The trial of six members of a Pakistani ‘grooming gang’ has quietly restarted in Manchester. The retrial hasn’t made the headlines, and looking at the sordid details of the case, it’s clear the British establishment wants to keep it that way.

The six suspects were alleged members of the Rochdale grooming gang – a group of Muslim men, predominantly Pakistani, who trafficked, sexually abused, and raped underage white British girls in the northern English town between the 1980s and 2010s. More than 75 men have been charged and 53 convicted since Greater Manchester Police began investigating the gang in 2010.

What are the men accused of?

The suspects have been charged with 46 counts of rape, sexual assault, and ‘assault by penetration’, with two of the men facing more than a dozen charges each.

• Tahrir Rashid, 53, 12 counts of rape, 3 counts of indecent assault, 1 count of assault by penetration

• Mohammed Saleem, 46, 8 counts of rape

• Sucklane Shah, 46, 2 counts of rape

• Itfaq Hussain, 45, 3 counts of rape

• Arshad Mohammed, 55, 5 counts of rape

• Amjad Mahmood, 53, 12 counts of rape, 2 counts of indecency with a child, 1 count of indecent assault, 2 counts of assault by penetration

All of the suspects’ alleged offenses took place between 2003 and 2008, and involved two girls who were as young as 13 when they were “passed around” between the gang, according to prosecutors. Rashid, the alleged ringleader, is also accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.

What happened in the first trial?

The six men were tried last year, but the trial collapsed with no explanation in December. When reporting restrictions were lifted a month later, it was revealed that the jurors had formed a WhatsApp group to discuss the case, and had shared documentaries on the subject of grooming gangs. 

Before the trial collapsed, the court heard how the group abused two girls in the “most humiliating and degrading way imaginable.” One of the victims, identified only as ‘Girl C’, was collected from school by Rashid, plied with alcohol, and raped repeatedly by the gang. ‘Girl C’ was raped a dozen times by Shah over several months, prosecutors alleged.

Mohammed told the other victim, ‘Girl A’, that he ran a modeling agency as a ruse to take nude photographs of her. She was allegedly raped by at least three members of the gang.

Both girls were described by the prosecution as “very vulnerable children with chaotic home lives,” which made them “easy prey for men with an unhealthy interest in having sex with children.” All six suspects pleaded not guilty.

Why do the British authorities want this kept quiet?

The proliferation of grooming gangs – or ‘rape gangs’, as right-wing politicians label them – is a national embarrassment for all levels of the British state. Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Police were warned of the gang’s activity in Rochdale as far back as 2007, but refused to investigate allegations of organized rape by Pakistani gangs until 2012, for fear “of being tarnished with a race brush,” according to an independent review published in 2024.

A 2014 report on rape gangs in Rotherham found that social workers, youth workers, and police officers ignored reports that 1,400 children had been abused by the gangs, partly for fear of being seen as racist. A nationwide audit published this year concluded that authorities in 50 towns and cities were reluctant to investigate the gangs due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of perpetrators were of Pakistani origin.

The most shocking report, funded by Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe and published in June, found that Pakistani rape gangs operated in 149 of the UK’s 317 municipalities. The report determined that a “bare minimum” of 250,000 women and girls had been raped by grooming gangs since the year 2000, and that senior politicians helped the gangs escape prosecution. 

In Parliament, reading the testimonies of rape gang survivors provided to our inquiry.

Please watch, listen and understand. pic.twitter.com/C7dyIL46ga

— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) June 17, 2026

These politicians included London Mayor Sadiq Khan, of Pakistani descent, who denied the existence of grooming gangs in the British capital, despite having evidence proving otherwise, and former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who as director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, let 13,000 pedophiles off with warning letters instead of prosecuting them.

It detailed a litany of crimes committed against white girls, with one victim “raped by between six and seven hundred different men over the course of three years,” and others raped by dogs, cut with knives, and “subjected to penetration with objects.” Lowe’s report, and earlier government-backed reports, found that some children were trafficked to Pakistan by the gangs.

Starmer’s ruling Labour Party voted en masse against a Conservative motion calling for a national statutory inquiry into the gangs last year. Starmer’s party eventually backed down under public pressure and opened a probe earlier this year, which is ongoing.

Are there more trials to come?

The six suspects currently on trial were charged in 2023 as part of Greater Manchester Police’s ‘Operation Lytton’. Active since 2015, Operation Lytton is aimed at arresting and prosecuting suspects who were overlooked by earlier investigations. The operation has resulted in 32 convictions to date.

#JAILED | Seven men jailed for 174 years after grooming two girls in #Rochdale (2001–2006).

Thanks to survivor bravery & GMP’s CSE team, justice has been served.

Op Lytton: 32 offenders jailed for 474 years so far.

Time is no barrier to justice.

More: https://t.co/SzwzGHTode pic.twitter.com/DolFSd1kBv

— Greater Manchester Police (@gmpolice) October 1, 2025

Fourteen suspects are currently awaiting trial, according to the most recent information from Greater Manchester Police.

Outside the greater Manchester area, six other large-scale grooming gang trials resulted in convictions this year. In Bradford, where 20% of all residents are of Pakistani descent, 15 men were sentenced in June for 88 rape offenses against the same 14-year-old girl. 

Eight men in south Wales have been charged with raping eight children, with their trial due to begin in early 2028.

A far-right Israeli MP smashed a memorial to Palestinians killed in the conflict with Israel in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday. He committed the act under IDF escort, which has been condemned by the army and politicians in Israel.

Zvi Sukkot, a member of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s ultranationalist Religious Zionist party, said he went to the West Bank village of Madama to remove a monument that “glorified murderers of Jews.”

Video of the incident circulating online shows Sukkot and one other man taking sledgehammers to the monument while an Israeli soldier with an assault rifle watches nearby.

Footage of the aftermath captured by an RT correspondent shows the memorial defaced, with tiles around its stone base partially smashed.

The IDF said Sukkot had received permission to conduct a military-escorted “tour of monuments” in the West Bank, but “acted deceptively” and without authorization in damaging the monument.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stressed that “taking the law into one’s own hands, particularly by public figures, is unacceptable.” The statement did not mention Sukkot by name.

“He lied to and misled the IDF and its commanders, harmed security, and tarnished the State of Israel as a whole,” the former military chief said on X.

Sukkot’s ultranationalist Religious Zionist party has been at the forefront of Israel’s recent push for more settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law by the UN and most of the international community.

Last week, West Jerusalem opened bidding for the construction of more than 1,200 new homes in the area as part the settlement expansion, which was unveiled in July. Critics stress that the project threatens to effectively cut the West Bank in two if completed.

The settlement push has been condemned internationally, with the leaders of more than a dozen European countries denouncing it as “unacceptable” in a joint statement on Thursday.

Earlier this month, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia called on Israel to cease its “creeping expansion” into the occupied Palestinian territories and to take measures to “curb settler violence.” Moscow has long said that the only way to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to rest is to implement a two-state solution.

The Russian military has struck a launch site for Ukraine’s long-range FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles, the Defense Ministry said on Tuesday. Kiev has used Flamingos in attacks deep inside Russia.

The site was targeted with two Iskander cruise missiles and seven Geran-4 Seeker attack drones, according to the ministry.

“The target has been hit,” it said, adding that the strike triggered a major fire and “a massive fuel spill… burning over an area of approximately 40,000 square meters.”

The MOD also released drone footage purporting to show a massive fire engulfing the launch site after the attack.

In separate strikes, Russian forces also hit Ukrainian drone assembly and storage facilities, according to the ministry.

The Russian military has intensified long-range strikes on targets in Ukraine in response to repeated Ukrainian attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure inside Russia. Moscow has condemned Kiev’s drone and missile strikes, including attacks deep inside Russian territory, as acts of terrorism intended to compensate for Ukrainian setbacks on the battlefield.

Russia maintains that it does not deliberately target civilians and that its strikes are directed at military facilities and infrastructure supporting Ukrainian forces.

Fire Point has been promoted by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky during trips to Western countries as the manufacturer of some of the nation’s “most successful” weapons. Over the weekend, a Russian volunteer air-defense unit shot down one of the supposedly state-of-the-art Flamingo missiles with machine-gun fire, according to Kursk Region Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein.

Fire Point has been linked to Zelensky’s former business partner, Timur Mindich, who has been dubbed ‘Zelensky’s wallet’ in Ukraine. Mindich fled the country last year after being named as a key suspect in a major corruption scandal.

The Canadian government has announced that it will impose retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on around 700 American products, after US President Donald Trump hit Canada with a round of tariffs and threatened further increases. 

American steel and aluminum will be tariffed at 50%, according to a statement on the Canadian Finance Department’s website, while other goods – including dairy products, appliances, and farm equipment – will face tariffs of 25%. The measures will cover around $20 billion in US imports, and will come into effect on September 8, the statement added.

“Canada will match the United States’ tariffs dollar for dollar, rate for rate,” Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said at a press conference on Tuesday. The tariffs, he added “are designed primarily to provide protection for Canadian industry impacted by US tariffs.”

Trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed on Friday, with both sides accusing the other of making last-minute changes to a proposed comprehensive trade agreement. Trump immediately imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports, including wine, cement, plywood, clothing, and hockey equipment.

Trump accused Canada of “ripping off the United States of America for years,” highlighting Ottawa’s protectionist tariffs on American agricultural produce. The system, he said, is “not sustainable.”

“On January First, 2027, Tariffs on all Cars, Trucks, both large and small, Automotive Parts, and Steel, will be increased to 50%,” Trump announced. The move will double the current 25% tariff on Canadian auto imports. “Build in the US and there are ZERO TARIFFS,” the president added, saying Canada would no longer be treated “like a State” and calling it “among the worst nations in the world to deal with.”

At the core of Trump’s grievance is the trade deficit with Canada. He claims this figure stands at $60 billion, but Trump’s own trade representative puts it at $48.3 billion. While Trump views this deficit as evidence that Canada is taking advantage of the US, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has argued that the deficit only exists because the US imports so much oil, gas, and electricity from Canada. “I don’t think they want us to stop sending it,” he commented in an address on Saturday.

Trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa date back to Trump’s first term, but reignited when he returned to office last year and launched a sweeping tariff campaign against major trade partners, including China, the EU, Japan, and Mexico.

“We’ve been under no illusions,” Carney said on Saturday, referring to his dealings with Trump. “We recognized from the start that America has changed.”

Thirty-five years after Ukraine declared independence, the anniversary offers little cause for celebration from Moscow’s perspective. Russian officials and commentators argue that a country which inherited one of the Soviet Union’s strongest industrial bases has spent the ensuing decades squandering that legacy, surrendering its real sovereignty to the West, and building a national identity around hostility toward Russia and rejection of the two nations’ shared past.

RT gathered comments from Russian diplomats, politicians, and analysts on what – if anything – remains of that independence and where the country’s chosen path is ultimately leading.

Ukraine is marking the 35th anniversary of its so-called “independence” with great fanfare. But is there really anything to celebrate? Over the past three and a half decades, successive governments have run the country into the ground. Those who shouted the loudest about Ukraine’s independence and bright future have, whether knowingly or not, been the very ones destroying it. Its current dictator – the self-proclaimed “president of peace,” whose term has long since expired – has been particularly successful in this regard.

With the active involvement of the collective West – whose countries claim to embody “civilization” and “democracy” – Ukraine has been turned into a “Zelensky concentration camp.” All dissent and political opposition have been outlawed, while those brave enough to voice an alternative point of view are imprisoned without trial or due process – or physically eliminated. The unprecedented persecution of the canonical Orthodox Church has been accompanied by brutal attacks on clergy and parishioners. Meanwhile, history is being rewritten wholesale: the Soviet legacy is repudiated, while Hitler’s accomplices and collaborators – responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russians, Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians during World War II – are glorified.

It is not only the Russian language that is under attack. Everything associated with our shared past is being systematically erased. The Kiev authorities display a truly primitive form of Russophobia and xenophobia – directed, in practice, even against their own citizens, many of whom are Russian not only by ancestry but also by cultural identity.

Perhaps nowhere is the wretchedness of Kiev’s rulers more evident than in one seemingly absurd example. Ukraine has even imposed sanctions on the Russian animated series Masha and the Bear, claiming that it promotes Russian militaristic narratives.

Having failed to achieve the desired results on the battlefield, the Kiev regime has now descended into outright terrorism against Russia’s civilian population. At the same time, Zelensky continues begging his Western patrons for more weapons and ammunition, which are then used to strike Russian cities, residential neighborhoods, and civilian infrastructure. The calculation is obvious: to frighten the public, sow chaos, and destabilize the situation inside Russia. Terrorism has become Kiev’s last resort in its attempt to reverse a situation that is increasingly turning against it.

Ukraine marks its 35th anniversary as more than just a failed state. It has become a country reduced to a single function, whose only reason for existing is to wage war against Russia. It is not fighting for its own interests, since everyone understands that Ukraine’s only chance of surviving in any form is to make peace with Russia immediately.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the war, Ukraine has already perished in it. Its population has been cut in half, it has lost one-fifth of its territory, its industrial base and energy sector have been destroyed, and, most recently, its agricultural exports have been severed. Countries do not recover from something like this.

And all of it has been sacrificed for the interests of Ukraine’s Western masters. The country is now dying to give France, Britain, and Germany a chance to establish themselves in a post-American world. But Ukrainians spent 35 years consciously pursuing this path, and now they are getting exactly what they worked so hard to achieve.

Happy Dependence Day, neighbors.

Dmitry Rodionov, Director of the Center for Geopolitical Studies at the Institute for Intonational Development (IID):

The document that laid the foundation for Ukrainian “statehood” was adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR exactly 35 years ago.

Ukraine marked the occasion with its customary pomp, despite the ongoing hostilities. After all, the “dignity” and “unbreakable spirit” of the “Ukrainian nation” must be emphasized at every opportunity. Yet much of this pageantry stems from the architects of Ukrainian “statehood” recognizing just how artificial and fraudulent their creation really is – hence their determination to make it appear as real as possible.

The declaration of Ukrainian independence was riddled with legal inconsistencies. These became a kind of foundational birth defect that predetermined the future of the Ukrainian “state,” which ultimately turned into a textbook failed state. Its historic collapse was baked in from the beginning, but regrettably, the process has dragged on for years and continues to claim more and more lives.

There are more than enough such inconsistencies to declare Ukraine a nonexistent state and withdraw its recognition as an entity under international law. But what would be the point? Ukraine’s fate is now being decided on the battlefield. Kiev still has a chance to preserve at least some form of statehood, yet it stubbornly refuses to do so, clinging instead to historical phantoms such as the “1991 borders.”

History will therefore put everything in its proper place and bury the temporary geopolitical aberration known as “Ukraine” once and for all.

Anatoly Viktorov, Russian Ambassador to Israel:

On August 24, 1991, Ukraine adopted its Act of Declaration of Independence. The 35 years that have passed since then provide an opportunity to look back and acknowledge with regret that Ukraine cannot claim any genuine autonomy in either its foreign or domestic policy.

Western countries have completely stripped Ukraine of its international legal personality, placing it under direct foreign control and turning the country into a staging ground for threats to Russia’s security.

At outside instigation, with the active participation of the “collective West” and amid the passive indifference of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, a radical and destructive strain of Western Ukrainian nationalism took root and flourished in the country. The Kiev regime based its ideology on the misanthropic ideas of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), led by terrorist Stepan Bandera, who, in pursuit of his slogan “Ukraine for Ukrainians,” became an organizer of and accomplice to the murder of thousands of Poles, Russians, and Jews. The greeting now commonly used in Ukraine – ”Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!” – was introduced by Bandera’s followers. It is comparable to the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil!”

The attempts by the Kiev junta, which has seized control of Ukraine, to portray its confrontation with Russia as Ukraine’s “existential struggle” for independence bear no resemblance to reality.

Likewise, Ukrainian officials’ claims that Ukrainians and Israelis face some kind of common “axis of evil” amount to little more than verbal gymnastics.

Ukraine has now become one of the world’s leading exporters of instability. The trail of Kiev’s intelligence services can be traced across numerous global flash points, including in the Middle East. Ukrainian “operatives” are actively seeking to share their experience and are more than willing to profit from the misfortunes of others.

Russia’s achievement of all the objectives of its special military operation would not only serve our vital interests in security and the protection of human rights, but also help curb modern Ukraine’s unchecked and destructive influence on the very foundations of international relations.

Thirty-five years of independence have clearly demonstrated that Ukraine simply failed the test of statehood – something that was effectively handed to it when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Instead of making intelligent use of the enormous potential it inherited from the USSR and building upon it effectively, Ukraine chose simply to squander that legacy. Once it was gone, the country began playing a series of strange games in the hope of outsmarting everyone else.

At first, Ukraine tried to “have it both ways.” Later, following the Euromaidan, it attempted to tap into the European Union’s supposedly “bottomless barrel.” As a result, Ukrainian statehood now stands on the brink of collapse, with its industrial base destroyed, its demographic crisis reaching monstrous proportions, and vast territories lost.

The country’s political reputation has also been ruined beyond repair. In 1991, Ukraine was given enormous credit as a new and promising post-Soviet state. Today, however, the same West treats it with condescension, if not outright contempt, despite continuing to provide financial, military, and information support. Incidentally, it is only thanks to this assistance that Ukraine has not yet disintegrated completely and continues to exist in some form as a state.

Ukraine is being exploited in every conceivable way, while still being regarded as a kind of “territory of Untermenschen and Nazi collaborators.” This is largely the result of the Ukrainian elites becoming so consumed by what they believed were their clever political games that they ultimately gambled away their own country. The population bears responsibility as well: it allowed itself to be drawn into the elites’ schemes, failed to rein them in before it was too late, and then, in large numbers, supported the Maidan and began sliding down the slope toward rabid Russophobia and Nazism.

Ukraine was one of the wealthiest and most developed republics in the Soviet Union. Judging by its GDP and the revenues and expenditures it generated, it was broadly capable of supporting itself. It was a self-sufficient republic with advanced industry, agriculture, and a thriving tourism sector – the Black Sea resorts and everything associated with them.

This system began to fall apart after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The years of independence brought industrial decline, mass emigration, and deteriorating infrastructure – processes that began long before Russia launched its military operation.

Take Crimea, for example. During the peninsula’s years as part of Ukraine, its infrastructure and roads fell into an extreme state of disrepair, while Kiev invested virtually nothing in their development.

Independence therefore brought Ukraine no happiness whatsoever. The country has lost its land, its people, its natural resources, and much of what once made it prosperous and livable. The term “independence” is particularly inappropriate in Ukraine’s case.

It should also be remembered that an independent, territorially unified Ukraine stretching from the Carpathians to Donetsk never existed historically. Ukraine was once a relatively small territory centered somewhere around Kiev.

Before becoming part of the Russian Empire, Ukraine was dependent on other states, particularly Poland. After 1991, that dependence merely changed direction: Ukraine became dependent on Western countries – above all the United States, Poland, and Britain. It possesses neither political nor economic sovereignty, so there is no reason for it to celebrate Independence Day.

What Ukraine has today is pseudo-independence, artificially sustained by the United States, the European Union, and those who have aligned themselves with the pro-Western world in the belief that they can defeat Russia using the Ukrainian army. That will never happen. Russia has a unique history: even in the most difficult moments, it has always emerged victorious.

Ukraine today is a completely fabricated country with no centuries-old history of its own. There were never any “ancient Ukrs.” These stories were invented by Ukrainian “scholars” to create the myth of an age-old Ukrainian state. Ukraine’s territory became prosperous and developed as part of a greater Russia, thanks to the collective efforts of the entire country. But once its politicians embraced the “anti-Russia” formula, Ukraine began destroying itself, ultimately driving the country into effective bankruptcy and leaving it unable even to pay pensions.

Ukraine has no GDP, economy, or industry of its own. It does not even own its land, which has been sold off to European and pro-American companies. Even its president can no longer be called a president, because he is illegitimate – no elections were held. Ukraine today resembles a patient in intensive care connected to an artificial life-support system. Western countries are keeping it alive solely so that it can continue fighting Russia. Therefore, when we speak of Ukraine as an independent state, its independence is in fact largely notional.

Russia will prevail – we have no doubt about that. We will overcome every difficulty together, and once the special military operation is over, Russia will enter a period of prosperity. Ukraine, as a fascist state ruled by a fascist regime, will be consigned to the dustbin of history, and every criminal who issued orders to kill will be punished.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is preparing to revoke the visas of up to 200,000 foreigners, AP reported on Tuesday, citing State Department documents and two US officials familiar with the plan. The reported move, which targets business and tourism applicants who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum, could be the largest mass visa revocation in US history.

US President Donald Trump has pursued a sweeping immigration crackdown since returning to office in January 2025, including increased deportations, expanded detention efforts, and tighter restrictions on visa applicants.

The visa revocation process, which has not yet been finalized and could be challenged in court, is expected to begin in the coming weeks and would target B1 business and B2 tourist visas issued since 2016, AP said.

“We are coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the US claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told AP.

Pigott did not provide an estimate of how many visas could be affected, adding that the process would remain ongoing and the number of cases could change.

As part of its broader immigration campaign, the Trump administration has taken a series of measures to tighten controls on foreign nationals seeking to enter or remain in the US.

Earlier this month, the State Department said it revoked more than 175,000 visas since Trump returned to office. The affected individuals include people who violated visa terms or were accused or convicted of crimes. AP reported that the total also includes people who have publicly criticized US policies.

In January, the department imposed an indefinite pause on immigrant visa processing for nationals of 75 countries while it reassessed screening and vetting procedures.

The Trump administration has also moved to tighten rules for work visas for highly skilled professionals. A new DHS proposal would impose an additional $103,265 fee on cap-subject H-1B petitions filed by US employers. DHS estimates that around 85,000 petitions annually would be subject to the proposed fee.

Eighteen-year-old Amber-Rose Berry has made history after becoming the youngest South African woman to swim the English Channel.

Berry completed the gruelling 33km open-water crossing from England to France in an unofficial time of 10 hours and 27 minutes on Sunday, August 23. Her time is still subject to ratification, but if confirmed, it would place her well ahead of the average 12 to 14 hours taken to complete the crossing.

She began her swim from Shakespeare Beach in Dover at 5.27am and reached the rocks at Pointe du Riden, near Cap Gris-Nez in France, at 3.54pm.

The achievement came despite a series of challenges during the crossing, including painful jellyfish stings, strong currents, cold water and the wake of a passing ship.

“That was bloody tough,” Berry said shortly after completing the swim. “But I was motivated by the opportunity I was given to complete this swim. And by the fact that, by finishing, so many opportunities would be afforded to student-athletes like myself.”

Berry’s mother, Karen, who supported her aboard the escort vessel Sea Leopard, said her daughter faced one of her toughest moments just beyond the halfway point. “She was tired and cold, and there was still so far to go,” Karen said.

Huge congratulations to Amber-Rose Berry on completing her solo swim at just 18 years old!
Well done to all on Sea Leopard Charterhttps://t.co/3YrZI4wGUu pic.twitter.com/zPPRRfcFcb

— Channel Swimming Association (@CSAswimmers) August 23, 2026

However, Berry’s training and determination helped her push through. She was also forced to battle the huge wake created by a ship, which her mother said appeared to give her renewed energy. “Funnily enough, that just seemed to energise her,” Karen said.

Berry trained for months under the guidance of open-water swimming coach Clinton le Seuer. During the crossing, she fed regularly, taking liquid nutrition every hour for the first two hours before moving to feeds every 30 minutes.

Her latest achievement carries additional significance as it comes exactly 100 years after Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926. It also coincides with South Africa’s Women’s Month, which commemorates the historic 1956 Women’s March against the Pass Laws. Berry follows in the footsteps of another record-breaking South African swimmer, Otto Thaning, who became the oldest person to complete the English Channel crossing when he swam it at the age of 73 in 2014. His record remains intact.

First published by IOL

Ukraine’s top anti-corruption court has set bail for the former deputy head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office, Irina Mudraya, at under $450,000 – less than one-seventh of the amount requested by prosecutors. She is suspected of channeling illicit funds into a bail payment for a defendant in a separate corruption case.

The High Anti-Corruption Court ruled on Tuesday that Mudraya must remain in Kiev and comply with any summons even if she posts bail, which she said she intends to do with the assistance of unnamed sponsors.

Zelensky fired Mudraya last week after she was formally accused of laundering about $3.3 million in cash to pay bail for former Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko. The latter had previously been implicated in an alleged $100 million kickback scheme blamed on Timur Mindich, a longtime associate of the Ukrainian leader.

Surveillance recordings previously leaked to Ukrainian media suggested that Mindich’s group was interested in placing loyal figures on Sense Bank’s cabinet-appointed supervisory board. Ukrainian media dubbed Mindich “Zelensky’s bagman” amid suspicions that he was merely a frontman for corruption at the highest levels of government.

Mudraya trained as a lawyer specializing in banking and worked for several major clients in the sector before becoming a deputy justice minister in 2022. She moved to Zelensky’s office in 2024, ostensibly to contribute to Kiev’s efforts to obtain war reparations from Russia.

The former Zelensky aide has also been accused of participating in criminal schemes intended to expropriate real estate in Kiev worth some $16.75 million by illegally altering government records and pressuring judges to deny the legitimate owners legal recourse.

NABU and SAPO presented extensive records of conversations reportedly involving Mudraya and other suspects. The exchanges were allegedly recorded by former lawmaker and banker Maksim Mikitas.

During the bail hearings, Mudraya blamed a provocateur, apparently referring to Mikitas, for abusing her trust in order to produce incriminating recordings. She suggested that references to her alleged involvement in corruption were false but did not explain why she had failed to challenge the statements at the time.

Her defense team called several character witnesses, including Jonathan Markovitch, the chief rabbi of Kiev. He told the court that he knew Mudraya as a trustworthy member of the Jewish community and did not consider her a flight risk.

Mindich fled to Israel in November 2025, reportedly hours before he was due to be arrested. One of his key associates, Aleksandr Zukerman, also left for Israel. Both suspects hold Israeli citizenship.

A rare and violent tornado has run rampant through the village of Pomas in southern France, injuring 39 people, including two critically, and damaging around 300 homes, according to the local authorities.

The tornado struck the village in the Aude department on Monday evening, with footage showing a large funnel swirling over the settlement, with gusts of violent winds wreaking havoc, ripping apart roofs, and smashing windows.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez called it a “tornado of rare intensity” while praising firefighters, security forces, and volunteers involved in the response.

Rescue operations continued through the night, the prefecture said on Tuesday, with 75 firefighters deployed alongside specialist reinforcements to check damaged buildings and search affected areas.

Residents forced from their homes were sheltered in a multi-purpose hall with help from the Red Cross, while others were temporarily relocated with relatives or to neighboring communes.

🌪️Eyewitness footage recorded from the village of #Verzeille captured a #tornado forming and swirling beneath a violent supercell thunderstorm south of the southern French city of #Carcassonne. https://t.co/tL5GfNBnxLpic.twitter.com/oGurjJdrxi
📌Authorities reported at least 26… pic.twitter.com/U5AVlVP0iw

— ⚡️🌎 World News 🌐⚡️ (@ferozwala) August 25, 2026

While no people were reported killed or missing, among the injured was a pregnant woman who was hurt when her house collapsed on her, according to AFP.

The storm also battered electricity infrastructure across southern France. Grid operator Enedis said about 21,000 households were without power across the south on Tuesday morning, including around 1,600 in Aude. The prefecture later put the number still without electricity locally at about 1,400.

The tornado appears unusually powerful by French standards. Emmanuel Wesolek, president of the Keraunos severe-weather observatory, told HuffPost that an initial assessment indicated “gusts of more than 200 kph” and potentially as high as 240 kph.

The tornado would likely rate somewhere between the upper end of EF2 and the lower end of EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, he added.

According to Meteo-France, while not as frequent as in the US, a few dozen tornadoes occur in mainland France in an average year, and most are of low intensity. According to figures cited by HuffPost, EF2 tornadoes occur only once or twice annually, while an EF3 is recorded roughly once every four years.

The EU is highly reluctant to revive plans to steal more than $200 billion in frozen Russian sovereign reserves and hand them over to cash-strapped Ukraine, EurActiv reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

On Monday, European leaders flocked to Kiev in a show of solidarity for Ukraine, which marked its 35th Independence Day, but the talks quickly turned to the country’s numerous issues, including a substantial budgetary deficit. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky told European officials that his government still faces a €23.5 billion ($27.4 billion) shortfall on top of EU funding already promised and urged Brussels to accelerate the next instalment of its €90 billion support loan.

According to EurActiv, while the EU’s attention once again pivoted to the idea of confiscating around €210 billion of Russian funds immobilized in EU institutions, mostly in the Belgian-based Euroclear, “there is little sign the issue is about to return to the table in Brussels.”

Russia has condemned the asset freeze as “theft,” ruled out paying any reparations to Ukraine, and has warned the EU of harsh retaliation if it confiscates the funds one way or another.

However, the scheme – which was championed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – met fierce opposition from a number of EU members, most notably Belgium. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever argued that the plan would leave it uniquely exposed to legal and financial pushback from Russia.

“Taking [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s money and leaving the risks with [Belgium]. That’s not going to happen,” he said last year.
Euroclear also vehemently opposed the seizure plot, at one point warning that it could sue the EU if the bloc tries to confiscate the assets. Several other EU leaders also raised concerns that confiscating Russian assets would erode international law and tarnish the bloc’s reputation and standing among investors.

Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday on the border issue between the two countries and improving relations.

”We are meeting in keeping with the guidance of our leaders, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping, who have given clear and positive direction to our relationship, both at the highest and working levels,” Doval said in his remarks, reports said. “I am happy that, over the past year, our relationship has been steadily returning to normalcy.”

Doval noted that the talks are “particularly important against the backdrop of the BRICS Summit.” The summit will be held in New Delhi next month and Chinese President Xi Jinping will reportedly attend.

The two officials are the designated special representatives for the border talks mechanism, which was established in 2003. It is the main channel for negotiations between the two countries on the border issue and communication on issues of mutual interest.

Doval, who is on a two-day visit to China, met with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on Monday and discussed ways to strengthen peace in the border areas and improve economic, political, and multilateral relations, the Indian Embassy said in an X post.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval held the 25th round of Special Representatives’ talks on the India-China boundary question with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing.

During his visit, NSA Doval also met Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, with discussions focusing on… pic.twitter.com/QyEcnOaYN3

— DD News (@DDNewslive) August 25, 2026

Ahead of the talks, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar reiterated that “peace and tranquility” along the border areas are a prerequisite for good relations with China.

Relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors froze after a skirmish between their troops in the Ladakh region of their common Himalayan border in 2020, which left 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers dead.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend the BRICS summit in New Delhi next month with a 400-strong delegation, Reuters reported, citing three unnamed sources.

Xi’s participation in the summit, which Russian President Vladimir Putin will also attend, has not been officially confirmed yet. India, which holds the rotating chair of the BRICS group, has engaged in intense diplomacy ahead of the summit.

