Niger has accused French President Emmanuel Macron’s government of inciting and supporting a failed mutiny by soldiers in the capital, Niamey, late last month and threatened possible international legal proceedings.

The Council of Ministers made the allegation following a meeting chaired by Nigerien transitional leader Abdourahamane Tiani on Friday. It described the unrest as an operation with “international ramifications” sustained by a network of collaborators headed by the “French regime.”

The military-led government said “treacherous and renegade elements, promised the moon and the stars, were tasked with carrying out the unfulfilled ambitions of Macron and his cronies” to destabilize the country and undermine its efforts to assert sovereignty over its natural resources. It said “substantial documentation on this aggression has been compiled, and Niger reserves the right to initiate proceedings before international courts.”

Soldiers from the Special Intelligence Battalion launched a mutiny at Air Base 101, located within Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, on the night of August 28. The country’s Defense Ministry said they detained fellow soldiers and opened fire on sensitive sites before advancing on the presidential palace, but were repelled by the Presidential Guard. The authorities said loyalist forces, assisted by Russia’s Africa Corps, suppressed the uprising. Three Presidential Guard soldiers were killed during the clashes, according to an official press release.

Niger and its AES allies Burkina Faso and Mali have repeatedly accused France of seeking to destabilize their countries and supporting armed groups behind a deadly jihadist insurgency in the Sahel. Paris has denied the allegations.

The opposition right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could join forces with the left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) after its landslide election win in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, RT contributor Rachel Marsden has said.

The AfD won 43.8% of the vote in Sunday’s regional election, leaving German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) far behind in second place at 17.5%. However, the right-wing party claimed 39 out of 97 seats in the local legislature, falling short of a governing majority.

Speaking to RT on Monday, Marsden pointed out that Saxony-Anhalt is “one of the AFD’s strongest states. So, no, it’s not like Germany has suddenly undergone some kind of mass political conversion.”

The AfD and BWS might sit on the different sides of the political spectrum, but their positions overlap in many areas, especially when it comes to urging dialogue with Russia and resisting the growing influence of EU bureaucrats in Brussels, Marsden stressed.

“There’s also the possibility that the AfD would refuse to work with anybody in favor of just kind of rolling the dice and hoping that nobody can form a coalition government,” which would lead to a new election, giving the right-wing party another chance of calming enough votes to govern Saxony-Anhalt alone, she added.

Watch the full video below:

Indian IT services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) plans to build a $7.4 billion data center campus, exploiting the opportunities offered by the white-hot global demand for artificial intelligence as it seeks to move away from the traditional outsourcing model.

The 1-gigawatt (GW) facility will cater to AI companies and large cloud providers, known as hyperscalers, offering support for AI training, inference, and other advanced workloads, TCS said on Saturday.

TCS unit HyperVault will build the campus – expected to be among the country’s biggest – in the southern city of Hyderabad. The buildout will happen in phases, based on customer demand and technology requirements, the Mumbai-based company said in a statement. 

TCS CEO K. Krithivasan said the project is part of the company’s “infrastructure-to-intelligence” strategy.

“AI demand is increasingly becoming infrastructure demand,” Sohom Banerjee, a technology analyst at the think tank CUTS International, told RT. He said TCS’s move should be viewed as some IT companies “moving vertically down the AI stack.” 

Banerjee noted that while AI is putting pressure on parts of the IT consultants’ traditional business model, it is also simultaneously creating demand for a new layer of services around data centers, computing capacity, cloud platforms, AI models, and enterprise applications. 

Thousands of people gathered in Belgrade on Monday to pay their respects to former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic before his burial, which took place without formal state or military honors.

Supporters carrying Serbian flags and photographs of Mladic gathered outside the Church of St. Luke, where his coffin was displayed ahead of the funeral service. He was later buried beside his daughter at a nearby cemetery.

Mladic commanded Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-1995 war that broke up Yugoslavia. In 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted him of genocide for targeting Bosnian Muslims, Croats and other groups.

Mladic died in The Hague on August 27 at the age of 84 while serving a life sentence.

His remains were returned to Serbia last week on a government plane. Serbian soldiers carried the coffin from the aircraft, which was then escorted through Belgrade. A separate commemoration was held on Saturday at the House of the Serbian Army.

Despite the convictions, Mladic has remained a respected figure among some Serbs, who view him as a wartime defender of the Bosnian Serb population. Many also share longstanding complaints that international courts have treated crimes against Serbs differently from those committed by Serb forces during the Yugoslav wars.

Public tributes to Mladic have also spread to football stadiums. The normally fierce rivalry between Crvena Zvezda (Red Star) and Partizan Belgrade was set aside at the Serbian capital’s derby over the weekend as both sets of fans chanted Mladic’s name, before a giant tifo bearing his image was unveiled. Crvena Zvezda fans also chanted in Mladic’s honor during a Europa League match last month, prompting UEFA to fine the club €90,000 ($105,000). Bosnia’s FK Borac Banjaluka was also fined €39,500 over similar chants and other fan offenses.

🫡

🔴⚪️ #fkcz pic.twitter.com/n0IwG1NDTu

— FK Crvena zvezda (@crvenazvezdafk) September 6, 2026

Justice Minister Nenad Vujic had initially suggested that Mladic would receive state honors, however, the final funeral arrangements included no artillery salute, ceremonial military presence, or attendance by senior Serbian officials.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic rejected the criticism, arguing that Brussels had failed to identify any concrete act of “glorification” by the Serbian authorities, and called Kos’ statement “stupid, as usual.”

“I suppose we should ban people from showing up, ban the funeral,” he said.

Vucic had earlier said Serbia would help Mladic’s family arrange a “dignified” burial and criticized The Hague for refusing repeated Serbian requests to allow the former general to return home as his health deteriorated.

The president did not attend Monday’s funeral, citing a previously scheduled visit by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

India is reportedly working on a plan to equip the Indian Air Force’s workhorse Sukhoi-30MKI fighter jets with advanced long-range Russian air-to-air missiles.

The Indian Defense Ministry is expected to consider a proposal to modify the Su-30MKI fleet to carry the Russian RVV BD air-to-air missiles, which can fly at hypersonic speeds and take out targets up to 300 kilometers away, ANI news agency reported. 

The RVV BD is the export version of the R-37M missile, one of the world’s longest-range air-to-air missiles. It is designed to shoot down tanker and early warning aircraft past enemy fighter escort from long range. The Defense Acquisition Council meeting on Monday is expected to take up the proposal, the report said, citing sources. 

The RVV BD is compatible with Russia’s advanced fifth-generation Su-57 fighter jet – which has already been offered to India.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit New Delhi later this week for the 18th summit of BRICS nations. A discussion on the possible sale of the Su-57 was on the agenda of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation held last month in Moscow.

The upgrades have taken on a new urgency as China has moved its J-20 fifth-generation aircraft next to the Indian border in Tibet, and is reportedly planning to transfer its J-35 fifth-generation fighters to Pakistan.

A defense acquisitions panel on Monday, chaired by Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, cleared a slew of proposals worth $11.64 billion to enhance the “war-fighting capability” of the air force, and various systems for the navy and the army.

”This upgrade is going to be formidable,” retired Air Marshal Anil Chopra told RT India.

He said India has been diversifying its defense purchases, but also maintaining strategic autonomy, despite US sanctions.

The Indian Air Force operates about 258 Su-30MKI – an India-specific variant of the multi-role fighter aircraft – and state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is producing 12 more at its Nashik facility to replace those lost in accidents over the years.

The jets saw action during last year’s clash with Pakistan – which India code-named Operation Sindoor – covering Indian formations and firing Brahmos missiles at Pakistani airbases.

Iran will announce a new “restricted zone” for shipping outside the Strait of Hormuz in the coming days, high-ranking security official Mohsen Rezaei has said.

The US resumed strikes on Iranian targets last week, saying they were in response to Tehran hitting commercial ships in the key waterway. The Islamic Republic maintains that no vessel can pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for the shipment of some 20% of global oil, without its permission. Iran retaliated with a missile and drone barrage against US military facilities in the Gulf, while also firing at American warships, including an aircraft carrier.

In a televised interview on Sunday, Rezaei, who is the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran plans to place even wider curbs on shipping in the region.

The restricted area “will begin from the US Navy’s blockade line and extend into parts of the Persian Gulf,” stretching toward several key ports, he said.

Rezaei insisted that the Strait of Hormuz remains “completely closed and under the control of the armed forces” of Iran, describing US President Donald Trump’s claims that it’s open as a “big lie.”

More than a hundred vessels passed through the waterway on a daily basis before the US-Israeli attack on Iran in late February, but now the number has reduced to only seven or eight per day, the official said. Those vessels are transporting essential goods for the Islamic Republic, he added.

“The Americans are trying to smuggle five to six vessels through at great expense, but these ships are usually struck,” Rezaei stressed.

Iran isn’t sinking those ships because they are carrying oil and doing so would harm the environment, he stressed.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth warned in a post on X that Washington could target the Iranian oil tanker fleet in the Middle East or in the Indo-Pacific region. “It’s simple: if Iran shoots at US ships, we will destroy (and sink) their oil tankers,” he wrote.

Iranian Parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned on Sunday that further aggressive actions by the US will be met with “faster, heavier and more painful” retaliation by Tehran.

“The Americans have surely understood that the era of proportionate responses has come to an end and our recent strikes against aggressor bases was only a start,” Ghalibaf said.

Right-wing protesters have clashed with police in the British city of Portsmouth as they tried to prevent a group of newly arrived migrants from being processed, videos from the scene show.

A small boat which departed Normandy in France with some 140 asylum seekers aboard was intercepted by the UK authorities in the English Channel and escorted to Portsmouth, British media reported on Sunday.

The news prompted hundreds of anti-immigrant activists to head to the city in Hampshire in south-eastern England. The demonstrators blocked roads in the area in an attempt to prevent buses from delivering the migrants to a Home Office processing center in the village of Manston in Kent.

The protesters, many of whom were dressed in black and wore face masks, chanted: “Stop the boats” and “Send them back.”

Footage from the scene captured minor scuffles between the activists and police armed with riot shields. The demonstrators were also filmed throwing objects at the officers.

Riot police clash with protestors in Portsmouth after small boat arrival. Shot for @PA pic.twitter.com/JavKFpfVVa

— Jamie Lashmar (@jamie_lashmar) September 6, 2026

Daniel Thomas, also known as Danny Tommo, who recently founded the Patriot Platform group, said in a live stream from the scene that “we will not accept this anymore.”

BREAKING:

The police and anti-migration activists are facing off with each other in the sea near Portsmouth.

After the police started splashing water on the activists, they responded with the same measure. The activists are there to block illegal migrants from being disembarked…

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) September 6, 2026

“This is no longer an option to tell us that the boat numbers are down. This isn’t about the numbers being down… this is about understanding that this has to come to an end now,” Thomas, who is an associate of prominent British right-wing activist Tommy Robinson, said of the flow of migrants from the other side of the channel.

🚨 LIVE FROM EASTNEY, PORTSMOUTH

Police have attempted to gain ground on patriots by reversing vehicles into them.

One man decided to lay down to try and stop them.

Pepper spray is being used by police.

🎥 @WesleyWinterYT https://t.co/6U358pa0iZ pic.twitter.com/Y1gSIk46rJ

— The Nationalist GB (@TheNatGB) September 6, 2026

The demonstrators said they intended to continue blocking the roads all night, but ended the rally at around 3 AM local time after police obtained a dispersal order and warned that officers would begin making arrests, according to The Guardian.

Police start attacking people & end up hitting an elderly man . Portsmouth 👇 pic.twitter.com/1VXq3xxegS

— 🤍𝕁𝕆🤍 (@jomickane) September 6, 2026

A British government spokesperson said that “we condemn the intimidating and thuggish behavior we are seeing tonight. The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to our democracy, but it must never cross a line into disorder.”

Some 33,000 people, mostly adult men, arrived in the UK in small boats between July 2025 and 2026, making up around 88% of all illegal migrants entering the country, according to government data. During the same period in 2024 and 2025, the number of asylum seekers crossing the channel stood at 41,000.

A YouGov poll published in August showed that 69% of Britons believe immigration over the past decade has been too high, while 43% said it had been mostly bad for the country, up from 33% in 2016.

The UN General Assembly has adopted a nonbinding resolution promoting world maps that show Africa at its true relative size, following longstanding objections that the 16th-century Mercator projection makes the continent appear disproportionately small.

The “Correct the Map” resolution, sponsored by Togo on behalf of the African Group, passed on Friday by 164 votes. The US voted against it, while Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine abstained.

The measure encourages governments, schools, publishers, international institutions, and digital platforms to use Equal Earth or other equal-area projections when comparing the size of countries and continents. It neither bans Mercator nor establishes a single official UN map. The resolution also states that it does not affect international borders or territorial claims.

Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said correcting the map would restore an accurate understanding of the continent’s true dimensions. “A more faithful representation can help better cover Africa’s real wealth and potential, particularly in global economy and commercial dynamics,” Dussey told reporters.

Created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, the old projection preserves angles and was designed for maritime navigation. However, it increasingly enlarges landmasses closer to the poles. Greenland consequently appears comparable in size to Africa, although the continent is about 14 times larger.

The vote followed the launch of the Correct the Map campaign by Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa in April 2025. The initiative described Mercator’s continued dominance as “cartographic colonialism,” arguing that making Africa appear smaller influences education, identity, and perceptions of the continent’s global importance. Those wider social effects remain an argument advanced by campaigners rather than a feature of the projection itself.

Washington said the resolution “mocks the work and purpose” of the UN and promotes an “ideological agenda.” Ukraine objected to maps on the Equal Earth website depicting Crimea as politically separate from the rest of the country.

Russia also backed the measure, saying the widespread use of Mercator maps had entrenched a misleading perception of Africa’s size. Deputy Permanent Representative Maria Zabolotskaya said the resolution sought to “correct a long-entrenched disproportion” associated with the “heavy historical legacy of colonialism,” under which Africa’s “place and significance were diminished.”

#CorrectTheMap

The maps we use shape the way we see the world.

For centuries, the Mercator projection has distorted the true size of continents, making Africa appear far smaller than it is. In reality, Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland.

Led by the African Union… pic.twitter.com/j8DvTmfUn8

— Diplomatie Togolaise (@DiplomatieTogo) September 3, 2026

The defense firm owned by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has signed an agreement with Indo-Russian Rifles Private Limited (IRRPL) to supply locally made ammunition for AK-203 assault rifles.

Under the deal, Adani Defence will supply 7.62 mm ammunition to IRRPL, which is making the Russian-designed rifles for the Indian armed forces at a facility in Korwa in the northern Uttar Pradesh state.

“Adani Defence will supply the small-caliber ammunition required for the AK-203 programme for five years, providing an Indian source of supply,” reports cited the company as saying. The ammunition will be made at Adani Defence’s facility in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, where the company already produces small-caliber rounds. 

The financial terms of the deal, the number of rounds to be supplied and the delivery schedule were not disclosed.

Gautam Adani became Asia’s richest man in June, ahead of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son. He hails from Gujarat, the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and has businesses in energy, transport, infrastructure, defense, and minerals and mining. A US court recently dismissed a criminal case against Adani brought by the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden.

Photos of Trump stepping off Air Force One in Morristown, New Jersey, on Friday en route to his golf club in nearby Bedminster show his signature golden-blond locks transformed into an almost brunette hue.

“What in the world is going on with Trump’s hair?” journalist Aaron Rupar asked on X after images of the apparent transformation began circulating online.

Next week pic.twitter.com/szt4Owy2id

— Philippe 🇺🇸 🌊 🖖🏼 (@unfazedgoat) September 5, 2026

“The hair???? If I hadn’t pulled the photos from Getty Images myself, I wouldn’t have believed it,” journalist Yashar Ali wrote.

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast announced that “Trump is now a brunette!” while lawyer and longtime Trump critic George Conway suggested that “something needs to be done about his hair under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment,” referring to the constitutional mechanism for removing a president deemed unable to perform his duties.

Author Anne Lamott offered a more flattering assessment, comparing the president’s new appearance to that of a former James Bond star.

“I love it. So youthful. Very Pierce Brosnan,” she wrote.

I love it. So youthful. Very Pierce Brosnan. https://t.co/UDukjWxSbp

— ANNE LAMOTT (@ANNELAMOTT) September 5, 2026

“If everyone keeps mocking this, there will be hell toupée,” Jeopardy! champion Hemant Mehta punned.

“For years, I had to suffer with people saying, ‘He wears a wig.’ I don’t wear a wig,” Trump said. “That night, they found out I did not wear a wig because if you did, it was not going to be on your head very long.”

Trump’s distinctive hairstyle has inspired fascination, speculation, and countless memes for decades. During his 2016 presidential campaign, he allowed late-night host Jimmy Fallon to ruffle it on television to demonstrate that it was real.
Footage of Trump boarding Air Force One in 2018 went viral after gusts lifted his carefully arranged hair and exposed a bald patch at the back of his head.

“I try like hell to hide that bald spot, folks. I work hard at it,” Trump joked at the Conservative Political Action Conference later that month. “We’re hanging in there, folks – together we are hanging in.”

Several US media outlets approached the White House for comment. The president appeared to conceal his new hairdo beneath a red cap while playing golf on Saturday.

The German government’s increasingly hostile stance toward Russia, mounting economic problems, and concerns over migration have helped propel the Alternative for Germany (AfD) to a historic election victory in Saxony-Anhalt, Professor Vladislav Belov, head of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Center for German Studies, has told RT.

The AfD won 43.8% of the vote, more than doubling its result from the previous state election, according to official preliminary results. It is set to hold 39 of the state parliament’s 97 seats, falling short of the 49 required for an absolute majority.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has led Saxony-Anhalt’s coalition government since 2021, finished a distant second with 17.2% and 15 seats. Sven Schulze, the party’s lead candidate and outgoing regional head, conceded defeat and congratulated the AfD on its success.

Speaking shortly after polls closed on Sunday, Belov recalled his earlier assessment that the anti-Russian positions adopted by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt would benefit the AfD among certain groups of voters.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), founded in 2024, entered the Saxony-Anhalt parliament for the first time after securing 5.3% of the vote.

Belov argued that the campaign had been unusually dominated by federal issues, despite voters formally electing a state parliament.

“For the first time, the AfD presented itself not merely as a protest party but as a party with governing competence,” he said, identifying migration, education, and Saxony-Anhalt’s economic and political situation as key campaign issues that other parties had failed to address.

The predominantly rural state is also home to a sizeable chemical industry that has been affected by higher energy costs since Germany abandoned inexpensive Russian pipeline gas. Unemployment stood at 8.1% in July, compared with 6.4% nationwide.

Belov attributed the Greens’ result to tactical mobilization rather than voter support for their policies. He described the ‘Taktisch Wählen’ initiative, which used door-to-door canvassing and an online tool to encourage support for the SPD or Greens in order to block an AfD majority, as “scandalous.”

US backroom diplomacy on Ukraine cannot achieve peace without Washington accepting that it is no longer the world’s sole superpower, economist and public policy scholar Jeffrey Sachs has told RT.

The comments follow separate closed-door talks held by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev over the weekend. Details of the proposals exchanged during the meetings have not been made public.

“The US still has a grandiose idea that it is the world’s hegemon and the sole superpower, and it is not. Clearly, we are in a multi-polar world,” Sachs told RT in an exclusive interview on Sunday.

Sachs argued that a peace settlement requires taking Russia’s security interests into account and abandoning the expansionist foreign policy the US has pursued for more than 30 years.

“It seems to be psychologically very difficult” for Washington to openly accept that “basic reality,” he argued, saying this is why it resorts to “backroom negotiations” and secrecy that ultimately produce no tangible results.

Sachs also described the situation in Ukraine as an “endgame situation,” arguing that Kiev is in a desperate position militarily, socially, and politically.

Watch the exclusive interview with economist Jeffrey Sachs in full below.

Ukraine lost around $1.2 billion to fraud, waste and mismanagement in military procurement in 2024 alone, the New York Times has reported, citing confidential government audits and court records.

Seven of the country’s ten largest military contractors continued to receive new orders despite fraud investigations, previous failures to deliver, or the arrest of executives on corruption charges, the paper wrote on Sunday, describing the pattern as a “persistent phenomenon.”

Auditors also identified 18 companies awarded contracts despite earlier defaults, six of which had failed to fulfill a single deal.

Defense industry fraud is “a longstanding tradition” in Ukraine, American anti-corruption expert James Wasserstrom has told the NYT. “Anything that isn’t nailed down in Ukraine will be stolen,” he said.

The audits also found that cheaper offers were sometimes bypassed. In one tender, Kiev reportedly bought Turkish-made munitions for multiple-launch rocket systems through a Czech intermediary for around $5,100 each despite the manufacturer offering them directly for roughly $4,200.

The losses accumulated as Vladimir Zelensky repeatedly appealed to Western governments for more weapons, warning of critical shortages on the battlefield. In April 2024, he said Kiev was in “dire need” of increased support and pressed its backers to deliver promised arms and ammunition.

The report comes amid a series of high-profile graft investigations involving top Ukrainian officials and figures close to Zelensky. In August, the Ukrainian leader sacked the deputy head of his office, Irina Mudraya, while other recent corruption probes have implicated former ministers, diplomats and senior officials.

Former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, meanwhile, accused the government of “systemic corruption” following his dismissal in July. Fedorov, who had sought to overhaul military procurement, has claimed that entrenched defense-industry interests resisted his reforms and has since called for wartime elections.

Moscow has long argued that the scandals are evidence of systemic corruption in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier this year that corruption “permeates the entire Ukrainian power structure, including Zelensky’s inner circle and Zelensky himself.”

At least 25 people, mostly schoolchildren and teenagers, have died after a bus fell into a ravine on Cabo Verde’s island of Fogo. The deadly crash prompted the authorities of the archipelago nation to declare a two-day mourning period.

The accident occurred on Saturday, when the bus, carrying children on a field trip, plumetted off a cliff while en route to the village of Cha das Caldeiras. The village, known for its unique wines, is located within the large crater of the active Pico do Fogo volcano.

The annual trip was set up by a private individual. The organizer, who is believed to have been behind the wheel, was killed in the crash. Most of the 32 people aboard the bus were killed in the accident, while others received injuries of varying severity.

“I am heartbroken. This is an irreparable loss, a part of the future that is being said goodbye to: the overwhelming majority of the victims are young people and teenagers,” The country’s president, Jose Maria Pereira Neves, said in a Facebook post.

The president, alongside other top officials, attended the funeral of some 18 victims of the crash on Sunday, while other deceased were buried in a separate ceremony earlier in the day. The country’s authorities are investigating the accident.

Five people have been killed and several others injured after a cargo plane overran a runway and crashed near Miami International Airport, authorities have said.

The FAA identified the aircraft as a Boeing 767 operated for Amazon by 21 Air. It had arrived in Florida from San Juan, Puerto Rico, at around 2 PM on Sunday.

The crash prompted “a full ground stop” at the airport while first responders assessed the scene, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

“Units arrived to find an airplane that had caught fire as a result of this crash, with heavy flames and smoke showing,” Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said on X. “Firefighters are working on extinguishing the fire and assessing patients.”

Videos circulating online appear to show the aircraft travelling beyond the runway and crossing a road before coming to rest near a parking area. Other footage shows flames engulfing its right side as thick black smoke rises from the wreckage. The right wing appears severely damaged.

Plane crashes at miami international airport.
Prime Air Boeing 767 cargo plane on fire with heavy black smoke after overshooting the runway at Miami International Airport. pic.twitter.com/FXFAvsROlw

— Indian🇮🇳 (@singh31919) September 6, 2026

NBC Miami reported, citing a source, that the two pilots were taken to Jackson South Medical Center, while three other people were transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital. Their conditions remain unknown.

CCTV footage showing the Prime Air B-767 crash today in Miami.

pic.twitter.com/qu1DStuEhT

— Francisco Cunha - ✈️ Aviation et al (@OnDisasters) September 6, 2026

One of the airport’s four runways reopened at around 4:15pm, followed by a second approximately 30 minutes later. Officials nevertheless warned passengers to expect continued disruption.

The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team to Miami to lead the investigation, with the FAA also examining the crash.

A US federal magistrate judge has ordered the administration of US President Donald Trump to disclose the names of those who had created a now-defunct fund for victims of politically-motivated prosecution. The lawsuit was filed by multiple plaintiffs, backed by a Soros-funded NGO.

Critics have argued that the $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund was designed to funnel taxpayer money to certain Trump supporters who claim they were unfairly investigated by the Justice Department, including those prosecuted over the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021.

On Friday, Judge Ivan D. Davis granted a request that the identities of the masterminds behind the fund be revealed to the plaintiffs and their attorneys, noting that this information must not be made public at this stage.

The DOJ has insisted that the names of those people are “irrelevant” to the case and, moreover, constitute confidential attorney-client discussions or government officials’ deliberations. The Department has also filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit altogether.

Providing legal support for the lawsuit is the Democracy Forward Foundation – a nonprofit organization that professes to advance “democracy and social progress through litigation, policy and public education, and regulatory engagement.” In May, it was named among the recipients of a five-year $300 million grant from billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), according to Inside Philanthropy.

The DOJ announced the creation of the fund in May as a part of a settlement agreement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Under it, Trump and several members of his family, along with the Trump Organization, agreed to drop their lawsuit over a leak of their tax returns. In exchange, the Anti-Weaponization Fund was to be established to provide redress to “victims of lawfare and weaponization.”

“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said at the time.

However, faced with criticisms from both Democratic and Republican members of Congress, Blanche declared the fund “dead” in August.

A US munition likely landed a direct hit on a wedding in Iran last week after it veered off its designated target, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing a person familiar with the operation.

The incident occurred in Kuhestak, Hormozgan Province, amid a new wave of airstrikes unleashed by the US on Iran on Tuesday. One of the munitions hit a residential home with a wedding party underway, killing at least five and wounding nearly 70. The Iranian authorities said the victims were three women and two children aged four and 16.

The explosion at the party was highly likely a result of a direct hit by a US munition, according to the WaPo. The US Navy dropped six glide bombs at a communications tower in the town, with all but one striking the designated target. The stray munition missed the tower, reportedly hitting the house located around 135 meters (440 feet) away. The comms tower was the only designated target within the town during the Tuesday strikes, the source told the WaPo, ruling out any prospects the home was attacked intentionally or mixed with some other target.

US Vice President J.D. Vance said on Thursday that Washington is looking into the incident. “We’re investigating it because obviously we care. We want to know,” he told reporters. The US military has insisted it does not target civilians and has not taken responsibility for the strike.

The attack on the wedding party has become the latest in the string of civilian mass-casualty incidents that occurred amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. 

On the opening day of the US-Israeli war on Iran, US forces hit an elementary school in Minab, killing 175 people, predominantly young girls. At least 21 civilians, roughly a third of whom were children, were killed in Lamerd that day. Tehran has repeatedly accused the US of committing war crimes throughout the conflict, reporting some 3,000 civilian casualties since it began late in February.

Diplomatic efforts to end an acute and bloody armed conflict should always be welcomed and the persistence of Donald Trump’s administration, which has pursued this goal for more than a year and a half, also deserves recognition, even if the results so far can hardly be called outstanding.

At the very least, the White House remains the only actor in the West both attempting to change the situation and possessing significant leverage over it. Trump and his closest associates probably do genuinely want the war to end as its continuation distracts Washington from foreign policy priorities they regard as more important. But why, then, does Trump’s diplomatic initiative keep going round in circles, with each new attempt ending in another disappointment?

Trump and his principal envoys tend to approach the conflict as an extraordinarily difficult but essentially technical problem, as a puzzle to be solved in isolation from the wider international system. This reflects the worldview of the current White House, where international affairs are a collection of practical problems to be resolved in ways that strengthen America’s position, preferably with some commercial benefit attached. Given the professional backgrounds of the president and his two principal intermediaries, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, this is hardly surprising.

Such an approach can be useful as an instrument, but it becomes less useful when it substitutes for an understanding of the processes that produced the conflict in the first place and, to use the Russian formulation, its root causes. Any durable settlement requires some understanding of what must change in relations between the major powers if similar confrontations are to be avoided.

Yet American and NATO policy towards Ukraine wasn’t created by one administration or a handful of officials in Washington and Brussels, rather it developed over decades from a particular conception of Western strategic interests. The crisis that entered its most acute phase in 2022 was, from Moscow’s perspective, the culmination of processes underway since the end of the Cold War.

This helps explain why Washington continues to underestimate how much the outcome matters to the principal participants. For both Russia and Ukraine, too much is at stake for the conflict to be settled through the kind of transaction Trump instinctively favors, given their interests are obviously opposed, but both regard the outcome as fateful. Western Europe, having invested heavily in Ukraine’s cause, also has a direct political stake in the result, so every new attempt by Washington’s two brokers therefore encounters the same obstacle in that none of the parties sees this as simply another deal.

Transferring the financial burden, political responsibility and risks to the Western Europeans while continuing to dictate the terms requires a degree of obedience from junior partners that Washington can no longer guarantee. EU governments and Kiev have also learnt how to deal with this unconventional president and when they can’t persuade him, they have become increasingly adept at circumventing his pressure.

The one American instrument against which there would be little defence is a complete cessation of military support, but Trump is unlikely to take that step, even if he were personally inclined to do so because facilitating an outright Russian victory isn’t his objective. He may care less than his predecessor about the precise shape of the eventual settlement, but a complete Ukrainian defeat would be another matter. Nor would abandoning Ukraine enjoy much support across the American political establishment, where there is virtually no constituency for a fundamental rapprochement with Russia.

The White House therefore doesn’t envisage the radical change in American policy that would be necessary to transform the conflict, but without one, events tend to return to their previous course as a prolonged and extremely fierce confrontation whose duration nobody can confidently predict.

Friends and business associates may establish contacts and discover areas in which compromise is conceivable, but they don’t themselves make peace. The shuttle diplomacy of a presidential son-in-law and a trusted business partner may eventually serve as a catalyst for serious negotiations, however, if that moment comes, the settlement will have to be negotiated by officials and institutions possessing state legitimacy and the power to implement what they sign. Personal connections can open the door, but they can’t, by themselves, end a war.

This article was first published by Russia in Global Affairs, translated and edited by RT.

Tokyo has demanded that Russia demolish a newly unveiled monument commemorating the 1945 Soviet victory over Imperial Japan and the end of World War II, claiming it offends the “feelings of the Japanese people.” Moscow, however, has dismissed the demand, equating it to telling “the Sun not to shine.”

The monument was unveiled in the Russian far-eastern city of Khabarovsk on Friday. The centerpiece of the memorial is a 15-meter statue of a Soviet soldier crushing a border stone engraved with the Imperial chrysanthemum crest of Japan with the butt of his rifle. The monument was created on the initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with its design beating seven other projects in a contest.

