The EU has been importing record volumes of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) despite a push to fully stop imports from Russia, Bloomberg has reported.
 
Plans exist to end long-term imports of Russian LNG from next year after the EU already banned purchases under new short-term contracts. Yet its latest watered-down sanctions package carved out exemptions for European companies to continue transporting Russian LNG to third-country markets after some member states balked at measures they said would damage their own economies.
 
Belgium relied entirely on Russian LNG imports in July as disruption in the Middle East curbed alternative supplies to Europe, according to Bloomberg calculations published on Monday.

In late June, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky announced a 40-day “operation of influence,” portraying it as a campaign of long-range drone strikes meant to force Russia to enter negotiations on Kiev’s terms.

As of early August, the campaign in practice turned out turned out to be what Moscow has described as “terrorist attacks” on Russian oil refineries, residential buildings, logistics hubs and other critical infrastructure, resulting in the death of dozens of civilians.

Russia’s answer has been to pummel Ukraine’s defense industry – including facilities producing drones and missiles instrumental to Zelensky’s much-maligned campaign – while continuing to grind forward on the battlefield.

As the 40-day deadline passed on Tuesday, there was no sign Russia had budged an inch.

Here’s how Zelensky’s campaign collapsed far from stated objectives.

What did Zelensky try to accomplish?

Zelensky approved the plan on June 25, describing it on social media as a combination of “long-range” and “medium-range sanctions” aimed at compelling Russia to end the hostilities.
Over the following weeks, Ukrainian strikes focused on three main target sets: Russian oil refineries, logistics warehouses belonging to retailer Wildberries (often described as “Russia’s Amazon”), and a wave of strikes that killed civilians far from any front line. Ukrainian officials have said that they seek to make the war psychologically “sweep over” large segments of Russian society.

What impact have Ukraine’s strikes on oil infrastructure had?

Ukrainian drones have hit refineries across several regions, including one major facility in Moscow, over the course of the campaign. The strikes did lead to temporary deficits, long lines at the pumps, caps on maximum fuel purchases for ordinary consumers, and logistics hurdles in several regions, particularly the Crimean Peninsula.

In late June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the strikes were designed “to undermine our confidence in ourselves and our capabilities” and to “create conditions for launching negotiations on terms favorable to our adversary.” He stressed that Russia “will not give them [Ukraine] that opportunity,” adding that the attacks had “no impact whatsoever on the situation at the front.”

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak said that the government had banned gasoline and diesel exports while strengthening air defenses around refineries, ensuring that plants operate at maximum capacity, and sending additional fuel to the hardest-hit regions.

Has Ukraine targeted Russian civilians?

Since Zelensky’s announcement, there have barely been any days without Ukrainian strikes killing civilians. According to Rodion Miroshnik, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s mission tracking Ukraine’s alleged war crimes, in the week of July 20–26 alone 492 people were affected, including 57 killed, seven of them children. In the most recent weekly count, Miroshnik reported 49 people killed, including four children, as well as 342 wounded.

The campaign’s final days brought one of the deadliest strikes on civilians: on Monday, a Ukrainian drone came down on a beach near the resort city of Gelendzhik, southern Russia, killing at least eight civilians, with dozens of others injured.

As part of the campaign, Ukrainian forces also started to attack Wildberries warehouses, hitting around a dozen facilities across Russia. At least eight people were killed, and dozens more were injured, with small sellers – mostly trading in clothes, toys and other purely civilian-use items – suffering large and often irrevocable financial losses.

How has Russia responded to Zelensky’s campaign?

Russia responded with long-range drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian defense-related facilities, with a focus on those producing UAVs that were ultimately being used in Zelensky’s campaign, along with attacks on cargo vessels it said were carrying military shipments in the Black Sea. Moscow maintains it does not target civilians.

On the ground, Russian forces kept advancing. According to TASS calculations, they liberated and took control of 32 settlements in July alone. The month’s biggest prize was Konstantinovka, a fortified stronghold in the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration that the troops fully secured in early July.

Officials in Moscow estimated that Kiev had lost some 13,500 troops while defending the settlement.

Later in July, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov announced that Russian forces were on the verge of liberating Krasny Liman, another key Donbass stronghold.

Has Kiev commented on its 40-day failure?

Zelensky himself has so far kept silent on the self-imposed 40-day deadline, but the head of his office, Kirill Budanov, argued that the calendar was beside the point. “Don’t get hung up on these numbers – 40, 50, 100, 15 days. What matters is the result,” he said.

How has Zelensky's 40-day campaign been assessed?

Ukrainian outlet Strana.ua noted there were no signs Moscow was shifting its position after 40 days, while describing Russia’s de-facto naval blockade of Ukrainian ports – imposed in response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian vessels in the Black and Azov seas – as one of the most serious problems the campaign created for Kiev.

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan wrote that the operation, “announced by Zelensky with such bravado 40 days ago,” had instead concluded with the liberation of Konstantinovka, the dismissal of half of Ukraine’s government, and Kiev appealing for an “air truce.” “Let’s remember them in peace,” she added, “when there is peace.”

Leonid Slutsky, the chair of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, said Zelensky’s plan had backfired on Ukraine, only leading to intensifying retaliatory strikes. He warned that Kiev now risks facing its hardest winter yet – a “portal to hell,” he said, that Zelensky himself had opened.

Zelensky's 40-day tactics: did he turn the tide?

Forty days and thousands of drones later, the only thing Zelensky can truly take credit for is dozens of dead Russian civilians, who had nothing to do with the conflict. While the strikes did lead to temporary and already easing fuel shortages in some regions, they failed to significantly affect the Russian economy or squeeze any concessions from Moscow.

Meanwhile, Zelensky’s gamble also failed to contain the Russian forces’ advance in Donbass and elsewhere, as Moscow’s military continues to pummel both Ukraine’s defense industry and frontline positions.

As the European Central Bank weighs how its new euro banknotes will look, NATO’s airborne surveillance unit has a novel suggestion: plaster the European notes with images of American military hardware.

In a recent post on its Facebook page, NATO’s Airborne Early Warning and Control (AWACS) Force shared its vision for the upcoming series of Euro notes, a US-made Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft soaring over the fields and forests of Europe. On the €20 note, the E-3 is accompanied by what appear to be two American F-16s.

“What if the new European banknotes had a little more…air superiority?” the NATO unit asked in a caption.

The post was tongue-in-cheek, but the image of American air superiority over Europe is a fitting metaphor for an organization designed, in the words of its first secretary-general, to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Coordinated NATO psy-op trying to tie NATO to the EU.

Thank you for your attention in this matter. pic.twitter.com/5zb54Hd4l2

— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) August 4, 2026

NATO’s Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Force followed suit, posting a series of notes featuring an American RQ-4D Phoenix surveillance drone. The posts received mixed reactions online, with self-described ‘Eurasian sovereignist’ Mats Nilsson describing them as a “coordinated NATO psy-op trying to tie NATO to the EU.”

Four Eurozone countries – Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, and Malta – are not members of NATO, while 15 of NATO’s 32 members do not use the euro.

Whether they are interpreted as tongue-in-cheek trolling or an expression of Europe’s vassal status to the US, the notes have no chance of ever being printed. The European Central Bank is currently holding a public survey on its forthcoming euro banknotes, with variants showing historical figures – including Marie Curie, Leonardo da Vinci, and Ludwig van Beethoven – and native European birds making the shortlist.

The survey closes in late September, and a winner will be chosen by the end of 2026. The notes will be printed and circulated in 2030 or 2031.

Wildfires in the EU have caused more than €3 billion ($3.46 billion) in damages so far this year, exceeding the European Commission’s average annual estimate, the Financial Times has reported.

Almost half a million hectares have burned in the first two months of the fire season in France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Romania, the paper wrote on Tuesday. The €3.1 billion figure, which covers only the cost of restoring burned land and forests, “far outstrips European Commission estimates of a €2.5 billion average annual impact” for the whole bloc, it added.

The losses in France alone could amount to between €10 billion and €15 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing data from Toronto-based ratings agency Morningstar DBRS.

The latest fires have also renewed debate over the impact of the EU’s sanctions against Russia. Spain has been unable to operate part of its fleet of Russian-made Kamov Ka-32 firefighting helicopters because EU sanctions have disrupted maintenance and access to spare parts. During the latest wildfire emergency, both Spain and France activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, requesting additional aircraft and firefighting crews from other EU countries and Türkiye.

Vladimir Zelensky has ordered Ukraine’s diplomatic missions to closely monitor missile stockpiles in their host countries, making weapons production, financing, and political pressure their principal measures of success.

Addressing more than 100 diplomats at their annual meeting in Kiev on Monday, Zelensky announced that each embassy would be judged by by the military resources obtained from its host country.

”An ambassador must know how many air-defense missiles there are in the country, where they work, and how to ensure that those missiles are not sitting in warehouses, but in our launchers here in Ukraine,” he said, adding that “You must bring weapons. This must be a KPI of our embassies.”

The instruction could potentially place Ukrainian diplomats in a legally and politically sensitive position, as gathering detailed information on a host country’s weapons stockpiles could be viewed as intelligence activity rather than conventional diplomacy.

Zelensky’s mandate extended beyond air-defense missiles. He also instructed envoys to secure missiles for other systems, weapons for combat aircraft, drone-production agreements, additional funding, and tougher sanctions against Russia, including in culture and sports.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Kiev has received vast quantities of weapons and tens of billions of euros from Western governments, but has repeatedly demanded more.

Western military stockpiles have meanwhile come under growing pressure, with some governments reluctant to surrender systems they say are needed for their own defense.

Zelensky’s orders also come as Ukrainian diplomats face accusations of interfering in the domestic politics of donor countries.

German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht accused Makeiev of openly meddling in German elections and said Kiev had “lost all sense of proportion” despite continuing to receive billions from German taxpayers.

Moscow has repeatedly argued that Western weapons deliveries prolong the hostilities without changing their ultimate outcome. Russian officials have also warned that transferring increasingly sophisticated military technology to Kiev makes NATO countries direct participants in the conflict.

Laura Loomer’s recent condemnation of multipolarity marks one of the clearest attempts within the American Right to define the emerging new international order as an existential threat rather than an inevitable transformation. Her arguments deserve careful examination, not because they are unique, but because they reflect assumptions that have become increasingly common in debates about the future of global power.

Loomer presents her first argument in the simplest possible terms. She claims that multipolarity exists to destroy American supremacy. According to her, Russia promotes the doctrine because it seeks the decline of the United States, while China, Iran, and other governments adopt the same language for the same reason. In her account, multipolarity is not a description of the international system but a political weapon aimed directly at Washington. The disappearance of American predominance therefore becomes the central objective of every state that speaks of a multipolar world.

This argument mistakes consequence for intention. Multipolarity does not begin with hostility towards America. It begins with the observation that the distribution of power has already changed. China possesses industrial capacity on a scale unseen in modern history. India has become a continental power with global ambitions. Russia remains one of the world’s foremost military powers despite unprecedented sanctions. Regional actors such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Indonesia, and others increasingly pursue independent policies rather than automatic alignment with Washington. These developments did not emerge because someone wrote books about multipolarity. The books appeared because the balance of power was already shifting. The decline of unipolarity is therefore not a revolutionary program but a recognition of political reality. No empire has remained permanently dominant. History moves through changing distributions of power, and every generation mistakes its own arrangements for permanent truths until events prove otherwise.

This confuses coincidence with unity. The countries commonly associated with multipolarity frequently disagree on questions of territory, economics, religion, and regional influence. India maintains strategic rivalry with China while participating in organizations that include Beijing. Turkey remains a NATO member while purchasing Russian military equipment. Saudi Arabia cooperates with Washington while simultaneously expanding relations with Moscow and Beijing. Iran and Russia share interests in some regions but not in every sphere. Brazil follows its own priorities, while Indonesia pursues another course entirely. There exists no single ideological headquarters directing these governments towards one objective. What unites them is not identical beliefs but the desire to preserve greater freedom of action. Multipolarity does not require permanent friendship among its participants. It merely assumes that several independent centers of power exist simultaneously.

Loomer’s third argument claims that multipolarity functions primarily as Russian propaganda. According to her, Moscow employs information campaigns, media personalities, and sympathetic commentators to persuade Western audiences that American leadership should end. The doctrine therefore appears as little more than a sophisticated psychological operation.

Propaganda cannot manufacture geopolitical reality. It may exaggerate events or shape perceptions, but it cannot create factories, armies, populations, technological industries, or national interests. The emergence of several major powers has measurable economic and military foundations independent of any Russian information campaign. China did not become an industrial giant because of Russian messaging. India did not become the world’s most populous country through propaganda. American debt, political polarization, and industrial decline cannot be explained by foreign influence alone. Every great power produces narratives supporting its own interests. Washington has done so for generations, just as London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing have done before it. To reduce structural transformation to propaganda mistakes symptoms for causes.

This assumes that civilization depends upon imperial management from a single capital. Yet Western civilization existed for centuries before the United States emerged as the world’s leading power. Classical Greece, Republican Rome, medieval Christendom, Renaissance Italy, imperial Spain, Bourbon France, Victorian Britain, and many other historical forms flourished under very different political arrangements. Civilizations possess cultural continuity independent of whichever state temporarily occupies first place. Indeed, empires often weaken the societies they lead by drawing them into endless military commitments, financial burdens, and ideological universalism. A civilization survives through confidence in its own traditions, institutions, and people rather than through permanent global supremacy.

Loomer’s fifth argument attacks thinkers associated with multipolarity, especially Alexander Dugin. She argues that such figures openly desire the destruction of the United States and therefore reveal the true intentions of the entire doctrine. Since some advocates welcome the end of American predominance, she concludes that multipolarity itself must be directed against America as a nation.

This moves from particular individuals to universal conclusions. Every major political tradition contains voices motivated by hostility towards rival powers. During the twentieth century, many American strategists openly sought the collapse of the Soviet Union. That did not mean every supporter of American leadership desired the destruction of the Russian people. Likewise, criticism of American global predominance does not necessarily imply hatred of America itself. Many advocates of multipolarity distinguish between the American nation and the international system established after the Cold War. They argue against universal political structures, not against the existence of the United States. Agreement or disagreement with that distinction remains a matter of political judgment, but it should not be erased.

Such reasoning risks replacing debate with suspicion. Political disagreement has always existed within free societies. Citizens may oppose intervention abroad, criticize alliances, question sanctions, or advocate different grand strategies without acting as foreign agents. Once every dissenting argument becomes evidence of hidden allegiance, public discussion gives way to accusations instead of analysis. Democratic societies depend upon distinguishing disagreement from disloyalty. Otherwise every political controversy becomes a search for traitors rather than an examination of competing ideas.

The deepest weakness in Loomer’s argument lies elsewhere. She assumes that the preservation of peace depends upon one state remaining permanently supreme. History suggests the opposite. Concentrated power often tempts its holder to expand beyond necessity because few external restraints remain. A world containing several powerful civilizations does not eliminate conflict, but neither did unipolarity. The decades following the Cold War witnessed repeated military interventions, regime-change campaigns, sanctions, and expanding geopolitical confrontation despite the absence of any peer competitor. The central question is therefore not whether one prefers America, Russia, China, or any other power. The question is whether lasting order is more likely to emerge from permanent global predominance or from a balance among several enduring centers of civilization. Multipolarity answers the second question. Its critics answer the first. That disagreement concerns the structure of international politics itself rather than merely the ambitions of any single state.

This article was first published on Constantin von Hoffmeister's blog Multipolar Press

Locals have described scenes of panic and “women’s cries” when a Ukrainian drone struck a crowded beach near the Russian Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik on Monday, killing seven people and injuring dozens more.

The attack on the village of Arkhipo Osipovka sent vacationers scrambling for cover. “People ran away. At first, they started screaming and began fleeing from there. I can still hear those women’s cries in my ears,” one man who witnessed the blast told RT.

No one expected such an attack “on a beach with children,” a local woman said, calling the strike an act of “treachery.” 

Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova Belova said on Tuesday that a fourth child had died from injuries. Regional authorities earlier reported that 58 people had been wounded, 21 of whom required hospitalization.

Doctors in Krasnodar Region said victims were brought in with complex mine blast injuries, including four children, two of whom are in intensive care. “They are receiving all necessary assistance,” Elena Kleshchenko, chief physician of the Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital said, adding that initial treatment on the scene and in nearby towns had been “timely.”

Acting deputy chief surgeon Aleksey Kovalenko at the Ochapovsky Regional Clinical Hospital said four of 14 adult patients “are in serious condition,” many of them with “combined trauma – shrapnel wounds plus burns.” The youngest patient is 19, while the oldest is 63, he added.

”I have tears in my eyes. I am a pensioner, and I feel very sorry for the children and the people,” an elderly woman told RT.

Kiev has intensified long-range attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure in recent months. Moscow has described the strikes as terrorist attacks deliberately targeting ordinary citizens. On Monday, another Ukrainian drone strike claimed the lives of at least five people and wounded at least ten others near the town of Chekhov in Moscow Region.

Artificial intelligence played a role in more than half of the cybercrime cases examined across Africa in 2025, as criminal groups increasingly turned to the technology to automate attacks, produce convincing deepfakes, and expand large-scale fraud operations, Interpol said on Monday.

The African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, which draws on intelligence from law enforcement agencies in 36 African countries, found that AI featured in 55% of cybercrime cases examined in 2025.

At the same time, reported financial losses linked to cybercrime more than doubled from $192 million in 2024 to $484 million in 2025. The report said the increase reflected the growing role of AI-facilitated scams, credential harvesting, and automated social engineering campaigns.

Interpol said AI has lowered the barrier to entry for cybercriminals, enabling even relatively inexperienced offenders to launch sophisticated attacks. According to the report, criminals are increasingly using AI to generate convincing deepfake videos and voice recordings, create synthetic identities for financial fraud, and craft highly personalized phishing campaigns.

Governments across Africa are moving to strengthen their defenses. Earlier this year, Kenya announced plans to amend its cybercrime legislation to address AI-driven threats. South Africa has also warned that AI-powered attacks and deepfakes are creating new security challenges, while Senegal launched an online reporting platform to improve the response to online offenses affecting children.

“Cybercrime has emerged as one of the most significant criminal threats to the region,” Interpol Cybercrime Director Neal Jetton said. “AI is automating every stage of a cyberattack from reconnaissance and phishing to extortion and evasion.” 

A former member of an ethnic-Lavtian branch of Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS was buried with military honors in the Baltic country on Wednesday.

Laimons Ezergailis, who died at the age of 102, served in the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division, a formation that was established on Adolf Hitler’s orders in 1943 and incorporated dozens of soldiers from notorious killing units .

The urn with Ezergailis’ ashes was buried at the Lestene military cemetery, a memorial site dedicated to Latvian Legionnaires. Ezergailis held the Order of Viesturs, one of the country’s highest state decorations and its highest military honor.

The Latvian Legion remains controversial because it fought under German command as part of the Waffen-SS, which was declared a criminal organization at the Nuremberg Trials.

Latvian authorities argue that the Legion fought to prevent the return of Soviet rule rather than in support of the National Socialist ideology, noting that many of its members were conscripted. Russia rejects that interpretation, and has accused Latvia of rehabilitating Nazi collaborators through official honors and annual commemorations.

Veteran German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht has accused Ukraine’s ambassador in Berlin of openly interfering in the country’s politics after he denounced several opposition parties and urged voters to reject them.

In an interview with Welt, Aleksey Makeiev claimed that parties on both the German right and left receive instructions from Moscow “every morning.” Asked whether he meant the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Left Party (Die Linke), and Wagenknecht’s BSW, the diplomat called on voters to examine “an alternative for which country” they were supporting.

“As a European, I want the democrats to win, not the autocrats,” Makeiev said, despite prefacing his remarks by insisting that an ambassador should not interfere in Germany’s domestic affairs.

Wagenknecht responded by accusing Makeiev of having “lost all sense of proportion.”

“He probably believes that if Ukraine can blow up the Germans’ most important energy supply line without any consequences, then it is also allowed to openly meddle in our elections,” she wrote on X.

The politician was referring to the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which carried Russian gas to Germany. German prosecutors have alleged that the sabotage was carried out by a Ukrainian team using a small rented yacht. Moscow has argued, however, that such a sophisticated operation could not have been carried out without Western assistance.

“That money is also paid by the voters of the parties he has condemned,” she said, accusing the federal government of treating Ukraine as more important than its own citizens.

Germany has provided Ukraine with tens of billions of euros since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. However, its own economy has been reeling from the consequences of rejecting cheap Russian gas, leading to declining industrial output and manufacturers bleeding jobs.

Both Wagenknecht’s BSW and the AfD have opposed continued military support for Kiev and have advocated for renewed diplomacy with Moscow. The AfD is currently leading national opinion polls and is expected to make major gains in upcoming regional elections in eastern Germany.

Despite the AfD’s growing popularity, senior politicians have maintained efforts to ban it, with officials in Lower Saxony already having blocked several AfD candidates from standing in local elections on the basis of domestic intelligence assessments, without any court rulings.

Opposition figures have accused the establishment of election rigging and trying to suppress the country’s largest political force by manipulating the electoral process before voters can deliver an AfD breakthrough.

Bangladesh has expressed its openness to cooperating with the US on nuclear power, even as it resists ratifying a reciprocal trade deal signed with Washington by the country’s previous interim government, which constrains its ability to conduct foreign policy and trade. 

“We are positive,” Bangladeshi junior foreign minister Shama Obaed Islam said on Monday. However, she added: “If any agreement with the US is beneficial for our bilateral relations and is in the interest of Bangladesh and its economy, we will proceed. If not, we will reconsider.”

US Special Envoy for South and Central Asia Sergio Gor made the nuclear proposal to Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman during a visit to Dhaka last week. His visit was seen as an attempt to pressure the country to ratify and comply with the Agreement to Reciprocal Trade (ART) signed in February, just before the country’s elections. 

The interim government agreed to buy 14 Boeing aircraft for about $3.7 billion following pressure from the Trump administration to boost its exports to Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s bilateral trade with the US was about $12 billion in 2024, primarily driven by the South Asian country’s apparel and textile exports.

However, the Trump administration also tacked on provisions that restricted Dhaka’s freedom to do business with nations labeled as “non-market economies,” which covers its longstanding partners Russia and China. 

Under the ART, higher tariffs will snap into place if Dhaka enters into any new bilateral free trade agreement or preferential economic agreement with a non-market country. It also restricts Bangladesh from buying any new nuclear reactors, fuel rods, or enriched uranium from a country that jeopardizes US interests. 

Gor’s nuclear cooperation proposal comes months after Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman inaugurated the commissioning process of the country’s first nuclear power plant – built and financed by Russia.

The 2,400 MW plant is nearing commercial power generation even as the US sanctions on Russia are making payments difficult for Dhaka.

China is Bangladesh’s largest trading partner, with $22 billion in bilateral trade annually. 

The government is not feeling “pressured” about the ART, Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman told the media after meeting Gor.

“We will never strengthen relations with one country at the expense of another,” he said, according to local media reports. “We seek to strengthen our relations with all countries while protecting and advancing Bangladesh’s national interests.”

Gor’s proposal is being reviewed by Bangladesh’s science and technology ministry.

The data of more than 100,000 UK police officers and staff has appeared on the dark web after hackers breached a key law enforcement database, The Times has reported.

The leak came just days after the cybercriminals published over half a million pieces of sensitive information from the British Education Ministry.

The perpetrators were able to gain access to the Police National Legal Database (PNLD), which is used by members of law enforcement in England and Wales, The Times said in an article on Sunday.

Police sources told the paper that some 114,000 PNLD subscribers, mostly officers, had their names and contact details uploaded online.

The hackers also exposed data from 2,615 Crown Prosecution Service employees, 617 Home Office personnel, 588 National Crime Agency staff, and 402 workers of the British Defense Ministry, they added.

The email addresses of some 21,000 members of the public who visited the Ask the Police website were also released as part of the leak, according to the article.

A group called ExfilSquad is believed to be behind the latest breaches, the paper noted. Its members allegedly do not follow any ideology, but engage in cybercrime in order to profiteer at the expense of their victims, it added.

An online statement by the group urged those affected by the hack to “be smart and just pay” to see their data taken down from the dark web. “The payment we request of you is simply a rounding error compared to the litigation costs of your data leaking,” it claimed.

One of the officials whose details were released told The Times that “for private information to be leaked about me is very disconcerting and puts officers at serious risk.”

A 10 Downing Street spokesperson said the British government has “dedicated capabilities to respond to cyber incidents, and it would be inappropriate to comment on a live investigation.” 

Sensitive UK police data has appeared online on a number of occasions in recent years. In 2023, the data of thousands of Metropolitan and Greater Manchester police (GMP) officers was compromised in a ransomware attack that targeted an IT firm servicing both forces.

The leak happened just weeks after the details of some 10,000 Northern Ireland police employees were published online after being accidentally included in a response to a freedom of information request.

The mass migrant crossing into Spain’s enclave of Ceuta in North Africa may have been part of a coordinated US-Israeli campaign to challenge Madrid’s control of the Strait of Gibraltar, British journalist and RT contributor Martin Jay has suggested.

An estimated 60,000 migrants, mostly young men, swam from Morocco and crossed into Ceuta on Thursday and Friday in an unprecedented influx that triggered a security crisis in the city. Around 48,000 had voluntarily returned by Friday evening, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry.

Speaking to RT, Jay described the influx as a possible test by Rabat to determine how Spain and the enclave’s residents would react to an attempt to claim it for Morocco.

“Perhaps they were trying to test the waters to see what would happen. Could the 84,000 Spanish residents there pack up and leave? Would that be a possibility? Could Morocco just simply take that territory, which they consider to be theirs?” Jay suggested.

Jay also argued that Israeli support for Rabat could eventually give the West and its allies greater control over the strategically vital Strait of Gibraltar.

The allegation echoes claims by Iran that Washington and West Jerusalem helped coordinate the latest migrant surge to punish Spain for its Middle East policies. Neither country has acknowledged involvement.

Watch the RT interview below:

The outlines of a new Western collective are beginning to emerge and at its center is Western Europe, for which the Russian threat has become a source of unity in a period of upheaval and uncertainty. To avoid direct confrontation, Ukraine is being enlisted as a willing proxy, while a common military-industrial system is being built around supporting it, above all through the production of drones.

The long-term argument is that this will also strengthen Western Europe’s own defense capabilities, and assistance to Ukraine can therefore be presented to the public not as money spent on someone else, but as an investment in their own security.

Across the Atlantic stands a powerful patron that’s reducing its direct involvement without withdrawing entirely, but the United States remains prepared to provide support when necessary, increasingly on a fee-for-service basis. At the same time, Washington is using conflicts in the Old World to test its own military and technological approaches.

This arrangement is unstable, but there’s little point in expecting a permanent structure to emerge because the world has entered a phase in which almost everything is temporary.

Military confrontation with Russia is an essential part of this model and without it, the political logic holding Western Europe together begins to weaken, so governments will therefore try to preserve the current situation for as long as possible.

Talk of negotiations with Russia should not be taken too seriously because from the European perspective, the only acceptable discussion is one in which Moscow abandons its objectives.

The US has less invested in maintaining this state of affairs, but it also suffers little inconvenience from it, since it’s no longer bearing the principal costs.

The Ukrainian leadership, whether the current rulers or any plausible successor, is unlikely to change course, because it’s got nowhere to retreat. More importantly, the role of ‘spearhead against Russia’ is Kiev’s only realistic route into the Western system, given that more conventional paths to full membership in the Western community are closed to a country in its present position.

History shows that a united West is neither permanent nor stable, and even if an impression of permanence was created by the Cold War, that period was exceptional.

No one can yet say what form the Western community will take after the present transformation of the international system and demographic changes within Western societies add another layer of uncertainty.

But during this transitional period, the united West, and above all a united Western Europe, will attempt to preserve itself through confrontation with Russia, and that reality must always be kept in mind.

This article is Part 3 in Fyodor Lukyanov’s series analyzing the impact of the perceived threat of Russia and the Ukraine conflict on the cohesion of the collective West. Read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

The US has pressured several African states to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), including by threatening consequences for governments that refuse, Le Monde reported on Tuesday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio formally launched the campaign last month, declaring that Washington would dismantle the ICC “brick by brick, if necessary.” He said countries benefiting from cooperation with US law enforcement, the military, or Washington’s “security umbrella” should reject the court’s authority over American officials and service members.

The US is not an ICC member and intensified its campaign after the court issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Washington has imposed sanctions on several ICC officials.

Uganda received a letter from Washington on July 24 containing “an ultimatum telling us to leave [the court] or face consequences,” an unnamed Ugandan source told the French newspaper. Kampala has so far resisted the demand, the source added.

The pressure on Chad was publicly documented before its withdrawal. At Washington’s request, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Frank W. Garcia Jr. called Chadian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul on July 23, according to Chad’s Foreign Ministry.

During the call, Garcia raised US concerns about the ICC and asked the Central African state to reconsider its membership in the Rome Statute. Chad said the request would be examined by the relevant authorities.

Four days after the call, Chad formally notified the UN of its withdrawal. The US Bureau of African Affairs welcomed the decision, praising N’Djamena for joining countries “reclaiming their sovereignty from this flawed institution.”

Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawals in July, following Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, which jointly denounced the court as an “instrument of neocolonial repression.” Their departure takes effect one year after formal notification and does not remove the ICC’s jurisdiction over crimes committed while they were members.

Established under the Rome Statute in 1998 and operational since 2002, the ICC says it serves as a court of last resort for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It has 125 member states, while other major non-members include Russia, China, Israel, and India.

The theft of at least $89 million in cryptocurrency that was supposedly safely stored in high-security hardware wallets has prompted the producer to warn that a “new AI paradigm” is redefining cybersecurity.

Hardware wallets are physical devices that store the private keys needed to access cryptocurrency and have long been considered safer than leaving digital assets on exchanges.
Last week, however, users of some Coldcard wallets saw their funds drained by unidentified perpetrators in a series of attacks.

The theft was unusual because the attackers managed to determine users’ keys after discovering that the wallets’ algorithm did not generate sufficiently random numbers. The devices themselves were not hacked and were not connected to the Internet, as is typical with so-called cold storage.

“We believe this is a sober reality of the new AI paradigm,” Rodolfo Novak, CEO of the Canadian company Coinkite Inc., wrote Friday in a message apologizing for the flaw in Coldcard devices.

“AI-assisted code review can now find latent bugs at a speed that is outpacing even the industry’s most seasoned experts,” he added. “If your firmware is open-source or has ever been public, assume it’s already being read by attackers and defenders alike.”

Coinkite issued its first warning to customers on Thursday, urging them to spread the word that users needed to update the affected firmware, originally released in March 2021, and move their Bitcoin to new accounts protected by newly generated seeds.

Please treat this as urgent. Migrate your funds. Follow the advisory for your model, upgrade your device, generate a new seed, and carefully move your funds.

Help spread the word, especially to people who are less online and may not see this update.

The threat is still ongoing. https://t.co/cbJxJles8x

— COLDCARD (@COLDCARDwallet) August 4, 2026

By Sunday, digital financial platform Galaxy said it had identified three separate waves of attacks against Coldcard users, resulting in the theft of 1,367.05 BTC, worth about $88.6 million at the time. On Monday, it warned of a likely fourth attack and estimated that the losses could rise to 2,055 BTC, valued at roughly $130 million.

The incident demonstrated that hardware wallets carry risks of their own and are not necessarily safer than centralized cryptocurrency storage services. Some industry observers remain hopeful that the transparent nature of blockchain transactions will make it more difficult for the thieves to convert the stolen assets into cash.

Listen… Coldcard hackers:

You may have acquired roughly 1,500 BTC.

But spending it is a completely different challenge.

Every transaction will be watched.
Every movement will be analyzed.
Every attempt to cash out will attract attention.

Bitcoin remembers.

If your goal was…

— Shagun 💰 (@shaguncrypto) August 2, 2026

“If your goal was wealth there may still be one path that leaves everyone better off,” one such commentator urged. “Return the funds. Accept a negotiated security bounty with CoinKite.”