Two UN peacekeepers have been killed and seven people injured after unidentified gunmen ambushed a patrol in South Sudan’s eastern Jonglei State, the UN mission in the country (UNMISS) said on Monday.

The patrol was attacked while traveling to Pajut, a remote area in Jonglei, according to the mission. UNMISS deployed a quick reaction force to secure the area and assist with the emergency response. Three other peacekeepers were among those injured, along with two members of the South Sudan National Police Service and two civilian staff. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far. 

UNMISS chief Anita Kiki Gbeho condemned the attack, describing violence targeting personnel working to support peace in the country as “unacceptable.”

Gbeho called on the authorities to launch a “thorough and prompt investigation” and ensure those responsible are brought to justice. UNMISS also warned that attacks targeting UN peacekeepers may constitute war crimes under international law.

The incident comes amid mounting security risks for humanitarian personnel in South Sudan. At least 36 aid workers have been killed in the country since the beginning of the year, according to the UN, already exceeding the 31 deaths recorded throughout 2025.

More than 450 incidents of violence against humanitarian workers and assets were reported between January and July, more than double the number recorded during the same period in 2025, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan Ramanathan Balakrishnan said last week.

Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, now a major opposition figurehead, has been detained in a corruption probe, the head of his office has said. Kocharyan and his eldest son Sedrak are reportedly being held amid a series of searches on their properties.

The detentions come amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s intensifying confrontation with the Armenian opposition, which has escalated further since the June parliamentary election. Kocharyan, whose Armenia Alliance is one of the main opposition forces in parliament, is a prominent political rival of Pashinyan.

Investigators have also searched dozens of addresses, including the home of Kocharyan’s younger son Levon, an opposition MP.

The Anti-Corruption Committee confirmed the arrests on Tuesday after Kocharyan was taken to its offices earlier in the morning. It said the investigation involves alleged property deals and bribery.

Kocharyan was later taken to a medical facility after his condition deteriorated in custody, she told reporters.

The ex-president’s office described the investigation as a fresh government “attack” on him and his family.

The case centers on alleged property schemes dating from 2004 to 2009, according to Kocharyan’s lawyer, Aram Orbelyan. Investigators claim property belonging to an educational institution and worth several billion drams was sold for just 12 million drams (around $31,000) before eventually passing to a member of Kocharyan’s family.

The committee is also investigating the sale of Defense Ministry land to a company linked to a Kocharyan associate for around a quarter of its market value. It alleges Kocharyan received a 30% stake in Toyota Yerevan for facilitating the deal, which was later transferred to Sedrak through allegedly fictitious transactions. Armenian media reported on Tuesday that tax authorities had sealed the Toyota dealership as part of searches targeting businesses linked to the family.

Armenia’s Central Electoral Commission authorized criminal proceedings against Kocharyan in June. The former president had earlier been barred from leaving the country without explanation, with his office accusing the authorities of attempting to fabricate a case against him.

The latest proceedings come after Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance won 9.92% of the vote and 12 seats in the June 7 parliamentary election. Pashinyan’s ruling Civil Contract party secured 49.74% and 64 seats. Kocharyan subsequently accused Pashinyan of attempting to “usurp power” by declaring victory before the final results had been announced.

Pashinyan, who was first elected prime minister in 2018, has since declared the opposition parties that entered parliament illegitimate and threatened to strip them of their political status. He has also vowed to confiscate the assets of the three largest opposition parties’ leaders, saying they “should be left hungry.”

The escalating tensions between Kocharyan and the Armenian authorities come as Yerevan seeks closer ties with the EU while maintaining strong economic links with Russia. Kocharyan has criticized the policy as a “geopolitical balancing act,” arguing that Armenia’s rhetoric is directed toward the EU while its economy and business remain oriented toward Russia. President Vladimir Putin has said Yerevan will eventually have to choose between the EU and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), while Armenian officials have insisted they have no intention of severing ties with Moscow.

Gaza rescue crews have been searching the enclave’s ruins for thousands of Palestinians believed to remain buried beneath buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes, some dating back to the first months of the war.

Recovery work continues amid a fragile ceasefire and an unresolved dispute over a peace roadmap unveiled last month by US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which calls for Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza in exchange for Israel withdrawing from the enclave. Israel has rejected the proposal, insisting Hamas must first disarm, while Israeli strikes have continued, further complicating recovery operations.

Gaza’s Civil Defense estimates that around 8,000 Palestinians killed during the war remain buried beneath the rubble. A chronic shortage of excavators and other heavy machinery has hampered recovery efforts, often forcing crews to search collapsed buildings with basic tools. Some families have waited years for the remains of relatives to be recovered for burial.

Watch Almughari’s full report on the recovery struggle below.

Norway will continue developing oil and gas fields in the Arctic, Energy Minister Terje Aasland has said, despite EU calls for a moratorium on drilling in the region. The bloc should no longer see his country as Europe’s “green battery,” he added.

EU Arctic policy aims to keep fossil fuels in the ground, cut black carbon and accelerate the green transition, citing claims of the region’s unusually rapid warming.

Brussels seeks to influence energy policy in Norway, which is not a member of the EU, but is the bloc’s largest gas supplier following the decision to reject cheap gas from Russia.

“In today’s geopolitical and security environment, and given the resource situation, I believe continued activity in the Barents Sea serves both Norwegian and European interests,” Aasland said in a Reuters interview on Monday, the opening day of ONS, Norway’s four-day energy conference in Stavanger.

The minister explained that Norway would develop the areas, but leave it to the EU to decide whether to impose a moratorium on buying the resulting oil and gas. He added that Norway aims to maintain petroleum production and exports at roughly the current levels until at least 2035, with production in the Barents Sea key to that goal.

Aasland called the long-standing idea of Norway serving as “the green battery” of Europe “flawed,” stressing that “the Arctic must be part of that discussion” if the country “is to remain a long-term supplier of oil and gas to Europe.”

According to the European Commission, Norway has supplied roughly 30% of the EU’s gas imports in recent years after Brussels rejected Russian energy in the wake of the Ukraine conflict. The country’s petroleum revenues have since reached record levels, boosted by its growing share of the European gas market and a surge in oil and gas prices after the loss of Russian supplies.

In 2025, the country’s gas production remained near the previous year’s record high, while oil output reached its highest level since 2009. Official Norwegian forecasts, however, show output could fall sharply after 2030 unless new fields are developed.

Fifteen years ago, it appeared that Russia-Japan relations were improving to the extent that Japan could become, for Russia, an eastern version of Germany as a former enemy turning into a major economic partner in a relationship where Russian resources were traded for the other partner’s investment and advanced technologies. With frequent and seemingly productive summit meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, it appeared that the issues remaining after World War II would finally be resolved and that a firm and lasting foundation would be laid for a qualitatively new relationship between what were sometimes called distant neighbors.

Over the years, the Russo-Japanese negotiations on a peace treaty to finally draw a line under the war had advanced considerably. However, there was still one stumbling block that refused to go away, and that was Tokyo’s defense and foreign policy subservience to Washington. Moscow simply could’t trust the Japanese to stand up to American political and military demands, given the US overlordship of Japan. That attitude proved prudent, because when the Ukraine crisis came, Tokyo had to fall in line with its senior ally. Germany, one might add, did even worse, given Berlin meekly allowed its economy to be deprived of the unique advantage it had enjoyed, cheap Russian gas, and watched its vast and lucrative business relationship with Russia be destroyed.

The cases of Japan and Germany taught Russians an important lesson. Countries that are US allies cannot be regarded as genuinely sovereign, since Washington has enough leverage to make them follow the American lead. Of course, Germany and Japan are more dependent on the US than some other allies, given the long and continuing military occupation of both and the wholesale Americanization of their elites and societies, but the general finding is still true in that an alliance with America is a form of bondage.

Japan isn’t there yet, but its Defense White Paper has already named Russia as a threat, while Tokyo’s already impressive defense budget is on the rise and restrictions on its naval activities are being eased, as are the rules governing Japan’s military exports. At the same time, US missile deployments in Japan threaten not only China and North Korea, but Russia as well. Tokyo is also strengthening its ties with NATO, so, as a result, Russia has to pay more attention to its Far Eastern flank. President Putin’s recent visit to Russian Pacific Fleet maneuvers and his trip to the island of Iturup in the South Kurils testify to that.

There are also other useful lessons to be learned from Northeast Asia. North Korea stands out as an example of a medium-sized and largely isolated country that has been able to ensure its sovereignty and security in a complex and challenging environment. All the talk of an impending collapse of the regime in Pyongyang, so common for years, has long since ceased. Unlike many other countries, the nuclear-armed DPRK is being courted, not threatened, by the US. For Moscow, Pyongyang has become a valuable military ally whose soldiers actually fight alongside their Russian comrades. The Russia-DPRK alliance substantially complements the Moscow-Beijing strategic partnership in bolstering security in the region.

There’s no question that the Republic of Korea is intently observing these developments and considering their implications. President Donald Trump’s recent abrupt decision to cut short joint military exercises to put pressure on Seoul over trade and investment issues has also been a useful warning. At the end of the day, South Korea’s security lies in its own hands. That security doesn’t rest solely on military and technological power, considerable as it is, and, thus, investing more in diplomacy with neighboring countries, including China and Russia, should be a priority. 

Germany’s Porsche has signed a $1.5 billion deal with India’s largest IT services company as the luxury carmaker looks to leverage AI to make itself more competitive in a fast-changing industry. 

It gives Bengaluru-based Tata Consultancy Services, which employs close to 595,000 people, a foothold in the European automotive industry as it changes focus from the traditional headcount-based outsourcing model to one defined by measurable results and productivity targets.

The 5-year strategic partnership with Porsche will go into effect once TCS completes the acquisition of Porsche’s IT consulting business, MHP, for €320 million ($373 million). 

It is a win-win for two companies from two industries that are swiftly being upended by artificial intelligence. 

The automotive industry is among the most disrupted by digital technology as cars increasingly become software on wheels, and with AI accelerating the evolution of technologies like self-driving through systems that learn from real-world data.

TCS will establish a dedicated AI Mobility Centre of Excellence for Porsche, to apply AI across engineering, manufacturing, operations, and customer experience as the car maker doubles down on its core business by shedding MHP – part of its ‘Sportwagenschmiede 35’ strategy, which aims to improve profitability and cash flow. 

Porsche recorded about $40 billion in revenue in FY2025.

TCS will “industrialize AI at scale for Porsche,” said the IT firm’s CEO K. Krithivasan.

AI has also become a major source of worry for Indian IT consultancy companies, which have built a multi-billion global success story, with margins coming under pressure as clients demand increased productivity from AI deployments.

The Nifty IT index, a benchmark for Indian IT stocks, is down nearly 20% from the beginning of the year, compared to just 7% for the broader Nifty 50 – an indication of how investors view Indian IT’s prospects.

TCS recorded $30 billion revenue in the financial year ended March, and analysts expect MHP to add 3% to its top line.

In short, TCS gets Porsche’s technology transformation business, MHP’s automotive expertise, and a platform to grab more business from global auto manufacturers.

Four people have been arrested in Kenya over the suspected poisoning of 18 elephants in the Amboseli ecosystem, the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife said on Saturday. 

A representative of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said on Monday that all four suspects were later released on bail.

Preliminary laboratory tests suggest that the animals may have died after ingesting tomatoes contaminated with cyanide from farms bordering wildlife habitats. Officials said further scientific testing was needed to confirm the cause of death.

The first 15 elephant deaths were recorded June 24 to July 24 in Amboseli National Park, Kimana Sanctuary, and the Kuku Ranch area, prompting the KWS and other agencies to launch an investigation. 

Ten of the elephants developed similar symptoms before dying, including partial paralysis which left them unable to stand. According to KWS, “the condition primarily affected adult females and their calves, with only one adult male” among the reported cases.

A search in Tikondo in Kimana, within Loitoktok Sub-County, also uncovered chemicals and other substances believed to have been sourced from a neighboring country. The potentially toxic and unlabeled materials have been sent for analysis.

The government stressed that the arrests and seized materials do not establish criminal responsibility. The authorities said the investigation is ongoing and pledged to prosecute anyone found to have unlawfully killed, poisoned, or harmed wildlife.

Earlier in August, the Kenya Veterinary Association (KVA) called for urgent testing of agricultural produce from areas around Amboseli after preliminary findings linked elephant deaths to cyanide. The group warned of potential risks to people after tomatoes were reportedly found in the animals’ stomachs and urged the authorities to determine whether contaminated produce could have entered local food supply chains.

Moscow has mocked a German journalist’s claim that a Russian missile strike near Kiev the day before German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul visited the Ukrainian capital amounted to a “clear affront” to Berlin.

The strike reportedly near Borispol airport – some 40 km to the east of central Kiev – destroyed dozens of trucks that had been converted into concealed launch platforms for long-range drones, as revealed by images of the aftermath released by the Ukrainian authorities, which were later scrubbed from official accounts.

When asked about Welt correspondent Christoph Wanner’s claim that the strike had crossed a certain diplomatic threshold, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Izvestia on Tuesday that Germany “gets insulted on a regular basis.”

What appears to be a truck coverted into a mobile launcher for Ukrainian FP-series one-way attack drones destroyed as a result of Russian strikes in Boryspil, Kyiv Oblast, earlier on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/wSIfrPZsjR

— Status-6 (War & Military News) (@Archer83Able) August 22, 2026

She pointed to several examples, including the US wiretapping of then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone, which was exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. She also cited the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which German investigators have linked to a Ukrainian diving team that may have acted on orders from Kiev.

Berlin endures diplomacy Ukraine-style

Ukraine’s diplomatic corps has for years used moral pressure to secure concessions from Western countries. Andrey Melnik, who served as Kiev’s ambassador to Germany from 2014 to 2022, became a prominent example of that approach by repeatedly lobbing insults at officials and politicians in his host country.

Among other things, Melnik called then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liverwurst” and accused former Chancellor Angela Merkel of having a “borderline obsession” with Russia that was “almost perverse.” While serving in Berlin, he also branded retired German Gen. Erich Vad a “pathetic loser” and left-wing politician Klaus Ernst a “Marxist crank.”

Melnik was recalled and appointed ambassador to Brazil only after becoming embroiled in a major controversy in Germany over his defense of Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. In an interview, he denied that Bandera and his movement were responsible for mass atrocities during World War II. Melnik currently serves as Ukraine’s envoy to the UN.

US President Donald Trump has warned schools across the country against promoting gender identity and transition, touting his administration’s efforts to purge what he calls “transgender ideology” and “far-left extremism” from classrooms.

Speaking at a White House back-to-school event on Monday, Trump said schools could face legal and financial consequences for telling children they are “trapped in the wrong body.”

“Every public school in America is now on notice that if they tell a child that they’re trapped in the wrong body, they are committing child abuse,” he said.

The president accused his predecessor Joe Biden’s administration of “weaponizing” education and imposing “extreme ideologies,” including critical race theory and “transgender insanity,” on children as young as four or five. He said schools had neglected basic education for gender identity issues, leaving the US near the bottom among leading nations despite spending “more money on education than any other country in the world by double.”

President Trump just issued a MAJOR WARNING to American schools:

"Every public school in America is now on notice that if they tell a child that they're trapped in the wrong body, they are committing child abuse"

🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/bls7ASN6FS

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 24, 2026

Trump stated his return to office meant reversing course, citing his measures targeting transgender policies and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices in education.

Speaking alongside Trump, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the administration had cut billions in DEI funding at schools and universities, redirecting it toward teachers, classrooms, and academic efforts, including workforce training. She warned that schools that continue promoting gender-related changes could lose funding altogether.

“If they subject children to radical experiments and sideline parents, they will lose their federal funding,” McMahon stated. “Children belong to their parents, not the federal government.”

Trump attacked the promotion of gender transition even before returning for his second term, vowing to “stop” gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated with “child sexual mutilation.”

Trump has also pursued a broader DEI crackdown, which his administration views as discriminatory and incompatible with merit-based policies. He ordered federal agencies to dismantle DEI programs, including in the military and Foreign Service, and reversed Biden-era workforce equity initiatives. The campaign has extended beyond government, with DEI funding cut and federal contractors and other institutions pressured to abandon race- and gender-conscious policies.

As recently as July 26 of this year, Ursula von der Leyen appeared full of confidence in victory during her visit to Kiev. She claimed the tide of the war had turned, that Ukraine had regained the initiative, and that Russia was on the defensive. The cause of this supposed turnaround, after four and a half years of a devastating war, is said to be a new ‘wonder weapon’: drones which, with the help of AI provided by Palantir and others, can carry the war deep into the Russian hinterland and precisely destroy oil refineries and other critical infrastructure there. The Russian economy – particularly the energy sector – is said to be severely weakened, and the war Russia started has now hit the country itself “with full force.”

On the battlefield too, according to these accounts, Ukraine has achieved considerable success with autonomously operating “killer drones.” These drones are said to be capable of automatically detecting and destroying all life at a distance of 30 kilometers on the front line. Technology, it is claimed, has thus more than compensated for the shortage of Ukrainian soldiers. Russian soldiers, by contrast, are now said paying a heavy price in lives without being able to demonstrate any military successes. This must be wearing down the aggressors and forcing Putin to acknowledge that he is going to lose the war.

These accounts were accompanied by media-effective drone attacks on Moscow and St Petersburg. No wonder, then, that the mainstream Western media have been full of victory reports over the past two months. Some even speculated that Russia could only hold out for another six months; a coup in Moscow was deemed possible. The strategically important Crimea was said to have been largely cut off from Russia by Ukrainian attacks. Putin would now be forced to the negotiating table as the loser – and on the terms of the European NATO states, which would amount to a Russian surrender. Their policy of providing massive military, political, and financial support to Ukraine, while refusing any talks until Russia was ‘brought to its knees’, seemed to have paid off.

It is striking that for the past week there have been hardly any reports on the course of the war, and the victory announcements have largely fallen silent. This is because doubts are mounting, both in the US and in Ukraine itself, about the success of the drone war deep within the Russian hinterland.

One need only heed the warnings of Valery Zaluzhny: the drone war is not very successful and far too expensive. As former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and current ambassador to the UK, he should know. According to the pro-Ukrainian war monitors ‘Dron-Bomber’, the Russians are now reportedly achieving a high shoot-down rate of Ukrainian drones. The dismissal of Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov is also likely to be linked to the looming failure of the drone war. Is the realization taking hold that this conflict cannot be won by drone warfare alone?

This means that developments on the battlefield remain decisive. However, there can be no question of a military stalemate claimed by the Western media. Even some Ukrainian Telegram channels admit, that “the pace of the Russian armed forces’ offensive is increasing.” Russian territorial gains are said to have occurred not only in Donbass but also around Kharkov and in Zaporozhye. This is still proceeding slowly, but it is a war of attrition whose primary aim is the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces. Could this objective be achieved by capturing the last remaining fortified defensive positions around the Donbass cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk?

Even more serious for Ukraine is the fact that its drone attacks have led to a hardening of the Russian position. The Russian leadership is now openly speaking of a war – including a war by NATO against Russia – and has significantly intensified the conflict. In the cruel logic of war, the destruction in Ukraine now far exceeds that in Russia. Another crucial factor is that Ukraine has no air defenses to speak of and is barely able to defend itself against massive Russian drone and missile attacks, while the intensity of Ukrainian attacks is reportedly waning.

The European NATO member states can do little to change this – they lack the military capabilities. Plans to station a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Poland or even to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine are completely unrealistic. The United States has recently announced that it will hand over leadership of the NATO center in Wiesbaden, which coordinates military support for Ukraine, entirely to European NATO member states. There is even talk of disbanding this NATO facility, which is crucial for Ukraine. Further, with the Iran war ranging, the US has hardly any weapons left to spare. There can therefore be little question of renewed US military involvement in the war in Ukraine.

Even before the latest escalation of the war, there were clear indications that the Ukrainian army was experiencing considerable difficulty. Upon taking office as defense minister in January, Fedorov spoke of around 200,000 deserters; other MPs cited significantly higher figures. Furthermore, some two million Ukrainian men are said to have evaded conscription orders. Whichever figures are accurate, they point to an alarming state of affairs within the Ukrainian armed forces – a situation that cannot be remedied either by forced recruitment on the streets or, as is now becoming apparent, by drones controlled by artificial intelligence. Similarly, a proposal now being discussed by the EU – to withdraw refugee status from Ukrainian men who have fled, in breach of international law, and to send them back to Ukraine to face the war – is further evidence of the hopelessness of the situation.

In May, Ukrainian Minister for Social Affairs Denis Ulyutin stated that the population in the government-controlled part of the country had shrunk from 52 million (at the time of independence in 1991) to possibly as low as 22 million. Of these, around 11 million are on social security, predominantly pensioners and war invalids. He expects the population to continue to fall after the war ends, as young men – once exempt from military service – would follow their families to the West. He does not expect any significant return of Ukrainians living abroad. Added to this demographic decline are increasing impoverishment, deep social inequalities, pervasive corruption, astronomical public debt and the country’s economic collapse.

Of course, such forecasts must be treated with caution. Yet the apparent failure of the drone war to bring about a strategic turning point should make it clear to European NATO states that, at the end of this escalation which was accompanied by such fanfare, Ukraine may not emerge as the victor, but is instead sliding into an increasingly devastated, depopulated, and bled-dry country. This should give us cause for great concern for the suffering people in Ukraine. European NATO-states must ask themselves whether a continuation of the war – which they have demanded and supported – can still be morally justified at all.

European NATO states are only harming Ukraine with their illusions of victory and wonder weapons, and must finally base their policy on a more realistic assessment of how the war is unfolding. It is therefore time to consider what would happen if the Ukrainian army’s resistance were to collapse one day and Russia were to capture Kharkov and Odessa as well. Any remnant of Ukraine that remained would scarcely be viable. It must be in the top interest not only of Ukraine but also of its Western backers to prevent such a scenario. But how?

Certainly, this cannot be prevented through direct military intervention by NATO. This would make the situation only much worse – also for Ukraine – as such a course of action would inevitably entail the risk of a nuclear war, which nobody can win. Diplomacy therefore remains the only realistic option. After almost five years of war, it is high time that the European NATO states actively sought dialogue with Russia. Germany – given its role as the strongest country in the EU, its geographical location, and its historical responsibility – should take the first step.

To move beyond the entrenched positions of both governments, an initial rapprochement through a civil‑society initiative involving respected and influential figures may be advisable. Such an approach could open a first, cautious pathway toward renewed understanding after years of silence and mutual demonization. Europe needs peace, and lasting peace can only be achieved with Russia, not against it.

There is not much time left for this.

This article was first published by Russia in Global Affairs and edited by the RT team

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is trying to “neutralize” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio by establishing a direct channel with President Donald Trump, CNN Brasil reported on Monday, citing sources.

Rubio previously excluded Brazil from the group of countries he described as friendly and attacked Lula over trade. The Brazilian president accused him of being “anti-Latin America.”

Tensions between the US and Latin America’s largest economy have been soaring for months, as Trump fiercely backed former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro during his trial over a plot to overturn his 2022 election defeat and keep himself in power.

The two countries are also locked in a trade dispute. The US imposed an additional 25% tariff on certain Brazilian goods in July after a trade investigation accused Brazil of a litany of unreasonable practices.

According to CNN, Lula complained for weeks about Rubio, a vocal critic of Brazil’s government, before calling Trump and seeking to weaken the secretary’s influence over bilateral relations. During a call last week, Lula reportedly told Trump that contact should proceed “without intermediaries.”

Following the conversation, Lula said talks with Trump were “very civilized and very respectful,” while lamenting that the “second tier” of the US government was taking “unthinkable” actions. “I sometimes get the impression that Trump is much better at political relations than his advisers.” 

Rubio also accused Lula of failing to negotiate in good faith, and said he “put his own ego” ahead of securing a trade deal, adding that the tariffs were “the price for that.” Lula has called Rubio “anti-Latin America” and “a mortal enemy of Cuba and several Latin American countries.”

The US sanctioned four Indian companies on Monday for allegedly trading in Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products.

The additions came as the Treasury Department launched “an unprecedented, whole-of-government, economic campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its enablers” called Operation Economic Outcast.

The sanctioned companies include Sadashiva Overseas, PP Softtech, and Prakrutees Infra Impex, which are accused of importing shipments of Iranian oil and oil products; and Portease Partners, a customs broker accused of facilitating the shipments.

Two partners of Portease – Indrismiya Asharafmiya Shekh and Harish Ramchandra Rangi – were also added to the list.

Bilateral trade between India and Iran is currently at around $1.6 billion, with $1.25 billion coming from Indian exports of goods exempted on humanitarian grounds, such as agricultural staples and medicine.

The Treasury said the designations will intensify pressure on networks that sustain the regime’s malign activities and fund its attacks across the Middle East.

Iran has largely blocked commercial shipping via the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s energy previously passed, following the US-Israeli attack against Iran earlier this year.

Nearly two dozen former cricket captains from around the world have appealed to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to provide proper medical treatment for the country’s former prime minister and one of cricket’s all-time greats, Imran Khan, as directed by Pakistan’s top court.

Twenty-two cricketers, including Indian legends Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar, made the appeal in a letter on Sunday after Khan was rushed back to jail early Friday morning following a brief checkup in a government-run hospital in Islamabad.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court had ordered that Khan be moved to the private Shifa hospital in the capital and be kept there until September 16, and that a medical board that includes his physician sister Uzma Khan be formed to examine his health issues.

Khan was, however, rushed to the state-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) from a Rawalpindi jail under heavy security just after midnight on Thursday, past the deadline given by the court, and whisked back early Friday morning after a few hours.

The cricketers, who also include India’s Dilip Vengsarkar, Sri Lanka's Arjuna Ranatunga, Clive Lloyd, Greg Chappell, Allan Border, and Alastair Cook, appealed that Khan be allowed visits from family members, as directed by the court, and any treatment recommended by the court be provided without delay. 

No Pakistani cricketer joined the appeal.

In February, 14 former cricketers – also including Kapil, Gavaskar, and Chappel – had written to Sharif, seeking more “humane” treatment for Khan.

Prime Minister Sharif on Saturday formed an inquiry committee, headed by a bureaucrat, to probe why Khan was not administered a heart diagnostic test previously recommended by doctors at the government-run hospital.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has also repeated its demand to move him to the Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad without any delay.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Iran attempted to assassinate one of his sons, making the explosive allegation without saying which of his children was targeted, when the supposed plot took place, or how close it came to being carried out.

The bombshell came almost in passing during a telephone interview with Israel’s Channel 14 on Monday about security arrangements for Netanyahu’s political rival, Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief who is challenging him ahead of the October 27 general election.

“This is an unbelievable case. Iran targeted one of my sons. Iran tried to murder him, tried to murder one of my sons,” Netanyahu said, arguing that round-the-clock protection for Eisenkot was “not a luxury” and warning that without it, the Iranians “will succeed.”

Netanyahu has two sons, Yair and Avner. He did not identify which one he was referring to, nor did he say where or how Iran planned to attack him.

The claim comes as Netanyahu faces a difficult reelection campaign. Successive surveys have put his governing bloc short of the 61 seats required for a parliamentary majority, while polls have shown Eisenkot competing closely with or overtaking Netanyahu and his Likud party. Reuters reported in July that surveys were pointing to a defeat for Netanyahu’s coalition, although the fragmented opposition also lacks a straightforward path to forming a government.

US President Donald Trump also claimed that Tehran has tried to kill him – even before the initial salvo of US-Israeli strikes on February 28 killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

During the NATO summit in Türkiye in July, Trump was secretly removed from Air Force One and transferred inside a catering truck to another military aircraft after Israel relayed intelligence about another alleged Iranian assassination threat. The extraordinary operation was concealed even from some members of his traveling party.

US intelligence reportedly assessed the Israeli-supplied information with “low confidence,” while Tehran has denied broader accusations that it sought to assassinate Trump or other American officials.

Dutch public broadcaster Avrotros has pulled out of next year’s Eurovision song contest, arguing that the event can “no longer be considered neutral” given the severe humanitarian suffering in Gaza.

In a statement on Monday, Avrotros criticized Eurovision organizers for failing to establish clear rules for countries involved in military conflicts, saying its continued participation was no longer consistent with the broadcaster’s values of “trustworthiness, independence and humanity.”

This year’s contest became embroiled in a series of scandals linked to Israel’s participation amid its continued military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. Five countries – Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland, and Slovenia – boycotted the event in May in protest against West Jerusalem’s actions.

Nevertheless, Israel’s Noam Bettan came in second, combining the jury’s ranking and an audience score, prompting rumors about vote-rigging.

Avrotros did not mention Israel by name, but said that “geopolitical tensions in the Middle East are having a significant impact on the Contest” and have caused deep divisions around Eurovision.

Earlier this month, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the event, amended its rules and said that a winner would be automatically barred from hosting the next contest if it or its “immediate region” is affected by an armed conflict or “a sensitive geopolitical situation.”

The Dutch broadcaster said the changes “do not provide sufficient confidence that the independent and neutral character of the Eurovision Song Contest has been restored.”

Avrotros Director-General Taco Zimmerman said Eurovision, originally founded to bring countries together, has become a “platform for division.”

The EBU has applied a selective approach towards nations involved in military conflicts. It banned Russia from participating following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 but did not take any measures against Kiev or West Jerusalem.

Russia has meanwhile revived Intervision, a Soviet-era alternative to Eurovision touted by the Kremlin as a music contest reflecting more “traditional values.” The first modern edition was held in Moscow in September 2025, attracting singers from 23 countries, including China, India, and Brazil.

Organizers said Intervision’s mission was to foster “dialogue between civilizations based on the mutual enrichment of national histories and traditions.” This year’s Intervision is expected to be hosted by Saudi Arabia.

Ukraine has been transformed into a “Zelensky concentration camp” with Western assistance, Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said, accusing Kiev of suppressing dissent at home and increasingly resorting to attacks on civilians in Russia.

Nebenzia made the remarks at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday marking the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s declaration of independence. The session was requested by the council’s five European members – Denmark, France, Greece, Latvia, and the UK – which reiterated their full support for Kiev.

The Russian diplomat questioned whether Ukraine has anything to celebrate, arguing that successive governments have run the country “into the ground” and that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky accelerated the process.

“With the most active involvement of the countries of the collective West, which claim to be ‘civilized’ and ‘democratic,’ Ukraine has morphed into a ‘Zelensky concentration camp,’ where any dissent or opposition is completely prohibited and those who find the courage to voice an alternative point of view are thrown behind bars without trial or due process, or physically eliminated,” he said.

Amid a growing crackdown on dissent and a deteriorating battlefield situation, Kiev has now slipped into “outright terror against Russia’s civilian population,” Nebenzia said.

“Terror has become the last resort for Kiev in its attempt to reverse the situation that is not currently in its favor,” he added. “At the same time, Zelensky continues to beg his Western patrons for new shipments of weapons and ammunition, which are then used to hit Russian cities, residential areas, and civilian infrastructure.”