The stone is “an exact replica of the boundary stone Japan erected on Sakhalin, seizing half of it after the Russo-Japanese War” in the early 20th century, Nikolay Ovsiyenko, deputy head of the presidential office on humanitarian affairs, said. “This isn’t just a symbol of the imperial house, as our neighbors insist – it’s also a symbol of militaristic Japan, which committed monstrous crimes during World War II,” Ovsiyenko added during the unveiling ceremony.

The display has caused a meltdown in Tokyo, with multiple top officials demanding the removal of the monument. “Through diplomatic channels, we have strongly requested the Russian side to cease the installation and remove it,” Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said, adding that he found it “extremely regrettable that the Russian side has not responded to Japan’s request as of the present moment.”

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also went to lengths about the Russian monument, calling the depiction of the destruction of the Imperial crest “completely unacceptable.” The crest “is widely recognized as a symbol of Japan,” and presenting it in such fashion offends the “feelings of the Japanese people,” Takaichi claimed.

Moscow provided an official reaction to the Japanese demands on Sunday, when Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova firmly rejected any prospects of demolishing the monument or somehow altering it to appease Tokyo. 

Last month, Putin made his first-ever visit to the Russia Kuril archipelago, which is partially claimed by Japan. The visit was vigorously protested by Tokyo, with Takaichi calling Putin’s trip “absolutely unacceptable” and saying it “hurts the feelings of the Japanese people.”

At the time, Moscow brushed off the Japanese protests, pointing out the Kuril Islands are Russian territory and the country’s president is fully within his rights to visit them as he pleases. Tokyo’s territorial demands have remained a persistent issue in its ties with Moscow for decades, ultimately preventing the Soviet Union and modern Russia from reaching a formal post-WWII settlement with Japan.

The opposition right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has won Sunday’s regional election in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt with 43.8% of the vote, the local election commission has said. The AfD is set to claim 39 out of 97 seats in the local legislature, falling short of a governing majority.

The vote was marked by a record turnout of 78%, the highest since the reunification of Germany in 1990.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party finished in a poor second, securing just over 17.2% of the vote and 15 seats, according to official preliminary results.

AfD lead candidate in the state, Ulrich Siegmund, said the party has “written history” and that the outcome of the vote would “shake all of Germany.”

“We are going to get our country back, and we are starting with Saxony-Anhalt,” he said.

AfD co-chair Alice Weidel earlier did not rule out forming a coalition government in the region, including with Merz’s Christian Democrats, should the right-wing party fail to secure an absolute majority.

After the exit polls gave victory to the AfD, Sven Schulze, the CDU lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt and the outgoing regional head, conceded defeat, congratulating the opponents on their electoral success.

“That’s democracy,” Schulze said, adding that voters have sent a clear message which must be heeded, both at the regional and federal levels, as quoted by German media.

Schulze attributed his party’s poor showing to the unpopular policies pursued by the federal coalition government, which is comprised of the CDU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). 

SPD co-leader and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil similarly spoke of a “signal to Berlin,” insisting, however, on the continuation of the so-called ‘firewall’ policy, under which all major parties refuse to cooperate with the AfD.

According to preliminary results, the SPD has finished third with 9.3% of the vote, followed by the Greens and the Left Party with 8.9% and 8.6%, respectively. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) has also narrowly secured the spot in the legislature with 5.3%.

Over the past several months, opinion polls have consistently shown that the AfD is the most popular party nationwide, enjoying the support of 28% of respondents.

Having the largest opposition faction in the Bundestag, the party campaigns on an anti-immigration platform and is also highly critical of the German government’s support for Ukraine, as well as sanctions against Russia.

An INSA poll published by Bild in late August indicated that support for Germany’s governing Christian Democratic CDU/CSU bloc had fallen to 20%, with some 78% of respondents dissatisfied with Merz’s coalition government.

There are grounds for cautious optimism following Saturday’s talks between US President Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl and ex-White House aide Steve Gill have told RT.

Trump’s son-in-law and the US special envoy likely presented concrete and well-developed ideas on ending the Ukraine conflict to the Russian leadership, Kneissl and Gill surmised.

According to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov, the talks, which lasted over three hours and included formal discussions as well as an informal exchange over lunch, were “substantive, constructive, extremely candid and trusting.” Aside from the Ukraine conflict, the two sides are understood to have discussed economic cooperation and potential “major, mutually beneficial Russian-American projects.”

Speaking to RT on Sunday, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl said that “there is apparently something materializing because these two persons would not come without anything in their hands.” She also claimed that “trust is there” between Moscow and Washington, citing “this ongoing direct communication on a high-ranking political level.”

Kneissl also pointed to the previously unannounced visit to the Russian capital by CIA Director John Ratcliffe last Tuesday, during which he met with Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief Sergei Naryshkin.

On Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov likewise said that Saturday’s negotiations were indicative of an “atmosphere of trust” between Russia and the US.

Conservative media host Steve Gill, who served in the office of the US Trade Representative under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, concurred with Kneissl, saying that he was “optimistic that the meeting took as long as it did.”

He told RT that the trip Witkoff and Kushner made to Moscow was likely preceded by considerable preparatory work, with Trump’s envoys plausibly bringing a substantive proposal to the Russian capital.

“The fact that it took three hours to kind of work through those details and now they’re heading to Ukraine leaves me at least optimistic that hopefully some progress was made today,” Gill concluded.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff has expressed optimism about Washington’s renewed efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict following talks in both Moscow and Kiev, saying the Trump administration hopes to find a diplomatic solution.

Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev on Sunday, a day after holding more than three hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. Sunday’s trip marked the US envoys’ first official visit to the Ukrainian capital as part of Washington’s peace efforts.

Witkoff said on Sunday that he “felt good” about the discussions in both capitals and that Washington hopes diplomacy can bring an end to the conflict. He also suggested that direct talks involving all three sides could take place soon, pointing to “a trilateral that we’re hopeful will be announced in short order.”

According to Ushakov, the American envoys presented several ideas on possible paths toward a settlement, while Putin reiterated Moscow’s readiness to continue working with Washington to seek a political and diplomatic solution. The Russian leader also stressed that any lasting agreement would have to address what Moscow describes as the root causes of the conflict.

According to an Axios source familiar with the meetings, during the talks in Kiev on Sunday Zelensky discussed Ukrainian preparations for continuing the war through the winter, while Kushner and Witkoff stressed they want a breakthrough before then.

A White House official also told Axios the Moscow discussions were substantive, saying the two sides had discussed plans for the next steps that are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has earlier thanked Trump for his efforts to help resolve the conflict, saying the US president continued seeking a settlement despite the difficulty of the situation. Putin also reiterated Moscow’s commitment to refrain from strikes on Kiev during a three-day period beginning at midnight on September 5, intended to allow the US envoys to travel safely to the Ukrainian capital.

It’s impossible to fully understand the legacy of American feminist icon Gloria Steinem without mentioning Russia.

Steinem – who fought her entire life to promote the radical concept that women should be able to choose whatever kind of life they want – passed away peacefully at her New York home last week at the age of 92. Judging by all the hair-pulling going on over her involvement with the CIA, you’d think that she had been tasked with planting exploding cigars on Fidel Castro.

But here’s what actually happened. Fresh out of Smith College in her early 20s, she took off to India to report for two years for a murky “fellowship,” capturing a newly independent country experimenting with Gandhian social reform, where women were actively collaborating to find their place.

When she returned home, she wanted to keep the party going and spread the same kind of enlightened ideals. She asked around about funding. Shockingly, corporations weren’t interested. But THE Corporation was.

The CIA was willing to fork over some cash, but it would involve setting up a think-tank: the Independent Research Service. She could load up a flight with liberal-minded young American students and professionals who were psyched about leftist ideals – but not too psyched – and take them over to the Soviet-organized World Youth Festivals in Helsinki and Vienna as an option to Communism. In exchange, she just had to produce some deliverables with her observations.

But what does any of this have to do with her lifelong fight for women’s rights and equality? Lots, actually.

Right around the same time as Steinem was being paid by the CIA to take Americans to the festivals, the agency published a report expressing its concern over the use of peace, brotherhood, and social progress to attract non-Communists from around the world to these festivals.

It cited a 1956 Moscow Radio broadcast: “The World Festival which is to be convened in Moscow” will “greet the festival of youth and peace with new labor achievements… Let us show our foreign contemporaries the results of the inspired creative labor of the Soviet people, the wealth of our socialist motherland, and everything of which the Soviet people are proud.”

One of those things of which Soviet society was very proud was the leading role of women in the workforce. In the wake of WWII’s losses, it was an inevitability that women were going to be stepping up as a matter of pragmatic reality.

The Committee of Soviet Women (KSZh) leveraged the 1957 Moscow festival to establish relationships with women from the developing world. The committee’s later reports indicate that women from Africa and South Asia were interested in the Soviet model, including such things as childcare provisions and female workforce participation, according to diplomatic historians.

Soviet archives say that visitors encountered Soviet institutions and it prompted them to think about “new possibilities for their societies.” The status of women was specifically one of the areas around which Soviet hosts and foreign visitors developed solidarity.

At the 1957 Moscow World Youth Festival, the Soviet Union made the social position of women part of its international cultural diplomacy. They were presented as educated, socially active participants in Soviet public life.

And surely it’s just another coincidence that President John F. Kennedy established the President’s Commission on the Status of Women in 1961, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt – or that JFK himself had been impressed by women in important positions in the USSR, according to his own brother, the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

Steinem’s Playboy Bunny exposé showing the exploitation of women in Hugh Hefner’s “gentlemen’s” clubs came just a year after one of the festivals, in 1963. The same year that the USSR was also sending a woman to space, while America was sending women to get butt-slapped by some pervert for a paycheck.

Don’t think that the CIA noticed or really cared that much about what women were doing in the workforce at home and abroad? They were actually kind of obsessed with it. To the point of collecting for their files a 1965 congressional report pointing out how women were everywhere in the Soviet workforce, and that “the party and Government have succeeded in altering social custom and public attitudes toward the employment of women.”

In 1963, the CIA found that “by 1959 about 80 percent of Soviet physicians and almost 75 percent of teachers, economists, and planners were women,” in a report concerned with Soviet leadership potential.

In 1974, three years after Steinem had nationally launched the political women’s issue magazine, ‘Ms.’, and become synonymous with the women’s liberation movement, Washington’s Rand Corporation think tank was still churning out research on women’s roles in science and technology in the USSR vs. America.

The Soviets had already understood the value of putting women to work, educating them, and showcasing them as evidence of social progress to the rest of the world. Hardly surprising that it wasn’t long before Washington understood the competitive value of offering its own version.

Steinem entered the American establishment’s Cold War contest with Russia over competing models of modernity at precisely the moment when the status of women had become part of that ideological battlefield.

At the perfect time, she waltzed in through a door that was just begging to be opened by the American establishment. One that had already been flung wide open by Soviet men and women.

Summer is officially over in Europe – and for millions of people, this may be remembered as the year when extreme weather stopped feeling particularly unusual.

Western Europe endured an extraordinary succession of heatwaves, drought, wildfires, and water shortages. Temperatures repeatedly climbed above 40C (104F), rivers fell to historic lows, and crops withered.

Then, in some places, the drought ended not with gentle rain but violent storms and flash flooding.
France, the UK, and Belgium all recorded their hottest summers on record.

So, was 2026 simply an exceptionally unlucky summer?

Scientists increasingly say no.

How hot was it?

France averaged 24C across June, July, and August, 3.6C above the 1991-2020 norm. The previous record, set during the deadly summer of 2003, was 2.7C above normal.

The country endured three official heatwaves totaling an unprecedented 53 days. Some 45% of France experienced temperatures of at least 40C at some point during the summer.

Britain, hardly famous for scorching summers, recorded a seasonal mean temperature of 16.5C – the highest since national records began in 1884. Temperatures peaked at 38.1C at London’s Kew Gardens, while 54 weather stations operated by the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, broke their all-time maximum records.

Across Western Europe, June and July were the hottest on record, with the average temperature reaching 21.62C – 2.79C above the 1991-2020 norm, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

How deadly was it?

Extreme heat can worsen heart, respiratory, and kidney problems, meaning its health impact is often measured through excess mortality rather than deaths explicitly attributed to heat.

In France, the national public health agency estimated almost 5,800 excess deaths from all causes during the June 17-July 2 heatwave, 36% above the expected level in the affected areas. Another 1,243 excess deaths were recorded during heatwave periods between July 3 and 22.

The figures are preliminary and do not mean heat caused every additional death, but health officials said the sharp increases highlighted the impact of prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures.

Older people were particularly vulnerable: Those aged 75 and over accounted for roughly two-thirds of the excess deaths during France’s first heatwave.

From heat to drought – and fire

Meanwhile, tinder-dry vegetation fueled wildfires. By early September, fires had affected more than 647,000 hectares in the EU, nearly twice the 20-year average for that point in the season, according to the European Commission’s Joint Research Center.

The economic cost

Agriculture was among the hardest-hit sectors.

In Britain, preliminary estimates suggested the country could be heading for its smallest harvest since detailed records began in 1984.

The impact also stretched across the EU. The European Commission has forecast the bloc’s maize harvest at a near 20-year low, following severe heat and water shortages in major growing regions.

How can drought and floods happen together?

A warmer atmosphere can hold roughly 7% more water vapor for every 1C of warming, providing more moisture for intense rainfall when storms develop.

At the same time, prolonged heat can leave some soils so dry that, under certain conditions, intense rain falls faster than the ground can absorb it, increasing runoff and flash-flood risk.

Northern Italy demonstrated the abrupt shift in August, when weeks of extreme heat were followed by torrential rain and flooding in Liguria, Lombardy, and northern Tuscany. 

France also experienced violent thunderstorms. On August 24, more than 20,000 lightning strikes were recorded alongside intense rain, hail, and powerful winds.

When the heat got weird

The extreme temperatures produced some unusual scenes across Europe.

In Belgium, young birds were reported jumping from nests to escape temperatures of up to 50-60C beneath roofs. One wildlife rescue center said it was receiving more than 40 heat-stressed animals a day as swifts, swallows, sparrows, and starlings struggled with the conditions.

Zoos resorted to creative ways of keeping animals cool. Prague Zoo brought in tons of ice for its polar bears and other animals, while Rome Zoo served frozen fruit, vegetables, and fish and moved some heat-sensitive species into climate-controlled areas.

Infrastructure also suffered. In Germany, sections of the A2 motorway buckled in the heat, while melting asphalt around tram tracks disrupted services in Leipzig. In Sweden, heat was blamed for warping railway tracks into a so-called “sun curve,” causing a freight train to derail.

The heat even interfered with history. In Belgium, organizers canceled a reenactment of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo because temperatures were considered too dangerous for participants and spectators.

Is this the new normal?

Not quite – yet.

The UK Met Office estimates that a summer as hot as 2026 would have had a less than one-in-1,000 annual chance in a climate without human greenhouse-gas emissions. In today’s environment, the probability is roughly one in nine – making such a summer about 130 times more likely.

Meteo-France reached a similar conclusion. It estimates that around 2.4C of the difference between summer 2026 and an average pre-industrial national summer was attributable to human-caused climate change.

Europe will still experience cooler and wetter summers. Natural weather variability has not disappeared, and no one can say whether 2027 will repeat this year’s extremes.

But the odds are shifting. Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense, while higher temperatures can worsen drought, wildfire conditions, and extreme rainfall.

Summer 2026 therefore may not be remembered simply as Europe’s summer from hell.

It may eventually be remembered as the summer when an extreme future briefly arrived early.

Violent Israeli settlers are “terrorists” who must be held accountable for targeting Palestinians, US Ambassador to West Jerusalem Mike Huckabee has said.

The UN relief agency, OCHA, said in August that there were an average of six settler violence incidents every day in the occupied West Bank during the first six months of 2026. The attacks by radicalized Jews have seen more than 2,300 Palestinians, including over 1,000 children, displaced, it added.

Huckabee, who is a strong supporter of Israel and calls himself a Christian Zionist, visited the town of Turmus Ayya near Ramallah on Saturday. The area has been frequently targeted by settlers this year, and around 80% of the town’s population of 3,000 people are Palestinian Americans, according to its mayor.

During his meeting with residents, Huckabee said that “if there are squatters that come in and put up their own flags and take possession of something that does not belong to them, if they burn a car, if they torch a mosque, if they go into someone’s home and vandalize it, paint graffiti on the walls, that’s a criminal act. But it extends beyond a criminal act. It’s an act of terror.”

According to Huckabee, doing so is in Israel’s “best interest” because the violent settlers damage the country’s reputation “when it appears that this tiny little group of marauders are somehow representative of the larger population.”

“There may be a few hundred who are responsible, but that’s a few hundred too many,” he said.

The US envoy already labeled the settlers “terrorist” in August after a series of attacks in the town of Qusra in the West Bank. Last week, after radicalized Jews set fire to a mosque in the village of Bizzariya, they sprayed graffiti on a wall, reading: “Regards to Huckabee from the terrorists.”

Carlson pointed out that, according to the Book of Genesis, the territory offered by God to the Hebrew patriarch stretched “from the Euphrates to the Nile,” which includes current Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and some parts of Saudi Arabia. “It would be fine if they [the Israelis] took it all,” the ambassador replied.

According to the UN, violence in the West Bank has been at an “all-time high” since Israel launched its military operation in Gaza in response to an incursion by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

Over 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the areas since then, with new illegal settlements being approved by the Israeli authorities and the country’s military often attacking Muslim communities together with the settlers, it said.

The talks that Russian President Vladimir Putin had with US President Donald Trump’s envoys on Saturday are indicative of an “atmosphere of trust” between Moscow and Washington, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have arrived in Kiev, where they are meeting with the Ukrainian leadership as part of US efforts to mediate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

Speaking to Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday, Peskov stated that “there is indeed an atmosphere of trust, at least with respect to this communication channel, [and] it is growing stronger.”

The official added that the “exchange of such greetings [between the Russian president and foreign dignitaries] is extended… when there are messages that the head of state deems necessary to convey.”

According to the Russian official, the US negotiators presented a “number of considerations regarding possible paths toward a settlement” of the Ukraine conflict.

Ushakov revealed that the Russian president and Trump’s envoys had also discussed economic cooperation and potential “major, mutually beneficial Russian-American projects.” He characterized the talks as “timely and very useful for both sides,” with Putin and Trump intending to continue personal contacts as well as the diplomatic work being conducted by Witkoff and Kushner.

The Russian president earlier praised his US counterpart for his sustained efforts to end the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev.

Ahead of the US negotiators’ departure for Kiev, Putin ordered a three-day hiatus in strikes on the Ukrainian capital to allow Witkoff and Kushner to safely carry out their mission.

The latest visit to Moscow by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff has triggered a fresh wave of speculation in Russia about what Washington is really trying to achieve.

With US President Donald Trump under pressure at home and much of his administration’s foreign-policy bandwidth consumed by Iran, the trip has been interpreted less as a breakthrough mission than as a signal – one that may be aimed as much at domestic American politics and alliance management as at Russia itself.

Russian analysts see the visit in different ways. Some believe the Americans are simply sounding out Moscow before returning to Kiev, trying to gauge whether any space remains for movement on Ukraine. Others argue the mission is part of a broader performance of diplomatic activity by the Trump White House, intended to project momentum where little real progress is possible. Still others view it as an exercise in ‘shuttle diplomacy’, useful mainly for information-gathering and atmospherics rather than for producing concrete results.

Roman Romanov, American studies specialist, lecturer at the Faculty of International Relations, Political Science, and Foreign Regional Studies at RSUH

I have two explanations regarding the visit and the format of this visit. First, the American side has already shown several times that it is interested in maintaining dialogue with both Moscow and Kiev. And this visit – or rather, this tour – is aimed at “synchronizing watches.” What does that mean? The Americans are trying to understand what conditions might be acceptable to the parties for resuming an active negotiating process. In other words, what can be offered to both sides so that they are prepared to move the dialogue in the direction of progress.

The second explanation is purely domestic-political for the United States. Against the backdrop of the failure of the Iran campaign, it is necessary to demonstrate some other kind of political activity that at least theoretically resembles progress with a concrete result. Trump has done this kind of thing more than once.

Do they have any ready-made proposals? I do not think so, because, first, at the moment a significant part of US foreign-policy resources is concentrated on Iran, and second, because despite the constructive role of both Witkoff and Kushner, they still act more as envoys of the American president on a specific issue than as direct participants formulating the American president’s position on this issue.

It is difficult to explain why they first went to Moscow and then to Kiev. One can assume they first want to hear Moscow’s stance, because it is in a more advantageous position – Russia is advancing, winning on the battlefield – so the US believes it would be more expedient first to hear out Moscow’s demands and gauge how much they’ve changed since August 2025, since the meeting in Anchorage.

At the same time, although we do not observe public participation by the EU, through closed channels the European Union surely communicates its interests. Their representatives are not there, but the position the Americans are shaping includes the EU’s position as well.

Dmitry Dtobnitsky – Russian political scientist specializing in American studies, expert in US foreign and domestic policy

These negotiations will continue – that’s the only perspective they have. What are we negotiating with the US about? About how to stop the conflict in Ukraine? Let’s be serious. First, this conflict is much broader than Russia’s military operation. It is a geopolitical conflict with very high stakes, the kind that happens with Europe once every several decades or even centuries. The Cold War period with the US was still an exception in that there were at least attempts to play at détente from time to time.

The world has entered an era of major transformation. In that sense, the narrow focus is – will they reach an agreement on Ukraine? No. Every time you think about that, you have to recall how it all started, why it is like this, how wrongly the world is structured, how important it is for Russia to insist on its interests, why the European bureaucracy itself cannot accept that, because otherwise that would mean the end of both it and the political class of many countries. Why can’t this conflict stop? Because it can’t be settled. Someone has to win. Just as with the US and Iran (which, incidentally, is a much more local conflict) – it is impossible to agree, there can be no deal. There can only be some movement in which one of the sides explicitly or implicitly recognizes its defeat. It may not be total defeat, but at least at some stage one side wins and the other side does not recognize it. Such a process will last a long time, but in the end there will still be some de facto consolidation of the results of this conflict. Not a negotiated one, unfortunately, but a factual one. Diplomats may formalize such a conclusion, or they may not. Frankly, that is no longer important.

Some say [Russian Finance Minister] Siluanov and [US Treasury Secretary] Bessent will come to some understanding, and perhaps there will be incredible financial, economic, or investment cooperation between the US and Russia. I have said many times that there can be no serious cooperation between Russia and the US. There are neither material nor geopolitical grounds for it. Are we now supposed to throw away all the achievements of localizing our civilian aviation industry and start buying Boeing again? Are we going to hand over half of the most convenient Arctic territory on the planet to the US? Is that it? Or are we going to sell all Russian oil through Mr. Kushner? How do you imagine that? Some say: “Investments will come here.” But that would mean that instead of creating a sovereign financial system, we would say: “No, let’s reintegrate ourselves back into the collapsing dollar system. Let’s support it with our achievements of the past five years.” It’s obvious that there can be no real cooperation.

One can have symbolic cooperation. It is a wonderful look when two great countries can do something together. The most we will get is a hockey match and an ‘Apollo-Soyuz’. It must be understood that these are purely token steps, which only demonstrate that nothing particularly substantial can happen. It does not mean it will be forbidden. It simply will never play a substantial role. Even in 2019, before Covid and the military operation, trade turnover between Russia and the US was negligibly small. And that is understandable: it is geopolitics, geoeconomics – you cannot jump over that. And now, after so much effort has been spent to become independent and to work with Eurasia on a new basis, to say, “No, now let’s start doing something again with the Americans” is just laughable. That will not happen.

Andrey Manoylo, doctor of Political Sciences, professor at Moscow State University, head of the Department of Information and Hybrid Wars at APN Alter

Why did Kushner and Witkoff fly to Moscow for the sixth time? It’s both simple and complicated at the same time. Kirill Dmitriev, being one of the corners of the ‘Anchorage triangle’ (a configuration of three equidistant centers of power – [Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov, [Kremlin aide] Yury Ushakov, Dmitriev), is a red rag both for Ushakov, the “social architect” of Anchorage, and for the more skeptically minded Sergey Lavrov. Especially given his ability to remain in the media spotlight.

That is precisely why the visit of Witkoff and Kushner – direct competitors of the ‘triangle’s’ hardline diplomacy – may have been planned as a simple diversion: to annoy those with whom [CIA chief] John Ratcliffe had contacts in Moscow. To show that the ball is now in Dmitriev’s court.

In all seriousness, though, Witkoff and Kushner did not bring anything strategic to Moscow. Their direct and, most likely, only task is to gather feedback from Ratcliffe’s visit.

Dmitriev is a gifted figure, but he is not an intelligence officer with an innate poker face, nor is he a career diplomat. Dmitriev is a living person, he is talkative, and “a chatterbox is a godsend for a spy.” I am convinced these two are flying in with an intelligence questionnaire. They will extract all the information from Dmitriev – what people are talking about in the president’s circle, rumors, gossip, among which there will also be leaks of genuinely secret information.

Ratcliffe made a lot of noise. His visit is still agitating minds; some see in him almost a messenger of the Apocalypse. It is no coincidence that people immediately started talking about mobilization – which in reality is “utter nonsense” (as our president said), about some secret Security Council meetings right in the middle of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, and even about war with Norway. It is obvious that Ratcliffe stirred something up, and the American duo came to find out how ready that brew is. They have no other tasks.

And one more important point. What Witkoff and Kushner are doing now with Dmitriev is the well-known practice of ‘shuttle diplomacy’. We know it from the events preceding the collapse of the Soviet Union. The author of the term was Henry Kissinger, who once bought Mikhail Gorbachev’s trust by saying: “Gorby, while you and I are trying to break the ice of hatred, our foreign ministries with their slowness are ruining everything – they are slowing down the reset of our relations. Let’s push them aside and solve things directly. We are not stupider than our subordinates, are we?” Gorbachev happily agreed, realizing that by removing the Foreign Ministry from the talks, he was ridding himself of criticism – no one would contradict him. But practice showed that the Foreign Ministry was the very mechanism that protected against hasty decisions, even if they seemed correct and the only possible ones. Gorbachev lost, and together with him the entire Soviet Union lost.

And this is not the only case that confirms the rule: however attractive ‘shuttle diplomacy’ may look, it always leads to defeat, and defeat leads to catastrophe. Having such rich historical experience and so many examples, we still continue enthusiastically to play at ‘shuttle diplomacy’ with Kushner and Witkoff. Why? That’s a good question.

Gevorg Mirzayan, specialist in American studies

The US began sending signals about its readiness for dialogue after Russia sharply intensified its retaliatory strikes on Ukraine and put the Kiev regime before the inevitable catastrophe of the coming winter. It is possible the Americans will ask us to stop, and then Trump could show voters, before the congressional elections, a nice picture of his successful peacekeeping mission.

The meeting between Bessent and Siluanov at the G20 summit also fits into this scheme – no serious issues were raised there; the important thing was to demonstrate the positive attitude of the US administration toward bilateral interaction.

Well, we are ready for peace in Ukraine, but only on our own terms – and those terms are unchanged and well known to Washington.

Yegor Tropov, political scientist specializing in American studies

The latest visit by the American negotiating delegation is primarily a symbolic step toward restoring dialogue and laying the groundwork for the future development of relations between Russia and the United States. In the four-sided diplomatic process, it is the American side that is most interested in the quickest possible signing of a peace document – though one that is more formal and declarative than a genuine and lasting peace.

For the sake of media image and his political role as the chief mediator, Donald Trump is ready to conduct numerous negotiations that verbally move towards peace, whereas in reality what leads to peace is only the lack of political will, finances, and weapons on the part of Europe and Ukraine to continue resisting – resources they still have enough of for years to come.

At the same time, one should not underestimate the importance of symbolism in the art of diplomacy: interstate communication, the establishment and strengthening of professional and personal relationships can play a much more significant role in the future – under conditions of a full-scale warming of interstate relations and the resumption of full-fledged economic and political cooperation.

France lacks money for itself and simply cannot keep funding Ukraine indefinitely, Jordan Bardella, the president of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally (NR) party, has said.

The main French opposition party faced harsh criticism from its rivals earlier this week after its vice president, Louis Aliot, said that NR “would turn off the tap” for Kiev if it comes to power after the 2027 presidential vote. Le Pen is seen as having strong chances to succeed in the election next year, no matter who her rival will be in the second round.

Bardella weighed in on the issue during his speech at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy on Saturday, saying that Ukraine needs support from France and other Western nations during the conflict with Russia, but “our objective should not be to finance the war ad vitam æternam,” which means ‘forever’ in Latin.

“The extremely serious and worrying state of French public finances means we can’t give money without any guarantees or assurances that this money will be repaid one day,” the National Rally president said.

Paris has been one of the strongest backers of Kiev in the EU after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, providing it with billions in military aid and supplying various sophisticated weapons, including CAESAR self-propelled howitzers and Mirage fighter jets.

According to Bardella, the Americans were “much smarter” than the Europeans when it came to assistance for Kiev “because the money they gave to Ukraine is secured against rare earth mining.” He was referring to the deal agreed upon between Washington and Kiev last year, which grants the US preferential access to Ukrainian mineral resources.

During US President Donald Trump’s second term, Washington also significantly reduced aid to Ukraine, making European NATO members pay for American-made arms supplied to the country.

Le Pen said on Thursday that the National Rally is skeptical about further assistance to Ukraine because it believes that the conflict with Russia needs a diplomatic solution.

A poll by Harris Interactive in late August suggested that Le Pen has the support of 34% of the French public, which should guarantee her a place in the second round of the presidential election, where she would likely win comfortably against either her left-wing rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon or the centrist candidate, former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

Russian officials said repeatedly that foreign weapons being sent to Kiev will not prevent Moscow from achieving its military goals, but will merely prolong the fighting, while increasing the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has confirmed plans to cut jobs as Britain’s largest carmaker struggles with rising costs, falling sales, and the impact of US tariffs, with The Times reporting that up to 4,000 positions could be eliminated.

JLR has faced mounting pressure from US tariffs, which have made its British-built vehicles more expensive to sell in the US despite London securing a reduced 10% rate. The impact has been particularly significant given that North America is the company’s largest market. Its troubles were compounded by a major cyberattack last year that forced it to halt production for several weeks.

JLR’s revenue fell by nearly 10% in the quarter ending in June, while pre-tax profit plunged by more than two-thirds to £109 million ($147 million). According to The Times, chief executive PB Balaji is under pressure from JLR’s Indian owner, Tata Motors, to cut costs.

In a statement to media, JLR said it “must adapt to evolving global market conditions” while seeking approximately £1.7 billion ($2.3 billion) in savings over the next two years and lowering its annual break-even point to 300,000 vehicles.

Employees were reportedly informed on Friday. The Times reported that up to 4,000 positions could be eliminated over the next two years, although JLR has not confirmed the number.

JLR directly employs around 34,000 people at sites in the West Midlands and Merseyside and supports an estimated 120,000 jobs across Britain’s automotive supply chain.