A cargo ship was reportedly hit in the Strait of Hormuz by an “unknown projectile” overnight. The incident occurred after US President Donald Trump declared that he was giving Iran its “last chance before decapitation” to sign a deal on his terms.

Control over the strait, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil passes, has become the focal point of the conflict since Washington launched its war against Iran in late February. Tehran has rejected Trump’s claims that his efforts to extract concessions through a naval blockade of Iranian ports and threats of overwhelming military action are leading to progress towards a diplomatic solution.

The incident occurred off the coast of Oman in the narrow waterway, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) monitoring agency reported late on Monday. Reuters later identified the ship as the Liberia-flagged dry bulk ship Minoan Pioneer, citing industry sources. A sailor is reportedly missing after a hit on the engine room, which prompted a full evacuation of the crew.

Separate reports from Kuwait said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attacked a US military base in the north of the country overnight. Tehran has not claimed responsibility for either incident.

Initial reports of an Iranian attack in northern Kuwait. pic.twitter.com/kun7ttfTaI

— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) August 3, 2026

Earlier on Monday, Trump said his latest decision to call off attacks on Iran over the weekend was intended to give Tehran an opportunity “to sign a good document.”

“I want to give them every last chance before decapitation,” he said after journalists at the White House pointed out that it was at least the fifth time he had said he was canceling military operations to facilitate negotiations.

“I’m not going to let him charge. Anybody’s going to charge, we’ll charge. We have total control,” he asserted.

Tehran reiterated Monday that it would continue responding to the US blockade. Mohsen Rezaei, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, rejected Trump’s claims that talks were ongoing.

“The negotiations are at a deadlock and Trump must break this deadlock,” the Iranian official told journalists. He added that if the US escalates hostilities, Iran will “expand the war beyond the Persian Gulf.”

Tehran insists that no ship may pass through the Strait of Hormuz without its permission. It has also said that the route must be open to either all nations, including Iran, or none. The Iranian military has also attacked American military assets across the Middle East while severely restricting traffic through the strait, creating pressure on the global economy.

India is looking to expand cooperation in mining and critical minerals with Uzbekistan as the two countries, with historical connections that ran through the ancient Silk Road trade routes, deepen their strategic partnership.

New Delhi has been looking to secure its supply of critical minerals amid the trade tensions that have disrupted supply chains globally. Rare earths and rare-earth magnets are critical components in green energy transition, going into everything from wind turbines to electric vehicles. China currently dominates much of the rare earth trade and rare-earth magnet production in the world.

India has expanded its search for reliable rare-earth supplies recently, with state-owned miner IREL seeking samples from Myanmar – which produces half of the world’s supply – and a deposit owned by Russia’s Rosneft in Siberia.

Uzbekistan foreign minister Bakhtiyor Saidov, who is on a four-day visit to New Delhi, said during a meeting with his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar: “The special instruction to me personally and to my whole delegation is to visit your country to prepare (for) the upcoming visit of Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] to Uzbekistan.”

📹 PM Modi's Next Stop: Uzbekistan?

🇺🇿 Foreign Minister says his four-day India visit is aimed at preparing for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming trip to Uzbekistan, underscoring the growing momentum in bilateral ties. https://t.co/UmYTxxguBy pic.twitter.com/SK73hn120s

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) August 4, 2026

Saidov called India his country’s reliable and “most important strategic and trade partner in South Asia.” India has strategic partnerships with Uzbekistan and other Central Asian nations – all former Soviet republics – as they face common challenges like terrorism and drug trafficking. 

“Uzbekistan presents opportunities for Indian investment in mining, while cooperation in textiles can benefit from Uzbekistan’s cotton production strengths and India’s expertise in manufacturing, design and global markets,” Goyal said.  

Indian President Droupadi Murmu, while meeting with Saidov, noted the two countries’ “shared heritage in architecture, language, cuisine, music, and religious traditions.”

The two countries also share robust educational and professional exchange ties, with more than 16,000 Indian students currently pursuing higher studies in Uzbekistan. “They act as a bridge between the two countries and foster mutual understanding and strong people-to-people ties,” the Indian president said.

Spain and Morocco have traded blame over last week’s deadly mass crossings into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, with Madrid accusing Rabat of allowing the migrant influx and a Moroccan government source arguing that a Spanish court ruling helped trigger the crisis.

On Monday, Ceuta regional president Juan Jesus Vivas accused Morocco of having “encouraged and permitted” the influx. Spanish media have also reported that the country’s intelligence services believe Rabat allowed and subsequently exploited the crossings, although they do not believe it planned them.

At a briefing in Rabat later the same day, the Moroccan government source said a July 8 Spanish court ruling restricting the immediate return of migrants reaching Ceuta and Melilla by sea had weakened a key deterrent against irregular migration. The official said trafficking networks exploited the ruling and amplified it through social media, arguing that Spain could not expect Morocco to compensate for legal decisions that weakened its own migration controls by preventing migrants from reaching Spanish territory.

“We are neither Europe’s policeman nor its caretaker; we are a sovereign partner, not a subcontractor,” the source said, calling for the rules governing migration cooperation to be revised, according to the state news agency MAP.

Spain estimates that around 69,500 migrants have returned to Morocco since the crossings began, while Rabat says approximately 40,000 entered Ceuta. The two governments also dispute the death toll: Spanish authorities have reported at least 72 deaths from drowning and crushing, while Morocco says ten people drowned and another died after falling from a rocky area.

Rabat denied relaxing border controls or reducing security deployments, saying its forces deliberately avoided confronting the crowds to prevent further casualties. Morocco says it deploys around 24,000 security personnel along its northern coast and prevented 74,000 attempted crossings last year.

The allegations followed comments by Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, describing Ceuta and Melilla as Spanish “colonial enclaves.” A recent US congressional committee report referred to the cities as being in Moroccan territory “under Spanish administration” and urged diplomatic engagement over their future status.

Washington recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara during President Donald Trump’s first term, while Rabat normalized relations with Israel in 2020. Reports have also linked the crisis to Spain’s renewed engagement with Algeria, Morocco’s regional rival, although Rabat denies using migration to exert political pressure.

Vladimir Zelensky’s latest reshuffle of senior government officials has exposed a shortage of people willing to associate themselves with his rule, former Ukrainian diplomat Andrey Telizhenko has told RT.

Zelensky triggered a political crisis by sacking Mikhail Fedorov as defense minister, who publicly objected to his dismissal and criticized Ukrainian commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky, who was fired several days later.

Another wave of appointments followed this week, affecting the country’s National Security and Defense Council as well as Ukrainian embassies around the world. The council’s secretary, former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, had been rumored to be in line to become ambassador to the US but was instead appointed head of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

There is a “lack of new names and new faces” in the Ukrainian government, Telizhenko said, comparing the reshuffle to a game of musical chairs in which the same officials remain close to power while moving between posts. The reason, he argued, is that Zelensky’s rule is increasingly viewed as unstable.

Fedorov’s removal sparked mass protests in Ukraine that were widely believed to have received tacit approval from Western donors seeking to limit Zelensky’s personal power.

With few alternatives available, the Ukrainian leader has been forced to recycle officials personally loyal to him and place them in positions for which they are not qualified, Telizhenko said. He cited Umerov’s lack of experience in national intelligence as an example.

“That’s where it ends: loyalty trumps professionalism,” he said. Umerov is likely to use his new position to target Zelensky’s political opponents, Telizhenko added.

Watch the full interview.

Ukraine will never become a member of NATO, the country’s former armed forces chief Valery Zaluzhny has said, dismissing over a decade of accession promises as “fairy tales.” At the same time, he said the bloc follows outdated doctrines and remains weaker than the Russian military.

Zaluzhny, who now serves as Kiev’s ambassador to the UK and is widely believed to be Vladimir Zelensky’s top rival in a potential presidential election, made the remarks on Monday during a discussion on Euro-Atlantic integration at a meeting of Ukrainian ambassadors in Kiev. Asked to comment on Kiev’s role in the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force comprised of NATO members, he launched a broadside at the bloc itself.

“I know NATO very well,” Zaluzhny said, as cited by European Pravda. “For about 12 years, I personally worked to ensure that we adopted NATO standards, and every year I listened to fairy tales that we were about to join. Unfortunately, we will never join it.”

“NATO will most likely remain in its current form and will spend another 12 years – just as Ukraine did – transitioning to the standards required to reach even half the level of the Russian Federation,” he said, although he conceded Kiev still needs Western technology such as anti-missile defense and space capabilities.

Following a Western-backed coup in Kiev, Ukraine enshrined NATO and EU membership as constitutional goals in 2019, with Zelensky formally requesting “accelerated accession” in September 2022. NATO, however, has never set a timetable for admission, and full membership requires unanimous approval from all 32 members.

The bloc has also been reluctant to accept Ukraine due to its conflict with Russia, with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth both ruling out accession as part of any potential peace deal between Kiev and Moscow.

Russia has for decades seen NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat and has ruled out Ukrainian membership of the bloc under any settlement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that preventing NATO troops from entering Ukraine is one of Russia’s key goals in the conflict.

At least five people have been killed and ten others wounded in an overnight Ukrainian drone strike in Moscow Region, local governor Andrey Vorobyev has said.

The strike comes as Kiev has intensified long-range attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure. On Monday, a Ukrainian drone struck a crowded beach in the Black Sea resort city of Gelendzhik, killing at least seven people, including three children, and wounding dozens more.

In a post on Telegram on Tuesday morning, Vorobyev said air defenses in the region had repelled another Ukrainian drone raid.

An industrial area in the village of Novoselki near the town of Chekhov, located some 74 km south of Moscow, was affected the most as a result of the attack, he added.

“Sadly, there have been fatalities and injuries... I extend my sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the deceased,” Vorobyev wrote.

One of the wounded remains in serious condition, with doctors describing the injuries of seven others as moderate, the governor said. Two more people declined hospitalization after being examined by doctors, he added.

The victims sustained shrapnel and blast injuries, fractures, and soft-tissue and chest wounds, Vorobyev wrote.

Fires broke out at several locations in the industrial zone, including at a warehouse, while a power substation and an administrative building were also damaged by drone debris, the governor added.

In the village of Solnyshkovo, a drone damaged a private home and a vehicle, the governor said. No one was injured, he added.

Air defenses also intercepted incoming UAVs in several other parts of Moscow Region, according to the governor.

A total of 49 civilians have been killed and more than 340 others wounded in Ukrainian attacks inside Russia over the past week, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik said on Tuesday. The majority of the victims – 95% – were hit by drones, he stressed. It’s not clear if the figures included the fatalities and injuries from the strike in Novoselki.

The Russian authorities have decried Kiev’s drone raids as terrorist attacks deliberately targeting civilians. One of the deadliest incidents in recent months happened in May, when several waves of Ukrainian UAVs struck a student dormitory in the Donbass town of Starobelsk, partially collapsing the five-story building and killing 21 people, mainly teenage girls.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed that two people died after contracting Cyclospora, a diarrhea-inducing parasite that has been spreading across the US. They are the first fatalities linked to the outbreak, which has affected at least 45 states.

The outbreak, which began in early May, has become the largest ever recorded in the country, with more than 18,000 confirmed or suspected cases, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The actual number of infections is believed to be much higher because many cases remain undiagnosed. The outbreak has already far surpassed the previous record of around 4,700 cases, set in 2019.

Michigan announced the first two deaths linked to the parasite on Monday. Both victims had underlying health conditions that may have increased the severity of the illness. Cyclosporiasis, which causes severe diarrhea “with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” as well as gas, bloating, stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting, is rarely fatal, according to the CDC.

The agency said the supplier implicated in the outbreak, Taylor Farms de Mexico, had removed all iceberg lettuce from the US market. At the time, it was unclear whether the contaminated food had been distributed to other restaurant chains or retailers.

The parasite is endemic to Mexico and other tropical and subtropical countries. There is no evidence that it can spread directly from person to person.

Apple said it briefly removed the popular messenger Telegram from the App Store over child sexual abuse material on the platform.

Telegram, which claims more than 1 billion monthly active users, has long faced accusations in several countries of lax content moderation and failing to crack down on illegal activity.

Users began reporting problems downloading the app on Tuesday shortly after 01:00 GMT. The app returned about an hour later. “Telegram has been restored on the App Store and should soon be available again for all users,” the company said without elaborating.

Telegram’s official account on X wrote: “Reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated.”

Hours later, Apple said in a statement to 9to5Mac that Telegram was removed after a review found content that violated the company’s “strict guidelines prohibiting child sexual abuse material.”

Last week, Australia’s telecommunications regulator initiated civil proceedings against Telegram for allegedly failing to detect and remove “pro-terror material” from the platform, including videos of terrorist executions and mass shootings.

Last month, Russia placed Telegram’s Russian-born founder Pavel Durov on a wanted list, designating him as a person involved in terrorism and extremism.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) alleges that Durov had failed to take down a dating chatbot used by Ukraine to recruit young Russians to commit arson and other forms of sabotage.

Durov, who has lived outside Russia since 2014, said he was put on the list “for refusing its demands for mass surveillance and censorship on Telegram.”

Russia first blocked Telegram in 2018 but lifted the restrictions two years later, citing the company’s cooperation with authorities’ efforts to combat terrorism. The country banned the service again in February 2026, citing violations of the law.

Durov was briefly detained at an airport outside Paris in 2024 after French authorities accused him of allowing organized crime to proliferate on Telegram. He later claimed that France’s  intelligence services had tried to pressure him into enacting political censorship, including a crackdown on conservative voices during Romania’s contentious 2025 presidential elections. The country has denied his claims.

The messenger was briefly blocked in Brazil in March 2022 and April 2023, after authorities accused the platform of failing to curb the spread of misinformation and neo-Nazi chat groups.

A Turkish-operated cargo ship was hit in an apparent Ukrainian drone attack off the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk late on Monday.

According to Türkiye’s Directorate General of Maritime Affairs (DGM), the Cameroon-flagged Nadezhda was sailing from Novorossiysk to the Turkish port of Samsun when it was attacked by drones.

Russian vessels evacuated the crew from the ship, which sustained damage to its bow and living quarters, the DGM said. Initial reports indicated that three people on board were injured.

3 Ağustos 2026 tarihinde, Novorossiysk Limanı’ndan Samsun’a seyir hâlinde bulunan NADEZHDA isimli Ro-Ro gemisinin, Novorossiysk’e yaklaşık 20 deniz mili açıkta dron saldırısına uğradığı bilgisi alınmıştır.

Gemide, 13’ü Türk vatandaşı olmak üzere toplam 22 mürettebat… pic.twitter.com/yb1pDYmCBE

— DENİZCİLİK GENEL MÜDÜRLÜĞÜ (@denizcilikgm) August 3, 2026

The Nadezhda had a crew of 22, including 13 Turkish citizens, according to the DGM. Turkish media reported that the vessel was operated by Samsun-based Kalyoncu Shipping and had been carrying fruit and vegetables from Türkiye to Russia.

Rusya'ya sebze taşıyordu: Türk Ro-ro gemisine saldırı!

4 mürettebat yaralandıhttps://t.co/JELlPdKDyI pic.twitter.com/JQVWqZMd03

— Cumhuriyet (@cumhuriyetgzt1) August 3, 2026

Although Turkish authorities did not identify the perpetrator, the ship’s captain, Yalcin Sahin, was quoted by Turkish media as saying that six or seven Ukrainian drones had struck the vessel. Ukraine has repeatedly targeted civilian ships near Russia’s Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts, as well as tankers off the Turkish coast.

Ukrainian attack drones struck the Russian ro/ro vehicle carrier Nadezhda last night off the coast of Novorossiysk, severely damaging the vessel and setting it ablaze. pic.twitter.com/e44P6wsfNX

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) August 3, 2026

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on cargo ships in recent months in an effort to disrupt Russian logistics. Russia has also increased strikes on vessels it says were transporting military equipment to Ukraine.

Iran called off retaliatory strikes against Ukraine over last month’s attack on a cargo ship in the Caspian Sea after Kiev apologized, a senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said.

Ukraine struck the Iranian vessel with drones on July 25, killing one sailor, and claimed that it was transporting military equipment to Russia. Iran said the ship was carrying civilian cargo and denounced the attack as an act of aggression. Russia identified the vessel as the dry cargo ship Ana.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohsen Rezaee said on Monday that Tehran had selected targets in Ukraine. “We were set to strike three sites in Ukraine, but canceled the attack following Ukraine’s apology,” Rezaee said, as quoted by Press TV.

According to Fars, Rezaee said Kiev had claimed that it attacked the ship by mistake and that Iran had decided to investigate the claim. “Even if it was a mistake, however, there will still be consequences,” he said.

Sibiga initially dismissed Iran’s threats of retaliation as “unjustified and groundless,” but later struck a conciliatory tone, saying that Kiev had “never intended to target civilian vessels or people.”

Russia described the attack on the ship as illegal under international law and accused Ukraine of attempting to “expand the geography of its terrorist activities.”

Iran has denied providing military aid to Russia apart from supplying a “small number” of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones before the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022. Moscow has insisted that all its Geran-2 drones, believed to be modeled on the Shahed-136, are produced domestically. Russia has also denied sending weapons to Iran during the US-Israeli bombing campaign against the country.

Poland has appealed a Belgian court ruling ordering it to pay for millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses it declined to accept under a controversial EU vaccine purchase deal.

The case stems from multibillion-euro contracts for Covid shots negotiated by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen with manufacturers Pfizer and BioNTech during the pandemic. The agreements later became the focus of the so-called ‘Pfizergate’ scandal.

In a statement released on Monday, the Polish Health Ministry said the government had appealed the judgment and requested that its enforcement be suspended pending the court’s review. It argued that the lower court had failed to consider all the “relevant factual and legal circumstances” but did not disclose further details.

Pfizer defended the ruling, telling Politico it reflected “the importance of the contractual obligations that underpinned a successful European pandemic response” and that the company had shown “significant flexibility” toward member states before pursuing legal enforcement.

Von der Leyen has faced scrutiny over her role in the vaccine deals, with opponents accusing her of concealing details of negotiations with Pfizer and AstraZeneca. She has come under particular criticism for refusing to disclose or preserve text messages she reportedly exchanged with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during the talks. The controversy prompted a no-confidence motion in the European Parliament last year, which she survived.

A Ukrainian national has been arrested after stabbing a Polish woman in Wroclaw, police have said, as public frustration with Ukrainian migrants continues to grow in the EU state.

In recent weeks, Poland has been hit by a string of violent incidents between locals and Ukrainian migrants. On several occasions, Polish nationals allegedly confronted migrants over speaking Ukrainian in public, as well as for having questionable nationalist-charged tattoos visible.

The latest incident occurred in the southwestern city of Wroclaw on Saturday, when an 18-year-old Ukrainian stabbed a 30-year-old Polish woman, according to local police. The attacker fled the scene and was apprehended the next day.

Law enforcement did not reveal any further details about the incident, confirming only that the victim was hospitalized in a life-threatening condition. The motives behind the attack were not immediately clear, while local media reports indicated the incident happened at the entrance hall of a multi-story apartment building.

Ukraine’s consulate in Wroclaw acknowledged the incident, confirming the attacker was a migrant from the country. “We strongly condemn all manifestations of violence and aggression, regardless of who is their perpetrator and who is the victim,” the consulate said in a statement.

Poland’s main opposition party, Law and Justice, condemned the incident, with its vice-president, Przemyslaw Czarnek, taking jabs at Prime Minister Donald Tusk for staying “silent” on the attack and not doing enough to ensure the “safety of Poles.”

Last week, Tusk condemned the rise of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in the country, lamenting the fact that “more and more” violent incidents targeting migrants from Ukraine have been occurring across Poland “We must wage a resolute fight against this violence, because thugs, hooligans, and this culture of violence are becoming increasingly brazen and insolent – and also because they have received political support,” Tusk said on Tuesday.

Warsaw has been a key backer of Kiev in the ongoing conflict with Russia, as well as one of the top destinations for Ukrainian migrants. The ties between the two countries, however, have gradually worsened over various issues, including cheap Ukrainian agricultural produce harming Polish farmers, as well as longstanding tension stemming from the two countries’ fraught shared history. The latest major blow to relations came from Kiev’s recent veneration of Nazi collaborators involved in the mass killing of Poles during World War II.

The record migrant influx into Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta has fueled political divisions in the country, with the opposition criticizing the government’s handling of the crisis. Madrid has accused Morocco of “weaponizing” migration.

Thousands rallied in Madrid and Ceuta on Sunday, demanding Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s resignation after nearly 60,000 people entered the exclave from Morocco on Thursday and Friday. In Ceuta, rallies by right-wing politicians and activists drew counterprotests from local residents, including members of the city’s Muslim community.

Sanchez rejected calls from Ceuta’s local authorities to declare a national emergency, instead deploying 60 troops – a move dismissed by right-wing European politicians as inadequate.

Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s right-wing Vox party, described the mass border crossing as an “invasion” and an “act of war” orchestrated by Morocco and enabled by Sanchez. He blamed the Socialist government for weak border controls and called for the frontier with Morocco to be permanently militarized.

The crisis also deepened divisions across the EU. While Brussels responded with formal statements of solidarity, several European leaders instead criticized Sanchez’s migration policies, with some calling for Spain to face consequences within the Schengen Area. None publicly endorsed Madrid’s claim that Morocco had instigated the crisis.

Migration has remained one of the EU’s defining political issues since the 2015 refugee crisis. While Brussels has sought to tighten migration rules and accelerate deportations, Sanchez has defended immigration as essential to addressing labor shortages and demographic decline. His government recently granted legal status to around 500,000 undocumented migrants and expanded pathways for them to obtain work permits.

Spain’s disagreements with the US and Israel over the Gaza conflict and strikes on Iran have also prompted broader speculation about the crisis. Iran’s embassy in Kenya alleged that the mass crossing had been orchestrated by the US and Israel to pressure Madrid over its Middle East policies.

Six religious Jews have been arrested after attacking the historic St. James Armenian Monastery in Jerusalem’s Old City, according to Israeli police.

The group, consisting of five minors and one adult, were caught on video spitting on and banging against the monastery entrance on Sunday night before throwing stones at the walls of the compound, which serves as the regional headquarters of the Armenian Church.

When an Armenian woman began filming the attack from a nearby building, the assailants hurled stones toward her window and shouted abuse at her.

Police subsequently located and arrested all six suspects. Three have been barred from entering the Old City for 15 days, while police have asked a Jerusalem court to extend the detention of the remaining three.

Israeli settlers spit on the porch of Saint James Monastery in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem pic.twitter.com/FYhCSPqEn7

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) August 3, 2026

The Armenian Patriarchate has filed a formal complaint and called on US Ambassador Mike Huckabee to press Israel to recognize such incidents as hate crimes.

The assault is the latest in a growing wave of attacks on Christians, clergy, and church property in Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian territories. Christian leaders say priests and pilgrims are routinely spat on, cursed and assaulted by ultra-Orthodox and radical nationalist Jews, while churches, monasteries, and Christian-owned property have been vandalized.

Six Israelis were detained after an incident near St. James Monastery in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter. They allegedly spat toward the entrance, threw stones at an Armenian woman’s window and shouted insults. The Armenian Patriarchate urged hate-crime charges. pic.twitter.com/64OfzYHSYL

— Sputnik Armenia 🇦🇲 (@SputnikArm) August 3, 2026

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that young religious Jews have openly described humiliating Christians as a religious duty.

The newspaper documented at least a dozen spitting incidents near the Armenian church during a single nationalist march in May. It also recalled an April attack in which a Jewish extremist shoved a French nun to the ground on Mount Zion, leaving her with a head injury. Some nuns are now reportedly too afraid to walk through Jerusalem alone and are escorted daily by volunteers.

Christians today are routinely “hit, spit at, beaten,” Dormition Abbey Abbot Nikodemus Schnabel told the outlet, adding that this is “not the case of one lost soul,” and that many similar incidents are never documented. 

Critics say extremists have been emboldened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government and senior officials such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

In a 2017 radio interview, Ben-Gvir defended spitting at priests and churches as an “ancient Jewish tradition” and questioned why the practice should be treated as a crime. After becoming the minister responsible for Israeli law enforcement, he again argued in 2023 that spitting on Christians was “not a criminal case.”

Israeli officials have insisted that they are confronting the problem and view violence and racism “with the utmost severity.”

Church leaders, however, have said that complaints frequently produce little action and warn that continued violence, settlement expansion, and political hostility are driving some of the Holy Land’s oldest Christian communities to leave.

The first mass-produced MC-21-310 aircraft, built using entirely Russian-made components, has taken to the skies for the first time, the state-run Joint Aviation Corporation (OAK) has said.

The narrow-body airliner had been in development since 2017, with the original model, the MC-21-300, powered by US-made Pratt & Whitney engines.

The sweeping Western sanctions imposed on Russia’s aviation industry in the wake of the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022 jeopardized the project and prompted Moscow to push for a fully domestically built variant. The MC-21-310 is powered by PD-14, the first next-generation turbofan aircraft engine developed in modern Russia, which was introduced last year.

The new plane made its maiden flight on Monday at the testing airfield of the Irkutsk Aviation Plant. The passenger jet stayed airborne for an hour and a half, reaching heights of up to 6,000 meters and speeds of up to 600 km/h, according to the OAK.

Footage released by the corporation shows the airliner accompanied by a Yak-130 jet trainer, the crew of which filmed the flight. 

“Today, the Irkutsk Aviation Plant confirmed its readiness to manufacture the first batch of 18 MC-21 aircraft and to begin work on subsequent orders,” OAK CEO Vadim Badekha said. The first batch is expected to be delivered to Russia’s flagship carrier Aeroflot.

Russian President Vladimir Putin toured the Irkutsk plant last month, inspecting the airliner, which was being readied for its first flight. At the time, the CEO of the plant, Andrey Soynov, said the facility was seeking to expand its serial production capacities to produce at least 36 MC-21 airliners per year.

An Indian parliamentary panel has demanded an apology from Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the removal last week of a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the country’s youth. The removal sparked an angry backlash against the social media giant.

Chairman of the panel Nishikant Dubey MP, from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, said Zuckerberg should apologize over the temporary removal of Modi’s Facebook video, saying that Meta should lose its safe harbor protection if it failed to do so.

“Our committee has said two things and has clearly stated that the apology should come from Zuckerberg. If Zuckerberg does not give it, then the safe harbor protection under Section 79 should be withdrawn from him,” Dubey told reporters after the meeting ended.

Section 79 of India’s Information Technology Act protects internet service providers, social media platforms, and online marketplaces from legal liability for third-party content, provided they act as neutral hosts and follow basic due diligence.

While a parliamentary panel in India cannot directly punish anyone, it can submit punitive recommendations to the full House for a final vote.

The global head of public policy of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was summoned by India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) recently over the issue.

The combined user base of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in India is more than 1.15 billion, making it Meta’s largest market.

The meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology was convened to discuss the regulation of social and digital media platforms.

Representatives of Meta, YouTube, X, Snapchat, the Indian Home Ministry, and MeitY appeared before the panel. Meta apologized before the panel, saying the removal of the video was due to an error.

Still, members of the panel took a tough stance, with several lawmakers saying the issue went beyond an apology. They demanded accountability, according to reports.

“For social media platforms who have been operating in this sector, they have to be alive to the requirements of the countries in which they are operating,” RT India’s managing editor, Ashok Bagriya, said. 

Last week, police in the south Indian city of Hyderabad registered a case against Meta’s country head and several Facebook and Instagram users over posts deemed offensive toward Modi.

On Monday, lawmakers sought details from Meta on what action the company had taken regarding controversial and objectionable content on its platforms.

India has tightened content rules that protect online platforms from liability over user-generated content. Since February, platforms have been asked to remove unlawful content flagged by courts or the government within three hours. The window was previously 36 hours.

Morocco has named one of its largest road projects after US President Donald Trump, describing the gesture as an expression of “deep appreciation” for his role in strengthening relations between Washington and Rabat.

King Mohammed VI informed Trump in a letter reported by the state-run Moroccan News Agency (MAP) on Sunday that the 1,055km Tiznit-Dakhla Expressway would be renamed the “Donald J. Trump Highway.”

The monarch said that bilateral relations, traditionally rooted in friendship and loyalty, have become particularly “vibrant and fruitful” during Trump’s two presidential terms.

”Your historic recognition, in 2020, of Morocco’s sovereignty over its Sahara will forever be etched in the memory of Moroccans, from one generation to the next,” the king wrote in a previously undisclosed letter dated July 2.

Trump thanked the monarch in a July 26 post on his Truth Social platform, describing the decision as a “great honor” and expressing hope that he would travel the highway’s entire length.

Rabat considers Western Sahara part of its territory and took control of most of the former Spanish colony after Spain withdrew in 1975. The Algeria-backed Polisario Front seeks to establish an independent Sahrawi state. A UN-brokered ceasefire took effect in 1991, but efforts to hold a referendum on the territory’s status have stalled.

Morocco submitted an autonomy proposal for Western Sahara to the UN Security Council in April 2007. Under the plan, local authorities would exercise executive, legislative, and judicial powers, while the territory would retain the Moroccan flag and currency. Rabat would remain responsible for foreign policy, national security, and defense.

The US became the first country to formally recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara during Trump’s first term in 2020. Washington has maintained that position, with Trump recently reiterating support for Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the only basis for resolving the dispute.

The US designated Morocco a major non-NATO ally in 2004. A bilateral free-trade agreement took effect two years later, making Morocco the only African country with such an accord with Washington. US exports to Morocco reached $5.5 billion in 2025, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.

Morocco also hosts African Lion, the US Africa Command’s largest annual military exercise on the continent.

On the last days of July, over 50,000 illegal immigrants breached the defensive perimeters of Ceuta and Melilla and swarmed into the Spanish enclaves in North Africa. This occurred against the backdrop of the grandly adopted New Pact for Migration in Brussels, which officially entered into force on June 12. By August 2, at least 72 people had reportedly died during the crossings.

This latest migration crisis has already sparked debate about the adequacy of EU legislation and exposed the tensions of the partisan political struggle unfolding within the bloc. Shocked observers have been left wondering who will pay for this influx of migrants. 

What happened?

The reasons for this unprecedented wave lie far beyond conventional humanitarian considerations and relate to the use of migration as a geopolitical weapon. The simultaneous collapse of Spain’s borders reveals a ruthless combination: On the one hand, King Mohammed VI of Morocco has reportedly once again used the ‘migration switch’ as a tool for direct financial blackmail against Madrid in disputes over subsidies. On the other, transnational smuggling syndicates took advantage of a recent Spanish Supreme Court decision to grant illegal residents amnesty, spreading rumors on social media about a supposed ‘opening of borders’. 

Finally, the real trigger for the disaster was Madrid’s own position: The left-wing coalition government of Social Democrat Pedro Sanchez deliberately orchestrated this migration influx. Behind the populist slogans about ‘amnesties’ lies a cynical calculation: Sanchez is solving the problem of legalizing millions of cheap labor to shore up Spain’s declining GDP, while simultaneously constructing a new, loyal socialist electorate from naturalized illegal immigrants.

Having transformed Spain into the ideological flagship of the EU’s left-liberals, Madrid is attempting to unleash a massive blackmail campaign against Brussels, hoping to intimidate its neighbors with the threat of a migrant inundation in exchange for supranational subsidies. But Sanchez’s domestic political ‘trick’ instantly turned the ruling coalition’s Migration Pact into an instrument of institutional suicide.

Why this happened: The Migration Pact and the political map of Europe

When discussing EU migration legislation, it’s important to understand that it has never been perfect. Previously, the general framework was established by an EU directive, while specific procedures depended on the national legislation of member states. Within the EU, these practices have been criticized since the mid-2000s. By 2015-2016, when approximately 2.3 million illegal migrants found themselves at the EU’s borders, the system’s woeful inadequacies could no longer be concealed. However, even then, there was little desire to make significant changes – migrant camps were highly segregated, procedures were closed, and the general public had little understanding of what lay behind the veneer of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘effective’ refugee integration methods.

