arrivals, with Germany and Spain accounting for nearly half of the increase, while smaller states such as Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg face the highest inflows relative to population size.

At the same time, official data points to mounting strain on living conditions. Eurostat said 8.2% of EU residents spent at least 40% of their disposable income on housing in 2024, while 16.9% lived in overcrowded households and 9.2% could not afford to adequately heat their homes. Among people aged 15 to 29, nearly one in ten faced a housing cost burden.

European Council President Antonio Costa said earlier this year that housing affordability is “at the core of people’s disillusionment with democratic institutions.” EU-level spending on migration and border management accounts for roughly 2% of the bloc’s seven-year budget, with most costs borne by national governments.

The pressures have fueled rising anti-immigration sentiment across several EU countries, where migration has become a central political issue as concerns over housing shortages, public services and the cost of living continue to grow.

Western Europe continues to back Ukraine’s war effort against Russia while hosting around 4.35 million Ukrainian nationals across the EU, with Germany the largest host at over a million.

Berlin and Kiev are now coordinating efforts to return military-age Ukrainian men residing in Germany to their home country, as losses mount at the front and Germans become more and more reluctant to host them.

Meanwhile, the EU countries are increasing defense spending via Brussels’ recently launched €800 billion ReArm Europe plan, citing the danger of Russian aggression. Moscow has dismissed the threat narrative as “nonsense,” accusing Western governments of deflecting from domestic issues.

India has agreed to import urea at double the prices it paid earlier this year, amid the supply disruption caused by the Middle East conflict, Reuters has reported.

New Delhi is set to import a record 2.5 million metric tons of the nitrogen-based fertilizer in a single tender, the news outlet reported on Wednesday, citing government sources.

Indian Potash Ltd. has agreed to buy 1.5 million tons of urea at $935 per ton for delivery on the west coast, and an additional ⁠1 million tons at $959 per ton for delivery on the east coast, according to the report.

Before the US and Israel launched the war on Iran in late February, India’s Rashtriya ⁠Chemicals and Fertilizers received bids at $508 per ton for west coast delivery and $512 per ton for east coast delivery, Reuters reported.

The latest imports would account for nearly a quarter of its annual imports of about 10 million tons in 2025.

India is the world’s biggest urea importer, and its urea production depends heavily on natural gas, mainly imported from the Middle East. The development also comes amid a shortage of liquefied natural gas, a key feedstock for urea production.

Supply disruptions caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have resulted in many domestic fertilizer facilities being forced to halt production.

Urea prices have risen globally since the Middle East war began on February 28, as about 45% of the supplies move through the Persian Gulf.

Higher import costs are likely to push up India’s fertilizer subsidy bill, as the federal government compensates fertilizer ⁠companies for selling crop nutrients to farmers at lower prices.

Indian companies import fertilizers individually but negotiate collectively with suppliers.

As New Delhi secures supplies, other nations are also expected to scramble for fertilizers, pushing up prices further and straining supplies globally.

The US is not setting any deadlines for concluding the war against Iran, President Donald Trump has said.

The remarks contrast with Trump’s earlier claim, made shortly after the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, that the fighting would last “four to five weeks.” He also repeatedly said over the past month that the war would be over “very soon.”

The US president told Fox News on Wednesday that there is “no time frame” and no rush to end the conflict.

“People say I want to get it over because of the midterms, not true,” Trump said.

Trump’s approval rating on the economy has fallen to a new low of 30% as energy shortages caused by the Iran war continue to drive prices higher, according to an AP-NORC poll published earlier this week.

The announcement came just hours before the expiration of the two-week truce between the sides. Earlier the same day, Iran opted out of talks with an American delegation in Pakistan, arguing that any discussions are pointless as long as Washington’s “bullying” continues.

Trump told Fox News that there is “no time pressure” when it comes to the ceasefire or setting a new date for talks with Tehran. His goal is to “get a good deal for the American people,” he added.

”The blockade scares [Iran] even more than the bombing,” Trump claimed. “They’ve been bombed for years but the blockade they hate.”

The president also called Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghachi “a smart man,” who will “be there when talks get underway again.”

Iran has said it is prepared to fight the US “until complete victory.” Tehran’s envoy to Beijing, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, told RT India earlier this week that there will be no talks until the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for some 25% of global crude oil trade, continues. What the Americans expect from Iran “is not dialogue, but surrender,” and that is not going to happen, he insisted.

Lebanon has accused Israel of war crimes after a reporter for a Lebanese newspaper was killed on Wednesday in a strike on a house in the southern village of al-Tiri, where she had taken cover after an earlier attack targeted the vehicle she was traveling in.

Amal Khalil, a reporter for Al-Akhbar, was killed in the strike and her colleague Zeinab Faraj seriously wounded. Rescuers were initially unable to recover Khalil’s body because Israeli fire forced them to halt their efforts for hours.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the attack amounted to a war crime, arguing that Israel’s strikes on journalists could no longer be dismissed as isolated incidents.

“Targeting journalists, obstructing access to them by relief teams, and even targeting their locations again after these teams arrive constitute clearly defined war crimes,” he wrote in a post on X. “Lebanon will spare no effort in pursuing these crimes before the competent international forums.”

The Israel Defense Forces denied targeting journalists and said the incident was under review. The IDF claimed that people in the vehicles posed an “imminent threat” to Israeli troops after crossing the unilaterally declared Forward Defense Line in the occupied part of Lebanon.

Al-Manar TV journalist Hussain Hamood was killed in an Israeli strike on Nabatieh on March 25, while Lebanese radio presenter Ghada Dayekh was killed when an Israeli strike hit her home in Tyre on April 8.