Nebenzia said Russia retains the battlefield initiative and rejected calls for a temporary ceasefire that would give Kiev time to regroup and its Western sponsors time to rearm it. He warned that there would be no meaningful diplomatic process as long as Russia is confronted with ultimatums and threats while the reality on the ground is ignored.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has threatened to cut electricity and critical minerals to the US if President Donald Trump continues to escalate his trade war with Canada, drawing an angry response from Trump.

The exchange came hours after Trump announced that tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts, and steel would rise to 50% on January 1, 2027. The move followed the collapse of trade talks last week and a separate 50% tariff that took effect Saturday on around $20 billion worth of Canadian imports.

“Everything’s on the table. I’ll do whatever it takes,” Ford told AP on Monday, saying Ontario could raise electricity prices or halt exports altogether.

“We power 1.5 million homes and businesses,” he added, warning that if Trump keeps trying to dismantle Canadian manufacturing, “he better have a pack of batteries.”

Trump fired back on Truth Social, dismissing Ford’s comments as “bluster” and personally attacking the premier before warning Canadian leaders to “fall in line.”

“Someone should get these clowns to ‘fall in line’ or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!” Trump wrote, again referring to Prime Minister Mark Carney as “Governor Carney.” He said the US is “far bigger, richer, and stronger” and claimed that Canada “couldn’t survive” without its southern neighbor.

“I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass,” Ford shot back at a press conference on Monday.

Canada's Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Trump:

I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so Trump has a lot of room to kiss my ass. pic.twitter.com/nP8MLVxfbI

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 24, 2026

Ford said Ottawa should consider progressively stronger retaliation, including restrictions on oil, potash, and strategic minerals. Quebec Premier Christine Frechette, whose province is a major hydroelectricity supplier, said she is not currently pursuing Ford’s approach but would not exclude it as Canada enters a “new phase” of the dispute.

However, the exposure is far more concentrated in border states such as New York, Michigan, and Minnesota, where a stable supply of Canadian power can be particularly important during periods of peak demand.

Meanwhile, the AI boom is placing additional pressure on regional power grids as tech companies race to build massive, power-hungry hyperscale data centers. In July 2026, New York imposed a one-year moratorium on state discretionary environmental permits for new hyperscale facilities while it develops new regulations intended in part to protect grid stability and ratepayers.

Ontario has used the electricity threat before. In March 2025, Ford imposed a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the three states before suspending it after Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.

Russia and China have expanded trade links through the Arctic, with the first Chinese container ship arriving at the northern Russian port of Murmansk via the Northern Sea Route (NSR), Rosatom announced on Monday. Beijing has described the growing cooperation as part of its Ice Silk Road initiative.

The NSR runs through Russia’s Arctic waters and exclusive economic zone, relying on Russian ports and icebreakers. State atomic energy corporation Rosatom oversees the route’s development, navigation, infrastructure, and maritime safety.

NewNew Shipping Line’s Xin Xin Hai 1 arrived in Murmansk on Wednesday carrying 500 containers of automotive components, Rosatom said.

“This was the first container ship from China to arrive at the Murmansk Commercial Sea Port,” the corporation said.

NewNew Shipping Line has operated along the NSR since 2023, although its vessels have generally carried cargo to ports in Russia’s Far East or the Baltic.

China is ready to continue “playing the role of a bridge” to support cooperation between Chinese companies and Murmansk Region and further develop the Ice Silk Road, Chinese Consul General in St. Petersburg Luo Zhanhui said on Thursday.

Ke has also expressed interest in investing in the ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk in Russia’s far north and acquiring a stake in the port of Ust-Luga.

China accounted for around 40% of Murmansk Region’s foreign trade in 2025, when the region traded with 48 countries, according to Governor Andrey Chibis.

The Northern Sea Route provides a shorter maritime link between East Asia and northern Europe and can cut around two weeks from a voyage between China and Europe compared with the route through the Suez Canal, according to Rosatom.

Interest in the Arctic corridor has also grown as the US war with Iran and instability in the Middle East have disrupted shipping through the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. South Korea launched its first trial container voyage to Europe via the NSR on Saturday, while India plans to send its first cargo ship along the route in 2027.

Appointing Darline Graham to simply finish her brother Lindsey’s Senate term was one thing, but having her run for the next term, with Donald Trump’s support, is simply bonkers. Or does Trump know something we don’t?

Darline’s political inexperience was on full display during last week’s debate against her run-off opponent, Rep. Ralph Norman, when she was unable to answer an elementary question on national security involving China and Taiwan.

Graham was simply asked if Taiwan and the South China Sea are national security issues for the US. Incredibly, she even failed to at least respond with a “yes” or “no.”

Clearly unprepared for the big night, Graham began by requesting for the question to be repeated. It didn’t help her. Following the second reading she admitted defeat, saying, “I’m just going to be honest here – I’m not, on national security, that – I’m not that informed on national security. So...”

After her voice quivered for a moment amid rumbling from the debate audience, Graham dug her hole deeper with a non sequitur: “But I do support the military. My brother was in the Air Force for 33 years, so I will do everything I can to support the military. My dad was in the army.”

Following Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sudden death on July 11, Gov. Henry McMaster appointed his sister Darline to finish up the remaining months of his tenure. What began as a sentimental gesture inexplicably morphed into a White House endorsement, with Trump pushing the inexperienced woman to enter the primary race with a chance at serving a six-year term that will begin in January. Feelings for her brother aside, Darline Graham has never held an elected office. Until this summer, she was commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, and earlier held a communications role in the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department.

Trump’s endorsement notwithstanding, Graham only received 33% of the vote in the special August 11 ballot, forcing her into an August 26 runoff against Ralph Norman, who came in second place with 25% of the vote. “Her lackluster showing reflected South Carolina Republicans’ deep unease with Trump trying to turn one of their Senate seats into an inheritance for someone with a joke of a political resume,” ZeroHedge quipped.

Darline’s egregious debate failure drew comparisons to Miss South Carolina’s famous response to a question in the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant.

The question she was asked to answer went as follows: “Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?”

It is an apt comparison and it would be funny if we weren’t dealing with a position that has the power to actually influence America’s foreign policy.

Having driven her own performance off a cliff, the next day Graham attempted to cover her losses by admitting to Trump attack dog Sean Hannity that she “tripped up on one question.” Brushing aside the importance of her inability to answer the question, Graham told Hannity, “I’m not a politician, certainly not a career politician, I don’t speak politician.”

In a separate interview with reporters, Graham said: “I tripped up on one question last night, regarding Taiwan. I don’t speak politician. I was just honest. Of course, Taiwan is our friend. But I think people in South Carolina are more worried about boys in girls’ sports.” Too bad Darline didn’t say that on the debate stage.

Thus, perhaps it can be argued that Darline Graham’s embarrassing lack of knowledge over foreign affairs might be just what the MAGA camp wants – a lot less Lindsey and much more Darline. They may be willing to forgive Darline’s inability to find Taiwan on a map so long as she focuses congressional attention on critical domestic issues, like LGBTQ curricula in schools, soaring costs, and crumbling infrastructure.  

On Tuesday, South Carolina Republicans will cast a vote that either continues in the blood-soaked shoes of Lindsey Graham or opts for a change in the person of his sister that keeps the attention on the American homeland.

The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has barred Russian teams from returning to the Chess Olympiad next month, prompting prominent names in Russian chess to accuse its leadership of politicizing the sport and making “Russophobic” decisions.

FIDE suspended the Russian and Belarusian national teams from its competitions in 2022, although players from both countries were allowed to compete individually under neutral status. The federation lifted all restrictions on Belarusian athletes last month.

On Sunday, the FIDE Council ruled that Russian teams would remain excluded from the 46th Chess Olympiad, which is scheduled to take place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from September 16 to 27.

Russian Chess Federation chief Aleksandr Tkachev said the decision had undermined FIDE’s own motto, “We are one family,” and accused members of the Council of putting their personal interests ahead of chess. Since 1991, Russian players  have won six gold medals in the Open Chess Olympiad (and multiple silver and bronze medals), and three gold medals in the Women’s Chess Olympiad. 

“There are people who prioritize the game over politics and don’t worry about their own careers. But there are also people who prioritize personal interests, and they currently predominate on the Council. This time, they prevailed,” Tkachev told TASS on Monday.

He claimed the decision had been initiated by acting FIDE President Viswanathan Anand, who took over last month after his Russian predecessor, Arkady Dvorkovich, was forced to step aside after he was placed under EU sanctions.

“There is only one explanation for this decision – the FIDE leadership has gotten out of control. The decisions being made are Russophobic,” Karpov told TASS. “Let’s hope the situation changes after the elections in September.”

FIDE is due to hold its presidential election in Uzbekistan on September 26-27, alongside the closing stages of the Olympiad.

The ruling means Russia will miss its third consecutive over-the-board Olympiad after being absent from Chennai in 2022 and Budapest in 2024.

Russian players nevertheless remain prominent internationally under the FIDE flag. They won four medals – one gold, two silvers and one bronze – at the Asian rapid and blitz championships in Hong Kong last month.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned restrictions imposed on Russian athletes by international sporting bodies as politically motivated. President Vladimir Putin has argued that comparable measures have not been applied to athletes from other countries involved in armed conflicts.

Russia just pulled its ambassador to the UK, as British Prime Minister Andy Burnham doubles down on open involvement in the Ukraine conflict. The risk of open war has never been higher, but Burnham is writing checks that he can’t cash.

Relations between Russia and the UK are at an “unprecedentedly low level,” Moscow’s embassy in London said in a statement on Sunday, after it emerged that ambassador Andrey Kelin had left his post in late July and would not be immediately replaced. In a follow-up statement to the Sunday Times, an embassy spokesperson said that Kelin had made “considerable efforts to preserve contacts and channels of communication” between the UK and Russia, but the UK had clearly chosen a “path of confrontation.”

☝️ Russia-UK relations across all areas have deteriorated to an unprecedentedly low level entirely on London's initiative.https://t.co/ddib4uE1B4 pic.twitter.com/BrdJAyk4bO

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) August 23, 2026

“He left Britain in the hope that a more constructive and respectful dialogue could eventually be restored, should the UK reconsider its policies towards our country,” the spokesman added.

How did Russia-UK relations get this bad?

Well, firstly, Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and of course David Cameron and their anglophonic media bullhorns. 

On August 17, the Russian Embassy in London warned Britain that “the deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support for Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov added that Moscow has “every right to regard the proudly proclaimed direct involvement of British missile forces in strikes against Russia as participation in the war, with all the consequences that entails.”

Neither statement seems to have deterred Burnham. Later that day, the British PM proclaimed that the UK would continue “to support Ukraine 100%.” Six days later, his office announced that it would provide Ukraine with classified information enabling it to produce Storm Shadow cruise missiles on Ukrainian soil. Burnham followed this up with a visit to Kiev on Monday, where he compared the conflict to Britain’s struggle against Nazi Germany in World War II, and promised to supply Ukraine with anti-air missiles to repel Russian strikes on its energy infrastructure.

Is pulling the ambassador a sign of war?

The withdrawal of Kelin is an unprecedented move. Diplomatic relations between Moscow and London have been strained on multiple occasions during the post-Soviet period, Russia’s response has typically been restrained. When FSB agents caught British spies hiding a listening device outside the Russian Embassy in 2006, the Kremlin named and condemned the agents responsible. When the UK expelled four Russian diplomats after Moscow refused to extradite a suspect in the alleged poisoning of double agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2007, Russia responded in kind. 

At no point during these incidents did Russia withdraw – or threaten to withdraw – its ambassador. However, with relations already in the gutter since 2022, Moscow’s lack of urgency in replacing Kelin most likely does not herald military action against the UK. Instead, it is an acknowledgement of just how badly relations have deteriorated.

What will Russia do to neutralize the UK’s Ukraine missile threat?

Russia’s kinetic response to Burnham’s missile data sharing plan is straightforward. In a statement to reporters on August 24, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “our armed forces are carrying out the relevant work and obtaining the necessary data in order to identify the production sites for such missiles and other military equipment, and are taking measures to destroy these locations.”

Destroying missile production sites in Ukraine is a far easier task for Russia now than at any point since 2022. Ukraine has no ammunition for its Patriot air defense batteries left, nor does Kiev have any money to buy more. In a post on X on Sunday, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky admitted that his military used all of its 2026 budget in the first six months of the year buying and building drones to attack civilian infrastructure in Russia. 

As a result, Russia has been dismantling weapons plants, ports and ships used to import arms, and energy targets across Ukraine with impunity since July.

How far can Britain escalate against Russia?

Burnham has little more to offer. The US is unwilling to share its dwindling stocks of Patriot missiles with Ukraine, even if the UK offers to buy. Three out of five weapons packages donated by the UK to Ukraine this year included other models of defense missiles – a total of more than 2,500 missiles – but these have apparently been used up by Kiev’s forces.

Given the potential consequences, some figures within the British defense establishment have called for restraint. Former Chief of the Defense Staff Tony Radakin – who once urged Britain to prepare to fight Russia in space – and his successor, Richard Knighton, have both reportedly sought contact with Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in order to limit the threat of naval escalation. Another former British defense chief, Field Marshal Lord David Richards, has called for peace talks with Russia since 2022, arguing last year that Ukraine “cannot win” the conflict with anything short of full-scale NATO intervention.

Even former defense attache John Foreman – who has encouraged Ukraine to strike Russia with British-made missiles – told The Times on August 15 that Britain should reopen “strategic dialog” with Russia, calling London’s suspension of military-to-military communications in 2024 “daft.”

'Good to speak to @edvaizey today about the need to hold our noses and re-establish mil to mil ties.

We can continue to support Ukraine. But at the same time, we can talk to the Russians'. Cutting military communication with Russia was a 'daft decision'.

With Russian forces…

— John Foreman CBE (@John_ForemanCBE) August 15, 2026

These calls have also come from the UK’s typically hawkish circuit of ‘Russia experts’. Among this group is Mark Galeotti, an academic with rumored links to British intelligence. In an interview with former British diplomat Ian Proud in mid-August, Galeotti conceded that “behind closed doors,” many British diplomatic and security officials now believe that “we’ve reached the stage where we need to be pushing both sides to some kind of resolution.”

“After years of spouting these empty mantras of ‘as much as it takes, for as long as it takes’, etc etc, who’s going to turn around and say ‘actually, come to think of it, this is not in our interests’,” he told Proud. 

Will Burnham step back?

After his speech in Kiev on Monday, Burnham chaired a meeting of the ‘coalition of the willing’ – a 34-nation group put together to pool military aid for Ukraine. In his opening remarks, Burnham called on the UK’s allies to “dig into our own stocks and help others dig into their stocks” to keep the Ukrainian military fighting.

However, should the UK continue supplying long-range missiles and drones to Ukraine, and should these munitions be used to kill Russian civilians, Russia is running out of diplomatic means of deterring London.

Britain has scoffed at every polite warning from Moscow to date, but with Kelin’s office vacant, there are fewer civilized options available to Russia. The “consequences” threatened by Lavrov could be far more catastrophic than a formal demarche.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced new sanctions against Iran, and threatened to boot any country dealing financially with Tehran out of the US dollar system, in a bid to make Iran an “economic outcast.”

The new sanctions target nearly 60 entities, individuals, and vessels in multiple jurisdictions that allegedly trade in “illicit nuclear and missile technology” with Iran, aid Iran’s “cyber operations,” and move Iranian oil, the US Treasury Department said in a statement on Monday. More than a third of the sanctioned entities and individuals – 21 – are based in China.

The Treasury also said it had identified digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping as areas for potential secondary sanctions.

Speaking at a press conference later on Monday, Bessent went further, announcing the beginning of “Operation Economic Outcast,” which he described as “an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections around the globe.”

In the Second World War, D-Day marked the historic beginning of a campaign with our allies to target and drive the enemy from its positions, including those in third countries. Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections… pic.twitter.com/1fLyobUucu

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) August 24, 2026

Bessent explained that the US would penalize any country refusing to sever its economic ties with Tehran. “Any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the US dollar system,” he said, adding “the clock just started ticking.” 

Iran exports goods to 147 countries, and imports from 114, according to the most recent data from the World Bank. Asked how the US intends to force three quarters of the world’s nations to cease trade with Iran, Bessent said that US President Donald Trump phoned multiple world leaders over the weekend “with specific requests to cease their interactions” with Iran, and that every country had been given “a defined timeline” to comply with his demands. 

“We find that the best way to engage with countries is through quiet diplomacy. And we are level-setting with every country to tell them our expectations. We know who they are. They know who they are,” he replied, adding “no-one is above the reach of US sanctions.”

Bessent’s threats were shrugged off in Tehran. “Americans know that no one buys their bombast,” senior Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X after the treasury secretary's press conference.

“The United States is not in an economic position to further restrict its relations with other countries,”he explained. “Iran’s trading partners, both in the media and through messages sent to us, have made it clear that they don’t take these statements into account anywhere.”

Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned on Sunday that “not a single drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz” if the Gulf states join the US’ economic pressure campaign. If US President Donald Trump “wants to do something, we will retaliate in a seismic manner,” Rezaei added.

Last week, Trump threatened to inflict what he called “Economic D-Day” on Iran, after a 60-day window for negotiating peace with Tehran expired with no breakthrough. Trump ruled out a return to negotiations, but Pakistani Chief of Defense Forces Asim Munir arrived in Tehran on Monday in an attempt to revive the talks. 

The massive influx of migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta has shown that Germany would be better off outside the Schengen zone, Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-chair Alice Weidel has said.

The EU’s “borderless” travel system poses a threat to Germany as long as the bloc’s external borders remain largely unprotected, the leader of Germany’s most popular party told ZDF broadcaster on Sunday.

Some 72,000 people illegally entered Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the North African coast, within hours in late July. The influx led to severe overcrowding and inadequate sanitation, with local authorities reporting a subsequent outbreak of disease.

At least 15 rape cases were also reported in the migrant-swamped enclave. Although most of the arrivals were quickly sent back, city authorities estimated that as many as 10,000 remained in Ceuta as of last week.

“When I see something like what’s happening in Ceuta, then [I say] we’re leaving Schengen,” Weidel said. “We have to start [acting] preventively, we can’t just let everyone in unchecked.”

Germany must “close” its borders because the EU is failing to uphold its commitments on external border security, she argued.

“We will leave Schengen so that people like those from Ceuta can no longer come to us,” she added.

The AfD holds just over 23% of seats in the Bundestag, making it the largest opposition faction. However, it remains largely unable to influence legislation because of the so-called “firewall” policy, under which Germany’s other major parties refuse to cooperate with it.

Weidel has argued that this could change after the next parliamentary elections, scheduled for 2029, which she believes the AfD could win.

The Ceuta crisis has already sent shockwaves through the EU. Several European leaders have called for Spain to be excluded from the Schengen zone, while Italy introduced temporary border checks on travelers arriving from Spain on August 1. Madrid responded with reciprocal measures.

Germany has long been the EU’s leading destination for asylum seekers. It received more than 163,000 applications in 2025, accounting for roughly one in five claims across the bloc’s 27 member states, according to the EU Agency for Asylum.

The country also has the EU’s largest foreign-born population in absolute terms, with nearly 17 million people born abroad, or around 20% of the population.

Berlin has already expanded checks along its borders with other EU countries and increased the number of migrants turned away in an effort to curb illegal migration.

US President Donald Trump has announced a 50% tariff on Canadian cars, trucks and auto parts starting next year, escalating a bitter trade war with Ottawa after negotiations collapsed last week.

In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump accused Canada of “ripping off the United States of America for years” and imposing excessive tariffs on American farmers. He claimed that bilateral trade has left the US with a “$60 billion deficit.”

“Not sustainable, and NOT ANYMORE! On January First, 2027, Tariffs on all Cars, Trucks, both large and small, Automotive Parts, and Steel, will be increased to 50%,” Trump announced. The move will double the current 25% tariff on Canadian auto imports.

“Build in the U.S. and there are ZERO TARIFFS,” Trump added, saying Canada would no longer be treated “like a State” and calling it “among the worst nations in the world to deal with.”

“WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” he wrote.

The announcement comes just two days after a separate package of 50% US tariffs took effect on around $20 billion worth of Canadian imports, including wine, cement, plywood, clothing and hockey equipment.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the US terms “unfair” and “uneconomic” and pledged to match Washington’s tariffs “dollar for dollar” to protect Canadian workers and businesses.

Ottawa’s retaliatory measures, which are set to take effect on September 8, will target US goods including steel, dairy products, appliances, and electronics.

Trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa, which date back to Trump’s first term, reignited after he returned to office last year and launched a sweeping tariff campaign against major US trade partners. These include Canada, Mexico, China, the EU, and Japan, who Trump has accused of unfairly benefiting from access to the US market.

The head of the Vatican’s diplomatic service, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, is visiting Moscow from August 24-28. 

This visit is part of the Holy See’s diplomatic efforts on humanitarian issues and the discussion of ways to resolve the Ukraine conflict. This is reflected in the fact that the Vatican, together with the authorities of several states, including Bulgaria, Hungary, and Italy recently contributed to keeping Patriarch Kirill off the latest EU sanctions list.

The visit is clearly necessary to revitalize communication between the Vatican and Moscow, as the formal diplomatic channels – though fully operational – have recently lost the historical depth and back-channel confidentiality previously maintained through the Russian Orthodox Church’s external relations. Below, we examine the true operational motives behind the Holy See’s urgent mission within the broader context of its geopolitical and financial survival in Central and Eastern Europe.   

American Pope

Pope Leo XIV has been in power for a year, allowing us to draw certain conclusions about his leadership style. We see a tough, sovereign politician who skillfully uses conservative symbols to promote the Church’s internal stability, but on the world stage, he advocates a center-left, global agenda that criticizes both rigid state borders and the power of algorithms. 

For example, the Vatican has returned to the use of traditional ornate vestments, which had been shelved under Francis XII. The public appearance was also received extremely favorably by conservative critics of the use of 'gender ideology' in schools and the promotion of non-traditional lifestyles. At the same time, the Pope is promoting ideas for decentralizing Vatican authority and proposing synodal reform, the essence of which is aimed at collegial governance of the Church, where decisions are made collectively by a large number of bishops and laypeople. 

Importantly, his statements provoked a counterattack from Silicon Valley leaders; Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel were among those who reacted negatively.

Overall, this paints him as a representative of the systemic wing of the Catholic Church – a supranational sovereign structure that thinks in terms of centuries, not electoral cycles. His accession to the throne signaled the Roman Curia’s intention to establish a strict leader from the New World, free from parochial European caste disputes.

The Institute for the Works of Religion, aka the Vatican Bank: Personnel Changes and Conservatism

It’s logical that Pope Leo XIV began his sovereign expansion on the throne not with abstract peace declarations, but with an immediate, surgical reformatting of the Holy See’s entire financial vertical. His very first significant document was the Apostolic Letter ‘Coniuncta Cura’ (Joint Care), which dealt a crushing blow to the former monopoly over the Institute for the Affairs of Religion (IOR). The Pontiff officially rescinded Francis’s harsh decree, which had previously forcibly locked 100% of the liquidity of all Vatican departments and orders within the Vatican Bank. 

Why did Leo XIV make this sensitive issue his very first priority? The answer is cynical: the previous centralization of accounts in the IOR had completely paralyzed the Vatican’s operational para-diplomacy, and most importantly, blocked the influx of capital from the New World. Conservative US Catholic foundations and Wall Street heavyweights – with Cardinal Timothy Dolan serving as the bridge – were ready to resume multi-billion-dollar donations but flatly refused to place them under the total control of the old IOR bureaucracy.

With the issuance of the ‘Coniuncta cura’ decree, Leo XIV restored the right of dicasteries and external bodies to legally move and place assets in major international commercial banks and foreign investment platforms. This opened legal channels for the influx of billions from conservative right-wing American circles, while simultaneously facilitating the transit of shadow funds belonging to the right-wing elites of the Visegrád Group (Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia) – elites seeking to safeguard their reserves from the fiscal coercion of Brussels and the ECB.

The mechanism of this combination is simple: as long as the Vatican is outside the official peace track, US financial authorities retain leverage over IOR transactions. But as soon as the Vatican is officially recognized by Moscow and Washington as an international arbiter (and the Pontiff has repeatedly stated that the Vatican is ready to play such a role) its bank automatically receives the status of peace process infrastructure. Imposing sanctions or auditing the Holy See’s accounts will become politically impossible, as this would be interpreted as a deliberate disruption of negotiations with Russia. Mediation in Ukraine is a legal shield shielding the Vatican’s assets from American and European regulators.

Moreover, the influx of hundreds of millions of dollars from conservative New World billionaires demands reciprocal political steps from the Pope. Ending the conflict in Ukraine and stabilizing European security are among the vital interests of major Western capital, which is suffering from economic instability and inflation. By becoming a participant in the peace settlement, Leo XIV is proving to his American donors that the Vatican is not just a 'church', but a highly effective instrument of global influence, in which it is profitable to invest money.

At the same time, Leo XIV’s policy is more subtle than it seems. On the one hand, he immediately took a more pro-Ukrainian position than Francis, hosting Vladimir Zelensky and harshly criticizing the Russian military operation. On the other hand, he pragmatically leaves the door open to Moscow, engaging in dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin on humanitarian issues (for example, the return of civilians and children). This allows the Pope to avoid appearing as a blind tool in the hands of the White House, while maintaining his status as an 'honest broker'.

Why does the Vatican need Ukraine?

Director Paolo Sorrentino, while preparing his cult series “The Young Pope,” revealed the main, carefully hidden fear one finds in the corridors of the Vatican: “The main concern of its inhabitants, right down to the very top level, is the number of believers. How many believers do we have? How many are we losing? How many can we bring back?” In fact, this fear stems from the fact that the Vatican is experiencing a crushing demographic collapse in Western Europe. Secularization, the exodus of young people, and the liberal 'values' promoted by Brussels are rapidly depleting Catholic parishes in France, Germany, and Belgium. 

Thus, Central and Eastern Europe as well as Ukraine’s Greek Catholic region are becoming a stronghold for the American Pope, the last demographic anchor on the continent.  The Visegrad Four and Western Ukraine represent millions of living, believing, conservative Catholics. Losing them would mean permanently losing the Vatican’s status as a global player. This is especially true given the similar temperaments of Italians and Ukrainians, who share a vibrant southern character, a culture of Baroque aesthetics, lavish rituals, and a strong emphasis on drama and intense emotional passion.

The historical syntax of the Vatican’s interest in Central and Eastern Europe is rooted in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the outcome of which – the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, the largest Catholic empire in human history, and the disintegration of the macro-region into small nation-states – is traditionally considered by the Vatican to be a catastrophic geopolitical mistake. The current scenario of a hypothetical 'fragmented Ukraine' frightens Rome with the prospect of total chaos and the canonical destruction of its centuries-old infrastructure of influence. 

Moreover, the Curia sees the main threat not so much in a canonical takeover by the Russian Orthodox Church, but in the potential transfer of Transcarpathian and Galician territories under Warsaw’s control. If such a scenario materializes, the aggressive Polish Roman Catholic Church will inevitably eliminate the autonomy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, forcibly converting millions of believers to the Latin Rite and forever cutting off the Vatican’s unique gateway to the 'Eastern Rite' for soft expansion into the Orthodox world.

The Vatican, through the figure of Archduke Edward of Habsburg (Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See) seeks to maintain this disintegrating power base by building a shadow analogue of a conservative Danubian Confederation capable of becoming a new center for the assembly of the region’s elites. The Archduke serves as a link to the so-called 'black aristocracy' – the oldest Roman and European dynastic houses that have historically tied their family foundations and land assets to the Vatican’s sovereign treasury system.

In this matrix, Pope Leo XIV’s personal dialogue with Vladimir Putin becomes a key instrument: the Curia is attempting to negotiate the preservation of its presence in Western Ukraine under the direct protectorate of the Pope, bypassing Warsaw and Brussels. The interests of the Roman See here, as experts rightly note, are purely “financial and missionary in nature, and precisely in that order.” 

The Vatican is proposing to Moscow to transform the IOR Bank into an external, secure gateway for Russia’s cross-border transactions with conservative Europe in exchange for security guarantees for its flock. Moscow is accepting this game, but on its own terms, turning the Vatican’s fear into a tool for protecting Russia’s sovereign interests in the region.

The main hidden marker of the depth of informal ties between the Holy See and Moscow remains an unprecedented fact: Patriarch Kirill has never been included in the official sanctions list of the European Union. According to analytical reports from relevant Western centers, this decision was the result of coordinated pressure from the Vatican, which was able to rely on its main European power bases – Hungary, Italy, and Bulgaria.

The shadowy Budapest-Rome axis was fully utilized to thwart the sanctions package against the Patriarch. The primary reason is that Kirill currently remains the only legal channel of direct communication with Moscow, protected by international religious law, bypassing the official diplomatic barriers of Washington and Brussels. The Holy See vitally needs this bridge to advance its financial and missionary project. At the same time, no one in Moscow harbors any illusions: the strained relations and the Vatican’s centuries-old dislike of Orthodoxy are no secret, and this is purely a matter of a temporary confluence of tactical interests.

However, by the time the Vatican representatives visit Russia later in August, the previous architecture of contacts between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic leadership will have been completely abandoned. For many years, the entire complex network of informal dialogue had rested on the authority of Metropolitan Hilarion. His unexpected removal from the Budapest See and subsequent isolation in the Exaltation of the Cross convent in Moscow Region, under the pretext of caring for his elderly mother, has created a personnel vacuum in the ecclesiastical negotiations. Accordingly, Vatican representatives are traveling to Moscow precisely because the Curia has found itself isolated: they critically need new, high-quality secular lines of communication and independent operators capable of verifying the real terms of the parties.

The subtle threat of the Vatican’s scheme is that the resources offered by the papacy are de facto tied to conservative circles within the American 'deep state'. At the same time, the Holy See is attempting to legitimize a permanent ideological foothold and cordon sanitaire in the 'fragments of Ukraine' under the shadowy control of representatives of the European 'black aristocracy'. Given that the Russian Orthodox Church lacks sufficient room to maneuver under severe sanctions pressure, Rome is convinced that Moscow will lose this order’s bargaining game through subtle psychological maneuvering due to the lack of personnel figures of comparable intellectual caliber.

There is one feeling I often recall from having lived and worked in Ukraine – to be precise, in its most nationalist, full-of-itself city, Lviv – for a total of five years in the 2000s: Thank God, at least there’s no violence!

That is what I, some other foreigners, and quite a few Ukrainians, too, were thinking and even saying then. The country was politically and even culturally polarized, extremely corrupt, and a sham ‘democracy’ even more fake than most of the rest.

It was dominated and bled dry by a greedy, hypocritical, and – despite all the cheap talk, the pious singing-of-anthems-hand-on-heart, and the cheesy peasant braids and stitched shirts – deeply unpatriotic establishment of typically post-Soviet turncoats, thieves, liars, and sell-outs. There was no rule of law, the courts were a bad joke, and the police was a racket.