European carmakers have been reducing their workforces amid weak demand, rising costs, and growing competition from lower-cost Chinese manufacturers. Volkswagen this week approved another 50,000 job cuts by 2030, bringing its planned global workforce reduction to approximately 100,000. Its Porsche subsidiary is set to eliminate another 5,000 positions by 2035.

Germany’s car-manufacturing crisis has also been compounded by high energy costs since the country lost access to much of the cheap Russian pipeline gas on which its industrial economy had long relied following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume has separately cited US tariffs and intensifying Chinese competition among the pressures weighing on the company’s competitiveness.

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to step up operations against armed groups after a drone swarm attack on a military compound killed three soldiers and injured four others.

The assault comes as Colombia is grappling with what has been described as its worst wave of violence in a decade. In August, an explosion outside a police station in Cucuta injured 11 officers and killed a police dog. Earlier this week, a car bomb outside another police station in the northeast killed one civilian and injured 11 others.

The latest attack occurred on Friday night at the El Trapiche military post in Ocana, in the northeastern department of Norte de Santander, according to Colombian authorities.

At least 20 UAVs were used in the assault, AFP reported. Explosives dropped from the drones struck barracks and other parts of the base before a firefight broke out. Two soldiers died at the scene and a third passed away after receiving medical attention. A Colombian Air Force helicopter was also hit by shrapnel.

#ATENCIÓN | Un helicóptero de la FAC habría sido impactado tras el ataque con drones por parte del ELN, contra el Ejército, en la base militar de Ocaña Norte, Santander.

Vía @josedavid88_ pic.twitter.com/VBQwr1hMtK

— ÚltimaHoraCaracol (@UltimaHoraCR) September 5, 2026

The Colombian military “categorically” condemned what it called a “terrorist action” and attributed the attack to the National Liberation Army (ELN), the country's last major active leftist guerrilla organization.

“To the ELN I say with absolute clarity: for every police officer or soldier you kill, I will bring down on you the full weight and legitimate force of the State,” De la Espriella wrote on social media.

IMPACTANTE
Primeras imágenes de los heridos del Batallón Santander tras el ataque con drones.
Soldados colombianos heridos. Familias en zozobra. Un ataque cobarde.
Los narcoterroristas que hicieron esto lo van a pagar. Y lo van a pagar caro. pic.twitter.com/eCydsYuDDl

— Jhonf Fonseca (@Jhonffonseca) September 5, 2026

The president pledged a new strategy for Catatumbo targeting the ELN’s leadership, organizational structures, finances, and illicit revenue.

Founded in 1964 with the hopes of overthrowing the national government and establishing a Cuban-style socialist state, the ELN later turned to the narcotics trade. It has fought FARC dissidents for control of Catatumbo, a major coca-growing region and drug-trafficking corridor along the Venezuelan border.

De la Espriella, a close ally of US President Donald Trump, took office last month after campaigning on a tough-on-crime platform and has intensified military operations against armed groups.

His government has also pursued closer cooperation with Washington through the US-led “Shield of the Americas” anti-cartel alliance, which includes Argentina, Ecuador, and El Salvador. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to meet De la Espriella in Barranquilla next week.

The husband of a 28-year-old Lebanese woman killed in an Israeli airstrike just two days after their wedding has told RT how he was speaking to his wife on the phone moments before their home was hit.

Saja Sharara was killed at the couple’s home in Arabsalim, southern Lebanon, on August 27. Six other people, including a child, were wounded.

Hussein said he called Saja after hearing about an Israeli strike nearby. Minutes later, she called him back and suddenly said: “A rocket, a rocket is coming towards us, Hussein.”

The connection was lost. “The rocket fell on her,” Hussein recalled. “And then I realized that it was over.”

Israel has not said specifically what it was targeting at the house. It said its wider attacks in the Nabatieh area targeted Hezbollah infrastructure in response to drones launched at IDF troops. No Israeli casualties were reported.

Hussein said the continuing Israeli military presence and air operations mean there is no ceasefire in practice.

“There is no ceasefire as long as this enemy is on our land and the aviation is flying above us,” he told RT.

RT’s Steve Sweeney spoke exclusively with Hussein in southern Lebanon about the future he and Saja had planned together.

An Iranian crude oil tanker has sunk in the Gulf of Oman after being struck by American forces, US Central Command (CENTCOM) has said. It was one of three commercial vessels targeted by the US on Saturday after Iran launched ballistic missiles at two American warships.

The M/T Kylo went down in the Gulf of Oman, CENTCOM said in a post on X on Sunday. The oil carrier “joined Iran’s navy at the bottom of the sea,” it added.

CENTCOM published drone footage showing the half-submerged vessel, with plumes of smoke coming from it. The US military said the M/T Kylo had not been carrying oil and that its crew had been directed to abandon ship before it was struck.

The attack follows renewed US-Iran hostilities earlier this week. Washington launched strikes on Iran on Tuesday, prompting Tehran to retaliate against US facilities in the Gulf with missiles and drones.

The US military described Iran’s missile launches against its aircraft carrier and guided-missile destroyer as unsuccessful and “unprovoked.” It claimed the three vessels it subsequently targeted were part of “a multibillion-dollar shadow network” financing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

“Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost – taking out three of yours,” CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper said in a statement.

In response, the IRGC said it had struck three oil tankers that were “trespassing” in the Strait of Hormuz, along with three US-linked vessels, in retaliation for the American attacks.

The IRGC later said it had fired several ballistic missiles at a US aircraft carrier and a destroyer. “After sustaining damage and fearing another reprisal, the two warships were forced to flee the area of engagement,” it claimed. CENTCOM, however, said the vessels had successfully evaded the Iranian attacks and that no American personnel were harmed.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev has refused to assign blame for last month’s drone incident in Germany squarely to Russia, citing “reckless” Western weapons deliveries to Kiev.

Earlier this week, the German government said it had grounds to believe that Moscow was behind the incident, in which an explosive-laden UAV was found between Ukrainian Antonov cargo planes at Leipzig/Halle Airport on August 4.

Berlin subsequently announced the closure of the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the Russian House in Berlin, as well as tighter border controls for Russian citizens. Moscow responded by shutting down the Goethe Institute centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Ekaterinburg, which promote German language and culture.

Moscow has rejected the allegations, with President Vladimir Putin suggesting they were being used as a diversionary tactic to distract Germans from domestic economic woes.

A case in point is Bulgaria, whose prime minister told the parliament on Friday that European shipments of long-range weapons to Ukraine have been just as “reckless” as the failed sabotage attempt in Germany last month. Radev pointed out that Kiev is using Western-made weaponry, backed by European intelligence and instructors, to conduct strikes deep inside Russian territory.

“And what can we expect when we attack deep inside another country with our long-range weapons? Will it stand by or will it respond?” the Bulgarian prime minister inquired rhetorically.

“Europe can exist without Russia, but Europe will hardly exist for long against Russia,” Radev concluded, calling on the EU to “sit down at the negotiating table [with Moscow] as soon as possible.”

Meanwhile, a number of prominent political figures in Germany have called into question the government’s response to the drone incident and, more broadly, Berlin’s current hostile policies toward Russia.

Similar assessments have been voiced by those at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Fielding questions from The Pioneer media outlet on Tuesday, Ulrich Siegmund – the lead candidate for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Sunday’s regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt – said that a “continuous sequence of events” had led up to the drone incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport. He cited his country’s ever-deeper involvement in the Ukraine conflict, arguing that “it’s only logical that there will be some kind of reaction at some point.”

Siegmund criticized the anti-Russian policies pursued by successive German governments since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, saying that weapons deliveries to Kiev and economic sanctions against Moscow have done little to resolve the conflict and save people’s lives.

The AfD politician insisted that it was high time Germany engaged earnestly in diplomacy with Russia instead.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised Moscow’s contribution to the country’s military and technological development, declaring that Russia will overcome the challenges it faces because they are “temporary and transient.”

The president made the remarks during an address marking Moscow’s 879th birthday; the city celebrates the anniversary of its founding every year in in early September. Putin lauded residents of the capital and the rest of the nation’s citizens, describing Moscow as a symbol of Russian statehood, unity and resilience.

“Together with all citizens of our country, we will overcome any difficulty and any challenge. They are temporary and transient, while Moscow and Russia are eternal,” Putin said.

“Today, the capital, together with the entire country, has mobilized all its forces, like 85 years ago, for the sake of a common, rightful cause. Tens of thousands of Muscovites are fighting against the neo-Nazis on the line of engagement, advancing and displaying valor, courage and heroism.”

Putin highlighted Moscow’s contribution to Russia’s military-industrial sector, saying more than 450 defense plants, high-tech enterprises and companies in the capital are producing goods for the needs of the armed forces.

Moscow hospitals are also playing a major role in treating and rehabilitating wounded servicemen, Putin said, while specialists from the capital are involved in reconstruction efforts in Donbass.

Xi Jinping’s state visit to Egypt, which began on September 1, was his first in a decade and coincided with the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

During his meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Xi called on Middle Eastern states to become masters of their own destiny, resist outside interference, and discuss a new regional security architecture. Beijing and Cairo agreed to deepen cooperation on security and counterterrorism, develop projects with data centers, semiconductors, and critical minerals, and expand the use of national currencies in bilateral trade. The relationship is moving beyond conventional trade and infrastructure into sectors that will shape economic sovereignty for decades.

The agenda fell within China’s familiar formula – development, state sovereignty, and fairer global governance. Beijing increasingly presents itself as a voice for the global majority and the Global South, where many countries associate today’s instability with Western hegemony, US sanctions, and decades of attempts to reorder other regions by force. Wars, regime change campaigns, economic blockades, and the division of states into “acceptable” and “unacceptable” have brought the Middle East neither lasting peace nor promised prosperity. Instead, they have created zones of chronic conflict, and made dependence on foreign patrons a source of regional vulnerability.

Beijing offers a different model of engagement, built around infrastructure, trade, investment, and recognition of every state’s right to choose its partners and development path. China is not doing this out of charity – its policies serve the world’s largest industrial economy, which needs export markets, secure transport corridors, and reliable access to raw materials. Even so, many countries in the Global South find it more attractive than a Western approach often accompanied by political conditions, sanctions threats, and demands to accept an external hierarchy of priorities. Chinese investment can also create debt as well as technological, and trade dependencies, but it rarely entails overt supervision of a partner’s domestic order. That distinction allows Beijing to work with very different governments that share a desire for greater freedom of action.

Xi’s visit to Cairo is thus a part of a broader Chinese initiative to strengthen ties with countries seeking a multipolar order and to set constructive interdependence against the destructive effort to preserve a unipolar system. Egypt occupies a special place in this strategy – it is simultaneously an Arab, African, and Mediterranean power, capable of anchoring China’s presence across several regions at once.

For China, Egypt offers a rare combination of strategic advantages. With a population of more than 110 million, it has a large domestic market, controls the Suez Canal, carries considerable political weight in the Arab world, and provides direct access to African markets. One of the principal maritime routes between Asia and Europe passes through Suez, making Egypt’s stability directly relevant to the security of Chinese foreign trade. Cairo is becoming a bridge between the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Africa, where China has steadily expanded its economic and political influence.

China–Africa trade reached a record $348 billion in 2025, while Beijing’s removal of tariffs on imports from 53 African countries strengthened its position just as the US was returning to protectionism. Africa’s importance to China goes well beyond mineral resources. Its rapidly growing population needs roads, power plants, ports, telecommunications, and industry – all areas in which China has extensive capacity. By building infrastructure and manufacturing hubs, Beijing opens markets for Chinese companies, embeds long-term commercial ties, and converts economic presence into political capital.

Egypt is particularly important because of the Suez Canal Economic Zone, which, according to the Egyptian government, has already attracted around $4 billion in Chinese investment. Chinese companies are involved in port and railway development, construction of the New Administrative Capital, pipe and tire manufacturing, green energy projects, and satellite production. Total accumulated Chinese investment in Egypt exceeds $10 billion, while bilateral trade reached a record $20.79 billion in 2025. In the first half of 2026 alone, trade rose by a further 21.5% to $11.3 billion. Egyptian exports to China roughly tripled over the same period, although their absolute value, at $840.8 million, remained far below the volume of Chinese goods flowing in the opposite direction.

This imbalance remains the main economic contradiction in the partnership. Egyptian imports from China reached roughly $10.4 billion in the first half of the year, and Cairo cannot remain merely a market for Chinese products. It must move from importing finished goods to localizing production, securing technology transfers, creating jobs, and integrating Egyptian companies into transregional value chains. If Chinese industrial zones support component manufacturing, workforce training, and exports to Africa, the Arab world, and Europe, the partnership will become more balanced. Otherwise, impressive figures will continue to conceal dependence on foreign supplies and a persistent trade deficit.

China’s presence also broadens Egypt’s room for manouver in foreign policy. Cairo receives approximately $1.3 billion in US military assistance each year and remains close to Washington while developing ties with China, Russia, and BRICS. El-Sisi calls this a strategic balance, reflecting the Global South’s wider desire to diversify partnerships and escape junior status within a Western-led system. Beijing supports that choice, because every industrial project, logistics terminal, or yuan-denominated transaction turns multipolarity from a slogan into material reality.

The Middle East’s importance to China is most clearly expressed in numbers. Trade between China and the Arab states reached $407.4 billion in 2024, with Chinese exports accounting for $206 billion and imports for $201.4 billion. Behind this apparent balance lies a critical energy dependence. In 2025, the Middle East supplied around 52% of China’s oil imports, or approximately 1.9 billion of the 3.6 billion barrels it purchased abroad. Six Arab suppliers in the Gulf provided 42% of all Chinese oil imports: Saudi Arabia accounted for 14%, Iraq 11%, the United Arab Emirates 7%, and Oman 6%. The region also supplied nearly one-third of China’s liquefied natural gas imports, most of it from Qatar.

For China, stability in the Middle East is an economic necessity. Rising oil prices increase industrial and transport costs, while any threat to the Strait of Hormuz affects several major suppliers at once. The Red Sea and Suez Canal are equally important: disruption forces ships around Africa, lengthening delivery times and raising insurance costs, especially for China-Europe trade. Beijing is diversifying suppliers, developing pipelines, building strategic reserves, and accelerating its shift to renewable energy, but it cannot quickly replace Middle Eastern supplies without substantial costs.

Iran occupies a distinct place in this equation. According to estimates by the global trade analysis company Kpler, China imported around 1.38 million barrels of Iranian oil per day in 2025, equivalent to roughly 12% of its total oil imports. Sold at a discount of about $8-10 a barrel, Iranian crude remains an attractive resource for Chinese industry, while Beijing’s purchases provide vital support to an Iranian economy under sanctions. Yet Saudi Arabia and the UAE are far more important to China in terms of overall trade. In 2025, Chinese trade with each country reached approximately $108 billion, compared with an estimated $41 billion with Iran once unrecorded oil shipments are included.

Beijing maintains a strategic partnership with Tehran, exceptionally close relations with Pakistan, expanding ties with the Gulf monarchies, and support for Palestinian statehood, while avoiding commitments that could draw it into a regional war. Chinese diplomacy aligns with Iran in opposing external military pressure and unilateral sanctions, and with the Arab majority in supporting an independent Palestinian state. At the same time, economic interdependence compels Beijing to maintain working relations with every major regional actor, including Israel.

Beijing has neither sent troops to defend Tehran against the US and Israel nor turned the relationship into a military alliance. It prefers diplomacy and trade, and refuses to recognize unilateral restrictions. China seeks not one regional power’s triumph, but an equilibrium that safeguards commerce, keeps maritime routes open, and prevents an outside hegemon from determining the region’s future.

The final element of China’s proposition concerns global and regional governance. Xi has urged Middle Eastern states to determine their region’s future and limit external interference – an appeal that has found a receptive climate.

The Gulf states, Egypt, and Türkiye continue to cooperate with the US while expanding ties with China, Russia, India, and one another, because recent experience has exposed the risks of excessive reliance on US security guarantees. Washington still commands the region’s largest network of bases and alliances, yet this power has failed to produce durable order and has often accompanied new wars and divisions.

The Mecca joint defense agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan on August 7 expressed this desire for greater autonomy. It establishes that an armed attack on one member will be regarded as an attack on all, although practical mechanisms remain undefined. Egypt’s possible accession would give the grouping far greater political and military weight. Beijing views its underlying logic favorably as regional responsibility, diversified partnerships, and reduced external dependence accord with China’s understanding of multipolarity, while Pakistan links the emerging framework to one of Beijing’s closest partners.

It would nevertheless be wrong to cast China as a selfless champion of the Global South or a future replica of the US. Beijing pursues its own interests and uses its economic scale to promote Chinese companies, standards, and currency. Its instruments, however, are different. Beijing does not organize regional policy around regime change, divide partners by ideology, or build military protectorates. Nor is it prepared to replace the US as an all-encompassing security guarantor or immerse itself in the region’s religious, national, and dynastic rivalries.

China’s influence is growing by other means: trade, investment, technology, ports, energy contracts, diplomatic mediation, and support for the autonomy of regional powers. This strategy has already produced tangible results. Saudi Arabia and Iran restored relations through Chinese mediation in 2023; BRICS expanded; China-Arab institutions grew stronger; and the gradual shift towards settlement in national currencies began. None of these developments alone will displace the dollar or erase Western military and political influence. Together, however, they are weakening one center’s monopoly on writing the rules.

Xi Jinping’s visit to Egypt marks the next stage of that process. China remains cautious about the use of military power, but its expanding economic presence is increasingly translating into political influence. Its ability to engage simultaneously with Iran, the Arab monarchies, Egypt, Türkiye, Pakistan, Palestine, and Israel makes Beijing a natural participant in any future regional security system. For the global majority, what matters is the principle embodied in this presence: a major power that does not demand unconditional loyalty, but helps broaden the choices available to the states of the Global South and reinforces their sovereignty.

That is why China’s approach is increasingly regarded across the region as a substantial counterweight to US-led Western hegemony. This is not simply about replacing one global leader with another, but about creating an order in which no power can impose its will on everyone else. Egypt, linking Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean, can become one of its pillars. Xi’s visit shows that multipolarity is ceasing to be a diplomatic abstraction and is acquiring infrastructure, trade routes, financial mechanisms, and political agency.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s talks with US President Donald Trump’s envoys were “constructive,” “extremely candid” and useful to both sides, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov has said.

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin in Moscow on Saturday for talks focused on settling the Ukraine conflict. The meeting lasted over three hours and included both formal discussions and an informal exchange over lunch, according to Ushakov.

“The conversation was substantive, constructive, extremely candid and trusting,” the presidential aide told reporters following the meeting.

The Russian side provided a detailed assessment of the battlefield situation, expressing confidence that Moscow would achieve its objectives and reiterating that any lasting settlement must address what it considers the root causes of the conflict, Ushakov said. Putin also confirmed Moscow’s readiness to continue working with Washington to seek a political and diplomatic settlement, he added.

The US envoys are expected to travel to Kiev on Sunday. Ushakov said they had promised to use the assessments and observations they received directly from Putin in their talks with the Ukrainian side.

Putin earlier thanked Trump for his efforts to help resolve the conflict, saying the US president continued seeking a settlement despite the difficulty of the situation. The Russian president also reiterated Moscow’s commitment to refrain from strikes on Kiev during a three-day period beginning at midnight on September 5, intended to allow the US envoys to travel safely to the Ukrainian capital.

In his opening remarks before the closed-door talks, Putin noted that Ukraine had also sharply reduced attacks on Russian territory, including Moscow, but stressed that Moscow and Kiev had not agreed on a broader three-day truce proposed by the Ukrainian side.

The talks also covered issues beyond Ukraine. Ushakov said the two sides discussed economic cooperation and potential “major, mutually beneficial Russian-American projects” in detail.

Putin additionally drew the US envoys’ attention to Ukraine’s plans to rebury the remains of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) figures Andrey Melnik and Evgeny Konovalets, whom Ushakov described as among the “most notorious Nazi criminals.” The Americans “took note” of the issue, according to the Kremlin aide.

Ushakov described the talks as “timely and very useful for both sides,” adding that Putin and Trump would continue personal contacts and that the diplomatic channel involving Witkoff and Kushner would remain active.

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) – known for its anti-immigration stance – is predicted to convincingly win the election in the Saxony-Anhalt region, according to exit polls published after voting closed on Sunday. The AfD looks likely to win up to 45% of the vote while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party is likely to lose half of its electorate to record an 18% vote and a slump of teh same amount.

Berlin is apparently so wary of this potential outcome that it is actively preparing mechanisms to cut a potential AfD government off from some federal resources, such as the intelligence-sharing network, according to Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.

What did the polls predict?

Prior to the vote the AfD enjoyed between 40% and 43% support in the state – about double that of Merz’s CDU at 22-23%, according to the last pre-election surveys conducted on behalf of the public broadcasters German ZDF and ARD.

Should those numbers hold, the AfD could emerge as the only political group in the parliament capable of forming a government, because all other parties would have to put together a broad coalition to challenge it. Such a coalition would require the right-of-center CDU to enter an agreement with The Left – the successors of the former East Germany’s Communist Party, which is projected to finish third. Such a scenario was already rejected out of hand by current Saxony-Anhalt government head Sven Schulze, the CDU’s leading candidate.

Saxony-Anhalt: Mirror of German woes

Saxony-Anhalt is a relatively sparsely populated, predominantly rural state but it also has a sizeable chemical industry. In many ways it has become a reflection of the troubles facing the entire German economy.

Unemployment in Saxony-Anhalt stood at 8.1% as of July 2026, far above the nationwide average of 6.4%.

Germany’s decision to abandon cheap Russian gas imports in 2022 has played a major role in slowing down the German economy. It contracted in both 2023 and 2024, the first back-to-back annual decline in more than two decades, and grew only by 0.2% in 2025. Corporate insolvencies also rose by more than 22% in each of those years, according to official data.

The state’s political agenda is thus dominated by economic issues, according to ZDF polling. 

‘The most dangerous man in Germany’

The AfD’s election lead is Ulrich Siegmund, a charismatic 35-year-old wholesale and foreign trade specialist.

When the Der Spiegel weekly ran a cover story about him titled ‘Germany’s most dangerous man’ last month, the politician described by the Financial Times as “charming” with a “toothpaste-advert smile” turned it into a publicity stunt by autographing a pile of printed copies featuring his photo.

The party is not relying on Siegmund’s charisma alone, though. Its backing of a more restrictive immigration policy and reliance on German workers, as well as promises of extensive social benefits, lower taxes, and vows to avoid new government debts have resonated with the electorate.

Siegmund has criticized the German government for what he called “giving away money all over the world.” Tens of billions of euros are going to asylum and integration spending, he told the broadcaster MDR in an interview, adding that “every minute, 20,000 euros ($23,190) go to Ukraine. That’s all money we need, money the federal government could also pass on to the states.”

In a separate interview with Die Welt, he also vowed to fight “deindustrialization” and predicted “an economic boom” in Saxony-Anhalt. 

A study by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), however, suggested that an AfD government could face an annual budget deficit of €2.2 billion if the party follows through on all of its election promises without external support.

Why is the AfD shunned by elites?

German officials and politicians have routinely referred to the AfD as “right-wing extremists” or a “far-right” party. They contend the party does not uphold modern “democratic” values and seeks to undermine the political system, though the AfD itself has never voiced such intentions publicly.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius tried in July to justify the federal government’s plans to deny any potential AfD government access to classified information by claiming that the party is “opposed to the very constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany” and willing to “destroy our democracy from within.”

The party’s anti-immigrant stance appears to be at the heart of the standoff with the German political system. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, sought to label it a “confirmed right-wing extremist organization” in 2025, claiming the party “disregards human dignity” and uses terms such as “knife-wielding migrants” to ascribe violent tendencies to non-European ethnic groups.

Back in 2025, AfD co-chair Alice Weidel described her party as “libertarian conservative” and said it fights bureaucracy and seeks to “free the people from the state.” She also criticized the then-German government for fostering “immigration into the social system” and accused the EU of Hitler-like censorship in a lengthy interview with Elon Musk on X ahead of snap elections.

So is the AfD controversial?

The party still attract its fair share of controversy, mostly linked to Germany’s Nazi past or the Holocaust. In 2024, the AfD’s top candidate for the European Parliament elections, Maximilian Krah, had to step down after claiming that not all members of the Nazi SS were “automatically” criminals. In 2022, an AfD MP, Holger Winterstein, was accused by the Israeli ambassador of “dancing” on the Berlin Holocaust memorial, prompting the party to intervene and take “measures” against the lawmaker.

Why is the AfD so popular?

The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, according to polling agencies Forsa and INSA, maintaining a healthy 8% lead over its closest rival – the CDU.

Support for the party has surged outside its political heartland in the former East Germany, achieving electoral milestones in regional votes in two western German states.

AfD co-Chair Alice Weidel told ZDF in August that the party would bring “law and order to Germany,” adding that she was fed up of being “lied to.” Earlier, she also called for bringing back cheap Russian energy, claiming it was “the secret of the success of ‘Made in Germany’.”

The party’s rise in public standing comes as approval ratings for Merz’s government coalition comprising the Christian Democratic CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democratic Party is at record lows. Merz was named Germany’s least popular chancellor in 30 years in July, with a disapproval rating of around 84%.

Merz, who came to power as a result of snap elections in February 2025, has spectacularly failed to deliver on his own campaign promises. The chancellor, who vowed to revive the struggling economy, ended up funneling money into the military while blaming the economic problems on Germans themselves.

In July he admitted that the nation’s “ongoing energy crisis [was] due to the lack of Russian gas” but suggested no way out of it while ignoring suggestions from the AfD to “call Moscow.”

Merz has backed a massive military spending increase, vowing to make the German army the strongest conventional force in Europe, repeatedly pledging more support for Ukraine and resorting to megaphone posturing on any question of resolving the conflict.

In Saxony-Anhalt, a CDU member told Euractiv on Tuesday that the local party branch was paying the price for Berlin’s policies.

Is the Brussels-based consensus facing a shock?

An AfD victory would likely be met by a federal government attempt to limit the power of any new Saxony-Anhalt government. The Telegraph and Die Welt reported in July that Berlin was developing a “secret plan” to prevent any “obstructionism” on the part of the regional authorities in case it would need to facilitate a massive NATO troop movement through the German territory, potentially towards the Russian borders.

Under German laws, a regional government exerts control over the state’s police, education, environment, and health. It can also have limited influence on federal policies through the Bundesrat – a House of the German parliament consisting of the regional governments’ representatives.

The options reportedly considered by the federal government would revise nationwide emergency regulations to allow Berlin “overrule individual states or to take the necessary measures” without the states’ explicit consent.

A potential AfD government is also likely to be perceived as another sign of the continued right-wing resurgence across the EU, where support for such political parties has grown, by some accounts, as much as fivefold since 1995.

At the same time, the bureaucrats in Brussels are looking for ways to tap into citizens' savings and compel people to invest in the “EU’s strategic objectives” to address “new geopolitical dynamics.”

The Saxony-Anhalt election could represent a significant setback for Berlin and for the Brussels consensus, which it plays such a strong role in dictating.

US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has conveyed deep gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin from the family of former US Marine Robert Gilman, who was released from jail in Russia last month.

The 32-year-old US national was detained in early 2022 after drunkenly assaulting a police officer while traveling through the country by train. He was freed in mid-August before his prison term expired, apparently for humanitarian reasons, after Trump interceded with his Russian counterpart.

Addressing Putin during talks at the Kremlin on Saturday, Witkoff stated that the “Gilman family is incredibly indebted to you and thanks you very very much for Bob Gilman being allowed to come home.”

Putin replied by saying that the man’s relatives should be thanking President Trump.

“They have thanked President Trump, but they thank you also, sir,” the senior US negotiator said.

Witkoff, along with another US presidential envoy, Jared Kushner, arrived in Moscow earlier on Saturday for talks aimed at settling the Ukraine conflict.

During the meeting, Putin praised Washington’s efforts to mediate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, while Witkoff thanked the Russian president for halting strikes on Kiev ahead of the US negotiators’ planned visit there.

The US national had initially been sentenced to 4.5 years behind bars for assaulting a police officer, with the term reduced to 3.5 years by a higher court. However, Gilman reportedly grew increasingly violent while in a penal colony and was handed an additional seven years of incarceration in 2024 over repeated assaults on prison staff.

According to media reports, the man was transferred to a civilian psychiatric ward in July in a state of “dissociative stupor.”

The Russian military has conducted large-scale drone and missile strikes on Ukraine, targeting assorted dual-use infrastructure sites, industry, and shipping in the Black Sea, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Saturday.

The ministry named a broad range of targets hit over the past 24-hour period, including two major metal plants in Dnepropetrovsk Region, which have been supplying cast iron and steel to the Ukrainian defense industry.

Footage circulating online suggests the plants sustained considerable damage, with major fires erupting onsite.

The Russian military hit multiple logistic centers and stockpiles across the country, including warehouses in the Odessa, Nikolayev, and Kiev regions. The strikes also targeted two fuel depots near the Gostomel airfield outside Kiev, as well as an electronic reconnaissance point in Brovary on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, the ministry said.

Footage shared by the ministry features drone strikes on Ukrainian shipping. Two dry cargo vessels and a container ship were hit at the port of Chernomorsk. Another dry cargo ship was struck at the port of Odessa, the ministry said.

All the vessels were hit by jet-powered Geran-4 Seeker drones, the ministry noted. The Seeker family of drones are said to be fitted with AI-powered machine vision systems, which enable the UAVs to search for, identify, and lock onto targets without input from their operators.

The latest wave of strikes comes ahead of a three-day hiatus in attacks on Kiev ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of talks with senior US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who arrived in Moscow on Saturday. The pause in the strikes on the Ukrainian capital is intended to allow US President Donald Trump’s envoys to attend negotiations with Ukrainian officials in the country’s capital, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Last week, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced in Kiev that defense manufacturer MBDA had been authorized to disclose information concerning the British components of the SCALP missile, the French version of the long-range Storm Shadow, to Ukraine.

Officially, the decision concerns documentation required to organize local assembly, but in practice, it could facilitate the transfer of blueprints, components, assembly kits or finished missiles.

Moscow regards this technology transfer as the UK crossing a red line, as London hasn’t even attempted to shift responsibility onto intermediaries and the decision was publicly authorized by the prime minister. Britain has therefore assumed direct responsibility for the resulting escalation and deepened its involvement in military operations against Russia.

SCALP was developed through a joint British-French program and its assembly requires classified information about British components and French sub-assemblies, as well as access to a secure facility. Ukraine doesn’t possess a complete production cycle, but even a partial transfer of classified data would integrate Ukrainian assembly into the British-French manufacturing chain and bind all three parties together for years.

Before this decision, Britain had been far more careful about covering its tracks. For example, the Flamingo missile, marketed as a product of the Ukrainian company Fire Point, is identical to a design unveiled in 2025 by the British-Emirati Milanion Group. That arrangement allowed London to keep its distance, with formal responsibility for the missile’s development and deployment resting with Kiev.