Khalil’s death brought the number of journalists killed in Lebanon this year to at least nine, according to AP. Lebanese authorities say more than 2,300 civilians have been killed since the latest escalation began, including at least 254 women and 168 children, after Israel launched its combat operations in Lebanon, where the militant group Hezbollah is based, amid the wider US-Israeli war against Iran.

Three sailors were injured after a fire broke out aboard USS Zumwalt while the stealth destroyer was sitting pierside at HII Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, undergoing a costly modernization meant to give the ship a whole new identity.

One sailor was taken to a local hospital in stable condition, while two others were treated at the scene after the April 19 incident. The US Navy is investigating the cause and the extent of the damage to the warship, a spokesman told USNI on Wednesday.

The troubled vessel has never participated in any combat mission and has become a byword for Pentagon overreach: flashy, fantastically expensive, and still trying to figure out what exactly it wants to be when it grows up.

Those hypersonic missiles, however, have yet to be fully developed and fielded on the ship. National Defense previously reported that the Navy wanted to begin CPS testing aboard the Zumwalt in 2027 or 2028.

The Zumwalt-class destroyer program consumed up to $24.5 billion for a fleet of just three ships, according to a 2018 GAO review, while media outlets described the vessel as an $8 billion blunder.

The program was announced with much fanfare in December by President Donald Trump, alongside Navy Secretary John Phelan and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, as part of a new “Golden Fleet” vision. Phelan was still out there this week touting the new battleship as the future of sea power – before abruptly “departing” the administration the very next day.

The White House has reportedly drawn up a NATO “naughty and nice” list, sorting member states into tiers as it considers how to reward countries that backed the US war against Iran and punish those that did not.

According to Politico, the internal paper was prepared ahead of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s recent trip to Washington. It reportedly lays out members’ contributions to the bloc and appears to reflect Pentagon rhetoric about “model allies” deserving “special favor,” while others face “consequences.”

The administration has not publicly spelled out what punishments are on the table. But officials cited by Politico said options could include shifting troops, scaling back exercises, or redirecting military cooperation away from “bad” members and toward more obedient ones.

For years, Trump has berated European NATO members for allegedly not paying enough for their own “defense,” even as they poured billions upon billions into arming, financing, and sustaining Kiev in its conflict with Russia. At the same time, many of those same governments have invoked the specter of a looming Russian threat to justify fresh militarization and bigger military budgets.

Trump has made little secret of his contempt for members he sees as freeloaders or cowards. Earlier this month, he blasted NATO over its reluctance to join the Iran fight, while Rutte again found himself trying to smooth things over after already being ridiculed for calling Trump “Daddy.”

As a Canadian who has spent 17 years working in Europe, I feel qualified to speak on behalf of the few remaining brain cells still on active duty (that would be just 40% of all Canadian neurons, according to a recent poll): Canada has zero interest in joining the European Union.

All some Canadians see when they declare their support for joining the EU are what they perceive to be advantages – which really aren’t. Take the free movement of people across the EU’s effectively borderless Schengen zone. That’s all fine and dandy until the Spanish prime minister decides to grant mass amnesty to the better part of a million migrants, many of whom might then decide to head over to that new EU nation of Canada.

Yet this idiotic topic keeps coming up. In just the latest instance, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, visiting the Canadian capital, was hanging out with central banker finance bro turned Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

They played a fun little butt-slapper of a hockey game, and Stubb talked about how they texted nonstop like teenagers while musing to the Canadian press that Canada joining the EU “would be a marriage made in heaven.” Get a room, you two. But please keep the rest of Canada out of it.

In reality, it would involve requiring every European state to unanimously vote to modify the current EU treaty to include a North American state in a union explicitly limited to geographically European nations. But Stubb said that he foresaw “negotiations that would be faster than Finland joining NATO.” Only if Canadian officials sell out their own voters – something that would have to become a habit as an EU member state.

But here’s a less self-flattering way of putting it: “Maybe if I’m giving up my assets to someone of my own choice, then it’ll be clear to the creep pursuing me to keep his hands off them.” Regardless, someone’s getting easy access to your resources without having to regularly negotiate for them. Which isn’t much better than someone threatening to take them by force. Either way, your autonomy is compromised. You’ve just sold it to yourself differently.

The ideal option would be to maintain absolute control, don’t let anyone take you for granted, and ensure that anything you give up is subject to a fair exchange. That describes Canada’s current relationship with the EU. And that’s about as good as it gets.

Some Canadians apparently have failed to notice that the people of the country with which it currently shares a head of state – King Charles – already voted to bail out of the very same relationship that they’re now drooling over. And it wasn’t a clean escape. All the EU rule of law provisions that were domesticated into British law still impact the daily lives of the British.

Why would Canadians want European bureaucrats, over whom they have zero democratic control, to be capable of dictating policy and parameters to elected Canadian lawmakers? It’s a known feature of British and Canadian constitutional law that very little infringes on parliamentary sovereignty – but EU law was effectively given supremacy over UK law until Brexit. And every EU member state is in the same boat, usually with slightly different national traditions of complaining about it.

How would Canadians feel about paying cash to Brussels so it can be given away for use by other EU funding recipient countries? Because Canada would be in the donor tier of EU nations and expected to pay up. Meanwhile, its farmers and energy industry would be subjected to the same ridiculous regulations that have EU Copernicus satellites spying on crop production to make sure they match paperwork, Eurocrats wringing their hands over how to parlay cow farts into tax revenue or a land grab, and dictating how (or even if) Canada can exploit its own massive natural resources.