And yet, while the usual business-crime complex took its toll and there was the occasional state murder of a journalist, there was no large-scale violence. There was bitter grumbling galore, including about Crimea, all the time. But there was no civil war – as the almighty US intelligence services had infamously as good as predicted in the even darker 1990s – and no one was reaching for a gun either to leave an unbearable country or keep others in it by force.   

While the Americans were busy thinking about the possibility – and perhaps opportunities – of Ukrainians killing each other in large numbers, their British cousins were considering another kind of doom. For them, more than three decades ago, the most interesting question was whether Ukraine and Russia would go to war, specifically over Crimea. There, British spooks back then warned with unusual honesty, “most of the population is Russian,” and things might become less than cordial if Kiev didn’t watch its steps.

They literally hunt and, in effect, sell their subjects as cannon fodder, so that they can profit and the West can have its slaughterhouse war against Russia, in an insane, evil, and futile attempt to eliminate Moscow as a power to be reckoned with. This is the reality of “busification,” and nothing remotely like it happened before Zelensky and his accomplices took over. Those who do not readily submit to being treated as combat cattle regularly die mysteriously from ‘falls’ or maybe just blowing their nose.

The Ukrainian mass media have never been remotely clean, objective, or reliable. But the zombified and self-zombifying propaganda machine created under Zelensky is unprecedentedly awful. Those who openly resist the national brainwashing are incarcerated by kangaroo courts, tortured, and killed.

Or consider basic demography: Ukraine’s real population has almost halved since the end of the Soviet Union, and the future looks even worse. And while part of this catastrophe is due to the current war, much of it has been produced by the ceaseless class-war-from-above of injustice, exploitation, and hopelessness that Ukraine’s ‘elites’ have waged on their own subjects for a third of a century while blabbing sanctimoniously about nation this and nation that.

Yet it was not. Indeed, Ukraine’s short post-Soviet history is, among other sad things, a record of at least sleepwalking and, more frequently, proactively provoking this twin catastrophe. But Ukrainians – or rather their rotten establishment – did have plenty of help in getting it so wrong. Take, for instance, the mean-spirited and asinine obsession with suppressing the Russian language to eradicate Ukraine’s windfall advantages as a mostly bilingual country of Russian and Ukrainian speakers.

That perverse and self-harming pursuit – recalling Freud’s hunch about nationalism as neurosis – was obstinately cultivated by both a narrow-minded but hyperactive and arrogant minority of ukrainier-than-though nationalists at home and descendants of run-away World War II nationalists, mass murderers of Poles, and Nazi collaborators from the West who were eager to infest post-Soviet Ukraine with their hoary bigotry.

Personally, I remember being naïve enough back then in the 2000s to ask Lviv acquaintances why Ukraine couldn’t just codify its own variant of Russian (comparable to the way American English is different from British English) and also promote Ukrainian (I know both languages, as it happens), and then focus on actually important matters. Blank stares were the answer, at best.

Entitled, patronizing exile nationalists projecting their selfish tunnel-vision fantasies on, and throwing their Western hard currency at, desperate people freshly shell-shocked by ultra-predatory ‘transition’ capitalism were one noxious outside influence vitiating Ukraine’s post-Soviet trajectory. But it was far from the only one. Indeed, as time went on, the West as a whole – its politicians, intellectuals, and mainstream media – became ever more interested in and vastly detrimental to Ukraine.   

To be fair, the first yet already extremely harmful steps the West took to, ultimately, ruin Ukraine had very little to do with it: When Washington decided – not once but repeatedly – to cheat and humiliate Russia and break clear promises not to expand NATO eastward, it was first Germany, then multiple Eastern European countries that were at the center of attention, but not Ukraine. Yet, ironically, even while neglecting it, the West’s reckless expansion already set the stage for phase two of putting Ukraine in the crosshairs.

That was reached in 2008, when, at an infamous summit in Bucharest, the high and mighty of the West, led by the indispensably destructive US, artfully maneuvered Ukraine into the very worst position imaginable: by making a promise of NATO membership for Ukraine sometime in the future, they inevitably poked Russia in the eye once too often. By keeping the reckless promise vague, they left Ukraine completely exposed, as if baiting Moscow to intervene. The whole mad scheme took willfully ignoring the clear warnings issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Munich one year before and multiple equally explicit warnings produced by not Russians but widely acknowledged Westerners such as George Kennan and, back then, even William ‘Bill’ Burns.

Indeed, it doubled down on it. If only the West had dropped Ukraine the way it dropped Georgia in 2008, many Ukrainians would still be alive and the country would have lost none or far less territory. Instead, the West got involved ever more deeply, offering a poisonous EU association agreement and the shaping a regime-change coup in 2014. After that, it bound Ukraine so closely into official and black-ops NATO structures that formal membership looked increasingly irrelevant, while helping Kiev sabotage the last realistic chance to return to peace and avoid large-scale war, the Minsk II agreement of 2015. Meanwhile, demagogic public intellectuals, such as Tim Snyder and Anne Applebaum did their worst to pour oil into the fire by a mix of silly nationalism-by-proxy and nasty Russophobia.

Finally, the West almost nonchalantly refused to seriously consider Moscow’s, as it turned out, last pre-February-2022 offer to return to substantial diplomacy and compromise. Once the war had greatly escalated, the West sent Britain’s most evil clown to kill an excellent opportunity to make peace quickly produced by the Istanbul talks of spring 2022.

Since then, since locking Ukraine into a devastating, perfectly unnecessary, and futile yet deliberately provoked war to weaken Russia, things have only gotten worse and worse, and there seems no end in sight. Indeed, as a remarkably sane former German general has just explained, Kiev is still eager to drag all of Western Europe (at least) into an open shooting war with Russia. In Europe, many establishment figures seem all too willing to go along. Ukraine has become the outstanding example of how the West risked and then destroyed the opportunities of the post-Cold War period. Ukraine could have been a prosperous country profiting from links to both East and West. Instead it’s a ruin.

Russian-Israeli historian Artyom Kirpichenok has been subjected to brutal treatment while in Shin Bet custody, including interrogations lasting up to 24 hours, sleep deprivation, prolonged handcuffing, and threats, according to his lawyer.

Kirpichenok, 51, disappeared on August 2 shortly after arriving at Ben Gurion Airport from Yerevan. His whereabouts remained unknown for nearly three weeks before his supporters revealed that he was being held at a detention facility in Petah Tikva.

His lawyer, Inna Lebedinskaya-Katz, was finally allowed to meet with him for around an hour on Sunday after repeatedly seeking access, according to Nika Dubrovsky, a Russian-born artist and writer campaigning for his release.

Citing Lebedinskaya-Katz, Dubrovsky said Kirpichenok has faced interrogation sessions lasting 18 to 24 hours while deprived of sleep. He is allegedly being kept handcuffed and hunched over on an iron stool fixed to the floor, with three or four interrogators standing behind him “shouting, threatening, and applying constant pressure.” He has also allegedly been threatened with life imprisonment.

”He understands that his friends have not abandoned him. He is holding on and sends his greetings to everyone,” she wrote. Kirpichenok also asked that no one come to Israel.

The allegations have not been independently verified. However, international human rights groups previously documented sleep deprivation and painful restraint during Shin Bet interrogations. Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against deliberately using prolonged sleep deprivation to break suspects.

Kirpichenok is being held underground with the lights on around the clock and denied books and writing materials, Dubrovsky cited his lawyer as saying. A gag order remains in force, and the defense has yet to receive the case files or details of the accusations.

Kirpichenok recently worked with media outlets and civic organizations in Türkiye and Iran and frequently traveled to Iran. Israeli citizens are generally prohibited from traveling to countries they are at war with. Dubrovsky, however, said the trips now appear to be of little interest to investigators.

Born in Russia, Kirpichenok moved to Israel in the 1990s, studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and served in the Israel Defense Forces before returning to Russia. He later became a vocal critic of the Israeli government and its military campaign in Gaza, describing Israel as a Western “colonial project” in his recent book ‘Israel: The Road to Catastrophe’.

Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, attributing the recent growth in bilateral trade turnover amid a hostile geopolitical environment directly to Modi’s “close personal attention” to relations between the two nations.

“I am pleased to note that our trade turnover has grown this year,” Putin told Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar at a Kremlin meeting. “While it decreased slightly last year, it is rising this year, and this is due in part – and perhaps above all – to the efforts of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, who gives the development of Russian-Indian relations close personal attention.”

Jaishankar had earlier co-chaired the 27th session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation, with Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov in Moscow. Manturov noted in his opening remarks that bilateral trade turnover between India and Russia grew 8% in the first half of the year.

The increase comes as the two traditional friends deepen their ties amid Western attempts to isolate Russia and squeeze it economically, and as India resists finalizing a trade deal with an unpredictable US administration that has used tariffs and sanctions to enforce its geopolitical agenda.

❗📹 Putin Credits PM Modi For Growing Russia-India Trade 🇷🇺🇮🇳

“Perhaps primarily, the merit of the Prime Minister,” the Russian President said of the rise in bilateral trade, while welcoming EAM Jaishankar to Moscow.

“Your visit today underscores the level of relations that… pic.twitter.com/bXWr4YoTkP

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) August 24, 2026

”I would like to ask you to convey my best wishes to Mr. Modi,” Putin said, adding “I hope to see him soon, as we planned, within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”

Modi and Putin are slated to attend the SCO Heads of State Council summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, next week.

Jaishankar delivered a personal message to the Russian president from Modi, who said he looks forward to their meeting at Bishkek. Modi also extended an invitation for Putin to attend the upcoming BRICS summit, scheduled for September 12-13 in New Delhi, to anchor their regular annual bilateral exchanges.

”We are doing everything to resolve this issue for Indian farmers and agriculture; we are increasing these supplies and are ready to continue doing so,” he said. “All other issues related to nuclear energy, cooperation in high-tech fields, and other areas are on the agenda, and they are all progressing quite confidently.”

Chad has accused parties in Sudan’s civil war of carrying out airstrikes deep inside its territory, warning that the conflict risks spilling across the border, the Chadian Armed Forces said on Saturday. 

According to the statement, aircraft and drones believed to belong to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or forces supporting them pursued and bombed a convoy of vehicles on Thursday. The strikes began on Sudanese soil before continuing more than 100 kilometers inside Chad, reaching the Mourdi department in the eastern Ennedi-Est province.

The military said that the extent of the incursion was established following aerial and ground checks conducted on Friday. No Chadian casualties have been reported, but the army condemned what it described as a new violation of the country’s territorial integrity.

Chad warned Sudan’s warring parties against attempting to extend the conflict onto its territory, saying that its defense and security forces remain on the highest level of alert and are prepared to respond to any threat to the country’s security. There has been no response from Sudanese authorities to the Chadian military’s allegations.

In March, a drone strike from Sudan killed at least 17 people in the same town, including mourners attending a funeral. President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno condemned the attack and ordered the military to retaliate against any future strikes originating from Sudan, whether carried out by the Sudanese army or the RSF.

A month earlier, Chad shut its eastern border with Sudan after five soldiers and three civilians were killed in clashes allegedly involving the SAF and RSF. At least 12 others were wounded in the incident, which also occurred in Tine, officials said.

Police in South Africa’s Eastern Cape have arrested two men in connection with the murder of former world boxing champion Zolani Tete, who was fatally shot in Mdantsane on Friday.

The two persons of interest, aged 30 and 22, were arrested in Ku Gompo on Saturday following a swift, intelligence-driven operation involving multiple law enforcement units, police said.

Eastern Cape police spokesperson Brigadier Nobuntu Gantana said the suspects were in custody and were being questioned in connection with Tete’s murder and the attempted murder of a 27-year-old woman who was wounded in the attack.

“Due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation, the SAPS is unable to disclose further details regarding the motive or the circumstances surrounding the arrests at this time,” Gantana said. “Investigators are following up on several leads, and more arrests are imminent.”

“In an attempt to escape the hail of bullets, the deceased drove his vehicle into the yard. He unfortunately succumbed to his injuries and was declared deceased on the scene,” Gantana said.

The woman sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was taken to a nearby hospital, where she remains. On Saturday, police confirmed Tete’s identity after notifying his next of kin.

Tete was one of South Africa’s most successful boxers, winning world titles in two weight divisions. He also holds a Guinness World Record for the fastest knockout in a world title fight.

He had not fought since July 2022, when he tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol following his victory over Jason Cunningham at Wembley. The result was overturned to a no contest and Tete was handed a four-year ban, which ended on July 29 this year. Tete maintained that he had never knowingly taken the substance. In an interview with boxing magazine The Ring in January, he said he planned to return to the ring this year.

First published by IOL

Ukraine is increasingly looking abroad to replenish its depleted ranks. Two Colombian fighters recently captured by Russian forces told RT they were lured to Ukraine with promises that bore little resemblance to the reality on the front line.

Russian forces steadily liberate settlements in Donbass and elsewhere, leaving Ukraine struggling to sustain frontline units.

At home, recruitment has increasingly relied on ‘busification’ – a term for draft officers violently snatching military-age men in public and dragging them into vans bound for draft centers. Videos of these incidents emerge almost daily, fueling public tensions and driving men to evade the draft by any means, including illegally fleeing the country.

As manpower shortages worsen, Colombia has emerged as a major source of foreign recruits, targeted through social media and personal networks with promises of high pay and favorable conditions. The captured fighters told RT that these promises quickly evaporated once they were deployed.

Both men urged other Colombians not to follow them.

“Please don’t go to Ukraine,” one warned. “If you come there as a Colombian, they’ll hug you and then stab you in the back… Don’t believe what the recruiters say, it’s all lies meant to take you to Ukraine and throw you away as cannon fodder.”

The joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of eight Arab and Muslim countries was one of the clearest diplomatic signals of recent weeks. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates did more than condemn Israel’s E1 settlement project. They demanded that the plan be halted, the decisions approving it reversed, and sanctions considered against individuals and entities involved in settlement expansion. The signatories also reaffirmed that an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, remains the only viable path toward a lasting settlement, according to an official statement released by the UAE Foreign Ministry.

This was not just another communiqué intended to register concern over unfolding events. The reference to possible sanctions suggests that even the region’s more cautious governments are beginning to adopt a tougher stance. Israeli leaders apparently assume that normalization with certain Arab countries has become irreversible and that their objections can therefore be safely ignored. The E1 project, however, may reveal just how badly mistaken that calculation is.

The plan calls for the construction of more than 3,400 homes in the strategically important corridor between East Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. If implemented, it would effectively split the West Bank into northern and southern sections while cutting East Jerusalem off from the main territory of any future Palestinian state. In other words, E1 would reshape not only the demographic but also the political geography of the conflict. This is not a routine expansion of an existing settlement. It is a step that could deprive the “two states for two peoples” formula of its territorial foundation.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has made no attempt to conceal the project’s political purpose, openly presenting it as a way to finally “bury” the idea of Palestinian statehood. E1 received final approval in 2025, and the publication of construction tenders in 2026 transformed it from a political threat into a plan moving toward practical implementation.

It is still too early to suggest that Abu Dhabi is abandoning the Abraham Accords. Rather, the UAE is changing the terms on which it is prepared to support normalization and reminding Israel that establishing diplomatic relations did not amount to endorsing every subsequent action taken by the Israeli government. For the Emirates, normalization has always been an instrument of statecraft – not a commitment to follow Israel unconditionally.

The annexation of Palestinian territory is a matter of principle for the UAE leadership. In 2020, Abu Dhabi justified its decision to normalize relations by arguing that its agreement with Israel had halted the annexation of Palestinian land and preserved the possibility of a two-state solution. This was intended to reassure Arab audiences that the Emirates had not abandoned the Palestinian cause but had instead chosen a different way of influencing Israel: direct dialogue rather than a boycott. The latest demarche should therefore be seen not as a repudiation of that earlier policy, but as an attempt to restore the Abraham Accords to their originally stated purpose.

The Israeli government’s actions, however, are steadily making that argument harder to sustain. If normalization does not restrain annexation, halt settlement expansion, or preserve the prospect of Palestinian statehood, it becomes increasingly difficult for Abu Dhabi to explain what political purpose its special relationship with Israel actually serves.

There is also a broader strategic calculation at work. Israel is becoming politically toxic even for Arab governments that embraced normalization only a few years ago. The problem is not Israel’s existence or the need to maintain working relations with it. What has become toxic is the course pursued by the current Israeli government, which openly rejects Palestinian statehood, continues to expand settlements, and expects its Arab partners to quietly accept the new reality.

Put bluntly, the Israeli leadership has lost its sense of proportion. It behaves as though the economic and defense interests of Arab countries allow it to disregard their position on Palestine indefinitely. But there are limits to that approach. Israel cannot expect to deepen its relations with the Arab world while systematically destroying the possibility of a Palestinian state.

For the UAE, association with this policy carries growing reputational costs. Abu Dhabi has no intention of sacrificing its standing in the Arab and Muslim world to pay for the radicalism of members of the Israeli cabinet. The Emirates understand that, as the regional order is reshaped, they must maintain stable relations first and foremost with their neighbors and the leading powers of the Islamic world.

The presence of Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan in this group is particularly important. Shortly before the statement was issued, the three countries formed the Mecca Defense Pact, which has already been described as a prototype for a “Muslim NATO.” The UAE did not join the alliance, and it would be wrong to portray it as a member. Yet the joint demarche over E1 shows that Abu Dhabi does not want to find itself outside the emerging Arab-Islamic political alignment. The Emirates are signaling that they can coordinate their position with the core members of the Mecca alliance while continuing to cooperate with Israel and the United States.

At the same time, the criticism of Israel was carefully calibrated. The eight countries cited not only international law and UN resolutions, but also Donald Trump’s peace plan and its rejection of West Bank annexation. This framed the Israeli government’s actions as a challenge not only to the demands of Arab countries but also to Washington’s own stated position. It allows the UAE to increase pressure on Israel without turning its demarche into an anti-American gesture.

For now, it is difficult to imagine Abu Dhabi opting for a complete break with Israel, although that possibility cannot be ruled out entirely. The cooperation built since the signing of the Abraham Accords has proved too valuable to the Emirates, particularly in the economic, technological, and security spheres.

At its core, the latest demarche is a warning, not a rupture. The UAE is making clear that normalization is not a blank check and does not give Israel the right to ignore the interests of the Arab world. The Israeli leadership has become far too confident that economic cooperation has permanently separated the Palestinian issue from its relations with Arab governments.

The E1 project proves otherwise. Normalization has political limits, and the Israeli government is moving dangerously close to crossing them.

The Russian military has showcased a new man-portable laser system designed to safely disable mines and unexploded ordnance from up to 100 meters away.

The gun featured in a report by the military’s official media outlet, Zvezda TV, on Sunday is derived from a larger system designed for remotely controlled small ground vehicles. The channel demonstrated both variants alongside other modules intended for the tracked Kurier (“courier”) platform, which is being widely adopted by the Russian military.

The smaller gun is powered by a backpack-style battery pack and features a 1-kilowatt laser. Its beam is strong enough to burn through a plastic casing within seconds, provided the operator maintains a steady aim. The video showed that the best results are achieved when the weapon is mounted on a tripod.

The larger variant has twice the power and places the projector on a retractable lifting platform, allowing the laser to be fired from behind cover. Its greater stability and beam strength give it a range of up to 500 meters, according to the developer. Both the rover-mounted module and the man-portable gun have entered serial production.

The Zvezda report also demonstrated other modules developed for the Kurier platform, including some designed by a frontline engineering unit involved in the Ukraine conflict. One of its creations is fitted with a drill and is used to prepare holes for poles before anti-drone nets are installed over roads in the battle zone.

Both Russia and Ukraine are developing new uses for remotely operated vehicles, which are increasingly being deployed for combat, resupply, medical evacuation, and military engineering missions.

The European Commission has approved €6.1 billion ($7.1 billion) in new weapons purchases for Ukraine, the commission said on Monday. The tranche is part of a €90 billion loan allocated by Brussels for budgetary and military aid to Kiev earlier this year.

Facing mounting battlefield pressure, Kiev is increasingly pushing for faster aid disbursements as it relies heavily on foreign funding to plug a widening budget gap and sustain its war effort against Russia. Moscow has argued that Western military aid to Ukraine, which comes at the expense of ordinary taxpayers, only serves to prolong the conflict.

In April, the EU approved a €90 billion ($105 billion) emergency loan for Ukraine that allocates €30 billion for budget support and €60 billion for military aid in 2026-2027. The loan, backed by joint EU borrowing and repayable only if Kiev receives war reparations from Russia, was pushed through after plans to seize Russian sovereign assets frozen in the West failed. Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia have secured exemptions from the scheme.

The latest tranche came on top of €16 billion of previously approved procurement plans, of which €8.35 billion has already been transferred to Kiev. The €6.1 billion disbursement is expected to finance air and missile defense systems, missiles, ammunition, and radars, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The EU’s financial and military aid to Ukraine has drawn criticism from current and former officials in and outside the bloc. Earlier this month, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov said the West will never recover its loans to Kiev.

German MEP Fabio De Masi warned that the funds will enrich “corrupt oligarchs.” Former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl told RT earlier this year that the EU is shifting from its traditional focus on trade toward an increasingly geopolitical and defense-oriented agenda.

In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev and the “so-called European pseudo-peacekeepers” of seeking to prolong the conflict. He said their goal is “not peace, but the continuation of the war with Russia to the last Ukrainian.”

Russia has successfully placed a new military spacecraft into orbit aboard a Soyuz-2.1b rocket launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk Region, the Defense Ministry has said. The type and specific mission of the spacecraft have not been disclosed.

A combat crew of the Russian Space Forces launched the medium-class rocket at 5:40 AM Moscow time on Monday. The spacecraft was sent up “in the interests of the Russian Defense Ministry,” according to an official statement.

The spacecraft reached its designated orbit and was taken under the control of ground-based Space Forces systems.

“Stable telemetry communication has been established and maintained with the spacecraft, its onboard systems are functioning normally,” the ministry said. The flight and deployment proceeded as planned.

After the launch, the Soyuz-2.1b and its payload were tracked by the ground-based automated control complex of the German Titov Main Test Space Center, which is responsible for controlling and monitoring Russian military spacecraft.

The Soyuz-2.1b is a disposable three-stage medium-lift launch vehicle that has frequently been used to deploy both military and civilian satellites.

The mission comes after several military launches from Plesetsk earlier this year. On April 17, a Soyuz-2.1b carried several spacecraft into orbit for the Defense Ministry. Six days later, an Angara-1.2 light rocket was launched from the cosmodrome with military satellites.

Plesetsk is Russia’s northernmost major launch facility. Its high latitude makes it suited to place spacecraft into polar orbits, which are widely used for Earth observation and military missions. The facility began as a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile base before being converted for space launches in the 1960s.

Iran has denied reports that it has been invited to join the Mecca defense pact comprising Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan, while confirming that proposals have been made for talks with the three countries on regional security.

The clarification comes after Mehdi Rahimi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s Khaneh Mellat news agency, told Al Mayadeen on Saturday that Tehran had received an invitation to become a member of the Mecca pact and was considering it.

On Monday, however, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei rejected the claim, stating that no formal invitation had been received in Tehran. At the same time, he said that discussions with the pact members concerning broader regional security have been proposed and are under consideration.

The three founding members of the pact had previously repeatedly said the alliance could eventually expand to include other regional states, with Egypt being publicly mentioned as a possible candidate. Pakistan has also said it would have no objection to Iran joining.

The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, which was signed on August 7, brings together Türkiye, which possesses one of NATO’s largest militaries and a rapidly growing defense industry, Saudi Arabia, which features enormous financial resources and ambitions to shape the Arab political order, and Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with one of the largest militaries in the Muslim world.

Tehran initially said it had “no reason for concern” over the agreement, with spokesman Baghaei noting that its creation reflected a growing desire among regional states to develop their own security mechanisms.

Some observers have dubbed the new grouping an “Islamic NATO,” although experts have cautioned against treating it as a fully-fledged military bloc. Gulf Research Center chairman Abdulaziz Sager has said the pact could strengthen the members’ combined diplomatic and defense weight and contribute to a more regionally driven security system.

Israel, meanwhile, has responded to the pact with alarm, raising concerns that a bloc built around Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and nuclear-armed Pakistan could emerge as a counterweight to its own military dominance in the region.

The Mecca pact members, however, insist that the agreement is defensive, is open to other countries in the region, and is not directed against any other states.

Bilateral trade turnover between India and Russia grew 8% in the first half of the year, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said in Moscow on Monday, adding that both exports and imports showed expansion.

“Our goal is not only to increase the volume of trade turnover, but also to diversify its structure,” Manturov said at the 27th Session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation, which he is co-hosting with visiting Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar.

India and Russia are pursuing a bilateral trade target of $100 billion to be reached by 2030, which was set by President Vladimir Putin in December when he visited New Delhi.

Jaishankar said bilateral trade has increased more than fourfold in the last four years, from around $13 billion in 2021-22 to over $60 billion in 2025-26. He also noted, however, that the rapid expansion has increased the trade imbalance. The Indian foreign minister said progress on market access, removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers, and strengthening payment mechanisms will be critical in addressing the imbalance.

Manturov said the free trade agreement (FTA) that the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union has been negotiating with India since August last year will be a new driver for sustainable trade growth. “Its preparation is in an active stage and it is important to maintain a high pace of negotiations,” he added.

❗️🇮🇳-EAEU FTA Preparations in 'Active Stage' - 🇷🇺 Deputy PM Manturov

Interaction between business circles must be intensified, with INNOPROM India expected to be integral to the process, he adds. pic.twitter.com/10grT9CfW0

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) August 24, 2026

He underscored the competitive advantages of the Northern Sea Route, noting that state-backed Rosatom is discussing mutually beneficial formats for cooperation on the Arctic route. “The use of this Arctic route will reduce transport costs for economic operators,” Manturov said. India, which has shown keen interest in the route amid global shipping disruptions, plans to send its first cargo ship along the passage next year.

❗️ ‘Regular High-Level Dialogue Lays Foundation for Special & Privileged Strategic Partnership Between 🇷🇺-🇮🇳’ – Russian Deputy PM Manturov

Regular dialogue also provides additional impetus to work on developing practical cooperation on ‘trade, economic and humanitarian ties,’… https://t.co/i9kK5bvimm pic.twitter.com/2wsUcukE8b

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) August 24, 2026

Manturov also stressed the need to improve mutual access of goods alongside “an expansion of direct contacts between the business circles of our countries.” He emphasized the need to stimulate business participation in exhibitions and fairs, and highlighted the international industrial exhibition ‘INNOPROM. India’, which will be held for the first time in New Delhi on the eve of the BRICS summit next month.

In his speech, Manturov highlighted a raft of areas where cooperation with India is deepening – from industrial cooperation, for its role in “ensuring the technological sovereignty of our countries” to space, in particular, “in manned spaceflight, rocket engines, and satellite navigation.”

Manturov noted the cooperation in energy security – with India now the second largest importer of Russian crude – and underscored joint investment projects for the extraction and processing of hydrocarbons.

He added that the successful experience of cooperation on the Kudankulam nuclear power plant project could be a basis for building new power plants across India, including small-scale reactors.

Singapore has launched the world’s first independently operated data center using living human brain cells for some computing tasks, the medical school of the National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine) has said. The system consumes a fraction of the power of traditional computing hardware. The neurons are fed every three days and sustained by dedicated life-support equipment.  

NUS Medicine announced the prototype earlier this month in partnership with Singapore-based data center operator DayOne and Australian biotech firm Cortical Labs. Housed at the university, the system is described by its developers as the world’s first independently operated biologically integrated server rack.  

Cortical Labs founder and CEO Hon Weng Chong said the prototype moves biological computing “from research to commercial application,” arguing it could complement AI where “data is sparse” and conditions change. He pointed to potential uses in drug discovery, humanoid robotics, cybersecurity and fraud detection.  

Unlike conventional data centers packed with power-hungry servers and cooling systems, biological computers could operate on a fraction of the electricity by harnessing the natural processing capabilities of living neural networks.  

Keeping the “computers” running looks more like maintaining a laboratory than a server room. Technicians feed the cells a mixture of sugar, micronutrients and pH buffers every three days, while a gas system supplies carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen.  

The power difference is particularly relevant for Singapore, which temporarily halted construction of new data centers in 2019 because of concerns over their electricity and water consumption. Data centers accounted for around 7% of the country’s electricity use in 2020.  

The technology is not intended to replace silicon, which Chong said remains “far superior” for the fast, repeatable calculations behind large language models such as ChatGPT. Biological systems, however, can learn from fewer examples and adapt to changing conditions.

Pope Leo has called for international action to confront the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), where transmission remains active across six provinces and thousands of people have died.

On Sunday, the pontiff said on X that he often remembers the African state in his prayers, especially in light of the spread of the Ebola epidemic.

“I encourage on the part of the international community a response that also involves local communities in efforts of prevention, so that many human lives may be saved,” Pope Leo said.

The appeal came as the latest figures from DR Congo’s Health Ministry showed 5,375 confirmed cases and 2,557 deaths, putting the case fatality rate at 47.6%. 

The outbreak has reached 56 health zones across six provinces – Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, Bas-Uele, and Tshopo. Ituri remains the most widely affected, with cases recorded in 28 of its 36 health zones. The authorities said transmission remains active but that there has been no further geographical expansion in the latest reporting period.

The WHO and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) have also previously called for greater international support to contain the outbreak.

DR Congo declared the outbreak in May. It is the country’s 17th recorded Ebola outbreak and is caused by the Bundibugyo virus. There is currently no licensed vaccine or approved specific treatment for this specific strain.

Japan does not plan to supply Ukraine with weapons, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara has said. At a press briefing on Monday, he told reporters that Tokyo “is not considering any deliveries” of defensive or offensive weapons “at this time.”

Kihara was responding to Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergey Koretsky, who asked Japan on Sunday for anti-ballistic missiles, in an interview with Kyodo News.

“I would like to kindly ask one and only thing... anti-ballistic missiles,” he was cited as saying. “It’s the most important thing we need... I very much hope and count on your country.”

Koretsky took office in July and was reportedly close to disgraced businessman Timur Mindich, a close associate of Vladimir Zelensky who fled to Israel amid a corruption scandal.

“At this time, the government does not consider transferring weapons under the Self-Defense Forces Law to Ukraine,” Kihara said, referring to an overhaul in April of Japan’s defense-export policy that lifted restrictions limiting transfers to non-lethal categories and opened the door to lethal weapons exports.

Japan’s stance on the Ukraine conflict has been marked by contradiction. Tokyo has publicly sided with Kiev, condemning Russia’s military operation and taking part in the Western sanctions. However, it has stopped short of supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine, and unlike some Western nations, has retained stakes in key Russian energy projects, citing their importance to domestic energy security.

Over the past few months, Ukraine has increasingly sought new military hardware from its Western backers to counter severe battlefield shortages amid the steady advance of Russian forces. 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. Over the past week, Russia has liberated six settlements in Donbass.

Russia has long accused Western weapons suppliers of enabling Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign. A Sunday Times report last week claimed that Ukraine has used British-made drones for long-range attacks inside Russia over the past six months. Moscow maintains that this aid makes Kiev’s foreign backers direct participants in the hostilities and only serves to prolong the conflict. Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Russia will adopt “much harsher methods to destroy everything that enables the West to fuel Kiev’s war machine.”

