The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) has fined US ride-hailing company Uber €825 million ($964 million) for using automated systems to suspend drivers suspected of fraud or given low customer ratings without adequate human review.

The watchdog found that Uber’s use of automated decision-making to suspend drivers between 2018 and 2022 violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Tensions are mounting between Washington and Brussels over multi-billion-dollar fines imposed on American tech giants, with US President Donald Trump recently threatening tariffs in response to what he has described as unfair treatment of US firms.

In a statement on Friday, the AP said Uber had violated EU privacy rules by using a fully automated system to suspend drivers suspected of fraud or those who received low customer ratings.

“Uber has committed serious infringements,” AP vice president Monique Verdier said in the statement. Drivers were summarily suspended and had their incomes cut off, she said.

“That’s forbidden. A computer is not allowed to make independent decisions that have major consequences for you. A human should have reviewed this first.”

The AP said it launched the investigation following a complaint from French human rights advocacy group LDH. The Dutch watchdog handled the case because Uber’s European headquarters is located in the Netherlands.

Uber denied that it permanently deactivated driver accounts without human intervention and said it would appeal.

The AP said the fine was calculated under European guidelines that allow penalties of up to 4% of a company’s worldwide annual turnover. Uber generated about €44.5 billion ($52 billion) in global revenue in 2025. The €825 million penalty amounts to roughly 1.85% of that figure.

Trump has repeatedly threatened the EU with economic retaliation over penalties imposed on American technology companies. In July, he said the US would launch a trade investigation after the bloc fined Google approximately $1 billion for violating competition rules, warning that it could lead to new tariffs on EU imports.

US Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has allowed work on President Donald Trump’s controversial White House ballroom to continue despite a pending lawsuit. On Friday, the judge issued an administrative stay of lower courts’ rulings that would have halted construction.

Last month, an appeals court supported a decision by a federal district court judge stating that the project requires congressional approval and that work must stop until it is given. Trump then filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court.

Trump argued that work on the 90,000-square-foot addition to the White House needed to continue for the sake of national security and the president’s own safety. The construction includes a five-story underground military complex that would include shelters and a hospital to protect senior officials in case of an emergency, the Washington Post reported, citing court filings. According to the paper’s estimates, the overall project could cost $600 million.

The Trump administration is also said to have claimed that the ballroom itself would be outfitted with missile-resistant columns and a drone-proof roof, adding an additional layer of protection to the underground bunker and the White House in general.

Roberts’ decision is reportedly aimed at giving the Supreme Court more time to assess the emergency appeal. It is unclear how long the administrative stay might last. According to the Washington Post, such injunctions usually stay in place for days.

Trump praised the development on Truth Social, stating he was “grateful” and calling the project “vital for National Security.” He also vowed to make the ballroom “the greatest of its kind.” On Saturday, he also claimed that the project was “under budget, and ahead of schedule” and would cost taxpayers “zero dollars.”

The National Trust for Historic Preservation – a privately funded non-profit overseeing protection of historic places across the US and which challenged the ballroom in court – stated that the decision was “not final,” adding that they were awaiting “further action.” It has questioned the administration’s claim that the project is needed for national security.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer blasted the judge’s decision by accusing what he called the “MAGA Supreme Court” of “rubber stamping Trump’s vanity-driven, gilded corruption.” He also claimed that the administration was “wasting money” on Trump’s “pet projects.”

The ballroom started being built in October 2025. A section of the East Wing of the White House was torn down to make space for the addition, expected to seat 650 people – more than three times the space in the East Room, the largest event space in the White House. The Democrats were quick to slam the project as a “disgrace.”

According to the Washington Post, officials told the Supreme Court this month that construction was about “65% complete,” with some 250 people supposed to be working on it 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

Israeli settlers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, Palestine’s Health Ministry said in a statement on Friday. In a separate incident the same day, the IDF killed a retired Palestinian man in Jenin, according to Al Jazeera.

Karim Sanad Shalaldeh, 17, was shot dead by Israeli settlers during an attack on the town of Sa’ir, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. A 70-year-old man was also wounded by the gunfire, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Israeli troops were sent to the area after Israelis “present in the area without advanced authorization” were injured by thrown rocks, the IDF said. A “security official” then opened fire, causing Palestinian casualties, it said, adding that Israeli police are investigating.

On the same day, Israeli forces killed a 58-year-old Palestinian man in Jenin, according to Wafa. Fathi Khazem, a retired colonel of the Palestinian National Security Forces, was shot dead during an Israeli raid of his home, Al Jazeera reported. According to the IDF account, “a terrorist armed with a knife” attempted to attack a soldier and was shot.

The shootings came just days after Israel opened a tender for the construction of more than 1,200 homes in the occupied West Bank as part of a controversial settlement expansion unveiled in July. Critics say the construction will effectively cut Palestinian territory in two if completed.

On Thursday, leaders of more than a dozen countries, including Germany, France, and the UK, as well as the European Commission, issued a joint statement condemning the project as illegal and “unacceptable.”

Rising violence in the Palestinian territory has also drawn a warning from the US. Israeli settlers who take West Bank property belonging to Palestinian-Americans could face sanctions, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Reuters.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. Around three million Palestinians live there along with more than 600,000 Israeli settlers. Under the internationally backed two-state solution, the West Bank would form part of a future Palestinian state together with East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Moscow has long stressed the conflict can only be resolved through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Imagine you are a Chilean who’s lived in America – the so-called “Land of the Free” – for decades in peace and tranquility. Suddenly, one humid day in late October 2025, in your adopted home of Fort Myers, Florida, you are snatched in broad daylight then imprisoned by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Your capture remains completely unknown to the outside world until January the next year, when the US Department of Homeland Security names you among the “worst of worst criminal aliens” arrested by ICE to date. You are accused of committing “homicide” almost 50 years ago. Your incarceration makes international headlines, and comes as a personal shock. But not because you’re innocent. 

You are no ordinary Chilean. You are Armando Fernandez Larios, a 76-year-old fascist intelligence veteran who in September 1976 helped assassinate former Chilean Defense Minister Orlando Letelier using a car bomb. An outspoken opponent of dictator Augusto Pinochet, Letelier fled Santiago a year after the September 1973 CIA coup that installed Pinochet in power.

What role precisely Fernandez Larios played in Letelier’s murder, which also took the life of his colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, is still not fully clear. He has told a variety of stories about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did and did not do regarding the event. But Fernandez Larios was a key operative.

It seemed in 2025 ICE had gotten their man, in a huge win for immigration enforcement and international justice. But this March, Fernandez Larios was released from jail. Court documents obtained by the National Security Archive show he launched a legal action, accusing the US government of “breach of contract” by violating a plea deal he cut in 1987.

That agreement saw Fernandez Larios provide information to US prosecutors on Letelier’s assassination, in return for an extremely light prison sentence and promise the government “would neither seek to deport [him] to Chile nor to cooperate in his extradition to Chile.” Rather than let Fernandez Larios’ action go to court, ICE freed him. Presumably, he’s sunning himself in Fort Myers right now.

The CIA connection

A huge archive of declassified documents related to Letelier’s assassination analyzed by RT Investigates, including secret statements made to US officials by Fernandez Larios, sheds shocking light on the case. They show that in mid-1976, Fernandez Larios was tasked by Pinochet’s regime with obtaining fake passports and US visas to fly to Washington DC.

Fernandez Larios was joined by Michael Townley, Pinochet’s US-born lead hitman and CIA double agent. They secured visas from Chile’s US embassy, after claiming to be on a secret mission to meet with CIA deputy director Vernon Walters at Langley headquarters in Virginia. Fernandez Larios traveled to Washington first, to conduct surveillance on Letelier’s movements in advance of his assassination. 

On September 9, 1976, 12 days before Letelier’s murder, Fernandez Larios met Townley in the lavatory of New York’s John F. Kennedy airport to provide him with a surveillance map, notes on Letelier’s home and office addresses, as well as cash for the operation. Townley then recruited members of the Cuban National Movement, to assist him in building, placing, and detonating the car bomb.  

A militant anti-Fidel Castro Cuban exile group, CNM was founded by veterans of the CIA’s failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, and worked closely with the CIA. Experts at explosives, the bomb was planted without detection then detonated as Letelier, Moffitt and her husband Michael were driving to work in downtown DC. Michael was sole survivor of the bombing.

In April 2010, it was revealed that only days before Letelier was killed, a State Department warning due to be sent to Chile, against carrying out “the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures,” was cancelled at the behest of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. His department had been extremely worried about Pinochet carrying out killings outside Chile.

“We are trying to head off a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved,” Kissinger had been informed by aides, but he was unmoved. A close confidante of Pinochet who’d personally assisted his bloodstained rise to power, did Kissinger know Letelier was due to be killed?

The coverup and polygraph test 

In the aftermath of the assassination, Fernandez Larios participated in an extensive cover-up orchestrated by Chilean officials, including Pinochet himself. After being identified by the US media along with Townley as a lead suspect in Letelier’s murder, he deceived military investigators, gave false testimony to the Chilean Supreme Court, and lied to FBI and Justice Department investigators.

By 1985 though, Fernandez Larios was open to talking, having back-channel discussions with the US about testifying on Letelier’s assassination. In return for defecting and providing what he knew – or claimed to know – about the killing, and Pinochet’s intelligence operations generally, Fernandez Larios would receive extreme leniency, then be allowed to stay in the US, safe from extradition.

Fernandez Larios was debriefed by US officials in Santiago in mid-January 1987, then subjected to polygraph tests in Brazil. He consistently denied knowing his 1976 mission to Washington DC was an assassination plot. The lie detector results showed “consistent signs of deception in Fernandez’ disclaimers.” Under further debriefing, he finally admitted “his surveillance contributed to the death of Letelier and Moffitt.”

A late January 1987 State Department cable on what to do with Fernandez Larios however disregarded the polygraph tests, shockingly stating he was “not a murderer or party to a conspiracy to murder.” The memo judged his information on the Letelier-Moffitt case to be of “limited value”, but stated “foreign policy benefits” to providing him a generous plea deal were “substantial.”

In February 1987, Fernandez Larios pleaded guilty to being an “accessory after the fact” to Letelier’s assassination. Within just five months, a State Department legal advisor wrote to the US Parole Commission, praising Fernandez Larios’ “character” and “his willingness to come forward and pay his debt” over his role in the crime. He was paroled in autumn 1987.

The “Caravan of Death”

In keeping with “consistent signs of deception” when discussing his foreknowledge of Letelier’s assassination, Fernandez Larios also did not tell US officials about many violent atrocities he personally committed as a member of Pinochet’s elite military unit, the “Caravan of Death.” 