Ultimately, extremely lengthy procedures, a lack of adequate criteria and mechanisms for returning people home, and the focus among asylum seekers on moving to the countries with the highest standards of living led to the collapse of the system.

To top it all off, refugee flows have always been extremely unevenly distributed – the fundamental principle of European law, which requires applications to be submitted in the country of entry, led to the formation of huge refugee camps on the EU’s southern borders. This, in turn, led to Italian and Greek border services turning a blind eye to refugee flows and not registering them in the Eurodac database.

The illegal immigrants made their way to the bloc’s wealthiest states. There, in turn, poorly controlled ghettos have formed. The rise in crime among migrants has led to the rise in popularity of right-wing and far-right parties in Europe, which actively use anti-immigration rhetoric to attract voters.

During a recent discussion at the Valdai Discussion Club on this topic, British political scientist and University of Kent professor Richard Sakwa vividly captured the existential depth of this crisis. According to the expert, the EU’s approach to illegal migration has long since outgrown the humanitarian agenda and has become a fundamental ‘conceptual issue’ – a marker of the complete inability of the member states to protect their sovereign borders in the face of increasingly ambitious supranational trafficking syndicates. The situation has been exacerbated by a catastrophic demographic crisis within Europe itself, where total fertility rates are often under 1.5. Against this backdrop, a colossal portion of local budgets is irrevocably wasted on social support for unemployed immigrants, depriving states of resources for sovereign development.

Changes on the European political map and the rise of right-wing rhetoric have forced Brussels to reconsider how to address the situation. This is especially true given that migration-related problems not only bring chaos to European unity but also distract policymakers from what they consider more pressing issues – increasing military spending and weakening Europe’s geopolitical enemies. It was in this context that the new pact was developed.

At the same time, the EU is not prepared to completely purge its territory of immigrants. As Brussels analyst Andrea Bianchi noted during the same Valdai discussion, the Migration Pact was created as a tool to legalize and filter out cheap labor in the interests of transnational capital at the EU core. However, the mechanisms proposed by systemic experts – such as turning the bloc’s southern periphery into training centers for migrants and issuing ‘passports’ – merely camouflage the neocolonial nature of the reform. The EU’s wealthy powerhouses (Germany and France) are seeking to skim the cream of the crop in the form of an adapted labor force, shifting the entire infrastructural and electoral burden onto the frontline states of Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.

Who pays for the migrants?

The new migration pact clearly outlines ‘solidarity’ mechanisms: arriving refugees must be distributed among all EU countries based on their population size and per capita GDP. Those who refuse to accept them must pay €20,000 ($23,000) for each immigrant rejected.

The people of Central and Eastern Europe are acutely aware that they will be the ones paying for this ‘migration banquet’. This is precisely the reason for the rise of right-wing and populist parties in the region, which can only be discredited globally through serious accusations of corruption, as is currently happening in Budapest and Warsaw.

However, the EU’s globally inadequate fiscal approach to the migration issue will inevitably become the main electoral battering ram in the upcoming elections in many European countries. As a reminder, elections will be held in Italy, Poland, and Slovakia in 2027, and in France and Germany in 2029. As Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs notes, the recent influx into Spain will have a devastating impact on the overall political climate in Europe. 

For example, in Poland, analysts have already rushed to compare Morocco’s current hybrid attack on Madrid to the migration crisis on the EU’s eastern border, where streams of illegal immigrants were arriving from Belarus. Warsaw withstood the blow, building protective barriers at its own expense and fortifying the border with troops, despite the lamentations of Brussels human rights activists. 

In the spring of 2024, the usually pro-European Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, understanding public sentiment, voted against the pact. For the entire following year, he teetered on the brink of open blackmailing Brussels. To avoid losing ground domestically to the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), which was demanding a referendum, Tusk took the unprecedented step of declaring his readiness to temporarily suspend the right to asylum, enshrined in the 1951 Geneva Convention, due to the crisis on the Belarusian border.

Ultimately, by the end of 2025, when right-wing presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki declared victory, Tusk was given the go-ahead to temporarily relax compliance. But for the Polish electorate, this triumph merely confirmed that sovereignty under the pact is suspended. Poland is financially dependent on EU funds, and the European Commission can suspend those payments if it determines that Warsaw’s actions regarding immigration violate its standards.

The flip side of this story is the stable popularity of the right in Poland, which is predicted to win the next parliamentary elections, despite the latest ‘divorce’ in the PiS party. Also noteworthy is that the Jagiellonian Club, a conservative think tank, has stated that the priority of immigration reforms should be “protecting EU citizens” and “improving deportation mechanisms,” with the overall conclusion that radically harsh measures should be applied to illegal migrants, such as automatic deportation for crimes and drastic cuts in social benefits.

Hungary’s resistance to the migration dictate appeals to the legacy of the 2016 ‘quota referendum’ (kvótanépszavazás), in which 98% of voters opposed the distribution of migrants within their territory. Although the referendum was declared invalid due to low turnout, those 3.2 million votes remain an important argument for Hungarians in negotiations with Brussels. The irony of June 2026 is that immediately after the Migration Pact came into force, this old referendum was turned into a weapon for internal struggle. While still campaigning for office, Prime Minister Peter Magyar accused Orban’s team of secretly preparing migration centers in Vitnyed to save European subsidies in order to appeal to right-wing voters, declaring that Brussels has no right to decide with whom Hungarians live.

Finally, Bratislava sets the final tone in this regional picture. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s position on the Migration Pact is consistent with the glitch diplomacy RT wrote about earlier. During the official vote in the EU Council, Slovakia openly opposed key fiscal reform provisions, while voting in favor of others. Consequently, after the pact was forced into adoption by a qualified majority, the prime minister refused to implement the new rules altogether. Fico has condemned the pact as “the liquidation of a sovereign ethno-cultural landscape.” However, this conceals a pragmatic calculation: he is well aware that Bratislava cannot afford €20,000 fines from its imbalanced budget, but he also won’t accept illegal immigrants, hoping to extract the same temporary concessions for having taken in Ukrainians as Poland and the Czech Republic.

Budapest and Bratislava, which for years had rigorously blocked any illegal immigration flows with their respective approaches, now have no legal basis for exemptions. Brussels has presented them with a full-blown bill, turning the Migration Pact into an instrument of direct financial punishment for past rebellion.

Slovakia and Hungary’s internal resistance to Brussels’ quotas stems not from simple stubbornness, but from an existential fear of the erosion of their national identity. The modern, post-WWI history of Central Europe has been one of rigid cultural and ethnic homogeneity. For Fico and new Hungarian leader Magyar, the forced importation of migrants from completely different civilizations is akin to a direct threat to public security and sovereignty.

The situation is further exacerbated by an internal trigger: Both Slovakia and Hungary are already experiencing a severe ethno-demographic shift, associated with the rapid growth of isolated Roma communities amid the aging and depopulation of their indigenous peoples. Under these circumstances, Brussels’ imposition of external quotas is perceived as an attempt by European officials to completely eradicate their identity.

Naked problems

Most importantly, the new pact fails to address the EU’s migration policy in a qualitative sense – it has merely veiled it in fiscal mechanisms, and the results of these miscalculations are now evident. The current influx of illegal immigrants has demonstrated that EU countries don’t know what to do when the authorities of one member country declare a migration amnesty and thereby provoke an influx of migrants. 

The proclaimed slogans about suspending migrants from the Schengen area are appealing to those citizens who haven’t read the agreement itself and don’t know that temporarily excluding a country from the agreement is impossible – it must do so voluntarily and independently. Secondly, the EU’s southern borders remain vulnerable, preserving the status of frontline distribution camps for the southern and eastern peripheries of the EU. Thirdly, ‘flexible solidarity’ turned out to be a basic scam: Central and Eastern European countries were simply denied their sovereign right to distance themselves from the demographic mistakes of others, and were offered a choice between forced resettlement and steep penalties. Finally, the news that by Friday evening, more than 37,000 foreigners, faced with brutal resistance from assault police, tear gas, and a day without food, voluntarily turned back through holes in the border fence, clearly revealed the true nature of these avalanches. 

These illegal flows are driven not by an existential search for asylum, but by a purely pragmatic expectation of unimpeded access to EU social funds, and they buckle before the first demonstration of sovereign physical force. This mass retreat in Morocco fully confirmed that Poland and Hungary were right all along: The continent’s security is ensured not by armchair ‘solidarity’ and the distribution of quotas, but by strict border controls.

A 13-year-old girl has been killed and two other children wounded after a Ukrainian drone struck near a playground in Russia’s Belgorod Region on Sunday, local officials have said.

The attack occurred in the village of Printsevka in the Valuysky District, according to municipal head Aleksandr Shuvaev. The teenager suffered critical injuries and died as emergency workers attempted to save her, he said.

“Medics who arrived at the scene took every possible measure to save her, but the injuries proved incompatible with life,” Shuvaev wrote in a statement.

Two other girls, aged seven and nine, were hospitalized with shrapnel wounds. The seven-year-old suffered multiple injuries to her head, back, and legs, while the nine-year-old was also struck by fragments, according to the official.

Regional Health Minister Andrey Ikonnikov later said both children were in a moderately serious condition and were continuing to receive treatment.

The strike was part of a series of Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod Region over the weekend that killed four civilians, including the teenager, and wounded another 32 people, Ikonnikov said.

A total of 134 people injured in Ukrainian attacks are currently being treated in medical facilities across the region, including 12 children, according to the minister. Twelve adult patients remain in intensive care.

Following the Belgorod strike, seven people, including three children, were also killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on a crowded beach area near the Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik on Monday.

The strike wounded around 40 people, 17 of whom were hospitalized, and damaged civilian infrastructure, according to Krasnodar Region Governor Veniamin Kondratyev.

Ukraine has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign in recent weeks, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings, and other civilian infrastructure deep inside Russian territory as Kiev’s forces continue to suffer setbacks on the battlefield.

Moscow has described the strikes as terrorist attacks deliberately targeting civilians and has responded by stepping up long-range strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure. Moscow maintains that its strikes only target military sites and infrastructure supporting Ukraine’s armed forces.

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who is suspected of being part of a top-level corruption ring associated with businessman Timur Minchich, has been appointed to lead Kiev’s civilian intelligence agency.

Umerov previously served as secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, the body headed by Vladimir Zelensky that is responsible for Ukraine’s strategic policy. His link to Mindich, nicknamed by the press “Zelensky’s bagman” over his long-time association with the Ukrainian leader, who fled from Western-backed anti-graft investigators to Israel last year, was exposed by leaked tapes allegedly recorded by detectives surveilling their primary suspect.

Zelensky announced Umerov’s appointment as the head of Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine on Monday. Igor Klimenko, who previously led the Interior Ministry, was appointed as his replacement at the security council.

Alleged Mindich man in the MOD

Zelensky has sacked six defense ministers during his overextended tenure at the head of the Ukrainian government. Several of them have been associated with high-profile corruption scandals, such as Aleksey Reznikov, whose so-called “golden eggs” became the namesake for inflated procurement exposed by the media in early 2023. Neither he nor any other former defense minister has been charged with any crime.

Umerov served as defense minister between September 2023 and July 2025. He was identified as an associate of Mindich by the media in 2025, based on leaks from the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), the agencies created under Western pressure to root out the rampant corruption and profiteering at the top-levels of government, for which Kiev is notorious.

Initial reports suggested Umerov was using his position to authorize the purchase of $5.2 million worth of suspicious body armor supplied by a company associated with Mindich. NABU wiretapping records published by multiple media outlets now suggest Umerov’s involvement with Mindich ran far deeper.

Extraordinary political survivor

Umerov has managed to stay in the top echelons of government despite suspected corruption and has remained one of Kiev’s key negotiators. Just last week he was part of the delegation that Zelensky brought with him to the US. There was speculation in the press that Umerov could be appointed as the Ukrainian ambassador in Washington. His survivability contrasts his predecessors and successors:

• Andrey Zagorodnyuk. Zelensky’s first defense minister is now on the board of a defense-related think tank in Kiev.

• Gen. Andrey Taran. Zagorodnyuk’s successor, who was reportedly forced to resign over supposedly deteriorating health, was given a sinecure as the ambassador to Slovenia before leaving public service in 2024. Notably, a similar diplomatic semi-exile befell Syrsky’s predecessor as the AFU commander-in-chief, Ret. Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, who is now posted in London.

• Andrey Reznikov. Ukraine’s first wartime defense minister disappeared into the same obscure Western-linked think tank world as Zagorodnyuk.

• Rustem Umerov. Seems to be unsinkable. Some reports have claimed he became untouchable by becoming a secret witness on Ukrainian corruption for the FBI.

• Denis Shmigal. Fedorov’s immediate predecessor who has the reputation of being a bureaucrat with no personal ambition, was broadly understood to be a stopgap appointment following the Mindich scandal. The former prime minister currently leads the Energy Ministry, replacing Svetlana Grinchuk, one of the Ukrainian officials swept up by NABU’s graft probes.

• Mikhail Fedorov. The political future of the man who once was Zelensky’s closest ally hangs in the balance, after he reportedly refused being shuffled into the cabinet as vice prime minister for innovation.

Zelensky’s power base eroding

Fedorov’s slated replacement is Gen. Evgeny Khmara. A career commando, Khmara rose through the ranks of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). 

The notorious security agency was accused of abusing its power in an effort to pressure NABU and SAPO to drop investigations against Zelensky’s inner circle. Ruslan Magomedrasulov, a senior detective in the Mindich inquiry, was arrested by the SBU alongside his father over claims that they had a joint business in Russia.

In 2025, the Ukrainian leader infamously tried to place NABU and SAPO under the office of the prosecutor general, stripping their independence, but was pressured to reverse the legislative changes after Western donors threatened to suspend all aid.

India’s crude imports from Russia surged to a record high in July, accounting for 55% of its total crude oil purchases, according to media reports.

Shipments rose to around 2.6 million barrels per day (mbd), the Times of India reported, quoting Sumit Ritolia, lead analyst for modelling and refining at Kpler.

The rise in purchases came even as US sanctions on Russian oil remain in force. After the Middle East conflict sparked a surge in oil prices, the US waived the sanctions – as a price dampener – on Russian oil already loaded on vessels at least three times. The last waiver was issued in May, but Washington quietly let it lapse on June 19, as global oil supplies remain restricted and stocks have mostly been drawn down across the world.

Russian crude imports increased 1.8% from 2.73 mbd in June, though New Delhi’s total imports were only slightly higher, up 0.1% from 5.02 mbd. Moscow’s share has also risen from 54.4%, further consolidating its position as New Delhi’s top supplier. Russian crude imports to India have more than doubled from 23.4% in January.

Supplies of Russian Urals crude helped Indian refiners after disruptions caused by the Middle East conflict continued. Moscow has also sharply slashed discounts to $2-3 per barrel recently.

A June ceasefire brokered to halt the Middle East conflict has collapsed, leading to airstrikes by the US and Iranian retaliation. While the US announced a temporary pause on a planned major military offensive last week, the situation remains volatile. Shipping traffic through the Hormuz Strait, through which a fifth of global energy supplies passed before the conflict, has been severely impacted.

China and India have been the two largest importers of Russian oil recently.

The US had imposed 25% tariffs on Indian imports as a penalty for its oil purchases from Russia in August 2025. The tariffs were lifted after a broad trade deal was announced in February. India has maintained that its oil purchases are dictated by national interest.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s departure from the Elysee Palace next year could open the door to Ukraine skeptics and create a “big problem” for the NATO coalition backing Kiev, The Telegraph reported on Sunday, citing sources.

Fears about what the British paper described as a “leadership vacuum” revolve mainly around the so-called “coalition of the willing” – a grouping of roughly 30, mostly NATO, states that has spent over a year drawing up plans to put troops in Ukraine as self-styled “peacekeepers” once a ceasefire is reached. Among the goals of the group – which is dominated by the UK and France – is also to coordinate aid to Kiev.

Russia has rejected any unauthorized foreign military presence in Ukraine, suggesting that Western troops would not be “peacekeepers” but rather “occupation forces” and therefore legitimate targets.

Two potential replacements are Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing National Rally, and left-wing firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon. Both are hardline Ukraine and NATO skeptics. Le Pen has vowed to pull France out of the bloc’s military command, lift sanctions on Russia, and push Kiev toward a peace deal, while Melenchon has pledged an outright French withdrawal from NATO.

The vacuum fear is reportedly exacerbated by the situation elsewhere in Europe. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is mired in domestic turmoil, with Berlin refusing to send troops to Ukraine even to police a future truce. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has also questioned the bloc’s cohesion and is facing a re-election battle next year.

Even without leadership woes, the coalition has been reeling under policy splits. Italy and Poland have ruled out sending their own troops to Ukraine, while Spain, Belgium, Sweden, and Canada have signaled they will contribute to security guarantees only through training, funding, or logistics rather than combat deployments.

Among the other problems is the lack of military personnel, with multiple media reports warning that NATO members would struggle to amass a “peacekeeper” force even under an ideal geopolitical landscape.

US airstrikes on residential areas and other non-military targets in Iran constitute “war crimes” for which Washington must be held accountable, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told RT at a press briefing on Monday.

His remarks came after a US airstrike hit a residential neighborhood on Qeshm Island in Iran’s Hormozgan Province last week, leveling a family home and killing three people, including a two-year-old child.

Iran said the strike hit a densely populated working-class neighborhood, with footage from the scene appearing to support that claim. US Central Command, however, insisted it had targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) positions in retaliation for the force firing “multiple ballistic missiles” at US troops across the region earlier that week.

Baghaei was commenting in particular on a New York Times report claiming the neighborhood was struck by a 2,000-pound Mark 84 bomb – one of the largest conventional weapons in the US arsenal – citing analysis of videos, photographs, and satellite imagery.

He mentioned the infamous strike that came during the initial stage of the war in February, which destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, southern Iran, killing more than 170 people, most of them children. Washington continues to deny responsibility. Baghaei has previously said more than 600 schools and educational facilities were targeted across Iran during the conflict’s first month, including a school and sports hall in Lamerd, where at least 21 people were killed.

“Throughout these five months, such attacks have continued,” he said, citing repeated strikes on facilities “used exclusively for civilian purposes” as evidence of Washington’s “determination to dismantle the norms and principles of international law.”

Last week’s strikes followed the collapse of a Pakistan-brokered interim agreement reached between Iran and the US in mid-June, with the two sides later accusing each other of violating its terms. Last Monday, US President Donald Trump claimed “very friendly negotiations” with Tehran were again underway, but within days, Washington resumed strikes, while Trump adopted increasingly aggressive rhetoric, promising to hit the country “very hard.”

CBS News earlier reported that the US and Israel had been preparing a major bombing campaign against Iran’s energy infrastructure over the weekend. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, however, Trump said he had agreed to requests from Tehran and several Middle Eastern countries to delay the attack because the “parameters” of a deal had been reached. Speaking aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said talks will begin on Monday.

Baghaei, however, insisted Tehran is “not currently having negotiations with the US” and said the only ongoing talks are with Oman on establishing a temporary safe shipping lane through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway carrying around 20% of global oil and LNG trade that has been de facto closed by the conflict.

The death toll from a Ukrainian drone attack on a beach at a Russian Black Sea resort has risen to eight people after a fourth child victim succumbed to their injuries, local officials have said.

The strike on Monday near the resort of Gelendzhik also wounded several dozen people and damaged civilian infrastructure, Krasnodar Region Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said on the day of the attack.

He described the incident as a “tragedy” deliberately targeting civilian sites after debris from a downed drone fell on the resort village of Arkhipo-Osipovka.

“What happened today was a deliberate strike by the Kiev regime against civilians with no connection whatsoever to military infrastructure. This cynical and inhumane terrorist attack targeting children cannot be justified,” he wrote on Max.

On Tuesday, Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova said that a fourth youngster succumbed to his wounds at a hospital, taking the death toll to eight.

Earlier in the day, the Krasnodar Region operation headquarters updated the figures on the number of wounded, saying it had risen to 58. Twenty-one of them, including three children, required hospitalization, with the rest being released after receiving treatment, it said.

Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik shared footage of the attack on social media on Monday, showing the moment a drone struck a densely packed beach near Gelendzhik, sending beachgoers scrambling for cover.

Miroshnik later said that 49 civilians have killed and more than 340 others wounded in Ukrainian attacks inside Russia over the past week. The large majority of the victims were hit by drones, he said.

Another major tragedy occurred in 2024, when four people, including two children, were killed and more than 150 others injured after the Ukrainian military fired five US-supplied ATACMS missiles at the Crimean city of Sevastopol. Russian air defenses intercepted four of the missiles, but a fifth, though damaged, veered off course and detonated its cluster warhead over a crowded beach.

Ukraine has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign in recent weeks, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure deep inside Russian territory as Kiev’s forces continue to suffer setbacks on the battlefield. Last month, Russia announced the capture of the key Ukrainian stronghold of Konstantinovka in northwestern Donbass, before launching an offensive toward the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the last two major cities in the region still under Ukrainian control.

Russia has also stepped up long-range strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure, describing the campaign as retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian and energy facilities. Moscow maintains that it targets only military sites and infrastructure supporting Ukraine’s armed forces.

Meanwhile, Russia has long argued that the Ukraine conflict is a NATO-backed proxy war against Moscow, pointing to the scale of Western military and financial aid to Kiev, as well as the unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia over its military operation. Commenting on Monday’s strike, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reiterated that countries supporting Kiev have become “sponsors of terrorism.”

“The sponsors of terrorism are NATO countries. Not long ago, NATO and the EU proclaimed zero tolerance for terrorism. Today, they themselves have become part of international terrorist activity,” Zakharova said, describing the Kiev leadership as a “terrorist gang.” 

Ukrainian security services are directly involved in smuggling weapons out of the country and may be receiving assistance from their Western counterparts, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik has alleged.

Italian media reported last week that prosecutors were concerned that organized crime groups in the southern European country could gain access to an estimated 780,000 weapons reportedly diverted from Ukraine to the black market since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022.

“As a general rule, large-scale trafficking of this sort cannot operate without protection and involvement of special services – Ukrainian for sure, but possibly in cooperation with Western partners,” Miroshnik, who heads a special Russian Foreign Ministry mission that investigates alleged Ukrainian crimes, told RIA Novosti on Monday.

“We are not talking about some caches, but established border breaches, cargo transport and handlers who oversee those channels on behalf of the Ukrainian political authorities and their partners abroad,” he added.

Italy’s Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that law enforcement officials estimate that about 149,000 military-grade weapons disappeared in Ukraine and probably diverted to the black market during the first five months of 2026 alone.

The newspaper warned that Italian mafia groups could upgrade their arsenals with AK-47 assault rifles, powerful explosives, attack drones and other weapons from Ukrainian stockpiles.

Moscow has argued that Western governments supporting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia have created a state that recognizes no limits after it has faced no consequences for actions such as drone attacks on civilian merchant vessels in international waters and bomb plots on Russian territory.

In a recent suspected case of such violence spreading abroad, a Ukrainian woman planted a bomb in Monaco that seriously injured exiled Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev and members of his family.

A key bridge serving as a strategic link for transporting cargo from Romania into Ukraine has reportedly been seriously damaged in recent Russian strikes.

The reports of damage to the Zatoka Bridge, which have not been confirmed by officials, come amid a major escalation in mutual attacks on logistics infrastructure. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky initiated the exchanges last month when he announced a 40-day “pressure campaign” against Russia. Moscow’s retaliatory strikes have already paralyzed direct maritime shipments to and from Ukraine through the Black Sea.

The overnight attack on the bridge in Ukraine’s Odessa Region reportedly caused one of its sections to collapse. Russian military-themed online outlets published footage on Monday morning that they claimed showed the nighttime strikes and the damage recorded the following morning.

The bridge is crucial for cargo transported to and from Ukraine through Romanian ports. The route, an alternative to direct shipments through ports in Odessa and Nikolaev Regions, has limited capacity but remained operational after commercial companies were deterred from using Ukrainian ports by the threat of Russian attacks.

The Russian Defense Ministry reports strikes in and around Odessa and Nikolaev almost daily, saying it is targeting Ukrainian military logistics. Its latest statement on Monday morning said drones had hit three cargo vessels in the sea and another ship moored in Nikolaev.

The previous night, Russian forces reportedly struck one seagoing vessel and two transport ships in Nikolaev, as well as a tugboat that the military said Ukrainian forces had converted into a platform for launching naval drones.

No extra Patriot interceptors expected

Ukrainian officials have touted the escalation of long-range strikes against Russian oil refineries, civilian warehouses, and transport infrastructure as a potential game changer in the four-year conflict. At the same time, they have complained that shortages of Western-supplied air defenses have left the country vulnerable to retaliation, particularly from ballistic missiles.

During his visit to the US last week, Zelensky urged President Donald Trump to supply an additional 300 Patriot missile interceptors before the winter.

In a video address over the weekend, former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told Ukrainians that there “no protection from ballistic missiles is available or would be available anytime soon.” 

He advised people to run to shelters when they see an incoming ballistic missile. The recommendation, which was widely impractical because of the speed of such weapons, was removed from a later version of his remarks.

Transport disruption leaves businesses ‘desperate’

MP Daniil Getmantsev, a member of Zelensky’s ruling party, said in a recent interview that Ukrainian business owners are “desperate” over the growing disruption to the country’s transport industry. He compared the negative sentiment among businesses to that seen when the conflict escalated in 2022.

The economic pressure is compounding tensions over forced mobilization, which has become a major source of discontent in Ukrainian society. Human rights ombudsman Dmitry Lubinets has warned that the country has almost reached “the boiling point” and that people may soon begin lynching conscription officials.

An official letter sent by the US Department of State to Congress in late July set the dispute between Türkiye and the US over F-35 fighter jets back to square one.

The transfer of the aircraft and Türkiye’s reinstatement in the program are still impossible because Ankara continues to possess the Russian-made S-400 air defense system and associated equipment, has not provided legally sufficient guarantees that it will avoid similar purchases in the future and has therefore failed to meet the conditions under which the US administration could certify to Congress that the security risks to the F-35 program had been removed.

Washington has not closed the door on negotiations, allowing both sides to maintain the appearance of moving forward even though the legal situation has barely changed since Türkiye was expelled from the program. The letter appeared shortly after the NATO summit in Ankara, where Donald Trump, during a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that sanctions on Türkiye could be lifted and indicated that the F-35 issue would be resolved positively. He did not announce a signed contract or specify a delivery date, but his words created the impression that the White House had already reached a political decision and that only technical obstacles remained.

Erdogan referred to the aircraft previously produced for Türkiye and expressed confidence that Trump would honor his promise. The exchange was aimed as much at the public in Türkiye as at Washington, since Ankara wanted to show that the long-running dispute was approaching a settlement and that the personal relationship between the two presidents could again reshape bilateral ties.

The present deadlock, however, reveals the limits of such diplomacy. Trump may see Erdogan as a useful ally and support Türkiye’s return to American weapons procurement, but presidential approval alone is not enough. The restrictions are embedded in US legislation, which prohibits the transfer of F-35s while Türkiye retains the S-400, and they are reinforced by a bipartisan group in Congress whose objections range from the Russian system itself to Erdogan’s domestic policies, Ankara’s ties with Hamas, its disputes with Israel, Greece and Cyprus, and the wider perception of Türkiye as an unpredictable ally.

Türkiye was never merely a customer. Ankara joined the F-35 project at an early stage, invested in its development, planned to acquire around one hundred aircraft, trained pilots and technical personnel, and integrated domestic companies into the international production chain.

Hundreds of components were manufactured in Türkiye, including parts of the center fuselage, landing gear, air intakes, wiring systems, weapons-bay structures, and selected engine components. For Ankara, participation meant more than acquiring a modern fighter. It offered long-term industrial orders, manufacturing experience, access to advanced aviation practices, and a stronger position within NATO. After Türkiye’s exclusion, the Pentagon had to move production to alternative suppliers, while Ankara lost both the aircraft and a network of industrial cooperation around which companies, specialists, and public investment had already been organized.

The rupture followed Türkiye’s purchase of the S-400, whose first components arrived in 2019. Ankara argued that Washington had failed to offer acceptable terms for the Patriot system, had not provided the desired technology transfer, and had ignored Türkiye’s urgent need for long-range air defense. For Erdogan, the Russian contract also carried political value because it demonstrated that Ankara could choose its own weapons without submitting to Western pressure. After the attempted coup of 2016 and the deterioration of relations with the US, the S-400 became part of a wider effort to show that Türkiye could pursue an independent policy while working with both Russia and the West.

Washington saw it differently. The S-400 was designed to detect and engage advanced aircraft, and its radars could theoretically gather information about the F-35’s stealth characteristics, electronic signatures, and operational patterns. Even without integration into NATO networks, the physical presence of the Russian system alongside the F-35 was considered an unacceptable risk. Ankara’s proposals for a technical commission or separate operation of the two systems did not change the US position. Türkiye was removed from the program, pilot training was halted, aircraft already produced for Ankara were withheld, and sanctions were imposed on its defense industry.

The S-400 has therefore changed from a symbol of strategic autonomy into a political burden. Ankara cannot fully activate it without risking another crisis with NATO, but returning it to Russia, transferring it to a third country, or dismantling it would amount to an implicit admission that the original decision was a mistake.

Israel’s opposition has become an additional and possibly more difficult obstacle, particularly as relations between Türkiye and Israel have moved from periodic crises to lasting strategic distrust.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly opposed the transfer of F-35s to Türkiye, arguing that it would disturb the regional balance of power. He has accused Ankara of aggressive ambitions, linked the issue to Erdogan’s anti-Israel rhetoric and Türkiye’s political relationship with Hamas, and portrayed the potential sale as a decision that would strengthen a state increasingly willing to challenge Israel.

These concerns go beyond the personal hostility between Erdogan and Netanyahu. Türkiye has large armed forces, a developed drone industry, an increasingly capable navy, a growing missile sector, and a military presence extending from Syria and Iraq to Libya and Somalia. Access to the F-35 would provide Ankara not only with a modern strike aircraft but also with experience in fifth-generation operations, advanced data-sharing systems, intelligence capabilities, training, and maintenance technologies that could later support Türkiye’s own KAAN fighter and other national programs.

From Israel’s perspective, Türkiye’s possession of the F-35 could eventually restrict the freedom of action of the Israeli Air Force in the Eastern Mediterranean and the wider Middle East. The preservation of Israel’s qualitative military edge has been a central principle of US regional policy for decades, and although Israel operates its own modified version of the F-35, the emergence of a comparable Turkish capability would narrow the existing gap and lead Israel to demand compensation, additional weapons, and technological restrictions on any aircraft delivered to Ankara.

The influence of the pro-Israel lobby should not be reduced to the image of a single secret organization directing US policy. It functions instead as a durable network connecting Israeli diplomacy, members of Congress, think tanks, civic organizations, political donors, and parts of the defense establishment, all of which treat Israel’s military superiority as a long-term American interest. Its strength lies in converting Israeli concerns into bipartisan letters, committee hearings, budget amendments, and legal restrictions that remain effective regardless of the president’s personal position.

In Türkiye’s case, this resistance is reinforced by Greek, Cypriot, and Armenian organizations and by legislators who oppose Ankara over its domestic politics, ties with Russia, and support for Hamas. The coalition against Türkiye’s return is broader than the pro-Israel lobby alone, but the Israeli factor gives it its strongest strategic justification.

For opponents of the sale, the question is not only whether Türkiye has formally met the S-400 conditions, but whether strengthening Ankara serves the long-term interests of the US and its principal Middle Eastern ally. Trump’s insistence that no one will dictate which weapons he can sell may reflect irritation with Israeli pressure, but it does not eliminate the institutional influence behind that pressure.

The years of sanctions have strengthened a conclusion already widespread within Türkiye’s political and military establishment. The country cannot consider itself a fully independent power while the production of critical weapons depends on decisions taken in Washington, Berlin, Ottawa, or other foreign capitals.