Canada is doing pretty well right now in developing a long overdue, sustainable new multilateral foreign and trade diversification policy approach that decenters the superpowers – notably amid US recklessness. But the EU is aiming for an increasingly lockstep strategy among its member states. Which makes some sense if you’re an actual European country and a part of continent where both world wars took place because you were fighting with one another nonstop until the EU was created to lock all of you into one giant political straitjacket so you’d behave. At least it gives the EU a nice narrative for crackdowns in service of its globalist agenda. But it’s ridiculous for Canada to want to voluntarily check into the insane asylum.

Trade and defense cooperation already exist with the EU, thanks. The last thing that a Canada needs is to become Brussels’ experimental North American bureaucratic extension project.

US Navy Secretary John C. Phelan has stepped down in an abrupt move announced by the Pentagon without any public explanation or indication that his exit was linked to the naval blockade of Iran.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that Phelan was “departing the administration” at once and that Undersecretary Hung Cao would become acting secretary of the Navy.

“On behalf of the Secretary of War and Deputy Secretary of War, we are grateful to Secretary Phelan for his service to the Department and the United States Navy. We wish him well in his future endeavors,” Parnell said in the statement.

No reason for Phelan’s departure was included in the announcement, which was reposted without further comment by Secretary Pete Hegseth.

STATEMENT:

Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan is departing the administration, effective immediately.

On behalf of the Secretary of War and Deputy Secretary of War, we are grateful to Secretary Phelan for his service to the Department and the United States Navy.

We wish…

— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellASW) April 22, 2026

Phelan, a businessman and investor with no prior military service, was sworn in as the 79th secretary of the Navy on March 25, 2025, after being nominated by President Donald Trump. He had overseen the Department of the Navy for just over a year.

Cao, who had been serving as undersecretary of the Navy, will now take over in an acting capacity. Phelan had previously praised him as a key part of the department’s effort to rebuild the “warrior ethos” and improve quality of service across the Navy and Marine Corps.

Phelan’s departure also comes just weeks after Hegseth forced out Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and two other senior Army generals in a separate Pentagon shake-up.

A Ukrainian press gang in the city of Odessa used pepper spray on a woman as she desperately attempted to prevent the forced mobilization of a man, according to eyewitness video circulating on social media.

The footage, shared on Wednesday, depicts at least eight draft officers struggling with an unwilling conscript while the woman attempts to intervene. At one point, the officers pull her away and apparently pepper-spray her, leaving her sitting on the ground and screaming: “My eyes!”

The man is eventually escorted to an unmarked minibus, as bystanders suggest rinsing the woman’s eyes with milk to alleviate the burning sensation.

Amid mounting losses in the conflict with Russia and a shortage of willing recruits, Ukrainian draft enforcement squads have increasingly turned to coercion to fill the ranks. The practice, colloquially known as “busification,” involves military-age men being snatched off the streets, from workplaces, and from residential areas, then taken to recruitment centers against their will, often triggering clashes with relatives, neighbors, and passersby.

In one case, draft enforcers shoved a woman to the ground and pepper-sprayed bystanders as they detained a man.

In another incident, a press gang pepper-sprayed the occupants of a car after the male driver refused to get out and called a lawyer instead.

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Публикация от ORLOV MYKYTA (@orlov.mykyta)

Earlier this month, two draft enforcers were stabbed during a document check in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa. In a separate incident in Lviv, a conscription officer was fatally stabbed in the neck.

Moscow has accused Kiev of seeking to fight “to the last Ukrainian” at the behest of Western powers waging a proxy war against Russia. Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov previously estimated that Ukraine had lost nearly 500,000 servicemen killed or seriously wounded in 2025 alone.

Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken has defended the drone scare which gripped the country last year and cost some €50 million ($58.5 million) in emergency spending, offering a lackluster apology for personally disseminating images purporting to show the UAVs, which turned out to be false.

The drone craze gripped the country, as well as several other EU nations, late last year with numerous sightings of mysterious UAVs reported from military and critical infrastructure sites. The Belgian government declared an emergency situation over the sightings and swiftly allocated €50 million for anti-drone procurement.

The scare prompted allegations of Russian involvement, yet no evidence to back up such claims, as well as to prove the very existence of the elusive aircraft, has ever emerged. Moscow at the time dismissed the “drone hysteria” as paranoia.

The drone affair was explored by VRT News’ program Pano, which reignited the controversy over the drones and the government’s handling of the crisis. According to the documentary, in several instances the alleged UAVs turned out to be police helicopters. The investigation also raised questions over emergency spending, pointing at inflated pricing allegations in multi-million contracts awarded without any due public tender process.

The defense chief cited findings by the country’s military intelligence, which claimed that at least 42 out of 250 drone sightings over military barracks were legitimate. While no physical evidence has been collected, there was “no other plausible explanation than a drone” for them, he claimed. 

“Anyone who claims today that there were no drones is therefore ignoring the findings of our own intelligence service. And let’s be honest: as long as you don’t have the means to detect and neutralize drones, it stands to reason that you cannot immediately produce physical evidence,” Francken said.

The minister also offered a lackluster apology for his role in fueling the scare, admitting it had been “painful” that he personally circulated images of alleged drones that turned out to be false. In particular, Francken disseminated an image of an aircraft above Brussels Airport, which turned out to be a police helicopter.

The US decision to extend sanctions relief for Russian oil was taken to prevent crude prices from exploding amid the Iran war and followed pleas from energy-vulnerable countries, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said.