Following Pinochet’s seizure of power this deadly Caravan flew around Chile kidnapping local officials who remained loyal to Salvador Allende, who died in contested circumstances during the coup. Approximately 72 dissidents were executed or “disappeared.”  Fernandez Larios was identified by multiple witnesses as one of the most ruthless members of the military death squad.

After Pinochet’s fall in 1990, investigations into his regime’s many atrocities were opened in Chile. In several cases, substantial evidence against Fernandez Larios as a personal perpetrator of appalling crimes was found, leading to Santiago launching legal proceedings. In accordance with his plea deal though, Fernandez Larios remained at liberty in Florida.

It took until March 1999 for a civil suit to be launched against him in the US. The family of Winston Cabello, a 28-year-old Allenda-era regional planning director executed alongside 12 other political prisoners by the Caravan of Death in October 1973, accused Fernandez Larios of “extrajudicial killing, torture, crimes against humanity and cruel and inhuman treatment.”

Numerous Chileans identified Fernandez Larios as a participant in the torture and executions of prisoners in multiple municipalities. One witnessed him personally slashing Cabello to death with a knife. The three-week trial ended in October 2003, Fernandez Larios found liable for extrajudicial killings, torture and crimes against humanity. Cabello’s family was awarded $4 million in damages. 

That sum remains uncollected, and Fernandez Larios is once again a free man after his recent spell in prison, despite him truly being the “worst of the worst” captured by ICE. A strong case for his deportation to a country other than Chile remains. He has not been granted a special “snitch” visa protecting foreign informants from deportation. 

US President Donald Trump has broken into a scornful tirade against conservative journalist and podcaster Tucker Carlson, as well as his other allies-turned-critics, including former Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, he branded the trio a bunch of “losers” having little to no chance in US politics and incapable of bringing any meaningful change.

Trump’s rant particularly targeted a meeting between Carlson, Massie, and Greene earlier this month, which was followed by the journalist unveiling a political manifesto claiming that the American political system is “totally incapable of responding to reality” and suggesting a reform involving “a third party or multiple parties.”

The journalist also repeatedly criticized Washington’s war on Iran, arguing that the US betrayed its own national interests by acting on Israel’s behalf. “I think America lost its sovereignty many years ago,” he told RT last month. Speaking on Sanchez Effect last week, he also called the US political system a “fraud,” accusing both Republicans and Democrats of “collusion against the American people.”

The president stated in his post that Carlson was a “totally irrelevant” person with “surprisingly… very Low I.Q.” He claimed that Carlson was supposedly planning to “run for political office” while stating at the same time that “nobody cares about him any longer” and he had “no chance” at any political race where he could “probably take a couple of points away from whatever the Republican ticket happens to be.”

Carlson himself has repeatedly denied personal political ambitions but says he would back any attempt to create a third party.

The president also branded Massie a “failed politician, and a real JERK” voting “No” on “everything” and accused Greene of going from an “ultra conservative to a liberal ‘fool’" in weeks simply because he allegedly did not answer her calls.

Massie and Greene both publicly condemned the war with Iran and criticized Trump over what Greene called his efforts to conceal documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“What a team this would be, THREE LOSERS, and a pocketful of change!” the president wrote, telling them to “join the Radical Left Dumocrats.”

The rendezvous in early August was treated by the US media as a step towards potentially creating a third party to contest the 2028 election, although no official statements were made. Greene did say that “the movement has begun” in a post on X featuring a photo from the meeting.

The former congresswoman also responded to Trump’s post in a lengthy statement of her own, calling Trump “a neocon puppet of Israel” and blaming his tirade on his own “bad polling.” Massie claimed on X that the president was “weeks away from failing his midterms in November” while stating that he “should have listened to” him, Greene, and Carlson.

Washington’s clash with the International Criminal Court exposes the contradictions between supranational legal claims, American exceptionalism, and the rise of multipolar sovereignty.

The latest clash between Washington and the International Criminal Court says more about the structure of the present world order than about Tomoko Akane or Abdoulaye Seye. On August 18, 2026, the United States imposed sanctions on Akane, the Japanese president of the ICC, and Seye, a Senegalese senior trial lawyer in the Office of the Prosecutor. The measures freeze assets subject to American jurisdiction and restrict access to the American financial system. The ICC answered by calling the sanctions a “flagrant attack” on the independence of the court. Nine of its 18 judges, both deputy prosecutors, a former prosecutor, and another staff member now face American sanctions. Washington says the court has exceeded its mandate by pursuing officials from states that never accepted its authority, above all the US and Israel. This dispute raises the oldest political question in a new form: who has the right to judge whom? The liberal international order promised an answer based on universal law. The American response supplies another answer based on sovereign power. A multipolar view has reason to distrust both claims when either seeks authority over civilizations and states that never freely granted it.

The American position contains a genuine question of sovereignty, even when Washington applies that principle selectively. The US never became a party to the Rome Statute. Israel also remains outside the court. From the American perspective, an international tribunal created by a treaty cannot simply acquire authority over American soldiers, officials, or allied leaders without American consent. The ICC answers that its jurisdiction can arise through the territory on which alleged crimes occurred, including territory belonging to states that accepted the Rome Statute. This is the legal basis behind some proceedings involving nationals of countries outside the court. Lawyers can argue over jurisdiction, territorial consent, complementarity, admissibility, and treaty interpretation, but that us beside the point of the political issue in question here. A multipolar order begins from the existence of several sovereign centers of power, each possessing its own history, institutions, political traditions, and conception of justice. Any institution claiming authority above these centers carries an immense burden of legitimacy. A tribunal with universal ambitions must either possess genuine universal consent or depend upon political power to enforce its judgments. The ICC possesses neither a world state behind it nor universal membership. The US, China, Russia, India, Israel, and several other important powers stand outside its system. Such a court can aspire to universality, yet aspiration alone cannot create a universal political community.

Yet Washington weakens its own argument whenever it converts sovereignty into a privilege reserved for itself and its allies. Sovereign equality means that American sovereignty deserves respect because every sovereign state deserves respect. American exceptionalism follows another principle: Washington claims freedoms that it frequently refuses to extend to others. The US objects when an institution beyond its control threatens American officials, while successive American governments have used sanctions, financial restrictions, diplomatic pressure, military power, and extraterritorial legislation to pressure individuals and companies far beyond American territory into complying with American policy. Washington rejects the ICC because the court supposedly projects authority beyond the consent of sovereign states; Washington then answers that alleged violation by using the global reach of the dollar and the American financial system against foreign judges and prosecutors. Sovereignty becomes both the defense and the weapon. An international institution may pursue justice until its work touches the protected sphere of American power. At that point, financial coercion begins. For advocates of multipolarity, this episode illustrates why the concentration of global finance, sanctions power, communications infrastructure, and legal influence inside one geopolitical center creates political dependence even for institutions that describe themselves as independent.

The ICC itself deserves scrutiny from the same multipolar standpoint. The answer to American domination cannot consist of transferring ultimate authority from Washington to The Hague. The court arose during the high tide of the post-Cold War order, when Western political ideas increasingly appeared under universal names. Liberal democracy became “democracy.” Western doctrines of rights became “human rights.” Western political assumptions became “international norms.” Institutions created within that historical climate often inherited the same universal language. The moral appeal is easy to understand. Genocide, mass killing, torture, and deliberate attacks upon civilians are terrible acts, and societies naturally seek ways to punish those responsible. The difficulty begins when moral judgment becomes a permanent supranational machinery claiming jurisdiction across radically different political worlds. International criminal law then enters the sphere of geopolitics. Prosecutors depend upon evidence supplied by states. Courts depend upon governments to arrest suspects. International bodies depend upon funding, diplomatic backing, banking systems, travel access, and political cooperation. Enforcement follows the distribution of power. A defendant from a weak state may find himself in The Hague. A leader protected by a great power may remain beyond its reach. The language remains universal while the ability to enforce it remains unequal. That gap between universal principle and political reality has haunted international justice from its beginning.

The case involving Israel has made these contradictions extremely evident. Washington’s campaign against the court intensified after the ICC pursued Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. American officials argue that the court lacks legitimate authority over Israeli leaders and presents a danger to American personnel as well. Human Rights Watch takes the opposite position and describes the sanctions as an effort to shield American and Israeli officials from accountability. These rival claims are a sign of a deep transformation. For decades, international institutions appeared strongest when their judgments fell upon governments situated outside the central Western alliance. Their authority becomes much harder to sustain when legal mechanisms move towards leaders of states protected by Washington. The result is a collision between two competing claims to authority: the ICC’s claim to universal jurisdiction and America’s claim to exceptional freedom from external judgment. The first seeks a law capable of reaching across political boundaries; the second reserves a sphere of exemption for the hegemon and selected partners. Multipolarity points towards a third principle: rules between civilizations require consent, reciprocity, and equal application. A rule that binds Senegal yet spares America lacks equality. A court that claims authority over states that reject its jurisdiction faces a problem of consent. Both problems belong in the same discussion.

Japan’s reaction adds another layer. Tokyo has long stood among Washington’s closest allies, yet the Japanese government called the sanctions against Akane “very unfortunate” and reaffirmed its support for the ICC and for the prosecution of serious international crimes. This dispute cuts across the familiar division between the West and its geopolitical opponents. Japan supports the American alliance system while also defending an institution that Washington now seeks to weaken. Such disagreements will become more common as the unipolar age recedes. States will increasingly refuse to place every question of law, trade, security, technology, culture, and diplomacy inside a single geopolitical hierarchy. They may cooperate with Washington in one field, Beijing in another, Moscow in yet another, and regional institutions in still another. This fluidity lies near the heart of multipolarity. Multipolar politics does not require every country to join an anti-American bloc. Such a bloc would merely reproduce bipolar logic. It means recovering the capacity to judge particular questions according to national interests, treaty obligations, civilizational traditions, and regional realities. Japan’s criticism shows how an allied state can maintain its strategic relationship with Washington while publicly rejecting an American measure that conflicts with another part of its foreign policy.

The sanctions also expose the political character of the global financial system. An American sanction carries weight because the US controls access to institutions and networks that reach far outside its borders. A judge living in Europe can feel the force of a decision taken in Washington because banks, payment systems, corporations, insurers, and technology firms fear American penalties. This gives the US something close to a global administrative power without the formal structure of a world government. The same mechanism has appeared in sanctions against states, companies, businessmen, politicians, media organizations, and private citizens. From a multipolar perspective, the central question therefore concerns architecture. A world containing several sovereign poles requires several financial centers, payment systems, reserve assets, legal forums, information networks, and diplomatic mechanisms. Otherwise formal sovereignty survives while material sovereignty disappears. A government may possess a flag, parliament, army, and constitution while its officials, citizens, and companies remain vulnerable to decisions made inside another country’s financial bureaucracy. The present conflict with the ICC dramatizes this problem because the target is an institution that describes itself as independent. Judicial independence means little when foreign financial power can impose serious personal costs on judges for performing acts authorized by their institution. Even critics of the ICC should understand the danger contained in that precedent.