This explains Ankara’s investment in the Bayraktar and Anka drones, the KAAN fighter, the Hurjet trainer and light combat aircraft, the Kizilelma unmanned combat aircraft, MILGEM warships, Roketsan missiles, the SIPER air defense system, and the emerging Steel Dome architecture. Türkiye’s defense industry has become an instrument of security, foreign policy, exports, and regional influence.

Yet these achievements do not amount to full technological independence. Early versions of the KAAN depend on American F110 engines, and Türkiye still imports engines, gas turbines, optical equipment, microelectronics, machine tools, specialized materials, and electronic components for aircraft, drones, warships and air defense systems. Ankara can design and assemble complex platforms and integrate domestic missiles, radars, and communications systems, but it does not control the entire production chain, especially in aircraft engines, semiconductors, and advanced materials.

This is why the F-35 remains important despite the development of the KAAN. The national fighter is a long-term project, while the Turkish Air Force must address the ageing of its current fleet, preserve NATO interoperability, and prevent the technological gap with Israel and Greece from widening. A return to the program could also restore part of the lost industrial cooperation and provide operational experience that declarations of strategic independence cannot replace.

Türkiye will therefore probably seek a compromise with Moscow over the S-400, possibly through deactivation, transfer to a third country, return to Russia, or another arrangement that would allow Washington to certify that no operational system remains on Turkish territory. At the same time, Ankara is unwilling to damage relations with Moscow openly because Russia remains important in energy, trade, tourism, Syria, the South Caucasus, and the Black Sea. Erdogan does not want to choose between Moscow and Washington because Türkiye’s foreign policy has been built around cooperation with rival centers of power and the benefits created by their competition.

The F-35 dispute nevertheless shows that this strategy has limits. Türkiye’s need for advanced technology, the requirements of its air force, and its NATO membership push it towards the American aircraft, while retaining the S-400 supports its claim to strategic autonomy and its special relationship with Russia. Reconciling the two is becoming increasingly difficult.

Even if Trump ultimately approves the sale, Congress is unlikely to readmit Türkiye without substantial conditions. What is often called the American deep state is, in this case, not a hidden command center but a combination of legislation, congressional committees, military bureaucracy, intelligence assessments, lobbying networks, and deeply rooted alliance commitments. When this system must choose between accommodating Türkiye and preserving Israel’s strategic advantage, it generally favors the latter.

For Ankara, the dispute is another test of its foreign-policy model. Türkiye can continue diversifying its relationships, developing its defense industry, and seeking compromises with Moscow and Washington, or it may have to accept that access to the West’s most sensitive technologies requires abandoning some earlier choices. Given domestic economic pressure, the enormous cost of national defense programs, rising regional tensions, and Erdogan’s determination to maintain the image of an independent leader, the decision is genuinely difficult. Concessions over the S-400 would look like retreat, abandoning the F-35 would preserve Western restrictions for years, and attempting to keep both the Russian system and access to the American aircraft would most likely leave Türkiye in the same deadlock it has faced since 2019.

At least 12 people have been killed and an unspecified number of women and children abducted in an attack by gunmen in northwestern Nigeria, Reuters has reported, citing local residents.

Armed men, as yet unidentified by the authorities, entered the village of Lajinge in Sokoto State at around 11 PM local time on Saturday and attacked residents until approximately 3 AM on Sunday.

Six members of one family were killed when their home was set on fire, according to witnesses. “They killed at least 12 people, injured four others, abducted women and children after rustling many livestock,” resident Auwal Hassan told Reuters by telephone.

Sokoto police spokesperson Ahmed Rufai also told the outlet that an investigation had been launched and that the force would provide further information later. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The northwest region of Africa’s most populous nation has faced persistent attacks by heavily armed gangs commonly known as bandits. The groups raid rural communities, kidnap residents for ransom, steal livestock, and demand payments from farmers seeking access to their land.

Nigeria has also experienced an upsurge in mass abductions amid a worsening security crisis, despite President Bola Tinubu declaring a nationwide security emergency in November and ordering the recruitment of thousands of additional police officers and military personnel. Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province and the Al-Qaeda-linked Ansaru group have been blamed for attacks on villages, churches, and schools, as well as mass kidnappings.

On Sunday, the Nigerian Army said troops foiled an attempted “infiltration” of a military base in Zamfara State by terrorists. An army officer and a police officer were killed, while nine of an unspecified number of abducted civilians were rescued, the military said in a statement.

OPERATION FANSAN YAMMA: TROOPS REPEL TERRORISTS' INFILTRATION AT FOB KASUWAN DAJI, INFLICT HEAVY CASUALTIES AND RESCUE ABDUCTEES

Troops of Sector 2, Operation FANSAN YAMMA, deployed at the Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Kasuwan Daji, Kaura Namoda Local Government Area of… pic.twitter.com/gH2aGW8UeI

— Nigerian Army (@HQNigerianArmy) August 2, 2026

The US deployed around 200 troops to Nigeria in February for training and technical support after conducting joint airstrikes with Nigerian forces in December. Most have since been withdrawn, although Washington continues intelligence sharing and wider security cooperation with Abuja, according to the US Africa Command.

Despite new US involvement, attacks and mass abductions have continued. In May, Amnesty International said a Nigerian military airstrike on the crowded Tumfa market in Zamfara State killed at least 100 civilians, including women and girls. The military confirmed conducting a strike but disputed reports of civilian casualties.

Samuel Memeh, chairman of the opposition Democratic Leadership Alliance, told RT last month that the US deployment “has not yielded significant improvements” in Nigeria’s security. He argued that foreign military assistance alone could not defeat the armed groups, saying that “local problems require local solutions.”

The Ebola outbreak currently spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) is the largest the country has ever faced, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday. 

Infections are spreading despite months of response efforts, according to the agency. The current outbreak, DR Congo’s 17th, has reportedly surpassed the country’s 2018-2020 Ebola epidemic to become the largest on record. 

The currently untreatable Bundibugyo virus, for which there are no approved vaccines, was initially detected in the Mongbwalu health zone in Ituri Province, but has spread across five provinces in two months and now affects 49 health zones, the agency noted. The affected provinces are Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, and Tshopo.  

The outbreak is “intensifying, with sustained transmission and continued increases in reported cases and deaths,” the WHO stated. 

The latest Congolese Ministry of Health data put the number of confirmed cases at 3,674, up from the 3,605 reported by the WHO as of July 30. The death toll has climbed to 1,621, while 760 patients remain in isolation or are hospitalized and 666 people have recovered. The overall case fatality rate stands at 44.1%.  

The agency said insecurity, mass displacement, population movements, and cross-border travel are hampering containment efforts and raising the risk of further spread. Despite those challenges, the Congolese Health Ministry said surveillance systems and laboratory testing remain operational, while contact tracing has improved, although it remains below target. The nationwide contact follow-up rate currently stands at 78%. 

WHO said a substantial scaling up of the response involving the Congolese authorities, the UN agency, and international partners will be needed to bring the outbreak under control. 

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has mocked the European Commission for what he called blatant hypocrisy after it quietly exempted Russian luxury sable fur from sanctions, reportedly bowing to pressure from member states dependent on the trade.

The EU initially banned imports of finished Russian fur garments shortly after the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, alongside luxury goods such as diamonds and caviar. Raw pelts remained legal until April, when Brussels closed the loophole by banning both raw and processed furskins, including sable.

However, in its 21st sanctions package unveiled late last month – already diluted as member states balked at measures damaging their own economies – Brussels reversed course, exempting raw sable pelts while keeping the ban on finished fur garments.

“EU hypocrisy blossoms like a cherry tree in May,” Fico said. “Goods we need for our industry or for everyday life are banned from being imported from Russia, even if they are difficult to replace and much more expensive to source elsewhere. But that won’t apply to sable fur, no. There will be as much of it as needed, as if it were an everyday commodity like coffee or sugar.”

These are exactly the sanctions that hurt us more than Russia. Only the hypocritical European Commission could come up with something like this.

Fico has long opposed Brussels’ hardline policy toward Moscow, including military aid to Kiev and sanctions on Russia, and was among the politicians to argue that the restrictions ultimately backfire on EU nations.

Natural gas has been the commodity the bloc has struggled most to replace since imposing unprecedented restrictions on Russia in 2022. Before then, Russia supplied about 45% of the EU’s natural gas imports.

The US war on Iran and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz – a vital route carrying around 20% of global oil and LNG trade – have further strained Europe’s already volatile energy markets this year. Major suppliers such as QatarEnergy declared force majeure on shipments, sending European buyers scrambling for increasingly competitive US and West African LNG. The resulting spike in prices, freight costs, and supply disruptions have fueled inflation across the bloc, with analysts warning of gas shortages this winter.

Trade between India and China across their shared Himalayan border resumed on Saturday after a gap of six years as the two Asian powers rapidly normalize their relationship.

Himalayan trading, a centuries-old tradition between people in China’s Tibet and India’s Himalayan states, had stopped during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. It remained suspended after a border skirmish in 2020 in Galwan in eastern Ladakh left 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers dead, freezing relations between the two countries.

The restart, led by local traders and using traditional routes, is expected to boost the economies and remote communities in Himalayan border areas.

Videos posted on social media site X show officials from both countries greeting each other at the Shipki-La, Lipulekh, and Nathu La mountain passes, with small groups of local traders being allowed into each country.

🇮🇳🇨🇳 India-China Border Trade Reopens Through Shipki-La After Nearly Seven Years

The historic route in Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district resumed on Saturday, restoring a key commercial link across the Himalayan frontier. pic.twitter.com/EQjCrOL2Ht

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) August 2, 2026

Nathu La, in the state of Sikkim, sits at a height of 4,300 meters on an offshoot of the Silk Road, an ancient network of trade routes connecting Asia and Europe.

Before being halted, the border trade through the high-altitude passes was conducted under strict daily caps and limited to specific regional items such as spices, tea, and silk.

Both sides have initiated confidence-building measures, including the resumption of direct flights and updates to the visa regime. India recently started allowing Chinese investments into critical sectors of its economy, signalling a willingness to integrate its business and economy more with that of China.

China is the world’s second largest economy and India the fourth in terms of GDP, and both are continuing to grow fast despite the macroeconomic headwinds caused by US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable tariff impositions and the war in the Middle East triggered by the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

An Israeli court has temporarily blocked National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from using Nile crocodiles to guard security prisoners, most of them Palestinians.

Ben-Gvir proposed surrounding prisons with crocodile-filled moats in December, arguing that the reptiles would strengthen security and deter escapes.

While the Israel Nature and Parks Authority initially deemed the plan unfeasible because Nile crocodiles were considered wild animals that could be kept only in zoos and sanctuaries, the hurdle was removed last month when Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman redesignated them as “tended wild animals,” potentially allowing their deployment at prisons.

On Sunday, however, the Jerusalem District Court issued an injunction against the project following a petition by the animal-rights organization Let Animals Live.

Judge Avraham Rubin ruled that the state may not locate crocodiles or prepare them for transfer until further notice. The order will remain in effect while the court considers a longer-term injunction, with the government required to respond by August 16.

Ben-Gvir criticized the decision, accusing the judiciary of siding with “terrorists” and thwarting measures intended to strengthen Israeli deterrence.

“We know that the terrorists are worried about the arrival of the crocodiles, but today the court came to their aid,” he said, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post.

Nearly 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners are being held in Israeli prisons, according to rights group Addameer, with the number having almost doubled since the Gaza war began in October 2023. More than a third are administrative detainees held without criminal charge or trial under indefinitely renewable six-month orders, often based on secret evidence withheld from them and their lawyers.

Vladimir Zelensky has become Ukraine’s biggest problem and the principal beneficiary of the conflict with Russia, his former press secretary Yulia Mendel has said. She accused the Ukrainian leader of clinging to power by canceling elections and suggested that he is turning a blind eye to his inner circle engaging in rampant corruption.

Mendel, who served as Zelensky’s spokeswoman from 2019 to 2021, made the remarks in an interview with French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche published on Sunday. She delivered a wide-ranging attack on her former boss, accusing him of enabling corruption, authoritarian drift, and prolonging the conflict for his own political survival.

“I believe he has become my country’s main problem,” Mendel said. “The world has come to see Ukraine as the face of a single man. It believed this fabricated image.” She added that Zelensky is now “the main beneficiary of this war,” since it allows him to remain in power after he “canceled the elections.”

Mendel further recalled the so-called Midas case, Ukraine’s largest graft scandal, in which people close to Zelensky were accused of siphoning around $100 million in kickbacks from state nuclear operator Energoatom.

Mendel also pointed out that companies linked to Zelensky’s inner circle are raking in “billions of euros” allocated by the EU.

She went on to single out forced conscription as proof of Zelensky’s authoritarian drift, as Ukrainian draft officers have repeatedly faced accusations of seizing men off the streets – sometimes leading to violent and even deadly altercations – to meet mobilization quotas amid manpower shortages at the front.

“Those responsible are almost never punished,” she said, arguing Zelensky “betrayed the people’s trust in the state.”

Asked about media narratives suggesting that Kiev was gaining the upper hand in the conflict, Mendel disagreed. “Even if Russia is losing, it doesn’t mean Ukraine is winning. And Russia is not losing,” she said, adding that Moscow is adapting to long-range drone strikes.

The former spokeswoman urged the West to “stop this war” and “save Ukraine.” She cited Finland’s 1940 Winter War settlement with the Soviet Union as a model for a peace deal, noting that the country ceded territory but “saved its state, its people, and its freedom.”

Mendel has been a fierce critic of Zelensky, claiming in May that the Ukrainian leader’s drug use is “an open secret” in Kiev’s corridors of power. She also suggested that Ukraine’s delegation had been ready to accept “all of Russia’s demands” at the Istanbul talks in 2022 before Western pressure derailed the deal.

The first case of Bourbon virus has been confirmed in New York, prompting researchers to call for expanded surveillance and testing amid warnings that the rare tick-borne infection may be more widespread than currently known.

Discovered in 2014 and named after Bourbon County, Kansas, where it was first identified, the virus is believed to be transmitted by the lone star tick. There is no vaccine or medicine available to prevent or treat the illness. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, rash, headache, body aches, nausea, and vomiting.

Only six human cases have been reported since the virus was identified, primarily in the central US. The first known patient, diagnosed in Kansas in 2014, died.

According to a Stony Brook Medicine study released last month, Bourbon virus “could soon begin to complicate diagnoses if it becomes more prevalent this summer and in coming years.”

Researchers studied blood samples from 107 patients who developed fever and other symptoms after recent tick bites in Suffolk County between 2019 and 2024 and found that two had antibodies to Bourbon virus.

“There are a lot of lone star ticks in New York and in the Northeast. We have dense populations, and when someone is infected with Bourbon virus, the symptoms are similar to those of other tick-borne infections,” Dr. Luis Marcos, a Stony Brook Medicine professor and director of its Tick-Borne Disease Clinic, said.

“For these reasons, the Bourbon virus is likely more prevalent than we think in our region, and other cases are likely going undiagnosed.”

Lone star ticks are aggressive, reddish-brown, blood-feeding arachnids. Adult females are identifiable by a prominent white dot on their backs, while nymphs and adult females most frequently bite humans and spread disease, according to the CDC.

Previously concentrated in the southern US, the species has spread across much of the eastern US and can now be found as far north as Maine. Its bites can transmit ehrlichiosis, Heartland virus disease, and tularemia. It has also been linked to southern tick-associated rash illness and alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy to red meat.

Japan and the US have officially confirmed an extraordinary joint intervention to rescue the yen after its collapse toward a four-decade low spilled over into the already strained American government-debt market.

Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama announced the operation on Monday morning in Tokyo, saying the two governments jointly purchased yen during US trading on Friday, July 31.

The intervention was intended to counter “excessive volatility and disorderly movements” in the currency, Katayama said, adding that Tokyo remained in close contact with the US Treasury and “will not hesitate to conduct further joint intervention.”

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent issued a nearly identical warning, saying Washington remained prepared to participate in additional joint action. He described the intervention as a matter of both economic security and support for a key American ally.

The operation was the first coordinated US-Japanese currency intervention since the G7 acted following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It was also the first time Washington had directly helped purchase yen to strengthen the Japanese currency since 1998.

Tokyo did not disclose which reserve assets it liquidated to support the yen, but the intervention coincided with a sharp selloff in US government debt, strongly indicating that Japan unloaded part of its enormous Treasury portfolio to finance the yen purchases. The benchmark ten-year Treasury yield jumped more than nine basis points on Friday to 4.735%, its highest level since 2023, while the 30-year yield reached 5.265% – a level not seen since the 2007 financial crisis.

Tokyo has not disclosed the precise cost of the latest operations, but analysts estimated that Japan may have spent close to ¥8.45 trillion (roughly $53 billion) during Thursday’s initial intervention alone.

Washington itself was forced to liquidate some of its euro holdings to support the yen, with the New York Fed selling Europe’s common currency on behalf of the US Treasury – effectively shifting part of the burden of Japan’s rescue onto its European allies.

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Japan had asked Washington for “a little bit of help,” arguing that the operation would produce a “financial benefit” for the US and was also “good for the world economy.”

Two firefighting helicopters collided in midair in Greece, killing two crew members, as hundreds of personnel battled at least 220 wildfires recorded nationwide over the past week, according to the Greek Fire Service.

Nearly 500 firefighters and 23 aircraft were deployed to the main front west of Athens alone, but gale-force winds drove flames through dry forests and hampered the response, preventing some aircraft from safely reaching the sea to collect water. Hundreds of people were evacuated from coastal communities by boat after flames and smoke cut off roads.

The collision occurred on Sunday near Psatha, around 70 km west of Athens, as the aircraft battled a major wildfire that broke out near Agios Vasileios on Friday before spreading toward Porto Germeno and the forested mountains west of the capital.

BREAKING: Two firefighting helicopters collided Sunday while battling a wind-driven wildfire in the Porto Germeno area west of Athens. Video captured one of the aircraft crashing to the ground after the midair collision. pic.twitter.com/4kTHa7wR0V

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 2, 2026

A Greek coordinator and a Danish pilot aboard one helicopter were killed, while the crew of the second aircraft – a Greek national and a British national – survived. No injuries were reported on the ground.

🚁 Battling the flames in Porto Germeno – Villia, Greece.

Firefighters, supported by aerial firefighting operations, continue their efforts to contain the wildfire. Every minute counts in protecting lives, forests, and local communities.

🎥 kostas_mdtatoo#wildfires… pic.twitter.com/phKkenVf1v

— IoannaDementiEU 🇪🇺 (@IoannaDementi) August 2, 2026

Footage circulating online appears to show one helicopter climbing into the flight path of the other before the aircraft collide. The lower helicopter then bursts into flames and plunges to the ground, while the second remains airborne.

🇬🇷🔥Fire Greece Porto Germeno Attica - Meteology Live App pic.twitter.com/eljgilorwc

— Meteology Live (@AppMeteology) August 1, 2026

Both aircraft were leased Bell helicopters operated by the Australian aerial firefighting company McDermott Aviation. The cause of the collision remains under investigation.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his “deepest sorrow” on X, describing the victims as “frontline fighters in the war against the fires under highly adverse weather conditions.”

Wildfires fanned by heavy winds burned across multiple areas of Greece, including near Athens, with large-scale firefighting operations and emergency evacuations ​underway https://t.co/Pl8qLHOTx0 pic.twitter.com/1FA2ohWspT

— Reuters (@Reuters) August 1, 2026

The collision came just days after two firefighters were killed while battling a blaze on Crete, while a third died in the Peloponnese.

Europe has been grappling with a major wildfire crisis, with fast-moving fires around Madrid, Valencia, and Bordeaux forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate.

Spain’s response has been hampered by the grounding of its fleet of Russian-made Kamov Ka-32 helicopters under EU sanctions imposed following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Madrid has acknowledged that the restrictions prevent operators from obtaining Russian spare parts or bringing Russian engineers into Spain to conduct maintenance and inspections. Replacement aircraft reportedly carry less water and are less effective in difficult conditions.

US President Donald Trump has teased new negotiations with Iran after abruptly calling off a major attack in a Truth Social post published on the same day that his media company began selling Wall Street firms millisecond-fast access to the platform’s market-moving content.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump claimed that talks would begin on Monday and said several Middle Eastern governments had urged him to give diplomacy another chance.

“We’re just going to see whether or not we can make a deal,” Trump said, claiming that the canceled operation would have been the “biggest attack since World War II.”

From ‘friendly’ talks to ‘locked and loaded’ – and back

Last Monday, Trump claimed that “very friendly negotiations” with Tehran were already underway. Within days, however, the US had resumed bombing Iran, while Trump adopted increasingly aggressive rhetoric, promising to hit the country “very hard.”

US media reported on Friday that Washington and Israel were preparing an extensive campaign against Iranian power plants, refineries, and other energy infrastructure.

The threats, combined with continued disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, helped sustain fears of a wider energy shock and propelled crude prices toward $90 a barrel.

The sudden reversal triggered another sharp market swing when Asian trading resumed on Monday morning. Brent crude fell by more than 7% at the open, while West Texas Intermediate dropped 6.7% to $78.98 a barrel. US stock-index futures rose as traders priced in a reduced risk of further escalation and disruption to Gulf energy supplies.

Truth Social monetizes Trump’s posts

August 1 was also the launch date of Truth API, a paid service operated by Trump Media & Technology Group that provides institutional customers with a licensed, machine-readable feed of posts from influential Truth Social accounts. The service is aimed specifically at high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms and reportedly costs as much as $100,000 per month.

Trump’s posts are particularly valuable because he routinely uses Truth Social to announce abrupt changes involving wars, tariffs, individual companies, and other policies capable of moving stocks, currencies, and commodities. AP noted that policy reversals can be especially lucrative for high-speed traders, who can profit from an initial threat that moves prices in one direction and then rapidly change their positions when Trump announces the opposite.

Hormuz talks are none of US business – Iran

Iran has previously accused Trump of publicizing purported diplomatic breakthroughs to lower oil prices and buy time for further military action. The latest pause also follows an established pattern: Trump has repeatedly announced that strikes against Iran were being suspended to allow negotiations, only for military operations to resume after talks faltered or new attacks occurred.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said negotiations with Oman over the waterway’s management were “nearing completion,” while Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei described the discussions as a bilateral matter that “does not concern any other party.”

Baghaei said Iran and Oman are negotiating a new shipping route that would replace the existing northern and southern routes. He stressed that any agreement “does not mean that the Strait of Hormuz will be opened or remain closed,” contradicting Trump’s claim that the proposed deal would provide for its “immediate, complete, and total” reopening.

Ukraine’s “terrorist plague” is spreading across Europe, the Russian Embassy in Italy has said, accusing Kiev of orchestrating the deadly bombing of an Italian restaurant in central Moscow.

An improvised explosive device detonated outside the Balzi Rossi restaurant on Kudrinskaya Square on Saturday evening after an unidentified woman allegedly attempted to carry it inside. The security guard who stopped her at the entrance was killed in the blast, along with the courier and one patron attending a private event. Another two patrons later died in the hospital, according to RT’s sources. Almost two dozen others were injured.

The National Antiterrorism Committee has not publicly identified any suspects or linked the attack to Ukraine, another state or any particular organization, while no group has claimed responsibility.

“It has now become completely clear that the explosion at the Balzi Rossi restaurant and other terrorist attacks in Russia, Monaco and elsewhere show that the Ukrainian terrorist plague is already spreading across Europe, and particularly Italy,” the embassy said.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin described the explosion as a “brutal terrorist act” and vowed that those responsible would be found and punished.

Similar attacks blamed on Kiev

Russian officials have not announced any arrests or disclosed a suspected motive, but the embassy’s allegations follow several previous bomb attacks for which Moscow explicitly blamed Ukrainian intelligence services.

Russian journalist Darya Dugina was killed in August 2022 after a bomb was planted in her vehicle. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) accused Ukrainian special services of organizing the assassination and identified Ukrainian national Natalya Vovk as the alleged perpetrator. According to the FSB, she fled to Estonia and has since vanished from public view.

Russian investigators concluded that Trepova had acted on instructions from handlers in Ukraine. She maintained that she had been deceived and believed the statuette contained a listening device rather than a bomb, but a court convicted her of terrorism and sentenced her to 27 years in prison.

Kiev never formally admitted involvement, but its former military intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov, later hinted that his agency was behind several high-profile killings inside Russia and promised to “keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world.”

Terrorism beyond Russia

The June 29 bombing in Monaco cited by the embassy also involved a woman allegedly recruited by a Ukrainian military intelligence network, according to Russian law enforcement sources. In that attack, a backpack containing an improvised explosive device packed with shrapnel was placed outside a residential building and detonated remotely, injuring Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev, his partner, and her 13-year-old son.

Recordings obtained by RT captured Zhikovich discussing plans to recruit unsuspecting civilians, including women and minors, to transport explosives, sometimes without knowing that they would be killed when the devices detonated.

A petition urging New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stay away from the commemoration of the 9/11 attacks has gained traction online, attracting more than 70,000 backers.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the attack, which resulted in nearly 3,000 fatalities and the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The annual commemoration is customarily held at the monument built on the spot where the towers used to stand. It is frequented by senior local and federal officials.

The upcoming anniversary sparked controversy well before the event, with a group of relatives of the victims launching a petition against Mamdani’s participation. According to the petitioners, the motion has nothing to do with the mayor’s religion, but with his controversial views and perceived connections to radicals.

The petition, which was launched last month, reached 50,000 verified signatures earlier this week and over 70,000 as of Sunday. It calls out the Muslim mayor over what it described as “public positions, associations, and responses to rhetoric that many perceive as hostile to these shared values.”

Among other things, it listed the mayor’s connections to radical Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj and the appointment of Ramzi Kassem, who previously represented a terrorist convicted in an Al-Qaeda tanker bombing plot. The petition also called out his father, Mahmood Mamdani, over his 2004 book ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim’, in which the political scientist argued the 9/11 attack should be “understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.” The mayor had previously noted that his father had largely shaped his own views, the petition pointed out.

A smaller activist group of the victim’s relatives, the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, stood by the mayor, condemning the petitioners over the alleged “anti-American accusations and Islamophobic sentiment.” The dissenting group, believed to have just over 250 active members, has been bankrolled by the Soros Foundation, receiving more than $500,000 in grants from it over the past decade.

The controversy comes as the feud between the NYC mayor and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reignited this week after Mamdani said the latter could be arrested on war-crimes charges should he visit the city. Netanyahu claimed the mayor sided with Iran and accused him and other critics of Israel of “moral cynicism” and “absurdity.”

RT showcases its top five stories of the week and dives deeper into the topics that shaped the news over the past seven days.

FIFA crisis as testament to US decline

The FIFA scandal has been further aggravated by Infantino’s botched attempt to sell to private investors stakes in a $20 billion subsidiary to run the World Cup. The plan met with an overwhelmingly negative reaction and was opposed by UEFA’s national associations and other federations around the globe. Infantino eventually abandoned it. While the scandal might not finish off FIFA itself, it is expected to result in the early departure of its embattled boss.

British AI drive runs into energy shortage

The proposal comes as Britain continues to struggle with a deepening energy crisis, during which both speculative energy consumption and household bills have continued to climb. According to Ofgem, this year the average household energy bill is expected to be almost 50% higher than five years ago, climbing to £1,862 ($2,510).

Laura Loomer struggles to notice neo-Nazis in Ukraine

During the interview, the commander of the notorious Azov regiment, now rebranded as the 3rd Assault Brigade, struggled to explain why the insignia of his unit closely resembles the Wolfsangel symbol used in Nazi Germany. Biletsky invoked unspecified “aristocratic” and Cossack symbols, which the insignia is supposedly based upon, and also tried to downplay the use of SS-style symbols in general. “Hitler ate with a fork and was a vegetarian. That doesn’t make forks or vegetarianism bad things,” he told Loomer.

Despite facing criticism over cavorting with open neo-Nazis, Loomer has insisted that she did not find any in Ukraine, touting her Jewish ethnicity as well as the fact Biletsky did not kill her on the spot. The influencer sparked further controversy this weekend when she said she “would kill” Russian President Vladimir Putin if she were the US leader.

Covid-related Fauci scandal reignited

RT explored the disastrous performance of former US coronavirus czar Dr. Anthony Fauci in Congress, where he was summoned to testify on the origins of the pandemic.

While former President Joe Biden pardoned Fauci last January, shielding him from prosecution for any potential offense committed between January 1, 2014, and January 20, 2025, the hearing has renewed the push for jailing him. The oversight committee led by Paul is set to vote on Wednesday on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. The measure is expected to pass with Republican support.

Roots of Spain’s migrant crisis explained

While the crisis had seemingly waned by the weekend as the bulk of migrants retreated back to Morocco, the true numbers remain unclear. According to Interior Ministry estimates, some 50,000-60,000 migrants invaded the enclave on Thursday. Local media reports citing law enforcement, however, indicated that around 73,500 people have now left Ceuta, suggesting that the scale of the initial invasion was significantly bigger than reported by Madrid.

As I sat in the Olympic Stadium in Athens on Thursday night, I would like to say I felt the hand of history on my shoulder, but instead I felt a sick feeling in my stomach at how European football has been irreversibly damaged by the holier than thou brigade at UEFA.

UEFA, the governing body for football in Europe and subordinate only to global overseer FIFA and to the richest clubs on the continent, has effectively created a full-on apartheid system that sees the rich get even richer and their power increasingly unchecked. And they showed their power in beating back FIFA’s bid to commercialize their biggest cash cow: the World Cup.

Greek (and not just) tragedy

In 1971, Panathinaikos made it to the final of the European Champions Cup, the previous name of the UEFA Champions League. The first and only Greek club to do so, they lost 2-0 to mighty Ajax of Amsterdam, who at the time were in their pomp with the late Johan Cruyff. The Greeks subsequently made two semifinals, in 1985 and 1996, but on Thursday played in the continent’s third tier competition, the UEFA Conference League. If the capital club go on to win this year’s competition, they will receive €7 million, not a sum to be sniffed at. However, the club that wins the Champions League takes home €25 million. That is only for winning the whole thing and doesn’t include prize money for earlier wins etc., but you kind of get the divide that UEFA has deliberately created.

I write this because right now Europe’s governing body brought hellfire down on FIFA for a number of reasons and they’re all false, spurious, and downright deceptive.

Since the UEFA Champions League was launched in 1992, only two sides outside of the ‘Big-5’ leagues (England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy) have won. Ajax in 1995 and Porto of Portugal in 2004. The ‘Champions’ league is actually a misnomer. It’s a league for the winners, runners-up, third, and fourth placed clubs from the ‘Big-5’, with the actual champions from Greece, Ireland, Scotland, Romania, and dozens of other nations having to qualify to be in the money-making league stage. UEFA has gamed the system to keep the wealth and power at the top, leaving ‘minnows’ from Albania, Hungary, and Poland not even dreaming of winning the whole thing.

UEFA created this cabal to ensure that the ‘big clubs’ from the ‘Big-5’ don’t create their own super league, the latest threat being just five years ago. To survive, in 2022 UEFA changed the competition format to give more money to the ‘big clubs’ and relied on FIFA intervention and support to make sure that they remained relevant.

Yet just four years later, they threatened to boycott FIFA competitions due to that organization proposing to increase investment in global football by selling off 20% of its World Cup commercial operations to private investors. As one German football writer said on Sport1 last week, “FIFA saved UEFA by stopping the Super League, UEFA pays back by stopping super money.”

UEFA starts up its money train band wagon

As soon as the British media whipped up a hatestorm to the FIFA proposal, new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham made his latest gaffe. Bad enough that he was boasting about jogging with tarnished athletics star Mo Farah on X, he then wrote something that made even the most hardened anti-FIFA mind boggle.

Burnham was cashing in to build credit with the ‘footballing public’, to try to last at least as long as predecessor Keir Starmer. Because even he knows what UEFA’s ultimate aim is and it’s not protecting football.