Testifying before a Senate appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday, Bessent defended last week’s U‑turn to prolong a general license allowing deliveries of Russian oil and petroleum products that were already loaded on tankers. The waiver, which runs until May 16, follows an earlier 30‑day relaxation that expired on April 11.

Bessent said that during the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington he was approached by finance ministers and central bank chiefs from “more than ten of the most vulnerable and poorest countries in terms of energy,” who asked the US to extend sanctions relief for another month.

Bessent told lawmakers the waiver allowed Treasury to put “more than 250 million barrels on the water” and ease fears over supply. With crude trading near $100, he claimed that without the extra Russian barrels “they might have been at $150,” saying the measure was intended to shield both US consumers and allies from even steeper fuel costs.

US gasoline prices have soared, putting pressure on households ahead of November’s midterm elections. The national average exceeded $4 per gallon, up from $2.94 in late February before the Iran conflict, according to data from the American Automobile Association.

The Financial Times has called Russia “the biggest winner from the conflict in the Middle East,” calculating that Moscow is earning up to $150 million a day in extra budget revenues.

The Kremlin has confirmed a “modest increase” in oil income linked to the Middle East conflict but said it is not critical for the Russian budget or the wider economy.

When Spain’s Pedro Sánchez arrived in Beijing in April for his fourth visit in four years, he did so for a tightly choreographed round of high-level meetings with Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials, alongside business and academic engagements.

Officially, the visit revolved around cooperation: trade, green energy, technology, and multilateral governance. Spain, Sánchez reiterated, rejects the fashionable rhetoric of “decoupling” and instead champions interconnected supply chains. He urged China to take on a greater role in global governance, from climate change to artificial intelligence to nuclear security.

This sounds like standard globalist responsibility-sharing talk, but there’s a strategic motive behind it. Spain is stepping into a role that others in Europe have either abandoned or mishandled: that of a credible, influential interlocutor with Beijing.

Brussels’ favorite son vs. Europe’s usual suspect

To understand Sánchez’s growing relevance, one must contrast him with Hungary’s now former prime minister Viktor Orbán. Both favor engagement with China, but only one is taken seriously in Brussels.

Orbán’s approach – conservative, sovereigntist, and openly combative – has long cast him as a convenient outlier for the EU’s liberal elites. Sánchez, by contrast, is Brussels’ model pupil. He aligns with the European Commission on migration, climate orthodoxy, and regulatory expansion, projecting the image of a leader fully in tune with the union’s progressive agenda. He does not challenge the EU’s ideological architecture, which is why Spain’s voice carries more weight in Brussels.

As the fourth-largest contributor to the EU budget and one of its fastest-growing major economies, Spain offers Beijing something Hungary could not even under ‘China-friendly’ Orbán: access without disruption. The result is a curious inversion. Europe’s most effective advocate for engagement with China is not a populist, but a leader deeply embedded in Brussels’ political mainstream, with all the inclusivity, sustainability, and wokeism that entails.

Washington has taken notice of Sánchez’s China policy – and not with enthusiasm. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent bluntly warned that aligning with Beijing would be “like cutting your own throat,” a remark that captures the growing impatience within US policy circles. Spain’s refusal to fully align with American positions on recent geopolitical crises, including the war in the Middle East, has only sharpened these concerns.

Within Europe, Sánchez’s approach has found a more receptive audience. European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Stéphane Séjourné has openly suggested that the EU would benefit from increased Chinese investment and should resist mimicking America’s more isolationist stance.

At the same time, Sánchez’s talk of multipolarity, shared global responsibility and cooperation over confrontation aligns neatly with Beijing’s own narrative – and sits somewhat awkwardly alongside the traditional transatlantic framework.

Meanwhile, Sánchez’s broader political ambitions are hard to ignore. Fresh from hosting a Barcelona gathering of global left-wing leaders aimed at countering the rise of the “far-right” and “authoritarian populists,” he appears keen to position as a figure of international progressive leadership within the EU. Ironically, this champion of ideologically progressive causes at home is navigating great-power politics abroad with a distinctly pragmatic touch.

China-Spain relations in practice

If the rhetoric occasionally drifts into abstraction, the substance of China-Spain relations is refreshingly concrete. China is Spain’s largest trading partner outside the EU, and economic ties are expanding rapidly. Chinese investment in Spain has grown by 50% between 2024 and 2025 compared to the previous two-year period, reaching around $3 billion. This capital is anchored in industrial projects that are reshaping Spain’s economic landscape

In Barcelona, Chinese automaker Chery is establishing a European operations center and R&D institute. In Zaragoza, battery giant CATL is building a lithium battery gigafactory. In Navarra, Hithium is investing in energy storage systems. These projects are part of a broader strategy by Chinese firms to localize production within Europe, bypassing tariffs while embedding themselves in the EU’s industrial ecosystem.

Spain has also ventured into more sensitive technological territory. A strategic agreement with China’s Origin Quantum aims to develop Europe’s largest quantum computer, placing Spain at the forefront of emerging technologies – albeit with significant Chinese involvement. Meanwhile, Madrid’s decision to entrust Huawei with storing judicial wiretaps raised eyebrows among some allies, particularly as debates over telecom security intensify. Yet while others deliberate, Spain is building.

Sánchez’s latest trip to Beijing delivered a dense package of outcomes that went well beyond diplomatic niceties.

Nineteen bilateral agreements were signed, covering trade, technology, green energy, and infrastructure. These deals also established a new Strategic Diplomatic Dialogue Mechanism, institutionalizing regular high-level engagement between Spain and China. For Madrid, this represents a significant upgrade in its bilateral relationship – one that positions it as a key European partner for Beijing.