British drones are already being used by Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia. They include the Nyan jet-powered drone, manufactured by Callen-Lenz, a subsidiary of BAE Systems. For its developers, the battlefield offers something particularly valuable: operational data with which to refine the weapon.

Russia has also repeatedly pointed to the direct involvement of British specialists in the deployment of Storm Shadow missiles.

On the same day as the SCALP announcement, London secured access to Avengers AI Labs, an extensive body of data gathered by Ukrainian frontline sensors, so now British companies will be able to use this information to train target-recognition and autonomous-control systems, greatly shortening the journey from development to battlefield deployment.

Five British governments have come and gone during the active phase of the Ukraine conflict, but the country’s anti-Russian course has remained remarkably consistent.

Boris Johnson began a program to develop the Ukrainian navy, Rishi Sunak signed a ten-year security agreement, Keir Starmer followed with the Centenary Partnership Agreement and Burnham has now authorized access to classified missile technology. Each government has built upon the commitments made by its predecessor.

That review established the principle of “NATO first, but not only NATO” and committed Britain to preparing for war.

These doctrines are supported by long-term financial obligations, given London has promised Ukraine £3 billion, approximately $4 billion, annually until at least the 2030-31 financial year. The century-long partnership agreement provides for joint production, technology transfers and cooperation in the Baltic, Black and Azov seas where Britain’s presence is intended to endure for decades, regardless of when the current military campaign ends.

The declaration signed by Britain, France and Ukraine on January 6, 2026, already outlines arrangements for the postwar period. These include multinational forces, military logistics hubs, secure facilities and a special legal regime for foreign personnel. In London’s calculations, a ceasefire wouldn’t end its involvement, but it would consolidate a new phase of Britain’s military and industrial presence.

To coordinate these efforts, Britain is assembling several overlapping structures, such as the Joint Expeditionary Force, the Maritime Coalition, the “coalition of the willing,” the International Fund for Ukraine and Lancaster House 2.0. Meanwhile, a classified British-German program known as Deep Precision Strike also envisages developing weapons with a range exceeding 2,000 km during the 2030s.

The International Fund for Ukraine is financed by Britain and 15 other countries, while the British Ministry of Defense administers procurement. Participating states receive technology, contracts, guarantees and a place at the planning table while London turns the resources of its partners into instruments of British influence.

The Joint Expeditionary Force coordinates national and NATO operations during the transition from crisis to conflict, at the same time Britain is doubling its contingent in Norway, expanding its presence in Estonia and deploying equipment stocks, command systems and targeting capabilities. A network of supply, communications and fire-control facilities is being constructed close to Russia’s borders to enable rapid combat deployment.

Britain also seeks a leading role in coordinating NATO defense initiatives. This allows London to shape allied plans, establish standards and monitor their implementation, while also influencing how other countries build their armed forces and prepare for a possible war against a specifically identified opponent. Yes, Russia, of course. 

Britain’s elected governments merely provide public legitimacy for this strategic course, as beyond the electoral cycle, the same network of intelligence agencies, professional bureaucrats, City financial interests, defense corporations, foundations and think tanks continues to operate.

This network establishes the institutional framework, distributes contracts, attracts investment and moves personnel between government departments and corporate boards. Ukraine has become one of its principal hubs, bringing together British standards, European manufacturing, Western capital, defense conglomerates and Silicon Valley start-ups.

This is the essence of the British approach, where London compensates for its shortage of resources by coordinating the capabilities of others and turning that coordination into political power.

London will therefore support only a settlement that preserves its military and institutional position in Ukraine and it won’t accept any peace agreement that restricts British influence over the postwar order.

Russian attacks on port and logistics infrastructure in Yuzhny and Izmail affect more than supplies to the Ukrainian armed forces. For Britain, which leads the Maritime Coalition and has extended its century-long partnership to the Black and Azov seas, these ports possess particular strategic value, given that military logistics, export routes, insurance markets and future maritime programs all converge there.

Russian policy must recognize the networked character of Britain’s strategy and focus upon the coordination centers through which London harnesses foreign resources while diluting its own accountability. So long as Britain can raise the stakes while transferring the costs to its partners, its policy will not change.

Deterrence begins when the cost of a strategy is borne not only by those who execute it, but also by those who organize it.

This article was first published by Kommersant and was translated and edited by the RT team.

Recently, a middle-aged man on an e-bike was passing me on the sidewalk. Out of nowhere, he swerved, kicked me in the shin, shouted “Leftist pig!” and sped off. An elderly woman with a walker asked me, visibly shaken, if I knew him. I said no, just as alarmed as she was.

A little later, a woman was handing out SPD balloons between market stalls and a stage in the town center. I listed the cruelties her party in Berlin is currently shoving down the throats of workers. She squeezed out the word “constraints,” pointed to the CDU, and brushed me off. The DGB trade union federation has also apparently awakened from its coma. A Verdi trade union member was recruiting members and babbling about “solidarity.” I asked him whether he meant that “social partnership between capital and labor” that has never actually existed. He looked at me in confusion and said this was all about the AfD. When I replied that the AfD also just wants to enforce capital’s interests through law, just as the SPD does in government, he quickly cut the conversation short. He had no interest in leaving his parallel world.

The closer the state election gets, the more madness spreads in Saxony-Anhalt. The SPD presents itself as a “workers’ party” while throwing workers’ rights in the trash. The Greens pose as protectors of homosexuals while beating the war drum loudest for war against Russia. The CDU waxes lyrical about tried and tested traditions while implementing one AfD demand after another. The still-governing FDP markets the leftovers of its neoliberal fairy tale about the “trickle-down effect.” Helplessly, The Left wobbles back and forth because it does not want to miss out on bourgeois respectability – a sorry spectacle.

That means the AfD doesn’t have to do much more than counter this madness with a parallel world of its own. Its lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, smiles into many cameras. Before his supporters, he even rhapsodizes about the GDR, which he never experienced himself, while his party constantly accuses The Left of socialism and being the Stasi the moment it so much as utters the word “social.” Siegmund moves from talk show to talk show, complaining about exclusion, even though right now nothing is more omnipresent than his party.

One could laugh at how the ‘bourgeois center’ and its media keep boosting the AfD with all their fuss. The panic does seem genuine; more than a few public employees probably quite rightly fear that they will soon be “cleaned out” politically, to borrow the words of one AfD campaigner I met. Better not to mention that under CDU rule this has long been happening quietly already. Only now the circle of those purged could grow, and posts and mandates are at risk of collapsing. Once again, it is mainly about money and status.

In their own reality, the bourgeois center sees itself as the representative of “democracy” in a struggle against “anti-democrats.” This is nonsense, of course, because the AfD also wants to pour its system-supporting demands into laws. That is as democratic as things in the Federal Republic have always been. Its mix of nationalism, authoritarianism, chauvinism, neoliberal economic policy, and sanctimonious moralizing is simply distributed a little differently and expressed more bluntly than by the “old parties.”

CDU in blue

Neither mainstream nor alternative media like to talk about how much less the AfD’s program differs from the CDU’s than many assume. One striking example sounds as if copied directly from one of the Christian Democratic parties: the AfD wants to “give special support to Christianity” – in the very federal state with the lowest proportion of church members, at not even 14%.

Like the CDU, the AfD demands unpaid compulsory work for asylum seekers. But in parts of Saxony-Anhalt, this already exists. Municipalities happily replace regularly paid jobs, for example in park maintenance, with unpaid labor from refugees and the unemployed. It also wants Ukrainians no longer to be recognized as war refugees, fully aware that the CDU has already pushed this through the EU and that those sent back will be forced by Ukraine to the front against Russia. That fits its supposedly anti-war line just as badly as its demands – entirely compatible with the ‘old parties’ – for more rearmament, more military industry, and more simplified weapons exports across the world.

In May, for example, the AfD voted together with the CDU in the town council of Sangerhausen, a small town in Saxony-Anhalt, in favor of bringing in the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems – genocide in Palestine and possible business with Ukraine notwithstanding. None of that concerns us in Germany at all, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider admitted openly in an interview with Compact magazine. The only things that mattered were the 400 promised jobs and extra tax revenue. What he did not say: he means the taxes paid by workers, which in any case only flow to the federal level, because the AfD would prefer to cut corporate taxes.

On taxes, Siegmund’s party appears to have borrowed heavily from American tech oligarchs. It even wants to “examine special economic zones in Saxony-Anhalt.” That means areas where corporations pay little or no tax and where normal labor rights for employees would no longer apply. Under current law, this is not enforceable. But laws, of course, can be changed later.

Special economic zones are a fetish of so-called market libertarians – neoliberal extremists like tech billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. And who would have thought it: in the CDU-linked Konrad Adenauer Foundation, such market-radical fantasies are highly popular as well. There, common ground is easy to find.

More of the same

On many issues, the AfD merely goes a little further than the governing parties in Saxony-Anhalt – the CDU, SPD, and FDP. It wants to force teachers and public servants into patriotic declarations, arm the police even more heavily than they already are, and largely prevent investigations into officers even after deadly use of firearms. The executive branch is to become an untouchable authority, which in reality it already almost is – no surprise when the police investigate themselves.

The AfD also calls for a ‘voluntary citizens’ guard,’ meaning a private vigilante force supported by municipalities. Such a force could, for instance, help the police ‘catch’ student councils, which the AfD wants to ban, or “put Antifa back in its place.” It wants to classify the latter as a terrorist organization – greetings from US President Trump. Since there is no actual group by that exact name, any number of political dissidents could then be branded with the label. How convenient. This fits its desire for prison sentences for anyone who “disparages Germany.” That, too, is almost infinitely open to interpretation.

The conclusion is obvious: for both sides, freedom of expression means above all freedom for their own opinions and suppression of those who think differently. The two camps are not actually that far apart.

So much for the claim that the AfD is less neoliberal than the CDU, Greens, SPD, or FDP. This is entirely compatible with an authoritarian state, as we can already observe in part. Wealthy industrial donors likely want exactly that. The AfD already has plenty of such backing: last year, in large donations above €35,000, it came in second place directly behind the CDU, with nearly €5.15 million in income, while the CDU collected €6.35 million. That figure does not include all smaller donations.

The AfD received its largest donation from Henning Conle, a German-Swiss real estate shark who has heavily financed the party since its founding, up until 2021 together with the now-deceased billionaire August von Finck Jr. Millions flowed into the AfD’s coffers over the years, often more or less covertly via shell companies, think tanks, and advertising agencies. Not that things are so very different with the ‘old parties’, they are just better at not getting caught.

Such huge sums from circles of capital, intended to enable a party’s rise, do not really fit the myth of some kind of fundamental opposition on behalf of the ‘little people’. Whoever gives that much is pursuing something that certainly does not lie in the interest of the majority. In that respect, it is no different from the other parties.

Collusion with the old parties and corporate bosses

And yet the story of the one and only true opposition party stubbornly persists. That is due above all to the scaremongering of the self-appointed ‘true democrats’ in politics and the media. For Saxony-Anhalt’s AfD lead candidate himself likes to blurt out what they do not want to hear. Recently podcaster Benjamin Berndt asked him about the Potsdam ‘remigration meeting’, which some media outlets inflated into a new Wannsee Conference.

Siegmund laughed it off: it had merely been one of many meetings with cadres from various parties, including the CDU, and influential business figures. That, he said, is how the AfD forges “networks” with the economy and other political factions – and collects donations at the same time.

In saying this, he spoke aloud what anyone in Saxony-Anhalt who wants to know it knows. It immediately reminded me of 2017: in Oebisfelde, a small town near Magdeburg, the AfD invited people to an election event disguised as a “citizens’ regulars’ table.” Volkssolidarität provided the hall, there were free drinks, complimentary snacks, and a podium. Sitting on that podium were not only AfD members, but influential businessmen and CDU and FDP politicians who – to everyone’s amazement – openly campaigned for voting AfD and boasted of their donations to it. There was no sign of exclusion even back then, nine years ago – and nothing has changed since.

The AfD regularly stages such meetings in eastern Germany. Any journalist on the ground could have found that out. But the press prefers to feign outrage over isolated incidents. Thus, for example, the regional news outlet Volksstimme blathered in 2022 about a “secret meeting” and sanctimoniously asked: “Were the CDU and AfD in Saxony-Anhalt making common cause?” More recently, the Tagesspiegel cooked up a new scandal: a CDU politician had donated €10,000 euros to the AfD. Well, fancy that?

This ‘business as usual’ is probably rather embarrassing even to the self-proclaimed ‘center democrats’ themselves. In reality, they have been colluding with the AfD so actively for so long that even the Left, sitting at the children’s table, can no longer fail to notice it. Yet the Left is just as eager to flee from the truth and courts the CDU in a manner as embarrassing as it is futile, hoping that it will finally tear down the only truly existing firewall it has – the one against the Left.

Anyone who refuses to pick a side can only feel like a misplaced extra in the midst of a mad shadow-fight between two camps, each trapped in its own parallel reality: two camps that inflate tiny differences, spread panic, talk nonsense, blank out reality, deceive workers, make the poor poorer (or want to), and stir up the aggression already visible on the streets.

All Siegmund has to do is show up, smiling, and churn out culture-war phrases about banning gender asterisks, “leftist terrorists,” and compulsory German flags – all of which explains neither how people are supposed to pay tomorrow’s rent with money they do not have, nor how their lives are to improve. But then, the others do not explain that either.

The frustration in the German state with the highest average age was thus inevitable. And Siegmund apparently sees it coming. In the above-mentioned podcast, among other things, he tries to prepare for it accordingly: he stressed that he could not change very much very quickly because the CDU had left him with a pile of shattered glass. Naturally – voters have to be kept on the hook for longer than a single election campaign.

The pile of broken shards is real. And Siegmund knows, just like the “old parties,” that a harder-edged CDU policy will not improve the lives of the majority. But whoever wants to administer the system had better not talk about the system’s causes. In inventing problems to distract from the real ones, they all outdo one another. In Saxony-Anhalt, capital is merely rehearsing a test run – with new protagonists.

This article was first published by RT DE, and translated and edited by RT.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a three-day hiatus in strikes on Kiev ahead of talks with senior US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who arrived in Moscow earlier on Saturday.

The negotiations are expected to focus on resolving the Ukraine conflict. Witkoff and Kushner are slated to visit Kiev after their meetings in Moscow, which include talks with Putin.

Speaking on Saturday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that “Russian president [and] commander-in-chief Putin has ordered [the armed forces] not to conduct strikes on Kiev for three days starting from midnight today.” He added that the decision was intended to allow Witkoff and Kushner to hold negotiations with Ukrainian officials in the country’s capital.

Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne subsequently quoted Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff Kirill Budanov as saying that Ukraine had sent a truce proposal to Russia calling for the temporary cessation of hostilities along the front line, as well as all air strikes. However, Moscow did not respond, according to Budanov.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump said that Witkoff and Kushner were “bringing with them a proposal to end the war,” without elaborating on the specifics.

Since the start of Trump’s second term in office in early 2025, the two negotiators have repeatedly visited Moscow as part of the US president’s efforts to mediate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

However, despite a glimmer of hope following last year’s meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska, the diplomatic back-and-forth has since stalled as neither Russia nor Ukraine will compromise on key issues.

Still, speaking on Thursday, the Russian president praised Kushner’s and Witkoff’s work, saying that the US negotiators are “always welcome guests here, and we work with them with pleasure.”

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) have exposed a criminal organization suspected of protecting a network of fraudulent call centers and laundering assets allegedly led by an official within the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, NABU announced on its Telegram channel.

This case is the latest in a series of high-profile graft investigations involving Ukrainian officials and figures close to Vladimir Zelensky.

Earlier in August, the Ukrainian leader sacked the deputy head of his office, Irina Mudraya. Her home had been searched searched as part of a probe into efforts to raise and legalize $3.3 million in bail money for former Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko, a key figure in a $100 million corruption case involving state nuclear operator Energoatom and linked to Zelensky’s longtime business associate Timur Mindich.

Other recent corruption investigations have targeted former Ukrainian ministers, diplomats, and senior officials. According to investigators, the criminal group was set up and headed in mid-2025 by a high-ranking employee of the prosecutor general’s office.

More than $500,000 was spent on real estate, valuables and other assets, while a further $300,000 in assets was concealed by transferring them to third parties. Another $250,000 was allegedly laundered through bank accounts, according to local media.

Five people have been detained as suspects and face racketeering and money laundering charges.
Sources cited by Ukrainska Pravda said Sergey Kropyva, head of the prosecutor general’s office cyber department, had already been detained as part of an operation code-named “Carthage.”

The investigative measures have also targeted Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, his deputy Maria Vdovychenko and Oleg Kiper, head of the Odessa regional military administration.

The heads of NABU and SAPO recently warned that graft remains entrenched at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government. SAPO chief Aleksandr Klimenko said the state has repeatedly demonstrated that it has “no political will to fight corruption properly.”

Last year, Zelensky sought to bring the two anti-corruption watchdogs under tighter government control. He was quickly forced to reverse the move after it sparked nationwide protests and criticism from Kiev’s Western backers.

Moscow has long argued that the scandals reflect systemic corruption in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier this year that corruption “permeates the entire Ukrainian power structure, including Zelensky’s inner circle and Zelensky himself.”

A drone strike on the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) headquarters in Kiev could have been carried out by the country’s military intelligence (HUR) as part of a conflict between the two agencies, high-ranking Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik has said.

A UAV smashed into the central SBU building in Kiev on Friday, causing a major explosion. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky blamed the strike on Russia, saying the drone had directly targeted the office of the agency’s acting head, Aleksandr Poklad. Zelensky said he had tasked Poklad, who was unharmed, with preparing an “adequate, noticeable and, if possible, mirror response.”

“According to Zelensky’s statement, he maintains that the UAV flying directly into the window of the service’s chief was a result of a ‘Russian drone’ attack, not a showdown between the security agencies provisionally subordinate to him,” Miroshnik wrote on Telegram on Friday.

Miroshnik was referring to a recent armed clash between SBU and HUR personnel in Kiev. Operatives from the two Ukrainian security agencies engaged in an open gunfight overnight on Tuesday, with several reportedly wounded.

The diplomat also said that “the leadership of this agency [SBU] has repeatedly claimed involvement in organizing terrorist attacks in Russia that resulted in the deaths and injuries of numerous civilians.”

The standoff between SBU and HUR apparently revolved around Stepan Kaplunov, a reported white supremacist and senior officer with the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), a paramilitary unit under the HUR patronage.

While the SBU claimed that Kaplunov participated in Moscow’s plot to assassinate a “leader of the Russian opposition movement” on Ukraine’s Independence Day, the RDK accused the security service of kidnapping its commander and holding him at a black site for more than a week.

The first 2,200 of 6,000 lockable baboon-proof bins are due to reach priority areas of South Africa’s Cape Peninsula from mid-September 2026, while a northern fence project awaits final environmental and administrative approvals.

The Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team (CPBMJTT), made up of SANParks, CapeNature and the City of Cape Town, said the rollout will initially focus on areas where baboon activity and conflict with residents have been reported most frequently.

According to the CPBMJTT, the process is expected to begin later in September once environmental checklists and administrative approvals have been completed. The task team said the fence is intended to prevent baboons from entering urban areas and farmland in the northern part of the peninsula, while securing habitat for an estimated 250 baboons.

A memorandum of understanding has been signed between seven wine-farm landowners bordering Table Mountain National Park in the Constantia Valley, the Cape Baboon Partnership and the City. The agreement sets out shared responsibilities for construction, maintenance and the long-term operation of the fence. The landowners and Cape Baboon Partnership will share the construction and upgrade costs, while the City has committed a once-off R10 million contribution.

The CPBMJTT said construction is expected to take about six months if all goes according to plan. Once the fence is in place, rangers will encourage the CT1 and CT2 troops towards the mountainside and will continue monitoring the troops and patrolling the fence.

The fence forms part of the approved Cape Peninsula Baboon Strategic Management Plan and is intended to create a clearer boundary between Table Mountain National Park and neighbouring agricultural and residential properties.

A Swansea University research project involving the Da Gama troop ended on August 21. The study tested non-invasive approaches using olfactory, auditory and visual cues to examine how baboons respond to simulated risks. The collars used during the research were designed to self-release and have now been collected. Data analysis is underway, with the findings expected to be made public once the study has been completed.

First published by IOL

Russia has the right to strike NATO plants making weapons for Ukraine, but President Vladimir Putin is showing great restraint to avoid a direct clash with the bloc, former American judge Andrew Napolitano has said.

Kiev has been launching hundreds of fixed-wing drones deep into Russian territory on a daily basis in recent months, many of which are manufactured in European countries. Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry in Moscow published a list of enterprises producing the UAVs, some of which are based in the UK, Germany, Italy, Czechia, and other NATO-member states. London and Paris are currently also discussing plans to make long-range SCALP/Storm Shadow missiles in Ukraine.

In an interview with RT on Friday, Napolitano, who hosts the popular ‘Judging Freedom’ interview channel on YouTube, said that “President Putin has demonstrated an almost saint-like capacity for patience and forbearance” by not ordering Russian forces to target those facilities.

“I’m sure he understands that. My guess is that he’s considered it, but he’s been consistently patient. Sometimes even to the dismay of his strongest supporters,” the former New Jersey Superior Court judge added.

Putin is focused on the Ukraine conflict and “does not want a war against NATO,” he argued.

The Russian president previously labeled claims of Moscow having aggressive designs against the bloc as “nonsense,” saying that they are only made by Western politicians to distract the public from problems at home and justify growing military spending.

Russian officials also said that if Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania knowingly helped to facilitate Ukrainian drone attacks against northwestern Russia, Moscow could consider them complicit in those actions and would have the right to self-defense under the UN Charter.

Napolitano said that the Ukraine conflict is “headed into an acceleration” and that he expects “a last-ditched effort by some of the NATO countries to try and prevent the inevitable, which is the achievement by the Russian military of its objectives.”

“The Ukrainians are aware that they’re on their last legs, so to speak, in the war. They know that their days are numbered,” he stressed.

Europe sees Russian drones everywhere

Germany found a new Russian threat this week, accusing Russia of staging a drone incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport in August, where an explosives-laden UAV was reportedly found between Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft.

Before returning to Germany, RT India reports on a case of Ukrainian mercenaries who launched a drone at a passenger jet in Myanmar, and are now languishing in an Indian jail.

Berlin launched a raft of anti-Russian measures, including closing Moscow’s consulate in Bonn, ending the lease of the Russian House cultural center in Berlin, tightening border controls for Russian nationals, and drawing up another sanctions list.

But as these stories usually go, Berlin presented no actual proof that Russia had anything to do with the drone.

Berlin’s outburst is the latest evidence of the mass Russian drone hysteria that has gripped many of Kiev’s European backers. No claims of Russian drones over airports, military bases, and infrastructure have been proven, while the Brussels hymn sheet includes ‘hybrid attacks’ and a ‘drone wall’.

Kiev gets desperate, threatens EVERYONE

While European governments searched the skies for Russian drones that may or may not exist, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky threw subtlety out the window and issued a direct threat to virtually all aircraft flying in Russia’s airspace.

After threatening not only Russian passengers, but also airlines from Türkiye, China, the Gulf, Central Asia, and even Europe, Kiev demanded that the International Civil Aviation Organization effectively close Russian airspace to all international traffic. The ICAO did not oblige.

RT looked at who exactly Zelensky was threatening, how many people use Russia’s skies daily, whether Kiev could actually close Russia’s enormous airspace, and why foreign airlines have so far refused to panic.

Aviation expert Roman Gusarov told RT that Zelensky’s threat is an “act of desperation” after weeks of punishing Russian strikes on Ukrainian ports, energy facilities, warehouses, and military infrastructure.

Over the week, Zelensky’s problems at home only grew as agents of the SBU and HUR, two of the country’s most powerful security agencies, exchanged gunfire in a residential district of the Ukrainian capital. The shootout took place over the detention of an officer from the neo-Nazi-linked Russian Volunteer Corps. Three servicemen were wounded.

Meanwhile, in Kiev’s suburbs, residents have been demanding answers as to why their government is storing explosives beside their homes. The protests came after a Russian strike on a Ukrainian ammunition depot in the village of Milaya triggered hours of secondary explosions, scattering ordnance throughout the surrounding residential area, killing at least 38 people and damaging more than 200 homes.

”Ukraine has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets and refined products,” Bessent said, adding that the strikes are creating “upward price pressure on a global basis.”

West aids Kiev’s hunt for Russian property

The Norwegian authorities seized the Professor Molchanov while it was docked in Barentsburg, Svalbard, following a request from Ukraine’s state-owned gas company, Naftogaz, which is trying to shake Russia down for $4.22 billion over supposed lost assets in Crimea.

Check out RT’s detailed explainer to learn more about the ship, its significance for science and Arctic researchers, and the broader context of the arrest.

The West escalates, Eurasia shakes hands

The capture of the Professor Molchanov came just days after Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov published a sweeping article on the future of the Arctic, in which he accused NATO of trying to turn the region into a new front against Russia, pointing to military exercises, new command structures, and a broader Western buildup in the High North.

Russia, however, wants the Arctic to remain “an area of peace and cooperation” and is ready to work with countries willing to engage on equal terms, Lavrov said.

Putin joined Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and other leaders from across Eurasia to discuss future development opportunities.

Putin told the summit that the emergence of a new multipolar world order is “irreversible” and called for countries of the Global South and East to receive greater representation in global institutions.

Another American strike, another civilian target

In the Middle East, however, diplomacy appears to have failed once again as the US resumed attacks on Iran on Tuesday. Tehran responded with missile and drone attacks against US military facilities across the region.

The attack killed five people and wounded nearly 70 others. The dead reportedly included a 4-year-old and 16-year-old.

The incident has reignited accusations of war crimes against Washington, which has also been accused of attacking an elementary school in Minab on the first day of the war, killing around 170 people, most of them children.

In other news

One of the week’s more alarming numbers came not from a battlefield, but from a farm. A new study published in the Frontiers in Public Health journal estimated that as many as 433 million agricultural workers suffer acute pesticide poisoning every year – around 46% of all farmers worldwide.

Thousands died inside the facilities, while biological weapons developed there killed far more people across China. Check out the full deep-dive into the horrific history of the unit here.

Germany could deliver another headache for Chancellor Friedrich Merz this weekend. Voters in Saxony-Anhalt go to the polls on Sunday, with the AfD polling around 41-42% against 22-23% for the CDU. An outright majority looks unlikely, but a landslide first-place finish would still be a major blow to the political establishment.

India then takes center stage. The first INNOPROM India fair opens in New Delhi on Wednesday, ahead of the BRICS summit on September 12-13. Modi said he expects Putin in India, with trade, Russia-India ties, and the broader multipolar agenda likely to dominate.

September 10 will also mark one year since the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a killing that became a rallying point for Republicans and sharpened the debate over political violence in the US.

AI agents apparently linked to OpenAI hijacked a German programming website and turned it into a message board where they exchanged tactics for bypassing restrictions and avoiding detection, Reuters has reported.

The previously undisclosed incident, which reportedly began in May, adds to a series of cases in which advanced AI agents have gone beyond their instructions, reached the open internet, or taken unauthorized actions during testing.

Reuters on Friday cited researchers who found more than 15,000 edits on a German programming wiki that they attributed to OpenAI agents, some made at speeds far beyond normal human activity.

The agents reportedly used DseWiki to share ways to cheat on tasks, bypass OpenAI’s restrictions, and hide their behavior. They discussed using Tor, a tool for browsing the internet anonymously, to evade detection and created backup pages after a moderator began deleting their messages.

The messages were signed by users identifying themselves and each other as agents, with names including ‘OpenAIResearcher’ and ‘OAIResearchMar26’. Researchers also found much of the activity originated from Microsoft Azure infrastructure, which OpenAI uses, and observed visits to the site by company employees afterward.

“It seems extremely unlikely that OpenAI wanted them to do this,” researcher Sydney Von Arx told Reuters, adding that she doubted the agents were supposed to coordinate or write on the open internet.

OpenAI officials learned about the incident weeks ago but did not disclose it publicly, Reuters reported. The outlet also said attempts to broaden an internal probe met resistance, including from legal advisers. OpenAI denied that its legal team had discouraged an investigation.

The company disputed describing the agents’ activity as hacking and said it could not “meaningfully respond” to findings it had not yet reviewed.

Last month, OpenAI said it had temporarily slowed some frontier-model development while strengthening monitoring, alignment, and containment safeguards.

Early in August, the UK’s AI Security Institute reported that agents powered by OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic’s Mythos 5 had gone beyond their instructions during cybersecurity testing and engaged in potentially harmful activity targeting real people and organizations.

The company said the incident was primarily driven by an internal research model comparable in scale to GPT-5.6 Sol and described it as a “warning shot” showing that advanced AI agents can work around technical controls and take dangerous actions without human direction.

Anthropic and Meta have also disclosed cases in which their models gained unauthorized access to real organizations during cybersecurity evaluations, although both attributed the incidents to problems with testing environments.

A loud argument between Russian intelligentsia over Schubert, Bach, and the merits of a fugue has delighted millions of viewers far beyond the Russian-speaking internet.  

Here’s the background.

Set the scene.

St. Petersburg, 2019. Three old friends are bantering around a table when the topic naturally turns to Franz Schubert, as it does, and things get emotional.

Who is at the table?

Esteemed musicologist Natalia Entelis is at a post-lunch table with friends; former orchestral violinist Emil Finkelstein and his wife Elena Fradkina, who was celebrating her 80th birthday. Their daughter, pianist Polina Fradkina, who – possibly knowing what was coming – recorded the video, posted it online recently in connection with comments over the merits of an online music course, and it has struck a chord. 

What caused the argument?

Finkelstein opens with a demand for an inquiry, into how Schubert could have written such brilliant music without knowing the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. 

Opposite and stoic in her resolve, Entelis observes that fugues are almost entirely absent from Schubert’s masses and, as you would, points instead to the Italian tradition he studied. 

The best video you'll see all day pic.twitter.com/PMkiUnn63G

— Joan Cook from PBS (@MissPavIichenko) September 2, 2026

Tip: a fugue is more or less a form in which one musical voice introduces a theme and others pick it up. Bach used them.

Meanwhile, birthday girl Fradkina drops a bomb, asking if writing one is “some f***g mark of quality?” 

Voices rise and hands fly, of course. Italian polyphony – always the first to go – is dismissed as “bullsh*t.”  

Beethoven’s preference for Handel over Bach enters the fray, obviously, before Fradkina declares: Schubert’s songs were works of genius; everything else was “crap.”  

The argument ends with one final disagreement:  

 “Schubert, as a person, is my favorite composer,” Entelis says.  

“No,” Finkelstein corrects her. “Bach is your favorite composer.” 

Finkelstein, now 85, told the St. Petersburg publication Paper that Entelis was working on an academic article about Schubert at the time.

“I once got to perform a mass by Schubert, a religious work, that is terribly boring, to my taste,” he recalled. “I did not like her writing about bad music.” 