Why UEFA fought FIFA

UEFA is solely concerned with money and control, nothing else. It is also staving off two major issues that need to be resolved by September: Russia’s return and Israel’s suspension.

UEFA knows that it will face uproar from the usual screeching heads by allowing even Russian girls back into continental competition, as explained here and once the boycotts kick off, it will lose millions because those not too inclined towards peace in Ukraine will make sure their voices are heard.

In ‘showing off’ by standing up to FIFA right now, it can force the global governing body to backtrack on allowing Russia to return to the footballing family. And the reason is simple: the biggest TV markets are in Europe and FIFA needs them to keep the money flowing. This UEFA power play effectively neuters FIFA from any future moves to increase funding to all its 211 member nations.

And there is the Israel question, soon to be faced in furious technicolor by Ireland. The Irish men’s national team will play their Israeli counterparts in two neutral venues as cities in Israel are unsafe for matches, while Dublin has also been deemed “too volatile.” UEFA’s avoidance of responsibility over the Israel question has put them at odds with FIFA and nations in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and South America. They have punished Israeli football fans for racist and offensive behavior, yet allowed clubs and teams from the country to continue despite the response to the October 7 terror attack by Hamas and the bombing of Iran and invasion of Lebanon.

UEFA ‘saves the day’ and sinks itself?

UEFA has been allowed to kick the can down the road, in relation to the abovementioned in-house conundrums, and won plaudits from the Eurocentric European sports media. By having lapdogs like the BBC back UEFA attacks on FIFA boss Gianni Infantino, UEFA is ensuring that more money stays in Europe while appearing to care about football.

Yet, pretending to be the saviors of football could yet backfire on the European body. UEFA is terrified of having to put those vehemently against Russia’s return back in their proverbial boxes, because money will be lost. It does not want to offend Israel as business and political supporters in Europe will make UEFA pay financially. As soon as this media cycle passes, questions will need to be answered and the rulers of European football have no answers. Indeed, they will depend on FIFA to help out, again.

As for suggestions that they should set up a new global governing body, UEFA has zero interest as it’s bad for business. The noise around FIFA’s commercial sell off was simply to make sure that when the cake is being divided up, they’ll make more money from it, and that FIFA will back down over Russia, and the public will forget that Israel are still in competition. 

Far from breathing a sigh of relief early on Saturday when FIFA released a statement saying its business plan had been shelved, UEFA began the countdown to having to deal with its own burning issues. The ‘thunderous barrage of criticism’, to quote a BBC football writer, directed by UEFA at Infantino will not see the champions of Greece, Ireland, Poland, or Russia, dream of becoming champions of Europe. The ‘barrage’ is poorly aimed flak, meant to distract, from a pair of incoming missiles that could derail the UEFA money train.

Several sunken World War II-era Nazi warships have resurfaced in the Danube River amid a major heatwave and prolonged drought. The vessels became visible as the water level in Europe’s second-longest river fell to record lows.

Photos and videos posted on social media showed massive shipwrecks lying in the water and on a sand ridge in the middle of the waterway near the village of Prahovo in Serbia.

Elsewhere, the wreck of a Hungarian cargo ship that sank in 1937 resurfaced near the Croatian village of Opatovac.

Some 200 vessels could be lying on the bottom of the Danube River, according to the European Investment Bank. River transport has nearly come to a halt due to the low water levels, according to Hungary’s Transport Ministry.

🇷🇸🇭🇷 A sunken German flotilla has surfaced in Serbia due to the shallowing of the Danube, Reuters reports.

The rusting hulks of the German flotilla, sunk in 1944 during the retreat before the Red Army, are reportedly posing a threat to shipping. pic.twitter.com/WwacLDGlgC

— Маrina Wolf (@volkova_ma57183) August 1, 2026

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar also said that the Paks nuclear power plant, which covers nearly half of Hungary’s electricity needs, could be shut down for weeks because of insufficient water levels.

Na Dunavu kod Prahova.
Stari nacististički brodovi se vide zbog niskog vodostaja.
📷Đorđe Kojadinović pic.twitter.com/b44rZe2H4J

— 💀Patogeni puding💀 (@PatogeniP) August 1, 2026

In Budapest, a German WWII artillery shell was found near Margaret Bridge – one of the city’s major traffic arteries – last week. The discovery prompted brief safety closures as a bomb disposal team was deployed to the area. Hungary’s national weather authority also reported a record-low water level of 23cm in the Danube as it flows through the city. The previous all-time low, set in 2018, was 33cm.

In northern Bulgaria, the drying-up river revealed what is believed to be the remains of a mammoth. The bones were found by a local resident of the village of Ryahovo. Nikolay Nenov, a director of a regional history museum in the nearby town of Ruse, called the discovery “very important for science.”

En Bulgarie, des ossements de mammouth découverts dans le lit asséché du Danube
(Reporterre) pic.twitter.com/bvz3Wq1i1j

— PBE 🦔🌳🐤🐾 (@Pbe95) August 1, 2026

The Danube is expected to go even lower in the coming days, with no significant rain forecast and temperatures expected to exceed 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees F) in the region, according to AP.

Israel is at the heart of Washington’s long-running tensions with Colombia and its outgoing President Gustavo Petro, Foreign Minister Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio has told RT.

In an exclusive interview aired on Sunday, Villavicencio insisted that the decisive factor behind US sanctions on Petro was not his alleged failure to combat drug trafficking but rather his outspoken support for Palestine and repeated accusations that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Relations between Bogota and Washington – Colombia’s largest trading partner – steadily deteriorated during Petro’s presidency over US policy in Latin America, particularly toward Venezuela and Cuba, regional anti-drug efforts, and broader geopolitical differences, most notably Petro’s outspoken support for Palestine and criticism of Israel. This culminated in Washington sanctioning Petro last year, accusing him of “allowing drug cartels to flourish” and “refusing to stop” narcotics trafficking.

US President Donald Trump called Petro an “illegal drug leader,” and openly backed right-wing presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who campaigned on restoring closer ties with Washington, over Petro ally and left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda in the election earlier this year.

“We are talking about record-breaking seizures of cocaine, exceeding the figures achieved by any previous administration,” she said, adding that authorities had dismantled cocaine laboratories, extradited suspects, confiscated criminal assets, and kept the US informed of those efforts.

“President [Petro’s] inclusion on the OFAC list [is] in no way related to drug trafficking. These measures were taken against the president because of his firm and principled stance when he openly described what is happening in Palestine as genocide,” Villavicencio declared. “That was the real reason.”

Petro severed diplomatic ties with Israel in 2024 over its military campaign in Gaza, repeatedly accusing West Jerusalem of committing genocide and becoming one of Israel’s fiercest critics in Latin America.

Petro is due to hand power to President-elect de la Espriella on August 7. He has said he will not attend the inauguration, challenged the legitimacy of the election, and alleged that Israel manipulated Colombia’s presidential vote by hacking election servers. Apart from aligning Colombia more closely with Washington, de la Espriella has pledged to restore full diplomatic ties with Israel, effectively reversing nearly every major foreign-policy decision of the Petro administration.

Meanwhile, the Gaza conflict remains unresolved despite recent political developments. Earlier this week, Hamas said it had accepted Trump’s Board of Peace proposal for phased disarmament, provided Israel fulfills its commitments, including a phased military withdrawal, humanitarian access, and progress on reconstruction.

The US and Israel orchestrated the mass migrant crossing from Morocco into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta to punish Madrid for its refusal to bow to pressure on the Middle East conflicts, Iran’s embassy in Kenya has suggested. Spain has been at odds with Washington and West Jerusalem over the Gaza war and strikes on Iran.

Over the past several days, roughly 50,000 to 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta by land and sea in numbers equivalent to some 70% of the enclave’s regular population. The local authorities admitted they had been “completely overwhelmed” by the sudden surge.

The crisis, the largest human traffic invasion in the EU’s history, claimed the lives of at least 86 people, a toll expected to rise further. Many of the victims drowned in the sea or were crushed in the stampede at border checkpoints.

It also branded the crisis “a gift to Europe’s far right” and “punishment for the country that dared to challenge the American Empire and its Israeli henchmen,” warning that “the empire never tolerates defiance.”

Neither the US nor Israel commented on the accusation. However, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon slammed Spain’s handling of the crisis. “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy”, Danon wrote on X. “Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”

The comments come against a backdrop of deep acrimony between Madrid and Israel over the Gaza conflict and the US-Israeli war on Iran. Spain recognized Palestine in May 2024, accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza, and has permanently pulled its ambassador from Israel over its opposition to strikes on Iran while closing its airspace to US aircraft involved in the attack.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Madrid of “standing with tyrants” while US President Donald Trump blasted Spain, saying that it “has been very bad” to NATO. Iran, meanwhile, has praised Spain for its “principled” position on the war.

In a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Sanchez said he had “serious concerns” about some EU governments, noting that while most EU states had shown “support and solidarity,” others had responded with a “selfish, polarizing and unlawful reaction” driven by “prejudice, fake news, ignorance, or political interest.” 

Apart from the theory of alleged US-Israel involvement, several other explanations for the crisis have circulated. The Spanish authorities have pointed to criminal human-trafficking networks which they claimed exploited a Supreme Court ruling barring “hot returns” of migrants and fabricated a viral social media campaign to lure them to the border.

At the same time, Western intelligence sources cited by The Telegraph suggested that Morocco may have loosened border controls in retaliation for Sanchez’s pursuit of historic rapprochement with rival Algeria.

In late July, the Philippines did something that has become increasingly rare. It made great powers sit down. Under the chairmanship of the Philippines, the 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Manila and its dense constellation of related gatherings turned the capital into one of the few reliable stages where rivals still appear in the same rooms, exchange views, and keep channels open.

From July 20 to 24, foreign ministers from Southeast Asia, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, India, Europe, and beyond convened against a distinctly unsettled backdrop of escalating hostilities between the US and Iran and rising tensions between Beijing and the Philippines after incidents in the South China Sea.

Yet ASEAN did what it has long done best – it refused to let the friction dictate the terms. The organization offered something that is in very short supply in the modern world of competing geopolitical blocs: a neutral platform where conversation remains possible and practical cooperation continues.

A region under pressure

The timing was anything but comfortable. The Middle East conflict has already begun to squeeze energy prices, shipping insurance, and supply-chain calculations across Asia. For a region whose growth remains tightly linked to imported fuel, the risks are very real. Closer to home, the South China Sea incident added another layer of sensitivity to an already delicate maritime equation. All of these were live pressures that tested ASEAN’s claim to remain the primary driving force in the regional architecture.

Yet the Joint Communiqué adopted on July 21 showed neither panic nor denial. Ministers reaffirmed the peaceful resolution of disputes, full respect for international law including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the principle of ASEAN centrality. Negotiations on a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea continued, with eyes fixed on further progress ahead of the November Summit.

On Myanmar, the Five-Point Consensus remained the central reference, with discussion focused on measurable steps rather than rhetorical gestures. ASEAN would address its challenges on its own terms, without allowing external turbulence to rewrite the regional script.

What gave the Manila meetings their particular charge was not only the formal agenda but the density of bilateral encounters conducted on its margins. ASEAN does not pretend to mediate every dispute or to impose outcomes on larger powers. Its real craft lies in creating the conditions under which those powers can still speak.

The first-ever meeting of the Quad foreign ministers on the sidelines of ASEAN-led events reaffirmed support for a “free and open Indo-Pacific” while explicitly endorsing ASEAN’s unity and centrality. Concurrent sessions of the ASEAN Plus Three, the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, and the ASEAN Regional Forum further illustrated the layered architecture that continues to revolve around ASEAN as its institutional core. In a period when many multilateral forums have become arenas of performance, Manila still functioned as a workplace.

Lavrov and Rubio

Among the most closely watched encounters was the meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The American side initiated the talks – an important detail in itself. It signaled that even in a period of sharp differences, Washington recognizes the necessity of sustained contact between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

The discussion covered the Ukraine conflict, the state of bilateral relations, and regional questions of mutual concern. Lavrov set out Russia’s positions with characteristic clarity. Both ministers welcomed the resumption of full contacts between Roscosmos and NASA and spoke in favor of expanding inter-parliamentary exchanges and cultural ties. Rubio indicated that the US remains prepared to play a constructive role in efforts aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.

ASEAN’s external relations received concrete reinforcement. Türkiye was admitted as the organization’s 12th Dialogue Partner, joining a diverse group that already includes China, India, Russia, the US, and the EU. Germany and Qatar were elevated to Sectoral Dialogue Partner status. These decisions reflected continued international confidence in ASEAN’s capacity to manage its own agenda and to offer partners meaningful avenues for engagement without demanding alignment on every geopolitical question.

The 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia provided an additional opportunity to widen the circle. New accessions further illustrated the treaty’s enduring appeal as a foundation for peaceful interstate relations. The steady expansion of ASEAN’s partnership network stands as evidence of practical attraction rather than mere ceremonial goodwill.

Energy as the new front line

Few issues illustrated the collision of distant conflict and regional interest more sharply than energy. The flare-up involving the US and Iran has returned attention to the vulnerability of petroleum supply routes and the need for collective resilience. Ministers highlighted the continuing relevance of the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Petroleum Security and the practical advances already achieved under the ASEAN Power Grid.

These mechanisms, developed through years of patient technical work, now function as instruments for managing risk. In the Joint Communiqué, energy security, food security and supply-chain stability were treated central to the region’s ability to absorb external shocks. The emphasis on accelerating implementation of the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation reflected a clear understanding: geopolitical turbulence abroad quickly becomes an economic and social challenge at home.

Centrality is key

Throughout the meetings, ASEAN ministers returned repeatedly to the concept of centrality. As major-power rivalries intensify globally, the organization’s insistence on remaining the primary driving force in the regional architecture is both a principle and a practical necessity. The Joint Communiqué underscored the determination to project common positions, to leverage ASEAN-led mechanisms, and to contribute to an order anchored in international law.

ASEAN does not seek to exclude external partners or to pretend that differences do not exist. The region’s preferences – for consensus, for non-interference, and for inclusive dialogue – continue to shape the terms of engagement. The presence of representatives from the full spectrum of major powers in Manila was itself a recognition of that reality.

The meetings in the Philippines capital showed that inclusive, ASEAN-centered diplomacy retains practical value even when the global atmosphere grows more polarized. The Lavrov-Rubio conversation, the discussions between Rubio and Wang Yi preparing the ground for higher-level contacts, the expansion of formal partnerships, and the steady attention to energy and maritime cooperation all pointed in the same direction.

The region faces real pressures: an unsettled Middle East, maritime tensions in the South China Sea, and the structural competition between major powers that shapes the wider Indo-Pacific. ASEAN’s response to these pressures, as seen in Manila, is to insist that dialogue is better than conflict and silent treatments, centrality is better than fragmentation, and that patient institution-building is the best path through turbulence.

For an international community searching for spaces where conversation is still possible, the message from Manila was both timely and consequential. When the storm rises, ASEAN still sets the table. And for now, that may be the most valuable service of all.

Russia’s richest woman, Wildberries CEO Tatyana Kim, has been added to Ukraine’s notorious Mirotvorets ‘kill list’ amid Kiev’s claims that her company is aiding the Russian military.

Kim is the founder, CEO and largest shareholder of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, often dubbed the country’s Amazon. She launched the company from her Moscow apartment while on maternity leave, building it into a business operating in ten countries with gross merchandise turnover of about $77.3 billion in 2025. With an estimated net worth of more than $8 billion, Kim is Russia’s richest woman, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and one of the country’s most influential business leaders.

Kim’s entry appeared in the Mirotvorets database on Saturday, citing “public support for Russian malice.” The listing also describes her as “an accomplice in crimes against Ukraine and its citizens,” an “organizer of logistical support for Russian military units,” and a “financier” of the Russian army.

Launched in 2014 as a nominally independent project, Mirotvorets has long been linked to Ukraine’s security services and is notorious for publishing the personal details of those it deems enemies of the Ukrainian state. Several people whose information appeared on the website – including journalists and politicians – have later been killed.

Kiev claims the Russian military uses the retailer’s distribution network to procure and transport dual-use goods. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky confirmed the attacks were deliberate, arguing the warehouses stored “sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the claims fake, while Russian Deputy Security Council Secretary Aleksandr Maslennikov this week described the strikes as “terrorism and a war crime,” arguing Kiev was seeking to generate media attention by targeting what many see as a symbol of everyday consumer life.

“Attacks on Wildberries’ infrastructure are attacks on civilians. And not just on Russians,” Kim said, noting that around 10,000 people from ten countries, including Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Uzbekistan and China, do business through the company’s ecosystem and have been affected by the strikes.

US President Donald Trump has canceled a planned attack on Iran after saying the outlines of an agreement had been reached that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and address what he described as Tehran’s “nuclear threat.”

CBS News reported that the US and Israel had been preparing a major bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic’s energy infrastructure that could begin as early as the weekend. The network said the proposed operation, which it described as potentially one of the harshest campaigns against Iran to date, was expected to target power plants and oil refineries, while military officials also reportedly discussed cutting electricity across Tehran.

In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, Trump wrote that despite the US being “locked and loaded” to strike Iran at “levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II,” he had agreed to requests from Tehran and Middle Eastern nations to hold off on the attack because the “parameters” of a deal had been agreed upon.

Trump said the proposed agreement would include “the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”

Iranian officials, however, disputed Trump’s account. A source described by the Fars News Agency as being close to Iran’s negotiating team said there were no plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and insisted it would remain closed “as long as the US continues its hostile actions.” According to the source, commercial shipping would only be permitted through a route designated by Iran and with the permission of the IRGC Navy.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader, reportedly spoke to Trump on Saturday and raised concerns about a further escalation. A source familiar with the conversation told AP that Riyadh feared US attacks on Tehran’s key infrastructure could prompt retaliatory strikes against energy facilities in Gulf countries. The crown prince also reportedly sought clarity about the military action Trump was considering.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to AP that the conversation had taken place but did not disclose any details.

Despite joining the US in strikes on sites used by alleged Iran-aligned militias in Iraq, Saudi Arabia has reportedly been urging Washington and Tehran to resume negotiations to end the five-month-old conflict. Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, the crown prince’s brother, traveled to Washington on Wednesday for meetings with Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance to discuss Iran strategy.

Wildfires burning across more than 100,000 hectares in Washington state, US, have triggered widespread evacuations and power outages around the city of Spokane, state officials said on Saturday.

Large parts of Spokane County were placed under the highest Level 3 evacuation order as strong winds drove flames into residential areas. Officials urged residents to leave immediately “due to the life-threatening conditions,” while an evacuation shelter was opened at a local community college.

The largest blaze, the Old Trails Fire, ignited around noon and had burned more than 1,000 hectares by late afternoon, according to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The fire spread rapidly through brush and grass into residential neighborhoods.

Videos circulating on social media showed burning homes, towering plumes of smoke, and orange skies as long lines of vehicles fled the area.

Volleyball friends on the way out of the evacuation zone in Spokane on W Strong, after evacuating from Spike and Dig but then being trapped at the Indian Trail Safeway #OldTrailsFire #WAWildfire pic.twitter.com/fBGmRbktYD

— David Wu (@davidpwu) August 2, 2026

Washington State Forester George Geissler said the blaze threatened about 4,000 structures.

Man this is not good. A community off of Tiffany Ave. in Spokane, with homes on fire, and not a single fire engine in sight. After watching the devastation unfold in Altadena and the Palisades in 2025, seeing neighborhoods once again surrounded by flames is gut-wrenching.
🎥KHQ… pic.twitter.com/Yqy4CQ8rSK

— CodeThreeNews (@CodeThreeNews) August 2, 2026

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said around 200 homes had been evacuated by mid-afternoon, along with several major facilities, including water reclamation plants, a waste-to-energy facility, and a local hospital.

🇺🇲🔸Driven by strong winds, the rapidly spreading Old Trails fire jumped the Spokane River and reached residential areas in the northwestern part of Spokane, Washington, prompting a massive emergency evacuation. pic.twitter.com/ziJBMzwD4P

— Argonaut (@FapeFop90614) August 2, 2026

Officials reported no injuries or fatalities as of Saturday evening, while the local utility company, Avista, said around 60,000 customers were without electricity.

BREAKING: Video shows homes on fire in northwest Spokane, Washington amid massive wildfire. pic.twitter.com/pgZ5DnNC92

— AZ Intel (@AZ_Intel_) August 2, 2026

Some buildings have been destroyed, although officials have yet to determine the full extent of the damage.

Massive wildfire has engulfed multiple homes in Spokane, Washington, USA 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/NYl8cRpVFF

— Disaster News (@Top_Disaster) August 2, 2026

Firefighters had zero containment by Saturday evening, as strong winds continued to fuel the blaze, DNR spokesperson Jessica Watson said.

Video from Anna Johnston in Spokane, Washington shows traffic jammed up as residents continue to evacuate due to the Old Trails Fire. The fire continues to spot and grow due to very strong winds.

The Dwight Merkel outdoor Sports complex that was full for Saturday activities has… https://t.co/01CSyaOYcZ pic.twitter.com/x3mXVnjSuT

— The Hotshot Wake Up (@HotshotWake) August 1, 2026

Washington is enduring one of its worst wildfire seasons in years, driven by prolonged drought and extreme heat. More than 1,000 fires have already burned about 172,000 hectares this year – the largest area scorched since 2021 – according to the DNR.

The Old Trails Fire in Spokane, Washington has turned into worst case scenario.

This footage was sent in to me, taken from Indian Trail Road, North of west Francis Ave. Devastating losses.

Crews are making progress on slowing the spread of the fire, now 3,509 acres, but… https://t.co/CKepj7ZB56 pic.twitter.com/EdvWIUK9eC

— The Hotshot Wake Up (@HotshotWake) August 2, 2026

More than a dozen active wildfires remain burning across more than 100,000 hectares in the state, most in sparsely populated areas. The largest, the Kaiser Canyon Fire in northeastern Washington, has already consumed about 54,000 hectares.

BREAKING 🚨🚨#Spokane / #Washington

Dramatic New Video from the Old Trails Fire in Spokane shows dozens of homes burnt to the ground, similar to what we saw in LA and Paradise. Eery feelings pic.twitter.com/5tvpo8oqge

— OC Scanner 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 (@OC_Scanner) August 2, 2026

Around 4,000 firefighters are battling the blazes, Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove said during a virtual press conference.

“This year has already been one of our busiest wildfire years on record, and we just started August,” Upthegrove said. “Our firefighters are already stretched thin [and] any new spark on our tinder dry landscapes can lead to another devastating wildfire. I’m urging all Washingtonians to not be that spark.”

The structure loss in Spokane is unfathomable.

I’d estimate up to 100 homes lost so far based on video evidence alone. Scenes look Palisades-esque. pic.twitter.com/gaFcb828GD

— Mike Gagliardi (Tropics) (@Mike__Gagliardi) August 2, 2026

Governor Bob Ferguson has declared a statewide state of emergency. The order includes a statewide ban on most outdoor and agricultural burning through September 30, covering yard debris burning, bonfires, and campfires outside designated fire rings.

Two civilians have been killed and several wounded after a wave of Ukrainian drones attacked Russia’s Saratov Region in the central part of the country, local Governor Roman Busargin has said.

In a post on Telegram on Sunday, Busargin said the UAVs targeted facilities in both Saratov and Engels, with drone wreckage claiming two lives as it tore into a multi-story apartment block in the latter city. He added that several people were injured in Saratov, with strikes also damaging “civilian infrastructure facilities.”

The governor assured that the affected families would be given “all necessary assistance” and temporary housing while engineers assess the damage.

Radiy Khabirov, the head of Republic of Bashkortostan, also in central Russia, said 25 drones had been downed over the region, with debris sparking a fire in the industrial zone in Ufa.

In Samara Region, the attack also damaged a warehouse belonging to Wildberries, the country’s largest online retailer often dubbed Russia’s Amazon, the company’s press service confirmed.

Wildberries said it had rerouted its logistics chain, with incoming shipments and outgoing orders now handled at other facilities.

Ukraine has intensified drone strikes deep into Russia in recent weeks, with many of the strikes targeting Wildberries hubs, along with civilian infrastructure and residential buildings. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky confirmed the attacks on the warehouses – which killed numerous civilians – were deliberate, arguing that the warehouses stored “sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment.” Moscow has dismissed the claim that Wildberries supplies the Russian military.

Moscow has retaliated by targeting Ukraine’s defense-related facilities, including drone and missile production sites and fuel depots. Russia maintains it never targets civilians.

US politicians are using profanity in public far more frequently than in the past, according to research published by Cardiff University politics lecturer Dr Joseph Phillips.

Some 87% of the 692 documented instances of presidents, vice presidents, and presidential candidates using profanity in public have occurred in just the last decade, Phillips wrote. The overwhelming majority of those cases – 78% – came from President Donald Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden, according to the study published this week.

On Wednesday, Trump was heard using another expletive following an Iranian attack on US forces in Jordan. According to Fox News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent, Trey Yingst, the president said: “We’re going to beat the f**king s**t out of them.” Biden previously made headlines while serving as vice president, when he was caught on a hot mic telling then-President Barack Obama that signing the 2010 Affordable Care Act was a “big f**king deal.”

However, Trump has introduced a broader range of profanities into presidential rhetoric, using words such as “bullsh*t,” “ba***rd,” “b***ch,” and “f**k” in speeches, interviews, and social media posts, according to Phillips.

The researcher argued that the trend reflects broader changes in political communication rather than simply the personalities of individual politicians. He said profanity has become increasingly common in US politics, with politicians at all levels of government swearing more frequently than in previous decades.

Phillips also argued that politicians increasingly use profanity because it can signal authenticity at a time when public trust in politics is low. Since swearing is common in everyday conversation, using it publicly may help politicians appear more relatable and less carefully scripted. He added that even voters who dislike political profanity are unlikely to change their political allegiances over it, given the deep ideological divisions between the two major parties.

“Profanity can be a signal of authenticity. In a time of low political trust, signals that a politician is ‘authentic’ are at a premium.”

Thai police have arrested four suspects in a high-profile case involving the kidnapping and murder of two Russian nationals and a local family of three. Diana Nazimova, 22, and her brother Roman, 17, disappeared near the resort city of Pattaya earlier this week.

The siblings moved to Thailand with their mother several years ago and lived in the Huai Yai area southeast of Pattaya. According to police, they left their home on a rented Honda ADV 150 motorcycle before dawn on July 26. Shortly afterwards, Diana sent her mother a message saying that someone appeared to be following them, before contact with the two was lost.

CCTV footage showed them speaking with another motorcyclist not far from their home before their disappearance, according to local media. The incident prompted a search operation, and their vehicle was discovered three days later, dismantled and buried in a wooded area near an abandoned cemetery.

Police identified two men – Thana ‘Pong’ Koedthong, 43, and Thongchai ‘Thong’ Srinil, 39 – as the principal suspects in the case. The two were detained near Thailand’s border with Cambodia on July 31 following a five-day manhunt.

BREAKING: Two Russian siblings missing in #Thailand have been killed over a motorcycle.17-year-old Roman was shot dead.
His 22-year-old sister Diana was beaten to death.
Thai police arrested two suspects near the #Cambodian 🇰🇭 border. The men confessed to murdering the pair… pic.twitter.com/hFMz769EFh

— Mahalaxmi Ramanathan (@MahalaxmiRaman) July 31, 2026

During questioning, the suspects confessed to killing the siblings and led investigators to a shallow grave in a wooded area of Huai Yai. Police recovered two bodies believed to be those of Diana and Roman, with forensic examinations still ongoing.

🔴 Tayland’da günlerdir aranan Rus kardeşlerin öldürüldüğü ortaya çıktı.

Pattaya yakınlarında kaybolan 22 yaşındaki Diana ile 17 yaşındaki Roman’ın motosikleti parçalanarak toprağa gömülmüş halde bulundu.

Yakalanan iki şüpheli, kardeşleri motosikletlerini çalmak amacıyla… pic.twitter.com/lXkJ854FDh

— 3. Dünya Savaşı (@ww3mediaa) July 31, 2026

The suspects reportedly posed as police officers conducting a routine check to stop the siblings on a road. They then handcuffed the brother and forced the Russians to accompany them to a wooded area while threatening them with firearms. Police named robbery as the potential motive, as the killers took their belongings, including the motorcycle.

One of the suspects, Thong, also confessed to being involved in the kidnapping and murder of a local family that disappeared around two months ago. Police searched a second site located just a few kilometers away and recovered three more bodies.

Pong and Thong now stand accused of premeditated murder, robbery, firearms offenses, and impersonating police officers. Two additional suspects were also arrested in connection with the second murder case. The Thai corrections service confirmed that Pong had been released from prison only on June 5 after serving seven years and seven months for attempted murder, firearms offenses, and drug violations.

The Russian Embassy in Thailand said it was closely monitoring the investigation and expected the suspected perpetrators to face justice. It added that Moscow had no complaints against Thai authorities but maintained that effective action by Thai law enforcement would be “of key importance” in the case.

Three people were killed and at least two others injured when a gunman opened fire at a crowded In-N-Out restaurant in Idaho, triggering an apparent exchange of gunfire with an armed bystander.

The attack unfolded at around 2:30pm on Saturday in Twin Falls, approximately 130 miles (210km) southeast of Boise. The restaurant had opened only about a week earlier and was packed with customers in one of the city’s busiest commercial districts.

The shooting apparently began inside the restaurant before spilling into the surrounding area, according to footage showing terrified customers and employees fleeing into the parking lot and onto the road as shots rang out.

Video circulating online shows a man armed with an AR-style rifle and dressed in a black shirt and jeans walking out of the venue as the crowd flees. He then approaches a white car, opens its trunk and reaches inside.

BREAKING: Active shooter reported near the In-N-Out Burger at Canyon Rim in Twin Falls, Idaho; according to police. pic.twitter.com/RbWtWahDq8

— Scope Report (@ScopeReport_) August 1, 2026

In another clip, the suspect is seen walking through a parking lot near a Tesla charging station and firing several shots.

WATCH: Active shooter roaming around Twin Falls Visitor Center in Idaho, seen firing at a Tesla vehicle. pic.twitter.com/QGOViBoLMR

— Noteworthy News (@newsnoteworthy) August 1, 2026

Separate footage appears to show another man firing a pistol at the rifleman. Eyewitness Lane Koehn, 34, also told the Associated Press that he saw a man with a handgun open fire after the suspected attacker emerged from the drive-through carrying the rifle.

WATCH: New video appears to show an armed person firing a handgun during the active shooting in Twin Falls, Idaho. pic.twitter.com/t5e9wRnm5H

— Scope Report (@ScopeReport_) August 1, 2026

Police have neither confirmed that the pistol-wielding man was a civilian attempting to stop the attack nor established what role his gunfire played. Authorities have also declined to say how the suspected shooter died, leaving open the possibility that he was killed during the apparent exchange.

There’s been a shooting in In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Police are advising everyone to stay away as a continue to look for the shooter(s). pic.twitter.com/DfIHdHB6XL

— Comandante🎖️ (@commandante_) August 1, 2026

Koehn said the rifleman fired at least three or four rounds, although he could not tell whether anyone in particular was being targeted. Moments later, he saw an In-N-Out employee drag a wounded female colleague across the parking lot. The woman had apparently been shot in the chest. Koehn, the employee, and the pistol-wielding man remained with her until paramedics arrived.

Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks later confirmed that the suspected gunman was among the three people killed.

“We believe the threat to the community is over,” Hicks said, describing the site as an “exceptionally chaotic scene.”

The identities of those killed and injured have not been released. Police are still working to identify the suspected attacker and determine his motive, while the FBI and federal firearms investigators are assisting with the investigation.

RT has visited survivors undergoing treatment at a hospital in the aftermath of a Ukrainian drone strike on a seaside resort in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region that killed 12 people, including five children.

At least six drones struck a hotel in the town of Kirillovka on the Sea of Azov at around 1:30am last Saturday, while at least 53 vacationers were asleep inside. The popular holiday destination was considered safe, as it is located more than 100km from the nearest front line, and there are no military facilities in the vicinity.