By some estimates, the agreements achieved more for Spain’s trade position in a single visit than years of EU-level negotiations have managed. This is a reminder that, for all the emphasis on European unity, national diplomacy still delivers results.

Sánchez also used the visit to actively court further investment, including outreach to wind turbine manufacturer Ming Yang, whose expansion plans have faced resistance elsewhere in Europe. Spain’s openness contrasts sharply with the more cautious stance of other Western countries, reinforcing its reputation as a welcoming destination for Chinese capital.

Beyond economics, the visit included a strong cultural and academic component. Agreements were signed to expand cooperation in education, research, and cultural exchange. In a symbolic gesture, Sánchez was awarded an honorary professorship by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences – an accolade that underscores the personal dimension of his engagement with China.

Between pragmatism and posturing

Sánchez’s China policy is, at its core, a blend of pragmatism and performance. The pragmatism is evident in the deals, the investments, and the industrial strategy. Spain is securing tangible benefits at a time when economic growth is a scarce commodity in the EU.

This duality defines Sánchez’s approach. In Brussels, he is the dependable progressive, aligned with the Union’s prevailing ethos. In Beijing, he is the pragmatic dealmaker, open to cooperation and eager to position Spain as a central player in a changing global order.

Europe’s new interlocutor, with strings attached

Spain’s deepening relationship is the result of deliberate political choices. Sánchez has identified an opportunity and moved decisively to seize it, positioning Madrid as a key bridge between Beijing and Brussels.

Despite the clear benefits, the strategy is not without its tensions. As Spain draws closer to China, it also tests the limits of its alignment with the US and navigates the complexities of EU politics.

For now, Sánchez appears comfortable walking this tightrope – equally at ease with Brussels ideology and Beijing pragmatism. Whether this balancing act proves sustainable is another question.

What is certain is that Spain is no longer a peripheral player in the EU’s China debate. Under Sánchez, it has become a bridge, a broker – and perhaps, for some, a rather enthusiastic convert to the art of strategic ambiguity.

There is “rampant Satanism” in certain EU member states, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has alleged, citing their connivance in the Ukrainian authorities’ “blasphemous practices” at the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Orthodox monastery.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the government in Kiev has intensified its crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church over allegations that it has connections to Moscow. The Ukrainian authorities have since conducted numerous raids on monasteries and launched dozens of criminal cases on collaboration charges against clerics, as well as property seizures.

At the same time, Vladimir Zelensky’s government has backed the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which the Russian Orthodox Church considers schismatic.

Speaking at a Russian Foreign Ministry reception on Wednesday dedicated to Orthodox Easter, Lavrov stated that the Ukrainian leadership has rejected “their spiritual and civilizational roots.”

“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been persecuted for over a decade now, with churches [forcibly] taken over, vandalized and clergy and parishioners harassed,” he said.

According to Lavrov, the “Ukrainian Ministry of Culture used this bureaucratic formula to conceal its legalized blasphemous practices, while several European countries have turned a blind eye to these developments or even directly supported them.”

“There is rampant Satanism in these countries, too,” the Russian foreign minister concluded.

Last March, the first reports emerged of Ukrainian government officials and police forcing their way into the catacombs of what is considered the nation’s most significant monastery and the final resting place of several Christian saints.

Incidentally, this is not the first time Lavrov has suggested there are Satanic tendencies in the West.

Speaking in February, after the US Department of Justice released a large trove of the so-called Epstein files, the Russian foreign minister said that the materials had “revealed the face of the West.”

“Every normal person knows this is beyond comprehension and pure Satanism,” Lavrov stated then.

A Moldovan court has sentenced businessman and opposition politician Vladimir Plahotniuc to 19 years in prison in a high-profile bank fraud case.

The charges are related to a 2014 bank scandal in which $1 billion was siphoned from three of the largest financial institutions in the country. Plahotniuc stood accused of receiving only a fraction of the money, namely $39 million and €3.5 million ($4.1 million) from the affected banks.  

The politician fled the country in 2019 after his Democratic Party lost the elections and has denied any wrongdoing, insisting the case against him is politically motivated. He was arrested in Greece in July last year and promptly extradited to Moldova to face trial. Plahotniuc requested to be sent to Moldova rather than to Russia, where he has been wanted since 2017 over a failed assassination attempt on a banker.

The 2014 bank fraud affair, locally known as the “heist of the century,” sent shockwaves through the political landscape of the ex-Soviet nation, implicating many high-profile figures. Former Moldovan Prime Minister and founder of the Democratic Party, Vlad Filat, was sentenced to nine years for corruption and influence peddling in 2016, but was released on parole in 2019. Filat has maintained his innocence, repeatedly accusing his former ally Plahotniuc of fabricating the case against him.  

Another opposition politician and businessman, Ilan Shor, was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in 2023 over his role in the bank fraud. Shor fled the country in 2019 and has remained abroad ever since, first taking refuge in Israel and ultimately moving to Russia, where he was granted citizenship. The businessman has long maintained his innocence as well, insisting the charges against him are politically motivated.

The EU is facing months of uncertainty as its energy crisis deepens following the escalation of the Middle East conflict, with the bloc now paying far more for fossil fuel imports, Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen has said. 

The US-Israeli war on Iran has added pressure to global energy markets, driving oil prices higher and increasing fuel costs for consumers worldwide. The conflict has choked flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a key route that handles around 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas. The EU has already been grappling with the fallout from its decision to cut energy ties with Russia following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, alongside the costs of its green transition policies.  

Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, Jorgensen said the bloc’s fossil fuel import bill had risen by more than €24 billion (over $28 billion) since the Middle East war began, amounting to “over €500 million per day.” He warned that “the coming months will be filled with uncertainties” and that the true impact of the crisis will be long‑term, adding “we must be prepared for anything.” 

In January, the European Commission restated its goal of phasing out Russian fossil fuels by 2027. Jorgensen told the Financial Times this month that Brussels is “preparing for the worst‑case scenarios” in light of the Iran war, including possible rationing of jet fuel and diesel, but insisted the EU will not reverse its ban on Russian LNG, opting instead for much more expensive alternatives from the US “and other partners.”   

The International Energy Agency has warned that the world is facing “the largest energy crisis” and that Europe could run short of jet fuel within weeks. Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev has said the EU faces deindustrialization under “Russophobic politicians” and that Western governments will eventually be forced to seek renewed access to Russian energy. 

The US has extended its temporary waiver on certain Russian oil shipments loaded on vessels through May 16 in an effort to stabilize prices. Moscow has signaled it is ready to plug any oil supply gaps triggered by the conflict.

The US Justice Department has charged the anti-racist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with wire fraud over its funneling of more than $3 million to white supremacist and extremist groups, including the organizers of the deadly ‘Unite the Right’ Charlottesville rally in 2017.

In an indictment handed down by a grand jury in Alabama on Tuesday, the SPLC was charged with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. According to the Justice Department and the FBI, the organization misled donors by soliciting money to “fight” extremists, then covertly funneling the money to the leaders of these same extremist groups.

🚨HAPPENING NOW: Justice Department announces indictment against Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC"). Our indictment alleges SPLC secretly funneled MORE THAN $3 MILLION in funds to members of white supremacist and extremist groups. pic.twitter.com/Ifpda94f7D

— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) April 21, 2026

Given the SPLC’s stated mission of “fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to help create a multiracial democracy,” the indictment – if proven – reveals stunning hypocrisy at the heart of the organization.

What is the SPLC? 

Founded as a civil rights law firm in 1971, the SPLC has grown into one of the US’ leading liberal NGOs. It has won civil lawsuits for victims of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) violence, agitated for immigrant, LGBT, and prisoners’ rights, and its database of “hate” organizations is considered authoritative by mainstream media outlets.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the SPLC focused its attention on white-supremacist and Klan-adjacent groups, one of which firebombed the organization’s Alabama offices in 1983. The SPLC’s more recent activities have proven controversial: the organization was accused of anti-white racism when a senior staffer, Mark Potok, was filmed with a ‘countdown clock’ to whites becoming a minority in the US taped to his desk; and the SPLC’s listing of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA as a “case study” in “hate and extremism” led the FBI to cut its ties with the center after Kirk’s assassination last year.

What does the SPLC indictment allege?

According to the indictment, donors were told that their money would be used to help “dismantle” the extremist groups listed in the SPLC’s database. What they weren’t told was that this money was actually being funneled to these groups via fictitious business entities, and that the SPLC would in some cases order the groups to continue stoking racial hatred. The list of recipients includes:

• A member of the online chat group that planned the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville – $270,000 between 2015 and 2023

• An affiliate of the neo-Nazi National Alliance – $1,000,000 between 2014 and 2023

• The Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America – unknown amount

• An officer in the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club – $300,000 between 2014 and 2020

• The Chairman of the National Alliance – $140,000 between 2016 and 2023

• The leader of the National Socialist Party of America – $70,000 between 2014 and 2016

• The National President of American Front – $19,000 between 2016 and 2019

• The wife of an Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Kluk Klan – $3,500 at an unknown time

Two of these individuals – the National Alliance chairman and National Socialist Party of America leader – were listed by name on the SPLC’s “extremist file” web page at the time of the payments. The president of American Front was, at the time, a convicted felon over his taking part in a cross burning.

Another individual was allegedly paid $160,000 by the SPLC, which he then disbursed “to various violent extremist group leaders including the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,” the indictment alleges. 

Did the SPLC secretly organize the Charlottesville rally?

A 2017 torchlit march attended by hundreds of right-wingers, militia members, ‘alt-right’ activists and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended in tragedy when participant James Alex Fields rammed his car into a crowd of left-wing protesters, killing one person and injuring 35.

Democrats and the mainstream media tied President Donald Trump to the spectacle. Trump, who expressed support for some of the participants, spent the remainder of his first term in office repeatedly disavowing “the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”

According to the indictment, however, a man described as “a member of the online leadership chat group that planned” the rally and attended the event “at the direction of the SPLC… made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC, and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.”

The SPLC has never denied planting informants within extremist groups. In this case, however, it appears that the center played a leading role in organizing the rally – one which it concealed from the media, law enforcement authorities, and its own donors.

Is the SPLC’s use of informants illegal?

The SPLC’s use of paid informants is not illegal, provided the informants are not being paid to commit crimes. What the lawsuit alleges is that the SPLC knowingly deceived its donors, who were told that their money would be used to “dismantle” extremism and “uplift progressive candidates who uphold inclusive democratic values,” and knowingly deceived banks, who had no idea that fictitious companies with names like ‘Rare Books Warehouse’ and ‘Fox Photography’ were fronts for funding extremism.

Nonprofits like the SPLC are not required by law to show donors where every dollar of their money was spent. To win the case, the Justice Department will need to prove that the SPLC engaged in a deliberate scheme to lie.

How has the SPLC responded to the indictment?

In a statement on Tuesday, SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said that the organization no longer uses paid informants, but that the practice helped the SPLC infiltrate extremist groups and “saved lives.”

“We are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC,” Fair said. “Today the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation’s most vulnerable people and any organization like ours that stands in the breach,” he continued, adding: “we will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.” 