A mature multipolar position therefore has little reason to choose between worship of the ICC and worship of American sovereignty. The better principle is sovereign equality joined to negotiated international responsibility. Great crimes require mechanisms of judgment, yet those mechanisms gain strength through broad consent, reciprocity, clear jurisdiction, regional legitimacy, and rules applied to powerful and weak states alike. International law will command deeper respect when it grows from agreements among civilizations instead of presenting the political inheritance of one historical era as the final constitution of mankind. The same standard must apply to Washington. America may defend its sovereignty, but that defense becomes credible only when it respects the sovereignty of others. The ICC may defend judicial independence, but its claim to authority becomes stronger when its structure reflects a genuinely plural distribution of global power. The dispute over Akane and Seye therefore marks another stage in the breakdown of the old order. The future will contain fewer institutions capable of speaking unquestioned in the name of “the international community.” That phrase once concealed a hierarchy. Multipolarity brings the hierarchy into view. From there a different order can emerge: several great political spaces, several legal traditions, and several centers of power negotiating common rules without granting any capital, court, or ideology the right to tower above humanity as its final judge.

Ukraine is facing a “catastrophic scenario” from Russian retaliatory strikes after it “opened Pandora’s box” with its attacks on economic and civilian infrastructure, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday.

In spring, Kiev sharply escalated its long-range drone attacks on Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure, thereafter extending the strikes to e-commerce warehouses and civilian logistics facilities. Russia retaliated by targeting Black Sea shipping and key port facilities it said were handling Ukraine’s military-related imports, effectively severing the country’s main export route.

Kiev is now reaching out through intermediaries to try to “prevent this situation from developing into a catastrophic scenario,” Putin said in an interview with Russia 1. However, their trajectory is apparent, he added.

Ukraine initiated this with its “massive missile and drone strikes on our civilian targets and logistics,” the president stated.

It has opened Pandora’s box itself.

Russia’s retaliation struck Ukraine’s “most sensitive economic sectors,” including agricultural exports, which are its main source of revenue, Putin said.

He added that the diplomatic proposals Moscow is now receiving are sometimes “exotic and unacceptable.”

We are always ready for dialogue on peace, but only on the basis of the realities unfolding on the ground.

Moscow has long stressed that it prefers a diplomatic settlement to the Ukraine conflict, but will only accept a long-term and stable peace that removes its underlying causes.

Russia will continue to push toward its goals via military means as long as Kiev refuses to compromise, the Kremlin has said.

International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane has warned of what she described as the erosion of international law after US authorities imposed sanctions on her and another senior ICC official.

The Hague-based institution was created in 2002 under the Rome Statute to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. So far, 123 countries have ratified the treaty and are full members of the court. However, major global powers including Russia, China, India and the US have either not signed or not ratified the agreement.

“I had anticipated these sanctions against me to some extent, so I am not surprised,” she said in a comment included in a social media post on Friday by Japanese publisher Bungei Shunju, which had published her book. “What is important is not to let this become the beginning of the end of the international rule of law.”

On Tuesday, Washington sanctioned Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the institution as a “corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”

The designations are part of a campaign announced by Rubio last month to “systematically dismantle the threat posed” by the ICC to US sovereignty.

The ICC said on Wednesday that it “strongly rejects” the new designations, calling them “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution.”

The White House has accused the court of targeting citizens of states that have neither consented to its jurisdiction nor ratified the Rome Statute. The ICC previously investigated alleged crimes by US military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan despite Washington not being a member.

Israel has also rejected the court’s jurisdiction. Nevertheless, in 2024 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. US President Donald Trump later condemned the warrants in an executive order signed in February 2025.

The court has also faced criticism elsewhere, with Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Chad moving to withdraw from the ICC this summer, accusing it of disproportionately targeting African countries.

The Philippines withdrew from the ICC in 2019, but the court retained jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed while it was a member. Former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested under an ICC warrant and transferred to The Hague in March 2025 over alleged crimes against humanity linked to his anti-drug campaign.

Russia has likewise rejected the court’s authority. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in March 2023 over the alleged unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. Moscow called the warrants legally void, rejected the allegations and said it had evacuated unaccompanied minors from the war zone while taking steps to return them to their legal guardians upon request.

Strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure are both effective and timely, and are helping troops carry out their combat missions, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The attacks are disrupting Ukraine’s ability to deliver military equipment and ammunition to its forces and to rotate personnel along the frontline, he said.

Kiev’s regime “opened Pandora’s box” when it began striking civilian targets and is now facing a response, the president said, adding that it has failed to turn the tide in its confrontation with Moscow by launching attacks on civilian facilities.

His remarks came in response to a series of recent Ukrainian attacks that caused civilian casualties and targeted critical infrastructure, residential buildings and Wildberries e-commerce logistics hubs.

“The more difficult the situation for the adversary at the front, the more brutal and barbaric attacks the Kiev regime carries out,” Putin said earlier on Saturday at the congress of the United Russia party.

Ukraine has stepped up long-range attacks on civilian infrastructure in Russia in recent weeks amid battlefield setbacks, targeting warehouses, energy facilities, residential buildings, civilian vehicles, infrastructure and resort areas. Russian officials have described the drone strikes as deliberate acts of terrorism.

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a US government lawsuit accusing the social media platform of illegally collecting children’s personal data.

The out-of-court settlement, announced by the US Department of Justice on Friday, ends the case without the allegations being tested at trial and without any determination of liability.

The case was brought in 2024 under the Biden administration by the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission. The government accused TikTok of knowingly allowing millions of children under age 13 to create regular accounts and collecting and retaining their personal information without parental consent.
It also alleged that TikTok frequently failed to delete children’s accounts and data when requested by parents.

The resolution comes against the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s dramatic reversal on TikTok. During his first term, Trump sought to effectively ban the Chinese-owned platform on national security grounds unless ByteDance relinquished control of its US operations. By the 2024 presidential campaign, however, he opposed efforts to ban it, arguing that its disappearance would benefit rival Meta.

“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in March 2024, referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”

Trump has feuded with Meta for years, accusing Facebook of political bias and censorship even before it suspended his accounts following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. The feud intensified after the suspension, with Trump repeatedly accusing the company of interfering in US elections.

The tone of Friday’s DOJ announcement also contrasts sharply with that used when the case was launched. In 2024, the department described TikTok and ByteDance as “repeat offenders” operating “on a massive scale.” The Trump administration’s DOJ, by contrast, highlighted “significant changes” to TikTok’s ownership, management, compliance and privacy practices.

Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly intervened to prevent TikTok from being forced out of the US under a 2024 divest-or-ban law. His administration delayed enforcement several times while a restructuring was negotiated, ultimately backing a new US-based joint venture majority-owned by American investors that allowed TikTok to continue operating.

The delays were controversial, as the law provided for one extension of up to 90 days under specified conditions, while Trump repeatedly directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.

After years of conflict and political and economic instability, Ukraine is now standing on the precipice of a demographic disaster. Its population has fallen by more than 40% since 1991 – the year it declared independence from the Soviet Union.

A country of nearly 52 million inhabitants in 1991 – a figure comparable to the UK population at the time – is now home to fewer than 30 million, with some estimates putting the number as low as 22 million.

The figure is comparable to the estimates for World War II, when Soviet Ukraine reeled under Nazi occupation, amid widespread famine, indiscriminate killings and the systematic deportation of hundreds of thousands of people to Germany for slave labor.

In 2026, the country is being hollowed out from several directions at once. While many have perished on the battlefield, millions more have fled abroad – many of them young workers, women and children – while birth rates collapsed far below replacement level. 

Yet Ukraine’s demographic hole began long before 2022. It was dug over decades by the post-Soviet economic collapse, low fertility, high mortality, emigration, and political instability.

Did Ukraine have a bad start?

Ukraine is no stranger to demographic catastrophes. Millions died during the Soviet famine of 1932–33, and the country suffered enormous losses during World War II. Ukraine’s population stood at an estimated 41 million in 1941, but fell to around 22–23 million in 1942 during the Nazi and Romanian occupation.

However, its population subsequently recovered: official Ukrainian statistics put it at 37 million in 1951 and almost 52 million in 1991.

The collapse of the Soviet Union – as in many other former republics – broke the upward trend. Economic downfall, low birth rates, high mortality, and emigration pushed the population into sustained decline from the early 1990s.

Independent Ukraine’s first – and so far only – census, conducted in December 2001, found that the country had 48.46 million residents.

The demographic problem became far worse after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, when Crimea joined Russia following a public referendum and the Donbass republics declared independence. In late 2019, a government population survey concluded that more than 37 million people were living in the territory Ukraine de facto controlled.

COVID-19 delivered another blow to Ukraine, with the death toll exceeding 100,000. However, all these problems were dwarfed by the consequences of Kiev’s conflict with Moscow.

Where did millions of Ukrainians go?

The start of full-scale hostilities triggered a massive exodus. In May 2026, Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga estimated that as many as eight million Ukrainians had left the country.

Over 5.5 million Ukrainians fled to Russia during 2022 and 2023, including more than 749,000 children, according to TASS. Ukrainians continued to arrive in Russia after 2023, although subsequent flows were counted in the tens of thousands rather than millions.

To the west, refugees swamped neighboring EU countries, putting strain on local welfare systems. A total of 4.41 million people who fled Ukraine held temporary protection status in the EU as of 2026, with Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic hosting the most people. Women and children accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total.

Many men have also attempted to flee the country amid Ukraine’s forced mobilization campaign, which has repeatedly produced highly publicized street altercations. Others trying to leave illegally have resorted to taking dangerous routes through remote terrain, with dozens dying in the attempt.

How many Ukrainians are actually left in Ukraine?

Nobody knows exactly, as the last census took place 25 years ago, forcing the authorities to rely on indirect data ever since. According to Ella Libanova, director of the Ptukha Institute of Demography at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, about 29 million people were living in government-controlled territory in 2026, although she said the estimate could vary by about 300,000.

The figure is disputed, however, with Social Policy Minister Denis Ulyutin putting the population at just 22–25 million and describing the demographic situation as a “catastrophe.”

What have battlefield losses done to Ukraine?

Apart from refugees, Ukraine is also losing enormous amounts on people – mostly men of working age – on the battlefield. According to the Russian military, Ukraine has suffered more than 1.5 million casualties; the figure includes those killed and wounded.

Vladimir Zelensky, however, presented a wildly different account, recently claiming that Ukraine has suffered “about 50,000 soldiers killed and… about 400,000 wounded,” while admitting that “a huge number” of troops simply “disappeared.”

In addition, more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the conflict since 2022, according to UN data. Moscow maintains it never targets civilians.