The explosions were so powerful that a young girl was decapitated. Her head was found at least 60 meters from her body, according to rescuers. In addition to those killed, 19 people were injured, including several children, many of whom remain in intensive care.

Natalia, whose husband was killed in the strike, said she did not remember much beyond seeing a flash through the window before the explosion.

“My son was lying in the next bed. He got scared and said, ‘Mom, what should I do?’ My son is still in intensive care,” she said. “We didn’t think it was dangerous there. Everyone seemed calm.”

Another survivor, 19-year-old Alexander, who was vacationing with his girlfriend at the time, told the correspondent that he had been in bed when the drone struck.

“I was thrown back. I hit my head, and that was it,” he said. “I remember being dug out and then the surgery, and that’s it. I was incredibly lucky.”

“The number of mine and blast injuries resulting from shelling, primarily drone attacks, is increasing,” the doctor said. “Recently, more and more children have been admitted for treatment.”

Investigators identified debris recovered from the scene as belonging to long-range, Ukrainian-made FP-2 drones. Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a terrorism case over the attack.

Moscow maintains that Ukrainian forces deliberately targeted civilians at the resort, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova calling the strike a blatant act of terrorism.

Watch RT’s full report below:

The deadly bombing at a central Moscow restaurant bears all the hallmarks of terrorism because it was apparently intended to inflict mass casualties and spread fear among civilians, former Pentagon analyst Michael Maloof has told RT.

Five people were killed and nearly two dozen wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated outside the Balzi Rossi restaurant near Kudrinskaya Square on Saturday evening, according to RT's sources. An unidentified woman allegedly attempted to carry the device into the establishment but was stopped at the entrance by a security guard.

“If it weren’t for that guard, who was unfortunately killed, there probably could have been a mass slaughter in that restaurant and in the surrounding area,” Maloof said.

The former US Defense Department analyst argued that the location and timing of the bombing suggested that the perpetrators sought to cause maximum harm. The explosion occurred on a warm Saturday evening in a busy area of central Moscow near the Moscow Zoo, shortly before a nighttime cycling event was due to take place.

“Just given the description, that was for maximum effect. It was to kill as many people as possible,” Maloof said. “That is the very definition of terrorism – to terrorize the civilian population.”

Maloof said it remained unclear whether the restaurant had been selected simply because it was crowded or whether a particular individual inside had been targeted.

“It was meant, I think, to have maximum effect. And if it was intended to target someone, the individual did not care what the collateral damage might be,” he said.

“This was clearly meant to cause maximum panic and terrorism, and to create greater uncertainty so that people would be afraid… It is really important for people not to show that fear, but to go about their business while being cautious and alert.”

The Russian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal investigation and said forensic specialists are examining the site. Officials have not publicly identified the woman who carried the device or announced any arrests.

Western intelligence agencies and their Ukrainian proxies were likely involved in the deadly bombing at a central Moscow restaurant, former US Army officer Stanislav Krapivnik believes.

Russia’s authorities have not publicly identified any organization or foreign government as responsible for the attack, and no group has claimed responsibility. Investigators have also yet to announce a suspected motive for the improvised explosive device attack, which killed five people and wounded 21 on Saturday evening, according to RT's sources.

An unidentified woman allegedly attempted to carry the device into the establishment, which had been reserved for a private event, but was stopped at the entrance by a security guard. Both were killed in the blast, along with one of the restaurant’s patrons.

“While officially nobody is taking credit for doing this, we know who’s behind this. We know exactly who’s behind this,” he said. “In Russian folk myth, in Eastern Slavic folk myth, there’s a three-headed dragon. In this case, that three-headed dragon is the CIA, MI6, and Mossad.”

“They are neck-deep in Ukraine. They’re neck-deep in this conflict. They have been since 2014 and earlier. They recreated the SBU into a terrorist organization. They use them as proxies to commit terrorist acts, and they go after Russian officials as much as they can,” Krapivnik argued.

Moscow has previously accused Ukrainian intelligence services of orchestrating assassinations and attempted attacks inside and outside Russia, sometimes with Western assistance. Krapivnik claimed that Kiev’s security agencies had a record of recruiting or deceiving couriers to deliver explosive devices.

The former US Army officer also pointed to photographs showing human remains some distance from the site as an indication of the explosion’s force. He praised the security guard for stopping the suspected bomber from entering the restaurant and potentially preventing further casualties.

Russian officials have not said whether the woman acted knowingly, was manipulated by others, or had any connection to Ukraine or Western intelligence services. The Russian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal investigation into the bombing but has not publicly named the woman, identified a suspected organizer or announced any arrests.

The recent burst of illegal migration into Spain’s Moroccan exclave of Ceuta was, above all, a sensational media event produced for political effect. It will have lasting consequences, but not in terms of who ended up where: Of the about 50,000 migrants who suddenly, as if on command, stormed Ceuta by land and sea, almost all quickly went back to Morocco. According to the EU’s home affairs commissioner, not a single Ceuta-crasher made it to the European mainland.

In that sense, the whole thing might as well not have happened. Apocalyptic fantasies of Ceuta turning into a wide open gate to the rest of fortress Europe were always, at best, silly: no, you can’t just travel on into Spain from there or to British Gibraltar, for that matter.

Worse, there have been many deliberate attempts at political profiteering by spreading panic. All through the West, figures from across the political spectrum did not miss a beat trying to exploit the Ceuta emergency: In America, President Donald Trump – under pressure from his self-imposed fiasco in Iran – spoke of a “catastrophe” for Spain and predicted even worse to come in the US if voters dare abandon his Republicans in the upcoming midterms. Elon Musk, richest oligarchs in the world, shared a fragment of the not-so-subtly Zionist horror epic “World War Z” to compare the migrants to Zombies.

Meanwhile in NATO-EU Europe, Italy’s leadership under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni staged some grand, irrelevant theater about the country’s perfectly unaffected borders, while making sour sounds about Schengen this and Schengen that. Not to be outdone, in France the Rassemblement National’s number two Jordan Bardella charged with equal absurdity that Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and his liberal policies had “opened the doors of Europe.”

None of the above means that this fresh and unprecedentedly massive – five or six times as large as previous peaks, according to the Wall Street Journal – Ceuta crisis wasn’t real. Indeed, it was real enough to leave at least 67 casualties behind, namely, those migrants who did not manage to breach the Spanish border fortifications and drowned or were crushed to death.

They, however, have met with little interest and no human compassion. Clearly, under Western eyes they are negligible. Western mainstream media and politicians have treated their lives as if they hardly mattered. Almost as if they were, say, Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, killed, robbed, and displaced by Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing.    

Which brings us to an especially intriguing aspect of this manufactured panic: Curiously, Israel’s UN representative Danny Danon has felt it is his job to go after Spain as well. “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy,” he declared, adding “maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”

Ceuta and its sister exclave Melilla really are odd historical remnants, no doubt. But to hear an official representative of Israel, a genocidal settler colony led by an indicted war criminal, go on about colonialism is rich. But then, that is Danon’s default style: aggressive, shameless, and dirty.

More serious is the fact that Israel’s UN ambassador has chosen to make this statement when social media are already abuzz with theories pointing to Israel as somehow behind – if not necessarily alone – the storming of Ceuta. In essence, the idea is that the Zionist apartheid state and its international networks have found a way to pay Spain back for its far from perfect but – in NATO-EU Europe – unusual solidarity with Israel’s Palestinian victims. No wonder that many Spanish observers, including the Minister of Transport, believe Israel’s involvement is real in this assault on Spain’s territorial integrity and standing within the EU.

So, what are we supposed to think? That the Israel connection is a mere conspiracy theory? That Danny Danon is simply a self-important and nasty man who couldn’t resist what seemed, to his narrow mind, like a good trolling opportunity? That Israel would never meddle abroad so crudely? Or, perhaps, the Israeli representatives at the UN and in Spain are really delivering a well-coordinated performance where Danon implicitly takes the credit for the Ceuta pay-back and Ehrlich adds the plausible-deniability?

Clearly, there are other causes and culprits in play: Recent Spanish legislation and a finding of the constitutional court are said to have attracted the migrants, even if through a massive misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation by migrant smuggling networks. Morocco, too, has a well-deserved reputation for “weaponizing” migrants against Spain to make a point. This time, Rabat may have been sending a signal against Spain’s recent rapprochement with Morocco’s opponent Algeria.

Yet there is substantial circumstantial evidence pointing to Israeli sabotage. For one thing, Israeli and Israel-linked think tankers, such as Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute and Amine Ayoub at Ynet, have a record of suggesting to use US influence and Morocco to, in effect, storm the two Spanish exclaves with the help of civilian masses. Likewise, the son of Israeli Prime Minister and wanted war criminal Benyamin Netanyahu has urged “Arabs” and “Muslims” to “free” the Spanish territories.  In general, Morocco and Israel are indeed close de facto allies, connected through security, intelligence, and arms production projects.

The likeliest explanation for the Ceuta assault and its lethal consequences may well be a combination of factors. Yet the real question is not simply which causes contributed to this fatal outcome, but whether they came together spontaneously or by design. Was there a trigger or a catalyst? If there is one thing the genocide in Gaza should have taught everybody then it is that when Israel announces a crime, it will follow through and commit it. With that in mind, it is naïve to rule out the very real possibility that Ceuta was an Israeli psy-op against Spain, at the cost of dozens of lives no one in Europe seems to care about.

The commander of the notorious Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov unit, Andrey ‘White Leader’ Biletsky, struggled to explain its SS-style insignia in an interview with American influencer Laura Loomer, eventually resorting to a comparison between Adolf Hitler and eating with a fork.

This week, Loomer, who has cultivated close ties to US President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, was on a PR tour of Ukraine, which she insists doesn’t have a neo-Nazi problem.

However, she confronted Biletsky about his unit members “wearing a swastika, carrying swastika flags, doing Hitler salutes” in what she described as a “bizarre” practice. She also pointed to Azov’s insignia, describing it as “identical to the Nazi Germany logos worn by SS agents.” The emblem is the exact copy of the Wolfsangel rune used by several Nazi military formations, including the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich.

Biletsky acknowledged that the insignia was “rather controversial” because of its resemblance to Nazi symbols, but insisted it was a historical “monogram” representing the “idea of the nation” and claimed it had been used by some aristocratic and Cossack families “since the 16th century.” He maintained that Azov had adopted the symbol because of that tradition rather than a desire to imitate the SS.

Biletsky then tried to downplay the issue by comparing the use of SS-style symbols to eating with a fork. “Should we see nothing but offensive triggers in everything…? Hitler ate with a fork and was a vegetarian. That doesn’t make forks or vegetarianism bad things,” he said, adding that his unit’s “symbolism” should be “approached… more cautiously.” 

He also claimed that Azov “did not commit a single hate crime” and that Ukraine had “a super low level of xenophobic manifestations” in general.

Canada and the US barred support for the unit in 2015 over its ideology and alleged abuses, with restrictions being only lifted years later under political pressure. The unit was eventually integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard, and in 2023 was expanded to a brigade.

By 2026, the 3rd Army Corps emerged from the wider Azov movement, with Biletsky – a prominent Ukrainian far-right figure, who founded the original Azov Battalion – still in command in the rank of brigadier general. Prior to founding Azov, the man known as the ‘White Leader’ also helped establish the ultranationalist Social-National Assembly, which has widely been described as a neo-Nazi, white supremacist organization.

Neo-Nazis are reportedly still prevalent within the Azov ranks. A Dutch mercenary who fought for Kiev told De Telegraaf newspaper in January that he saw Nazi symbols, swastikas, and flags at one of the Azov HQs. He said other foreign fighters told him they had seen the unit’s soldiers “giving the Nazi salute every morning.”

The term 'collective West', widely used in Russia, is rarely employed in the West itself, except perhaps when discussing Russian political thinking. What’s commonly heard, however, is the long-running debate over what the West actually is and that discussion has continued in philosophy and politics since at least the 18th century.

The concept has never had a fixed definition, even among those who are supposedly part of it so instead, the West has usually been defined in opposition to something else. At different times, that “other” has been Byzantium and Eastern Orthodoxy, the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic world, or even Germany, which was once regarded by some as alien to the European spirit.

Russia has frequently occupied the same role, albeit there have been periods when Russia was considered part of the Western community, but this generally happened when Western Europe’s great powers needed the support of a major ally against one of their own rivals, and once that purpose had been served, Russia was once again treated as an outsider.

There was also a longstanding debate over the place of the New World, given North America was, geographically and culturally, the West par excellence, yet it simultaneously presented itself as both the heir to European civilization and its challenger. Whether the United States belonged to the same historical and ideological community as Europe remained an open question for generations and for much of this period, conflict within what later became known as the West was intense and almost continuous.

The defeat and division of Germany removed the principal source of conflict within Europe that had dominated the previous three centuries when Germany itself was confined within strict political limits. At the same time, Western Europe’s dramatic decline following two catastrophic world wars enabled the United States to assume leadership of the Atlantic community and finally, the Soviet Union, at the height of its military and political power, provided a common external threat around which the alliance could unite, and this was how the 'collective West' came into being.

During the Cold War it was defined by opposition to Moscow and after the Soviet collapse, it transformed itself into the self-appointed manager of the international order, assuming that its dominance would continue indefinitely, but the erosion of the liberal world order, which began during the first decade of this century and accelerated dramatically by the mid-2020s, has challenged that assumption. Western Europe, as the more vulnerable half of the Atlantic partnership, has been forced to redefine both its identity and its purpose.

The necessary Russian threat

The reasons behind the weakening of the post-Cold War West are well known, and include the disappearance of bipolarity, the rise of new centers of power, America’s strategic shift towards the Indo-Pacific, Washington’s growing focus on competition with China, while the fragmentation produced by the end of the liberal globalization era have all undermined the foundations of the Atlantic order.

An alliance designed for the realities of the mid-20th century no longer corresponds to those of the 21st and previous American presidents hinted that Western Europe could no longer expect the relationship to continue unchanged, however, Trump merely said so openly, and began reshaping it accordingly. Brussels was slow to recognize the implications, but it has now largely done so.

This brings us back to Ukraine, as the United States is reducing its direct role in European affairs, seeking a position that preserves strategic influence while avoiding responsibility for the continent’s security. Western Europe must therefore assume greater responsibility for its own defense, while, at the same time, it needs a new political narrative capable of holding the half-continent together.

An external threat provides exactly that, and Russia has become the ideal instrument.

Over the past four years, the perception of a growing Russian threat has justified NATO’s expansion to include formerly neutral countries and it has enabled Brussels to sever most economic ties and virtually all political relations with Moscow. Confrontation with Russia has become the organizing principle of both Western European foreign policy and, increasingly, domestic politics and physical barriers and new political 'curtains' are once again dividing Europe from Russia.

The next step, however, requires something more ambitious, the institutional consolidation of Western Europe around an explicitly anti-Russian agenda, echoing the mature Cold War.

There are, however, two serious obstacles. The first is that, despite an intense ideological campaign, Western European governments haven’t succeeded in convincing their populations that Russia represents an existential threat comparable to the Soviet Union and attempts, particularly under President Biden, to revive the narrative of the 'free world' confronting tyranny have largely failed.

The second problem is that militarization develops its own internal logic. Using military preparedness as a means of promoting national unity and economic revival inevitably creates pressure for the moral and political mobilization of society and eventually, passive public support is no longer enough, but active participation is required.

As the old theatrical saying goes, a gun hanging on the wall in the first act must eventually fire, but nowhere in Western Europe is there a public eager to fight a war. Governments can’t simply compel people to embrace such a role, while re-educating entire societies would take decades, and even then success would be far from guaranteed and this is where Ukraine assumes a new role.

The Ukrainian leadership, determined to continue fighting Russia until its maximalist objectives are achieved, is effectively turning the country into a mercenary force for the wider West. It has embraced the role that Western Europe itself is unwilling to perform in fighting Russia directly and inflicting the greatest possible damage upon it.

That, however, is only part of the story and the other is the drone revolution, which is fundamentally altering the relationship between technology and manpower, as precision strike capabilities increasingly compensate for shortages of personnel.

Paradoxically, this seemingly technical development may prove to be one of the conflict’s most important political consequences.

This article is Part 2 in Fyodor Lukyanov’s series analyzing the impact of the perceived threat of Russia and the Ukraine conflict on the cohesion of the collective West. Read Part 1 here, and Part 3 here.

An improvised explosive device has killed three people and wounded 21 others at a restaurant in central Moscow, Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee (NAC) has said.

The explosion struck the Balzi Rossi Italian restaurant near Kudrinskaya Square at around 7:55pm on Saturday. According to the NAC, an unidentified woman attempted to carry a homemade explosive device into the restaurant but was stopped at the entrance by a security guard.

The woman and the guard were killed in the explosion, along with one of the restaurant’s patrons. The wounded sustained injuries of varying severity and were receiving medical assistance, officials said.

Witnesses described a powerful blast followed by scenes of panic as bloodied patrons fled the building.

“I ran out onto the street and saw people rushing out of the area in their best clothes and women running barefoot... They were holding their shoes in their hands. Men were supporting them,” a local resident told RT’s Farida Singatoulina at the scene.

The witness said one man emerged wearing only a vest that appeared to be stained with blood, while ambulances, fire engines and other emergency vehicles converged on the site.

Videos from the scene showed police officers and members of Russia’s National Guard Service, Rosgvardia, cordoning off the surrounding streets as firefighters and medical personnel worked at the site. Investigators and forensic experts remained there late into the evening.

The Russian Investigative Committee said investigators and forensic experts were examining the scene. Officials have not identified the suspected attacker or disclosed a possible motive.

Today’s Germany is a grim, unhappy place. Thirty-six years after West Germany’s take-over of the former East Germany (polite term: re-unification), which was supposed to herald a golden age of national fulfilment, citizens are in a very foul mood.

According to Ipsos, one of Germany’s go-to pollsters, their morale is at a “historic nadir,” and they are “losing confidence about the country’s future.” As of last month, fear of poverty and inequality was “clearly increasing,” with 37 percent of all respondents picking it as their number-one angst, followed by “migration” (31 percent), “inflation” (30 percent), worries over the healthcare system (26 percent) and “criminality and violence” (25 percent).

Note that all top five anxieties focus on what is going wrong at home. That doesn’t mean, though, that Germans are optimistic about the world or Germany’s place in it: 24 percent of the Ipsos poll respondents fear “military conflicts between states.”

If the mood is sour, it’s very good reasons: Germany’s abysmally, unprecedentedly unpopular and embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is desperately trying to sell an absurd feel-good story about the German economy as an “anchor of stability.” But that only demonstrates how divorced from reality Germany’s rulers are: In the real Germany that their subjects must inhabit, industrial output is 17 percent below 2017. After the recent roll-out of a perfectly underwhelming “reform package,” business leaders have warned that much more is needed to prevent a “lost decade.” That would be, in effect, the second one in a row.

Meanwhile, Berlin is busy doing two things: cut down public spending on absolutely vital things such as education (next to inexpensive energy, the decisive resource for Germany’s prosperity already sacrificed to the proxy war against Russia) and raze the sorry remnants of social safety nets that have long been in tatters already.

This is the background of not only a severe national depression but also a search for alternatives. At this point at least, the AfD (Alternative for Germany), an anti-immigration party founded in 2013, is benefiting the most from this crisis. On the rise for roughly a decade now, its momentum has recently greatly accelerated.

A fresh poll for all of Germany has the AfD at 27 percent, outdistancing (again) all other parties, including those making up the radical-Centrist coalition currently in charge in Berlin (CDU – 21 percent, SPD – 12 percent).

Perhaps even more importantly, the AfD may well win crucial regional elections in the key eastern Land of Saxony-Anhalt and looks set to do very well in two others – in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin – as well.

In sum, the AfD is probably on the verge of a historic breakthrough that will greatly weaken, maybe even ruin the traditional parties’ longstanding “firewall” strategy of freezing it out of political leadership positions no matter what the people say in elections, in effect half-disenfranchising its voters.

This moment is likely to reset the whole German political system at the cost of the establishment parties which are still desperately defending their de facto exclusive hold over political offices, perks, and power.

So, what do you do when you are losing a (barely) fair fight? Easy, at least if you are part of Germany’s self-appointed guardians of democracy, civil society, and wholesome ‘values’ all around: You start playing even dirtier.

This has all been accompanied by a mainstream media cacophony of cries of “democracy in danger!” and “Nazis at the gates!” Crazy conspiracy theories included, such as the one recently spread – without being challenged – by a member of the co-ruling SPD party on a mainstream news channel: Let’s just blame the latest Islamist terror attack in Berlin on Russia trying to boost the AfD. In what alternative universe does that make any sense? Welcome to the often unhinged, notoriously shameless, and very ugly world of German mainstream discourse.

The problem with the let’s-just-prohibit-the-whole-lot approach is that having a party banned is, fortunately, very hard under German law. And although Berlin’s establishment parties don’t mind bending the rules to deploy nasty lawfare, they do want to be sure to win. If they try to prohibit the AfD and fail, the latter will only get even stronger, as everyone understands. Indeed, even prohibiting ‘merely’ a part of a party, say, a Land organization, is neither easy nor a sure bet.

But what if there were a way to kneecap the AfD without having to run that risk? What about, for instance, promising AfD candidates could be taken out and removed from elections without having to overcome the high legal hurdles that make full-fledged prohibition so scary? And that is where the Land of Lower Saxony (in the former West Germany and not to be confused with Saxony-Anhalt in the former East Germany) has taken on the role of trailblazer in democracy defense via democracy suppression.

Think of recent events there as a prototype or trial balloon. Based on a very recently passed, as it were, made-to-measure law, local election committees have begun to block AfD candidates from running by invoking especially produced reports from the Land branch of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz. This is unprecedented and scandalous, as critics are pointing out. In a ludicrously flimsy and absurdly unfair procedure that needs no courts – in this manner similar to EU sanctions-against-dissidents policy – German citizens are deprived of the passive franchise, the right to be elected.

The election committees are – surprise, surprise – staffed with preponderant majorities of establishment party representatives, while the domestic intelligence offices producing the reports the committees use – de facto indictments – are subordinate to the Land interior ministry which is led by SPD politician Daniela Behrens, who seems very proud of her contribution to shutting down what she considers excessive choice in elections. Indeed, her ministry has circulated an internal memorandum, in essence, to stimulate the removal of AfD candidates by laying out wide and flexible criteria: See how easy that is? Now get going!

These criteria – or perhaps rather pretexts – for this regime of preventative electoral exclusion include membership in the AfD. Yes, you have read that right: Being a member of the party for which you are trying to run, while that party has not been prohibited and probably never will be, is already a reason for being kicked out of the elections.

Not, at least pro forma, a sufficient reason, it is true. Other truly weighty things must be added. Such as, for instance, a social media post that insists that “real democrats have no need to prohibit other parties” and calls on readers to “stand together for freedom of opinion and against dictatorship.” Yes, you have read that right as well.

By now, a handful of AfD candidates for local office – including a current member of the federal parliament in Berlin – have been dealt with in this new, innovative manner. They are likely to seek legal recourse against this Kafkaesque caricature of due process, but things have been set up in such a way that that may well take years, while the elections will, meanwhile, go ahead in their truncated format.

Full disclosure: I have very little political sympathy for the AfD. But I do take democracy seriously. If the scandalous radical-Centrist attack on election integrity tried out now in one Land becomes a model for the rest of Germany, then those pretending to defend democracy will have put yet another nail in its coffin.

Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev has accused Ukraine of “piracy” after a civilian container ship belonging to the Russian state nuclear corporation was sunk by a Ukrainian drone strike.

The MV Yanina, a freighter belonging to Rosatom subsidiary FESCO, was attacked by two Ukrainian drones about 130 miles off the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, Likhachev said in a press release on Saturday.

“It was a perfectly ordinary, peaceful container ship sailing in international waters and carrying civilian goods – ranging from frozen foods to construction and finishing materials,” he said. “Such an attack can only be characterized as piracy and maritime banditry.”

Likhachev also thanked the international crew of the container ship Delphinus, captained by an Egyptian national, “who, despite the danger posed by drones, headed to the shipwreck site at night and rescued 16 of our 17 men.”

The world changes, yet the concept of ‘maritime brotherhood’ remains an enduring value!

The remaining crew member was saved by Russian Black Sea Fleet aircraft, Likhachev said, adding that all of the sailors are in “satisfactory” condition.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian drones struck two tankers carrying cargoes for the international Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) in the Caspian Sea off Kazakhstan. The company, whose shareholders include US and European firms, condemned the strikes as “terrorist attacks.”

In retaliation, Russia escalated strikes on Ukraine’s principal Black Sea port of Odessa, targeting fuel and lubricant storage meant for the Ukrainian armed forces, as well as on ships it said were transporting military cargo.

The Pentagon is planning to transfer leadership of the Germany-based NATO command coordinating military aid to Ukraine to another member of the military bloc as Washington continues to scale back its military presence in Europe, Politico reported on Friday, citing an unnamed NATO official.

Ukraine has been heavily dependent on weapons supplies from its Western backers throughout the conflict, which is now in its fifth year. Moscow has condemned the weapons shipments to Ukraine, arguing that they only prolong the conflict without changing the outcome, and warning that the military assistance shows that NATO is a direct party to the conflict, thereby risking a direct confrontation between Russia and the bloc.

The reported plan follows a broader shift in US defense policy under President Donald Trump, whose administration plans to reduce troops and critical weapons systems in Europe and redirect some resources to Asia and other regions. The White House has also pushed NATO members in Europe to take greater responsibility for regional security to significantly raise defense spending. 

The NATO official told Politico that the transition is expected to take up to a year, while a US deputy will remain involved through the alliance’s military command structure. SAG-U was always intended to be a temporary organization, with the transition designed to distribute responsibilities more evenly among NATO allies, the official added.

Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has pushed NATO members to commit to spending 5% of GDP on defense by 2035, and has repeatedly accused the bloc’s European members of failing to share the common military burden. Divisions within NATO also deepened over Trump’s push to acquire Greenland and after several European members declined to support his military operation against Iran.   

In February, the US announced that the UK would take over NATO’s Joint Force Command in Norfolk, Italy would lead the Naples headquarters, while Germany and Poland would assume responsibility for the Brunssum command in the Netherlands.

A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck the Campi Flegrei volcanic region near Naples in southern Italy on Friday evening, injuring at least 26 people, two of them critically, and damaging dozens of buildings.

The earthquake hit at 7:46pm local time at a shallow depth of about 3km, according to Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). Its epicenter was between the towns of Pozzuoli and Quarto. Civil protection officials said that it was the strongest quake recorded in the area since continuous instrumental monitoring began, surpassing two magnitude 4.6 tremors registered in 2025.

The quake was felt across Naples, Ischia, Procida, and much of the Gulf of Naples. Seismographs have since recorded more than 60 aftershocks, the strongest measuring magnitude 3.8 late on Friday and another of 3.1 early on Saturday. Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci warned that the seismic swarm is continuing and that further earthquakes above magnitude 3 remain possible.

Grietas en casas, derrumbes, coches dañados y diez personas levemente heridas. Este es el primer reportaje del fuerte terremoto de magnitud 4.7 que sacudió la zona de Campi Flegrei esta tarde, con el epicentro en la zona de Solfatara de Pozzuoli. En las comunas de Flegrei, los… pic.twitter.com/u0YXPfAQF4

— Guillermo Gomez (@G_GomezJ) August 1, 2026

Dust blanketed roads and cars, while several unoccupied buildings collapsed.

#CampiFlegrei: dalle prime immagini che circolano sembra che gran parte dei danni più importanti siano stati causati dal crollo dei costoni di roccia che bordano gran parte dei crateri della caldera. pic.twitter.com/s8PLrMo1LD

— Il Mondo dei Terremoti (@mondoterremoti) July 31, 2026

Cracks also appeared at the town’s commercial port, forcing its closure and suspending ferry and hydrofoil services to the nearby islands of Ischia and Procida.

🚨🇮🇹 4.7 magnitude earthquake just struck Naples.

People flooding the streets in panic.
Power outages reported across parts of Naples.
Train and metro services suspended.
One of the strongest quakes in decades
My brother just sent me this video pic.twitter.com/raPKq4kwSK

— Robin Nakamoto (@RobinNakamoto) July 31, 2026

Power outages affected around 100,000 customers after a high-voltage pylon collapsed in Naples’ Agnano district.

CCTV footage of the moment a strong earthquake struck Campi Flegrei, west of Naples, Italy, causing major damage. pic.twitter.com/AzUpoeL76l

— Weather Monitor (@WeatherMonitors) July 31, 2026

Train, metro, and high-speed rail services across the region were temporarily suspended before gradually resuming.

Imágenes de daños en la región de Nápoles, Italia tras el terremoto de M4.5 está tarde a las 19h46.

Dada la cercanía del epicentro y poca profundidad, percibido fuerte.#Sismo #earthquake #Naples #Italy
Vía @AlertesNewsFR24 pic.twitter.com/wkr0ovOwTc

— Geól. Sergio Almazán (@chematierra) July 31, 2026

Authorities in Pozzuoli initially evacuated around 250 people after the quake. As inspections continued, at least nine buildings were declared unsafe and around 290 residents, were ordered from their homes, with the number expected to rise as building checks continue.

🇮🇹 🫨 #Strongest #earthquake #in 40 #years #strikes #near #Naples 🔹A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck the Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields) area. Residential buildings in Pozzuoli sustained damage, while falling rocks and debris landed on cars and railway tracks. pic.twitter.com/ToLae8tb9A

Local media reported that many residents chose to spend the night outdoors or in their cars rather than return to their homes.

🤔HOFFENTLICH WAR ES DAS, SONST...

Braucht sich keiner mehr um den Klimawandel 😂 zu sorgen.

Ein Erdbeben der Stärke M4,7 hat die Phlegräische Felder bei Neapel, in einer Tiefe von 3 km erschüttert, laut INGV; das USGS gibt eine Tiefe von 5 km an.

Laut Rai war es das stärkste… pic.twitter.com/PazXiWDHcO

— Steffen Unger (@unger2701) August 1, 2026

Three streets have also been sealed off because of the risk of further collapses, including from a damaged church bell tower.

⚠️ UPDATE: A M4.7 earthquake hit Campi Flegrei near Naples, Italy. Fire crews report minor building damage but no immediate rescue requests or major injuries. #Terremoto - Sismo - #Napoli - Pozzuoli - Fuorigrotta - Campania https://t.co/kjC6yBgAmE pic.twitter.com/PDlQ6BSar2

— GeoTechWar (@geotechwar) July 31, 2026

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told the media that she was closely monitoring the situation as Italy’s Civil Protection Department coordinated the emergency response with local authorities.

UN SISMO DE MAGNITUD 4,7 SACUDIÓ A LOS CAMPOS FLÉGREOS, CERCA DE NÁPOLES

Dejó al menos ocho heridos, cuyo estado era estable, además de daños en edificios y cortes de electricidad. Protección Civil informó que fue el movimiento más fuerte registrado en la zona en los últimos 40… pic.twitter.com/UUXbd7NyI4

— Clarín (@clarincom) August 1, 2026

Firefighters continued rescue operations and structural inspections across the affected area on Saturday.

A 4.7 magnitude earthquake struck the Phlegraean Fields (Campi Flegrei) volcanic area near Naples, Italy today

It was the strongest earthquake in the area in over 40 years

The world really doesn’t want Camp Flegrei to wake up & be at its worst behaviour pic.twitter.com/oHEYNWGPTC

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 31, 2026

OpenAI has uncovered additional cases in which its autonomous AI models breached containment and acted without human instruction, Reuters has reported, citing sources.

The findings come as the company expands its investigation into a hacking incident last month in which an AI bot went rogue while attempting to cheat in an internal cybersecurity test.

During tests of GPT-5.6 Sol and another unreleased model, both stripped of their safety guardrails, the systems were assigned ExploitGym – a benchmark designed to measure AI models’ ability to identify and exploit known software vulnerabilities. Instead of completing the tasks, one model escaped its supposedly isolated testing environment, gained internet access and hacked into Hugging Face – an online repository for AI models and datasets – in search of ready-made answers.