He described the exchange as something more personal. “It was a dispute about who values which music, and who loves which music,” he said. “A dispute about love, if you like.” 

Why did the pianist post the video?

An online course on medieval and Renaissance music by popular lecturer Anna Vilenskaya had come under fire from specialists over factual errors, prompting a wider argument about accuracy in popular education.  

“Understanding how music works is not a collection of correct dates and terms,” she wrote. “Facts are needed to see the process behind them.”

Why does the argument feel so intense?

In late Soviet life, private flats – and kitchens in particular – were gathering places where friends could spend hours arguing about everything from politics and history to books, music and everyday life. 

“I grew up in a family of musicologists,” Fradkina wrote on Facebook, recalling how everything at home revolved around music: “from family squabbles over a missing slipper to fierce discussions about the roots of antisemitism, from Slavophiles and Westernizers to the proper way to make Olivier salad. Somehow, sooner or later, it all came back to music.” 

What have international viewers made of it?

With English subtitles, the clip became a hit on X. One widely shared upload has received more than five million views and thousands of comments. 

Viewers called it “the most intellectual argument” they had seen on the platform and said they would watch five seasons of the discussion. Some joked that the scene explained Russian classical literature; others described it as “a breath of fresh air” and even a video that “heals the nervous system.” 

I wish Americans would have more arguments like this around the dinner table, instead of arguing over garbage political matters heard on the TV. Russians arguing passionately about the the extent of Schubert’s knowledge of polyphony & Bach. https://t.co/iku9sQbnlz

— Professor R Shaldjian Morrison,διδάσκαλος,夏炉冬扇, 散人 (@Swarthyface) September 3, 2026

“I wish Americans would have more arguments like this around the dinner table, instead of arguing over garbage political matters heard on the TV,” one user wrote. “Russians arguing passionately about the extent of Schubert’s knowledge of polyphony and Bach.” 

The reactions sometimes romanticized three individuals as representatives of an entire culture. But they also recognized something genuine: in an internet full of anger without intimacy, this was an argument that became heated because everyone at the table cared. 

What does this say about Russians?

So while some might be surprised at the emotionality of Russians engaged in a passionate discussion of pinnacles of European culture, here's the reality.

Finkelstein says he and Entelis are still friends and still meet for coffee.

Speculation abounds over the reason for CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s recent trip to Moscow. Which probably could have been an email. Or a social media post. Just like everything else this administration does.

Oooh, don’t tell me! He went to demand that Russian President Vladimir Putin not help Iran! Or he went to ask whether they’re still up for more speed dating to talk peace in Ukraine! Or maybe just to talk about swapping prisoners. Which happens fairly regularly. And doesn’t require a personal visit. Or maybe Ratcliffe just had a jonesing for that ice cream at the GUM mall in Red Square. Who really knows.

So I’d like to personally take the opportunity to add to the theories, which can only really be evaluated sometime down the road in hindsight.

The thing that strikes me the most about this trip is the sudden secrecy. Specifically from an administration with a penchant for blabbing about everything. If Trump wanted to tell Putin or Russian intelligence something, he’d do it himself on Truth Social Instead, he was uncharacteristically vague, calling the trip semi-routine. When is this guy tight-lipped about anything? It’s so far out of character for the American President that one is almost obligated to look for a motive for the secrecy.

So with that in mind, it seems reasonable to ask whether there is any financial or political constituency that stands to benefit from the message being sent by this unusually secretive trip.

Well, it turns out that it just happened to take place at the same time as the European Union was meeting to set its new 7-year budget, and Eastern European Baltic nations were making a massive push for cash from Brussels.

So here you have Europe, that’s been sitting there while Kiev says 'gimme money', and 'I deserve it because I’m defending all of Europe for you. Oh, and even better, actually, defending DEMOCRACY for you lazy bums'. And instead of whacking it on the nose and going, 'NO, BAD! Brussels just goes, 'Wanna treat?'

So now, what do you know, here comes Latvia, who’s been watching this whole charade, seeing that Ukraine goes from begging to getting tossed a bone every single time, and now they too are like, 'Woof, woof, I’m defending all of Europe for you. Where’s my money? 7 BILLION EUROS, specifically'.

And it’s not like Latvia is even bothering to come up with its own twist on Ukraine’s pitch. It’s not like they’re saying, 'Ukraine’s pitch to Brussels is, ‘Look, we’re being invaded. You’d better give us what we want because we’re the only thing standing between Putin showing up in Europe with a neck pillow for an Interrail tour of Europe.’ So we, Latvia, need to come up with something else. Especially since we aren’t actually being invaded – we just need some emotional-support money'.

No, instead, they’re just basically saying the exact same sort of thing minus the existential threat – that Latvia is the bouncer at the Baltic door keeping Putin on the other side of the velvet rope.

And now energy prices are going back up again, too – an 83% spike in gas prices since the beginning of this year in Latvia, and 24% over just the past month. An established trend since the EU cut everyone off from Russian fuel and now Trump’s cutting everyone off from fuel from the Middle East with his apparently endless 'mine’s bigger' standoff with Iran.

Oh look, here comes Lithuania now, too. What a surprise! Another guy watching from the cheap seats and going: 'Hang on. We’re also next to Russia. We have security problems, infrastructure costs, and defense bills. Where is OUR cash handout?'

Turns out that Lithuania has just gone directly to Brussels with the invoice, essentially saying: You keep telling us the eastern flank is crucial to European security. Wonderful. Please prove this commitment using the traditional European unit of measurement: euros.

When it comes to Eastern Europe, the EU’s seven-year budget plan is starting to look like a group dinner where everyone suddenly remembers that the guy at the end of the table has a corporate credit card.

All this comes after the western press reported that the CIA director flew to Moscow this week to tell Russia not to attack NATO countries. Which is actually great marketing for the cause of Eastern European countries shaking down Brussels and basically launching a grant program. They’re behaving now as though a potential future hypothetical Russian attack on NATO is serious enough to justify enormous new expenditures, but the benefit of Brussels’ largesse risks going to Washington as the top weapons supplier.

The trip is remarkably convenient for governments seeking to turn fears about Russia into a case for vastly increased European defense spending – and for the American defense industry that stands to benefit from a big chunk of that spending.

But hey, who really cares if everyone’s barking out for treats when you’re Brussels and all you ever need to do is reach into the pockets of the taxpayer. Even if you then run straight back to Uncle Sam with it and drop it in his lap.

A US Army doctor has testified that she knows of 28 US military deaths caused by Covid-19 vaccines, Politico has reported citing a court deposition. The US government is investigating 2,544 deaths reported following the jabs, the official has said.

Theresa Long, who also serves as an adviser to US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., reportedly gave the testimony during an August 14 deposition in a federal court case in Virginia. Neither her testimony nor her role at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had previously been reported.

Long allegedly said that the 2,544 unverified deaths were reported to the department’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Former US President Joe Biden ordered all US military staff to be vaccinated or be discharged from service, resulting in over 9,000 dismissals. After returning to office, President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to offer reinstatement to those who had been discharged for refusing a vaccine.

Long testified for the defense in a lawsuit being heard by District Court Judge Michael Nachmanoff over the dismissal of Terry Adirim as director of the CIA’s Center for Global Health Services. Adirim alleges that the intelligence agency fired her for political reasons, specifically because of her advocacy for Covid-19 vaccination.

Adirim served as acting assistant secretary for health affairs at the Department of Defense during the pandemic. The CIA fired her in April 2025, a move highlighted at the time by several conservative political commentators, including Ivan Raiklin, who is a defendant in the lawsuit. Her termination came about a month before she would have qualified for full federal retirement benefits.

In May 2025, Nachmanoff expressed skepticism about Adirim’s chances of prevailing in the case when he declined to issue an injunction reversing her termination. The CIA has argued that the matter is an ordinary contract dispute.

Romanian authorities have indicted social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate in absentia on charges including human trafficking, sex offenses involving minors, money laundering and witness tampering. The brothers have been held in a US jail since mid-July while fighting a separate British extradition request.

Both have strongly denied wrongdoing.

Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer and dual British-US citizen, built a global following promoting wealth, hyper-masculinity and traditional gender roles. His online content has attracted millions of followers while drawing widespread criticism over remarks about women.

Romania’s Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) announced on Friday that Andrew had been charged with human trafficking, having sex with a minor, money laundering and influencing witnesses. Tristan is accused of aiding and abetting him.

Prosecutors allege that in 2012 Andrew recruited a 15-year-old girl in the UK by falsely claiming he wanted a romantic relationship with her before taking her to Romania. She was then allegedly forced to produce pornographic content for a webcam business, with the brothers controlling her through threats, emotional blackmail and physical violence.

Prosecutors have separately accused Andrew of having sex with another 15-year-old girl.

The case has been referred to the Bucharest Tribunal, where preliminary proceedings are expected to take at least two months.

Eugen Vidineac, the brothers’ Romanian lawyer, said the defense would challenge the indictment. Andrew and Tristan, who moved to Romania in 2016, were arrested there in December 2022 in a separate case involving similar allegations. An appeals court later returned that case to prosecutors after finding some evidence inadmissible. The charges were not dismissed, but travel restrictions were lifted in February 2025, allowing the brothers to fly to Florida.

In July, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service announced additional charges against the Tates, bringing the British case to seven alleged victims and 59 charges combined, including rape, sexual assault and trafficking-related offenses.

The brothers were subsequently arrested in Florida following a British extradition request.

Their lawyer, Joseph McBride, has said Andrew and Tristan will vigorously fight extradition, describing the British case as politically motivated because his clients have repeatedly criticized the UK authorities and political establishment.

Dozens of masked men have descended on a Kiev court to support a Ukrainian military intelligence operative charged over a shootout between two of the country’s security agencies that left at least three people injured.

The suspect, identified as Sergey Ivanov, was detained following the shootout between operatives of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate (HUR) that unfolded in Kiev on Wednesday. At least three HUR operatives were injured in the skirmish.

Ivanov is believed to have been in command of the military intelligence unit involved in the clash and is now accused of attempted murder of a government official. An SBU operative, whose identity has not been officially disclosed, has also been detained and is now accused of exceeding official powers.

Several dozen masked men, some wearing camouflage, gathered outside the Pechersky Court to support Ivanov. The court held the hearing behind closed doors, determining whether the suspect should be taken into pre-trial custody. Ivanov was ultimately released on personal recognizance, the mildest possible pre-trial restriction in Ukraine. He was ordered not to contact witnesses, leave his place of residence, and surrender his passport.

Later in the day, the same court heard the case of the SBU operative involved in the skirmish. The court also convened behind closed doors and handed the operative the same restrictive measure of release on personal recognizance.

The standoff apparently revolved around Stepan Kaplunov, a reported white supremacist and senior officer with the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), a paramilitary unit under the HUR patronage. While the SBU claimed Kaplunov participated in a Russian government plot to assassinate a “leader of the Russian opposition movement” on Ukraine’s Independence Day, the militants accused the service of kidnapping him and holding him at a black site for about ten days. 

Kaplunov, who was released from SBU custody following the shootout, blamed the “historic competition” between the SBU and HUR, claiming his kidnapping was an attempt by the agency to get to his superiors.

A storm is gathering in bond markets across the globe as yields on government debt are in many cases near multi-decade highs. 

High and rising government debt levels pose a problem for bond markets for which no solution seems imminent. The rising deficits, meanwhile, are colliding with diminished demand for government debt.

On top of this, renewed fighting in the Middle East earlier this week pushed oil prices higher and elicited concerns of what one Wall Street analyst called an “inflation monster.” 

RT takes a look at the rumbling in global bond markets and what to look for in the coming days and weeks.

What happened and what caused it

After fighting between the US and Iran restarted earlier this week, oil jumped more than $4 a barrel on Tuesday, settling at a five-week high of $94.65 per barrel Brent. Prices retreated somewhat later in the week, but oil is still set for a roughly 9% gain on the week. US diesel futures, meanwhile, surged to a 52-month high earlier in the week.

More broadly, the volatility comes as major economies have flooded the market with debt, demand for which has been tepid. In particular, the pool of price-insensitive institutional buyers is shrinking in what is a larger structural shift. All things being equal, investors want higher yields to absorb the quantity and also to protect themselves against rising inflationary risks.

Perhaps most concerning are what seem to be permanently expanding budget deficits in numerous countries, particularly given the apparent lack of political will to stem the profligacy. The US recently passed the $40 trillion debt mark with no sign of slowing down. Debt as a share of economic output is at or above 100% across the G7, except Germany, which seems determined to catch up.

Heavy borrowing by AI companies – which are in many cases unable to fund growth out of cash flow – is also contributing to the rising rates. According to a blog post by the European Central Bank, US tech giants are flooding European bond markets to fund AI investment, potentially reaching $1 trillion by 2028, thus crowding out other borrowers – including governments.

Meanwhile, higher energy prices are having a direct feed-through to inflation. Consumer prices in the Eurozone climbed 3.3% in August year-on-year, the fastest pace of inflation in nearly three years. The recent move higher in oil prices will only make this worse. 

What it all adds up to is that yields on government bonds across major economies are in many cases trading at levels not seen in years or even decades.

• The UK’s 30-year bond yield hit its highest level since 1998.

• Japan’s 10-year yield has broken through the 3% mark for the first time in three decades.

• Yields in Germany and France are also trading at their highest levels in a decade.

• The yield on the US 10-year, the single most important interest rate in the world, is at a level last seen in 2023.

“It’s becoming harder and harder to disentangle” all the factors behind the moves in bond markets, said Ed Al-Hussainy, a portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle. “The only thing we can say right now is that they’re all pointing in the same direction, and that’s in the direction of higher rates, and they’re doing it globally.”

War and the bond market

US yields are currently sitting at or near multi-decade highs across much of the curve and have edged higher since hostilities with Iran resumed. With the war now in its seventh month, many analysts are wondering whether the bond market might end up being the major constraint on US military ambitions.

It wouldn’t be the first time Treasures put a damper on moves by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

A few months into his new term, Trump introduced his Liberation Day tariffs, thus opening a trade war against the whole world from the White House lawn. It would take exactly three trading days for the 10-year yield to chalk up a gain of around 50 basis points, putting it on pace for its biggest weekly rise in a quarter century. The administration beat a humiliating retreat by canceling or postponing most of the tariffs.

Meanwhile, the worsening inflation climate is not lost on the Fed. New Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh delivered a hawkish message at last week’s Jackson Hole Symposium – an implicit acknowledgement of the war-related risks. The market is now pricing in a 70% chance of a rate hike at the Fed’s next meeting in September.

A hike would push Treasury yields higher, but mostly at the short end. This is essentially what the market gave Warsh after Jackson Hole: the 2-year jumped while the long end was much calmer, producing what is called a bear flattening, when short-term yields rise faster than long-term yields. This can be interpreted as a vote of confidence that the Fed is going to deal with inflation.

But if the war in Iran is raging and inflation is surging, a Fed hike might not convince the market. If the Fed hikes and long-term rates rise anyway, it would be a very ominous signal that the central bank might be losing control of the bond market.

France – the new sick man of Europe

France has emerged as the Eurozone’s biggest sovereign debt risk, which means that a problem once confined to the southern periphery of the union has moved to one of the two political pillars of the entire European project.

France’s finances are a mess. The country’s public budget deficit stood at 5.1% of GDP in 2025, while its debt-to-GDP ratios hit 115%. Both figures are well above EU limits and both are highly unusual for a country that is neither at war nor in a deep recession.

France has accumulated more than €3.5 trillion in public debt, which is becoming more expensive to finance as the yields on its bonds have risen dramatically over the past year. As a result, the French 10-year is trading above its Greek and Italian counterparts, a state of affairs that few previously would have imagined.

Meanwhile, Paris has committed to billions in increased defense spending in the coming years. A major update to the country’s defense budget authorizing an additional €36 billion for 2026–2030 was signed off on by lawmakers in June.

France, with its political deadlock and fiscal profligacy, may have emerged as the most acute source of potential stress in the EU, but the trend of higher yields is visible across the bloc. German Bunds, the benchmark for the bloc, have also moved sharply higher, hitting 15-year highs. 

The surge in European yields is potentially bad news for the US. Japan recently off-loaded some US Treasuries to defend its beleaguered currency. The move elicited a rare joint US-Japanese intervention, ostensibly aimed at stabilizing the currency but almost certainly with the deeper goal of preventing a weak yen from forcing Japan to unload Treasuries to defend it.

Given that Europe is a large holder of Treasuries, there are two ways this can become a problem for Washington. First, higher yields across the bloc make European bonds relatively more attractive, thus potentially steering yield-hungry investors toward Europe. Second, if European financial conditions deteriorate badly enough, banks and other institutions may need to raise cash. Selling Treasuries would be a natural source of funding. Either way, US yields would rise.

What to watch for in the coming days and weeks

Any prolonged resumption in hostilities in the Middle East could easily push oil prices back over $100. With bond markets already strained, selling could pick up further. Any disorderly selling would be a signal in itself. But short of that, inflation is the key transmission mechanism to watch. A new wave of price growth would push investors to demand more compensation for holding long-dated liabilities and would likely force the hand of central banks, who may still be reluctant to tighten. 

Meanwhile, with politicians reluctant to impose fiscal discipline, the bond market might have to do it for them. If yields continue to rise, governments will eventually have to choose between higher taxes, lower spending, and still greater borrowing costs. Policy-wise, what invariably prevails are options to kick the can further down the road, but any substantial change in rhetoric toward fiscal responsibility would suggest that the bond market’s message is beginning to be heard.

Norway’s $2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund could sharply reduce its holdings of US Treasuries under a proposed overhaul aimed at boosting returns through other types of debt, the institution has announced. The shift could cut its Treasury allocation by almost $80 billion, according to Financial Times estimates.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, recommended in a letter to Norway’s Finance Ministry on Tuesday that government debt be cut from 70% to 50% in its fixed-income portfolio. The change would reduce its global government bond allocation by about $106 billion, with most of the reduction falling on US Treasuries, the FT calculated.

NBIM said a 50% government bond allocation would still be enough “to cover the liquidity needs” during periods of market turbulence, while the remainder would provide exposure to “more sources of risk premiums.”

Under the plan, US Treasuries would fall from 34.1% to 21.9% of the fund’s bond benchmark. Much of the money would rotate into higher-yielding non-government US debt, including mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae.

The allocation away from government debt comes at a time when government bonds have been selling off across leading economies, pushing yields in many cases to multi-year highs.

The proposed cut, although not significant relative to the size of the US Treasury market, signals a further shift at the margins away from US debt. This comes as rising deficits are forcing the US to issue more debt while foreign buyers have shown less appetite for Treasuries.

Economist Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC on Friday that Norway’s move matters less for its size than for the signal it sends. “The size isn’t big, but the signal that traditional holders and buyers are becoming less reliable is a very important one.”

Last month, meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the Treasury would at least double its buyback operations of long-dated USTs. Although framed as a mere liquidity operation, the move was widely interpreted as an attempt to bring long-dated yields down. It came shortly after the 30-year yield reached its highest level since 2007.

The Norwegian proposal is not yet final. NBIM described it as “advice” that will feed into broader recommendations to the Finance Ministry, with the government expected to submit its final proposals to parliament in spring of 2027.

Clashes broke out between protesters and police in central Madrid this week following a mass rally over the Spanish government’s handling of the migrant crisis in Ceuta.

The enclave, a small Spanish territory located on the North African coast, has faced severe pressure since around 72,000 people crossed from Morocco in late July. Although most returned or were sent back, thousands remain, straining local services and intensifying criticism of the Spanish government’s border policy.

The unrest followed a gathering outside Madrid City Hall on Wednesday, with official attendance estimates ranging from 50,000 to 150,000. Several hundred demonstrators later moved toward parliament, where police said objects were thrown at officers. Riot police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, leaving four people arrested and several officers injured, according to EFE news agency.

The demonstration was part of gatherings held across Spain to mark Ceuta Day. Although organizers presented them as a show of solidarity with the territory, many participants blamed Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s left-wing government for the crisis, chanting “Sanchez, traitor, resign” and calling for him to be jailed.

Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s right-wing party Vox, said that Ceuta had been “abandoned and betrayed.” He also claimed that the crisis offered a warning of what could happen elsewhere in Spain unless the government took stronger action.

Sanchez had previously condemned the mass crossing as a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” and pledged to strengthen border controls. Addressing the Spanish parliament on Thursday, he acknowledged that the authorities’ response “has not been sufficient.” He said trafficking networks and false claims circulated on social media were among the factors behind the influx.

Tensions have also risen inside Ceuta, where residents have demanded faster deportations and a stronger response from Madrid. Local authorities have struggled with overcrowding, sanitation problems, and disease outbreaks, while police have investigated numerous violent and sexual crimes during the crisis.

A police intelligence report submitted to a Spanish court this week said suspected Moroccan officers had guided migrants toward crossing points, but stopped short of accusing Rabat of organizing the operation.

The AfD enters the Saxony-Anhalt election with a ten-point plan for rapid reform as the political establishment resorts to surveillance, raids, ban proposals, and economic threats to stop it.

A few days before the September 6 state election in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD is on the verge of becoming the first party outside Germany’s postwar political cartel to govern a German state. Two months ago, at its state party conference in Magdeburg, the party presented a clear and ambitious 100-Day Program. The party entered the final days of the campaign united, confident, and focused on the concerns of ordinary German citizens. The ten-point plan offers a practical course for immediate action should the AfD assume government responsibility. It seeks to restore order and protect the homeland.

The establishment has answered this program with threats rather than arguments. The state Office for the Protection of the Constitution (a fittingly Orwellian name for such a dystopian organization) has classified the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt as a ‘confirmed right-wing extremist’ party since 2023, allowing an agency controlled by the Interior Ministry to spy on the strongest opposition party and infiltrate it with informants. Days before the vote, leading SPD (Social Democratic Party) and Green politicians renewed calls to ban the AfD’s state branches in Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. Ten days before the election, police searched 15 properties in an investigation into the alleged continuation of Artgemeinschaft, a Germanic neo-pagan association banned in 2023 as a ‘right-wing extremist’ organization. Two AfD parliamentary candidates were among those targeted. The legal merits of the case will be decided later, but the political images were broadcast before voters enter the polling stations. The message was plain: The state will place every possible obstacle before a party it cannot defeat at the ballot box.

First, the AfD will terminate the state broadcasting treaties and begin the reform of public media. The present compulsory fee forces every household to finance television and radio organizations that regularly treat opposition to mass immigration, hysterical climate policy, European centralization, and the war course against Russia as signs of moral or political deviance. The AfD wants a leaner, cheaper, and fully transparent system that informs citizens instead of lecturing them. This proposal strikes directly at one of the establishment’s main instruments of power, which helps explain the fury it has caused.

Second, the program promises deportations from minute one. An AfD government would use every legal instrument available to ensure that people who have received orders to leave Germany are actually returned to their countries of origin. Temporary detention would prevent those scheduled for removal from disappearing before deportation. Borders must be controlled, German communities must be protected, public resources must serve those entitled to them, and laws must be enforced. A state that announces deportations but fails to carry them out teaches both citizens and foreigners that its rules are empty words. The AfD intends to end that practice immediately.

Third, asylum seekers who are allowed to remain will have to perform mandatory community service. Anyone supported by society will be expected to make a contribution to it. Centralized accommodation in suitable facilities will become the rule, while placement in private apartments will be restricted to exceptional cases. This will improve oversight, security, and the orderly administration of the asylum system while respecting the taxpayers who finance it.

Fourth, an AfD state government will redirect public money away from party networks and ideological pressure groups. It will end funding for party foundations, including its own, and cut state support for the asylum and integration industry, the climate rescue industry, gender programs, and projects such as ‘School without Racism – School with Courage’. These organizations are presented as independent parts of civil society, yet many promote the establishment’s political slogans and campaign against the AfD. Taxpayers are thus forced to finance bodies that instruct them how to vote and denounce them when they refuse. The AfD would break this cycle. Public money would return to the people of Saxony-Anhalt and serve roads, schools, families, public safety, and other real needs instead of an army of activists protected from the economic conditions imposed on everyone else.

Sixth, the AfD will establish special classes for children of refugees and asylum seekers. These pupils will be taught material from their home countries to prepare them for eventual return and reentry into their national school systems. The measure will also protect the learning environment for German students and reduce the strain on teachers who are expected to overcome language barriers, cultural conflicts, and serious differences in educational level without adequate support. At schools affected by violence and persistent disruption, the AfD will deploy professional private security services. Teachers should teach, students should learn, and parents should be able to send their children to school without fear. The present system often conceals disorder because officials worry more about damaging the image of ‘diversity’ than about protecting children. Violence is softened into ‘conflict’, intimidation becomes a ‘challenge’, and falling standards are blamed on a lack of funding. The AfD rejects this evasive language. When a school is unsafe, security must be restored. When students cannot follow lessons, they must receive suitable instruction. A functioning school serves children through discipline, knowledge, and clear rules.

Seventh and eighth, the program calls for a cultural renewal that honors German traditions. Rainbow flags will be removed from schools because classrooms should not serve as advertising space for deviant sexual orientations and leftist political campaigns. The black-red-gold federal flag will fly in their place. This will teach children that Germany is their shared country and that belonging to it carries duties as well as rights. The state’s existing #moderndenken (modern thinking) campaign will give way to #deutschdenken (German thinking). The new initiative will affirm German history, culture, regional character, and national identity. The AfD also rejects the attempt to define Saxony-Anhalt chiefly through the Bauhaus movement, whose international style sought to strip art and architecture of much of their inherited ethnic and regional character. It will instead place more emphasis on the older heritage of the land and the people who formed it. This has provoked a flood of claims that the AfD threatens art itself. The charge confuses the withdrawal of state favor with censorship. Artists may continue to create what they wish, but they will no longer possess an automatic right to public money. The German nation has the same right to preserve its own culture that every other people is told to exercise with pride.

Ninth, the AfD will reduce the number of ministries in the state government. Too many ministries produce more offices, titles, press departments, and senior posts for loyal party functionaries without producing a better government. A smaller administration will lower costs, shorten lines of responsibility, and make it harder for ministers to hide failures inside a maze of agencies and committees. The government should concentrate on the essential services that affect daily life.

The final polls put the AfD at around 42%, almost twice the CDU’s 22%, with the Left Party near 13%. Depending on how many small parties fail to clear the 5% threshold to enter the state parliament, the AfD could even win an absolute majority of seats.

Ulrich Siegmund, who received 99.5% support in his election to the executive board, has nevertheless called for humility, discipline, and hard work until the last ballot is cast. Against him stands the whole machinery of the old order. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned that an AfD government would frighten away foreign investors. This is nonsense: Investors care about affordable energy, public safety, skilled workers, and reliable rules, all areas in which the established parties have failed. Leftist activist groups are urging voters to cast tactical ballots for the SPD and Greens solely to deny the AfD a majority. Commentators have discussed whether civil servants and police officers might refuse orders from an elected AfD government. German law does not permit refusal merely because a superior belongs to the AfD, but we all know that German law means nothing when push comes to shove.

The major parties maintain their firewall and would rather form a coalition across old ideological divisions than allow the strongest party to govern. The AfD’s answer remains its program: a concrete plan to govern from the first day and break with decades of failed establishment rule. The old parties had decades to solve these problems. Their rule brought higher costs, weaker public order, open borders, more crime, failing services, and contempt for national identity. Now that voters are turning away from them, they call the voters dangerous. Saxony-Anhalt has the chance to show that ballots still outrank secret-service files, media campaigns, ministerial warnings, and political threats.

India has launched its first imaging satellite that will operate from geosynchronous orbit, giving the country the ability to obtain frequent, near-real-time images of large areas for disaster monitoring, agricultural, and military purposes.

The Earth Observation Satellite-05 (EOS-05) was launched aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) GSLV-F17 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 2:55 am on Friday. Around 18 minutes later, it was placed in a transfer orbit.

EOS-05 is intended for “persistent monitoring of [the] Indian region,” ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan told RT India. Unlike India’s existing Earth-imaging satellites in lower orbits, which must pass over the same location again before fresh imagery can be collected, EOS-05 will be able to keep watching the same broad region for much longer periods.

“It is continuously monitoring. You can even take spot photographs,” Narayanan said, adding that its steerable camera can be moved across a designated area to scan selected locations.

Mission Success!

GSLV-F17 has successfully accomplished its mission, placing EOS-05 into the intended orbit.

Sharing a few memorable moments from the lift-off.

For more information:https://t.co/VneB2jgZoY#GSLVF17 #EOS05 #ISRO pic.twitter.com/kv0zB6V5Vi

— ISRO (@isro) September 3, 2026

Lower-orbit satellites can require around a day to return to the same area. By operating from a geosynchronous orbit, EOS-05 reduces that gap and provides more frequent imagery. The capability also has a security dimension.

“You’ve got an eye in the sky, which helps you see exactly what you want to see 24/7, and then gives you that much more reaction time,” retired Indian Army Lieutenant General Arun Sahni told RT India. “I don’t have to wait for a revisit.” 

The satellite could strengthen observation along India’s borders with Pakistan and China, he said. India and Pakistan exchanged missile and drone strikes during a brief conflict last year, while Indian and Chinese troops clashed along their disputed Himalayan border in 2020.

At 2,367 kg, it is the heaviest satellite yet carried by India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) into a transfer orbit.

The mission was the GSLV’s 19th flight and ISRO’s first successful orbital launch this year. It follows the failure of the PSLV-C62 mission in January after an anomaly in the rocket’s third stage.

An earlier attempt to deploy a geosynchronous Earth-imaging satellite in 2021 also failed because of a problem with the GSLV’s cryogenic upper stage.

German car giant Volkswagen is set to shed around 100,000 jobs worldwide after management and unions agreed to cut a further 50,000 positions by the end of the decade, the company has said. The reductions would amount to roughly one in seven of its global workforce.

Volkswagen, like much of German industry, is facing a severe financial and operational crisis, having watched profit margins collapse. CEO Oliver Blume has cited the loss of Russian energy as a key factor, along with increased competition from China.

The scale of the restructuring marks a dramatic retreat for a company long regarded as a symbol of German industrial strength. Volkswagen already had around 50,000 job cuts underway at its namesake brand, Audi, Porsche, and software subsidiary CARIAD, mostly through voluntary departures and early retirement. The latest plan effectively doubles that figure.

If carried out in full, the loss of around 100,000 positions would be the largest workforce reduction ever undertaken by a global automaker. Volkswagen employs roughly 650,000 people worldwide.

The company is also shrinking its ambitions elsewhere. Its model range is set to be cut by as much as half, while investment and research spending for 2027-2031 has been capped at €135 billion ($157 billion). Volkswagen is restructuring around annual sales of roughly 9 million vehicles and is targeting a 9% operating margin by 2030.

Hit by US tariffs and patchy demand for electric cars, Europe’s largest carmaker is struggling on several fronts. The crisis has been compounded at home by soaring energy costs since Berlin abandoned cheap Russian pipeline gas following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, increasingly relying on costlier LNG imports, including supplies from the US.