Repeated claims that Ukraine is about to turn the tide against Russia and achieve a military victory are like being trapped in a time loop, a former White House official has told RT.

The latest wave of media reports predicting a breakthrough in Kiev’s military campaign came on the heels of an escalation in Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries, retail warehouses, and cargo ships. Ukrainian officials claimed the attacks would pressure Moscow into accepting Kiev’s terms for a peace settlement.

Russia instead intensified its own strikes, virtually paralyzing crucial Ukrainian trade through Black Sea ports and inflicting other damage. On Sunday, President Vladimir Putin said Kiev was the one that “opened Pandora’s box.”

“I feel like the old American movie ‘Groundhog Day’,” conservative media host Steve Gill, who served in the office of the US Trade Representative under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, told RT.

“How many times do we have to hear, ‘oh, it’s the spring offensive, the fall offensive, the summer offensive, the winter offensive that is going to win things for Ukraine? And it is the same cycle of promise and despair, promise and failure that, again, has done nothing but cost the lives of both Russian and Ukrainian men and increasingly women,” he added.

Gill also suggested that Ukrainians who want to end the hostilities are in no position to do so because the country does not determine its own foreign policy.

“The ones who are making the decisions in Western Europe – and some in the United States, some who have the ear of President [Donald] Trump – are feeding misinformation and disinformation both through media and through the policymakers that is continuing the violence, continuing the death, and continuing this folly of Ukraine thinking that they’re somehow winning on the battlefield when nothing could be further from the truth,” he explained.

Watch the full interview.

A Ukrainian monk has been stabbed to death and two other people are seriously wounded in an attack at a monastery in the Ukrainian-controlled northern part of the Donetsk People’s Republic, near the frontline of the conflict with Russia.

The deadly assault by a group of unidentified perpetrators occurred on Sunday morning near a 17th-century church at the Svyatogorsk Lavra. The monastery is run by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which has faced a sweeping government crackdown in recent years.

The Svyatogorsk monastery identified the slain monk as Barsanuphius. The two surviving victims were named as junior monk Gregory and a refugee, Andrey Kirienko.

Gregory managed to reach the monks’ dormitory and alert others to the attack. Both survivors suffered punctured lungs and severe blood loss and were rushed to the hospital, the monastery said.

Ukrainian police did not immediately comment on the criminal investigation into the attack. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Ukrainian troops may have been responsible.

The government of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has labeled the UOC, which has historical ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, a national security threat. The authorities have charged several senior clergy members with subversive activities and raided major cathedrals and monasteries in search of evidence of alleged anti-Ukrainian conduct.

Kiev supports the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was established ahead of the 2019 presidential campaign in a move that caused a major schism in the Orthodox world. The organization has sought to take control of UOC property across the country.

The Svyatogorsk monastery traces its recorded history to at least the 16th century, when it was mentioned in a German diplomat’s account of his travels. It may, however, have been founded as early as the ninth century by refugees from Byzantium. The monastery was shut down twice, first in 1787 and later by the Bolsheviks, before being reinstated in 2000.

The deadly attack coincided with a Ukrainian drone strike on the Epiphany Cathedral in Gorlovka, in the Russian-controlled part of Donbass. It reportedly occurred during Sunday services and injured local bishop Metropolitan Mitrofan and three other people.

Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar is in Russia for high-level talks as the two countries prepare for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India next month and step up bilateral cooperation amid rising geopolitical tensions.

Jaishankar is discussing trade and defense cooperation in Moscow, where he and Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov are co-chairing the 27th Session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) on Monday.

“The India-Russia partnership has consistently demonstrated resilience and adaptability,” Jaishankar said in his opening remarks at the event. “Even amidst a complex international landscape our engagement has continued to deepen, reflecting the mutual interest and confidence that define our bilateral partnership.”

The Indian foreign minister will also discuss regional and global issues with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, the Indian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The IRIGC‑TEC is one of the pillars of the India‑Russia Intergovernmental Commission (IRIGC), a mechanism to monitor bilateral progress across trade and economic cooperation, which was established in 1992. The relationship between the two traditional friends, which endured through the Cold War, has deepened as Western countries have tried to use economic and trade levers to isolate Russia and punish countries friendly to Moscow.

❗️🇮🇳 EAM Jaishankar Shares Friendly Greetings With 🇷🇺 President Putin In Moscow pic.twitter.com/1WRdZKv7bY

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) August 24, 2026

India-Russia partnership shows resilience even in 'complex international landscape': Jaishankar

The ties still rock-solid pic.twitter.com/xV7hK9VbcD

— Sputnik India (@Sputnik_India) August 24, 2026

Putin is set to visit India for the BRICS summit to be held under India’s rotating presidency on September 12-13 in New Delhi. The two countries set a bilateral trade target of $100 billion to be reached by 2030 during the Russian leader’s last visit to India in December.

India-Russia bilateral trade has boomed since then, with India now the second largest importer of Russian oil. However, the threat of steep US tariffs on countries buying Russian oil, under a new sanctions bill that has cleared the US Senate, looms over New Delhi. India has consistently maintained that its purchases of Russian oil are driven by energy security concerns and ensuring affordable energy for its 1.4 billion population.

New Delhi and Moscow are also expected to discuss a possible sale of Russia’s advanced fifth-generation stealth fighter, the Su-57. In June, Putin noted in a Q&A session with global news agencies that Russia offered the plane to India as a joint project. “We are ready to supply India with this aircraft, to keep developing it,” he said. “We don’t have any issues or limitations. The same goes for air defense systems.”

The flurry of activity in bilateral relations could be capped by another visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Russia this year. Modi last visited Russia in 2024.

Meanwhile, Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval is in Beijing for the 25th round of talks between the special representatives on the boundary issue between the two countries, where he will hold talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Doval’s visit also comes ahead of a possible visit to India next month by Chinese President Xi Jinping for the BRICS summit. The summit is shaping up to be a major forum where the heads of the emerging economies are expected to discuss common issues that impact developing countries amid trade tariffs and sanctions.

UN special rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese has called for the deployment of an international protection force in the Palestinian territories in response to a rise in attacks by Israeli settlers.

“An International Protection Presence in West Bank/east Jerusalem and Gaza is absolutely URGENT,” Albanese wrote in a post on X on Monday.

“Third states have an obligation, per the ICJ, to act to end Israel’s unlawful occupation,” she said, using the acronym for the Hague-based International Court of Justice. She called on the offices of the UN secretary-general and the General Assembly to help bypass the “paralysis” of the organization’s Security Council, where the US has vetoed a number of resolutions critical of Israel.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law by the UN and most of the international community. Israel disputes this. The settlements are also widely viewed as an obstacle to establishing a viable Palestinian state. In 2024, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion saying Israel should end its occupation of Palestinian territory “as rapidly as possible.”

Israel has taken an increasingly hawkish stance since the war in Gaza began with a Hamas attack in October 2023, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying last year that “there will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River.”

More Israeli outposts have since been approved in the West Bank, which far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich hailed as “a revolution” in settlement expansion.

Settler violence has also surged. There were around 190 attacks against Palestinians per month in the first months of 2026, according to UN data cited by The Guardian. A 17-year-old Palestinian was killed and another wounded by gunfire on Friday during an altercation with settlers.

Britain is directly participating in the Ukraine conflict and actively working to prolong it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, after London announced it would grant Kiev access to classified technical information needed to assemble long-range cruise missiles domestically.

The UK government has authorized European defense manufacturer MBDA to release classified information concerning British-made components for SCALP, the French-produced version of Britain’s Storm Shadow. The air-launched missiles use shared French and British technology and have a range exceeding 250 km.

The move was confirmed by Downing Street on Monday and by Prime Minister Andy Burnham personally during his visit to the Ukrainian capital on the same day.

“The UK was the first to gift long-range weapons to Ukraine back in 2023,” he said, referring to deliveries of Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles. “I am pleased to confirm today that I have approved” Kiev’s request to share the missile-production technology as well, the prime minister added.

Responding to the announcement, Peskov said Britain is “participating in this war on the side of the Kiev regime” and is “methodically and regularly adding fuel to the fire and scheming to prevent any development of the peace settlement process.”

London said the decision to release the information would allow “the French and Ukrainians to move forward with the Ukrainian assembly of the missile.”

“The Ukrainian people should be in no doubt: The UK is behind you today and for as long as it takes,” Burnham said ahead of his visit to the Ukrainian capital, where he met with Vladimir Zelensky and chaired his first meeting of the ‘coalition of the willing’, established by Britain and France under his predecessor, Keir Starmer.

Moscow has maintained that the UK and other suppliers of weapons to Kiev are directly responsible for the deep-strike campaign, which it says has frequently hit civilians.

In a statement last week, the Russian Embassy in London called the UK “an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks” committed by Ukraine. It warned that “the deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support for Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that London will face consequences if it continues supplying drones used by Ukraine for strikes deep inside Russia.

“We have every right to regard the proudly proclaimed direct involvement of British missile forces in strikes against Russia as participation in the war, with all the consequences that entails,” Lavrov said.

A rapidly spreading human-caused wildfire in Nevada has injured at least six people and forced around 42,000 people to evacuate; tens of thousands more have been warned to prepare to leave.

The Hawk Fire broke out northwest of Reno on Saturday and had spread across more than 15,000 acres (61 square kilometers) by the following day. Three civilians and three first responders were injured, and several structures were destroyed.

The ‘GO NOW’ evacuation zone has expanded to the edge of the University of Nevada, Reno, and another 45,000 people in an adjacent ‘GET SET’ zone have been urged to leave and prepare to stay away for several days.

WATCH: Human-caused Hawk Fire explodes to 10,500 acres near Reno, Nevada; 42,000 evacuated pic.twitter.com/d95enUHNKM

— Rapid Report (@RapidReport2025) August 23, 2026

Shifting and strengthening winds caused the fire to change direction rapidly and reportedly jump over fire trucks, preventing crews from reaching some hot spots as people attempted to flee.

“It was extremely confusing,” Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam said, describing how the winds repeatedly sent the flames in different directions and urging residents in evacuation-warning zones to leave. “Please get out if you can right now,” he added.

The Hawk Fire has consumed most of Mount Peavine here in Reno, NV. Many people in the north valleys area lost their homes and businesses were destroyed including a Copart warehouse and storage facility. I am located roughly 1.8 miles from the evacuation zone.@nyprepper1 pic.twitter.com/ifR9GXjpG4

— Mopar🇺🇲Man1152 (@SSecurity93929) August 23, 2026

Officials have determined that the fire was human-caused but have not disclosed how it started or whether it was accidental or deliberate, saying the precise cause remains under investigation.

VIDEO: Nevada Army Guard drops water on Hawk Fire, Aug. 23, 2026. #hawkfire pic.twitter.com/aDSQzeleK9

— Nevada Guard (@NVNationalGuard) August 23, 2026

Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo has declared a state of emergency in Washoe County. The National Guard has sent two helicopter crews and 60 troops to support firefighting operations and protect evacuated neighborhoods. Two hospitals have moved patients to safety, and the authorities are monitoring whether the county jail will also need to be evacuated.

JUST IN: Human-caused Hawk Fire spreads toward neighborhoods in northwest Reno, Nevada, burning homes and injuring at least 6 people, according to press conference. pic.twitter.com/rLJ16jK6wt

— Scope Report (@ScopeReport_) August 23, 2026

Nearly 60,000 customers initially lost electricity, although that figure had fallen to around 10,000 by Sunday. Parts of US Route 395 were also closed.

The Hawk Fire comes as months of dry weather and record-low snowfall last winter fuel fires across the western US. Fifteen new fires erupted across Nevada on Saturday alone. Earlier this month, wildfires near Spokane, Washington forced around 60,000 people to evacuate, while three separate fires north of Reno displaced more than 13,000 people.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has condemned a Ukrainian drone strike on a church during a service in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic.

The attack occurred on Sunday at the Epiphany Cathedral in Gorlovka, according to a statement on the Moscow Patriarchate’s website.

Metropolitan Mitrofan of Gorlovka and Slavyansk was wounded and treated at the hospital, the local diocese said. Protodeacon Roman Stepin and two volunteers with the Patriarchal Humanitarian Mission suffered minor injuries.

“An enemy drone attacked people during prayer, once again demonstrating the lack of principle and flagrant cynicism of those who directed this criminal attack,” Kirill said.

Ukraine has intensified its deep-strike campaign in Russia in recent months amid battlefield setbacks. Moscow has described the strikes as acts of terrorism, pointing to drones and missiles hitting apartment blocks and other civilian targets.

Russia has said it is retaliating with missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian weapons factories, logistics centers, and infrastructure supporting the military.

Last week, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia will “respond proportionately to emerging threats” from Ukraine.

Three children were killed and six others injured when a Ukrainian drone struck a childcare center during an overnight barrage on the southern Russian city of Krasnodar on Monday, Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova has said. 

Regional Governor Veniamin Kondratyev has reported that two adults were also hospitalized following what he described as “a massive attack by enemy drones” on the city near the Black Sea coast. He said apartment blocks were also hit and a warehouse caught fire.

“This is how Zelensky’s regime, and he himself, treats children,” Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said of the attack, condemning Kiev’s “sophisticated murders of children of all ages, from infants to students.”

E-commerce giant Ozon said a drone struck a warehouse in Krasnodar, causing a large fire. All employees were evacuated, the company said on Telegram.

Ukrainian drones also targeted an unspecified industrial site in Nevinnomyssk in neighboring Stavropol Region, Governor Vladimir Vladimirov said.

Ukraine has stepped up its deep-strike campaign in recent months, targeting energy sites, ports, and warehouses. In many cases, drones have also hit civilian targets, including apartment blocks and fuel trucks on highways.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that the strikes will not destroy the country’s economy nor dampen public morale, but will have “exactly the opposite effect.”

A Turkish sailor who survived a drone attack on one cargo ship was killed when the vessel that rescued him was struck as well, near Russia’s Black Sea coast. Ukraine has been escalating long-range strikes against Russian ports and civilian logistics.

According to multiple Turkish news reports on Saturday, Ilker Lazoglu was the cook on the San Marino-flagged bulker Necibe. The vessel was reportedly struck by drones at Russia’s Black Sea port of Tuapse on Tuesday, where it was scheduled to load 20,000 tons of wheat.

Along with 17 other crew members, he was evacuated to the Ural, a Turkish-owned and Cameroon-flagged vessel, Türkiye Today and Hurriyet reported. However, that ship was reportedly hit near Novorossiysk, which has faced numerous attacks by Ukrainian drones in recent months.

For several months, Ukrainian long-range strikes have been targeting Russian ports and international shipping that Kiev suspects of transporting Russian cargoes. Russian officials have warned that Ukraine is “playing with fire” by attacking other countries’ civilian ships in the Black Sea and have condemned the strikes as terrorist acts.

Moscow has retaliated by targeting Ukraine’s key Black Sea ports and shipping it says are handling imports for the Ukrainian military, effectively cutting off the country’s main export route.

A small Russian mobile air defense unit consisting of volunteers has successfully shot down a Ukrainian missile Kiev touted as its “most successful” weapon by firing at it with a machine gun, according to Kursk Region Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein.

The intercept occurred during a Ukrainian drone and missile attack overnight on Sunday. According to Khinshtein, the BARS-Kursk brigade, made up predominantly of residents of the border region, received an alert about an incoming strike. Minutes later, one of its mobile air defense units detected a “huge” missile traveling at 500 kilometers per hour at an altitude of less than 50 meters. The soldiers managed to hit the missile, forcing it to lose altitude and eventually fall into a wooded area.

A video of the intercept recorded by BARS-Kursk soldiers and published by Khinshtein shows the unit detecting the projectile flying at a low altitude and shooting at it. The missile is then shown crashing into the ground in a massive fiery blast. The second part of the video shows soldiers examining the wreckage at the crash site.

“Our volunteers did not just shoot down a missile. They prevented a catastrophe and saved human lives,” the governor said, vowing to recommend the air defense unit servicemen for a decoration. He also called it an example “of what a Russian solider is capable of.”

The Ukrainian military has routinely targeted civilian and energy infrastructure in drone and missile strikes deep into Russian territory. Moscow has condemned the Ukrainian strikes on civilian infrastructure and residential areas as terrorist attacks, adding that they are apparently intended to compensate for Kiev’s setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces continue their steady advance.

Unveiled in 2025, the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile has been touted by Kiev as a state-of-the-art weapon. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky described it last year as “by far the most successful missile in Ukraine’s arsenal.”

The missile is produced by Fire Point – a Ukrainian defense contractor personally promoted by Zelensky during his trips to Western nations.

The company was later revealed to be de facto owned by the Ukrainian leader’s longtime former business partner, Timur Mindich, known as “Zelensky’s wallet” in Kiev. The businessman fled Ukraine last year after a major corruption scandal in which he was named as one of the primary suspects.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s position on the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage is motivated by the fact that Warsaw lost out economically on the project, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Vesti published on Sunday.

The statement came just days after Tusk said that those responsible for the September 2022 blasts should not be ashamed, but rather those who built the pipelines. Warsaw had long opposed the pipelines’ construction over concerns about Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, he told reporters on Thursday.

According to Putin, the Polish prime minister’s “motives are very simple – economic expediency.”

The initial plan for the Nord Stream project envisioned one of the pipelines going through Poland, he said. However, the decision was ultimately made to “to run the second line along the bottom of the Baltic Sea in order to minimize risks,” he added.

“Partly because it would lose certain economic advantages for Poland as a transit country. Secondly, Poland would lose revenue from the transit of our hydrocarbons. This position is absolutely nothing new,” he said.

Tusk’s statement came a day after a Ukrainian national suspected of taking part in the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was arrested in Croatia on a European warrant.

Moscow has long dismissed the theory as fantasy, arguing that the operation could not have been carried out in NATO-controlled waters without state backing.

In a 2024 interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, Putin hinted that the blasts were likely orchestrated by the CIA.

By 1943, World War II had turned decisively in the Allies’ favor. At Stalingrad, the Russians destroyed the Wehrmacht’s largest field formation, the Sixth Army. In the Pacific, the Americans and their allies won a hard-fought victory over the Japanese at Guadalcanal. In North Africa, Allied forces trapped the German Afrika Korps and its Italian partners and forced them to surrender. And back in Russia, the Red Army won the decisive Battle of Kursk.

Beating the enemy with a shovel

In the winter of 1942-43, riding the momentum of their triumph at Stalingrad, Soviet forces launched a series of operations across the southern sector of their enormous front. Most met with at least some success. But in March, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein mounted a surprise counteroffensive that drove the Red Army’s battle-weary forces back from Kharkov and Belgorod.

Elsewhere, however, victory at Voronezh allowed the Russians to break through quickly to Kursk, a major transportation hub in central Russia. The result was a bulge in the front known in the West as the Kursk salient and in Russian as the Kurskaya Duga, or Kursk Arc. It projected roughly 150 kilometers westward, measured about 200 kilometers across at its base, and had Kursk at its center. To the north, it was flanked by the German-held Orel salient, which was roughly the same size. To the south, the German line formed a right angle with Belgorod at its corner.

The coming operation was code-named Citadel. German forces would strike along converging axes at the base of the Kursk salient, then surge into the rear of the Soviet armies deployed inside it.

At first, the Germans did not intend to wait long. They planned to launch the offensive in the spring of 1943. Then other considerations intervened. In their memoirs, German generals usually had an elegant way of assigning responsibility for controversial decisions to a dead Führer who could no longer answer back. In reality, however, the man who first called for postponing the attack at Kursk was Walter Model, commander of the German forces north of the salient.

That winter, Model had “suffered a victory” near the town of Rzhev. The Germans had repelled a Soviet offensive there, but their own losses were too heavy to replace quickly. Now Model, who was supposed to attack the Kursk Arc from the north, wanted more time to prepare and as many reinforcements as he could get. Some other generals argued that the operation should be canceled altogether. Yet the Germans had no alternative plan for the summer of 1943. Trying to hold the entire front through passive defense was a dead end. Sooner or later, the Russians would find a weak spot. In war, it is critical to impose your will on the enemy and make him fight where it suits you.

In the end, the plan was simply revised to accommodate Model’s demands. The delay also gave the Germans time to stockpile ammunition and equip their forces with the latest armored vehicles. The most famous were the heavy Tiger tank, the medium Panther, and the Ferdinand tank destroyer. But the new arsenal included several other models as well, including such exotic machines as the Borgward demolition carrier.

The Germans’ problem was that the Soviets had not been sitting still, meekly awaiting their fate. The plan was too obvious, and intelligence reports confirmed what Soviet commanders had already suspected. As early as April, Marshal Georgy Zhukov outlined the enemy’s most likely course of action. Zhukov was no crystal-ball prophet. All it took to arrive at the broad conclusion was a look at the map and a basic understanding of the enemy’s condition.

Curiously, the Russians received independent confirmation of the coming offensive from intelligence agents operating among their own allies. Kim Philby and John Cairncross of the famous Cambridge spy ring sent Moscow a German radio message intercepted by the British that contained the plan for the operation. Some Soviet commanders favored a preemptive strike. Zhukov and Chief of the General Staff Alexander Vasilevsky, however, decided it would be far wiser to absorb and extinguish the force of the German blow, since they already knew where it would fall.

The Red Army spent the remaining time building defenses around Kursk.

Surrendering the initiative to the enemy is normally extremely risky, but in this case the Russians had a reasonably good idea of where the attack would come. Soviet industry, now operating at full capacity, was supplying the troops with enormous quantities of weapons and materiel. There were also enough men under arms to create not only formidable defensive lines, but a safety cushion in the form of massive reserves.

While troops facing the German armored fists dug into the earth, Soviet armies were preparing offensives of their own near Orel, north of the Kursk Arc, and in the Donbass to the south. At the decisive moment, those attacks were supposed to force the Germans to abandon their own operations and start plugging holes elsewhere. The Soviet offensives were therefore inseparably linked to the defense of Kursk.

The Russians had to hold out until the Germans were fully committed and had burned through men, machines, supplies, and ammunition. Then the Red Army would strike on other sectors. The offensives near Orel and in the Donbass were expected to force the Germans to halt their attacks around Kursk, while the stubborn defense of the salient would wear them down so badly that they could not stop the new Soviet advances.

In early July, the agonizing wait came to an end.

The North: Ponyri Station and Olkhovatka

Konstantin Rokossovsky commanded the front defending the approaches north of Kursk. He received his final warning from the Stavka on July 2. On the night of July 4-5, a clash erupted in no-man’s-land when Soviet scouts ran into a group of German combat engineers clearing lanes through the minefields. Several Germans were killed and one was captured. The prisoner quickly told his interrogators everything he knew. Acting on his account, Rokossovsky immediately ordered his artillery to begin “counterpreparation” – a preemptive strike against the enemy’s gun batteries. Shelling the German positions before the offensive sounded like a good idea, but Soviet intelligence was inaccurate this time, and the barrage inflicted little damage. The decision was, frankly, a failure. Even so, it was with artillery fire in the predawn gloom that one of the largest battles in world history began.

Even there, however, no easy breakthrough followed. The Wehrmacht ran into minefields of staggering size, covered by artillery and sniper fire. Soviet antitank positions were so well concealed that the Germans usually found them only when the Russians opened fire.

The Germans still had one breach, but Rokossovsky had several reserve rifle divisions and an entire tank army with which to plug it. The constant churn of attack and counterattack disrupted the Germans’ momentum. Even successful Wehrmacht assaults developed slowly, allowing Soviet reserves to arrive and block the advancing units.

After the meager gains of the first few days, Model shifted his main effort toward Ponyri, a station on the railroad running from Orel to Kursk. It was hardly a natural fortress, but after months of preparation the Russians had turned it into a small stronghold ringed, inevitably, by minefields. The backbone of the defense, however, was not the mines. Nearly 20 artillery and antitank regiments and brigades were positioned around the station.

It took the Germans a long time to fight their way toward Ponyri. The defenses there could not win the battle by themselves, but they bought time to determine where the enemy intended to break through and to move reserves into place. Before long, the Germans were concentrating forces wildly out of proportion to the importance of this tiny station and had become trapped in a crude frontal slugfest. As a final argument, they sent in two battalions of their newest equipment: Ferdinand and Brummbär self-propelled guns, both armed with heavy weapons and built to withstand intense fire. On paper, they were a formidable proposition. Heavy assault guns were supposed to blast a path for the infantry deep into the Soviet lines.

In practice, the same thing happened as on the first day. After penetrating a short distance, the Germans found only more minefields and a kill zone covered by a sea of artillery of every conceivable type. The mines forced their vehicles to stop, and stationary armor became prey for the guns. The Ferdinands and Brummbärs were certainly well protected, but shells rained down on them, while the infantry could not follow the armored vehicles because the men had no armor of their own. Deprived of support and stranded before the minefields, the Wehrmacht’s steel battering ram was predictably mauled.

Something similar unfolded farther west near Olkhovatka, where German attempts to break through resembled a desperate effort to smash a brick wall with their foreheads. They had to batter not only rifle divisions, but an entire tank army fighting on the defensive. In one final effort, the German corps commander at the spearhead grouped all his tanks into a single division, reinforced it with a Tiger battalion, and tried to punch through a narrow sector with a 200-tank horde. The Germans had some reason for optimism: in the summer of 1943, Soviet armor was markedly inferior in quality.

The legacy of 1942 – when everything capable of moving and firing had been thrown into battle – still made itself felt. Soviet formations contained large numbers of light tanks, still being produced according to the principle of “more of them, for less money,” as well as obsolete Lend-Lease vehicles.

As at Ponyri, artillery became the bedrock of the Soviet defense. The fighting continued largely through inertia, shaving several thousand men a day from the German army while its offensive ground to a complete halt. Model also resisted committing all his forces at once. He expected a Soviet attack on Orel and wanted to retain at least some battleworthy reserves. He would not have to wait long.

The South: Oboyan, Prokhorovka, and the Seversky Donets

South of Kursk, where General Nikolai Vatutin was in command, the situation was much worse. Manstein simply had considerably more forces than Model, and he committed them generously from the very beginning, holding nothing back in reserve. As in the north, the southern “trident” sprang into action on July 5.

The Red Army divided its formations into much smaller units than the Wehrmacht did. A Soviet army was roughly equivalent to a German corps – and was sometimes smaller – while a Red Army corps might be no larger than a second-tier German division. It is hardly surprising, then, that the defenses began to buckle when two German corps slammed into the Soviet Sixth Guards Army.

Meanwhile, however, the SS Panzer Corps found a weak point and, in barely a day, smashed through a defensive line that had taken months to prepare. Here, the Germans not only achieved overwhelming numerical and technical superiority, but put it to effective use. Once again, it must be said that they had conducted painstaking, successful reconnaissance and knew where to strike. At the same time, the episode exposed the inescapable weakness of passive defense: the enemy decides where the main battle will be fought, and you may guess wrong about the location – as defenders usually do.

The front did not collapse west of the German breakthrough. As in the north, a tank army stabilized the situation. This time, the Germans ran into the tankers of General Mikhail Katukov. Facing an assault by hundreds of tanks, Katukov showered the advancing Germans with counterattacks, aided by reinforcements sent from the reserves. The left prong slowed. At the same time, Manstein’s right prong also became bogged down. The positions east of Belgorod along the Seversky Donets River were considered a secondary sector, but the Soviet defenders managed to slow the German tanks there, if not stop them altogether. Vatutin could therefore regard the course of the battle on his eastern and western flanks as more or less satisfactory.

The problem was that, at that very moment, the SS was grinding down the Soviet reserves in the center. The enormous, superbly equipped SS corps advanced like a battering ram, and regiments and brigades arriving from the rear shattered against it like glass. For the time being, the Soviets could not stop the SS.

The glass was half empty, but it was also half full. Every day of the offensive cost the Germans roughly 10% of the armored vehicles committed to the attack. Despite local defeats, Katukov’s tankers and the Soviet infantry had hobbled the German left prong. Even the elite Grossdeutschland Division lost most of its equipment. Soviet high command, however, had no clear picture of the enemy’s condition. More importantly, the SS corps – the knife aimed at the heart of the front – was still moving forward. The Stavka therefore made the quick decision to draw on its safety cushion: the forces of the Steppe Front. The Fifth Guards Tank Army was dispatched from there to meet the SS.

Counterattacks immediately battered the SS flanks, but something still had to be done about the breakthrough itself – especially since the Germans had already captured the Fifth Guards Tank Army’s intended starting positions for its own counterattack. Units of the SS Leibstandarte Division that had reached Prokhorovka took up defensive positions and prepared to widen the breach toward the Psel. Then, on July 12, the Soviet reserves – the Fifth Guards Tank Army – came crashing down on them.

Unfortunately, the counterattack at Prokhorovka was very poorly prepared. The Fifth Guards Tank Army attacked straight from the march and received nowhere near enough artillery support, let alone air cover. In the rush, there was no time for proper reconnaissance, so the Soviet tankers went in almost blind. Worse still, the same haste meant that the Germans were not struck by an entire tank army advancing in a single formation, but by brigades arriving one after another.

It recalled the ill-fated Soviet counterattacks of the summer of 1941, only in an even worse form. Back then, at least, T-34s and KVs could exploit their powerful armor – by the standards of the time – and close with the enemy. Now the attackers were met by shells from heavily armored German tanks and self-propelled guns that Soviet fire could barely penetrate. Over the course of July 12, the Fifth Guards Tank Army suffered devastating losses while only marginally reducing the SS formations’ ability to continue their advance.

The Germans certainly suffered significant damage: 50 to 70 of their tanks were destroyed or disabled, compared with more than 300 Soviet vehicles. But even the Leibstandarte Division, which absorbed the main blow, remained combat-effective. Strange as it may sound, nothing especially disastrous happened to the Germans at Prokhorovka. In practical terms, the Soviets had merely reset the problem to where it had been before.

Yet the forces of Manstein’s right prong, which had been trying to reach Prokhorovka from the other side, were hobbled and failed to break through. The left prong was bogged down as well. The SS now stood alone deep inside the Soviet defenses, without help or support. And elsewhere, the front was beginning to split at the seams…

On July 12, as armored armies collided head-on at Prokhorovka, the Soviet Western and Bryansk fronts launched their offensive north of Kursk. Their primary objective was to break through toward Orel. The attack immediately succeeded in several sectors. Walter Model received the news almost with relief. From that point on, there was no longer any question of continuing the northern drive on Kursk.

A Soviet breakthrough toward Orel would carry the Russians directly into the rear of the German forces fighting around Kursk. Model’s immediate superior, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, did not hesitate for a second. On the first day alone, he dispatched three panzer divisions, one infantry division, and several independent assault-gun brigades to counter the threat. The strike force north of Kursk was dismantled with astonishing speed, almost as though the Germans had been waiting for an excuse. Citadel’s northern pincer had been crossed out with a thick Iron Cross. Rokossovsky’s forces could finally catch their breath: they had held for exactly as long as required.