Do Ukrainian refugees plan on returning?

Even if the guns fell silent tomorrow, it is highly unlikely that everyone who fled Ukraine after 2022 will return. Vasily Voskoboinik, head of Ukraine’s Office of Migration Policy, estimates that only 10–15% of Ukrainians currently abroad may return home after the fighting ends.

“The end of the war does not mean that Ukrainians will immediately start packing their things and returning to Ukraine,” Voskoboinik said in March, adding that the process could take several months or even a year.

He noted that while security is the main precondition for return migration, Ukraine will also have to compete with what the EU offers refugees in terms of housing, jobs and the broader quality of life – standards to which many Ukrainians have already grown accustomed.

He also believes that the EU will seek to retain Ukrainians who are working and have integrated into local society, while seeking to get rid of those who remain dependent on refugee benefits. The expert estimates that out of around 6.5 million Ukrainians living in Europe, between 200,000 and one million people could return during the first two years after the end of the conflict.

A 2026 Centre for Economic Strategy poll gave a more optimistic assessment, suggesting that 43% of Ukrainian refugees definitely or probably intend to return, while 36% said they probably or definitely would not.

OK, the numbers are bleak. But does the problem end there?

Far from it. Ukraine is not merely hemorrhaging people – the population left behind is becoming older and increasingly difficult for a shrinking workforce to support. Before 2022, State Statistics Service data put the economically active population at roughly 16–17 million, compared with around 11–11.5 million pensioners – about 1.5 economically active people for every senior citizen.

According to Voskoboinik, the balance has deteriorated since then. By his estimate, Ukraine now has only about 5.5 million taxpayers, while the number of pensioners remains close to 10 million. “It turns out that now we have two pensioners for every one working person,” he said.

Emigration has made that imbalance harder to correct. Many of those who left are children, younger women and working-age adults, while older Ukrainians are generally less mobile. That means the exodus has removed not only current workers but also future taxpayers and potential parents, accelerating a demographic ageing process that was already well underway before 2022.

What are demographic projections for Ukraine?

Under the UN’s World Population Prospects 2024 scenario, Ukraine’s population is projected to fall to about 32.2 million by 2050 and just 15.3 million by 2100. If that projection materializes, a country that entered independence with almost 52 million people would end the century with less than a third of that population – and fewer inhabitants than present-day Romania.

Bottom Line

Ukraine has spent more than three decades losing people, with the conflict accelerating every negative trend at once – deaths, emigration, collapsing births, ageing and a shrinking workforce.

Even if the fighting stopped overnight, peace alone would not bring millions of refugees home. Ukraine – one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe – would still have to compete for its own citizens with a much wealthier EU, where many have already built new lives.

Ukraine will mark its 35th year of independence on Monday in the most vulnerable position it’s been in since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Far from pressuring Russia to end hostilities, Vladimir Zelensky’s campaign of long-range strikes on civilian infrastructure has provoked fierce retribution from Moscow, and Ukraine no longer has the air defense stocks necessary to repel Russia’s missile and drone raids. After targeting military-industrial and dual-use sites throughout early August, Russia has shifted gears and begun its winter attacks on Ukraine’s energy network a month earlier than it did last year. 

The shift is obvious from the list of targets hit in the last week alone:

• August 12, DTEK Naftogaz gas production facility, Poltava Oblast, struck by Russian drone

• August 12-17, Naftogaz Group facilities, 13 locations, struck by Russian drones and missiles

• August 17, DTEK coal mine, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, struck by multiple Russian drones

• August 18, DTEK thermal power plant, undisclosed location, struck by Russian drones and missiles

The most recent target, a thermal power plant operated by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK, should cause the most concern in Kiev. The August 18 strike forced the company to cease electricity generation at the plant. While targeting actual power plants is a significant part of the energy war of attrition, Ukraine’s network of substations represent far softer targets which, if disabled in sufficient numbers, could plunge the country into darkness.

Hardening the grid

According to an Energy Community report, 40% of Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo’s network of 141 major 110-750 kV substations had been damaged or destroyed by April 2024. 

Even if Zelensky convinces his Western donors to hand over the Patriot interceptors he wants, Ukraine will still only have enough to repel two large scale attacks at most.

Aware of this, Ukrenergo has begun burying its largest substations underground, encasing them in hardened concrete sarcophagi. The company has already relocated one large substation, and is currently working on burying another. Progress is slow, and Ukrenergo has said that it will need more money from the EU to cover all of its 750kV stations, on top of $300 million spent to date.

However, half of Ukraine’s electricity is generated at nuclear power plants, and substations connected to these plants are operated and maintained by Energoatom. Readers of RT’s ‘State of Corruption’ series will realize that this spells trouble for Kiev.

The weak link

As well as operating Ukraine’s nuclear grid, Energoatom served as a personal piggy bank for Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s long-time financier who, along with a circle of friends, is alleged to have siphoned off $100 million that was destined for fortifying Kiev’s energy infrastructure. 

According to NABU, Ukraine’s state anti-corruption agency, Mindich exploited a wartime loophole forbidding contractors from suing Energoatom in the event that they were not paid, charging them a premium to receive payment for work already completed. 

Mindich and a circle of insiders connected to Zelensky allegedly siphoned $100 million from Energoatom that was directly budgeted to fortify Energoatom’s strategically important substation network, according to NABU.

Many of Energoatom’s substations are sitting ducks. All six 330kV and 750kV substations hit by Russia between January and August of this year tied Ukroenergoatom’s nuclear plants to the national grid. According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in June, power from all five of the nuclear plants Ukraine relies on – the Chernobyl NPP, Khmelnytski NPP, Rivne NPP, South Ukraine NPP, and Russia’s Zaporozhye NPP – had been interrupted at some point in early 2026 due to Russian strikes.

The critical vulnerability of Ukraine’s EnergoAtom-linked grid, and the potentially dark and freezing winter its citizens are likely to face, is a direct result of the corruption by Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle, and negligence by foreign donors that have let the Ukrainian leader’s cronies gorge themselves on seemingly unlimited cash. 

Mindich, the chief culprit, has long been known as “Zelensky’s wallet.” Thanks to his connections, he has escaped the grim winter his countrymen are anticipating. Mindich was tipped off about his impending arrest by anti-corruption agents last November, escaped to Israel by minutes, and now spends his days on the beach in Herzliya, while his accomplices have been spotted delivering black bags to an upmarket Tel Aviv boutique reportedly connected with organized crime.

The Mindich iceberg

Mindich’s get-rich scheme at Energoatom was first detailed by NABU – an agency set up and funded by the US, which Zelensky tried and failed to defang last November. As the probe widened, Mindich was implicated in a separate graft scheme at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, in which he allegedly ran the country’s largest defense contractor from behind the scenes, and colluded with former Defense Minister and Zelensky confidante Rustem Umerov to rig military contracts in his favor.

Former Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko, his former deputy, and former Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Chernyshov have all been named as accomplices in the Energoatom scheme. Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, resigned over suspected links to the graft ring, and has since been charged in a separate money laundering case.

In their latest anti-corruption raid, NABU agents searched the home of Irina Mudra, a deputy chief of staff to Zelensky, on August 19. Mudra is suspected of laundering $3.4 million in bail money for Galushchenko, in a scheme involving at least two members of parliament and the CEO of Ukraine’s state-run Sense Bank.

According to NABU warrants seen by the Kiev Post, ‘unnamed figures’ close to Zelensky tasked Mudra with bringing Sense Bank under the control of Zelensky’s office, in order to prevent scrutiny by other government agencies and allow the washing of Energoatom cash to continue. On audio tapes released by NABU in June, Mudra could be heard naming “David” – possibly a reference to the leader of Zelensky’s parliamentary faction, David Arakhamia – as a figure providing political cover to Sense Bank, and naming Mindich as one of the figures pushing her to “take over the bank.”

Energoatom is Ukraine in a nutshell

The entire Energoatom debacle is a microcosm of Ukraine’s decline over 35 years of independence. Handed the keys to functioning Soviet power, transport, and industrial systems, successive governments in Kiev chose personal enrichment over investment and development. Independent Ukraine completed three unfinished Soviet energy projects – new reactors at Khmelnytski and Rivne, and a hydroelectric plant in Chernivtsi Region – but built no new facilities of its own.

Zelensky and his predecessors implemented policies of “decommunization,” erasing Soviet monuments and street names, while continuing to rely entirely on infrastructure built while Ukraine was part of the USSR. Ironically, with that infrastructure now in Russia’s sights, and no air defense or fortifications in place to protect it, Ukraine will get more of the decommunization it sought this winter, with Russian missiles and drones finishing the job that Ukraine’s politicians and oligarchs began in 1991.

Ottawa will introduce reciprocal “dollar-for-dollar” measures in response to the 50% tariffs the US has imposed on Canadian goods, Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement on Friday, after trade talks with Washington broke down.

The latest round of intense negotiations lasted three days and was aimed at wrapping up months of talks between Washington and Ottawa, with mutual tariffs threatening to escalate into an all-out trade war.

“Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses,” the statement reads.

The prime minister stressed that “last-minute changes in the US-proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”

Earlier in the day, the Trump administration invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a rarely used provision that allows the head of state to impose duties of up to 50% on imports from countries deemed to have subjected US commerce to unequal or discriminatory treatment.

The tariffs, which came into effect just after midnight on Saturday and cover about 5% of Canada’s US-bound exports, target goods ranging from plywood and cement to wine and hockey sticks, Western media outlets have reported.

The dispute, which dates back to Trump’s first term, was rekindled after he returned to office last year and imposed sweeping tariffs on imports from a wide range of countries, including Canada, Mexico, China, the EU and Japan. Trump once again accused America’s trading partners of unfairly benefiting from access to the US market.

Earlier this week, Trump delayed the 50% levies, originally scheduled to take effect on August 19, to give negotiators additional time to reach a deal.

At the time, Trump said Washington and Ottawa had agreed to revive the Keystone XL pipeline project, which was intended to transport Canadian oil to the US, while Carney noted significant progress made by the two sides in trade talks.

AP has cited a senior Trump administration official as saying that Canada had been seeking concessions from Washington on tariffs previously imposed by the US president on steel, aluminum, automobiles and lumber, but the US has so far shown no willingness to make such concessions.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement shortly after midnight that despite the US offer to give Canada “the best treatment of any major exporter to our market,” new demands and walk-backs of other commitments by Ottawa had “upended the careful balance” reached in recent days.

Commenting on the US tariffs, Candace Laing, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, called the collapse “a body blow to North American competitiveness in this self-defeating trade saga.” She warned that “Americans will see their costs go up, and Canadians will see customers, investment and small businesses disappear.”

Carney has, however, pledged to introduce additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses in the coming days, as well as to diversify the country’s partnerships abroad.