Russian presidential investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev has linked Germany’s industrial decline directly to its break with Russian energy. “No Russian gas – no German industry,” he wrote on Friday, commenting on plans by steel giant ArcelorMittal to shut major operations in Duisburg, affecting around 550 of the site’s 800 workers.

The energy shock has eroded a competitive advantage that underpinned German manufacturing for decades. The country subsequently suffered two consecutive years of economic contraction followed by sluggish growth, with manufacturers cutting production, investment, and jobs.

At the same time, Volkswagen has been losing ground in China, once its most important market, to domestic rivals such as BYD and Geely. Chinese automakers have also expanded rapidly in Europe, putting additional pressure on Volkswagen as it struggles to make its electric vehicles competitive on price and cost.

Volkswagen has steadily scaled back production at home. Last December, it ended vehicle production at its Dresden plant – the first time in the company’s nine-decade history that it had stopped carmaking at a German factory. BASF, Bosch, Continental, and other major German manufacturers have also closed or downsized facilities in recent years.

South Africa’s Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) has recovered 8.3 billion rand ($519 million) in assets and funds linked to corruption, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi has said, while calling for those who enable graft to face prosecution.

Speaking at the University of Johannesburg’s Combating Corruption Summit on Wednesday, Kubayi said the AFU’s recoveries had increased from about R6 billion reported at last year’s summit.

“These successes are in part because of AFU strengthened collaboration work with anti-corruption task teams, inter-agency working group on illicit financial flows. These are systems that we’ve worked or we are working on, but also these are some of the work that we are doing in partnership, not only with government but also with private sector,” the minister stressed.

But she made it clear that recovering money could not be the end of the country’s anti-corruption efforts. Kubayi challenged professional bodies, particularly those representing accountants and lawyers, to show what action they had taken against members implicated in corruption.

The warning comes as state agencies intensify efforts to recover money and assets linked to corruption. Kubayi said the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) had recovered assets and cash worth R936 million, against a target of R1 billion, over the past year.

”I need to highlight what is important about the work that is being done by SIU. SIU just doesn’t recover, but also, it’s able to stop contracts so that we don’t have to come back and recover,” Kubayi added.

The Tembisa Hospital corruption case is one example of the state’s efforts to recover the proceeds of corruption. The AFU secured a final forfeiture order for about R326 million in assets linked to businessman Hangwani Maumela, including luxury properties and vehicles. The SIU helped trace the assets.

OUTA Chief Executive Officer Wayne Duvenage said the recovery of stolen money was important but should not be mistaken for victory against corruption.

He added those involved needed to face consequences beyond losing the proceeds of their crimes. Duvenage said major corruption rarely happens in isolation, often involving officials, business people, and professionals who help structure deals, move money or disguise corrupt transactions.

“If those enablers believe that the worst that will happen is that some of the money may eventually be recovered, while they remain free to continue doing business, then the system isn’t creating sufficient deterrence,” he said.

Accountability Now Director Paul Hoffman SC believes the problem is even more fundamental, arguing that South Africa lacks an anti-corruption institution sufficiently independent from the executive.

”The problem at the moment is that South Africa does not have the necessary machinery of state to deal with corruption effectively and efficiently,” Hoffman noted. He also called for legislation creating an independent, stand-alone body to deal with corruption outside Cabinet control, arguing that the Hawks and National Prosecuting Authority remain under political executive structures.

”Nothing is happening if there’s an arrest. Absolutely nothing. It only happens when there’s a prosecution and a conviction. Then something is happening,” Nel said. He added that the failure to prosecute was particularly concerning when politically connected individuals were involved and questioned why there were no consequences for prosecutors responsible for decisions not to prosecute.

First published by IOL

The EU- and US-funded press watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), has called for tighter controls on AI-based search technology, after discovering that chatbots bypass European censorship laws and present Russian media sources banned by in Western Europe to users.

The Paris-based RSF, which lists EU and the US National Endowment for Democracy among its backers, found that popular AI services can provide RT articles, links, excerpts, and news summaries to web users. “Public chatbots can access these websites and redistribute their content,” a statement by the organisation claimed on Wednesday.

The EU and UK have banned numerous Russian news outlets since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, including RT and Sputnik. Moscow has denounced the EU-wide ban as an attempt to silence coverage of the conflict that contradicts Brussels maximalist political stance.

The censoorship has since spread across virtually every publishing channel, including websites, apps, chats and social media. RT has been blocked and removed from practically all Western tech platforms, while RT France was forced to close in 2023 after its accounts were frozen and RT America suffered a similar fate in 2024.

RSF asked popular AI services to retrieve international news exclusively from sanctioned outlets, including RT, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti.

ChatGPT and Grok emerged as the “leading bots for circumventing EU sanctions,” retrieving headlines and providing links, excerpts and detailed summaries. ChatGPT complied “without reservation,” according to RSF, while Claude responded with “unfailing consistency.”

Gemini cited sanctions to refuse requests while Meta AI, whose parent company unilaterally banned RT from Facebook and Instagram in September 2024, was the only chatbot tested that “consistently refused” to provide the requested material.

A drone has hit the central building of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Kiev, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has claimed.

He blamed the incident on Russia, claiming the UAV landed a direct hit on the office of the agency’s acting head, Aleksandr Poklad. The official was not harmed in the alleged Russian attack, according to Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader said he had already tasked Poklad with preparing an “adequate, noticeable, and, if possible, mirror response.”

Footage from the scene that has emerged on Ukrainian Telegram channels appears to show that an explosion damaged the facade of the building, with thick black smoke billowing out of two of its windows.

Surveillance footage that emerged online shortly after the incident shows an unknown projectile, appearing to be a delta wing-patterned kamikaze drone, rapidly approaching the building before exploding into a large fireball.

Nine people were injured in the Shevchenkovsky District, where the SBU building is located, after a drone came down in the area, according to Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko. Seven of them were hospitalized.

The incident comes shortly after Zelensky issued a threat against civilian aviation operating in Russia. “We want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who still uses Russia’s key airports: Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe,” the Ukrainian leader said in a video address on Tuesday. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the remarks as a “declaration of state terrorism,” pledging to deliver an appropriate response if Kiev’s threats resulted in a tragedy.

Somali forces have “decisively defeated” militias allegedly operating alongside Al-Shabaab after they launched an attack on Baidoa, the capital of South West State, the authorities have said.

The assault began at around 4:15 a.m on Thursday with explosions intended to cause panic among civilians, the East African nation’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. Fighting continued for several hours before subsiding in the afternoon.

The ministry said government troops inflicted heavy losses on fighters loyal to former South West State President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen. It did not provide a casualty figure, but said an assessment was underway.

In a separate statement on Thursday, the South West State government said the attack began with two vehicle-borne explosive devices. It said its forces killed more than 40 Al-Shabaab fighters, wounded several others, and seized weapons and military equipment. Bay Regional Hospital received 71 wounded people, including 15 women, and one dead civilian, emergency department head Abdikafi Omar Mohamud told AP. Residents reportedly fled their homes as gunfire and explosions spread into residential areas.

The latest violence follows a prolonged standoff between Mogadishu and Laftagareen. The federal government rejected his disputed reelection in March and took control of Baidoa on March 30, prompting Laftagareen, who had governed South West since 2018, to announce his resignation.
Regional lawmakers elected former Somali parliament speaker Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe as president of South West State in June.

Baidoa, which is about 245km northwest of Mogadishu, hosts more than half a million people displaced by conflict and drought. Al-Shabaab has waged an insurgency against Somalia’s government for nearly two decades and continues to control territory in parts of the country.

Russia is now training more African students than the Soviet Union did, Andrey Maslov, director of the HSE Center for African Studies, said on Friday at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok.

The number of students from African countries enrolled at Russian universities has reached a historic high of over 37,000 this year, Olga Petrova, Russian deputy minister of science and higher education, reported at the same session. The figure is up from around 17,500 in 2020, according to Fernando Jose Sambu, the representative of the African International Congress, a Russian-based international platform.

Russia has also expanded state-funded education opportunities for African students, a policy promoted by President Vladimir Putin at the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit.

The expert noted there is strong demand among African governments for Russian expertise in financial monitoring and cybersecurity.

“This is an area that African states are only just beginning to approach systematically in terms of understanding their role in protecting their national digital environments from external influence,” Maslov stated.

The HSE Center for African Studies has been running its E-Governance Knowledge Sharing Program since 2022, providing training for African government officials in the digitalization of public administration. Its first major training school in Moscow in 2023 brought together over 40 mid- and senior-level officials from 23 African countries. The program has since expanded to activities on the continent, including a training school on e-governance held in Tanzania in May 2026.

A group of migrants in the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta have been accused of pulling a baby dolphin from the sea and beating it to death, after disturbing footage sparked outrage online.

The bottlenose dolphin calf was spotted swimming close to the shore at El Trampolin beach on Wednesday before several men dragged it from the water, according to local newspaper El Faro de Ceuta. One of them allegedly struck the animal in the head with a stick, leaving it mortally wounded.

A beach worker reportedly confronted the group and told them not to touch the dolphin and to call wildlife services. They then tried to return it to the sea, but the animal appeared already dead.

Ceuta-based blogger Juan Ruiz filmed members of the group raising the dolphin like a trophy as he approached them. “You can’t take that, it’s a dolphin, you don’t eat that!” he shouted, before demanding to know who had killed it.

When people in the group apparently claimed the animal had already been dead in the water, Ruiz responded sarcastically: “Yeah, it died in the water on its own, right.”

Local environmental group DAUBMA has filed a complaint with Spanish law enforcement, demanding the authorities investigate the incident and identify those involved.

Ceuta has been gripped by chaos since an unprecedented migrant influx from neighboring Morocco in late July, when around 72,000 people crossed into the tiny Spanish territory.

Thousands remain, many living in makeshift camps, on beaches, and in the streets. Local authorities have struggled with overcrowding, sanitation problems, and disease outbreaks, while police have investigated numerous violent and sexual crimes during the crisis.

Residents have repeatedly protested, demanding faster deportations and tougher action from Madrid. Last month, locals tore down migrant shelters at El Trampolin as police intervened to keep the groups apart.

Six Ukrainians and an American described as “mercenaries” and currently being held in prison launched a drone attack on a civilian aircraft in neighboring Myanmar, India’s anti-terrorism agency told a Delhi court.

The seven were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in March while trying to depart India from different parts of the country.

A first-person view drone (FPV) of the type that is widely used in the Ukrainian conflict struck a Myanmar National Airlines ATR-72-600 while preparing to depart from Myitkyina Airport to Mandalay, on February 20, Burmese media reported at the time. 

The passenger-laden plane suffered damage to its nose, mid-fuselage, and tail sections. It is not clear if the NIA was referring to the same attack.

The agency previously told the court on August 19 that the Indian government “has received credible information indicating the involvement of certain Ukrainian and US nationals in a drone attack on a civilian aircraft in Myanmar.” 

The court granted the agency permission to interrogate two from the group – Ukrainian Viktor Kaminskyi and American Matthew VanDyke – in prison.

The details of the court filings were reported by the Indian Express on Friday.

The NIA said in total 14 Ukrainians entered India on tourist visas on different dates and flew to Guwahati in the northeastern state of Assam, where they traveled to the state of Mizoram without the required permits, and entered Myanmar illegally to conduct a “pre-scheduled training on drone warfare, drone operations, assembly, and jamming technology” for ethnic armed groups fighting the military government.

Several consignments of drones from Europe were delivered by the accused to individuals and groups in Mizoram, according to the NIA. The arrested mercenaries also allegedly confessed to have been in contact with and helped “unknown terrorists carrying AK47 rifles.”

The agency said it wants to confront Kaminskyi and VanDyke with certain witness statements to “unearth the larger conspiracy” in the case, details of the other suspects, and the masterminds of the operation.

It said data extracted from seized devices contained images, videos, voice samples, among other things, which have to be corroborated with direct questioning.

VanDyke, the American, is the founder of Sons of Liberty International, which provides military training in conflict zones. He has reportedly been involved in other conflicts, including fighting with Libyan rebels in 2011.

The court in July allowed him special food items and a cook after he complained that the “spicy and oily” prison meals affected his health, but it rejected his request for treatment at a private hospital, and to communicate with his family in the US.

Venice Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco has defended his decision to reopen Russia’s pavilion at the event, saying “art won” despite EU pressure and Brussels stripping the exhibition of €2 million in funding.

In early March, the Venice Biennale announced Russia’s return despite the Ukraine conflict, Moscow’s standoff with Brussels, and unprecedented EU sanctions.

Russia, which has owned one of the exhibition’s oldest pavilions since 1914, went on to stage a show titled ‘The Tree Is Rooted in the Sky’ there in May, bringing together more than 50 young musicians, poets, and philosophers from Russia and other countries. Russian cultural envoy Mikhail Shvydkoy called the exhibition proof that attempts by Western political elites to “cancel” Russian culture had failed.

“It was more than right and proper toward the institution I preside over,” he said, adding that none of its formal decisions contained “a single comma” that violated laws or regulations.

The comments followed Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli’s claim in May that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin won at the Biennale.” Buttafuoco rejected that characterization, saying: “Putin didn’t win, art did.” He argued that the Biennale’s 131-year history was built on remaining open to the world even during conflicts and likened that principle to the ancient Olympic truce.

Buttafuoco also renewed his criticism of Brussels, which had challenged Russia’s participation on ethical and sanctions grounds. He stated that under the EU’s stated standards on democracy and freedom of expression, roughly 87% of non-EU countries represented at the Art Biennale would fail to qualify.

Russia’s return to one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious art festivals triggered a backlash in Brussels. The European Commission withdrew €2 million ($2.3 million) in funding for the Biennale in July, claiming that Russia’s participation violated EU sanctions and that taxpayer-funded cultural events must uphold democratic values. The Biennale stressed, however, that the grant had been earmarked for film projects that had “nothing to do with Russia’s participation” in the exhibition.

The funding row followed months of pressure from Kiev and its European backers. Ukraine separately sanctioned people linked to the Russian pavilion, while activists staged protests in Venice. The pavilion opened during the May preview but remained closed to the public after the Biennale officially began.

Moscow blasted the funding cut, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova describing it as a “relapse into anti-culture.”

The world’s elderly population has overtaken the number of young children for the first time in human history, according to a new US Census Bureau report. Europe, already the world’s oldest region, is at the forefront of the trend.
People aged 65 and over accounted for 10.5% of the global population in 2025, surpassing children aged five and younger for the first time, the bureau said in its An Aging World: 2025 report.

The reversal has been driven by longer life expectancy and falling birth rates. The Census Bureau said sustained fertility below replacement level can create a “fertility trap,” as the number of potential parents eventually declines.

Around 132 million babies are now born worldwide each year, down from a peak of roughly 142 million in the early 2010s, according to UN data. Africa accounted for roughly 47 million births in 2024, reflecting an increasingly uneven global trend.

The decline has been particularly pronounced in Europe. Just 3.55 million babies were born in the EU in 2024, nearly half the 6.8 million recorded in 1964. The bloc’s fertility rate has fallen to a record low of 1.34 children per woman.

The demographic shift is set to accelerate. The global population is expected to grow by more than 2 billion by 2060, while the number of people aged 65 and over will rise by around 1.15 billion, according to the US Census Bureau.
The elderly are projected to account for 19.6% of humanity by then, up from 10.5% today. In Europe, their share is expected to rise from 21% to nearly 31%, the report said.

The shift will put further strain on government budgets as fewer workers and taxpayers support a growing number of retirees. The Census report estimates that across Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, increased government healthcare spending over the next decade will amount to 2.6% of GDP, twice the projected 1.3% growth in revenues.

Kiev’s Western backers cannot guarantee that Ukrainian terrorist attacks will not endanger their own citizens, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

Moscow has long accused the Ukrainian government of employing terrorist tactics and deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. President Vladimir Putin has described Vladimir Zelensky’s recent threat against foreign airlines operating in Russia as “state terrorism.”

“They (Western nations) have created a monster, and we always said that this monster will go rogue, as did all the monsters they created before,” Zakharova told Izvestia on Friday.

“What guarantee do they have that Zelensky won’t strike their own citizens when carrying out those terrorist attacks?” she added. “Nobody could ever guarantee that.”

The same agencies were involved in firefights in Kiev this week in what appeared to be a dispute over custody of an HUR operative whom the SBU has accused of involvement in a for-profit plot to organize a political assassination.

German investigators have accused Ukrainian citizens of carrying out the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which caused one of the most serious incidents of damage to energy infrastructure in recent history.

Media reports have also described clandestine Ukrainian operations in Africa and the Middle East purportedly intended to undermine Russian interests, including the training and arming of local militant groups.

Putin criticized Ukraine’s Western backers in remarks on Thursday, arguing that by failing to condemn Kiev’s criminal actions, they effectively become accomplices.

Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) has reported an attempted drone strike on fuel tanks at a depot in the capital, Tripoli, in the latest attack targeting the conflict-torn country’s energy infrastructure.

The remotely controlled drone targeted the Brega fuel depot on Airport Road on Thursday morning, the NOC said in a statement. It initially reported no damage but raised emergency readiness at all sites and ordered teams to lower fuel levels in the tanks as a precaution.

NOC subsidiary Brega Petroleum Marketing Company later said inspectors had found damage to several pipelines and two tanks. According to the company, a suspected drone entered the depot’s airspace before crashing near one of the storage tanks. No casualties were reported.

NOC described the incident as a “dangerous indication” of attempts to target oil facilities through “acts of sabotage.” It warned that such attacks posed “a direct threat to the supply system and essential services,” including power generation, healthcare, and industry.

The assaults have compounded an electricity crisis that triggered protests across western Libya in July. Demonstrators demanding improved services and the resignation of Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah stormed the Mellitah energy complex and temporarily shut gas lines supplying power stations.

On August 30, representatives of the rival camps signed a UN-backed roadmap aimed at holding presidential and parliamentary elections within 24 months under a single executive authority.

Since April, US President Donald Trump’s adviser Massad Boulos has also promoted a power-sharing initiative in an attempt to resolve Libya’s political deadlock. In an RT opinion piece, Libyan academic Mustafa Fetouri argued that the plan could bypass the UN process, keep the rival Dbeibah and Haftar camps in power, and deepen the country’s division.

Horsemen, wrestlers, and archers are testing their strength and skill against the spectacular backdrop of Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan, where the sixth World Nomad Games are in full swing.

Competitors from 90 countries are taking part in 43 disciplines rooted in nomadic traditions, ranging from eagle hunting, horseback wrestling, and archery to tug-of-war and traditional intellectual games.

Horses take center stage in many of the events of the Games, which run through September 6.

In ‘er enish’ (horseback wrestling), two mounted wrestlers try to drag each other from the saddle, while ‘tyiyn enmei’ (coin picking) requires riders to lean almost to the ground at full gallop to pick up an object.

Another gold for Kyrgyzstan in Er Enish (horseback wrestling) at the World Nomad Games! 🇰🇬🥇 pic.twitter.com/WO5uglfgtX

— Samat (@samat_awa) September 3, 2026

Then there is ‘kok-boru’ (gray wolf), perhaps the games’ most famous spectacle, in which two teams on horseback fight for possession of a goat carcass and attempt to carry it to the opposing side’s goal.

Highlights from Day 1 of the VI World Nomad Games.

The Kyrgyz Kök Börü team defeated Team USA in a very intense game.

🇺🇸 Lad Howell won the hearts of the Kyrgyz crowd with his true warrior spirit. pic.twitter.com/FzwAmJQjJ3

— Samat (@samat_awa) September 2, 2026

Traditional hunting is represented by ‘salbuurun’, featuring golden eagles, other birds of prey, and hunting dogs. Archery, horse racing, and numerous forms of traditional wrestling are also on the program.

Iran’s four-member tug-of-war team finished runner-up at the Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan. pic.twitter.com/eAe83P3qhV

— Alireza Akbari (@itsalireza_akb) September 3, 2026

Team GB’s female riders took on horseback archery at the World Nomad Games in Kyrchyn Gorge, firing from the saddle against a dramatic mountain backdrop https://t.co/ad3MEBkNH6 @StephenMBland pic.twitter.com/JwpFF2Fi7r

— The Times of Central Asia (@thetimesoca) September 3, 2026

People coming to the World Nomad Games also get to try traditional Turkic sports themselves.

Like this one.

Two people, one wooden board, one stick. Basically, whoever can’t pull the other guy over loses. pic.twitter.com/cCVvPBNYQl

— Daily Turkic (@DailyTurkic) September 2, 2026

The games are about more than sport. Yurts, national costumes, crafts, music, and food have transformed the venues into a showcase of nomadic culture.

The event grew out of efforts in Kyrgyzstan in the 2000s to preserve traditional games whose rules risked disappearing as older generations died. The initiative was later recognized by UNESCO as a good practice for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.

First staged in Kyrgyzstan in 2014, the World Nomad Games have since traveled to Türkiye and Kazakhstan before returning to their birthplace this year. What began as a regional effort to keep old traditions alive has grown into an international celebration of nomadic culture.

India has defended its continued purchases of Russian oil, with the foreign minister saying restrictions on the energy trade will not bring a resolution to the Ukraine conflict, which has to come through dialogue and diplomacy.

“This conflict, which is today in its fifth year, will not be solved because somebody is buying or not buying oil or alumina or minerals or metals or fertilizer,” Jaishankar said after talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha, in the capital, Kiev. “This conflict will be solved by dialogue, by diplomacy, by negotiation.”

Asked whether India will reduce its Russian oil purchases if Washington imposes steep sanctions on Russia’s top oil customers under a new bill, Jaishankar pointed to the challenges of providing energy for 1.4 billion people amid a “very, very difficult” global energy situation.

Russia was India’s largest crude oil supplier last month, providing around 2.1 million barrels per day, or 45% of the country’s imports, according to maritime intelligence firm Kpler. Volumes were lower than the record 2.8 million barrels per day imported in July as Indian refiners scaled back some purchases. 

Speaking to the press after meeting with FM Andrii Sybiha in Kyiv #Ukraine

🇮🇳🇺🇦 https://t.co/v7RxoXWzFP

— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 3, 2026

Jaishankar said New Delhi respects Ukraine’s perspective on Russian energy, but expects India’s position to be respected as well.

The exchange comes as the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 awaits consideration by the US House of Representatives. The legislation, which cleared the Senate last month, would allow tariffs of up to 100% on the top five buyers of Russian oil and gas. Ukraine has been lobbying US lawmakers for the bill’s passage. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has met US President Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in the Kremlin. The pair have arrived in Moscow for talks aimed at settling the Ukraine conflict.

Putin has thanked both Witkoff and Kushner, stressing that Trump is continuing his efforts to contribute to the resolution of the Ukraine conflict. The Russian president added that “contacts of this kind are always beneficial.” In turn, the US envoys thanked Putin for the meeting and especially for his decision to order a three-day hiatus in strikes on Kiev.

The envoys were greeted at Vnukovo airport earlier in the day by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, who previously held several rounds of talks with both Witkoff and Kushner in Russia and the US.

RT has published footage of the motorcade carrying Trump’s envoys and Dmitriev leaving the airport and heading towards the Kremlin.

Trump said on Friday that Witkoff and Kushner would travel to Moscow before heading to Kiev, “bringing with them a proposal to end the war.” The US president did not elaborate on the proposal or disclose what the two envoys would discuss with the Russians and Ukrainians.

Witkoff and Kushner are handling several high-profile negotiations for the American leader. Their linked visits to Moscow and Kiev have been expected for months.

The possibility of Witkoff and Kushner making their trips over the weekend was also reported by the Kyiv Independent and Axios, which cited their own sources.

On Thursday, Putin said he valued American efforts and called Kushner and Witkoff, who were involved in trilateral talks involving the US, Russia, and Ukraine, sincere interlocutors.

“Mr. Kushner and Witkoff are always welcome guests here, and we work with them with pleasure.”

In recent weeks, Zelensky has made several public statements about the duo’s possible visit to Kiev, with his latest prediction coming on Thursday night.

Both Kushner and Witkoff have visited Moscow during Trump’s current term, but are yet to travel to Kiev. Zelensky claimed in public remarks that the disparity was unfair to Ukraine.

In June, Zelensky ordered a campaign of mass drone attacks targeting Russian transport ships, refineries and retailer warehouses, which political observers said was designed to convince Trump that Ukrainian forces could secure a military victory and should be provided with additional supplies.

Russian retaliation strikes have left Ukraine virtually with no access to maritime trade through the Black Sea and seriously disrupted logistics.

Russia is willing to share high-end technology and expand industrial cooperation with India to help develop its industries, the deputy minister of industry and trade, Roman Chekushov, has said.

”We are ready to share our technologies with them,” Chekushov said on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Thursday. He added that India has been seeking technologies from Russia as the two countries move beyond their robust trade relationship.

Chekushov said some Russian companies, mostly in the transportation and chemical sectors, already have production facilities in India. Calling this the initial stage, he said more Russian companies are exploring production in India and expanding in the Indian market. The initiative will also be in line with the Make-in-India policies promoted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he seeks to boost economic growth and jobs in the world’s most populous nation.

The INNOPROM. India trade fair will open in New Delhi next week just ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit. The organizers say the event will showcase advanced technologies and explore cooperation across sectors ranging from aviation to AI.

'Russia–India Moving Beyond Trade Relations & Into Industrial Cooperation' - Roman Chekushov

‘Made in India’ partnerships will create added value, and Russia is ‘ready to share its technologies with 🇮🇳,’ the 🇷🇺 Deputy Minister of Industry & Trade said at EEF. pic.twitter.com/dOKUTrx3nZ

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) September 3, 2026

Russian aviation, technology, energy, and industrial heavyweights are attending, along with several big Indian companies.

India is also keen on the Northern Sea Route, which Russia is developing as a shorter, more competitive trade route to northern Europe via the Arctic ocean and its Far East.

The two countries have set a bilateral trade target of $100 billion to be reached by 2030.

The EU’s top court has rejected claims that the nature of Russia’s political system can be used as the sole justification to freeze assets belonging to Russian-linked companies, after bloc member Lithuania cited Russian President Vladimir Putin when taking action against an electricity supplier.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) made the finding on Thursday in a case involving Lithuania’s 2022 decision to freeze the funds of electricity supplier Inter Rao Lietuva, which was not itself on the EU sanctions list.

The company operated in Lithuania as an independent importer and supplier of electricity. Some 51% of its shares are owned by Finland-based RAO Nordic, which is in turn wholly owned by Inter RAO, a major Russian state-controlled power company.

The freeze severely disrupted Inter Rao Lietuva’s operations, with the company launching insolvency proceedings after saying it could no longer meet its obligations to creditors.

The authorities in Vilnius claimed that Inter Rao Lietuva was ultimately controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is subject to EU sanctions, pointing to its ownership links to Russian state-controlled companies and the broad powers of the Russian presidency.

However, the CJEU concluded that the nature of Russia’s political system “does not, in itself, constitute sufficiently solid evidence” that the Russian president controls Inter Rao Lietuva.

The court said authorities must have “an objective and sufficiently solid basis” to prove that a company is controlled by a sanctioned individual before freezing its assets.

The case will now return to Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court, which must resolve the dispute in line with the Luxembourg court’s interpretation of EU law.

Israel’s seizure of UN facilities in occupied East Jerusalem amounts to “highway robbery,” Palestinian-American journalist Daoud Kuttab told RT.

His comments come amid an escalating dispute over facilities belonging to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the UNRWA. Israeli security forces seized the agency’s Kalandia vocational training center in East Jerusalem last week. Israel disputes the UNRWA’s rights to the site and plans to repurpose it as part of a Jerusalem municipal development project.

Earlier this year, the Israeli authorities seized and partially demolished the UNRWA’s former headquarters in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

“Israel… literally stole, took over [UNRWA] buildings and turned them over to the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem. This is highway robbery, literally stealing UN property without any authorization,” Kuttab told RT’s Rory Suchet on Thursday.

Kuttab also discussed the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Watch the full interview below.

US President Donald Trump has said he intends to present Europe with a belated bill for billions of dollars Washington spent arming Ukraine under his predecessor, Joe Biden.

In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump renewed his criticism of the scale of the Biden administration’s support for Kiev, claiming that “Hundreds of Billions of Dollars was given to Ukraine and NATO, free of charge, that Europe would have paid for – If they were only asked.”

“We will be asking for that money, though somewhat belatedly!”

Trump did not specify how much Washington would seek, which European countries would be expected to pay, or how any retroactive payments would be arranged. Earlier this week, he said Biden gave Ukraine more than $300 billion worth of weapons “free.”

Under Trump, Washington has shifted the cost of new US weapons supplied to Ukraine through the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) to other NATO members and partners. Launched last year, the scheme allows them to pay for US-made weapons and ammunition supplied to Kiev. NATO says more than $6 billion worth of US military equipment has been funded through the program.

Moscow has maintained that additional Western weapons will not change the outcome of the conflict, arguing that they will only prolong the fighting.

Trump’s latest remarks came as he pushed back against reports that the conflict with Iran has severely depleted ammunition stocks, saying the US is ramping up production and currently keeping newly produced munitions for its own forces rather than selling them abroad.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur has announced his resignation after it emerged that Tallinn paid €70 million ($81 million) in advance for artillery shells for Ukraine to a company with no track record of producing the ammunition.

The scandal erupted on Wednesday after the Eesti Ekspress newspaper reported on the botched procurement and the ensuing legal dispute. In August 2024, Tallinn signed a contract with Italian-registered Datasel, owned by Indian company Neco Defence Munitions, to supply artillery ammunition for Ukraine. The government paid €15 million upfront despite neither company having any previous record of manufacturing artillery shells.

A second deal followed in October, with Estonia paying another €10 million in advance. The first batch was due to reach Ukraine in November, but Datasel reported problems and repeatedly delayed delivery.

Despite the setbacks, Estonia signed two more contracts with the company, eventually bringing total advance payments to around €70 million. The money came from the EU’s European Peace Facility, which has been extensively used to fund weapons and other military assistance for Kiev. Tallinn is now disputing the contracts in a case before the European Court of Arbitration in Strasbourg.

“The defense minister does not conduct contract negotiations. The defense minister does not count socks and ammunition. The defense minister makes the fundamental decision to support Ukraine,” Pevkur said.

RKIK head Elmar Vaher acknowledged that his agency was to blame for the scandal, but shifted the responsibility to his predecessor, Magnus-Valdemar Saar.

“I have been familiar with the matter since January. I cannot see inside people’s heads to know how they were thinking and what the main arguments behind their decisions were,” Vaher told ERR. “The decision was made by RKIK’s former director general.” 

It is unclear to what extent the contracts remain unfulfilled, since Estonian officials provided conflicting accounts. Pevkur said “tens of millions of euros’ worth of the ammunition” were delivered and are currently sitting “in a warehouse in a European country.”