What is the government saying?

The SPLC “lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups,” FBI Director Kash Patel said at a press conference on Tuesday. The organization “was not dismantling the groups,” US Attorney General Todd Blanche added. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

Responding to Fair’s allegations of “weaponization,” Blanche told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the “indictment is free for everybody to read, and if the takeaway is that that’s political, I mean, I think the opposite is true.” The SPLC’s conduct, he said, was “extraordinarily egregious.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has refused to release former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, ruling that it has jurisdiction over his case despite his country’s withdrawal from the tribunal. The 81‑year‑old will remain in custody in The Hague.

Duterte was arrested at Manila airport in March 2025 and transferred to the ICC’s detention facility in the Netherlands. He faces charges of crimes against humanity over a deadly anti‑drug campaign he launched while in office. Police records count roughly 7,000 deaths, although human rights groups put the figure much higher.

Duterte has consistently defended the campaign, saying he only ordered police to kill in self‑defense. His lawyers have also argued that the ICC lost jurisdiction when the Philippines formally withdrew from the Rome Statute in 2018.

The appeals chamber has rejected the argument, ruling that the alleged crimes were committed while the country was still a member and that a preliminary examination had already begun before the withdrawal took effect. The decision clears the way for a possible full trial.

The ruling has drawn sharp reactions from Duterte’s allies. Harry Roque, a former spokesman for the Philippines president, told RT that the court is using Duterte to justify its own existence. 

“Outside of the Duterte case, the court has not been trying any other case,” he said, pointing to the ICC’s failure to prosecute any other leaders it has accused, namely Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He called the decision “sad” and argued that the drug war was a “legitimate sovereign duty,” not a crime against humanity.

Constitutional law professor James Reserva told RT that the case is a signal to future Philippine presidents. “If you will not behave like what we want you to behave, you will become like Duterte,” he said, claiming that the ICC is being driven by geopolitical interests rather than justice.

The ICC pre‑trial chamber is expected to decide by the end of April whether to confirm the charges. If confirmed, Duterte would become the first former Asian head of state to stand trial at The Hague.

Europe’s summer getaway is under threat as airlines slash thousands of flights amid a deepening jet fuel crunch, raising alarm among holidaymakers. Lufthansa alone is scrapping 20,000 services through October to conserve fuel, the carrier announced on Tuesday, while airlines across the continent trim schedules as costs surge and supplies tighten.

Why is this happening?

The jet fuel squeeze is being driven by disruption in one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints – the Strait of Hormuz – amid the US-Israeli war on Iran. Around a fifth of global oil supply passes through the narrow route linking the Persian Gulf to world markets, making it vital to energy flows to Europe and Asia, according to the International Energy Agency.

The escalation of the conflict has sharply reduced tanker traffic through the strait, with shipments delayed or halted, triggering what IEA chief Fatih Birol even warned could become the worst energy crisis in history.

Why is jet fuel affected?

The EU does produce jet fuel in its own refineries, but not in sufficient volumes, which is why Europe’s aviation sector is particularly exposed to the situation in the Middle East. Around 75% of Europe’s jet fuel imports come from the region, mostly Kuwait, making supplies highly vulnerable to disruptions in Gulf shipping routes.

Jet fuel itself is also relatively scarce by design. Only a small share of crude oil, typically around 10%, is refined into jet fuel, meaning supply cannot easily be increased even when demand is high.

How much fuel does a plane use?

Jet fuel is one of the largest and most volatile costs for airlines, accounting for a significant share of operating expenses, according to industry data.

Fuel consumption varies by aircraft and route, but even short-haul jets use large volumes. A typical single-aisle aircraft such as a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 burns around 2,500 to 3,000 liters per hour, depending on load and conditions, according to aviation estimates.

What does this mean for my holiday?

Jet fuel prices have roughly doubled since the Iran war began on February 28. Airlines have begun passing on costs by raising fares, adding surcharges, and increasing fees for baggage and other extras, according to reports.

At the same time, carriers are cutting unprofitable routes and reducing frequency, increasing the risk of last-minute cancellations and disruption. Airlines including Lufthansa, KLM, Ryanair, SAS, and Aer Lingus have already cut or cancelled flights, according to industry and media reports.

Are others worried?

Travelers are already showing signs of concern as uncertainty over flights grows ahead of the summer season. More Britons are opting to holiday at home due to “uncertainty over flights,” with concerns over potential cancellations and disruption linked to the jet fuel crisis, according to The Guardian. UK holiday operators have reported a sharp rise in domestic demand.

What is the EU doing to fix the situation?

EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said on Tuesday that EU countries could be asked to share jet fuel reserves if shortages emerge, noting that the bloc maintains emergency stocks that can be released if necessary. Voluntary cooperation between member states could become mandatory if the situation worsens, he added.

European transport ministers are also exploring options to import jet fuel from alternative suppliers such as the US, according to Euronews.

What are the airlines doing to fix the situation?

Apart from increasing costs for passengers, airlines are seeking to offset tightening supplies by securing alternative fuel sources and rerouting deliveries, according to industry reporting.

Several airlines are also urging the UK government to relax regulations, allow alternative imports and prioritize jet fuel production to stabilize supply, according to The Guardian.

Is it too late to save summer vacations?

However, he vowed to maintain the US naval blockade, touting it as leverage to force Tehran to make a deal, meaning that traffic remains unstable and unpredictable.

But even if flows were restored immediately, analysts warn the disruption may already be too deep to avoid impacting the peak travel season.