South Korea has launched its first trial container ship voyage to Europe via the Northern Sea Route (NSR), as disruption to traditional shipping lanes drives growing interest in Russia’s Arctic trade corridor.

The NSR stretches roughly 5,600 km along Russia’s Arctic coast, mostly through waters under its jurisdiction. The route relies on domestic port and navigation infrastructure. State atomic energy corporation Rosatom oversees its development and operates the world’s only nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet.

The PanStar Acro departed from Busan New Port on Saturday and will sail through the NSR before calling at Felixstowe in the UK, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and Gdansk in Poland.

The ship is expected to reach Felixstowe in around 18 days. The journey between Busan and Rotterdam via the Arctic is around 13,000 km, 35% shorter than the roughly 20,000 km route via Suez, with South Korean estimates suggesting the NSR could cut around ten days from a typical Asia-Europe voyage.

According to Reuters, Western diplomats have raised concerns over South Korea’s plan, which involved consultations with Russia and permits for the ship’s passage. The agency cited a European diplomat as saying Western governments want to isolate Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, not pursue “engagement” with it.

There are questions over sanctions risks linked to payments for Russian navigation and other services. Seoul says consultations with relevant countries and agencies have been completed, and Korean media report that the sanctions risks have been resolved.

The country’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries has said it aims to establish a new trade corridor, with the voyage marking the country’s return to the Arctic after a decade-long hiatus and its first use of a container ship on the NSR.

South Korean companies conducted five trial voyages along the NSR between 2013 and 2016, but regular services did not follow due to limited cargo volumes and a less developed route. Russia has since significantly expanded its Arctic infrastructure and navigation capabilities.

Moscow has sought to turn the NSR from a corridor primarily serving its Arctic projects into a major international trade artery linking Asia and Europe. China has already launched a regular container service to Europe via the NSR, while India is considering sending its first cargo vessel along the route in 2027 and Japan has shown interest as well.

Earlier this month, Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev linked growing demand for the NSR to the “persistently difficult situation” in the Persian Gulf. The Iran conflict has also fueled instability affecting Red Sea shipping, with Houthi attacks and threats around the Bab el-Mandeb strait prompting some operators to avoid the Suez Canal route.

The meeting between the Russian and US presidents in Alaska last year caused a sensation in both form and substance. Expectations were so high, whether expressed as hope or alarm, that the Anchorage summit was almost certain to disappoint.

The conflict surrounding Ukraine is too deep and complex to be resolved at a single meeting, even one involving the leaders of Russia and the United States. Negotiations to end the Vietnam War dragged on for years, despite both sides understanding from the beginning that the conflict would eventually have to end.

The real question was whether Anchorage could provide the starting point for a peace process; it didn’t. Much has since been said about why, although the conditions for such a breakthrough probably didn’t exist in the first place. Yet rather than dismissing the summit with the usual sarcasm about the “spirit of Anchorage,” it’s worth considering what the meeting did achieve.

First, it exposed the widening divergence between the United States and Western Europe as the old world’s leaders remain committed to seeking a military victory over Russia, but Washington, by contrast, doesn’t want to become directly involved in pursuing that objective.

Donald Trump’s claim that the United States is merely a mediator rather than a participant is plainly disingenuous, given that Washington remains deeply involved, but American involvement could be far greater, even allowing for the apparent limits on its resources and its growing obligations elsewhere.

This divergence doesn’t mean the transatlantic alliance is about to collapse; however, it does suggest that the Atlanticism established during the second half of the 20th century will not survive in its old form. Whether its replacement will prove more advantageous to Russia remains unclear, but, nevertheless, Moscow has long wished to see the end of NATO as we have known it, and the chances of that happening are increasing.

Anchorage also demonstrated that the United States isn’t all-powerful, as Trump was unable to secure from Western Europe and Ukraine what he wanted at the time. In that instance, Washington’s failure worked against Moscow, but the broader recognition that American power has limits should be regarded as a positive development.

Taken together, these lessons show that the West is becoming more diverse and internally divided, so its remaining unity must increasingly be maintained by political pressure and institutional inertia. Russia must therefore develop a more sophisticated and flexible policy towards Western countries, exploiting their growing differences rather than continuing to treat them as a single bloc.

Finally, Anchorage offered a revealing model of modern diplomacy, in which personalities increasingly matter more than institutions, and character more than principles. There are no longer any “magic” agreements and a gentleman’s agreement lasts only until another gentleman arrives with different priorities.

What retains value is composure and reliance on one’s own capabilities, combined with a sober assessment of their limits. Russia’s mistake before Anchorage was to imagine Trump as an external force capable of fundamentally changing the situation, but he didn’t play that role, nor could he have done so.

That disappointment returned everyone to the reality of the conflict in that no outside power can impose its resolution. During the year since Alaska, the Russian-Western European military confrontation has acquired a clearer direction and an internal logic of its own and it’s within that logic that Russia must seek a way to end the present war and prevent the next one, without waiting for magical solutions or grand bargains imposed from abroad.

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin has delivered an address at the United Russia congress in Moscow, insisting that Russia won’t give up on the principle of popular rule despite the most difficult circumstances, and hold elections throughout the country next month.

The high-profile gathering in the capital was aimed at approving the ruling party’s program for the parliamentary vote on September 8-12.

Putin had already spoken at the first stage of the United Russia congress in late June, during which its candidate list, topped by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, was finalized.

The president is not officially a member of United Russia, but the party has actively supported him and his activities since its foundation in 2001.

United Russia currently holds 315 out of 450 seats in the Russian legislature, the State Duma.

This live feed has ended.

Two children and one adult have been killed, and another adult injured, in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Krasnodar Region, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev has said.

The attack on Saturday targeted the Yeysk district, damaging homes and civilian infrastructure, according to the governor. 

“A family has suffered as a result of yet another vile and cynical strike by the Kiev regime,” Kondratyev wrote on Telegram. “I express my sincere condolences, but no words can bring comfort to their loved ones.”

The two adult victims were hospitalized, one of whom later died, while emergency services were working at the sites where the UAVs came down in a residential area. Drone debris also struck an enterprise at the local port, sparking a fire, Kondratyev said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said multiple Russian regions were targeted by a large-scale drone raid overnight. According to the ministry, air defenses intercepted and destroyed 457 Ukrainian fixed-wing UAVs, including over Krasnodar Region, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azov.

Authorities have declared a day of mourning in the Yeysk district following the attack, cancelling all entertainment events.

District head Roman Bublik said Russian forces had repelled the mass drone attack and shot down most of the UAVs, but casualties could not be avoided. He expressed condolences to the victims’ relatives and said those injured would receive all necessary assistance.

Two Mexicans were among five people arrested at a crystal meth lab worth more than half a billion rand (nearly $30 million) on a farm in Musina, Limpopo, the South African Police Service (SAPS) reported on Friday.

The lab was raided late on Thursday night. The blitz was carried out by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security, alongside the Hawks, SAPS, the South African Narcotics Bureau, Crime Intelligence and the Special Task Force. Hawks spokesman Colonel Avele Fumba said drugs and laboratory equipment worth an estimated R600m were seized, along with an undisclosed amount of cash.

The five men are aged between 20 and 47. Two are Mexican, two are Zimbabwean, and one is Malawian. Fumba said the raid followed a two-month investigation into drug manufacturing on the farm, and that the lab was set up for industrial-scale production. It is the third clandestine drug lab shut down in Limpopo.

Limpopo Hawks head Major General Gopz Govender said the operation had gone after the machinery behind the drug trade. “This R600 million seizure is not merely a quantity of drugs taken off the streets. It represents the disruption of an entire criminal enterprise,” Govender said. “We will follow the money, the networks and every person connected to this operation.”

Limpopo police commissioner Lieutenant General Jan Scheepers said communities would not be left to become markets for syndicates. “Those who manufacture and distribute these dangerous substances must know that law enforcement is closing in on them,” he said.

Officers were still working the scene on Friday morning. Photographs released by police show officers in masks and surgical gloves moving through a low structure roofed with corrugated iron and walled with green shade netting. Industrial steel pots stand on the concrete floor beside a gas cylinder and a digital floor scale.

Musina sits on the Beitbridge border post with Zimbabwe, the busiest land crossing in southern Africa. The five face charges of manufacturing and possessing illicit drugs and are due in the Musina Magistrate’s Court on Monday.

First published by IOL

Washington approved a $5 million payout to Liberia to take in up to 1,200 third-country deportees from the US as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, the New York Times has reported.

The first flight carrying 20 migrants, mainly from Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, landed in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on Thursday.

The NYT said in an article on Friday that the US State Department green-lighted the payment in December after Liberia said a few months earlier it would consider accepting migrants from other nations.

According to internal documents reviewed by the paper, Washington found assurances by Monrovia that the deportees would not be subject to racial or religious discrimination in the West African nation.

The US State Department said in the documents that the money could be allocated to boost Liberia’s immigration system and support vulnerable migrants. However, it also acknowledged the risk of the funds being misused.

Public spending data shows that the US made a $5 million payment to Liberia in January for unspecified “migration management activities,” the NYT said.

When addressed for comment by the paper, a representative of the State Department said that as a general matter, the agency would not “comment on the authenticity or veracity of allegedly leaked documents.”

The report by the NYT goes against the statements by the Liberian government that its agreement with the US was “entirely humanitarian.”

“The transfer of persons to Liberia is not a transaction with a quid pro quo. Liberia has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward in exchange for its consent to participate in the program,” it said on Tuesday.

However, Monrovia noted it “will receive support to help manage the program and strengthen its migration system more broadly,” without disclosing the value or terms of the assistance.

Liberia “was founded as a refuge for freed slaves from the US and other parts of the world” and “has a long history of accepting people seeking refuge from political and other crises,” the statement read.

Since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second term, Washington has inked deals with at least 35 nations to accept third-country deportees, according to data from Human Rights First, an NGO. The agreement with Liberia became one of the largest among them.

Democrats in the Senate estimated in February that at least $40 million in taxpayer money had been spent on such deals, inducing payments of $1.1 million per person to Rwanda for seven deportees and $7.5 million to Equatorial Guinea for 29 migrants.

Immigration lawyers have accused the Trump administration of using third-country deportations as a legal loophole to force migrants back to their countries of origin, which refuse to accept them directly from the US.

They have described the practice as excessively punitive, saying that people are left with no other choice but to try to return home after being delivered to places where they have never been to, don’t know the language and face security risks.

Officials in Spain’s Murcia region have demanded an explanation from authorities in Madrid after dozens of illegal migrants arrived by boat on a crowded beach in broad daylight.

The immigration crisis was thrust back into the spotlight late last month when more than 72,000 people crossed into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast, prompting scrutiny of the left-wing government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and accusations of lax border security.