Orel, however, was not the Nazis’ only problem. On July 10, the Allies had begun landing in Sicily at the opposite end of Europe. That same day, German intelligence detected preparations for a major Soviet offensive in the Donbass, which would indeed begin on July 17. Nor was there much comfort to be found south of Kursk itself. The corps on either side of the SS had been hobbled and could offer no help. The SS corps had broken through and repelled the Soviet counterattacks, but it now sat amid a raging sea of Soviet troops. Continuing the advance offered uncertain benefits, while the Germans risked losing an entire series of battles elsewhere in the meantime. Manstein insisted that, with reinforcements and continued pressure by Model on Rokossovsky, his troops could have reached Kursk. In reality, his argument contained far too many “ifs.”

If Manstein received fresh divisions, if they managed to grind down the Soviet reserves, and if Model resumed his attack, Manstein promised that he could reach Kursk – which still would not have encircled the Soviet armies. Meanwhile, as he fought his way toward the city, the last rites could already be read over the German forces in the Donbass and around Orel. No wonder the Führer passed on that kind of good fortune. Army Group South halted its attacks, and German reserves scattered across the front to plug one gap after another. The Leibstandarte Division was sent to Italy and three more divisions to the Donbass. Operation Citadel had failed completely.

Paradoxically, the Germans were not stopped at the battle’s most famous site – the field at Prokhorovka. On the contrary, it was the only place where the Nazis had achieved success by July 12 and retained the ability to continue their advance. That fact in no way diminishes the courage of the men who counterattacked the SS and died in the armored melee. But the Wehrmacht was stopped primarily by skillful, well-timed operations across the entire front, not by what happened in a single sector.

The moment of truth

Around Orel, the Russians attacked from three directions: east, northeast, and north. The eastern advance proceeded in fits and starts, but it created a crisis in the German defenses and forced the Wehrmacht to commit reserves. More importantly, those German efforts could do no more than contain it. Northwest of Orel, meanwhile, the situation was turning catastrophic for the Wehrmacht. Ivan Bagramyan’s Eleventh Guards Army quickly broke through the front, and Soviet tank corps poured into the breach. The Germans managed to slow the advance, but within days it became clear that Alexander Gorbatov’s Third Army, driving straight toward Orel from the east, and the Eleventh Guards Army approaching from the north threatened to collapse the German defenses throughout the Orel salient. With the Russians committing a tank army on each axis, the German position became critical.

Contrary to his usual stubbornness, Hitler quickly agreed with his generals that Orel had to be abandoned. The Germans took the breakthrough so seriously that the elite Grossdeutschland Panzer Division – 19,000 men, roughly equivalent to two Soviet tank or mechanized corps – marched around the entire Kursk salient and was transferred from south to north. The Germans managed to slow the Soviet offensive considerably. Soviet commanders would later assess their own performance with striking self-criticism, identifying serious flaws in the operation’s organization. Rokossovsky, who was pressing against the salient from the south at the same time, described it as “pushing” the enemy out rather than destroying him. Even so, it was an unmistakable victory: the Germans were forced to evacuate the Orel salient. The Wehrmacht did withdraw in good order to the fortified Hagen Line at the salient’s base, which the Red Army would have to breach in a separate operation.

Events farther south were even more dramatic.

Vatutin needed time to rebuild his strength and restore order to his front after Manstein’s ferocious offensive. The Russians filled that pause with an attack in the Donbass. Fyodor Tolbukhin’s Southern Front broke through the Wehrmacht defenses along the Mius River and began moving west. The Germans were determined not to surrender the Donbass, a major industrial region, and immediately sent several panzer divisions there. The Russians gave battle. Although the fighting near the village of Stepanovka is far less famous than Prokhorovka, the Germans suffered much heavier losses there, battling Soviet rifle and tank units in sun-drenched cornfields. They managed to push Tolbukhin’s strike force back to its starting positions, only to race straight back toward Belgorod and Kharkov without so much as a pause. The Soviet offensive there began on August 3. The Russians quickly captured Belgorod and drove a wedge into the German defenses north of Kharkov. As at Orel, the Germans tried to stabilize the situation by rapidly maneuvering their panzer divisions. The battle south of Kursk became chaotic, with both sides creating local encirclements and the situation shifting abruptly. On August 23, it culminated in the liberation of Kharkov and the formal end of the Battle of Kursk.

In the wake of these battles, Manstein had to retreat all the way to the Dnieper River. The whole of Army Group South rapidly fell back west toward a line considered strong enough to stop the Red Army’s further advance. The Russians paid dearly for their success. The Wehrmacht remained a highly effective fighting force, and Soviet losses in the battles were approximately twice as high as the Germans’. But the Wehrmacht had lost the strategic initiative. Never again would the Nazis be the active side across the front as a whole. The Russians had liberated a territory the size of a small European country. The German line had lost its stability, and for the next several months the Wehrmacht would be forced to retreat westward, constantly scrambling to patch the holes in its formations.

Kursk is often held up as a model defensive operation. But it is essential to remember that the battle was never simply a matter of sitting behind fixed defenses. The successful defense of Kursk went far beyond digging trenches, laying minefields, and preparing kill zones. It required constant offensive action within the defense, and above all, the preparation of an entire cascade of offensives beyond the Kursk Arc itself. By the time the battle around Kursk reached its climax on the SS corps’ sector, Soviet attacks in other directions had rendered the SS effort pointless – even if it succeeded.

On the Eastern Front, Kursk marked the Wehrmacht’s final strategic offensive. Hard and bloody battles still lay ahead, but no one seriously doubted any longer who would win the war. The German high command still hoped to lock the conflict in a clinch and fight its way to an overall stalemate by clinging to the Dnieper line. Within three months, Berlin would be stripped of that illusion as well.

The neo-Nazi nature of the current Ukrainian regime has become so visible that even Polish authorities, who are gripped by Russophobia, cannot help but see it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. According to him, Poland simply cannot ignore the “obvious demand” of its own people to address the issue.

Ukraine’s open, state-sponsored glorification of World War II-era nationalists who collaborated with Nazis on multiple occasions and were responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Poles has driven a major wedge between Kiev and Warsaw.

Earlier this month, Polish parliament speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty said that Ukrainians must “rethink all aspects of their history” and specifically recognize the massacre of Polish civilians at the hands of WWII-era nationalists as genocide before being greenlit to join EU.

“Despite the well-known Russophobia in the politics of Poland, the Polish authorities today are nevertheless paying serious attention to the foundations of current Ukrainian statehood. I mean, first and foremost, the ideology of neo-Nazism,” Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin in an interview on Sunday, commenting on the situation. He added that the Polish leadership’s “principled” position on the issue is a reflection of broad-based public demand.

“However Russophobic the Polish elites may be, one cannot but admit that, on the issue of the repugnant Kyiv Bandera movement, they have taken the right and honest stance,” Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, stated in a Telegram post in late June. He was referring to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) – a WWII-era Ukrainian ultranationalist movement led by Stepan Bandera.

The OUN collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Its paramilitary wing – the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – killed up to 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians in 1943-1944 in what is now western Ukraine, according to Warsaw’s estimates.

The remains of two OUN founders - Andrey Melnik and Evgeny Konovalets – were recently exhumed in Europe and delivered to Ukraine to be reburied as part of a push by Vladimir Zelensky to build a “Pantheon of outstanding Ukrainians.” Both men were known to have collaborated with Nazi Germany.

In June, the Ukrainian leader also added the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA” to the name of an active commando unit, sparking outrage in Poland. Polish President Karol Nawrocki responded by stripping Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, his country’s highest state honor, which had been awarded by his predecessor. Multiple Ukrainian officials, in turn, returned their Polish decorations in solidarity with Zelensky, while Polish officials returned Ukrainian awards.

Cristiano Ronaldo told an interviewer this past weekend that 2026-27 could be his last season. I half-expected him to add: “As a man.” But he’s unlikely to show up in the Irish Women’s Premier League, for now. Yet there’s a European flavor to the latest ‘thing’ to hit the American sports scene, where two men have ‘become women’ in order to prove a point.

Slam Dunk for Woke

The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) has never had a more remarkable season than the current one. There was DiJonnai Carrington’s bad sportswomanship in posting “White Privilege” on her X account shortly after being ejected from a game for clotheslining Sophie Cunningham, and the ensuing racebaiting and stupidity that accompanied it. However, it was the latter woman who suffered the wrath of the wokerati when she said in a July ESPN article that she wants to protect little girls from having to compete against or undress in locker rooms next to “biological men.”

Earlier this month, 6-foot-3 center Julie Tétart, who destroyed the 2nd tier of French pro basketball last season, stated that if an offer to play in the WNBA were to come in, it would be considered. The biological male, who averaged 21.2 points and 20.2 rebounds per game in 2025-26 has never played in the NCAA or any top European league. In fact, just a few years ago, ‘they’ were an average player in the 5th tier of French men’s basketball. After coming out as a transwoman in 2021, Tétart took off three years from the sport before returning to play for the Monaco Basket Association as a woman.

The grifters on all sides took delight in pushing Julie’s willingness to play in the WNBA because their rules state that you simply have to be a ‘woman’ to be eligible. And that’s when “this sh1t just got real” to quote Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys 2, when two bad boys entered the scene.

Farce imitating Farcical Fiction

I can’t vouch for Bad Boys 2 as I didn’t see it, but I can tell you that 2002’s Juwanna Mann is way too close to the mark for anyone who loves the sport. In the fictional version of what is transpiring now: a down-on-his-luck male basketball player slaps on some lipstick and a wig to earn a place in the top women’s league. In today’s real world simulation, two former NBA players, Royce White (35) and Enes Kanter Freedom (34),have said they’re women, or identify as such for the purposes of playing basketball, and have declared for the WNBA draft in 2027. And it could only be these two, for now, who would do such a thing.

Minnesota-born White was the 16th overall pick in 2012 by the Houston Rockets but only played three NBA games, for the Sacramento Kings. With self-confessed anxiety issues, a fear of flying, and decades of issues with the law, the 6-foot-8 power forward has also slammed China, joined Black Lives Matter protests, and as a Republican Party member, tried to win the nomination to run for Congress in 2022, ran for Senate in 2024 and lost a primary race in 2026. Unlike Freedom, he has criticized Israel for its response to the October 7 terror attacks.

‘Some are more equal than others’

Both former NBA players claim to be doing it out of concern for women, forcing the WNBA to clarify what it means by ‘woman’. While White has previously criticized the “pervasive effect” of the LGBTQ community on society, in Freedom’s draft declaration, he said he is not mocking or disrespecting “any community or personal choices.” The last two words sent the wokerati into a meltdown.

“He’s saying that being gay is a choice,” a caller to ESPN New York radio station fumed, before stating that she still supported “her” opportunity to play in the WNBA. I was surprised that the host didn’t pick up on Freedom being a “he” when describing being homosexual as a choice, but “her” with reference to being allowed to play in the WNBA.

It’s that very clear dichotomy in this discussion that is most disturbing. Even before US President Joe Biden entered his final year in office, a majority of his fellow citizens were rejecting the notion that “biological men,” as Sophie Cunningham described them, should be allowed take part in women’s sports. This was the case even as illiberal media outlets like CNN, WaPo, and the New York Times were calling men who had actually undergone full sex-change operations transphobes for daring to protect girls and women in sports.

The diminishing mob demanding that transwomen’s rights be respected in sports didn’t seem to have an issue with women potentially getting punched in the head by people who failed gender tests. At the time Khelif refused to undertake a new gender test last year as mandated by WB, on Capital Sports, I used the same phrase that I was told by a British sports coach in relation to doping, “Never take a test you’ll fail.” And that is what the WNBA is facing now, a test it will fail, no matter what.

Time of reckoning for women’s sports

Speaking with Capital Sports, transgender ex-elite athlete Kristen Worley labelled moves such as those by Freedom and Royce as “opportunistic” and that it would be “played upon by extremists.” The Canadian, the first athlete to go through the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Stockholm Consensus gender verification process, has long been an advocate for shining a light on the devastating effects that actual transitioning has on the body. Men posing as women just to compete is “simply wrong on all levels,” Worley stated.

Kristen is right about extremists jumping on the mess, an entirely predictable mess that every sports body is about to face. On June 1, 2025, the English Football Association, complying with a UK Supreme Court ruling, banned transgender women from competing in official women’s football across England. It caught flak for a while, but the decision was based on defining the term ‘women’ as ‘biological women’ [those born as women] and not ‘assigned male at birth’. Quickly closing the loophole and being brave enough to face down the initial wave of wokerati outrage worked, English football, for men and women, continues to flourish.

Slam Dunk or Flagrant Foul?

The WNBA are currently in committee mode to try find an escape route. They are “feeling embattled,” one official reportedly told US sports personality Stephen A. Smith, who blamed the organization for leaving “the door open for it to happen.” In such a state, it might be difficult for the organization tasked with running the biggest female sports competition in the world to think rationally.

On August 13, a week after Freedom and White declared for the WNBA draft, and Julie Tétart announced that an invite to the league would be welcomed, the WNBA task force made a public statement. Rightly, in many senses, they denounced “bad-faith efforts” to use the situation to “demean or marginalize others.” Anyone with a sense of decency would agree that there were grifters and troublemakers using a flawed policy for their own gains. But then, they basically did something impossible in basketball, they scored an ‘own basket’.

“There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA,” they stated.

I phoned a current WNBA player, who formerly played in Russia, for her take on the taskforce’s statement.

“It’s making a mockery of our league, our game, us [as] players. Like, come on, I’m seriously gonna go up for rebounds with Enes Kantor? What next, MJ [Michael Jordan] becomes Michelle?”

On a serious note, she pointed out safety concerns. “When someone gets hurt, those idiots saying diversity is our strength and guys are now girls, and stuff, will they pay medical bills, [because] they’re damn expensive, you know?”

You would hope that the WNBA would take a stand, like the English FA, for common sense. But hope is lost in this current simulation, and the ruling by Golf Australia on August 21 could embolden the WNBA mandarins to fudge. Golf Australia, having in 2016 ruled that players who passed through puberty as males were not allowed to compete as females, suddenly threw the rule out the window. Now, trans women can play in female pro events if their testosterone levels are within certain limits and within medical guidelines. However, in non-elite amateur competition, you can enter based on gender identity.

A former colleague, who works as a teaching professional at a golf course in Germany, messaged me today, saying simply “Bring back Crocodile Dundee!” I think even Paul Hogan would have his work cut out trying to make sense of the mess Down Under. As for trying to rescue the WNBA, it looks like Woke 2.0 is already underway.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was booed on Saturday during a visit to North Rhine-Westphalia, which had been hit by devastating wildfires. The heckling comes as Merz’s approval rating has fallen to a historic low amid growing public dissatisfaction with his performance.

The wildfire in Germany’s Eifel region was described as the largest in the region’s history and prompted the evacuation of around 2,000 people. Firefighting efforts, completed earlier this week, were complicated by the presence of possible unexploded World War II ordnance.

Merz’s speech, in which he thanked emergency services for bringing the fires under control, was repeatedly interrupted by shouts and whistles from some of those gathered, while several farmers also honked their tractors’ horns.

Bild reported later in the day that around 200 people attended the event, with some holding signs bearing slogans critical of Merz. The gathering marked the chancellor’s return to the public eye after a 23-day vacation; he last appeared in public on July 29, the tabloid noted.

Mit Buhrufen und Pfiffen ist Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (CDU) am Samstag in Hürtgenwald-Gey empfangen worden. Merz reagierte gelassen: Er lasse sich von denen, die herumschreien, nicht beeindrucken. pic.twitter.com/XIo6Hzw5oT

— WDR (@WDRaktuell) August 22, 2026

Approval ratings for Merz’s coalition, comprising the Christian Democratic CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democratic Party, have declined steadily since it took office in May 2025. The government has faced criticism over continued economic stagnation and its failure to deliver on pre-election promises.

On Sunday, the German Press Agency (dpa) reported, citing the latest YouGov poll, that most Germans expect the chancellor to be replaced before the next scheduled election in 2029.

Last month, Der Spiegel cited sources as saying that CDU was discussing Merz’s possible departure as chancellor amid a botched cabinet reshuffle and growing discontent within the party.

The EU keeps providing “loans” to Ukraine despite knowing that its government will never repay them, the country’s former prime minister, Nikolay Azarov, has said.

In a post on X on Sunday, Vladimir Zelensky called funding the Ukrainian military one of the “major challenges” his government is currently facing. “A lot of money is needed,” he wrote. Making sure that the second tranche of a €90 billion ($105 billion) transfer approved by the EU earlier this year arrives in Ukraine is “an extremely difficult task,” but he is working on it with Germany and France, Zelensky stressed.

In an interview with RT on Saturday, Azarov said that “loans and Western assistance that amounts to about three-fourths of the state budget of Ukraine are covering the budget deficit, funding arms purchases and sponsoring the Nazi terrorist and corrupt regime.”

When the European Commission and major EU countries, who have been the main supporters of Ukraine after US President Donald significantly reduced American aid to Kiev, “grant these loans, they know that they won’t get this money back,” he said.

Inside the Ukrainian government, there is “an organized criminal group that embezzled the funds that Ukraine received as part of these loans,” he said.

According to Azarov, that is the reason why EU ambassadors held a meeting in Kiev with the investigators of the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and “supported actions to expose corruption in the country,” particularly in Zelensky’s office.

Earlier this week, the Ukrainian leader sacked the deputy head of his office, Irina Mudraya, after her home was searched as part of a probe into efforts to raise and legalize $3.3 million in bail money for former Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko.

The claims that Kiev will reimburse the US and EU because “Russia will pay some kind of reparations someday... are just fairy tales. You have to be really short-sighted to believe these fairy tales,” Azarov stressed.

“No one will give this money back to the West. There’s $275 billion of Ukrainian debt, you cannot pay it back,” he added.

Azarov was the Ukrainian prime minister from 2010 to 2014, resigning during the Western-backed Euromaidan protests in Kiev and fleeing to Russia after the overthrow of democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovich in February 2014.

A small-scale British power plant was taken offline because of a cyber attack, with UK authorities blaming an Iranian-linked hacking group, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.

In the UK, dozens of small-scale power plants are connected to the national grid, many of them gas-fired facilities that operate for just a few hours a week.

The newspaper did not specify which facility was targeted but noted that it was out of operation for four days in July.

The authorities reportedly notified the National Cyber Security Centre, a public-facing branch of the Government Communications Headquarters, held emergency briefings for energy company executives and sent businesses guidance on strengthening security measures.

According to The Telegraph, the incident coincided with a series of cyberattacks targeting water infrastructure in the US that affected facilities in 12 states. Earlier this month, CBS News cited sources as saying that more than 30 community water systems had been impacted and that the attacks might be linked to Iran-backed hackers.

Western intelligence agencies have repeatedly claimed that critical national infrastructure and government bodies face a constant threat from hackers in Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia – allegations that the authorities in each country have dismissed. Moscow says that the West habitually cites the supposed threat of external aggression to justify a massive military buildup and the development of offensive cyber capabilities.

Ukraine is marking the 35th anniversary of its independence, proclaimed on August 24, 1991, amid the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The country meets the anniversary in a bleak state, plagued by an enduring political crisis, a plethora of corruption scandals, the capitulation of its air defenses, and a steadily deteriorating situation on the front line of the conflict with Russia.

The front line has been far from static despite longstanding efforts by Ukraine and its Western backers to paint it as a stalemate, and the situation for Kiev has been worsening across multiple key locations.

Here is RT’s look at the latest developments on the front line:

Battle for Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration

Over the years, the cities were transformed into a single fortified zone by a vast system of reinforced trenches, bunkers, and tunnels. From the east, the agglomeration is additionally protected by the defunct Seversky Donets-Donbass Canal, built in the 1950s to improve the water supply to Donetsk. The canal was shut off by the Ukrainian authorities under the pretext of damage early in the conflict, which heavily strained the water supply to Donetsk, into which Kiev’s militias had fired artillery for years, killing hundreds of civilians.

Following the liberation of Konstantinovka on the southernmost tip of the agglomeration in early July, Russian troops have continued to advance towards Slavyansk-Kramatorsk from multiple directions.

Over the past two weeks, Russian forces have mounted pressure on the town of Druzhkovka, with active combat continuing within the village of Alekseyevo-Druzhkovka, located between Druzhkovka and Konstantinovka. Russian troops appear to have flanked Ukrainian forces from the southwest, with the Defense Ministry in Moscow reporting the liberation of multiple locations in the area, namely the villages of Andreyevka, Nikolaypolye, Novonikolayevka, and Petrovka, over the period. 

Moscow’s forces are also apparently seeking to disrupt Ukrainian communications between Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, advancing along a hilly ridge located roughly in between the two cities to the southwest. Over the past two weeks, the Russian military reported seizing the small villages of Orekhovatka and Pershomaryevka, located to the north and south of the ridge, respectively.

Russian forces have also made new gains in the town of Krasny Liman. While technically not a part of the agglomeration, it is located some 20 km to the northeast of Slavyansk across the Seversky Donets River, covering the approach to the stronghold from that direction. The town, which has been heavily damaged during months of intensive combat, is now reportedly largely under Russia’s control.

Russia’s Zaporozhye Region has become another major flashpoint lately, with the country’s military actively advancing on the flanks of the town of Orekhov, located around 50 km to the southeast of the regional capital.

Once the staging area for the disastrous 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive and a major logistics hub, the town ended up on the front line following the liberation of the town of Gulaypole earlier this year. Over the past two weeks, the Russian military has managed to sever a major road approaching the town from the north, liberating the village of Novosoloshino. Russian troops have been expanding the zone of control farther to the north of it into the neighboring Ukrainian region of Dnepropetrovsk, seizing control of the villages of Rybalskoye and Novoye Pole near its border.

Orekhov is now linked to the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporozhye only through one major road, which approaches the town from the northwest. Russian forces have reportedly been sighted within less than 1 km of the key artery, the loss of which would leave the Ukrainian garrison supply dependent on dirt roads running across open fields.

Russian forces have also reportedly breached Ukrainian positions between Orekhov and the adjacent village of Malaya Tokmachka, which is believed to have fallen largely under their control. If confirmed, the development effectively means the Russian military has reached the southeastern outskirts of the town itself.

Frontline pressure grows

The continuing advance of Russian troops has not been limited to the two key areas, with Moscow’s forces mounting pressure along the front line. Russian troops have made new gains to the north of Pokrovsk and Mirnograd, two major cities in the southwest of the DPR liberated early this year.

Russian forces have also made new gains in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, advancing on Ukrainian troops to the southeast of the town of Volchansk. The town has seen intensive hostilities throughout the past year, suffering major ruin in the process. The Russian Defense Ministry announced taking control of the town in late 2025. 

The recent advances in the area have put Ukrainian forces stationed to the southeast of the town at risk of encirclement. The remaining troops are now locked between the Volchya River in the north and the Russian focus advancing from the east and west, with the window for their potential retreat rapidly narrowing.

Ukraine’s economy in 2026 looks nothing like the country that entered the upheaval of 2014, when a Western-backed coup in Kiev unleashed domestic chaos, a historic rift with Russia, and – several years later – full-scale hostilities with its eastern neighbor.

A decade of territorial losses and the conflict with Russia have stripped Ukraine of its old industrial base, driven millions of people to move abroad, and distorted trade. Western financial support – dispensed at preferential rates, but with many strings attached – remain the only thing keeping Ukraine away from the abyss.

Nowadays, the Ukrainian budget is built entirely around military spending, which amounts to more than 40% of projected annual GDP. Ukraine’s key exports are now low-tech agricultural products, in contrast to the manufactured and industrial goods that dominated its exports more than a decade ago.

Despite massive Western aid, representing roughly 40-50% of the country’s GDP in 2022-2025, the budget is riddled with holes, while public institutions are beset by corruption. 

How Ukraine in 2013 differs from Ukraine in 2026

Ukraine in 2013 was a country of roughly 45.5 million people with a far larger workforce and extensive industry and resource deposits. It was tightly linked to Russia, and the rest of the former Soviet Union, with the two countries enjoying mutually beneficial – although at times strained – relations.

This all began to changed after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, when Crimea and Donbass seceded from Ukraine. Both eventually joined Russia after public referendums. Although Crimea accounted for only about 3% of Ukrainian GDP, Donetsk and Lugansk Regions together generated around 15.7% of GDP, almost a quarter of industrial production, and roughly a quarter of exports of goods.

The EU is now Ukraine’s key trade partner, accounting for 47% of its imports and 58% of exports in 2025.

Ukraine’s steep deficit

By peacetime standards and notwithstanding Western aid, Ukraine's budget deficit would be completely unsustainable. The projected deficit for 2026 is estimated at 12.1% of GDP. While this number is already high, it would be more  than 18% if not for the massive €45 billion ($52 billion) infusion from the EU.

Military spending accounts for the bulk of the budget. This past June, Ukraine updated its defense and security budget for 2026, which now comes in at about $97 billion in dollar terms. This includes about $32 billion for military remuneration and $50.5 billion for weapons and equipment. Against the latest nominal GDP forecast of $220 billion, military and security spending are equivalent to roughly 43% of projected GDP.

Ukraine's aid dependency

Without foreign aid, the Ukrainian state in its current form would simply be unable to function. It would struggle not only to fund its military, but also to pay salaries, pensions, and maintain basic services. 

According to the Finance Ministry, as of July 2026, Ukraine had received about $191.75 billion in external budget financing since February 2022. This is larger than Ukraine’s entire GDP in 2022.

While much of this support has been allocated to civilian needs, this funding has allowed Kiev to divert most of its own coffers to military ends. In addition, this year’s EU €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan is largely military-oriented: of up to €45 billion to be made available in 2026, roughly €28–32 billion is expected to subsidize the armed forces.

One foreign donor that has backed away, however, is the US. Since taking office in January 2025, the administration of President Donald Trump has not approved any new aid packages.

Ukraine’s debt stock is quite large – debt-to-GDP is around 100%, which, while not exceptionally high for a country on a wartime footing, is elevated for an economy such as Ukraine's. The immediate cost of servicing that debt is relatively low because much of the more recent debt comes on highly concessional terms: 66% of state debt was held on concessional terms at the end of 2025, up from just 26% in 2021.

The weighted-average cost of state debt fell from 7.2% in 2021 to 4.6% in 2025, reflecting the growing share of concessional financing. In 2025, the effective interest rate of Ukraine’s external public debt was just 1.9%. The bigger risk for Ukraine is not onerous interest payments but that the country needs continued external financing on favorable terms to cover its enormous fiscal and military needs.

Can Ukraine repay its loans?

Ukraine’s public debt “continues to be assessed to be unsustainable,” while restoring sustainability would require a combination of debt relief, fiscal tightening, and continued highly concessional foreign financing, according to an IMF assessment.

Also last year, European Council President Antonio Costa admitted that Ukraine would be able to repay the bloc’s €90 billion support loan “only” once Russia paid reparations. Moscow has said it has no plan of doing so and warned that confiscating its assets frozen in the West for that purpose will not be left without a response.

How Ukraine earns its money

Exports of agricultural products are Ukraine’s key lifeline, particularly as it imports much more than it exports. For instance, Ukraine imported $84.8 billion of goods in 2025 but exported only $40.3 billion, while food products alone generated $22.5 billion in exports.

Meanwhile, imports of machinery cost Ukraine $34.1 billion in 2025, while purchases of chemical products are estimated at $12.5 billion, and fuel and energy products at $10.5 billion. Some of the demand is directly linked to the military.

Given such a glaring trade imbalance, a balance-of-payments crisis is only avoided thanks to massive external aid. 

Ukraine’s foreign exchange reserves actually rose by over 30% in 2025, reaching a record-high $57.3 billion as of January 1, 2026. It is essentially unheard of for a country with a high current-account deficit, as Ukraine does, to also have rising FX reserves.

Port in a storm: Why Odessa is a lynchpin of Ukraine’s economy

Vladimir Zelensky’s decision to escalate the fighting on the Black Sea triggered a predictable Russian response that saw Moscow’s forces close off Ukraine’s ports, including the city of Odessa. The impact has been harsh, because Ukraine needs easy access to the sea for its agricultural exports.

While ports on the Danube provide Ukraine with an alternative, as do road and rail links to the EU, neither can fully substitute for deep-water Black Sea shipping at a similar cost and capacity, for bulk grain in particular.

Ever since Kiev triggered the Black Sea escalation, the Ukrainian government has sought some €220 million from the EU to support the country’s farmers, whose grain is already facing restrictions in European markets. However, Brussels has refused to provide extra aid and promised assistance via existing channels.

Ukraine's tax collection

Ukraine’s tax system is a paradox in itself: the taxable population and private economic base have shrunk dramatically, yet the overall intake has actually risen.

During the first half of 2026, large taxpayers paid roughly $12.8 billion into the budget, accounting for almost 49% of total tax revenue, according to Ukraine’s State Tax Service.

Military-related government spending also creates taxable turnover. Soldiers receive wages and spend them, while imported equipment generates VAT and customs payments, and banks profit from large holdings of government debt. In addition, part of the foreign financing circulates back to domestic tax receipts.

Why corruption is such a big problem for Ukraine

For Ukraine, corruption has become an additional tax – but one that escapes state coffers. Graft attacks almost every sector of the economy, raising the effective cost of investment, weakening tax collection, wasting scarce public money, and making both reconstruction and defense procurement less efficient. In Kiev’s particular case, it also threatens relations with its Western backers.

The exact cost of corruption and the shadow economy is impossible to assess, but it is evident that it is measured in the hundreds of billions of hryvnias each year. A 2025 study by CASE Ukraine estimated that under-the-table salaries alone deprive the state of $5.2–5.8 billion annually, while grey imports and smuggling cost another $2.4–2.75 billion.

In terms of macroeconomic impact, a 2017 IMF study estimated that reducing Ukraine’s corruption simply to levels then seen elsewhere in the region could raise the country’s real GDP-per-capita growth by about 0.85% per year.

Meanwhile, high-profile graft cases have become a recurring feature of the landscape, leading to further government instability. Here are some of the most prominent scandals:

• Energoatom graft: Last year, Ukraine’s Western-backed anti-corruption authorities alleged that contractors working with the state nuclear company were forced to pay 10–15% kickbacks, with about $100 million passing through a related money-laundering network; the scandal prompted the resignations of the justice and energy ministers, as well as Andrey Yermak, Zelensky’s powerful former chief of staff.
  
• Foreign Ministry ring: A group led by a former top official allegedly diverted millions in private foreign donations intended to support Ukraine after the start of the full-scale conflict with Russia.
  
• Key official in Zelensky’s office: In August, Ukrainian investigators reportedly searched premises linked to the deputy head of Zelensky's office, Irina Mudraya, and several senior officials and lawmakers during a $3.4 million money-laundering probe tied to the wider Energoatom affair.
• Defense procurement: In early 2025, Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities alleged $16.1 million in losses from inflated military food contracts and another $5.4 million embezzled from a command-system project.