Energy market specialists say it would take months for global oil and jet fuel supplies to normalize after such a shock. Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler, said recovery could take until “at least July,” adding that even that timeline may prove optimistic.

Florida has launched a criminal probe into OpenAI and ChatGPT over a shooting spree at Florida State University, which the perpetrator planned with the help of the AI chatbot.

The incident occurred in April 2025, when the suspect allegedly killed two and injured six people. He was subsequently injured in a shootout with the police and taken into custody. The gunman, who turned out to be the son of a deputy sheriff, was charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.

The US state is now probing ChatGPT’s role in the attack and seeks to determine whether “OpenAI bears criminal responsibility” for the chatbot’s actions, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Tuesday. 

“The chatbot advised the shooter on what ⁠type of gun to use, on which ammo went with which gun, and on whether or not a gun would be useful at short range,” Uthmeier told a press briefing. 

“If it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder,” he added.

“In this case, ChatGPT provided factual responses to questions ⁠with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet, and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity,” the spokeswoman stated.

The rise of chatbots has long-prompted concerns over AI-enabled crimes, voiced by numerous independent researchers and government agencies worldwide. While the bulk of AI-powered crimes appear to take place in the tech sphere, including hacks, cyberattacks, fraud, and identity theft, the chatbots have been repeatedly implicated in aiding violent crime as well. A recent joint investigation by CNN and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, for instance, found that eight out of ten leaders were ready to assist users in staging violent attacks, including religiously motivated bombings, school shootings, and assassinations.

Russia has announced new initiatives to combat infectious diseases in Africa, including responding to a mysterious outbreak in Burundi and expanding cooperation with the Republic of the Congo.

In recent years, mpox – a rare deadly tropical disease – has spread across parts of the continent, while several countries have also faced other infection outbreaks, and Ebola and cholera have killed thousands in West and Central Africa.

Russia’s public health agency, Rospotrebnadzor, announced on Tuesday that it will establish an epidemiology and infection prevention center in the Republic of the Congo. A memorandum was signed by its head, Anna Popova, and Congo’s minister of health and population, Jean-Rosaire Ibara.

“The creation of the center will ensure the national sovereignty of the Republic of the Congo in the field of biosafety,” the Rospotrebnadzor press service noted.

The move follows a 2023 agreement on sanitary and epidemiological cooperation signed on the sidelines of the second Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 35 cases have been identified and at least five people have died in the Mpanda district. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, blood in the urine, fatigue, and jaundice.

Laboratory tests for Ebola, Marburg, and other known diseases have returned negative, raising concerns about the nature of the outbreak.

“While it’s reassuring that preliminary analysis is negative for these serious infections, further investigations are ongoing,” Lydwine Badarahana, Burundi’s minister of health, has said.

Rospotrebnadzor reported it has sent a proposal to assist Burundi and noted that a joint infectious disease research center is already operating in Bujumbura.

Russia has been expanding health cooperation with African countries in recent years. In July, Rospotrebnadzor began training Ugandan medical personnel, and has also supplied Burkina Faso with a mobile laboratory capable of processing up to 800 tests per day for more than 20 infectious diseases.

Pope Leo XIV has criticized the “colonization” of Africa’s mineral resources in a speech in Equatorial Guinea, one of the continent’s top oil producers, where nearly half of the population still lives in poverty.

The pontiff arrived in the central African nation on Tuesday for the final leg of his 11-day tour of the continent, having previously visited Algeria, Cameroon, and Angola. He was warmly welcomed by flag-waving and cheering crowds in the administrative capital, Malabo.

In his address to Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and other officials, Pope Leo echoed the words of Pope Francis, who passed away one year ago, stating, “We must also say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.”

“It is clear today that the proliferation of armed conflicts is often driven by the exploitation of oil and mineral deposits, with no regard for international law or the self-determination of peoples,” he said.

A peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to end decades of violence in eastern Congo, mediated by Trump, also includes plans to establish a regional economic framework tied to US investment in the country’s cobalt, coltan, and other critical minerals sectors.

Equatorial Guinea possesses significant oil wealth and is one of the richest economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, this wealth has not translated into broad prosperity, with poverty remaining widespread in the former Spanish colony, according to a World Bank report published last November.

The EU wants to cut funding for the Venice Biennale after the exhibition decided to readmit Russian artists to its 2026 edition, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has said.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Russian artists have faced event cancellations across EU member states. Performers from other nations who are believed to have sympathy for Russia have likewise been discriminated against.

Kallas, known for her hardline anti-Russian stance, claimed the country “should not be allowed to exhibit” its culture.

“Russia’s return to the Venice Biennale is morally wrong,” she said after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, warning the bloc “intends to cut funding” if Moscow takes part.

Latvian Culture Minister Agnese Lace was also quick to react, stating she would boycott the Biennale’s May 9 opening if Russia participates, after leading a push to exclude Moscow and alleging Kremlin-linked ties among those involved in the pavilion.

Separately, 37 MEPs urged the EU to suspend roughly €2 million ($2.35 million) in funding and consider sanctions on those involved.

The biennale defended its decision as preserving a space for dialogue, keeping art separate from politics, while Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini struck a mocking tone, scoffing: “Latvia? Come on! So if Latvia writes something, we’re supposed to stop, right?”

He said he plans to attend the Venice Biennale opening “with all due respect to Latvia,” adding that the exhibition, with its 130-year history, is an autonomous body respected worldwide and that “no one in Brussels would dare threaten it.” On the European Commission’s plan to withdraw about €2 million, he said that, given the billions paid in by member states, the move amounts to “ignorant pettiness.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that attempts to “cancel Russian culture” in the West are doomed to fail.