On Wednesday, a black inflatable boat carrying 62 migrants reached Cala del Barco, a tourist spot near Cartagena. The migrants began jumping into the water as the vessel approached the shore, startling beachgoers.

Arrivée réelle d’un bateau transportant environ 60 envahisseurs sur la plage de Cala del Barco, complexe touristique La Manga Club (Murcie, Costa Cálida, Espagne), le mercredi 19 août 2026 vers 13 h!
Doit-on accepter cela ? Je dis non !!!

pic.twitter.com/EPebPXR4jf

— Jean Bemfair (@JBemfair) August 21, 2026

Officials said the group consisted of 45 adult men, 15 boys, and two adult women, all believed to be Algerian. All 62 have since been located, examined by the Red Cross, and handed over to police.

🔴Des dizaines de migrants sont arrivés en bateau sur la plage de Cala del Barco, en Espagne ; les autorités ont indiqué que la Guardia Civil est parvenue à localiser 62 personnes pic.twitter.com/VB5YzYuVIP

— 75 Secondes 🗞️ (@75secondes) August 21, 2026

🔴 Los inmigrantes desembarcados en la Cala del Barco de Cartagena se dispersan a pie por el complejo de La Manga Club. https://t.co/uvlzwtAKEY pic.twitter.com/ZkzHMEEsjb

— La Bandera (@labanderaes) August 19, 2026

Murcia regional president Fernando Lopez Miras argued that the arrival appeared to have been “organized” and demanded answers from the government.

“We don’t understand how a vessel of that size can reach our shores without being intercepted, without being detected, without any kind of control. We don’t understand where the [Interior] Ministry’s personnel are,” he said, as cited by Murcia Plaza.

He added that the migrants brought “fear and insecurity” to the area and that there was “no information, cooperation or coordination” between the central government and the regions.

Cartagena Mayor Noelia Arroyo said the situation “cannot become normalized,” and called for a “serious, orderly and secure” migration policy.

“If a migrant boat can reach a cove like this, disembark in full view of citizens and then leave, we have to ask ourselves how our maritime borders are being controlled,” she said.

Sanchez condemned the mass crossing into Ceuta as a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” and pledged to strengthen border controls, while blaming the influx on the activity of human-smuggling networks and the spread of “fake news” on social media.

He also condemned what he described as the “selfish, polarizing, and illegal” attitude of European countries such as Italy, which suspended border-free travel with Spain in response to the Ceuta crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has lashed out at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after Ankara announced that it’s seeking an Interpol Red Notice for the controversial leader on genocide charges. The war of words comes amid broader tensions between the two US allies after Türkiye was angered by recent IDF airstrikes on an airbase in Syria.

An Interpol Red Notice is a request to police worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a wanted person pending extradition.

In a statement on X on Friday, Netanyahu’s office labeled Erdogan “an antisemitic dictator, who has massacred Kurds, harbors Hamas terrorists, occupies half of Cyprus, and jails record numbers of journalists and politicians who oppose him.”

The Turkish leader “now seeks to extend his aggression against Israel into Syria. Israel will not tolerate it,” it stressed.

“Erdogan’s pathetic attempt to intimidate the leaders and soldiers of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, will go nowhere,” the statement read.

Earlier on Friday, Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said on X that Netanyahu was among 35 defendants wanted over “an attack” on the activist-operated Global Sumud Flotilla, which sought to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. The charges include genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, deprivation of liberty, hijacking a transport vehicle, and property damage.

“We categorically reject the notion that the Netanyahu government, which is pursuing a policy of genocide in Gaza, is untouchable and cannot be held accountable,” Gurlek said.

The Israeli Navy has boarded several convoys in international waters sailing for Gaza, most recently in May, when more than 400 activists were detained aboard around 50 boats. The activists were deported to Greece and alleged mistreatment while in Israeli custody.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said at the time that all participants in “the provocative flotilla” were unharmed.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly compared Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler over the war in Gaza and accused him of committing genocide against Palestinians. Netanyahu, in turn, has labeled Erdogan an “anti-Semitic dictator” and accused him of committing genocide against Kurds.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has warned Erdogan against dragging his country “into dangerous adventures in Syria” after Ankara strongly condemned the strikes on the Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18. The attack caused no casualties but damaged recently built runways.

Both Syria and Türkiye denied Israel’s claim that Turkish troops were set to be deployed in the area. US presidential envoy to Syria and Iraq Tom Barrack also condemned the Israeli strikes as an unnecessary escalation.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is currently considering South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Separately, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel, which is a party to the ICJ Statute but not a member of the ICC, has denied the allegations.

Jurors in a Las Vegas court have heard an audio recording of Duane Davis, aka ‘Keffe D’, who is on trial for the murder of US rapper Tupac Shakur, telling detectives that his late nephew Orlando Anderson pulled the trigger.

The hip-hop superstar was shot four times while stopped at a red light in a car with record company executive Suge Knight on the Las Vegas Strip on September 7, 1996. Shakur later succumbed to his wounds.

A tape dated 2008 was presented in Clark County District Court on Thursday and features detectives telling Davis that their discussion is confidential, and that “nothing you say today can be used against you.” The former senior figure in the South Side Compton Crips street gang is heard saying that he was in the car, together with Anderson and two other men, when it pulled up alongside Knight’s vehicle, in which Shakur was riding.

“If we would have been on my side, I would have blasted,” Davis tells the detectives, explaining that the target was, however, on the other side.

According to the tape, Davis passed his gun to Deandre ‘Big Dre’ Smith, who refused to shoot. Then Anderson, who was also in the back seat, allegedly took the weapon and opened fire.

Prosecutors believe it was indeed Anderson who fired the fatal shots to avenge being beaten by Shakur and his entourage a few hours earlier. However, the man was never charged and was fatally shot in an unrelated incident in 1998. The other two alleged accomplices are also dead.

Under Nevada law, Davis can still be prosecuted for murder even if he did not actually pull the trigger.

Prosecutors told the jurors that Davis, who was arrested in 2023, has made multiple public statements since 2008, in which he detailed his alleged role in Shakur’s murder, thus nullifying any agreement he may have had with law enforcement.

These include several interviews, as well as the 2019 memoir ‘Compton Street Legend’ that he co-authored.

Davis has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with a deadly weapon with intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He now insists that he fabricated his previous admissions for money and notoriety.

His defense attorney similarly argued that the suspect was “full of c**p” when he publicly spoke about his supposed role in Shakur’s murder, and that no evidence has been presented to back up the prosecution’s allegations.

A conscription officer was fatally stabbed in western Ukraine on Friday night, marking the latest violent incident linked to the country’s controversial mobilization campaign during the conflict with Russia.

The altercation took place in the city of Lviv while a group of draft officials were conducting routine document checks, the regional police department said. A 25-year-old local man allegedly “attacked and stabbed” a 55-year-old officer, who succumbed to his injuries in an ambulance, it said.

A police officer accompanying the draft officials fired two shots, wounding the assailant in the leg. The suspect was hospitalized, police said, without providing details about what provoked the attack.

Video from the scene shows an agitated man standing across from an officer, separated by a half-open gate, as three onlookers stand nearby. The man suddenly rushes through the gate at the officer, who steps out of frame. A gunshot is heard, after which the man falls to the ground, apparently clutching his leg.

As he sits up and continues to move, the officer shoots him again at close range. The man, however, continues to crawl toward the officer before getting to his feet and struggling with him out of frame.

У Львові чоловік поранив ножем працівника ТЦК, після чого поліцейський вистрілив у нападника. pic.twitter.com/fsFdJHAvf9

— Олег Володарський (@volodarskijo) August 21, 2026

Police released an image of the knife allegedly used by the suspect.

Men aged 25 to 55 are subject to mobilization in Ukraine, while those aged 23 to 60 are generally barred from leaving the country.

The mobilization campaign, dubbed ‘busification’, has involved conscription officers ambushing military-age men on the streets, at workplaces, and outside their homes and shoving them into vans. Officers have often used violence against those attempting to resist or flee. Family members and former recruits have alleged widespread abuse at enlistment offices and training camps, resulting in several deaths. The military maintains that most of the deaths were due to natural causes.

In multiple cases, family members and bystanders have clashed with officers in an effort to prevent recruits from being sent to the front line.

The US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is heading home from its extended deployment, multiple media outlets reported on Thursday, citing officials.

The carrier’s tour of duty began in late November last year and was originally scheduled to end in May, but it was repeatedly extended due to its participation in the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran. The vessel now holds a modern US Navy record for the longest consecutive, uninterrupted period at sea, with roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard and more than 260 days spent largely without port calls.

The deployment has reportedly been plagued by supply and maintenance issues, including shortages of food and basic supplies, a lack of hot and potable water, and plumbing problems. Crew members’ families have raised alarm over what they described as collapsing morale, burnout, and mental health issues. Several crew members reportedly attempted to jump overboard.

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao acknowledged last week a “small number of mental health cases” on board that were “treated with no loss of life.”

Reports about the troubled deployment have prompted calls for the dismissal of US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who dismissed concerns raised in the media as “completely misrepresented.”

Last week, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Hegseth “must be fired immediately” over the USS Abraham Lincoln situation.

”When Pete Hegseth was nominated, everyone knew he was completely incompetent. Now our brave sailors are paying the price in a horrific and unfathomable way,” the Democratic leader said.

The politics of Vladimir Zelensky’s Ukraine remain a smelly swamp, producing a ceaseless seepage of scandals occasionally percolating to the surface in big, toxic bubbles that pop with a noxious stink. Recently, for instance, the returning ambassador to the US – no less – has become the subject of a corruption case bad enough to require bail equivalent to $130,000.

The very latest Zelensky regime stink bubble to burst, however, is centered on a former double minister. Before ending up at the center of yet another big pile of dirt, compliments of Zelensky and cronies, Herman Galushchenko had served as minister of energy and then of justice. And if you know Kiev’s political culture – for want of better terms – you won’t be surprised to hear that, in the end, he ended up arrested under suspicion of very large-scale corruption.

To be precise, Galushchenko is one of the main suspects in the massive scandal featuring the Energoatom, aka Mindich-Gate after Timur Mindich, an intimate friend of Zelensky who, clearly tipped off about his impending arrest, has long fled to Israel. Galushchenko, too, tried to run, but was not fast enough, or more likely, lacked the same level of premium protection, namely from the president himself, and got caught at the border.

Yet if the story had ended there, this would not be Ukraine.  Now we are into the sequel, and it’s at least as bad as the first part. Because in essence, Galushchenko in a cell was a thought that Zelensky and his crew could not tolerate. Surely out of sheer mafia-like camaraderie! Perish the thought – they were afraid of any deals the former minister might strike and names he might name. But getting Galushchenko out was expensive: Here as well the court had set bail, and as Mindich-Gate was a $100-million case, the bail wasn’t cheap.