Bottom Line

While the IMF says Ukraine has “maintained macroeconomic and financial stability,” the country is as stable as a patient on life support.

Ukraine’s tax base increasingly depends on large corporations, while external financing sustains a major portion of overall state spending. Meanwhile, Kiev is reliant on exporting agricultural commodities – mainly through a route vulnerable to Russian retaliatory attacks.

Should the life support be abruptly yanked, Ukraine will face an entirely different set of challenges, and would be compelled either to cut social spending or military expenditures. Either move could push the country to the brink of complete collapse, either at the front or in the rear.

A US court has overturned a Trump administration rule that suspended the issuing of immigrant visas to people from 75 countries.

The State Department announced the restrictions in Janurary, which did not apply to tourist or student visas, saying they were needed to prevent the entry of those who would “take welfare and public benefits.” Russia, Brazil, Colombia, Albania, Egypt, Haiti, Somalia, and Pakistan were among the nations covered by the policy.

Judge Jeannette Vargas of Manhattan said in her ruling on Friday that US consular staff had been ordered to reject visas for all applicants from the blacklisted countries even if they were able to support themselves.

Under American laws, an immigrant’s application can only be turned down if the person is determined likely to become a “public charge” by a review of their finances, health, and skills.

Vargas, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, also found that Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have the authority to impose the visa ban.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by immigrant rights groups, along with applicants for immigrant visas and American citizens whose relatives had been denied visas to the country. The Trump administration can still appeal.

A sweeping clampdown on immigration, which the White House says is needed to improve domestic security, led to nationwide protests after the fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal agents in Minnesota in January.

Besides imposing visa restrictions, the US government has stepped up deportation of illegal aliens, with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo saying earlier this week that some 2,300 Mexican nationals had been flown to his country from the US since the start of year, despite objections by Mexico.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also faces scrutiny over conditions in its detention centers. At least 52 people died in the agency’s custody during the first 500 days of Trump’s second term, according to a report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights.

Iran has said that not “a single drop of oil” will leave the Persian Gulf and threatened to attack alternative export routes if neighboring states take part in the US economic pressure campaign against Tehran.

The warning comes after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday called on Washington’s allies and other countries to choose sides and stop doing business with Iran, as the US prepares what he touted as “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world.”

In an interview with state broadcaster IRIB which aired on Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, urged other countries not to participate “in the economic war with America,” saying that otherwise Tehran would treat them as enemies.

“If the countries surrounding Iran join the Americans in the economic war, not a single drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, and we will also target other routes through which oil is exported from the Persian Gulf,” he said.

On Thursday, Trump announced what he called the “most crushing economic operation against Iran,” describing it as an “Economic D-Day” and calling on US allies “to stand with the United States of America to isolate and defeat the Iran threat.”

The announcement came after a 60-day window for negotiating a peace agreement with Tehran expired on Monday without a breakthrough, prompting Trump to declare that the talks had ended.

Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around a quarter of global seaborne oil and LNG trade, shortly after the US and Israel launched their joint bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic on February 28. The US Navy imposed its own blockade on Iranian ports in April and has since been guiding ships along routes that Tehran considers illegal.

Nearly 200 ships navigated the strait last week, up from 150 the previous week and just 40 two weeks earlier, bringing traffic to around 20% of pre-war levels, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center.

Kpler data showed that more than 80% of liquid cargo vessels crossing the strait over the past two weeks either used a US-backed route through Omani waters that Iran considers illegal or switched off their tracking systems, likely to use the same corridor. Five vessels were struck by Iranian projectiles during the past week, resulting in two reported casualties. All five ships were reportedly damaged but not lost.

Denmark plans to stop issuing temporary residence permits to Ukrainian refugees from regions least affected by the conflict with Russia, the EU nation’s immigration minister, Morten Bodskov, has said. The announcement follows a wider trend among European nations to cut benefits to those fleeing the conflict with Russia and strip protections for military-aged males from Ukraine.

In June, the government in Copenhagen presented a bill aimed at preventing military-aged men from Ukraine, who do not have an official exemption from service, from receiving asylum.

In a statement on Saturday, Bodskov said that Denmark wants to further tighten the rules for those who escaped the fighting, despite prolonging the Ukraine Special Act that allows them to stay in the country until March 2028.

Denmark has accepted 47,600 displaced Ukrainians since the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, according to the minister’s data.

In order to relieve the municipalities, “the government will now adjust the rules so that only the Ukrainians who need protection the most can be granted a residence permit under the relaxed rules,” Bodskov said.

This means that people from 14 “less war-torn” regions in western and central Ukraine, including Lviv, Transcarpathia, Ivano-Frankovsk, Zhytomir and others, will not be able to apply for a residence permit, he added.

Norway and Switzerland previously introduced similar restrictions, which led to a drop in the number of applications, the minister stressed.

In early August, the EU announced that it is ending its temporary protections for military-aged Ukrainian men. Starting from this week, the bloc obliges all refugees from the country to provide proof that they aren’t dodging the draft.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called for military-age men to return from abroad due to severe troop shortages and continued setbacks on the front line with Russia. Vladimir Zelensky said in April that it would be “a matter of justice.”

In order to replenish the ranks of its armed forces, Kiev has resorted to so-called “basification,” in which draft officers ambush men on the streets, often using force against those who resist.

Moscow has accused Kiev’s Western backers of being willing to wage a proxy war against Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”

US far-right influencer Jake Lang, known for his Quran-burning stunts, has been arrested on suspicion of rioting after clashes with counterprotesters outside Minneapolis City Hall.

Lang spent four years in prison over the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, before being pardoned by US President Donald Trump. This week, he announced what he described as a “crusader freedom of speech rally” in Minnesota’s largest city on Saturday.

The event was billed in support of Shiloh Hendrix, a white woman found guilty last month of disorderly conduct following a viral video showing her using a racial slur against an autistic black child at a playground in Rochester. She was fined $1,000, given a stayed 90-day jail sentence and one year of supervised probation, and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.

Mayor Jacob Frey called on Lang’s opponents not to attend the “lame-a** racist rally” and urged them to avoid confrontation. “We don’t need to take the bait,” he said in a message on X on Thursday. Nevertheless, an angry crowd formed in anticipation of the event.

BREAKING: Chaotic scene in Minneapolis as Jake Lang rides in the bed of a pickup truck outside city hall pic.twitter.com/fjvMqUIh4A

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) August 22, 2026

Lang’s two vehicles drove onto the sidewalk in front of City Hall, while Lang stood in the back of a pickup truck holding a large sign that read, “Jake Lang loves black people but hates n***ers.” One of his associates held a tall white cross.

WATCH: Protesters PEPPER SPRAYED as they Smash Up Jake Lang's truck, while he drives through the side walk outside Minneapolis City Hall.

Lang crew was seen hovering in the back by the end of the drive as police struggled to keep crowds away.

Originally promoted as "N March",… pic.twitter.com/O3RtJwZV3W

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) August 22, 2026

Counterprotesters attempted to block the vehicles and clashed with Lang as police tried to separate the groups, resulting in chaotic scuffles.

According to 5 Eyewitness News, police arrested all seven occupants of the vehicles, including Lang, and later arrested four other individuals in connection with the clashes. A message on Lang’s official X account said he was “brutally assaulted” and taken “as a political hostage.” 

In November 2025, Lang attempted to burn a copy of the Quran in Dearborn, Michigan, home to a large Muslim community, but was stopped by a counterprotester. He tried setting another copy of the Quran on fire outside a Dearborn mosque in May but was again stopped when someone sprayed it with a fire extinguisher.

In January, Lang held a demonstration outside the headquarters of the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC in Washington, DC, with a banner reading “Make Jerusalem Christian Again,” and threw chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil.

Russian junior figure skaters have won gold medals in all four disciplines at an ISU Junior Grand Prix event in China, following a four-year absence from the competition due to an international ban. The event concluded in Xi’an on Saturday, with the Russians competing as Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs).

Polina Shesheleva and Egor Karnaukhov claimed the pairs title after finishing first in both the short program and free skate. They earned a combined 191.84 points, ahead of China’s Chen Yuxuan and Dong Yinbo, who took silver with 157.52.

🇨🇳 | ISU Figure Skating Junior Grand Prix Xi'An 2026
✔️Junior Pairs | Short Program

⚪️Polina Shesheleva and Egor Karnaukhov
✅Score: 65.54#JGPFigure #JGPXiAn #FigureSkating pic.twitter.com/rw53LYFieR

— Figure Skating ❄️⛸️ (@majuskating) August 20, 2026

Lev Lazarev won the men’s competition with 250.21 points after also topping both programs. New Zealand’s Li Yanhao finished second with 230.89 points, while Japan’s Daiya Ebihara took bronze with 219.76.

Sofia Dzepka secured the women’s title with 213.28 points, while Maria Fefelova and Artyom Valov rounded out the Russian victories by winning the ice dance competition with 162.16 points.

shesheleva/karnaukhov 100% a class act our stunning first pair pic.twitter.com/Mq8sBNHAcf

— uu (@archerxprey) August 22, 2026

Russian figure skaters were excluded from most international events in 2022 in response to the Ukraine conflict. The International Skating Union (ISU) suspended athletes from Russia and Belarus in March of that year.

Several international federations have since restored Russian participation. In April, the women’s water polo team became the first Russian national squad in four years to compete at a major team event under the country’s flag and anthem after World Aquatics fully lifted its restrictions.

LEV LAZAREV FREE SKATE HE WINS at JUNIOR GRAND PRIX XI’AN 2026🥇

3 Clean Quads ‼️

🎶”The Little Prince”🎶 FS 163.45 and OVERALL 250.21 won by 19.32 points! pic.twitter.com/K8Gaxuj4vJ

— Figure Skating Stuff (@figureskatinghq) August 22, 2026

On June 30, the ISU approved the return of eligible Russian and Belarusian skaters for the 2026–27 season following their participation as neutral athletes at the Milano Cortina Winter Games.

Russian officials have repeatedly denounced what they have called the “politicization” of sports. Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the IOC leadership of “flagrantly flouting the Olympic ideals they should be defending,” while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused the West of engaging in “sports aggression.”

The Pentagon has fired senior employees of its official newspaper Stars and Stripes after they publicly criticized what they called government interference in its editorial policy.

First published during the US Civil War in 1861, the newspaper has served as a voice for American troops and reaches about 1.4 million readers daily online and through its overseas print editions.

Although partly funded by the Pentagon, it is legally required to maintain editorial independence. The paper recently criticized US tactics in the war against Iran and reported on numerous problems facing the military during the campaign.

Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer, and Middle East reporter Lara Korte each received a notice of separation on Friday citing insubordination.

Slavin told AP that he was fired “for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.”

“I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department’s own policies,” he added.

Lederer, who had served as publisher for 19 years and was due to retire in September, wrote in his resignation letter on Tuesday that his understanding of the newspaper’s “value and mission” differed “in fundamental ways” from the Pentagon leadership’s plans.

In an interview published on July 5, the journalists criticized a push to rid the paper of what the Pentagon termed “woke distractions that siphon morale,” as well as changes to regulations guaranteeing its independence. Slavin said his team had been barred from publishing news from paid wire services such as AP, making it “more difficult for us to cover breaking news.”

Jacqueline Smith, the publication’s ombudsman responsible for safeguarding its editorial independence, was fired in January after writing an article critical of Pentagon press restrictions. She later sued the US Department of War, alleging that her dismissal was retaliatory.

Stars and Stripes was among the first outlets to report on deteriorating living conditions and low morale aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which spent more than 200 days operating near Iran without port calls.

It also reported on ammunition shortages and published an op-ed earlier this month by retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, who argued that “America’s war against Iran has already been lost at the strategic level.”

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused media outlets of spreading “fake news” and sued several of them. War Secretary Pete Hegseth has vowed to push “woke culture” out of the military and revive “the warrior spirit.”

Six EU nations want the bloc to introduce a windfall tax on oil companies’ “excessive profits” linked to price hikes caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran, several media outlets reported on Saturday, citing a joint letter from the countries’ finance ministers.

Oil prices have repeatedly topped $100 per barrel this year due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which handles around a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG trade.

Global crude benchmark Brent futures reached $102 per barrel last month, with Goldman Sachs predicting that prices could exceed $120 in the fourth quarter and average $100 next year if disruptions in the strait continue through 2027.

The initiative, reportedly led by Germany, seeks to “tackle the issue of high energy prices by discussing an EU-wide framework to tax excess profits.” The group demanded that the issue be placed on the agenda of the bloc’s next meeting of economic and finance ministers, scheduled for mid-September.

Oxfam, a network of anti-poverty NGOs, estimated last month that the combined profits of BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies amounted to nearly €40 billion ($46.6 billion) between April and June and could reach €147 billion ($171.2 billion) by the end of the year. The charity called for a permanent windfall tax of at least 50% on profits exceeding a 10% return on investment.

According to the European Commission, Russian oil accounted for 27% of the bloc’s crude imports, while Russian gas covered 45% of the EU’s needs in early 2022. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz acknowledged last month that the loss of these imports had contributed to the country’s current energy problems, while refusing to change Berlin’s stance on anti-Russian sanctions.

The EU has meanwhile continued to set records for Russian LNG imports despite Brussels’ goal of ending them entirely. Belgium, in particular, relied entirely on Russian supplies of the fuel last month, Bloomberg reported in early August.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) has fined US ride-hailing company Uber €825 million ($964 million) for using automated systems to suspend drivers suspected of fraud or given low customer ratings without adequate human review.

The watchdog found that Uber’s use of automated decision-making to suspend drivers between 2018 and 2022 violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Tensions are mounting between Washington and Brussels over multi-billion-dollar fines imposed on American tech giants, with US President Donald Trump recently threatening tariffs in response to what he has described as unfair treatment of US firms.

In a statement on Friday, the AP said Uber had violated EU privacy rules by using a fully automated system to suspend drivers suspected of fraud or those who received low customer ratings.

“Uber has committed serious infringements,” AP vice president Monique Verdier said in the statement. Drivers were summarily suspended and had their incomes cut off, she said.

The AP said it launched the investigation following a complaint from French human rights advocacy group LDH. The Dutch watchdog handled the case because Uber’s European headquarters is located in the Netherlands.

Uber denied that it permanently deactivated driver accounts without human intervention and said it would appeal.

Trump has repeatedly threatened the EU with economic retaliation over penalties imposed on American technology companies. In July, he said the US would launch a trade investigation after the bloc fined Google approximately $1 billion for violating competition rules, warning that it could lead to new tariffs on EU imports.

US Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has allowed work on President Donald Trump’s controversial White House ballroom to continue despite a pending lawsuit. On Friday, the judge issued an administrative stay of lower courts’ rulings that would have halted construction.

Last month, an appeals court supported a decision by a federal district court judge stating that the project requires congressional approval and that work must stop until it is given. Trump then filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court.

Trump argued that work on the 90,000-square-foot addition to the White House needed to continue for the sake of national security and the president’s own safety. The construction includes a five-story underground military complex that would include shelters and a hospital to protect senior officials in case of an emergency, the Washington Post reported, citing court filings. According to the paper’s estimates, the overall project could cost $600 million.

Roberts’ decision is reportedly aimed at giving the Supreme Court more time to assess the emergency appeal. It is unclear how long the administrative stay might last. According to the Washington Post, such injunctions usually stay in place for days.

Trump praised the development on Truth Social, stating he was “grateful” and calling the project “vital for National Security.” He also vowed to make the ballroom “the greatest of its kind.” On Saturday, he also claimed that the project was “under budget, and ahead of schedule” and would cost taxpayers “zero dollars.”

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer blasted the judge’s decision by accusing what he called the “MAGA Supreme Court” of “rubber stamping Trump’s vanity-driven, gilded corruption.” He also claimed that the administration was “wasting money” on Trump’s “pet projects.”

The ballroom started being built in October 2025. A section of the East Wing of the White House was torn down to make space for the addition, expected to seat 650 people – more than three times the space in the East Room, the largest event space in the White House. The Democrats were quick to slam the project as a “disgrace.”

According to the Washington Post, officials told the Supreme Court this month that construction was about “65% complete,” with some 250 people supposed to be working on it 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

Israeli settlers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, Palestine’s Health Ministry said in a statement on Friday. In a separate incident the same day, the IDF killed a retired Palestinian man in Jenin, according to Al Jazeera.

Karim Sanad Shalaldeh, 17, was shot dead by Israeli settlers during an attack on the town of Sa’ir, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. A 70-year-old man was also wounded by the gunfire, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Israeli troops were sent to the area after Israelis “present in the area without advanced authorization” were injured by thrown rocks, the IDF said. A “security official” then opened fire, causing Palestinian casualties, it said, adding that Israeli police are investigating.

The shootings came just days after Israel opened a tender for the construction of more than 1,200 homes in the occupied West Bank as part of a controversial settlement expansion unveiled in July. Critics say the construction will effectively cut Palestinian territory in two if completed.

Rising violence in the Palestinian territory has also drawn a warning from the US. Israeli settlers who take West Bank property belonging to Palestinian-Americans could face sanctions, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Reuters.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. Around three million Palestinians live there along with more than 600,000 Israeli settlers. Under the internationally backed two-state solution, the West Bank would form part of a future Palestinian state together with East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Imagine you are a Chilean who’s lived in America – the so-called “Land of the Free” – for decades in peace and tranquility. Suddenly, one humid day in late October 2025, in your adopted home of Fort Myers, Florida, you are snatched in broad daylight then imprisoned by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Your capture remains completely unknown to the outside world until January the next year, when the US Department of Homeland Security names you among the “worst of worst criminal aliens” arrested by ICE to date. You are accused of committing “homicide” almost 50 years ago. Your incarceration makes international headlines, and comes as a personal shock. But not because you’re innocent. 

What role precisely Fernandez Larios played in Letelier’s murder, which also took the life of his colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, is still not fully clear. He has told a variety of stories about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did and did not do regarding the event. But Fernandez Larios was a key operative.

It seemed in 2025 ICE had gotten their man, in a huge win for immigration enforcement and international justice. But this March, Fernandez Larios was released from jail. Court documents obtained by the National Security Archive show he launched a legal action, accusing the US government of “breach of contract” by violating a plea deal he cut in 1987.

That agreement saw Fernandez Larios provide information to US prosecutors on Letelier’s assassination, in return for an extremely light prison sentence and promise the government “would neither seek to deport [him] to Chile nor to cooperate in his extradition to Chile.” Rather than let Fernandez Larios’ action go to court, ICE freed him. Presumably, he’s sunning himself in Fort Myers right now.

The CIA connection

A huge archive of declassified documents related to Letelier’s assassination analyzed by RT Investigates, including secret statements made to US officials by Fernandez Larios, sheds shocking light on the case. They show that in mid-1976, Fernandez Larios was tasked by Pinochet’s regime with obtaining fake passports and US visas to fly to Washington DC.

Fernandez Larios was joined by Michael Townley, Pinochet’s US-born lead hitman and CIA double agent. They secured visas from Chile’s US embassy, after claiming to be on a secret mission to meet with CIA deputy director Vernon Walters at Langley headquarters in Virginia. Fernandez Larios traveled to Washington first, to conduct surveillance on Letelier’s movements in advance of his assassination. 

A militant anti-Fidel Castro Cuban exile group, CNM was founded by veterans of the CIA’s failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, and worked closely with the CIA. Experts at explosives, the bomb was planted without detection then detonated as Letelier, Moffitt and her husband Michael were driving to work in downtown DC. Michael was sole survivor of the bombing.

In April 2010, it was revealed that only days before Letelier was killed, a State Department warning due to be sent to Chile, against carrying out “the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures,” was cancelled at the behest of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. His department had been extremely worried about Pinochet carrying out killings outside Chile.

“We are trying to head off a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved,” Kissinger had been informed by aides, but he was unmoved. A close confidante of Pinochet who’d personally assisted his bloodstained rise to power, did Kissinger know Letelier was due to be killed?

The coverup and polygraph test 

In the aftermath of the assassination, Fernandez Larios participated in an extensive cover-up orchestrated by Chilean officials, including Pinochet himself. After being identified by the US media along with Townley as a lead suspect in Letelier’s murder, he deceived military investigators, gave false testimony to the Chilean Supreme Court, and lied to FBI and Justice Department investigators.

By 1985 though, Fernandez Larios was open to talking, having back-channel discussions with the US about testifying on Letelier’s assassination. In return for defecting and providing what he knew – or claimed to know – about the killing, and Pinochet’s intelligence operations generally, Fernandez Larios would receive extreme leniency, then be allowed to stay in the US, safe from extradition.

A late January 1987 State Department cable on what to do with Fernandez Larios however disregarded the polygraph tests, shockingly stating he was “not a murderer or party to a conspiracy to murder.” The memo judged his information on the Letelier-Moffitt case to be of “limited value”, but stated “foreign policy benefits” to providing him a generous plea deal were “substantial.”

In February 1987, Fernandez Larios pleaded guilty to being an “accessory after the fact” to Letelier’s assassination. Within just five months, a State Department legal advisor wrote to the US Parole Commission, praising Fernandez Larios’ “character” and “his willingness to come forward and pay his debt” over his role in the crime. He was paroled in autumn 1987.

The “Caravan of Death”

In keeping with “consistent signs of deception” when discussing his foreknowledge of Letelier’s assassination, Fernandez Larios also did not tell US officials about many violent atrocities he personally committed as a member of Pinochet’s elite military unit, the “Caravan of Death.” 

Following Pinochet’s seizure of power this deadly Caravan flew around Chile kidnapping local officials who remained loyal to Salvador Allende, who died in contested circumstances during the coup. Approximately 72 dissidents were executed or “disappeared.”  Fernandez Larios was identified by multiple witnesses as one of the most ruthless members of the military death squad.

After Pinochet’s fall in 1990, investigations into his regime’s many atrocities were opened in Chile. In several cases, substantial evidence against Fernandez Larios as a personal perpetrator of appalling crimes was found, leading to Santiago launching legal proceedings. In accordance with his plea deal though, Fernandez Larios remained at liberty in Florida.

Numerous Chileans identified Fernandez Larios as a participant in the torture and executions of prisoners in multiple municipalities. One witnessed him personally slashing Cabello to death with a knife. The three-week trial ended in October 2003, Fernandez Larios found liable for extrajudicial killings, torture and crimes against humanity. Cabello’s family was awarded $4 million in damages. 

That sum remains uncollected, and Fernandez Larios is once again a free man after his recent spell in prison, despite him truly being the “worst of the worst” captured by ICE. A strong case for his deportation to a country other than Chile remains. He has not been granted a special “snitch” visa protecting foreign informants from deportation. 

US President Donald Trump has broken into a scornful tirade against conservative journalist and podcaster Tucker Carlson, as well as his other allies-turned-critics, including former Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, he branded the trio a bunch of “losers” having little to no chance in US politics and incapable of bringing any meaningful change.

Trump’s rant particularly targeted a meeting between Carlson, Massie, and Greene earlier this month, which was followed by the journalist unveiling a political manifesto claiming that the American political system is “totally incapable of responding to reality” and suggesting a reform involving “a third party or multiple parties.”

The journalist also repeatedly criticized Washington’s war on Iran, arguing that the US betrayed its own national interests by acting on Israel’s behalf. “I think America lost its sovereignty many years ago,” he told RT last month. Speaking on Sanchez Effect last week, he also called the US political system a “fraud,” accusing both Republicans and Democrats of “collusion against the American people.”

Carlson himself has repeatedly denied personal political ambitions but says he would back any attempt to create a third party.

The president also branded Massie a “failed politician, and a real JERK” voting “No” on “everything” and accused Greene of going from an “ultra conservative to a liberal ‘fool’" in weeks simply because he allegedly did not answer her calls.

“What a team this would be, THREE LOSERS, and a pocketful of change!” the president wrote, telling them to “join the Radical Left Dumocrats.”

The rendezvous in early August was treated by the US media as a step towards potentially creating a third party to contest the 2028 election, although no official statements were made. Greene did say that “the movement has begun” in a post on X featuring a photo from the meeting.

The former congresswoman also responded to Trump’s post in a lengthy statement of her own, calling Trump “a neocon puppet of Israel” and blaming his tirade on his own “bad polling.” Massie claimed on X that the president was “weeks away from failing his midterms in November” while stating that he “should have listened to” him, Greene, and Carlson.

Washington’s clash with the International Criminal Court exposes the contradictions between supranational legal claims, American exceptionalism, and the rise of multipolar sovereignty.

The latest clash between Washington and the International Criminal Court says more about the structure of the present world order than about Tomoko Akane or Abdoulaye Seye. On August 18, 2026, the United States imposed sanctions on Akane, the Japanese president of the ICC, and Seye, a Senegalese senior trial lawyer in the Office of the Prosecutor. The measures freeze assets subject to American jurisdiction and restrict access to the American financial system. The ICC answered by calling the sanctions a “flagrant attack” on the independence of the court. Nine of its 18 judges, both deputy prosecutors, a former prosecutor, and another staff member now face American sanctions. Washington says the court has exceeded its mandate by pursuing officials from states that never accepted its authority, above all the US and Israel. This dispute raises the oldest political question in a new form: who has the right to judge whom? The liberal international order promised an answer based on universal law. The American response supplies another answer based on sovereign power. A multipolar view has reason to distrust both claims when either seeks authority over civilizations and states that never freely granted it.

The American position contains a genuine question of sovereignty, even when Washington applies that principle selectively. The US never became a party to the Rome Statute. Israel also remains outside the court. From the American perspective, an international tribunal created by a treaty cannot simply acquire authority over American soldiers, officials, or allied leaders without American consent. The ICC answers that its jurisdiction can arise through the territory on which alleged crimes occurred, including territory belonging to states that accepted the Rome Statute. This is the legal basis behind some proceedings involving nationals of countries outside the court. Lawyers can argue over jurisdiction, territorial consent, complementarity, admissibility, and treaty interpretation, but that us beside the point of the political issue in question here. A multipolar order begins from the existence of several sovereign centers of power, each possessing its own history, institutions, political traditions, and conception of justice. Any institution claiming authority above these centers carries an immense burden of legitimacy. A tribunal with universal ambitions must either possess genuine universal consent or depend upon political power to enforce its judgments. The ICC possesses neither a world state behind it nor universal membership. The US, China, Russia, India, Israel, and several other important powers stand outside its system. Such a court can aspire to universality, yet aspiration alone cannot create a universal political community.

The ICC itself deserves scrutiny from the same multipolar standpoint. The answer to American domination cannot consist of transferring ultimate authority from Washington to The Hague. The court arose during the high tide of the post-Cold War order, when Western political ideas increasingly appeared under universal names. Liberal democracy became “democracy.” Western doctrines of rights became “human rights.” Western political assumptions became “international norms.” Institutions created within that historical climate often inherited the same universal language. The moral appeal is easy to understand. Genocide, mass killing, torture, and deliberate attacks upon civilians are terrible acts, and societies naturally seek ways to punish those responsible. The difficulty begins when moral judgment becomes a permanent supranational machinery claiming jurisdiction across radically different political worlds. International criminal law then enters the sphere of geopolitics. Prosecutors depend upon evidence supplied by states. Courts depend upon governments to arrest suspects. International bodies depend upon funding, diplomatic backing, banking systems, travel access, and political cooperation. Enforcement follows the distribution of power. A defendant from a weak state may find himself in The Hague. A leader protected by a great power may remain beyond its reach. The language remains universal while the ability to enforce it remains unequal. That gap between universal principle and political reality has haunted international justice from its beginning.

Japan’s reaction adds another layer. Tokyo has long stood among Washington’s closest allies, yet the Japanese government called the sanctions against Akane “very unfortunate” and reaffirmed its support for the ICC and for the prosecution of serious international crimes. This dispute cuts across the familiar division between the West and its geopolitical opponents. Japan supports the American alliance system while also defending an institution that Washington now seeks to weaken. Such disagreements will become more common as the unipolar age recedes. States will increasingly refuse to place every question of law, trade, security, technology, culture, and diplomacy inside a single geopolitical hierarchy. They may cooperate with Washington in one field, Beijing in another, Moscow in yet another, and regional institutions in still another. This fluidity lies near the heart of multipolarity. Multipolar politics does not require every country to join an anti-American bloc. Such a bloc would merely reproduce bipolar logic. It means recovering the capacity to judge particular questions according to national interests, treaty obligations, civilizational traditions, and regional realities. Japan’s criticism shows how an allied state can maintain its strategic relationship with Washington while publicly rejecting an American measure that conflicts with another part of its foreign policy.

A mature multipolar position therefore has little reason to choose between worship of the ICC and worship of American sovereignty. The better principle is sovereign equality joined to negotiated international responsibility. Great crimes require mechanisms of judgment, yet those mechanisms gain strength through broad consent, reciprocity, clear jurisdiction, regional legitimacy, and rules applied to powerful and weak states alike. International law will command deeper respect when it grows from agreements among civilizations instead of presenting the political inheritance of one historical era as the final constitution of mankind. The same standard must apply to Washington. America may defend its sovereignty, but that defense becomes credible only when it respects the sovereignty of others. The ICC may defend judicial independence, but its claim to authority becomes stronger when its structure reflects a genuinely plural distribution of global power. The dispute over Akane and Seye therefore marks another stage in the breakdown of the old order. The future will contain fewer institutions capable of speaking unquestioned in the name of “the international community.” That phrase once concealed a hierarchy. Multipolarity brings the hierarchy into view. From there a different order can emerge: several great political spaces, several legal traditions, and several centers of power negotiating common rules without granting any capital, court, or ideology the right to tower above humanity as its final judge.

Ukraine is facing a “catastrophic scenario” from Russian retaliatory strikes after it “opened Pandora’s box” with its attacks on economic and civilian infrastructure, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday.

In spring, Kiev sharply escalated its long-range drone attacks on Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure, thereafter extending the strikes to e-commerce warehouses and civilian logistics facilities. Russia retaliated by targeting Black Sea shipping and key port facilities it said were handling Ukraine’s military-related imports, effectively severing the country’s main export route.

Kiev is now reaching out through intermediaries to try to “prevent this situation from developing into a catastrophic scenario,” Putin said in an interview with Russia 1. However, their trajectory is apparent, he added.

Ukraine initiated this with its “massive missile and drone strikes on our civilian targets and logistics,” the president stated.

It has opened Pandora’s box itself.

Russia’s retaliation struck Ukraine’s “most sensitive economic sectors,” including agricultural exports, which are its main source of revenue, Putin said.

We are always ready for dialogue on peace, but only on the basis of the realities unfolding on the ground.

Moscow has long stressed that it prefers a diplomatic settlement to the Ukraine conflict, but will only accept a long-term and stable peace that removes its underlying causes.

International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane has warned of what she described as the erosion of international law after US authorities imposed sanctions on her and another senior ICC official.

The Hague-based institution was created in 2002 under the Rome Statute to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. So far, 123 countries have ratified the treaty and are full members of the court. However, major global powers including Russia, China, India and the US have either not signed or not ratified the agreement.

“I had anticipated these sanctions against me to some extent, so I am not surprised,” she said in a comment included in a social media post on Friday by Japanese publisher Bungei Shunju, which had published her book. “What is important is not to let this become the beginning of the end of the international rule of law.”