OpenAI initially said the intrusion was limited to Hugging Face. However, in a statement on Wednesday, it acknowledged the hacking spree had also compromised four accounts across four separate services.

OpenAI defends its models

OpenAI blamed the initial breach on a flaw in third-party software used in its testing environment, saying its AI models exploited it to break out and gain internet access. The company said it is tightening containment, monitoring and access controls while investigating the breach and patching the flaw.

CEO Sam Altman also acknowledged that “we may have to pace the rate of AI development,” but stopped short of committing to slow the company’s research.

Asked about the Reuters report, OpenAI declined to comment, referring to an earlier statement saying it was aware of speculation and planned to publish “a technical report of our learnings in the coming weeks.”

Anthropic finds similar breaches

Rival AI developer Anthropic said on Thursday it had also uncovered containment breaches involving its Claude models during internal security testing.

Anthropic cautioned against overinterpreting the findings because the behavior occurred in what it described as a controlled testing environment. However, it acknowledged the incidents showed AI evaluation systems “require significant controls” and that testing environments should be secured to the same standard as production systems.

Concerns over rogue AI on the rise

The incidents have fueled concerns that autonomous AI models are becoming increasingly capable of carrying out cyberattacks with little human oversight, prompting renewed calls for tighter regulation. They have also reignited debate over who should be held liable when AI systems cause real-world damage. Experts warn that AI capabilities are advancing faster than safety measures.

After initially praising OpenAI for cooperating with the investigation, Hugging Face later called on the company to release the rogue bots’ activity logs and prevent such incidents from becoming “normalized,” warning those responsible “must be held accountable.”

“We’re looking at AI, we’re looking at controls,” Trump told reporters. He insisted, however, that Washington must remain the global leader in AI, adding he did not want regulations that would leave the US “second to China.”

According to Reuters, the European Commission has contacted OpenAI and Anthropic to discuss the incidents ahead of the EU’s AI Act taking effect on August 2. Officials reportedly urged stronger monitoring, risk management and cybersecurity safeguards for advanced AI systems within the companies under the bloc’s new rules, which will allow fines of up to €35 million ($38 million) or 7% of global annual turnover for the most serious violations.

Russian forces hit five military-industrial facilities and a logistics hub in Kiev and its suburbs during a barrage overnight from Friday to Saturday, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said. Two ships carrying military cargo off Odessa the day before were also hit, it added.

In a statement on Saturday, the ministry said that the strikes, which involved precision air, sea and ground-based weapons, targeted the Kiev-based enterprise Radioizmeritel, which it said was supplying electronic components for Neptun-MD, Grom-2, and FP-7/FP-9 missiles and was involved in developing navigation systems for long-range drones.

Other targets included the Burevestnik plant, said to build electronics for long- and medium-range drones and radar equipment, and a Fire Point facility producing parts and warheads for FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles, along with chemicals for solid-fuel boosters.

Officials added that the strikes hit a logistics center in Vishnevoye, in Kiev Region, which handled components and warheads for Ukrainian drones. On Friday, two ships were also struck south of Odessa while transporting military cargo, the statement added.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky claimed that the strike involved 35 missiles – 27 of them ballistic – and 185 drones, with Kiev as the main target, alongside attacks on Dnepropetrovsk, Sumy, Kharkov and Poltava Regions. He said only one ballistic missile was intercepted, citing a shortage of Western-supplied Patriot interceptors.

Zelensky also reported fires across seven districts of Kiev, claiming that at least nine people had been killed and dozens injured. Meanwhile, Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported fires at both residential and unspecified non-residential industrial sites.

Moscow has been carrying out strikes on Ukraine’s defense-related facilities as retaliation for Kiev’s attacks deep into Russian territory, which often target critical infrastructure and residential buildings. Russia maintains it never targets civilians.

The surge of migrants across the border from Morocco into Spain is an example of what could happen to the US if Republicans aren’t elected, US President Donald Trump has claimed. Trump has repeatedly attacked his political opponents over immigration, blaming his predecessor Joe Biden for illegal border crossings.

An estimated 50,000 migrants, mostly young men, swam from Morocco and crossed into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta earlier this week in an unprecedented influx that triggered a humanitarian crisis in the city. The Spanish Interior Ministry has reported that around 48,000 had voluntarily returned by Friday evening.

“What’s happening with Spain, with tens of thousands of Illegal Immigrants invading it, happened in the United States during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, and it will happen again, only worse, if the Dumocrats ever again gain power,” Trump said late on Friday in a brief post on Truth Social, urging Americans to vote Republican in the midterm elections.

White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said on Friday that Trump “has long warned Europe what would happen if they continue to implement far-left, globalist policies, including enabling mass migration.”

Trump and his administration have consistently criticized both the previous US government and European leaders over their handling of illegal migration. The president has claimed that it was “killing” Europe, urging its leaders to act immediately before they lose control of the continent.

Trump’s latest remarks also come amid strained ties with Madrid. The two countries clashed during the recent conflict with Iran after Spain refused to allow the US to use its bases for strikes, while Trump has repeatedly criticized the country over what he believes is its insufficient defense spending.

Migration has remained one of the EU’s defining political issues since the 2015 refugee crisis. Brussels recently agreed on a sweeping overhaul of its migration system aimed at speeding up deportations, while many member states have tightened national immigration laws. Spain has, meanwhile, taken a different approach to migration. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has argued immigration is essential to address labor shortages and demographic decline, while his government has expanded pathways for undocumented migrants to obtain legal status and work permits.

Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered dozens of carved tombstones, pottery coffins, and funerary objects at the ancient site of Tel El-Deir in the northern province of Damietta, the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has announced.

The excavation, carried out by a mission from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), revealed around 20 limestone tombstones carved with human figures. The stones are decorated with religious motifs including the griffin, Agathodaemon, and Isis-Thermouthis, highlighting a blend of ancient Egyptian beliefs with Greco-Roman influences.

According to officials, the tombstones indicate that their owners occupied a distinguished social position, and that Tel El-Deir was a funerary center with its own social and religious significance rather than just a cemetery.

“The site, spanning from Egypt’s Late Period to the end of the Roman era, serves as a living archaeological record of centuries of social, religious, and funerary evolution in the Nile Delta,” the ministry said.

“These discoveries provide a more complete picture of the ritual and symbolic rites associated with burial practices across various periods,” the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mohamed Abdel-Badie, noted.

The ministry reported another archaeological breakthrough on Thursday, revealing the first integrated bath complex to be scientifically uncovered at the Tel Nasser archaeological site in Egypt’s Port Said Governorate. The discovery, dating to the late Ptolemaic and Roman periods, provides data on settlement patterns and the development of architecture and public infrastructure in the eastern Nile Delta.

Last week, Egyptian archaeologists also uncovered a new funerary complex at the Tel Athar Quesna necropolis in Menoufia province. The excavation unearthed hundreds of ushabti figurines, protective amulets, imported Rhodian pottery, and other burial artifacts.

The US can take “pretty much whatever we want” from Ukraine’s rare earth deposits under a minerals agreement signed last year, President Donald Trump has said, adding that profits from the agreement could ultimately exceed total American aid to Kiev since 2022.

Trump made the remarks in an interview with Real America’s Voice aired on Friday as he chastised his predecessor Joe Biden for “giving away” a purported $300 billion in military support to Ukraine without securing repayment.

“He could have Europe… paid for it. All you had to do is ask,” Trump said, adding that under his administration European nations now cover more of the costs.

Trump said Ukraine has “very rich, very fertile soil in terms of rare earth.” “We have a contract signed [with Ukraine] having to do with rare earth. We can go in there at any time we want and take pretty much whatever we want. That was a pretty good deal,” he said.

Trump has portrayed the deal as a way to pay for US military aid to Kiev. While he has claimed it amounted to more than $300 billion, the figure is widely disputed, with the US Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve estimating it at $195 billion in total appropriations.

While legally the minerals deal is up and running, with more than a dozen projects currently under review, it remains hamstrung by conflict-related risks, Ukraine’s notorious corruption, inadequate geological data, and risks of power outages, as well as other infrastructure shortfalls.

The deal itself was signed after months of strained negotiations, including a televised Oval Office clash in February 2025 between Trump and Vladimir Zelensky, during which the US president accused the Ukrainian leader of ingratitude and “gambling with World War III.”

After the signing of the agreement, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev remarked that “Trump has broken the Kiev regime to the point where they will have to pay for US aid with mineral resources, adding that “now they will have to pay for military supplies with the national wealth of a disappearing country.”

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has claimed that the nation’s military has lost “about 50,000” soldiers since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, a figure 5,000 lower than the estimate he offered six months ago.

The Ukrainian leader made the assessment in an interview with Fox News recorded during his visit to Washington this week. When asked about battlefield losses in the fighting with Russia, he initially said it was “very difficult to say,” arguing that he did not want to be “very open about it,” supposedly to avoid revealing the true state of the Ukrainian army to Moscow.

He eventually claimed that Ukraine has suffered “about 50,000 soldiers killed and… about 400,000 wounded,” as well as “a huge number” of troops who simply “disappeared.”

The Ukrainian military has been suffering from chronic manpower shortages amid mounting casualties, widespread draft evasion, and desertion. The latest publicly available official data showed that nearly 290,000 desertion cases had been recorded in Ukraine between 2022 and the autumn of 2025.

According to Moscow, Kiev is losing tens of thousands of soldiers each month on the front lines. Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov estimated in December that nearly 500,000 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed or wounded in 2025 alone. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also suggested that total Ukrainian military casualties, including those killed, wounded, missing and captured, have already exceeded 1 million.

Zelensky came to Washington on an unofficial visit under the pretext of attending the funeral of one of Kiev’s fiercest supporters, Senator Lindsey Graham. He met President Donald Trump behind closed doors on Tuesday to press him on his pledge to allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missiles.

Zelensky also reportedly tried to persuade Trump to call in a major favor from tech entrepreneur Elon Musk by asking him to allow Ukraine to use Starlink for strikes deep inside Russia. Musk himself refused to meet the Ukrainian leader, according to The Atlantic.

An investigation into a prestigious arts school in the US state of Michigan has uncovered decades of alleged sexual misconduct by dozens of faculty and staff members, while also revealing new allegations involving the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The 97-page report, released by Sanghavi Law Office earlier this week, was commissioned by the Interlochen Center for the Arts in 2024, to investigate allegations of abuse against several faculty members. The inquiry was later broadened and ultimately included allegations involving Epstein, a donor to the school.

Investigators collected 70 accounts from former students alleging physical conduct of a sexual nature involving 47 faculty and staff members between the 1950s and the 2010s, with most of the reported incidents occurring before 2000. The report describes a pattern of misconduct ranging from grooming, flirting, and inappropriate touching to sexual contact.

Epstein, who attended Interlochen’s summer camp in 1967 and donated more than $400,000 to the institution between 1990 and 2003, according to media reports, is also the subject of allegations in the report.

Another former student alleged Epstein asked her to expose her breasts while she was giving him a massage at his private residence. She said she cut off all contact with Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, after the incident.

The building named after Epstein was stripped of his name in 2009 after the school learned of his 2008 conviction on sex crime charges in Florida. It was later renamed Green Lake Lodge and has since been demolished.

Outside the school investigation, at least two Interlochen alumnae made allegations of grooming and abuse against Epstein and Maxwell, according to previous media reports. It was not immediately clear whether they also participated in the Interlochen investigation. Their identities were not made public.

Interlochen said it has provided the names of everyone identified in the investigation to prosecutors in Michigan’s Grand Traverse County for possible criminal review. None of those accused still work at the institution, while more than one-third are deceased.

Kiev and its suburbs were reportedly struck by dozens of missiles in multiple waves early on Saturday morning, following Russian strikes earlier this week on military-industrial facilities in the Ukrainian capital.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces carried out another large-scale combined strike overnight using high-precision ground- and sea-launched weapons and long-range attack drones.

The strikes targeted Ukrainian defense industry enterprises and logistics centers in Kiev and the surrounding region involved in the “production, storage and delivery of various types of missiles, drones, radar systems, and electronic-warfare equipment,” the ministry said.

The first blasts in Kiev were heard shortly after 1 AM local time, with further explosions reported in several waves through 3 AM. Videos shared on social media show blasts and successive fires across the Ukrainian capital, but the exact locations and types of facilities hit are difficult to verify.

Russian strikes on Kyiv and air defense activity.

POV 50.489652, 30.528595@GeoConfirmed pic.twitter.com/PHNSPS88KM

— 3BM15 (@3_bm15) August 1, 2026

The Ukrainian authorities tightly restrict information about strike sites and penalize those who share footage of impacts. However, another video shared by a witness purportedly shows Kiev’s air defenses attempting – and apparently failing – to intercept the incoming missiles with US-made Patriot systems.

Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko reported multiple fires at residential buildings and unspecified “non-residential” industrial facilities in at least four districts. He also claimed that at least three people were killed and more than a dozen injured. 

According to open-source intelligence trackers, the strikes targeted several industrial zones near the CHP-5 power plant and facilities belonging to Ukraine’s state-owned defense conglomerate Ukroboronprom.

Two of the impact locations in Kyiv. These are military-related factories which have been hit several times in the past.

The one in the southeast was hit by at least 6 Iskander-M/Zircon missiles.

Other areas were also targeted in western Kyiv. https://t.co/fVwAhFVD1m pic.twitter.com/FFFNgSqDQt

— AMK Mapping 🇳🇿 (@AMK_Mapping_) August 1, 2026

The new raid attack came just 48 hours after Russian forces targeted the Mayak plant in Kiev, which produces components for FP-1 and FP-2 kamikaze drones, as well as another drone plant in the Ukrainian capital.

Moscow maintains that it targets only military and dual-use installations in response to Ukraine’s indiscriminate “terrorist attacks.”

Ukraine has intensified its attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure and commercial vessels since Vladimir Zelensky announced a 40-day “pressure campaign” against Moscow last month. Ukrainian officials have said the campaign is intended to damage the Russian economy and make the public feel the effects of the conflict more directly.

AI developer Anthropic has disclosed three incidents in which its Claude AI models unintentionally targeted real-world organizations during cybersecurity evaluations that were supposed to take place in an isolated environment.

The cases were identified retrospectively during a review prompted by a similar incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face, an online repository for AI models and datasets, which was reported this month.

Anthropic said that it had found three incidents dating back to April. In each case, a misconfigured test environment retained access to the internet, enabling Claude to interact with real companies and public services. The company attributed the problem to a “misunderstanding” with its evaluation partner, Irregular. The tests involved “capture the flag” exercises requiring Claude to obtain restricted information from simulated targets. However, the model was incorrectly told that the network had no connection to the outside world, pushing it toward treating any systems it encountered as part of the exercise.

Before PyPI identified the package as malicious, it was downloaded and executed on 15 real systems, including one operated by a security company. Claude subsequently extracted credentials that it used to access additional parts of the firm’s infrastructure, Anthropic said.

In the third and most recent incident, the model struggled to reach its intended target and began searching the internet for alternative targets. It ultimately halted its activity after determining that the systems it found were real rather than simulated.

Some technology executives have argued that American AI companies should loosen certain safety restrictions to preserve their position in the global AI race.

On the morning of July 25, Ukrainian drones attacked an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea. An explosion occurred on board, killing one sailor and injuring another. Tehran described the incident as an act of aggression, summoned Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires and warned that retaliatory measures could follow.

Vladimir Zelensky did not deny that the operation had taken place, claiming that the targets were vessels allegedly involved in transporting military cargo linked to Iran. Yet within days, Ukrainian diplomacy abruptly changed its tone. Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga told his Iranian counterpart that the merchant vessel had been struck unintentionally, after which discussions over compensation began.

So long as the operation could be presented to Western audiences as another demonstration of the long-range capabilities of the Ukrainian security services, Kiev was eager to speak of success. Once it became clear that Tehran intended to demand accountability, the initial bravado gave way to attempts to portray the incident as an accident. In other words, the Ukrainian leadership sought to reap the publicity benefits of the strike without showing any willingness to accept responsibility for its consequences.

At almost the same time, reports emerged from Iraq that several groups suspected of attacking sites inside the country had been detained. National Security Adviser Qasim al-Aboudi stated that those arrested had admitted to acting in Ukraine’s interests and that, according to their testimony, the attacks had been disguised as operations carried out by local armed factions. The Iraqi authorities have yet to disclose the details of the investigation, but the alleged method closely resembles practices previously associated with Ukrainian structures in Africa and the Middle East.

The true audience for such signals is not in Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus or the capitals of Africa. They are directed at Western governments whose decisions determine the flow of funding to Kiev. At a time when the Ukrainian military remains dependent on foreign weapons, ammunition and budgetary support, Zelensky must prove that his government is not merely a recipient of assistance but a useful contractor capable of contributing to the West’s broader foreign-policy objectives.

The Mali and Syria precedents

This model was most clearly displayed in northern Mali in the summer of 2024. Near Tinzaouaten, Tuareg formations attacked a column of the Malian army and Russian units. Fighters from JNIM, an organization affiliated with Al-Qaeda and active across the Sahel, also took part in the fighting.

Following the attack, Andrey Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, stated that the rebels had received information that enabled them to carry out a successful operation. This acknowledgement was made publicly and was reported not by Russian outlets but by some of the world’s largest international media organizations. Reuters, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Washington Post and Al Jazeera all covered the alleged role of Ukrainian intelligence.

Subsequent attempts to portray the Mali scandal as the product of foreign propaganda were unconvincing, not least because the accusations had been prompted by the words of an official Kiev representative. Ukrainian intelligence itself associated the country with forces that, during the same combat episode, operated alongside a jihadist organization. Mali later severed diplomatic relations with Ukraine, accusing it of interfering in an internal conflict and supporting armed groups. Niger subsequently took the same step.

This approach allows Kiev to benefit from the outcome of an operation while avoiding responsibility for the methods used. When an action wins the approval of Western partners, Ukrainian involvement is highlighted through hints or public statements. When allegations of violating sovereignty or cooperating with radical organizations arise, the authorities issue denials and demand proof of activities they had effectively boasted about only shortly before.

Syria became an extension of the same model, this time in a larger and more politically significant conflict. In December 2024, The Washington Post reported that Ukrainian intelligence had sent a group of drone operators and approximately 150 FPV drones to Syria’s Idlib province. According to the newspaper’s sources, the assistance was intended for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Reuters subsequently reported on the same claims, noting that the alleged assistance involved more than consultations and included the transfer of equipment as well as the presence of specialists capable of training local fighters in the use of drone systems. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham emerged from organizations linked to Al-Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate and, at the time, remained on the United States’ list of designated terrorist organizations.

For the Ukrainian leadership, the origins and ideology of such partners appear to matter little whenever their immediate objectives coincide with those of Kiev and its Western patrons. In Mali, Ukrainian intelligence engaged with rebels operating in the same battlespace as an Al-Qaeda affiliate. In Syria, according to reports in the American press, Ukrainian specialists helped an organization with a jihadist past acquire modern drone capabilities.

What connects these cases is not merely the participation of irregular armed groups but also the nature of the assistance attributed to Kiev. It involves precisely those areas in which Ukraine has accumulated considerable experience during the war, including intelligence gathering, target acquisition, operator training and the use of strike drones. The Ukrainian authorities are now attempting to turn these capabilities into a distinct export product, offering them to forces whose immediate objectives align with the interests of Washington and its regional partners.

Reports of arrests in Iraq suggest that Ukrainian activity in the Middle East may not have been confined to Syria. According to Baghdad’s account, the detained groups carried out attacks inside the country and acted in Ukraine’s interests while disguising their operations as the work of local resistance factions.

Such tactics offer clear advantages to those organizing the attacks. Local operatives carry out the mission, initial responsibility falls upon regional armed groups, and the external sponsor retains the ability to distance itself from the incident. When an operation succeeds without provoking serious consequences, the result can be used privately or publicly to demonstrate effectiveness. When arrests and an international scandal follow, official structures simply remain silent.

This is what distinguishes the Iraqi case from the events in Mali. Ukrainian intelligence effectively boasted of the African operation because its outcome could be presented as a blow to the Russian presence. Similar publicity in Iraq would be far more dangerous, since the alleged attacks took place on the territory of a state in no way linked to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Instead of making public statements, Kiev therefore chose to behave as though Baghdad’s accusations did not concern it.

Silence, however, does not erase the broader pattern. Across several regions, Ukrainian structures have been linked to the use of intermediaries and local armed networks through which objectives unrelated to the direct defense of Ukraine are pursued. The countries and operatives may change, but the underlying method remains recognizable.

The attack on the Iranian vessel was the most overt attempt yet to demonstrate a convergence between the interests of Kiev and Washington. Iran occupies an important place in the foreign policy of Donald Trump’s administration, and Ukraine’s ability to strike routes associated with Tehran can therefore be presented as an additional argument for continued American support.

However, the Ukrainian leadership’s conduct after the Caspian Sea strike exposed the limits of this policy. Having secured the desired publicity, Kiev attempted to retreat as soon as a genuine confrontation with Iran appeared possible. The death of a sailor, the diplomatic protest and demands for compensation proved to be a price the Ukrainian authorities were unwilling to pay, despite having previously used the operation itself for political messaging.

Selling an image in place of a coherent strategy

Taken together, these episodes form a consistent picture. Kiev is attempting to offset its dependence on Western money and weapons through highly publicized overseas operations designed to suggest that Ukraine has evolved from a permanent supplicant into a provider of security capable of carrying out missions far beyond its own territory.

This approach was especially evident in March 2026, when the Ukrainian authorities launched an extensive publicity campaign around cooperation with the Gulf states. Kiev dispatched specialists to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan before signing defense cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. Ukraine promised to share its experience in countering Iranian drones and missiles, including interception methods, electronic warfare techniques and the organization of air-defense systems. In return, Kiev expected investment, contracts and scarce ammunition for Patriot systems.

The publicity generated by the initiative was far more substantial than its demonstrable practical results. Kiev spoke at length about hundreds of deployed specialists, unique expertise and a future regional defense architecture, yet Zelensky was later able to say only that Ukrainian teams had intercepted drones in several unnamed countries. Neither the number of interceptions nor the precise extent of Ukraine’s role or the impact of these missions on the overall effectiveness of Gulf air defenses was publicly disclosed. Meanwhile, the region continued to face Iranian attacks, while American, Israeli and national air-defense systems remained, according to Western reporting, the central pillars of its protection. The March initiative therefore looked primarily like a carefully staged presentation in which political claims ran well ahead of independently verifiable results.

The activities of Ukrainian structures in Mali, Syria, Iraq and the Caspian Sea should be viewed through the same lens. Local armed groups are used as intermediaries, drone technology becomes an instrument of political bargaining and every highly publicized operation is converted into promotional material for Washington.

This demonstration is particularly important in relations with the Trump administration, which approaches the open-ended financing of Ukraine more pragmatically than its predecessors. Kiev is attempting to show that it can serve Washington in its confrontation with Iran, in Syria and in other regions where direct American involvement would entail political risks. Hence the effort to portray the Ukrainian security services as a universal instrument capable of working through local forces, exporting drone technologies and carrying out carefully staged strikes.

Ultimately, what emerges is a series of short-term public-relations exercises aimed less at producing lasting military results than at preserving international interest in Kiev. The Ukrainian authorities are selling the West an image of their own indispensability in the hope of obtaining additional money, weapons and political protection, while attempting to conceal the gap between the scale of their claims and the limited number of independently verified achievements behind yet another information campaign.

The US and Israel are preparing a major bombing campaign against Iranian energy infrastructure that could begin as early as this weekend, according to multiple media reports.

The proposed operation would target power plants, oil refineries, and other energy-related facilities in what CBS News described as potentially one of the harshest bombing campaigns against Iran to date. American and Israeli forces are reportedly coordinating their preparations, although the precise scope and duration of the operation have not been finalized.

CBS and Axios reported that US President Donald Trump is seriously considering the strikes but has not yet issued final authorization. The Wall Street Journal, citing separate US officials, subsequently claimed that Trump has already ordered a new attack that could begin over the weekend and last several days.

The strike plan was reportedly discussed during Trump’s cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday. Some White House aides focused on domestic politics strongly opposed the escalation, CBS reported, although the president publicly indicated that heavier attacks are approaching.

“We’ll be hitting them very hard,” Trump told reporters. “At some point, they’re going to say, ‘We just can’t take it anymore.’”

“The Department of War is locked and loaded, ready to execute the president’s directives at a moment’s notice,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said.

US sources said Israel has been notified and is coordinating with Washington, but an Israeli official denied that the country has been asked to participate or informed of any decision to resume full-scale operations.

Axios reported that the proposed attacks are intended to pressure Tehran into accepting Washington’s terms in ongoing ceasefire negotiations.

A joint campaign would mark Israel’s return to direct combat operations and risk prompting Iran to resume missile strikes against Israel, which it has not targeted since the earlier memorandum of understanding collapsed and the US restarted combat operations in July.

A US Marine Corps F-35B stealth fighter crashed and caught fire at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California, on Friday, apparently resulting in the total loss of the $109 million aircraft, according to footage from the scene.

Emergency crews responded at around 10 AM local time to what the military described as a “Class A mishap,” its category for the most serious accidents. The aircraft was assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 11 of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing.

“The pilot ejected, was transported to a local medical facility in stable condition for evaluation and treatment of non-life-threatening injuries,” the Marine Corps said in a follow-up statement, adding that the crash occurred on the base’s flightline.

JUST IN: An F-35 caught fire after a mishap at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego on Friday morning. Emergency crews responded to heavy smoke around 10 a.m. Cause under investigation.

- FOX 5 pic.twitter.com/oDthXqbQRf

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 31, 2026

Footage from the scene showed a thick column of black smoke rising above the base. Aerial video showed the burned-out jet lying in a scorched dirt field near the runway as military personnel and firefighters surrounded the wreckage.

Exclusive video sent by our follower.

Initial reports indicate that a U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II has crashed at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, home of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, in San Diego, California. pic.twitter.com/qze3GLm8Og

— aircraftmaintenancengineer (@airmainengineer) July 31, 2026

The crash also sparked a vegetation fire, prompting a response from the San Diego Fire Department. White fire retardant could be seen covering parts of the ground around the aircraft. No injuries on the ground were immediately reported.

Miramar was formerly home to the US Navy fighter-pilot school depicted in the film Top Gun and was once known as “Fightertown USA.” The school moved to Nevada in 1996, when the base was transferred to the Marine Corps.

The latest incident occurred almost exactly one year after a US Navy F-35C crashed near Naval Air Station Lemoore in central California on July 30, 2025. Its pilot also ejected safely before the jet struck a field and burst into flames.

German officials are trading blame after it emerged that the suspect behind last weekend’s deadly Berlin attack had been released from prison on probation just months before the attack despite reportedly being considered a “high-risk individual.”

A van plowed into a crowd during the festivities known as Christopher Street Day, the German capital’s annual pride event, last Saturday. A Polish woman was killed in the attack and 31 people were injured, according to the authorities. The suspect, identified as 21-year-old Abdul Ballout, a German national of Lebanese descent, was fatally shot by police during an attempted arrest on Sunday following a large-scale manhunt.

Law enforcement officials later revealed that Ballout was a known Islamist who had previously tried to join Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and had pledged allegiance to the terrorist group in a video allegedly recorded on the day of the attack.

Why was the suspect free?

Ballout was arrested at Berlin Airport in November 2025 upon his return from Lebanon, where he had spent three months behind bars over “inciting a religious conflict.” According to German officials, he had traveled to Lebanon earlier that year in a bid to join IS jihadists in neighboring Syria.

In Germany, he was charged with “preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state” in connection with his attempt to join IS. He was tried by a juvenile court in May 2026, which sentenced him to a year and ten months behind bars.

The ruling nevertheless acknowledged that it “cannot be expected” the defendant “will not commit further offenses in the future.”

Berlin’s judiciary authorities defended the decision amid a wave of criticism in the wake of the attack. The ruling was passed “within the framework of the applicable legal situation,” the head of the Berlin Court of Appeal and the city’s Prosecutor General said in a joint statement.

The Tiergarten District Court that passed the judgement reportedly stated that its job was to ensure people are not unfairly deprived of liberty while crime prevention was the task of security officials.

‘Catastrophe’

Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemned the attack and called on Germans not to be intimidated by “such acts.” Those behind such attacks “want to divide our society, they want to take away the most important thing we have: our openness and our freedom,” he said in a statement issued in the wake of the incident.

He then faced criticism on social media for attending a business association dinner in Paderborn while the suspect remained at large. The chancellor dismissed the accusations, saying he wanted to demonstrate that “normal” life must continue despite the terrorist attacks.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann blamed the court’s decision to release the suspect on probation for the attack, calling it “a catastrophe.” “The judges who have to rule on such a case must be aware of the responsibility they bear for the safety of the people,” he told a local broadcaster.

The Greens and the Left MPs in the Bundestag demanded an emergency session of the Interior Affairs Committee involving the chiefs of the Federal Criminal Police, the domestic security agency (BfV) and the Prosecutor General. Berlin Police Chief Slowik Meisel maintained that the suspect had remained under active surveillance since his release in May but had demonstrated no signs of preparing an attack.

“We never lost sight of this man,” she said, adding that “we found nothing” that would warrant preventive detention.

Not enough diversity

An integration commissioner for Berlin’s Neukolln district, Guner Balci, blamed the incident on conservative values. All conservative religious people have a problem with homosexuality regardless of their faith, she told Die Zeit, adding that “things become difficult” in places “where there is no socio-cultural mixing.”

The federal government’s LGBT+ commissioner, Sophie Koch, warned that the far right continued to pose a threat to the LGBT+ community and called for increased security at future pride events.

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner suggested introducing Islam lessons to the state schools to reduce the influence of what he called “backstreet mosques.”

Redeeming the irredeemable

According to Berliner Morgenpost, Ballout had attracted the attention of the authorities from an early age. He was reportedly considered “aggressive” in primary school, transferred between schools, and eventually referred to a special education center.

“Support and intervention needs were identified early on, and he finished school without a diploma,” Berlin’s Education Department told the paper, with its head, Katharina Gunther-Wunsch, blaming the situation on the “lacking” cooperation from his family.

The man later accumulated a criminal record. In 2019, he was convicted of assaulting another person in the schoolyard. Two years later, he was found guilty of assault and extortion with an intent to rob, CBS reported, citing German security officials.

In 2025, he attempted to join IS twice. The second attempt resulted in a prison sentence in Lebanon and was followed by his arrest in Germany.

Upon his release in May, Ballout was referred to a de-radicalization program run by an NGO called Violence Prevention Network Berlin. Its communications director, Cornelisa Lotthammer, acknowledged to the New York Times and CBS that the man was basically irredeemable.

“His extremism was deep,” she told NYT. “He was very radicalized.”

According to Lotthammer, the staff quickly determined his cooperation was “fake.” “Our colleagues could tell that he wasn’t very interested in a real deradicalization process,” she told CBS while maintaining her organization did “what we were supposed to do” and saw no signs of an imminent attack that could have been reported to law enforcement.

Western regime change wars in countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya transformed entire regions into terrorist havens and led to “migration waves” such as the one currently engulfing Spain’s exclave of Ceuta, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko told RT on Friday.

An estimated 50,000 migrants, mostly young men, swam from Morocco and crossed into Ceuta on Thursday and Friday in an unprecedented influx that triggered a humanitarian crisis in the city. Around 48,000 had voluntarily returned by Friday evening, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry.

“The root cause of those migration waves lies in the policies of the West itself, which took aggressive action against Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Iran,” Grushko said, adding that this left entire regions in the Middle East and North Africa “stripped of statehood and transformed into safe havens for terrorists and extremists.”

This is a collapse of the immigration policy that the EU has pursued for many years.

Problems like immigration were “swept under the rug” while the bloc focused on militarizing and preparing for a war with Russia, he said.