Hence, this time the scandal is not about the embezzling, extorting, or stealing of humungous amounts of money, Ukrainian-establishment style. But that’s only because the stealing had been done already and phase two had started: laundering the loot. In legalese, the official case is about an attempt to “legalize criminally acquired property.” In practice, this meant weaving up a web of criminal deception to pay Galushchenko’s bail, well above $3 million – we are in the big league now – with dirty money made to look clean.

Central to this operation and the highest-ranking official to have lost her position at this point is Irina Mudraya, the deputy head of Zelensky’s very own office, as well as a former deputy minister of justice. But the circle of suspects is much wider, as always in Ukraine where corruption is the passionate national sport of those running and ruining the country, while its ordinary citizens are hunted by military press gangs in broad daylight.

Also officially under suspicion and investigation are Maksim Mikitas, a former parliamentary deputy; Vadim Stolar, a currently serving parliamentary deputy; Viktor Dubovik, another high official from Zelensky’s presidential office; Elena Ferens, a deputy minister of justice; Nikolay Gladishchenko, Oleg Stupak, Liudmila Snygur, all three high up in the management of state-owned Sens Bank, which served as the financial vehicle for the launder-and-pay-for-Galushchenko scheme.

Then we also have “businessman,” a “person linked to Mikitas,” the director of the Metrostroy company, a driver who also happens to run Montazh Servis (a construction company by the name of it – good for concrete foundations to bury the talkative), and a bodyguard who doubles as the director of a firm calling itself The Philosophy of Development.

These, in sum, are typical pillars of the Ukrainian establishment as it really is. Suffice it to say that, in 2018, high-flyer Irina Mudraya, trained at Lviv University, received a ‘Best Legal Adviser in Banking and Financial Law’ award (sure, just be honest next time and call it ‘Best Consigliere in Mafia Ukraine’). In 2021, she won ‘Women Leaders who have Influenced the Development of the Legal Community’ (and unfortunately, she probably has). And just two years ago, Business Woman magazine honored her achievements in “Politics and Diplomacy.”

In short, if the Cohen Brothers were to make a very dark, caustic comedy about corruption in Ukraine, this would be their cast. Not all of it, of course, because rest assured, many accomplices and even leaders have not been caught and won’t ever be caught, including the man everyone is always thinking about but can’t ever name when the latest stink bubble pops – the president himself.

Yet one man who may be looking at an uncertain near-future in conjunction with ‘Operation Forrest Gump’ – the code name for this investigation – is the current head of Zelensky’s administration, Kirill Budanov. Formerly mostly busy with black ops, lies, and terrorism, Budanov has taken his office as Zelensky’s top manager only recently. His predecessor Andrey Yermak, another very close, intimate friend of Zelensky, had been forced out because of his deep involvement in Mindich-Gate. Or probably, really due to both his own crimes and those of Zelensky himself that needed a fall guy.

As caught by eavesdropping, Mudraya reminded an accomplice that “he says that corruption needs to be organized and controlled; we must not fight it.” According to Ukrainska Pravda, the mysterious “he,” the real author of that arrogantly direct and brashly cynical statement, was her boss Budanov.

It is intriguing, as another Ukrainian publication has pointed out that it is precisely Ukrainska Pravda that has dared name Budanov. For the outlet is among the supporters of Mikhail Fedorov, the tech whizz kid and former minister of defense, who has turned from a Zelensky regime insider into a challenger by calling for presidential elections even during wartime. That is, in reality, for calling for an end to the Zelensky regime, because the incumbent, polls show, can be beaten.

Let’s set aside that Fedorov has demolished, in passing, a favorite propaganda lie shared by official Kiev and the West, namely that the Ukrainian constitution does not allow for such elections during wartime. In reality, the constitution does no such thing. Politically, the key fact is that Fedorov has thrown his hat in the ring. And in that coming fight, it is very likely that one of his main rivals will be Budanov.

The swamp that is Ukrainian politics keeps festering. The greed and cynicism of Kiev’s ‘elite’ knows no limits. At the same time what may be even more tragic for Ukraine is that any attempt to reign in the rampant corruption by finally holding everyone accountable, no matter how high up, is not only unlikely to succeed but dishonest too.

Naming Budanov? Yes, but not because he should face scrutiny and accountability but because he needs to be weakened so that another ambitious establishment representative has a better chance at beating him at coming elections. In Kiev, stories of messianic redeemers are popular again and again. Zelensky was once the most enthusiastically endorsed of them all. And yet it is his regime that has become the very worst. Why would Fedorov be any different? Or for that matter, anyone else. Ukraine does not need personnel change; it needs a massive reset.

Dozens of Ukrainian soldiers have deserted while undergoing military training in Germany, Die Zeit has reported, citing interviews with ten men who fled their units.

Kiev has increasingly relied on forced mobilization as it struggles to replenish battlefield losses. Videos regularly circulate online showing recruitment officers detaining men in public places and forcing them into vehicles, sometimes after violent confrontations. The practice has become widely known in Ukraine as “busification.”

Die Zeit reported on Wednesday that during the early years of the conflict, Ukrainian troops sent to Germany for training were generally experienced and highly motivated. More recently, however, many of those arriving have been newly mobilized recruits.

In Saxony-Anhalt alone, the regional Interior Ministry has recorded around 80 cases of Ukrainian soldiers deserting, while the nationwide total is believed to run into the hundreds, according to the weekly.

Among those interviewed was Vladimir Shulgin, a 39-year-old former pianist from Dnepr. He told Die Zeit that after Ukraine intensified its mobilization campaign, he largely avoided leaving home while his wife supported the family.

Shulgin said he was detained by recruitment officers after venturing outside in late January and was subsequently sent to Germany’s Altengrabow military training facility.

According to his account, he initially had no intention of deserting. He changed his mind after allegedly being physically abused by Ukrainian superiors and threatened with death upon his return to Ukraine.

After a German military doctor referred him to a hospital in Berlin, Shulgin did not return to the training facility. He has since applied for asylum and is living in a refugee shelter.

Another deserter interviewed by Die Zeit said he had fled because he did not want to kill or be killed.

“I simply don’t want to die, and I don’t want to kill. Not at the front, and nowhere else. Is that enough?” he said.

Their prospects of obtaining asylum are “likely slim,” however, according to the newspaper.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said last month that while Ukrainian men of military age could still apply for asylum, avoiding military service did not in itself constitute grounds for protection.

Similar desertions have occurred during Ukrainian training programs elsewhere in Europe. In late 2024, Ukrainian media reported that around 50 soldiers from the 155th Mechanized Brigade had deserted during training in France.

The Ukrainian authorities have acknowledged tens of thousands of desertion and unauthorized-absence cases since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022.

Russia has accused the leadership in Kiev and its Western backers of being willing to fight “to the last Ukrainian.”

The US Navy is reportedly considering whether to rename an upcoming aircraft carrier honoring World War II black hero Doris Miller after President Donald Trump in an unprecedented move.

The ongoing discussions were first reported on Friday by CNN, citing three sources familiar with the matter. The report was corroborated by CBN News, with two unnamed US officials confirming to the broadcaster that deliberations have been going on.

The USS Doris Miller is set to become the fourth Ford-class aircraft carrier and is expected to be commissioned in the mid-2030s. Under the first Trump administration, the US Navy announced the decision to name it after Miller, who distinguished himself during the attack on Pearl Harbor. The sailor, an enlisted cook with no appropriate training, managed to shoot down at least one incoming Japanese aircraft during the attack, becoming the first black recipient of the Navy Cross for his feat.

The navy is now reportedly weighing renaming a different warship after Miller, as well as posthumously recommending him for the Medal of Honor, the top US decoration for military valor. The sailor was killed in 1943 in the Japanese torpedoing of the USS Liscome Bay, which remains the deadliest carrier sinking in US Navy history, with over 700 crew lost.

During conversations regarding the ship’s name, the US Navy reportedly stopped referring to the ship as the USS Doris Miller, calling it exclusively by its hull number, CVN-81, one of the sources told CNN. The service has also been reportedly reviewing its rules covering vessel appellation, as naming a carrier after a sitting president would be an unprecedented and highly controversial move.

A recent Trump executive order, in which he tasked the Pentagon and US Navy to come up with a plan to replace electromagnetic aircraft launch systems on carriers with old-school steam and hydraulic catapults, also referred to the ship only by its hull number.

The US president has shown a great interest in shipbuilding during his second term. In December last year, Trump announced plans to construct a ‘Golden Fleet’ of massive, aptly named Trump-class battleships that would be “100 times more powerful” than any ever built. Trump said he approved building two ships to start, with plans for up to 25. 

The ‘Golden Fleet’ affair reportedly resulted in the downfall of Navy Secretary John Phelan, who was sacked this April for allegedly failing to deliver a plan to build the Trump-class battleships on a “nearly impossible timeline.”

As more US police departments deploy Flock cameras to monitor traffic and track criminals, public backlash has grown. In San Diego, a protester dressed as Darth Vader showed up to a city council meeting to portray Flock as a tool for tracking “rebel scum.”

There are now more than 130,000 Flock cameras dotting the US, with law enforcement departments in at least 4,000 cities erecting the AI-powered surveillance devices on intersections, parking lots, and public land. Flock Technologies says the cameras have helped police stop burglaries, carjackings, and homicides, but opponents say they encroach on civil liberties.

At a meeting of the San Diego City Council on Wednesday, a man dressed as Star Wars villain Darth Vader shared his opinion on the technology, approaching the podium with his character’s signature mechanical breathing.

“The Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilising Flock technologies so that we can surveil the rebel scum,” he declared. “As they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium, because we all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers, they are following children.”

Darth Vader comes out in favor of Flock cameras pic.twitter.com/YL3jaiwIEx

— Orwell Day (@OrwellDay) August 20, 2026

Flock is best known for its Falcon ALPR (Automated License Plate Recognition) cameras, which capture still images of passing vehicles. However, the company’s Condor PTZ video cameras can be used by police departments to track the movement of individuals across multiple cameras with AI, and search for people via description.

Flock’s Falcon ALPR cameras have already been used by more than 50 police officers to stalk women – including ex-wives and partners – without their consent, the Washington Post reported earlier this month. Vulnerabilities in Flock’s software have also left images of children, recorded with the company’s video cameras, exposed online. 

“I need this so I can stalk my ex-girlfriend,” ‘Darth Vader’ told the city council meeting. “This technology will help us find Luke Skywalker as he traverses the universe in his X-Wing.”

The rollout of Flock cameras began at scale in 2020, but the process has not been smooth.  Flock cameras have been shot, spray-painted, cut down, and obstructed across the country. According to FlockStats, a website that counts confirmed incidents of vandalism against the devices, at least 162 have been destroyed nationwide. 