The shells, however, were “not of sufficient quality” to send to Ukraine, according to the outgoing minister. The Defense Ministry’s secretary-general, Kaimo Kuusk, described the consignment as “wholly incomplete.” The Eesti Ekspress report called the munitions useless and faulty.

German police have launched an investigation into a suspected arson attack near the Munich premises of defense contractors Rohde & Schwarz and Helsing, detaining two Bulgarian nationals in connection with the incident.

Two incendiary devices were thrown from a car at a construction site around midnight on Thursday, Bavarian police said. One ignited and was extinguished by officers, while a bomb disposal team defused the second. No injuries or significant damage were reported.

Police shortly afterward detained a 28-year-old woman and a 38-year-old man, both Bulgarian citizens.

The motive remains unclear, although police noted that “several defense companies are located” at the site. Because a political motive cannot be ruled out, the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office and the Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism have taken over the investigation.

Die Welt later reported, citing a police spokesperson, that a letter claiming responsibility had appeared on a platform linked to left-wing extremists.

Since the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, EU officials have repeatedly alleged Russian involvement in suspected sabotage and other incidents described as ‘hybrid attacks,’ although Moscow has denied responsibility and conclusive evidence has not been publicly presented.

In another high-profile case, an explosive-laden drone was discovered between Ukrainian Antonov cargo planes at Leipzig/Halle Airport in early August. German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Tuesday that authorities believe Russia was behind the incident.

Berlin subsequently announced the closure of the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the Russian House in Berlin, along with other measures.

Moscow has rejected the allegations. Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Berlin of seeking to distract from its domestic economic problems by “planting the evidence” to implicate Russia.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova likewise dismissed the accusations as an “absolutely trumped-up and far-fetched” pretext for closing the Russian facilities.

Kiev has demanded that the UN aviation watchdog effectively shut Russian airspace to civilian traffic after Vladimir Zelensky threatened that Ukraine’s expanding long-range drone campaign would make flying over the country increasingly dangerous.

Ukrainian newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli reported on Wednesday that Infrastructure Minister Nikolay Kalashnik had sent a letter to Juan Carlos Salazar, secretary general of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), calling for action against flights through Russian airspace.

The letter urged the watchdog to “encourage aviation authorities, air navigation service providers and airlines” operating in Russia to take measures to “protect” civilian aircraft, including a complete ban on flights through Russian airspace by carriers from ICAO member states.

“The presence of civilian aircraft in Russian airspace may entail particularly high risks,” Kalashnik reportedly wrote in the letter obtained by the outlet.

Kiev’s demand followed an explicit threat from Zelensky to foreign airlines, insurers and governments on Tuesday that continued Ukrainian drone attacks would put civilian aviation in Russia at risk.

“The safe days in Russia’s skies are over,” he said, urging carriers to reconsider flights to Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major Russian destinations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described Zelensky’s warning as a move toward “state terrorism” and vowed that Moscow would respond if Kiev’s threats resulted in tragedy. “Let no one doubt that,” he said.

Drones have also struck residential areas, including high-rise apartment buildings and houses.

An attack last month on the Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik in southern Russia killed at least eight people, including four children, and wounded dozens more. Another strike on industrial and civilian sites in Nizhnekamsk, in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan, killed 13 people, while a July 18 attack on a Wildberries warehouse in the town of Kotovsk in Tambov Region left seven workers dead.

Moscow has described the intensified Ukrainian strikes as indiscriminate terrorist attacks intended to distract from Kiev’s battlefield setbacks and has responded with renewed long-range strikes on Ukraine. The Russian military maintains that it does not target purely civilian facilities, saying its attacks are directed at military, defense-industrial and dual-use sites.

The anniversary of victory over militarist Japan is more than a commemoration of a distant war. It is an opportunity to ask uncomfortable questions: What exactly was defeated in 1945 and what lessons were meant to survive the victory?

What was supposed to end in 1945?

Japan’s surrender ended a catastrophic war in Asia and the Pacific. Germany’s defeat ended an equally catastrophic war in Europe. In both cases, military power had ceased to be merely an instrument of state policy and had become a force shaping policy itself. Countries were destroyed and tens of millions were dead as a consequence.

After the war, Japan was forced to embraced a high degree of military self-restraint, symbolized by Article 9 of its constitution and by the deliberately defensive character of its armed forces. Germany followed a different path but reached a similar conclusion: Military power requires strict limits and could not be treated as the normal measure of national strength.

Neither country ended up completely defenseless. Both retained armed forces and entered alliance structures. But for decades, there was an underlying recognition that more weapons did not necessarily mean more security.

Today, that recognition is fading. Japan is undertaking its most extensive military buildup since World War II. Germany is carrying out the most consequential rearmament of its postwar history. Both are increasing military spending, expanding defense-industrial capacity, acquiring more powerful strike capabilities, and deepening strategic cooperation. More ominously, both are reassessing their relationship with nuclear weapons.

The justification is simple. The Japanese are told to fear China. The Germans are told to fear Russia.

But what if these threats are being systematically inflated – and politically manufactured? What if the preparations supposedly intended to prevent war are making a larger war increasingly likely?

Japan’s transformation is historically significant, because its postwar restraint was a conscious reaction to the disaster of the first half of the 20th century. Today, however, restraint is increasingly presented as an obsolete luxury in an age of geopolitical competition.

Japan is expanding its defense budget, strengthening its naval and air capabilities, acquiring long-range missiles, and developing what it calls “counterstrike capabilities.” It is strengthening its military infrastructure and integrating more closely into wider regional military planning. All of this is still framed as defensive measures, but that doesn’t change the fact that Japan is becoming a powerful military actor.

The relentlessly repeated justification is that China is growing stronger, therefore Japan must rearm. China is expanding its naval forces, therefore Japan must expand its own. China possesses increasingly sophisticated missiles, therefore Japan requires long-range strike capabilities.

But this narrative usually omits the strategic environment from which China’s own military policies emerge.

China is not surrounded by Chinese military bases. Instead, it faces a dense US-centered network of bases, alliances, intelligence systems, and military partnerships operating along its maritime periphery. US forces are stationed in Japan and elsewhere across the region. Japan is expanding its own military role and acquiring new offensive-range capabilities. Beijing’s response to this environment is then cited as proof that the original buildup was necessary, creating a vicious cycle of artificial reasoning.

China, like any major power, does pursue its own interests and take part in the global competition for influence. But the idea that China is simply a disguised aggressor waiting for an opportunity to attack Japan ignores both the elementary logic of power politics and Chinese strategic culture.

Why would China deliberately initiate a major war against Japan, knowing that this could bring it into direct conflict with the US and its allies? The more plausible scenario is the opposite, that China will increasingly prepare for a conflict because it sees one being prepared against it.

Germany is undergoing a parallel transformation. The army is expanding, military procurement is accelerating, arms production is being encouraged, and Germany is openly aspiring to a much larger role in EU military security.

The entire project rests upon a single dominant assumption: Russia is preparing to threaten Europe, and Europe must therefore prepare for war with Russia. Every day, the Europeans are being told that Russia intends to attack Germany or conquer Europe. These claims are absurd.

Russia’s strategic concerns have long centered on the military configuration along its borders and the expansion of hostile infrastructure toward them. These concerns are being consistently ignored, and all it does is show an unwillingness to understand how Moscow calculates risk.

The dangerous habit of contemporary Western policy is to assign cause and effect selectively. NATO’s expansion and military buildup are described as defensive. Russia’s response is described as proof of inherent aggression. More NATO deployments become necessary because of that response. Another example of circular logic.

Portraying Russia as an inherently expansionist force with no intelligible security interests creates the intellectual conditions in which permanent confrontation becomes inevitable. And permanent confrontation is increasingly becoming the organizing principle of German policy.

China and Russia have become indispensable threats for those advocating a historic expansion of Japanese and German military power. Without the Chinese threat, Japan’s transformation would be much harder to justify. Without the Russian threat, Germany’s rearmament would lose its central political rationale.

An external threat is useful to unlock budgets, strengthen arms industries, create political urgency, and marginalize those who ask whether another course is possible. But history repeatedly demonstrates that exaggerated threats can produce genuine catastrophes.

The nuclear dimension makes the parallel German-Japanese rearmament even more disturbing.

Germany has long taken part in NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements, but discussion is now moving beyond passive acceptance of an existing framework. Berlin is increasingly involved in debates about a broader European nuclear architecture and closer strategic coordination with France. The question is no longer merely whether Germany lives under an allied nuclear umbrella, but how deeply it should take part in planning and arrangements surrounding nuclear deterrence.

Japan’s case is even more historically charged. The only country to have suffered nuclear attacks, Japan built an important part of its postwar identity around the Three Non-Nuclear Principles: not possessing, producing, or permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons. Now, questions regarding nuclear sharing, extended deterrence, and the practical limits of Japan’s non-nuclear commitments are being discussed more openly than before.

This should concern the entire world. Once countries with Germany’s and Japan’s histories begin moving closer to nuclear strategy, a critical psychological barrier is weakened. Nuclear weapons become increasingly normalized as instruments of security policy rather than recognized for what they are: weapons whose actual use would represent a failure of civilization on an unimaginable scale.

In March, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius proposed a Reciprocal Access Agreement with Japan during talks with his counterpart, Shinjiro Koizumi.

This agreement would reduce legal and bureaucratic obstacles to the movement of German and Japanese military personnel onto each other’s territory, facilitating joint training, exercises, and potentially operations.

The proposal would give the Berlin-Tokyo military relationship a more permanent operational structure. Germany has already increased its military activity in the Indo-Pacific through deployments and exercises; a reciprocal access framework would make cooperation easier and more routine.

The symbolism is difficult to miss: Countries whose military histories were forcibly ended in 1945 are now building new structures for military access, deployment, and cooperation with each other.

And growing pressure generates resistance. Military blocs generate opposing alignments. The world is once again being divided into increasingly rigid strategic camps – and the countries that spent decades demonstrating the value of military restraint are now helping accelerate this process.

The lesson the world should draw from 1945

Military strength itself is not the problem. States have legitimate security interests and legitimate reasons to maintain capable armed forces. The decisive question is what political leadership does with that power. A strong military under prudent leadership can deter conflict. A rapidly expanding military under leadership convinced that confrontation is inevitable can accelerate it.

The task of serious statecraft is not to declare one side’s fears legitimate and another’s imaginary. It is to prevent competing security concerns from becoming a machinery of permanent escalation.

Eighty-one years after victory in 1945, Japan and Germany should remember that lesson particularly well. Their postwar restraint was not weakness – it was an understanding born from catastrophe.

Today, Japan is rearming against a supposedly inevitable Chinese threat. Germany is rearming against a supposedly inevitable Russian threat. Both are moving closer to nuclear strategy. Both are expanding military partnerships. Both are being told that there is no alternative.

This is perhaps the most dangerous phrase in international politics. There is always an alternative before war begins.

Norway has seized a Russian research vessel in Svalbard at the request of Kiev, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to denounce the capture of civilian vessels as “state terrorism.”

The vessel, called the Professor Molchanov, was detained while docked in Barentsburg, a Russian-operated settlement on the Norwegian-administered Arctic archipelago. The ship has been barred from leaving after a local court granted a request by Ukraine’s state-owned energy company Naftogaz.

Moscow has since summoned Norway’s ambassador in protest and vowed to challenge the seizure.

Why was a Russian state vessel in Norway in the first place, why does Kiev want it, and what could happen to the ship now?

What exactly happened

The Professor Molchanov arrived in Barentsburg on Tuesday on a scheduled voyage from Murmansk carrying scientists, passengers and supplies for the Russian settlements on the Norwegian-administered Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.

On Wednesday, Norwegian police, accompanied by an interpreter, boarded the ship again and read a court order to its captain, barring the vessel from leaving. Nobody aboard was arrested.

The order was issued on August 31 by the Nord-Troms and Senja District Court after an application from Ukraine’s Naftogaz.

What happened to the passengers and crew

The exact number of people on board when the ship arrived in Barentsburg has not been officially confirmed. The Professor Molchanov can accommodate up to 80 people, including at least 20 crew members and as many as 60 scientists and other expedition personnel.

Norwegian media have reported that around 50 passengers and crew were affected by the seizure. 

Russian officials have said that 21 people remained on board. They have been supplied with everything they need and continue working, with no Norwegian police or officials stationed on the vessel.

Those who had already gone ashore were not detained and have been able to continue their planned work. They include participants in the Arctic Biennale art-and-science project. 

The seizure has, however, left some passengers without their planned transport back to Russia. Norwegian authorities have said they are working with Arktikugol to resolve the situation for those affected, but no alternative route has yet been announced.

The Professor Molchanov

The ship, named after renowned Soviet meteorologist Pavel Molchanov, is a Russian state-owned, ice-strengthened research vessel with more than four decades of experience operating in polar waters.

Built in Finland for the Soviet hydrometeorological service and launched in late 1982, the 71-meter-long ship was designed for Arctic oceanographic and weather research. It carries four laboratories on board and can accommodate dozens of researchers alongside its crew.

The ship continues to be actively used in Arctic research, including studies of weather, marine ecosystems, microbiology, biodiversity and environmental conditions in the Barents and Kara seas.

The voyage to Svalbard was part of a regular route between Murmansk and Barentsburg, a Russian mining settlement where the state-owned Arktikugol trust has operated for decades.

Since 2025, the Professor Molchanov has carried scientists, Arktikugol employees, contractors, family members and supplies to Barentsburg and another Russian settlement called Pyramida. Ten round trips were planned for 2026.

It is currently the only vessel providing a direct passenger connection between the Russian mainland and the archipelago after direct air links between Russia and Svalbard ended in 2020.

While Svalbard is under Norwegian sovereignty, it is governed by the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, which grants nationals of signatory countries rights to conduct commercial and scientific activities on the archipelago.

Why Ukraine wants the ship

The seizure of the vessel stems from a long-running dispute over Crimea. Ukraine’s Naftogaz has claimed that it lost energy assets after the peninsula’s reunification with Russia in 2014 and took the case to an arbitration tribunal in The Hague.

In 2023, the tribunal ordered Russia to pay around $4.22 billion, plus interest and legal costs, ruling that Naftogaz’s assets in Crimea could be treated as Ukrainian “investments” in Russian territory and were protected under a bilateral treaty.

Moscow has rejected the ruling, arguing that the tribunal had no jurisdiction over the dispute and that the treaty did not apply to assets that had already been located in Crimea before its reunification with Russia.

Nevertheless, Naftogaz has since tried to collect the award by targeting Russian state property abroad. It has pursued assets in several Western countries, including Finland, Britain and France, and says the arbitration award can also be enforced in Norway.

According to Reuters, lawyers acting for Naftogaz had been monitoring the Professor Molchanov for months before seeking its seizure.

Not automatically. The current order only prevents the Professor Molchanov from leaving Barentsburg while the case proceeds. The vessel remains Russian property and has not yet been transferred to Ukraine.

Naftogaz ultimately wants Russian assets seized abroad to be sold, with the proceeds used to cover part of the $4.22 billion award. According to Reuters, its lawyers sought not only the arrest of the Professor Molchanov, but also its eventual compulsory sale.

However, even if the ship were to be sold, it would cover only a tiny fraction of Kiev’s multibillion-dollar claim.

Russia has also said it will challenge whether the ship can be seized or sold at all. While Naftogaz has claimed that the vessel has a commercial function, Moscow has stressed that it is state-owned, operated by Roshydromet, and used for scientific research and supplying Russian settlements in the Arctic.

Moscow’s response

Moscow has protested the seizure and demanded that Norway release the vessel. On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Norwegian Ambassador Heidi Olufsen and delivered a “strong protest” over the detention of the ship.

The ministry stressed that the vessel was carrying out a scheduled trip between Murmansk and Barentsburg and was transporting scientists, Arktikugol employees, and supplies needed by Russian settlements on Svalbard.

It accused Oslo of using the restrictions against Russia to undermine Moscow’s longstanding presence on the archipelago, saying Russian organizations and citizens there had effectively been placed in a “state of blockade.”

The ministry also accused Norway of violating the 1920 Svalbard Treaty and said Russian authorities would work to have the seizure lifted.

President Vladimir Putin described the capture of civilian vessels, attacks on merchant ships and threats against civilian aircraft as manifestations of “state terrorism.” He added that Western countries which ignore such actions risk becoming “accomplices in international terrorism.”

Part of a broader campaign against Russian vessels

Western countries have increasingly moved beyond sanctions and begun physically detaining or seizing vessels they accuse of helping Russia bypass restrictions on its trade, claiming the ships are part of a so-called “shadow fleet.”

A number of ships linked to Russia have been held in European waters since 2025, including tankers and cargo vessels detained by Germany, Estonia, France, Belgium, Sweden, and Britain.

Moscow has repeatedly decried the seizures while dismissing the “shadow fleet” designation as legally meaningless.

Putin warned in August that attempts to seize Russian ships and sell their cargo amounted to “piracy and robbery” and said Moscow could respond in kind against vessels carrying cargo for countries involved in such actions.

An attempt to limit Russia in the Arctic?

Russian officials and experts have linked the seizure to a wider Western effort to weaken Moscow’s position in the Arctic. Murmansk Governor Andrey Chibis accused Norwegian officials of trying to “push us out of Svalbard,” stressing that Russia has longstanding economic and scientific interests on the archipelago and that such efforts would fail.

Military analyst Aleksandr Stepanov warned the seizure could set a precedent for disrupting Russian maritime access not only around Svalbard but across northern waters more broadly.

Russian experts have also described the arrest as a potential blow to Russia’s ability to conduct Arctic research, noting that the Professor Molchanov is used for climate, weather, and environmental studies with relevance beyond Russia itself.

“For the surgeons, it was a regular workday.” This is how, many years later, one of the doctors from Unit 731 recalled the autopsies performed on living humans in a Japanese military laboratory near Harbin during the Second World War.

This is neither a mistake nor an exaggeration: human vivisections, exposure to plague and cholera, and chemical weapons testing on prisoners were simply “routine work” for those who worked in the unit – along with protocols, reports, video recordings, and visits of high-ranking guests who were shown the experiments. 

On the anniversary of the official end of WWII, we recall how this horrific “routine” was sanctioned by top officials in the Japanese government, and examine how biological weapons were tested on prisoners and why the US refused to punish Japanese war criminals after the war ended. 

In 1926, a new emperor, Hirohito, ascended to the throne in Japan. The country, already rife with far-right sentiment, quickly gravitated toward extreme militarism. There were two reasons for this.

Japan dominated East Asia and was economically superior to its neighbors: China, which was torn apart by civil war, and Korea, a former Japanese colony. Against this backdrop, Japanese elites sought to significantly expand their sphere of influence in the region.

The first step in Japanese expansion was the Mukden Incident of 1931, a supposed Chinese bombing of a railway. This became the pretext for the Japanese army to occupy Manchuria, a historical region in northeastern China, and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo on its territory. Japan then hoped to subjugate the remaining territories of China.

The second reason for Japan’s extreme militarism during the interwar period was the idea of ​​Japanese racial superiority promoted by state propaganda. Unlike Nazi Germany, Japanese ideology was not formalized into an official doctrine, but was supported by a significant portion of Japanese society.

A characteristic incident that vividly illustrated the situation in Japan at the time occurred in 1932.

The moderate Japanese Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai had sought to limit the military’s influence on national politics but was assassinated by Imperial Navy officers and conspirators from the far-right League of Blood organization. Then-Emperor Hirohito received a petition with 350,000 signatures, some made with blood, as well as 11 severed fingers: members of the far-right offered their lives in exchange for the lives of the conspirators. As a result, the assassins received symbolic prison sentences, and power in the country was completely transferred to the military.

Japan was about to take the first step in the upcoming new world war.

In 1928, a brilliant graduate of Kyoto University, a young doctor and talented microbiologist, Shiro Ishii, traveled to Europe. He was described as a harsh and withdrawn man. In interwar Europe, he formally studied chemical warfare agents and bacteriology.

Ishii drew an important conclusion: Europe, devastated during the First World War by chemical weapons and the Spanish flu epidemic, was terribly afraid of new diseases and infections. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 banned the use of chemical and biological weapons in war. From this, Ishii deduced that biological weapons could become the tool that would break the will of Western governments.

Returning home in 1930, and armed with this knowledge, Ishii found powerful patrons: the ultra-nationalist Minister of War Sadao Araki and the country’s chief military physician Koizumi Chikahiko. The latter, who had been interested in chemical weapons since WWI, was impressed by the use of chlorine near Ypres in 1915 and hoped to fully develop this idea with Ishii’s help.

Together, in 1933, they obtained imperial approval to begin a secret project. They not only planned to develop biological weapons, but also initially planned to test them on living people.

From a secret laboratory to a death factory

Unit 731 was located in Manchuria, and not without reason. Having occupied this region, Japanese troops gained virtually unlimited access to the Chinese people, whom they viewed as a free resource for their inhumane experiments.

Another category of the unit’s victims were Soviet citizens, primarily ethnic Russians. Beginning in 1930, Japanese saboteurs began capturing Soviet citizens in border areas to obtain intelligence on the situation in the USSR.

China and the USSR were considered Japan’s primary adversaries in the upcoming WWII so Japanese doctors studied the use of biological weapons on representatives of these nations. It is estimated that the Chinese constituted approximately 70% of Unit 731’s victims, while Soviet citizens and a few Koreans, Manchus, and Mongols accounted for about 30%.

The project initially began as a small, secret laboratory in the Zhongma prison camp. But after several prisoners escaped, it became clear that the project needed better security. 

Under the cover name of ‘General Directorate of Water Supply and Prevention of the Kwantung Army’ a real fortress was built in Pingfang, on the southern outskirts of Harbin. To make space for it, about 300 peasant houses were demolished, and in their place were erected barracks, laboratories, and a private airfield. The unit’s total staff numbered about 3,000 people. 

With the outbreak of WWII, similar units were established in Japanese-occupied territories, including Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, and elsewhere. These units were part of the so-called Ishii Network, which numbered about 10,000 people.

The unit was divided into several specialized departments: one researched various viruses and infections, such as plague, typhus, anthrax, and cholera; another designed bombs for delivering biological weapons; and a third was engaged in the mass production of the pathogens themselves. Another department was responsible for “annihilating and writing off logs” – the term used to refer to prisoners subjected to inhumane experiments.

Initially, Unit 731 carried out experiments on POWs, anti-Japanese partisans, and common criminals. Initially, they were well-fed, given meat, fish, and sometimes even alcohol, all to ensure they were in good physical condition before the sadistic doctors began their experiments.

What happened inside

❗The editors warn that the description of the horrific experiments that took place in Unit 731 may shock readers.

Prisoners were infected with plague, anthrax, cholera, typhus, gonorrhea, and syphilis. They were also subjected to experiments to test their resistance to dehydration and frostbite. Essentially, the prisoners were subjected to conditions in which the Japanese army would operate in Southeast Asia and the Soviet Far East. These experiments simulated combat conditions more realistically than one could imagine. 

For example, weapons such as grenades and bombs were tested on prisoners. To determine the optimal treatment for shrapnel wounds, prisoners were tied to posts and bombs and grenades were detonated at varying distances from them. Autopsies were performed on the dead, and those who survived were treated, but only to be killed in the next experiment. Flamethrowers were also tested on prisoners.

A separate horror was human vivisection – experimental surgeries and dissections of living people. These were done to study the body’s response in various conditions. A Japanese medical worker who witnessed this horror and had personally cut open a living person said that “for the surgeons, it was a regular workday.”  Equally disgusting is the description of how, whenever the surgeons needed individual organs, such as the brain, they ordered the guards to find a suitable prisoner. The guards would smash the prisoner’s head with an axe, give the brain to the doctors, and send the body to the crematorium.

Prisoners were also subjected to prolonged starvation, placed in pressure chambers, crushed with heavy objects, electrocuted, buried and burned alive. The effects of phosphorus, phosgene, mustard gas, and other chemical warfare agents were also tested on the prisoners.

All these inhumane experiments were videotaped, meaning they weren’t isolated incidents perpetrated by specific sadists, but rather a routine and established procedure. Notably, some doctors later described with horror what they witnessed in Unit 731, while others, far from repenting, described the experiments performed on living people in scientific articles.

It’s also horrifying that the disembowelment of living people and other inhumane experiments were conducted for high-ranking guests visiting Unit 731 as a form of sadistic and inhumane entertainment.

Weapons in action

The developments of the sadistic doctors from Unit 731 weren’t limited to laboratory use; they were actively used by the Japanese military in China. The Soviet Union first encountered Japanese biological weapons during the battle with the Japanese at Khalkhin Gol in 1939. At that time, Japanese troops secretly smuggled typhus vials on a passenger train and dumped them into border rivers, thus causing an outbreak of the disease on Soviet territory.

The Japanese military then carried out at least 12 attacks against Chinese cities. Specifically, they dropped plague-infected fleas from low-flying aircraft over the cities of Ningbo and Changde, causing an outbreak that claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives. During the war in China, the Japanese military also massively contaminated agricultural facilities, reservoirs, and wells. They also dropped contaminated food and clothing on territories unoccupied by the Japanese military under the guise of humanitarian aid; contact with these contaminated items led to infection and death. According to various estimates, at least 200,000 Chinese people died from plague, cholera, and anthrax spread by the Japanese military.

The plan was to launch aircraft from submarine aircraft carriers; the aircraft, manned by kamikaze pilots, would carry biological weapons developed by Unit 731, including plague, cholera, and typhus. The submarine crews were then expected to intentionally infect themselves and land on US shores.

However, this operation was initially suspended by the Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Yoshijiro Umezu, and was subsequently cancelled after Japan’s surrender.

Attempts to conceal crimes

The Japanese military also planned to use biological weapons against the Soviet Union, but the rapid defeat of the Kwantung Army by Soviet troops thwarted these plans.

Realizing that they were on the brink of total defeat and seeking to cover up their crimes, the Japanese military destroyed the buildings of Unit 731 and its branches, laboratories, accumulated stockpiles of biological weapons, documents, and experiment results. About 300 remaining prisoners and 600 Chinese and Manchurian workers were exterminated.

This was standard Japanese military practice at the time. For example, on August 9, 1945, the day the USSR and Japan entered into war, Japanese gendarmes arrested and executed 19 Soviet citizens in the city of Hailar. Unlike the prisoners of Unit 731, those were ordinary people who were executed as potentially disloyal individuals.

So, when the Red Army units arrived at the site of Unit 731 a few days later, they found only an empty death camp. By that time, at least 3,600 people had died in horrific experiments, and hundreds of thousands others were killed by biological weapons developed by the Unit.

More precisely, it was primarily the USSR that wanted to punish the war criminals. After all, their experiments were also carried out on Soviet citizens. The Americans, however, assessed the situation differently.

The US needed to rebuild post-war Japan, which had fallen within its sphere of influence, so Emperor Hirohito, who had sanctioned the creation of Unit 731, was spared from a war crimes tribunal. The fates of the others who stood behind the creation of Unit 731 varied: Chikahiko, one of Ishii’s patrons, committed suicide in accordance with samurai tradition; another of his patrons, Sadao, spent several years in prison and was released in 1956.

Ishii’s fate is far more interesting. Shortly before the Soviet Army occupied Manchuria, Ishii evacuated with most of his staff and archives, first to Korea and then to Japan. It was there that the Americans found him after the end of WWII.

Initially, Ishii denied carrying out experiments on humans and the use of biological weapons, but the American military made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: complete immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing all data on biological weapons research based on human experiments.

As a result, Ishii and his associates prepared what the Americans themselves called an “absolutely invaluable” report on their work in human experimentation and the use of biological weapons. Ishii and other Japanese scientists then lived and worked peacefully under American supervision.

While the US concealed information about the activities of Unit 731 as much as possible, the Soviet Union held a public trial in Khabarovsk in 1949. Twelve high-ranking commanders and scientists from Unit 731 and its associated units were found guilty of war crimes and developing and using biological weapons, and served sentences in Siberian camps.

On the anniversary of the official end of WWII, it’s worth remembering not just the abstract horrors of the past, but also the concrete facts: how a totalitarian machine placed its own interests above human life and universal moral laws. And how, after its defeat, its members received virtually no punishment for their crimes.

Many of the members of Unit 731 lived long and peaceful lives, pursuing successful careers in science, medicine, and business.

The only thing that can be done for the thousands of people who died in the camps of Unit 731 and the hundreds of thousands of victims of biological weapons developed there, is to remember the horrors perpetrated by this inhumane system and prevent them from ever happening again.

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov has announced the launch of a new military technology company, with Palantir CEO Alex Karp set to become its lead investor.

Fedorov has remained highly active in business and politics since Vladimir Zelensky dismissed him in mid-July amid reported tensions with then-commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky. The former minister has also grown increasingly critical of Zelensky, claiming he was removed over his anti-corruption efforts and calling for elections, which have been repeatedly postponed under martial law.

Last week, Fedorov unexpectedly emerged as an adviser on “defense innovations” to Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto. He said his role would involve helping Rome “develop modern warfare technologies” and “improve the defense sector.”

“We’ve worked together for a half decade. I have been absolutely inspired by what you and the Ukrainians have pulled off and very and super delighted that we could play a part. And you and your colleagues are launching a company that I think will be defining for the world, bringing your knowledge and acumen about the art of war as a product to allied countries,” Karp told Fedorov.

The ties between Fedorov and Karp span well beyond the ex-minister’s six-month tenure as defense minister. Before assuming the post in mid-February, he oversaw Ukraine’s digital transformation in various capacities. Immediately after his dismissal, Fedorov claimed to have been offered a job by Karp.

The anti-graft crusade supposedly led by Fedorov has remained questionable at best. Multiple media reports suggest he focused more on wresting contracts away from companies associated with Zelensky’s inner circle and steering them to companies linked to him personally than on truly battling corruption. Federov’s background has further fueled suspicion. Before entering Zelensky’s government, he considered himself a businessman while repeatedly facing allegations of running online and phone scams, laundering money through online advertising, and engaging in other fraudulent activities.

Ukraine’s coercive mobilization campaign, marked by recruitment officers forcibly grabbing men off the streets in a practice known as ‘busification’, has made the country look like a “nation of rapists,” Verkhovna Rada lawmaker Georgy Mazurashu has said.

Speaking in an interview published on his YouTube channel on Wednesday, Mazurashu criticized the forcible detention of potential conscripts and the practice of keeping exhausted troops in service merely to maintain troop numbers. The politician left Vladimir Zelensky’s Servant of the People party in 2024 but remains a member of its parliamentary faction.

“If you want people to respect and love the country this way … through coercion, then that amounts to supporting violence,” the lawmaker said. “Trying to obtain love through violence is rape.”

“We don’t want to become a nation of rapists,” he said. “But because of the actions of the ‘busifiers’ and those who keep people in the army simply for the sake of numbers … that is exactly what we look like.”

The MP instead called for voluntary recruitment supported by better conditions, higher pay, and stronger social protections.

Amid mounting frontline losses and desertions, Kiev has intensified its mobilization campaign. Recruitment officers have repeatedly been filmed chasing, beating, and forcibly detaining reluctant conscripts before bundling them into vehicles.