On Tuesday, Washington sanctioned Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the institution as a “corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”

The ICC said on Wednesday that it “strongly rejects” the new designations, calling them “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution.”

The White House has accused the court of targeting citizens of states that have neither consented to its jurisdiction nor ratified the Rome Statute. The ICC previously investigated alleged crimes by US military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan despite Washington not being a member.

Israel has also rejected the court’s jurisdiction. Nevertheless, in 2024 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. US President Donald Trump later condemned the warrants in an executive order signed in February 2025.

The court has also faced criticism elsewhere, with Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Chad moving to withdraw from the ICC this summer, accusing it of disproportionately targeting African countries.

Russia has likewise rejected the court’s authority. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in March 2023 over the alleged unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. Moscow called the warrants legally void, rejected the allegations and said it had evacuated unaccompanied minors from the war zone while taking steps to return them to their legal guardians upon request.

Strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure are both effective and timely, and are helping troops carry out their combat missions, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The attacks are disrupting Ukraine’s ability to deliver military equipment and ammunition to its forces and to rotate personnel along the frontline, he said.

Kiev’s regime “opened Pandora’s box” when it began striking civilian targets and is now facing a response, the president said, adding that it has failed to turn the tide in its confrontation with Moscow by launching attacks on civilian facilities.

His remarks came in response to a series of recent Ukrainian attacks that caused civilian casualties and targeted critical infrastructure, residential buildings and Wildberries e-commerce logistics hubs.

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a US government lawsuit accusing the social media platform of illegally collecting children’s personal data.

The out-of-court settlement, announced by the US Department of Justice on Friday, ends the case without the allegations being tested at trial and without any determination of liability.

The case was brought in 2024 under the Biden administration by the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission. The government accused TikTok of knowingly allowing millions of children under age 13 to create regular accounts and collecting and retaining their personal information without parental consent.
It also alleged that TikTok frequently failed to delete children’s accounts and data when requested by parents.

“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in March 2024, referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”

Trump has feuded with Meta for years, accusing Facebook of political bias and censorship even before it suspended his accounts following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. The feud intensified after the suspension, with Trump repeatedly accusing the company of interfering in US elections.

The tone of Friday’s DOJ announcement also contrasts sharply with that used when the case was launched. In 2024, the department described TikTok and ByteDance as “repeat offenders” operating “on a massive scale.” The Trump administration’s DOJ, by contrast, highlighted “significant changes” to TikTok’s ownership, management, compliance and privacy practices.

The delays were controversial, as the law provided for one extension of up to 90 days under specified conditions, while Trump repeatedly directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.

After years of conflict and political and economic instability, Ukraine is now standing on the precipice of a demographic disaster. Its population has fallen by more than 40% since 1991 – the year it declared independence from the Soviet Union.

A country of nearly 52 million inhabitants in 1991 – a figure comparable to the UK population at the time – is now home to fewer than 30 million, with some estimates putting the number as low as 22 million.

The figure is comparable to the estimates for World War II, when Soviet Ukraine reeled under Nazi occupation, amid widespread famine, indiscriminate killings and the systematic deportation of hundreds of thousands of people to Germany for slave labor.

In 2026, the country is being hollowed out from several directions at once. While many have perished on the battlefield, millions more have fled abroad – many of them young workers, women and children – while birth rates collapsed far below replacement level. 

Did Ukraine have a bad start?

Ukraine is no stranger to demographic catastrophes. Millions died during the Soviet famine of 1932–33, and the country suffered enormous losses during World War II. Ukraine’s population stood at an estimated 41 million in 1941, but fell to around 22–23 million in 1942 during the Nazi and Romanian occupation.

However, its population subsequently recovered: official Ukrainian statistics put it at 37 million in 1951 and almost 52 million in 1991.

The collapse of the Soviet Union – as in many other former republics – broke the upward trend. Economic downfall, low birth rates, high mortality, and emigration pushed the population into sustained decline from the early 1990s.

Independent Ukraine’s first – and so far only – census, conducted in December 2001, found that the country had 48.46 million residents.

The demographic problem became far worse after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, when Crimea joined Russia following a public referendum and the Donbass republics declared independence. In late 2019, a government population survey concluded that more than 37 million people were living in the territory Ukraine de facto controlled.

Where did millions of Ukrainians go?

The start of full-scale hostilities triggered a massive exodus. In May 2026, Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga estimated that as many as eight million Ukrainians had left the country.

Over 5.5 million Ukrainians fled to Russia during 2022 and 2023, including more than 749,000 children, according to TASS. Ukrainians continued to arrive in Russia after 2023, although subsequent flows were counted in the tens of thousands rather than millions.

To the west, refugees swamped neighboring EU countries, putting strain on local welfare systems. A total of 4.41 million people who fled Ukraine held temporary protection status in the EU as of 2026, with Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic hosting the most people. Women and children accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total.

Many men have also attempted to flee the country amid Ukraine’s forced mobilization campaign, which has repeatedly produced highly publicized street altercations. Others trying to leave illegally have resorted to taking dangerous routes through remote terrain, with dozens dying in the attempt.

How many Ukrainians are actually left in Ukraine?

Nobody knows exactly, as the last census took place 25 years ago, forcing the authorities to rely on indirect data ever since. According to Ella Libanova, director of the Ptukha Institute of Demography at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, about 29 million people were living in government-controlled territory in 2026, although she said the estimate could vary by about 300,000.

What have battlefield losses done to Ukraine?

Apart from refugees, Ukraine is also losing enormous amounts on people – mostly men of working age – on the battlefield. According to the Russian military, Ukraine has suffered more than 1.5 million casualties; the figure includes those killed and wounded.

Vladimir Zelensky, however, presented a wildly different account, recently claiming that Ukraine has suffered “about 50,000 soldiers killed and… about 400,000 wounded,” while admitting that “a huge number” of troops simply “disappeared.”

In addition, more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the conflict since 2022, according to UN data. Moscow maintains it never targets civilians.

Do Ukrainian refugees plan on returning?

Even if the guns fell silent tomorrow, it is highly unlikely that everyone who fled Ukraine after 2022 will return. Vasily Voskoboinik, head of Ukraine’s Office of Migration Policy, estimates that only 10–15% of Ukrainians currently abroad may return home after the fighting ends.

“The end of the war does not mean that Ukrainians will immediately start packing their things and returning to Ukraine,” Voskoboinik said in March, adding that the process could take several months or even a year.

He also believes that the EU will seek to retain Ukrainians who are working and have integrated into local society, while seeking to get rid of those who remain dependent on refugee benefits. The expert estimates that out of around 6.5 million Ukrainians living in Europe, between 200,000 and one million people could return during the first two years after the end of the conflict.

A 2026 Centre for Economic Strategy poll gave a more optimistic assessment, suggesting that 43% of Ukrainian refugees definitely or probably intend to return, while 36% said they probably or definitely would not.

OK, the numbers are bleak. But does the problem end there?

Far from it. Ukraine is not merely hemorrhaging people – the population left behind is becoming older and increasingly difficult for a shrinking workforce to support. Before 2022, State Statistics Service data put the economically active population at roughly 16–17 million, compared with around 11–11.5 million pensioners – about 1.5 economically active people for every senior citizen. 

According to Voskoboinik, the balance has deteriorated since then. By his estimate, Ukraine now has only about 5.5 million taxpayers, while the number of pensioners remains close to 10 million. “It turns out that now we have two pensioners for every one working person,” he said.

Emigration has made that imbalance harder to correct. Many of those who left are children, younger women and working-age adults, while older Ukrainians are generally less mobile. That means the exodus has removed not only current workers but also future taxpayers and potential parents, accelerating a demographic ageing process that was already well underway before 2022

Under the UN’s World Population Prospects 2024 scenario, Ukraine’s population is projected to fall to about 32.2 million by 2050 and just 15.3 million by 2100. If that projection materializes, a country that entered independence with almost 52 million people would end the century with less than a third of that population – and fewer inhabitants than present-day Romania.

Bottom Line

Ukraine has spent more than three decades losing people, with the conflict accelerating every negative trend at once – deaths, emigration, collapsing births, ageing and a shrinking workforce.

Even if the fighting stopped overnight, peace alone would not bring millions of refugees home. Ukraine – one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe – would still have to compete for its own citizens with a much wealthier EU, where many have already built new lives.

Ukraine will mark its 35th year of independence on Monday in the most vulnerable position it’s been in since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Far from pressuring Russia to end hostilities, Vladimir Zelensky’s campaign of long-range strikes on civilian infrastructure has provoked fierce retribution from Moscow, and Ukraine no longer has the air defense stocks necessary to repel Russia’s missile and drone raids. After targeting military-industrial and dual-use sites throughout early August, Russia has shifted gears and begun its winter attacks on Ukraine’s energy network a month earlier than it did last year. 

• August 12, DTEK Naftogaz gas production facility, Poltava Oblast, struck by Russian drone

• August 12-17, Naftogaz Group facilities, 13 locations, struck by Russian drones and missiles

• August 17, DTEK coal mine, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, struck by multiple Russian drones

• August 18, DTEK thermal power plant, undisclosed location, struck by Russian drones and missiles

The most recent target, a thermal power plant operated by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK, should cause the most concern in Kiev. The August 18 strike forced the company to cease electricity generation at the plant. While targeting actual power plants is a significant part of the energy war of attrition, Ukraine’s network of substations represent far softer targets which, if disabled in sufficient numbers, could plunge the country into darkness.

Hardening the grid

According to an Energy Community report, 40% of Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo’s network of 141 major 110-750 kV substations had been damaged or destroyed by April 2024. 

Even if Zelensky convinces his Western donors to hand over the Patriot interceptors he wants, Ukraine will still only have enough to repel two large scale attacks at most.

Aware of this, Ukrenergo has begun burying its largest substations underground, encasing them in hardened concrete sarcophagi. The company has already relocated one large substation, and is currently working on burying another. Progress is slow, and Ukrenergo has said that it will need more money from the EU to cover all of its 750kV stations, on top of $300 million spent to date.

However, half of Ukraine’s electricity is generated at nuclear power plants, and substations connected to these plants are operated and maintained by Energoatom. Readers of RT’s ‘State of Corruption’ series will realize that this spells trouble for Kiev.

As well as operating Ukraine’s nuclear grid, Energoatom served as a personal piggy bank for Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s long-time financier who, along with a circle of friends, is alleged to have siphoned off $100 million that was destined for fortifying Kiev’s energy infrastructure. 

According to NABU, Ukraine’s state anti-corruption agency, Mindich exploited a wartime loophole forbidding contractors from suing Energoatom in the event that they were not paid, charging them a premium to receive payment for work already completed. 

Mindich and a circle of insiders connected to Zelensky allegedly siphoned $100 million from Energoatom that was directly budgeted to fortify Energoatom’s strategically important substation network, according to NABU.

Many of Energoatom’s substations are sitting ducks. All six 330kV and 750kV substations hit by Russia between January and August of this year tied Ukroenergoatom’s nuclear plants to the national grid. According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in June, power from all five of the nuclear plants Ukraine relies on – the Chernobyl NPP, Khmelnytski NPP, Rivne NPP, South Ukraine NPP, and Russia’s Zaporozhye NPP – had been interrupted at some point in early 2026 due to Russian strikes.

The critical vulnerability of Ukraine’s EnergoAtom-linked grid, and the potentially dark and freezing winter its citizens are likely to face, is a direct result of the corruption by Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle, and negligence by foreign donors that have let the Ukrainian leader’s cronies gorge themselves on seemingly unlimited cash. 

Mindich, the chief culprit, has long been known as “Zelensky’s wallet.” Thanks to his connections, he has escaped the grim winter his countrymen are anticipating. Mindich was tipped off about his impending arrest by anti-corruption agents last November, escaped to Israel by minutes, and now spends his days on the beach in Herzliya, while his accomplices have been spotted delivering black bags to an upmarket Tel Aviv boutique reportedly connected with organized crime.

Mindich’s get-rich scheme at Energoatom was first detailed by NABU – an agency set up and funded by the US, which Zelensky tried and failed to defang last November. As the probe widened, Mindich was implicated in a separate graft scheme at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, in which he allegedly ran the country’s largest defense contractor from behind the scenes, and colluded with former Defense Minister and Zelensky confidante Rustem Umerov to rig military contracts in his favor.

Former Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko, his former deputy, and former Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Chernyshov have all been named as accomplices in the Energoatom scheme. Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, resigned over suspected links to the graft ring, and has since been charged in a separate money laundering case.

In their latest anti-corruption raid, NABU agents searched the home of Irina Mudra, a deputy chief of staff to Zelensky, on August 19. Mudra is suspected of laundering $3.4 million in bail money for Galushchenko, in a scheme involving at least two members of parliament and the CEO of Ukraine’s state-run Sense Bank.

According to NABU warrants seen by the Kiev Post, ‘unnamed figures’ close to Zelensky tasked Mudra with bringing Sense Bank under the control of Zelensky’s office, in order to prevent scrutiny by other government agencies and allow the washing of Energoatom cash to continue. On audio tapes released by NABU in June, Mudra could be heard naming “David” – possibly a reference to the leader of Zelensky’s parliamentary faction, David Arakhamia – as a figure providing political cover to Sense Bank, and naming Mindich as one of the figures pushing her to “take over the bank.”

Energoatom is Ukraine in a nutshell

Zelensky and his predecessors implemented policies of “decommunization,” erasing Soviet monuments and street names, while continuing to rely entirely on infrastructure built while Ukraine was part of the USSR. Ironically, with that infrastructure now in Russia’s sights, and no air defense or fortifications in place to protect it, Ukraine will get more of the decommunization it sought this winter, with Russian missiles and drones finishing the job that Ukraine’s politicians and oligarchs began in 1991.

Ottawa will introduce reciprocal “dollar-for-dollar” measures in response to the 50% tariffs the US has imposed on Canadian goods, Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement on Friday, after trade talks with Washington broke down.

The latest round of intense negotiations lasted three days and was aimed at wrapping up months of talks between Washington and Ottawa, with mutual tariffs threatening to escalate into an all-out trade war.

“Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses,” the statement reads.

The prime minister stressed that “last-minute changes in the US-proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”

Earlier in the day, the Trump administration invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a rarely used provision that allows the head of state to impose duties of up to 50% on imports from countries deemed to have subjected US commerce to unequal or discriminatory treatment.

The tariffs, which came into effect just after midnight on Saturday and cover about 5% of Canada’s US-bound exports, target goods ranging from plywood and cement to wine and hockey sticks, Western media outlets have reported.

Earlier this week, Trump delayed the 50% levies, originally scheduled to take effect on August 19, to give negotiators additional time to reach a deal.

At the time, Trump said Washington and Ottawa had agreed to revive the Keystone XL pipeline project, which was intended to transport Canadian oil to the US, while Carney noted significant progress made by the two sides in trade talks.

AP has cited a senior Trump administration official as saying that Canada had been seeking concessions from Washington on tariffs previously imposed by the US president on steel, aluminum, automobiles and lumber, but the US has so far shown no willingness to make such concessions.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement shortly after midnight that despite the US offer to give Canada “the best treatment of any major exporter to our market,” new demands and walk-backs of other commitments by Ottawa had “upended the careful balance” reached in recent days.

Carney has, however, pledged to introduce additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses in the coming days, as well as to diversify the country’s partnerships abroad.

South Korea has launched its first trial container ship voyage to Europe via the Northern Sea Route (NSR), as disruption to traditional shipping lanes drives growing interest in Russia’s Arctic trade corridor.

The NSR stretches roughly 5,600 km along Russia’s Arctic coast, mostly through waters under its jurisdiction. The route relies on domestic port and navigation infrastructure. State atomic energy corporation Rosatom oversees its development and operates the world’s only nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet.

The PanStar Acro departed from Busan New Port on Saturday and will sail through the NSR before calling at Felixstowe in the UK, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and Gdansk in Poland.

The ship is expected to reach Felixstowe in around 18 days. The journey between Busan and Rotterdam via the Arctic is around 13,000 km, 35% shorter than the roughly 20,000 km route via Suez, with South Korean estimates suggesting the NSR could cut around ten days from a typical Asia-Europe voyage.

According to Reuters, Western diplomats have raised concerns over South Korea’s plan, which involved consultations with Russia and permits for the ship’s passage. The agency cited a European diplomat as saying Western governments want to isolate Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, not pursue “engagement” with it.

The country’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries has said it aims to establish a new trade corridor, with the voyage marking the country’s return to the Arctic after a decade-long hiatus and its first use of a container ship on the NSR.

South Korean companies conducted five trial voyages along the NSR between 2013 and 2016, but regular services did not follow due to limited cargo volumes and a less developed route. Russia has since significantly expanded its Arctic infrastructure and navigation capabilities.

Moscow has sought to turn the NSR from a corridor primarily serving its Arctic projects into a major international trade artery linking Asia and Europe. China has already launched a regular container service to Europe via the NSR, while India is considering sending its first cargo vessel along the route in 2027 and Japan has shown interest as well.

The meeting between the Russian and US presidents in Alaska last year caused a sensation in both form and substance. Expectations were so high, whether expressed as hope or alarm, that the Anchorage summit was almost certain to disappoint.

The conflict surrounding Ukraine is too deep and complex to be resolved at a single meeting, even one involving the leaders of Russia and the United States. Negotiations to end the Vietnam War dragged on for years, despite both sides understanding from the beginning that the conflict would eventually have to end.

The real question was whether Anchorage could provide the starting point for a peace process; it didn’t. Much has since been said about why, although the conditions for such a breakthrough probably didn’t exist in the first place. Yet rather than dismissing the summit with the usual sarcasm about the “spirit of Anchorage,” it’s worth considering what the meeting did achieve.

First, it exposed the widening divergence between the United States and Western Europe as the old world’s leaders remain committed to seeking a military victory over Russia, but Washington, by contrast, doesn’t want to become directly involved in pursuing that objective.

Donald Trump’s claim that the United States is merely a mediator rather than a participant is plainly disingenuous, given that Washington remains deeply involved, but American involvement could be far greater, even allowing for the apparent limits on its resources and its growing obligations elsewhere.

Anchorage also demonstrated that the United States isn’t all-powerful, as Trump was unable to secure from Western Europe and Ukraine what he wanted at the time. In that instance, Washington’s failure worked against Moscow, but the broader recognition that American power has limits should be regarded as a positive development.

Taken together, these lessons show that the West is becoming more diverse and internally divided, so its remaining unity must increasingly be maintained by political pressure and institutional inertia. Russia must therefore develop a more sophisticated and flexible policy towards Western countries, exploiting their growing differences rather than continuing to treat them as a single bloc.

Finally, Anchorage offered a revealing model of modern diplomacy, in which personalities increasingly matter more than institutions, and character more than principles. There are no longer any “magic” agreements and a gentleman’s agreement lasts only until another gentleman arrives with different priorities.

That disappointment returned everyone to the reality of the conflict in that no outside power can impose its resolution. During the year since Alaska, the Russian-Western European military confrontation has acquired a clearer direction and an internal logic of its own and it’s within that logic that Russia must seek a way to end the present war and prevent the next one, without waiting for magical solutions or grand bargains imposed from abroad.

This article was first published by Kommersant and was translated and edited by the RT team.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has delivered an address at the United Russia congress in Moscow, insisting that Russia won’t give up on the principle of popular rule despite the most difficult circumstances, and hold elections throughout the country next month.

The high-profile gathering in the capital was aimed at approving the ruling party’s program for the parliamentary vote on September 8-12.

Putin had already spoken at the first stage of the United Russia congress in late June, during which its candidate list, topped by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, was finalized.

The president is not officially a member of United Russia, but the party has actively supported him and his activities since its foundation in 2001.

United Russia currently holds 315 out of 450 seats in the Russian legislature, the State Duma.

This live feed has ended.

Two children and one adult have been killed, and another adult injured, in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Krasnodar Region, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev has said.

The attack on Saturday targeted the Yeysk district, damaging homes and civilian infrastructure, according to the governor. 

“A family has suffered as a result of yet another vile and cynical strike by the Kiev regime,” Kondratyev wrote on Telegram. “I express my sincere condolences, but no words can bring comfort to their loved ones.”

The two adult victims were hospitalized, one of whom later died, while emergency services were working at the sites where the UAVs came down in a residential area. Drone debris also struck an enterprise at the local port, sparking a fire, Kondratyev said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said multiple Russian regions were targeted by a large-scale drone raid overnight. According to the ministry, air defenses intercepted and destroyed 457 Ukrainian fixed-wing UAVs, including over Krasnodar Region, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azov.

District head Roman Bublik said Russian forces had repelled the mass drone attack and shot down most of the UAVs, but casualties could not be avoided. He expressed condolences to the victims’ relatives and said those injured would receive all necessary assistance.

Two Mexicans were among five people arrested at a crystal meth lab worth more than half a billion rand (nearly $30 million) on a farm in Musina, Limpopo, the South African Police Service (SAPS) reported on Friday.

The lab was raided late on Thursday night. The blitz was carried out by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security, alongside the Hawks, SAPS, the South African Narcotics Bureau, Crime Intelligence and the Special Task Force. Hawks spokesman Colonel Avele Fumba said drugs and laboratory equipment worth an estimated R600m were seized, along with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Limpopo Hawks head Major General Gopz Govender said the operation had gone after the machinery behind the drug trade. “This R600 million seizure is not merely a quantity of drugs taken off the streets. It represents the disruption of an entire criminal enterprise,” Govender said. “We will follow the money, the networks and every person connected to this operation.”

Limpopo police commissioner Lieutenant General Jan Scheepers said communities would not be left to become markets for syndicates. “Those who manufacture and distribute these dangerous substances must know that law enforcement is closing in on them,” he said.

Officers were still working the scene on Friday morning. Photographs released by police show officers in masks and surgical gloves moving through a low structure roofed with corrugated iron and walled with green shade netting. Industrial steel pots stand on the concrete floor beside a gas cylinder and a digital floor scale.

First published by IOL

Washington approved a $5 million payout to Liberia to take in up to 1,200 third-country deportees from the US as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, the New York Times has reported.

The first flight carrying 20 migrants, mainly from Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, landed in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on Thursday.

The NYT said in an article on Friday that the US State Department green-lighted the payment in December after Liberia said a few months earlier it would consider accepting migrants from other nations.

According to internal documents reviewed by the paper, Washington found assurances by Monrovia that the deportees would not be subject to racial or religious discrimination in the West African nation.

The US State Department said in the documents that the money could be allocated to boost Liberia’s immigration system and support vulnerable migrants. However, it also acknowledged the risk of the funds being misused.

When addressed for comment by the paper, a representative of the State Department said that as a general matter, the agency would not “comment on the authenticity or veracity of allegedly leaked documents.”

The report by the NYT goes against the statements by the Liberian government that its agreement with the US was “entirely humanitarian.”

“The transfer of persons to Liberia is not a transaction with a quid pro quo. Liberia has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward in exchange for its consent to participate in the program,” it said on Tuesday.

However, Monrovia noted it “will receive support to help manage the program and strengthen its migration system more broadly,” without disclosing the value or terms of the assistance.

Since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second term, Washington has inked deals with at least 35 nations to accept third-country deportees, according to data from Human Rights First, an NGO. The agreement with Liberia became one of the largest among them.

Democrats in the Senate estimated in February that at least $40 million in taxpayer money had been spent on such deals, inducing payments of $1.1 million per person to Rwanda for seven deportees and $7.5 million to Equatorial Guinea for 29 migrants.

Immigration lawyers have accused the Trump administration of using third-country deportations as a legal loophole to force migrants back to their countries of origin, which refuse to accept them directly from the US.

They have described the practice as excessively punitive, saying that people are left with no other choice but to try to return home after being delivered to places where they have never been to, don’t know the language and face security risks.

Officials in Spain’s Murcia region have demanded an explanation from authorities in Madrid after dozens of illegal migrants arrived by boat on a crowded beach in broad daylight.

The immigration crisis was thrust back into the spotlight late last month when more than 72,000 people crossed into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast, prompting scrutiny of the left-wing government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and accusations of lax border security.

On Wednesday, a black inflatable boat carrying 62 migrants reached Cala del Barco, a tourist spot near Cartagena. The migrants began jumping into the water as the vessel approached the shore, startling beachgoers.

Arrivée réelle d’un bateau transportant environ 60 envahisseurs sur la plage de Cala del Barco, complexe touristique La Manga Club (Murcie, Costa Cálida, Espagne), le mercredi 19 août 2026 vers 13 h!
Doit-on accepter cela ? Je dis non !!!

pic.twitter.com/EPebPXR4jf

— Jean Bemfair (@JBemfair) August 21, 2026

Officials said the group consisted of 45 adult men, 15 boys, and two adult women, all believed to be Algerian. All 62 have since been located, examined by the Red Cross, and handed over to police.

🔴Des dizaines de migrants sont arrivés en bateau sur la plage de Cala del Barco, en Espagne ; les autorités ont indiqué que la Guardia Civil est parvenue à localiser 62 personnes pic.twitter.com/VB5YzYuVIP

— 75 Secondes 🗞️ (@75secondes) August 21, 2026

🔴 Los inmigrantes desembarcados en la Cala del Barco de Cartagena se dispersan a pie por el complejo de La Manga Club. https://t.co/uvlzwtAKEY pic.twitter.com/ZkzHMEEsjb

— La Bandera (@labanderaes) August 19, 2026

Murcia regional president Fernando Lopez Miras argued that the arrival appeared to have been “organized” and demanded answers from the government.

He added that the migrants brought “fear and insecurity” to the area and that there was “no information, cooperation or coordination” between the central government and the regions.

Cartagena Mayor Noelia Arroyo said the situation “cannot become normalized,” and called for a “serious, orderly and secure” migration policy.

“If a migrant boat can reach a cove like this, disembark in full view of citizens and then leave, we have to ask ourselves how our maritime borders are being controlled,” she said.

Sanchez condemned the mass crossing into Ceuta as a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” and pledged to strengthen border controls, while blaming the influx on the activity of human-smuggling networks and the spread of “fake news” on social media.

He also condemned what he described as the “selfish, polarizing, and illegal” attitude of European countries such as Italy, which suspended border-free travel with Spain in response to the Ceuta crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has lashed out at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after Ankara announced that it’s seeking an Interpol Red Notice for the controversial leader on genocide charges. The war of words comes amid broader tensions between the two US allies after Türkiye was angered by recent IDF airstrikes on an airbase in Syria.

An Interpol Red Notice is a request to police worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a wanted person pending extradition.

In a statement on X on Friday, Netanyahu’s office labeled Erdogan “an antisemitic dictator, who has massacred Kurds, harbors Hamas terrorists, occupies half of Cyprus, and jails record numbers of journalists and politicians who oppose him.”

The Turkish leader “now seeks to extend his aggression against Israel into Syria. Israel will not tolerate it,” it stressed.

Earlier on Friday, Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said on X that Netanyahu was among 35 defendants wanted over “an attack” on the activist-operated Global Sumud Flotilla, which sought to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. The charges include genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, deprivation of liberty, hijacking a transport vehicle, and property damage.

“We categorically reject the notion that the Netanyahu government, which is pursuing a policy of genocide in Gaza, is untouchable and cannot be held accountable,” Gurlek said.

The Israeli Navy has boarded several convoys in international waters sailing for Gaza, most recently in May, when more than 400 activists were detained aboard around 50 boats. The activists were deported to Greece and alleged mistreatment while in Israeli custody.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said at the time that all participants in “the provocative flotilla” were unharmed.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has warned Erdogan against dragging his country “into dangerous adventures in Syria” after Ankara strongly condemned the strikes on the Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18. The attack caused no casualties but damaged recently built runways.

Both Syria and Türkiye denied Israel’s claim that Turkish troops were set to be deployed in the area. US presidential envoy to Syria and Iraq Tom Barrack also condemned the Israeli strikes as an unnecessary escalation.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is currently considering South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Separately, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Jurors in a Las Vegas court have heard an audio recording of Duane Davis, aka ‘Keffe D’, who is on trial for the murder of US rapper Tupac Shakur, telling detectives that his late nephew Orlando Anderson pulled the trigger.

The hip-hop superstar was shot four times while stopped at a red light in a car with record company executive Suge Knight on the Las Vegas Strip on September 7, 1996. Shakur later succumbed to his wounds.

A tape dated 2008 was presented in Clark County District Court on Thursday and features detectives telling Davis that their discussion is confidential, and that “nothing you say today can be used against you.” The former senior figure in the South Side Compton Crips street gang is heard saying that he was in the car, together with Anderson and two other men, when it pulled up alongside Knight’s vehicle, in which Shakur was riding.

“If we would have been on my side, I would have blasted,” Davis tells the detectives, explaining that the target was, however, on the other side.

According to the tape, Davis passed his gun to Deandre ‘Big Dre’ Smith, who refused to shoot. Then Anderson, who was also in the back seat, allegedly took the weapon and opened fire.

Under Nevada law, Davis can still be prosecuted for murder even if he did not actually pull the trigger.

Prosecutors told the jurors that Davis, who was arrested in 2023, has made multiple public statements since 2008, in which he detailed his alleged role in Shakur’s murder, thus nullifying any agreement he may have had with law enforcement.

These include several interviews, as well as the 2019 memoir ‘Compton Street Legend’ that he co-authored.

Davis has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with a deadly weapon with intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He now insists that he fabricated his previous admissions for money and notoriety.

His defense attorney similarly argued that the suspect was “full of c**p” when he publicly spoke about his supposed role in Shakur’s murder, and that no evidence has been presented to back up the prosecution’s allegations.

A conscription officer was fatally stabbed in western Ukraine on Friday night, marking the latest violent incident linked to the country’s controversial mobilization campaign during the conflict with Russia.

The altercation took place in the city of Lviv while a group of draft officials were conducting routine document checks, the regional police department said. A 25-year-old local man allegedly “attacked and stabbed” a 55-year-old officer, who succumbed to his injuries in an ambulance, it said.

A police officer accompanying the draft officials fired two shots, wounding the assailant in the leg. The suspect was hospitalized, police said, without providing details about what provoked the attack.

Video from the scene shows an agitated man standing across from an officer, separated by a half-open gate, as three onlookers stand nearby. The man suddenly rushes through the gate at the officer, who steps out of frame. A gunshot is heard, after which the man falls to the ground, apparently clutching his leg.

As he sits up and continues to move, the officer shoots him again at close range. The man, however, continues to crawl toward the officer before getting to his feet and struggling with him out of frame.

У Львові чоловік поранив ножем працівника ТЦК, після чого поліцейський вистрілив у нападника. pic.twitter.com/fsFdJHAvf9

— Олег Володарський (@volodarskijo) August 21, 2026

Police released an image of the knife allegedly used by the suspect.

Men aged 25 to 55 are subject to mobilization in Ukraine, while those aged 23 to 60 are generally barred from leaving the country.

In multiple cases, family members and bystanders have clashed with officers in an effort to prevent recruits from being sent to the front line.