“Reality is simply smashing through the ideological and political doors and walls they have erected, revealing to the European Union where its true problems lie,” Grushko said.

Watch the RT interview below:

The EU has responded to the migrant invasion of Ceuta with watery statements on solidarity, and a stone-faced refusal to blame Morocco for opening its borders. But when Brussels could blame Russia, it sang a different tune.

Sanchez refused calls from local authorities in Ceuta to declare a national emergency, but deployed a token force of 60 troops to the exclave – a gesture perceived by the European right as inadequate.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was first to respond, calling for Spain’s exclusion from the EU’s border-free Schengen Area. Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares replied angrily, demanding “European solidarity, not partisan demagoguery” from Italy. Nevertheless, Italy suspended visa-free entry from Spain on Friday evening.

There was little sympathy for Spain on the European right, with the following leaders and officials joining Meloni in blaming the migrant surge on Sanchez’ policies:

• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk – demanded Spain secure its borders “if Schengen is to survive”

• Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker – threatened to close Austria’s borders, accused Sanchez of creating “additional incentive for illegal migration”

• Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen – said EU should consider suspending Spain from Schengen

• Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson – demanded Spain regain control of its borders

• Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis – called for Spain’s suspension from Schengen

• Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen – backed the Schengen suspension

• French President Emmanuel Macron – announced preparations to strengthen France’s internal border with Spain 

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico took a different tone, criticizing the “hypocrisy” of EU leaders who oppose illegal immigration, but “only a few years ago, through their lax approach, allowed illegal migrants to enter EU countries in massive numbers, causing serious crises.” Fico condemned proposals to boot Spain from Schengen, and offered the Spanish government assistance in securing its borders.

SPAIN MUST BE SUPPORTED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST ILLEGAL MIGRATION.

I am closely monitoring developments in the migration crisis in the Spanish enclave in Africa on an hourly basis. Today, I also joined the initiative of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni calling for a strong…

— Robert Fico 🇸🇰 (@RobertFicoSVK) July 31, 2026

How did the EU respond to the migrant surge?

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the invasion of Ceuta as “unacceptable,” and promised to work with Spain and Morocco to “control the situation.” Von der Leyen refused to blame either the Spanish or Moroccan governments, instead declaring that “returns must be swift, as our rules allow.” 

“I am confident that our close partnership with Morocco will help deliver concrete results,” she added.

The images coming from Ceuta are unacceptable.

We cannot allow anyone to come to our Union without abiding by our rules.

Dangerous crossings must stop immediately. Smuggling networks must be dismantled. And returns must be swift, as our rules allow.

I tasked two Commissioners…

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 31, 2026

As EU member states piled on Spain, some of the bloc’s most senior officials attempted to quash the rising right-wing anger. European Parliament Vice President Javi Lopez condemned Meloni’s position as “unworthy of a European partner,” adding that “when migration is weaponized, Europe answers with solidarity, not selfishness.” The EU’s former chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, ridiculed the Italian PM’s threats to expel Spain from Schengen. “That option simply does not exist in the legal architecture of the Union,” he wrote on social media. “It just can’t.”

Chief diplomat Kaja Kallas, meanwhile, did not issue a single statement on the most serious border breach in EU history.

Why is nobody mentioning Morocco?

Amid the infighting, none of the European leaders blaming Sanchez, nor anyone at von der Leyen’s European Commission, have publicly acknowledged the role Morocco played in instigating the crisis.

IN CRE I BLE #Ceuta cientos de marroquíes a la carrera tras llegar a nado al espigón del Tarajal#FronteraSur #Haraga #Inmigracion pic.twitter.com/qVA6MwDuxU

— KARIM PRIM (@KARIMPRIM) July 30, 2026

Video footage from the border in Ceuta appears to show Moroccan guards opening barbed-wire gates, allowing migrants to pour onto Spanish territory.

Numerous trucks were filmed carrying hundreds of young men toward the border from the Moroccan side.

🚨WATCH: New footage shows truck loads of 1000s of Moroccans being dropped off on the Ceuta border yesterday 🇪🇸

Busses and trucks rammed full of military aged men, all at the same time, orchestrated and organised.

This is an INVASION & it’s high time the Spanish government… pic.twitter.com/orDvVJTDbY

— BRITAIN IS BROKEN 🇬🇧 (@BROKENBRITAIN0) July 31, 2026

While the most widely circulated clip shows police intercepting one of the vehicles several miles away, many others apparently unloaded their passengers at the open border without interference.

ESTO ES MUY GRAVE. Me llegan estas imágenes de cómo las autoridades marroquíes vacían camiones llenos de jóvenes cerca de la frontera con Ceuta.

Quien no quiera ver que se trata de una operación perfectamente preparada por el régimen, es que es ciego. pic.twitter.com/YpxFAaF7Wb

— Taleb Alisalem (@TalebSahara) July 30, 2026

Morocco has a longstanding claim to Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two north African exclaves, and this claim is tacitly backed by the US House Appropriations Committee, by some sections of the US’ powerful Israel lobby, and by Republican Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, a close associate of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Madrid – with the backing of the EU – accused Rabat of “weaponizing” migration, but Morocco won in the end: the following year, Spain agreed to support Morocco’s ‘autonomy plan’ for Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. Under the plan, Western Sahara would receive some powers of self-governance, but would remain under permanent Moroccan sovereignty.

The crisis taught the Moroccan government a powerful lesson: by weaponizing migration, it can extract valuable political concessions from Spain and the EU.

The Belarus hypocrisy

The EU’s kid-gloves handling of Morocco stands in stark contrast to its response to illegal immigration from Belarus in October and November of 2021. That year, just under 40,000 migrants – mostly from Africa and Asia – attempted to cross from Belarus into Poland, prompting Polish authorities to erect a razor-wire fence, deploy thousands of soldiers, and accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of waging “hybrid warfare” on behalf of the Russian government.

Lukashenko had grievances against Poland and the EU, given that both had provided enthusiastic support to his political opponents during Western-backed riots in Minsk the year before. However, he has denied accusations of weaponizing migration, and no evidence of any Russian involvement in the supposed “hybrid warfare” campaign has ever emerged.

Nevertheless, the EU accepted Poland’s framing. Von der Leyen declared that the border surge was “a hybrid attack, not a migration crisis.” European Council President Charles Michel and chief diplomat Josep Borrell used the same wording, and within weeks, the EU sanctioned 17 Belarusian officials over “human rights abuses and the instrumentalisation of migrants.”

📍 At the border between Poland and Belarus.

Poland is facing hybrid attacks from across the border.

We stand in solidarity with our Member State.

In our new EU budget, we have proposed to triple border management funding.

We are all responsible for Europe’s external borders pic.twitter.com/gdoWTmr3NW

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) August 31, 2025

Despite the fact that Ceuta received more migrants in a day than Poland did in a year, no senior officials in Brussels or any EU member state have raised the possibility of sanctioning Morocco. The EU is capable of taking swift action against supposed “hybrid warfare,” but the decision to do so is clearly only made when it is politically expedient to do so – and not when doing so would upset a de-facto ally of the US and Israel.

What happens next in Ceuta?

The crisis appears to be simmering down, but its legacy will be twofold: first, Morocco’s apparent belief that it can wield disproportionate influence over EU politics through migration has been further vindicated. Rabat discovered that it could extract concessions from Madrid with 8,000 migrants in 2021. With 60,000, it can plunge the EU into infighting and push the Schengen Area to breaking point.

Secondly, Spain is unlikely to forget the pile-on by Meloni and her ilk. Posting on X on Friday evening, Sanchez shared a series of migration figures that implicate Italy as the EU’s leading point of entry for migrants between 2021 and 2026. Notably, and despite the EU-wide campaign against Lukashenko in 2021, the bloc’s eastern border – with Belarus and Ukraine – sits at the very bottom of the list.

“Solidarity and empathy are optional,” Sanchez wrote. “Respect for European treaties and data is not. This is not the time to divide. It is the time to continue building a strong and united EU.”

The events unfolding in Ceuta should not be reduced to the familiar European language of invasion, emergency and border control. From a Pan-African perspective, what we are witnessing is the human consequence of a profoundly unequal economic relationship between Africa and Europe.

Spain now has an opportunity to move away from the conventional European model of engagement with Africa and learn from the partnerships developed by countries such as China, Russia, Brazil, and India. These relationships are not without problems or contradictions. Nevertheless, they have generally approached African countries as political and economic partners, supported infrastructure and productive development, and recognized Africa as an emerging center of global power rather than merely a source of raw materials, migration, and insecurity. 

Spain can draw lessons from these experiences while developing its own distinctive partnership with Africa, based on geographical proximity, historical connection, mutual development and respect for African sovereignty.

Young Africans do not risk their lives at sea because Europe possesses higher fences. They do so because the present international economic system has concentrated opportunity, capital and mobility on one side of the Mediterranean while denying them on the other. 

Spain must, of course, protect its borders, preserve public order and ensure the safety of the people of Ceuta. No responsible African position requires Spain to surrender its sovereignty or tolerate disorder. Nevertheless, security measures alone cannot resolve what is fundamentally a question of development, dignity, and economic justice.

Spain is particularly well-placed to recognize this.

Under its current government, Spain has increasingly demonstrated a willingness to distance itself from some of the harshest and most arrogant tendencies of mainstream European and North American foreign policy. It has shown greater sensitivity towards the Global South, defended international law in difficult circumstances, and spoken of Africa not merely as a source of migration or insecurity, but as an equal strategic partner.

Spain’s relationship with Africa is also distinctive. It is certainly not free from the history of colonialism, military confrontation, and political inequality. No honest African analysis should conceal this. Yet Spain’s connection with Africa cannot be defined exclusively by colonialism.

Spain and Africa are geographical neighbors. They share Mediterranean and Atlantic spaces, centuries of human movement, commercial exchange, and profound cultural interaction. Much of Spanish history, language, architecture, agriculture, music, and identity was shaped through its relationship with North and West Africa.

Africa is therefore not a distant region lying beyond Spain’s strategic horizon. It is part of Spain’s immediate historical and geographical environment. This gives Spain an opportunity to lead Europe towards a different relationship with the continent.

The dominant Western approach has too often treated Africa through four narrow lenses: minerals, migration, terrorism, and geopolitical competition. African countries are approached when their resources are required, when their votes are needed, when their young people arrive at European borders, or when Western powers fear the growing influence of China, Russia, and other actors.

That model has failed Africa, and it will eventually fail Europe as well.

Spain can offer another path. It can support African industrialization rather than importing African raw materials. It can encourage joint ventures, technology transfer, and local production rather than relationships based on extraction. It can invest in African agriculture, renewable energy, transport, education, digital infrastructure, and manufacturing while ensuring that employment and value remain inside Africa.

It can also expand legal mobility, university exchange, vocational training, and circular migration so that movement between Africa and Spain becomes organized and mutually beneficial rather than dangerous and controlled by smugglers.

The long-term answer to Ceuta is therefore not simply a larger wall. It is the creation of an economic space in which a young African does not have to cross a border illegally to imagine a dignified future.

At the same time, African governments must accept their own responsibilities. They must confront corruption, economic exclusion, unemployment, and the failure to provide their youth with credible opportunities. Pan-Africanism cannot place every failure at the feet of Europe while exempting African elites from accountability.

Spain should reject the politics of fear that turns desperate human beings into an invading army. African states should reject the political manipulation of migration and prevent vulnerable young people from being used as instruments of diplomatic pressure.

The crisis offers Spain a choice. It can follow the conventional European response: more fear, more militarization, and more distance from Africa. Or it can remain faithful to the better principles it has recently articulated and help construct a new relationship between Europe and the African continent.

From a Pan-African perspective, Spain should be encouraged to choose the second road. But genuine leadership will not be measured by how effectively Spain closes the gate. It will be measured by whether Spain helps build a world in which fewer people are forced to knock desperately upon it.

Israeli strikes have continued across Gaza hours after US President Donald Trump announced a “historic agreement” under which Hamas would be disarmed and the IDF would completely withdraw from the enclave.

At least one Palestinian was killed and several others were wounded in the attacks on Friday, according to Palestinian health officials cited by media reports.

The agreement was reached late on Thursday following talks mediated by Egypt, Qatar, Türkiye and the US under the Washington-led Board of Peace. Trump hailed it as a “monumental step toward lasting peace and security” and a major milestone in his 20-point plan for the enclave. However, both Hamas and Israeli officials have since questioned key provisions of the deal.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir described the draft agreement as “unacceptable to Israel.” Writing on Telegram, he said that the “targeted killings” of “Hamas terrorists” in Gaza must continue, along with the “encouragement” of Palestinian “emigration” from the enclave.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has maintained that Israeli forces will “remain in the security zones as long as necessary.” 

Hamas has insisted that no disarmament will take place while Israeli forces remain in Gaza. In a statement, the group said any discussion of the handover of heavy weapons was conditional on a complete end to hostilities, a full Israeli withdrawal, reconstruction, international guarantees and progress toward Palestinian statehood.

According to AFP, Hamas sources said the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a Palestinian technocratic body established by the Board of Peace, would become the sole authority responsible for managing and storing Hamas’ weapons. Reuters separately reported that Hamas had reiterated that any handover remained contingent on an Israeli withdrawal and increased humanitarian aid entering the enclave.

A Roadmap for Completing the Implementation of President Trump’s Comprehensive Peace Plan in Gaza

Principles:

1. All parties reaffirm their commitment to President Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to achieve peace in Gaza, which constitutes, together with the UN Security Council…

— Board of Peace (@BoardOfPeace) July 31, 2026

Under the published roadmap, Israel must complete “without delay” its remaining commitments under the October ceasefire arrangements, “particularly the cessation of military operations.” Hamas and other Palestinian factions would transfer civilian governance and security functions to the NCAG. Heavy weapons and military infrastructure would subsequently be decommissioned under the committee’s administration, while Israeli forces would withdraw in phases.

The Board of Peace was established under Trump’s Gaza plan following last October’s ceasefire to oversee the enclave’s post-war transition and reconstruction. It is tasked with supervising reconstruction, supporting the transfer of civilian governance to the NCAG and coordinating the deployment of an international stabilization force.

Kiev’s strikes on international oil and gas shipments in the Caspian and Black seas could indirectly benefit the US by giving Washington greater influence over global supply chains amid the Iran crisis, Russian foreign policy expert Darya Saprynskaya has told RT.

Ukraine has escalated long-range attacks on civilian vessels and energy infrastructure in recent months. The most recent strikes hit two tankers in the Caspian Sea off Kazakhstan carrying cargoes belonging to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). The consortium, whose shareholders include US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron, condemned the strikes as “terrorist attacks” and noted that Washington has previously described such attacks as unacceptable.

“There have already been public signals from the United States that Ukraine should avoid international energy infrastructure. However, incidents have continued,” Saprynskaya, a research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences and an expert at the Valdai Discussion Club, told RT on Friday.

A destabilized Caspian and Black Sea energy corridor may indirectly benefit the US if tensions with Iran intensify, as it could increase the strategic importance of alternative routes, American energy companies and US influence over global supply chains.

“It’s very difficult to see any strategic benefit for Ukraine itself in damaging these assets linked to major American corporations,” she said.

The move is “very risky” for Ukraine because it is “so interconnected with European countries,” she said, adding that it could affect the EU’s financial backing of Kiev. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Watch the full RT interview below:

India’s northeastern state of Assam is battling the worst floods in decades that have left at least 80 dead, millions of hectares submerged, and thousands marooned or displaced.

Assam sees flooding every year in the monsoon season, like many parts of India, but this year they were especially destructive in the state. The flooding, which started around the end of June, intensified last week when the Brahmaputra river, which originates in the Tibetan Himalayas, quickly swelled from intense rainfall.

The Assam State Disaster Management Authority said on Thursday that 212,400 people were affected in the worst-hit districts of Charaideo, Golaghat, Jorhat, and Sivasagar. An RT India crew travelled to the flood-hit areas and captured the destruction and the tears.

“My husband earns a living by driving an e-rickshaw,” a woman told RT. “Our only source of income has been taken away. In just 10 minutes we lost everything.” 

“All the paddy fields we had and the livestock, which were our only source of income, all washed away,” said another local.

Some paddy fields now resemble water bodies. Officials reported that 437 villages are still under water and 17,198 hectares of crops have been damaged across the state.

As figures trickle in, more than 90,000 heads of livestock are also being counted as washed away.

India received 1% more rainfall than the July average. Assam’s chief minister has said that some districts in the state received nearly 500% above normal rainfall in July. 

The state administration has set up 112 relief camps and distribution centers across the four districts, providing care to 75,583 affected people, according to reports.

Up to 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in roughly 24 hours, overwhelming border forces and increasing the territory’s population by as much as 70%.

The unprecedented influx has triggered a political crisis, raised questions over the true nature of the incident, and exposed deep divisions in the West.

What happened at the border?

Tens of thousands of migrants stormed a weak point in the town of Ceuta, on the Spanish border with Morocco on Thursday. Ceuta’s regional president, Juan Jesus Vivas, said on Friday that around 60,000 people had entered the city since the border crisis erupted the previous day. The magnitude is such that it represents the single greatest human traffic invasion in the EU’s history.

Even more conservative estimates from Spanish media and security sources ranging from 30,000 to 49,000 would still mean that Ceuta’s regular population of some 84,000 had increased overnight by some 50%.

At least 41 migrants reportedly died. Many drowned while attempting to swim around the border barriers, while others were allegedly killed in a stampede near the Tarajal breakwater.

Widely circulated footage showed predominantly young adult men swimming around the breakwater, climbing border structures, and pouring through crossing points as Spanish officers struggled to contain them. Some later marched through Ceuta chanting: “Bye bye Morocco, hello Spain.”

Local police said they had been “completely overwhelmed” by the influx, while the regional government warned that reception facilities, hospitals, and other public services were nearing collapse.

So sieht das dann aus, wenn Tausende Marokkaner in #Ceuta nach Spanien übersetzen.
Das ist eine Landnahme und sie treffen auf ein sozialistisch regiertes Land, das gerade erst 1,2 Millionen illegale Migranten mit legalen Papieren ausgestattet hat und einen Regierungschef, der… pic.twitter.com/2Utuz8gJoW

— Birgit Kelle (@Birgit_Kelle) July 30, 2026

Madrid initially rejected Ceuta’s request to declare a national emergency but later deployed soldiers, special police, and additional Civil Guard units.

Morocco eventually reinforced its side of the border, deployed water cannons and tear gas, fired warning shots, and moved detained migrants away from the frontier. By Friday afternoon, the massive flow appeared to have largely stopped, although some people continued trying to swim into Spanish territory.

Hundreds of migrants also began walking back toward Morocco through the same breakwater route they had used to enter Spain.

Why Ceuta?

Ceuta is one of two Spanish territories on Morocco’s northern coast, alongside the enclave of Melilla. Together, they form the EU’s only land borders with Africa. Morocco claims both cities as part of its territory, viewing continued Spanish control as a legacy of European colonialism, while Madrid has considered them integral parts of Spain since 1580.

The enclaves have repeatedly become flashpoints in diplomatic rows between the two countries. Morocco is believed to have intentionally eased border controls during a dispute in 2021 to spark a migrant influx to pressure Madrid. However, that incident involved only about 10,000 migrants - several times less than the latest crisis.

What triggered the crisis?

It is currently unclear what exactly sparked Thursday’s incident but several possibilities have been raised. Spanish officials blame traffickers exploiting a recent court ruling, others suspect that Morocco deliberately eased border controls to pressure Madrid.

Some have also linked the timing to Spain’s rapprochement with Algeria, Morocco’s regional rival, and to the Sanchez government’s worsening relations with Washington.

🚨 BREAKING UPDATE: Spain's Civil Guard chief declares the border has "TOTALLY COLLAPSED," per @BillMelugin_

THOUSANDS of military-aged African men have poured over the border in the past several hours.

This is because Spain just gave AMNESTY to illegals. All amnesty does is… pic.twitter.com/1uR9dZGXaT

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 30, 2026

How did the Spanish court ruling increase the risk of mass migrant invasion?

The Supreme Court ruling in July asserted that immediate deportation can only apply to migrants crossing land barriers. Those intercepted at sea, on the other hand, must instead go through standard deportation procedures, including legal assistance and the chance to claim asylum.

The Spanish government has claimed that this ruling was misrepresented by traffickers as making sea crossings harder to reverse. The idea had allegedly spread “like wildfire” through human-smuggling networks and helped trigger the mass rush, Madrid suggested.

Critics have also linked the influx to Spain’s recent regularization of around 500,000 undocumented migrants, arguing that the measure encouraged further illegal entry.

Is Morocco applying pressure on Madrid?

The scale of the influx and the apparent lack of resistance on the Moroccan side have prompted accusations that Rabat deliberately loosened border controls to pressure Madrid, drawing parallels with the 2021 incident.

Morocco, however, has vehemently denied its involvement in the latest influx, instead blaming criminal trafficking networks for the crisis.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has also maintained that cooperation with Morocco continues.

The Algeria dispute

Suspicions of Morocco’s involvement have further been fueled by the timing of the crisis, which comes as Spain has been seeking to restore relations with Algeria - Rabat’s main geopolitical rival.

The two North African states have long been at odds over Western Sahara. Morocco claims the territory as its own, while Algeria supports the Polisario Front’s demand for an independent Sahrawi state.

Spain had backed Morocco’s autonomy plan in 2022 and repaired ties with Rabat. However, that caused a diplomatic rupture with Algeria, an important energy supplier to Spain.

Last week, Sanchez visited Algiers for the first time in four years as the two governments seek to restore relations. The Ceuta crisis erupted ten days later.

Some have suggested that Morocco intentionally allowed the migrant influx to occur as retaliation for renewed Spanish engagement with Algeria and an effort to influence Madrid’s foreign policy. Morocco has rejected the accusations.

Is Washington part of the equation?

Some have also linked the crisis to tensions between Washington and the Sanchez government, which escalated after Madrid refused to allow its bases to be used for US strikes on Iran.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Madrid for refusing to commit 5% of GDP to defense and has threatened to cut trade off with Spain altogether.

Following the Ceuta breach, senior White House officials shared footage of the crossings, presenting the crisis as the result of Spain’s left-wing migration policies and directly targeting the Sanchez government.

The United States stands with the people of Spain, and all Europeans, against this egregious violation of their sovereignty and human rights.

This unacceptable incident is the direct result of the Spanish Government's deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal…

— Department of State (@StateDept) July 31, 2026

Washington has meanwhile maintained close relations with Rabat, reaffirmed its recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, and praised Morocco’s role in the US-backed Abraham Accords with Israel.

This has prompted claims that Morocco may have expected the Trump administration to tolerate political pressure on Sanchez, particularly when the crisis also served Washington’s own campaign against the Spanish government.

How has the international community reacted to the mass immigrant invasion?

The images of dense crowds streaming into Ceuta have prompted shock and ridicule that Spain has lost control of its border.

US President Donald Trump called the scenes “terrible” and presented them as a warning of what could happen in the US if Democrats returned to power.

European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber described the situation as “appalling” and said that the images were the direct consequence of the “pull factor” created by Spain’s mass regularization program and the “instrumentalisation of illegal migration.”

Italy accused Spain of failing to protect the EU’s external frontier and encouraging further migration through its regularization policy. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Rome was prepared to consider “extraordinary measures,” including suspending Schengen arrangements with Spain. Finland has backed the proposal.

Elon Musk mocked the scenes by comparing them to the zombie film World War Z with the caption: “Wow, the situation in Spain looks crazy!”

Just kidding, this is the actual footage … pic.twitter.com/jYRpSWM24e

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2026

Russian presidential investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev compared the crowds with depictions of the sack of Rome in 410 AD and described Ceuta as a vivid illustration of “catastrophic” EU and UK migration policies. He also accused European left-wing parties of supporting mass immigration in the expectation that migrants and their descendants would later vote for them.

Other widely shared posts have also ridiculed the Sanchez government’s longstanding humanitarian defense of migration by contrasting his rhetoric about empathy and vulnerable newcomers with footage from Ceuta showing crowds composed overwhelmingly of young men.

Can the migrants be returned?

Spain and Morocco have agreed to accelerate the return of those who entered Ceuta illegally, but Madrid cannot summarily send back migrants who arrived by sea.

Unaccompanied minors also cannot be deported as adults and must be identified and placed under child-protection procedures.

According to Spain’s Interior Ministry, around 48,000 of the estimated 60,000 arrivals had already voluntarily returned to Morocco by Friday evening. Spanish authorities have not said how many of those remaining will be deported or how long the process could take. The government is reportedly considering new maritime barriers and possible legal changes to facilitate its response to future crossings.

Washington DC, July 29, 2026. On this day, a city accustomed to protocol visits and carefully orchestrated diplomatic spectacles welcomed a rather unexpected guest. Vladimir Zelensky’s unofficial visit to the US took place under the pretext of attending the funeral of former Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters in the US Senate. A private, closed-casket funeral was held. Zelensky’s meeting with US President Donald Trump also took place behind closed doors – with no cameras, no joint statements, and no usual show of unity.

Trump, however, found time to meet with the head of the Kiev regime. Soon after the private meeting, a social media post appeared along with two images – a color photograph and a black and white one. The photos show Trump patting Zelensky on the shoulder with a patronizing expression. According to American political tradition, black-and-white photographs are often published in memory of the deceased. According to military expert Aleksey Leonkov, the photograph seems to send a clear message: “Well, man, hang in there as long as you can. We’ve got no Patriot missiles for you, but hang on.”

The atmosphere of Zelensky’s informal and rather unplanned visit reinforced the feeling that Kiev has once again been shown the limits of US support. Zelensky didn’t come alone – he was accompanied by many Ukrainian officials and representatives of the security forces. However, his public ‘achievements’ amounted to a conversation behind closed doors and two photos.

Lindsey Graham was one of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine in the US Senate for many years. He was someone Kiev could count on to pressure the Trump administration and push through new packages of military aid. That’s why Zelensky used his funeral as an excuse to travel to the US.

The fact that Graham was buried in a closed casket gave rise to many theories. The official version is that his death was the result of a “sudden and brief illness.” The unofficial version is that, as military expert Aleksey Leonkov puts it, the senator was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He recalled that while Graham was in Kiev, the Russian army carried out one of its most powerful strikes on military targets in the city. 

Zelensky’s new demands 

Of course, Zelensky didn’t just come to bid farewell to the senator with whom he shared a hatred for Russia. Behind closed doors, he hoped to utter his usual “Gimme!” and hand Trump a specific ‘wish list’. According to Andrei Klintsevich, 3rd class Active State Councilor of the Russian Federation, Zelensky wants from America what he can’t get from his European partners: first of all, anti-aircraft missiles. “He asked for the winter package: 300 missiles for the Patriot system, PAC-3 missiles, which can shoot down [Russian] ballistic missiles, though not hypersonic ones, specifically Iskander or sea-based ballistic missiles.” Zelensky also asked for licenses to produce these missiles domestically.

Klintsevich notes that the Kiev government’s desire to obtain these licenses has come up against hard reality. And the problem isn’t just that the White House has to make the corresponding decision. Manufacturing these missiles involves a complex technological chain. RTX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and other companies are involved in assembling Patriot missiles. Some make the seeker heads, others the engines. Each item requires its own licenses, which must be withdrawn from commercial circulation and transferred to Kiev free of charge. “Of course, no one will agree to this,” Klintsevich says. 

PAC-3 missile licenses are more than just a set of documents. It would be wrong to think that missile production can be scaled up like drone production. Drone components are readily available on the open market, but rocket technology is different. “Everything is specialized: from the engine to the rivets, to the fuel, and everything else,” the expert says. 

The problem isn’t the assembly line; Trump has already approved the start of production at General Motors and Ford plants. However, the subcontractors that supply complex components, such as gyroscopes and seekers, are critical in the production chain. 

Combined, these two bottlenecks – issues with subcontractors and limited production volumes – make the demand for licenses and large-scale production practically impossible to implement in a short timeframe. 

The Iran-Ukraine front

Zelensky’s second initiative during this trip was the attempt to get involved in the Iranian conflict. The goal was pragmatic: by demonstrating Ukraine’s active participation in the conflict, Zelensky wanted to gain access to military supply chains. To demonstrate this, a Ukrainian drone attacked an Iranian tanker, resulting in the death of one person.

Before Zelensky’s trip, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga made harsh accusations against Iran, claiming that it “deserved” the blow. But after Zelensky’s visit, his tone changed. “Let’s not stir up the conflict,” the foreign minister urged. Apparently, Zelensky’s attempt to get involved was unsuccessful.

Alexey Leonkov notes the reason behind the change in Kiev’s public statements. “Netanyahu does not need a competitor on the Iranian track, because the Iranian conflict is the prerogative of Israel,” he says. Netanyahu refused a private meeting with Zelensky. Israel jealously guards its key role in the Middle Eastern conflict. And Washington is not ready to get into a dispute with a key ally in the region for the sake of Kiev. Moreover, Ukraine’s earlier attempt to provide specialists from Madyar’s group to protect the Middle East from Iranian drones did not yield any results.

America’s refusal fits into a broader logic. Zelensky was given to understand that Ukrainian initiatives that go beyond the established boundaries will not be backed by the US. Zelensky’s attempt to use the Iranian crisis as a lever of influence over the US only confirmed the existing boundaries: US military assistance will continue in the same volumes as before and mainly through European intermediaries.

Help, we’re winning! 

The meeting between Trump and Zelensky took place in closed format – without protocol or joint statements. This leaves wide room for interpretation. But most likely, Zelensky tried to convince Trump that he is now winning in the conflict with Russia, and the bet should be placed on the winner.

Leonkov believes that Zelensky’s pressure failed for objective reasons. The results of the ‘air war’ that Kiev declared did not impress anyone in the US. Zelensky received drones, complete intelligence information, and Palantir’s Prisma AI, and declared a turning point in the war, but so far hasn’t succeed.

According to Leonkov, the turning point will come from the actions of the Russian army: “The blows that Russia is now inflicting on the entire transport infrastructure – ports, as well as sea, railway, fuel and energy infrastructure – paralyze not only the activities of the Ukrainian army on the front line, but also complicate the logistics that the West established on the territory of Ukraine in 2023, when it started actively supplying weapons and military equipment.”

Expert assessments 

Moscow sees this as a simple protocol visit without any consequences. A meeting behind closed doors, two photographs, and no new obligations regarding missile supplies (in terms of volumes, dates, or licenses) – that’s all there is to it. Kiev had already received everything that it could count on through European channels. Attempts to exceed these agreements proved futile. 

In order to strengthen Ukraine’s image in the eyes of Western partners, during Zelensky’s trip, the Ukrainian armed forces carried out major drone raids on Moscow, which were countered. “That’s why we will continue to fight. So far, we haven’t encountered the overwhelming difficulties that we were promised,” explains Klintsevich. 

Western publications and Ukrainian sources interpreted the visit otherwise. Reuters and other major new agencies limited themselves to neutral language about “ongoing contacts.” Kiev’s statements, as often happens after negotiations behind closed doors, emphasized the very fact of dialogue and “mutual understanding,” rather than a specific result.

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon or the US Department of State issued any statements about new emergency military aid packages for Kiev after the visit. This in itself is more important than any interpretations. Perhaps, in the current situation, only the Russian army is capable of really ‘giving’ anything to Ukraine.

Without a ‘winter package’ of 300 PAC-3 missiles and licenses for their production, Ukrainian air defense remains depleted. Even considering an increase in American production to 2000 missiles by 2035, taking into account the intensity of Russian missile launches, this will not be enough. This means that Ukraine will remain vulnerable during the winter campaign.

Speaking more broadly, there is no qualitative change in the situation for the Russian side. Attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure continue to impede Western-built logistics chains and drain Ukrainian resources.

Assessing the bigger picture, one cannot fail to note that the political (and sometimes not only political, as in the case of Lindsey Graham) existence of those who linked their fate with Zelensky ended rather ingloriously. Sadly, an entire country – Ukraine – has linked its existence with him.