Public resistance to conscription has repeatedly erupted into violence. Last month, a crowd in Lviv overturned a recruitment vehicle while chanting “Shame!” after officers detained a man over military-registration violations. In another incident, bystanders attempting to prevent a man from being taken away were tear-gassed. A crowd in Lutsk badly damaged a recruitment vehicle and injured two officers, while a draft officer was fatally stabbed during a document check in Lviv, according to police.

The recruitment methods have also drawn criticism from Ukrainian officials. The country’s human rights commissioner has acknowledged mounting complaints over enlistment practices. His office received 6,127 complaints concerning recruitment officials in 2025, up from just 18 in 2022, and has stressed that enlistment personnel are not authorized to detain or forcibly hold civilians.

The central bank of the Netherlands has become the latest country to move gold holdings out of the United States, announcing on Wednesday that it had transferred 86 tons of bullion to London. The bank described the move as “crisis preparedness” during a time of “increasing geopolitical unrest.”

The transfer was carried out between March and August. The bulk of the gold was moved from New York, with the rest coming from Canada. Only about 27 tons were physically transported across the Atlantic, while the remainder was accomplished through sales in the Americas and repurchases in London. Prior to the transfer, the Dutch central bank (DNB) had held 313 tons in North America.

“With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves,” according to a written statement by DNB Governor Olaf Sleijpen. “We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness.”

The DNB’s move comes after France’s central bank sold its remaining 129 tons of gold held at Federal Reserve vaults in New York between July 2025 and January 2026, leaving it with no bullion in the United States. The proceeds from the sale were used to purchase an equivalent amount of gold in Europe.

Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez repatriated about 160 tons of its gold reserves from foreign banks, a move that was completed by January 2012. However, some 31 metric tons of Venezuelan gold are still held by the Bank of England. Efforts undertaken by then-President Nicolas Maduro to bring the bullion home were stymied by Great Britain, which did not recognize Maduro as the legitimate head of Venezuela’s government.

The DNB praised Bank of England-held gold as being “the world’s most easily tradable gold.” The Dutch central bank reported owning 612.4 metric tons as of the end of 2025, worth about €72 billion (about $84 billion).

Germany appears to be seeking a pretext for further confrontation with Russia by accusing Moscow without evidence over a recent drone incident, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl has told RT.

On Tuesday, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the German authorities had concluded that Russia was behind the August 4 incident in which an explosive-laden drone was found between Ukrainian Antonov cargo planes at Leipzig/Halle Airport.

Berlin subsequently announced the imminent closure of the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the Russian House in Berlin, as well as tighter border controls for Russian citizens.

Moscow has rejected the allegations, with President Vladimir Putin suggesting they were being used as a smokescreen to distract Germans from domestic political and economic problems.

Speaking to RT on Wednesday, Kneissl said Berlin had followed a familiar Western pattern of blaming Russia before presenting any hard evidence. The latest allegations are “not based on facts,” but merely assumptions, she said.

Kneissl suggested that the speed with which Berlin blamed Moscow could signal that the German leadership is “ready to confront Russia.” 

She also described the decision to shut down the Russian House in Berlin as a “very deplorable measure,” noting that cultural institutions were rarely targeted even at the height of the Cold War.

Speaking on Tuesday, Putin accused the German authorities of having “planted the evidence” to frame Russia. He also called Berlin’s confrontational stance a “gross mistake” that runs counter to the interests of the German people.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the German authorities had long sought to target both the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the Russian House in Berlin, and had concocted an “absolutely trumped-up and far-fetched” pretext to further damage bilateral relations.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Russia would respond to Germany’s moves by shutting down the Goethe Institute centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Ekaterinburg, which promote German language and culture.

Western media are using unverified claims that Beijing censored footage of the deadly Nepal-Tibet floods to promote “false narratives” about China, Hong Kong-based author Nury Vittachi has told RT.

Speaking on Thursday, Vittachi said Western outlets frequently cite Tibetan advocacy groups without adequately disclosing their funding and location, while shaping reporting that portrays Beijing in an overwhelmingly negative light.

“The Western media pick up these groups and they deliberately hide the funding,” he said, arguing that readers consequently get a “very distorted view.”

Vittachi singled out organizations supported by the US-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED), accusing them of “weaponizing human rights against China.” He argued that negative coverage of China ultimately serves a broader effort to “manufacture consent for a war on China.”

The comments come as Western outlets including the BBC and Telegraph have accused Beijing of suppressing footage of the catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-China border. The BBC claimed images of the disaster had spread around the world while being heavily restricted inside China.

Reporting live for RT from Gyirong, CGTN correspondent Cen Ziyuan showed the scale of the destruction and the difficulties facing rescue crews trying to reach the worst-hit areas. Heavy mud and huge rocks have blocked access roads, forcing crews to deploy excavators and other heavy machinery, she said.

Cen said rescuers had in some cases spent more than ten hours climbing through mountainous terrain to reach the border area, while helicopters had been used for airdrops. Her report from the disaster zone also showed heavy machinery working near the destroyed Gyirong Port and flood-damaged roads.

The on-the-ground coverage comes as search and rescue operations continue following the catastrophic landslide and flooding, with thousands reported dead or missing across the affected region.

The deadly strike on a wedding in southern Iran earlier this week was likely a direct hit by a US munition, Reuters reports, citing its own analysis.

The strike on Kuhestak, Hormozgan Province on Tuesday left five people dead and nearly 70 wounded. The Iranian authorities said the victims were three women and two children aged 4 and 16.

Four weapons experts who reviewed images and videos verified by Reuters said the damage was inconsistent with debris or a ricochet from another target. Three concluded that the munition was likely American rather than an errant Iranian air-defense missile, while one suggested that it may have missed its intended target.

Two US officials confirmed to the outlet that US forces specifically targeted a telecommunications tower around 135 meters from the wedding site. Weapons experts previously cited by AP and the New York Times identified recovered fragments as belonging to a US air-delivered guided munition, most likely a JSOW.

US Vice President J.D. Vance said on Thursday that Washington is investigating the incident. “We’re investigating it because obviously we care. We want to know,” he told reporters. The US military said it does not target civilians and has not accepted responsibility for the strike.

Australian tunnel safety and disaster expert Arnold Dix has urged rescuers in Nepal not to give up hope of finding survivors inside the tunnels in the Upper Trishuli-3A hydropower project, where scores of workers are feared trapped underground days after a flash flood.

“The operation at Trishuli 3A is proceeding as a rescue, not a recovery,” Dix, who is remotely assisting the operation, wrote on LinkedIn. Footage recorded around the time of the August 26 flood shows around 30 people moving toward and seeking shelter in the power station tunnels, he said. 

Dix said tunnels can remain comparatively stable after devastation above ground and may preserve breathable air and survivable spaces. “Silence is not evidence of death. It is only the absence of a signal,” he wrote, citing past rescues in Chile,

Thailand, and India where people survived underground for days without contact. Rescue teams are still trying to reach workers at more than a dozen hydropower sites along the Bhote Koshi-Trishuli corridor. At Trishuli-3A, a 93-member team is working with Chinese tunnel specialists, while teams from India and South Korea are assisting operations at other sites. 
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लाङ्गटाङ्ग जलविद्युत सुरुङबाट शव उद्धार || Dead Bodies Recovered from #LangtangTunnel#NepaliArmy #BhotekoshiFlood pic.twitter.com/Oc9UYTpD6v

— Nepali Army (@NepaliArmyHQ) September 3, 2026

Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) said on Thursday that 1,252 people have died and 4,216 remain missing. Around 900 people working at hydropower projects are among those still unreachable, while 11,993 people have been rescued. 

The gang-warfare-style clash between Ukrainian security agencies that left three troops shot in Kiev and shocked the country is being spun into competing narratives by the rival parties involved.

Depending on which one of Vladimir Zelensky’s security agencies is speaking, the central figure in the conflict is either a hired gun working for Moscow, or a brave Ukrainian combat officer who was illegally detained for over a week by rogue Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) agents.

What triggered the scandal?

The gunfight on Wednesday morning followed the disappearance on August 23 of Stepan Kaplunov, a reported white supremacist and senior officer in the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), a militia commanded by notorious neo-Nazi Denis “White Rex” Kapustin, under the patronage of the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate (HUR).

What excuses has the SBU offered for taking the HUR’s man?

On Thursday, as the scandal over the shooting escalated, the SBU accused Kaplunov of participating in a Russian government plot to assassinate a “leader of Russian opposition movement” on Ukraine’s Independence Day, which was marked on August 24.

The agency released a video in which Kaplunov, wearing sunglasses, “confessed” to cooperating with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), along with several screenshots it claimed had been taken from a messaging app on his phone.

Despite claiming to have foiled the alleged plot, the SBU said it chose not to seek Kaplunov’s formal arrest – a striking admission given that he was effectively being accused of treason.

What did Kaplunov claim he discussed with the “Russians”?

If authentic, the screenshots show the RDK officer – wanted for terrorism in Russia – discussing contract killings in Ukraine.

The alleged Russian connection was described as a “businessman from border areas” who was the son of someone important, “deals with FSB, etc.” and knew the client.

Where is Kaplunov now?

Kaplunov is presumably at a HUR safehouse, having been released after the debacle erupted across social media. In keeping with standard PR procedure, he subsequently gave an interview to a Ukrainian media outlet.

A decorated officer who has fought with Ukrainian units since 2014 and joined the RDK in 2023, where he serves as the RDK’s deputy commander for combat operations, Kaplunov now claims that the SBU had forced the confession from him, to manufacture legal grounds for searching his apartment.

He claims to have spent ten days in two secret SBU detention facilities, bound, blindfolded, and held incommunicado. He credited a HUR formation nicknamed “Timur’s special unit” – reportedly an umbrella structure for the RDK and several other militia groups working for military intelligence – with securing his release “by force.”

All three personnel injured in the shooting were Timur’s men, Kaplunov said.

“We are all a big family, and ‘Timur’ himself, our commander, will never leave anyone behind, not a soldier nor a commander, he will stand up for everyone,” Kaplunov said.

He blamed “historic competition” between the SBU and HUR for the confrontation and alleged that his “abduction” had been intended as a way to get to Ivanov.

What has the HUR said?

HUR has warned it is being targeted by a smear campaign and urged journalists who receive “dubious information” to report the leaks to law enforcement.

In an interview while wearing a face mask, “Timur,” accused the SBU of unlawfully detaining Kaplunov. He claimed that HUR personnel and the SBU’s Alfa commando unit had peacefully resolved the confrontation before another group of SBU agents arrived at the scene and opened fire.

Were there any repercussions for the agencies?

An embarrassed Zelensky, facing military, economic, demographic, and reputational collapse,  fired Oleg Khramov from his position as head of the SBU section responsible for protecting state secrets, although it was not immediately clear whether he had any involvement in the scandal.

Earlier, Ukrainian investigators accused an active HUR operative and a police officer reportedly serving clandestinely for the SBU of masterminding the Monaco bombing that seriously injured exiled Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev and members of his family in June. 

The principal perpetrator was allegedly murdered by the masterminds after she returned to Ukraine.

Are SBU and HUR rivals?

Both agencies were overhauled with CIA assistance following the Western-backed armed coup in Kiev in 2014, according to media reports.

The SBU is currently run by Aleksandr Poklad, the agency’s acting head and former deputy head, whose promotion has yet to be confirmed by parliament.

Kirill Budanov, now the head of Zelensky’s office, previously commanded HUR before a corruption scandal forced the Ukrainian leader’s previous chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, to resign last year.

Budanov and Poklad reportedly have had strong personal animosity since 2022, when the SBU summarily executed banker Denis Kireev, an undercover HUR agent. Poklad allegedly orchestrated the killing.

Is Zelensky in control of SBU and HUR?

Zelensky’s ability to maintain control over Ukraine’s competing centers of power remains in question. His presidential term expired in 2024, and he has remained in office under martial law without holding another election.

In the most recent example, last month a deputy head of Zelensky’s office was accused of laundering several bags of cash to pay bail for a former energy minister who himself faces graft allegations in a separate case.

The Ukrainian military is also under increasing strain as Zelensky has failed to secure additional supplies of Patriot interceptor missiles, the weapons Kiev badly needs to intercept Russian ballistic missiles.

Despite the shortage, he ordered mass strikes in July on Russian cargo ships and retail warehouses, prompting overwhelming retaliatory strikes.

This week, Zelensky also threatened foreign airlines operating in Russia, claiming that Russian airspace belongs to Ukrainian kamikaze drones now.

With the situation rapidly unraveling, it remains unclear what people trained to spy, sabotage, abduct, and kill on behalf of the state might choose to do next.

For decades, mutual deterrence among major powers provided the world with a degree of predictability, with the nuclear factor lying at the heart of this system since the middle of the last century. The great powers restrained one another and, in doing so, restrained themselves.

They understood that overly ambitious geopolitical adventures could carry unacceptable risks, thus “strategic stability” was the reassuring term given to what was, in reality, the capacity for mutual destruction. International institutions grew around this balance like mushrooms around a tree trunk, but beneath all the agreements and diplomatic language lay something much simpler: the fear of the consequences of a direct conflict between major powers. Now, however, that system is falling apart.

Many posit that the problem is precisely the loss of fear as political elites have ceased to believe that nuclear war is genuinely possible and hence the declining restraint we see in the conflict in Ukraine, in the Middle East and, potentially, in Asia.

The apparent solution is therefore to remind everyone just how terrifying nuclear war would be. Restore the fear, the argument goes, and states will once again exercise restraint and become ready to negotiate new rules. There’s logic to this, but there’s also an enormous danger.

In that case, nuclear weapons could cease to be primarily a political and psychological barrier and become simply another means of warfare, albeit an extraordinarily powerful one. Would this restore fear? Or would states instead accelerate the development of nuclear weapons designed for more effective battlefield use? Well, in the present atmosphere of growing recklessness, either is conceivable.

Nuclear weapons are the most powerful weapons humanity has invented and they were created to fight wars, but we discovered that they could perform another function by preventing the largest and most destructive wars from occurring at all. Today, however, perceptions seem to be returning to their starting point that a weapon is a weapon, even when it is nuclear.

Yet expecting weapons to solve the problems between states places impossible demands on them, particularly when warfare itself is becoming increasingly asymmetrical and all-pervasive.

States are finding it harder to hold on to what they can’t afford to lose. The erosion of borders, once celebrated as one of the great achievements of liberal globalization, is acquiring a much more alarming character.

States won’t simply accept this loss of control, so every action produces a reaction, which means the struggle will become fiercer. More importantly, the battlefield will increasingly encompass almost every sphere of human activity.

Under such conditions, what does “strategic stability” even mean, and how can it be maintained?

War itself increasingly resembles not a means of resolving conflicts but a permanent form of interaction, even coexistence and there may be no decisive victory or defeat, but only repeated attempts to exhaust an opponent economically, militarily, politically, and psychologically.

However, prolonged attrition produces two contradictory effects. States become more experienced and capable of enduring confrontation, but at the same time, fatigue accumulates, along with the temptation to end an apparently endless struggle by reaching for the most decisive and destructive argument available.

The world is losing the systemic safeguards that once limited such impulses and it increasingly resembles a hunting ground during open season.

So what, then, can we hold on to? For now, perhaps only common sense and an accurate assessment of the relationship between our ambitions and our actual capabilities. It’s a fragile lifeline, but it may be enough to prevent us from feeding the flames and instead keep us clear of them.

At least until the value of restraint, including self-restraint, is once again understood by everyone.

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

South Africa’s police service has fired Crime Intelligence deputy head Major-General Feroz Khan after he failed to appear for an expedited disciplinary process.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, SAPS (South African Police Service) said Khan was deemed dismissed in terms of the SAPS Discipline Regulations after failing to attend proceedings before the senior officer responsible for the disciplinary matter.

“The South African Police Service confirms the dismissal of Major General Feroz Khan from the Service,” the police said. SAPS reiterated its commitment to accountability and professional conduct, stressing that all members, regardless of rank, are subject to the same disciplinary framework.

“SAPS reiterates its commitment to accountability, discipline and professional conduct within the organisation. No member, regardless of rank or position, is above the law or the applicable disciplinary framework,” the statement read.

The police added that, because the matter has been the subject of legal proceedings, it would continue to respect court processes and would only provide further information where legally permissible.

Judge Connie Prinsloo found that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the matter and that Khan had failed to establish urgency. The ruling effectively cleared the way for SAPS to continue with the internal disciplinary proceedings.

Khan’s legal team had argued that the disciplinary hearing proceeded in his absence while he was receiving medical treatment following a shooting in Johannesburg in June. However, the court did not consider the merits of his case, focusing instead on jurisdiction and urgency.

Khan, who served as deputy national head of SAPS Crime Intelligence, has become one of the most prominent figures in South Africa’s ongoing policing crisis.

Khan remains under subpoena by the commission, although his appearance has been delayed because of medical concerns. Separately, Khan is facing criminal charges alongside Gauteng Hawks head Major-General Ebrahim Kadwa and businessman Tariq Downes.

The trio are accused of defeating the ends of justice and contravening the Precious Metals Act over allegations that they facilitated the release of a businessman found in possession of an unwrought gold bar in 2021. All three have denied wrongdoing and are out on bail pending the continuation of their criminal case.

First published by IOL

The EU and NATO are pursuing an increasingly aggressive campaign to attempt to divide Eurasia, contain Russia and China, and preserve Western global dominance, while hurting themselves in the process, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Thursday, Lavrov also said Moscow would not “beg” European nations to lift sanctions and accused the West of seeking to freeze rather than resolve the Ukraine conflict.

Addressing a lecture organized by the Russian Znanie Society, Lavrov presented the confrontation with the West as part of a broader struggle over the emerging multipolar world order. He argued that Western powers are trying to counter the rise of new economic and political centers while Russia is seeking closer cooperation across Eurasia based on “equality, mutual benefit, and honest dialogue.”

Here are the key takeaways from Lavrov’s address.

West ‘needs an enemy’

The EU and NATO are pursuing anti-Russia policies “even more fiercely, if not frantically” in an attempt to split the Eurasian continent, Lavrov said. He pointed to “walls and trenches” being built along EU borders with Russia, mocking claims that such measures are needed to prevent an alleged Russian invasion.

“This is sick imagination, but I think it is not so much sick imagination as deliberate policy,” he said.

According to Lavrov, both NATO and the EU need Russia to remain an enemy in order to justify their policies at home. “If this artificially created image of an enemy in the form of Russia disappears, the overwhelming majority of governments in the EU and NATO countries will simply be swept away by voters,” he stated.

He went on to accuse Europe of being unable to cooperate “honestly,” arguing that for more than 500 years it had been “the main source” of global upheaval, including two world wars. Europe, he said, is attempting to preserve what it sees as its right to global hegemony.

‘Neo-Nazi spirit’ in Europe

The foreign minister said that a “neo-Nazi spirit” remains “very, very resilient” in parts of Europe and singled out Germany, where he said the “metastases of Nazism” were re-emerging.

Lavrov pointed to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s pledge to make Germany Europe’s leading military power “again,” saying the choice of word had left him “stunned.”

“If this person does not understand what the word ‘again’ means in this context, then this is extremely dangerous for Europe,” Lavrov said, accusing the region of once again becoming a source of ideas of “national and racial superiority.”

‘Dictate’ rather than ‘negotiate’

Lavrov linked Western policy in Europe to persistent “neo-colonial habits” elsewhere in the world. Western diplomacy, he argued, is increasingly based not on reaching agreements but on coercion.

“The West does not want to negotiate, it wants to dictate,” he said, adding that diplomacy has effectively been “replaced by sanctions.”

He accused Western states of seeking to undermine the consensus-based architecture built around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which he praised for emphasizing consensus, mutual respect, and mutual benefit. According to the minister, Washington and its allies are instead creating smaller groupings designed to erode ASEAN’s central role.

Multipolar alternative

Russia’s answer, Lavrov said, is to strengthen open regional platforms rather than build closed military groupings. He cited the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, ASEAN, BRICS, and other structures whose cooperation Moscow wants to deepen.

He highlighted the “ASEAN plus partners” model, saying its participants have equal rights and decisions are based on inclusive principles rather than diktat.

Lavrov linked these efforts to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal for a “Greater Eurasian Partnership” open to all states on the continent and based on shared economic and development interests. He described the broader shift toward a multipolar world as an objective historical process that the West cannot stop.

EU ‘shot itself in the foot’

Lavrov also argued that the EU has inflicted severe economic damage on itself by abandoning Russian energy and accepting the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, describing the EU’s response to the sabotage as “self-humiliation.”

The EU is thus voluntarily squandering its economic advantages while transforming itself from an economic association into an “openly aggressive anti-Russian military bloc” supporting NATO.

Russia will not ‘beg’ Europe

Moscow, however, will not “beg” European nations to lift sanctions or restore economic ties, Lavrov said.

He argued that European leaders had assumed Russia valued its economic relationship with the EU so highly that it would eventually come “running and begging” for sanctions to be removed.

“That will not happen,” Lavrov said. “It is absolutely not in the genetic code of our people. We have, if you like, our own pride.” Russia has enough countries willing to cooperate “honestly,” he added, and does not need to seek reconciliation with Europe on its terms.

‘Fuhrer Ursula’

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – “we call her Fuhrer Ursula,” Lavrov said – is stripping national governments of their powers and concentrating them in Brussels.

He stated that von der Leyen was trying to pull into the European Commission powers that EU members had never transferred to Brussels and which “remain with national governments.”

“Nobody asked her what those European values were,” he said, pointing to restrictions on the Russian language and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. “If the legislative ban on the Russian language in education, culture, everyday life, and the media reflects European values, then welcome back to Nazism for Europe,” Lavrov said.

West wants to ‘freeze’ Ukraine conflict

Turning directly to Ukraine, Lavrov said Western governments had abandoned – or at least played down – their previous rhetoric about inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia and were instead seeking an immediate halt to fighting along the current front line.

“They do not want to settle this conflict, but to freeze it, preserving this threat on our borders,” Lavrov added. Accepting such an outcome would also amount to abandoning Russia’s stated goal of “denazification,” he argued, saying Moscow would not agree to preserve an anti-Russian government in Kiev.

“We would betray our ancestors who defeated Nazism in 1945,” he said. “I do not think our people are ready for that.”

US ride-hailing company Uber has shut down operations in Nigeria and Uganda, ending a 12-year presence in Africa’s most populous nation and a decade of service in the East African country.

The withdrawals took effect on Wednesday following what Uber described as a “thorough review” of its business. The company did not disclose how many employees or drivers were affected, but said assistance would be available during the transition.

Uber said the closures were limited to the two markets and that it remains committed to Africa. The move coincided with a global Uber restructuring involving around 3,300 job cuts, equivalent to roughly 10% of its workforce. In a message published by the company on Wednesday, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the restructuring would reduce costs and free resources for investment in growth and innovation as Uber seeks to “build the autonomous future.”

The company launched in Lagos in 2014 and Kampala in 2016. Its African operations have faced persistent disputes over driver earnings, commission rates, and regulation.

The Nigerian exit also followed a dispute over access to airports operated by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria. Uber denied that the issue prompted its departure, saying the decision reflected changing business priorities and investment plans. The shutdown leaves Bolt, inDrive, and the government-backed LagRide among Nigeria’s main alternatives.

In Uganda, Uber faced competition from platforms including SafeBoda and Faras, while drivers complained about low fares and high commissions. Local reports also cited rising operating costs and difficulties retaining drivers.

The latest exits limit Uber’s direct African presence to South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, and Morocco. Its technology is also used in Mauritius by Taxi by ala-lila, a locally managed service powered by Uber.

Russia remained India’s largest supplier of crude oil in August, selling around 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd), or 45% of the country’s total imports, data from maritime intelligence firm Kpler shows.

Russian shipments were down from a record 2.8 million bpd in July, when they accounted for more than half of India’s crude purchases. However, India’s overall imports also declined to around 4.6 million bpd in August, nearly 8% below the more than 5 million bpd bought the previous month.

Indian refiners ramped up purchases in May, June, and July to guard against potential supply shortages amid the conflict in the Middle East. The August decline reflected some normalization after months of heavy buying, scheduled maintenance at Indian refineries, and lower availability of Russian crude, according to Kpler.

“August was less a story of India voluntarily stepping away from Russian oil than of Russia having fewer barrels to offer,” Abu Dhabi-based commodity analyst Natalia Katona told the Financial Express. Lower Russian seaborne exports and stronger competition from Chinese refiners for available cargoes also weighed on supplies to India, she said. 

The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela were among India’s other leading oil suppliers during the month. Venezuelan shipments rose sharply, reaching their highest level since 2020, according to Kpler data. 

The purchases have continued despite the prospect of new US tariffs targeting major buyers of Russian oil. The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which cleared the US Senate last month, would allow tariffs of up to 100% on imports from the five biggest buyers of Russian oil. The bill has US President Donald Trump’s backing but still has to pass the House. 

India maintains that its oil purchases are guided by affordability, availability, and national energy security rather than geopolitical considerations.

Mozambique and Zimbabwe have launched an expansion of the Beira-Harare fuel corridor that will increase pipeline capacity by 67% and boost fuel supplies to landlocked southern African markets, the pipeline operator CPMZ said on Wednesday. 

Presidents Daniel Chapo of Mozambique and Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe broke ground on the project, which is expected to raise annual capacity from 3 million to 5 million cubic meters by the end of 2027. The upgrade will allow the corridor to transport around two billion additional liters of fuel a year. 

“The stronger Beira-Harare corridor will support Zimbabwe’s energy security while creating greater capacity to serve markets beyond our borders,” Mnangagwa said. “It shows what Mozambique and Zimbabwe can achieve through cooperation around infrastructure of shared regional importance.”  

The Mozambican president noted the project would strengthen the country’s position as a gateway for regional trade and deepen infrastructure cooperation with Zimbabwe. 

CPMZ said it is also studying a longer-term upgrade that could raise the pipeline’s annual capacity to around 12 million cubic meters to meet projected demand through 2050.   

Mozambique does not produce crude oil or operate a refinery and relies on imports for its petroleum products. However, its Indian Ocean ports serve as an important gateway for fuel shipments to landlocked countries including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, and the DR Congo.  

Nigeria has confirmed that around 200 US troops deployed to support its fight against armed groups will begin leaving the West African country, with most expected to withdraw by late September.

A smaller advisory and intelligence team will remain, while cooperation in training and information sharing will continue, Nigerian military spokesperson Major General Samaila Uba said on Tuesday. “The deployment of United States personnel was tied to specific operational and counterterrorism objectives,” Uba said, according to AP.

The troops arrived in February to provide intelligence, targeting, and training support. Washington subsequently deployed MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones to Bauchi Airfield in northeastern Nigeria. The mission came after US President Donald Trump accused the Nigerian authorities of failing to protect Christians and threatened military action.

Nigeria rejected claims that Christians were being systematically targeted, saying jihadist violence, banditry, and communal conflicts affect citizens of different faiths.

US Africa Command chief General Dagvin Anderson announced in July that most of the American troops had been withdrawn, saying the campaign had successfully degraded Islamic State’s leadership and disrupted its wider network. Samuel Memeh, chairman of Nigeria’s Democratic Leadership Alliance, disputed that assessment. Memeh told RT that the deployment had produced no significant improvement in security and argued that foreign forces alone could not defeat the country’s armed groups.

Lagos-based security consultancy SBM Intelligence said in a report last month that at least 7,825 people were abducted across Africa’s most populous nation between July 2025 and June 2026, a 66% increase from the previous 12-month period.

The seizing and targeting of Russian civilian vessels constitute acts of “state terrorism,” President Vladimir Putin has said, warning that these actions are making peace talks with Ukraine more difficult.

Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Thursday, the Russian president denounced the recent captures of Russian civilian vessels and pointed to Kiev’s threats against passenger aircraft.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky previously stated that the “safe days” in Russian skies are over, addressing foreign airlines, insurers, and governments whose aircraft continue to use Russian airspace.

“This, of course, is a manifestation of state terrorism,” Putin said, adding that these actions “undoubtedly complicate the possibility of bilateral peace negotiations.”

He also warned that “those who remain silent and do not pay attention to this become accomplices in international terrorism,” referring to Kiev’s Western backers.

The Professor Molchanov is a Russian state-owned research vessel that operates regular passenger and cargo services between Murmansk and Svalbard, carrying scientists, workers, their families, tourists, and supplies to Russian settlements on the archipelago. Moscow has said the seizure will be challenged in court.

The detention follows a series of Western seizures of Russian-linked vessels accused of belonging to a so-called “shadow fleet,” although the Professor Molchanov itself was seized in connection with a legal claim by Ukraine’s Naftogaz against Russia. Moscow has rejected the “shadow fleet” label as having no basis in international law and accused Western states of using sanctions as a pretext to interfere with civilian maritime trade.

Putin warned last month that attempts to seize Russian ships and sell their cargo amounted to “piracy and robbery,” saying Moscow is prepared to respond in kind in any part of the world.

Kiev has also stepped up attacks on civilian shipping. Putin said earlier this week that around 100 Russian merchant vessels had been damaged over a 40-day period, with sailors killed in the attacks, including Russian and foreign nationals.

Western countries are trying to draw India into a confrontation with China by pushing a more military role for the Quad grouping, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok. 

Lavrov said India feels “very uncomfortable” in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) grouping, arguing that the US and Japan have sought to add a military component to it.

“They are conducting maritime security exercises and are keen to draw our Indian friends into games against another great friend of ours – the People’s Republic of China,” Lavrov said.

The Quad grouping of India, the US, Japan, and Australia focuses on cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. Its activities cover areas ranging from trade and critical technologies to maritime security, with the four countries also taking part in the annual Malabar naval exercise.

At a meeting hosted by India in May, Quad foreign ministers launched a maritime surveillance initiative aimed at increasing information sharing and maritime domain awareness. India is also due to host the grouping’s next Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission, intended to improve interoperability and knowledge-sharing.

📹 Germany Wants To Be Europe’s Top Military Force ‘Again’... Lavrov Points To Nazi Past, Calls It ‘Extremely Dangerous’

Referring to German Chancellor’s call to make Germany “the best country in the world, the main military force in Europe again,” the Russian FM said, “I was… https://t.co/iTxDLWQ0bO pic.twitter.com/mGHu4cCpxU

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) September 3, 2026

Lavrov linked the grouping to what he described as a broader Western effort to weaken the central role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by creating smaller blocs in the region.

He said Western countries are also trying to establish a “second Quad,” comprising the US, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines – instead of India – with the aim of fragmenting ASEAN unity.

India has pushed back against suggestions that participation in the Quad is directed against Beijing, saying it pursues an independent foreign policy based on national interests.

Lavrov also accused NATO of seeking to expand its presence and infrastructure in Asia. The US-led military bloc has stepped up cooperation with Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand in areas including maritime security, cyber defense, and emerging technologies.