As the cameras have proliferated, so have their detractors. Republican Representative Thomas Massie is among the highest-profile opponents of the technology, introducing a bill last month that would withhold federal funding from police departments deploying the cameras. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, has also ordered cities to pause the installation of Flock cameras until the state develops new privacy legislation. 

Israeli airstrikes on Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18 unexpectedly turned what might otherwise have looked like another familiar episode of Israeli military activity inside a neighboring country into something far more dangerous.

This time, the real recipient of Israel’s warning was neither Iran nor Hezbollah, but Türkiye, which has emerged as one of the principal political and military partners of Syria’s new leadership since the fall of Bashar Assad. Eight strikes hit the airbase, located roughly 70 kilometers from the Turkish border, damaging runways and military infrastructure.

Israel said the operation was intended to prevent Syria from allowing Turkish forces to establish a presence there, while US and Israeli officials indicated that one of the objectives was also to disrupt the delivery of advanced Turkish weapons systems to the facility. Shortly before the attack, Mossad chief Roman Gofman had reportedly discussed with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Shaibani the expansion of Türkiye’s military footprint, arms sales to Damascus and the possible transfer of drones to the Syrian armed forces.

Turkish-Syrian military cooperation itself is hardly a secret. As early as August 2025, Ankara formally agreed to assist the reconstruction of Syria’s armed forces through weapons, military equipment, logistics, training and advisory support, and over the past year, the two governments have steadily deepened that relationship. What remains unconfirmed, however, is whether a new shipment of Turkish weaponry was physically delivered to Syria on August 20. Yet the issue goes beyond that particular shipment.

Israel increasingly views the transformation of Turkish assistance from a reconstruction program into a permanent military infrastructure as a strategic shift in the regional balance. It is especially concerned about drones, electronic warfare systems, radar networks and, above all, the eventual deployment of modern air-defense systems that could restrict Israel’s long-standing freedom of action in Syrian airspace.

The escalation between Türkiye and Israel is advancing at a remarkable speed. For the moment, the confrontation remains largely rhetorical, diplomatic and indirect, but Syria has created the very real possibility of a proxy conflict between two states that both possess modern armed forces, sophisticated defense industries and competing visions of the regional order. Syria could become the arena in which those visions collide via the arming of allies, the destruction of military infrastructure and attempts to enforce rival red lines. Such a scenario could become the point of no return.

Syria is no longer just a buffer zone

The most important change is that post-Assad Syria is no longer merely a battleground for Israel’s campaign against Iranian influence. For years, Israel operated within a relatively predictable framework. Airstrikes targeted assets linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, weapons depots and supply routes serving Hezbollah, Syrian air-defense systems and other infrastructure capable of restricting Israeli operational freedom. Türkiye was not directly a part of that equation.

Now, Ankara has acquired the opportunity to rely not only on its long-standing military presence in northern Syria and on armed groups historically aligned with it, but increasingly on the central government in Damascus itself. Syria’s new authorities need investment, reconstruction, military training, infrastructure and international political backing, all of which Türkiye is well placed to provide. For Ankara, this represents an unusually favorable strategic opening, allowing it to convert years of costly involvement in the Syrian conflict into lasting influence over the political and military architecture of the neighboring state.

Israel sees the Turkish presence as a threat. If the Syrian army remains weak, fragmented and technologically backward, Israel can preserve near-unrestricted operational freedom across large parts of Syrian territory. But if Türkiye helps Damascus rebuild a centralized army, restore airfields and radar networks, acquire drones and eventually field modern defensive systems, Israel could face a fundamentally different Syria within several years. More importantly, that Syria would no longer be backed by a sanctions-battered Iran, but by a NATO member with a rapidly expanding defense-industrial base.

The attack on Abu al-Duhur is an attempt to establish a preventive red line. Netanyahu said after the strike that Israel would not tolerate a Turkish military presence in Syria that threatened Israeli security, adding that an earlier message had apparently not been understood clearly enough. Türkiye replied by accusing the Israeli prime minister of pursuing an “expansionist and destabilizing policy,” while Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against testing Israel’s determination.

Even Israel’s allies in Washington are concerned. US envoy Tom Barrack described the strike as an unnecessary escalation, while the US has accelerated efforts to create a deconfliction mechanism between Israel, Türkiye and Syria. The very fact that such a mechanism is now considered necessary shows that Washington is increasingly treating an accidental or deliberate confrontation between two of its most important regional partners as a scenario that requires technical safeguards rather than as an abstract possibility.

Netanyahu needs an enemy before October

Yet it would be a mistake to think that Israel is solely pursuing military goals. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for October 27, and the campaign has already transformed Israel’s foreign policy into one of the central arenas of domestic political competition.

For Benjamin Netanyahu, this may be one of the most difficult election campaigns of his career. For decades, he built his political brand around two propositions – that he alone could guarantee Israel’s security and that he possessed a unique ability to manage relations with Washington and other world powers. Both claims are now under scrutiny. The October 7 attack shattered much of Netanyahu’s long-cultivated image as Israel’s ultimate guarantor of security. Years of war and mobilization have not produced an uncontested political outcome; relations with allies have grown more complicated, and domestic tensions have been intensified by disputes over ultra-Orthodox military service, the confrontation over the judiciary and Netanyahu’s continuing criminal trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, all of which he denies.

His problem is compounded by shifts within the electorate itself. Netanyahu must simultaneously recover more moderate right-wing voters and prevent the radical wing of the nationalist camp from drifting toward politicians such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and other parties positioned to the right of Netanyahu’s Likud party. That creates almost ideal conditions for a return to one of Netanyahu’s most effective political instruments – the politics of the besieged fortress.

The more threatening the external danger appears, the easier it becomes to move the election away from questions about Netanyahu’s personal responsibility, his court cases, the social cost of prolonged mobilization and economic pressures, and instead turn it into a referendum on who can be trusted to lead Israel against a growing circle of enemies.

That strategy has become explicit in Likud’s campaign messaging. Billboards have placed Erdoğan alongside Iran’s supreme leader, Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, beneath the slogan that they all want Netanyahu to lose. Erdoğan is no longer a difficult foreign leader or an unreliable partner, he now stands among Israel’s traditional adversaries and is being used as part of domestic electoral mobilization.

Netanyahu’s critics are attacking him from opposite directions. Naftali Bennett, himself hardly a dove, argues that Israel’s international position has deteriorated dramatically under Netanyahu and has proposed the creation of a special public-diplomacy body to fight for Israel’s image abroad. Bennett’s criticism carries weight: There is no fundamental disagreement between him and much of the Israeli right over the need to confront hostile regional forces. The disagreement is over method and results. According to Bennett, Israel possesses enormous military power but has failed to efficiently convert it into diplomatic clout.

Ehud Barak, by contrast, has attacked Netanyahu for moving too far in the opposite direction. He described the strike on Abu al-Duhur as “reckless and foolish” and argued that it carried a strong political flavor of manufacturing security fears before the election. Barak’s position is that Türkiye is not Iran and not Assad’s Syria, and that the tensions with Ankara can still be managed through discreet channels coordinated with Washington.

Netanyahu now finds himself squeezed between those that demand he prove that Israel can still impose its will on the region, and those accusing him of turning foreign policy into an extension of his election campaign. In this tight spot, backing down before Ankara may carry almost as much domestic political risk as escalating further.

Erdoğan has reasons of his own

The situation in Türkiye’s domestic politics is similar in some aspects, but different in others. The next scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections are formally due in 2028, yet the possibility of an early vote remains a recurring subject in Turkish politics. The issue is especially relevant for Erdoğan because constitutional limits complicate another presidential run unless the legal and electoral framework changes or early elections are triggered under specific conditions. At the same time, the government continues to promote the idea of a new constitution, a project that the opposition views partly through the lens of Erdoğan’s political future.

Türkiye is also approaching the next electoral cycle from a position of persistent economic and political strain. Inflation remains high, purchasing power has been severely eroded, and the cost of housing and food continues to shape everyday voter sentiment. Even as Ankara has adopted more orthodox economic policies and rebuilt parts of its financial credibility, the social consequences of years of inflation remain politically toxic.

The political environment is also tense. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s most formidable long-term rival, has been imprisoned, while the main opposition party CHP has endured a severe internal crisis and leadership struggle. Turkish authorities reject accusations that legal proceedings against opposition figures are politically motivated, but the struggle over the country’s post-Erdoğan future, or perhaps Erdoğan’s continued political dominance, has already begun well before the formal campaign.

Confrontation with Israel offers Erdoğan several political advantages. It appeals simultaneously to religious-conservative and nationalist constituencies, allows Türkiye to present itself as a state capable of shaping the Middle East, and turns foreign policy activism into proof that Ankara remains an autonomous center of power despite its economic problems.

By backing the government in Damascus, Türkiye can embed itself in Syria’s future security and political architecture, weaken Kurdish armed formations, expand markets for its defense industry and deepen its political presence all the way to the Mediterranean. Erdoğan has already argued that Israeli military activity in Syria and Lebanon has reached a stage where it threatens Türkiye’s own security.

This creates a problem similar to Netanyahu’s. Once Ankara publicly presents itself as a state capable of protecting its partners and influencing the regional balance, retreating after a direct Israeli strike on an object associated with Turkish-Syrian cooperation becomes politically costly. The more Türkiye’s regional strategy depends on the perception that it can defend its interests, the harder it becomes to ignore Israeli attempts to define the limits of Turkish involvement by force.

The Mecca pact and the fear of a new Sunni axis

On August 7, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a defense agreement in Mecca. The pact reportedly includes principles of mutual protection, political and military coordination, joint exercises and cooperation in defense production, including drone manufacturing, electronic warfare and emerging technologies. Riyadh has emphasized that the arrangement should not be understood as a sectarian bloc or as an alliance directed against any particular state.

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

From an Israeli perspective, this is the kind of development that feeds concern over the emergence of a new Sunni axis. What matters is not whether the three countries have formally created an anti-Israel alliance. They have not. Their interests differ, their relationships with Washington are distinct, and Saudi Arabia in particular has reasons to avoid being locked into an overtly anti-Israeli structure. But Israeli strategists are increasingly focused on the possibility that Turkish military power, Saudi financial weight and Pakistani strategic capabilities could gradually become parts of a broader political-security architecture capable of limiting Israel’s freedom of maneuver.

This concern is not limited to Netanyahu’s camp, either. Bennett has previously warned of the danger of Türkiye becoming a kind of “new Iran” and of a hostile Sunni strategic framework emerging with the involvement of nuclear-armed Pakistan. Once Saudi Arabia is added to that picture, the implications become even more uncomfortable for Israel, especially because normalization with Riyadh was for years regarded as one of the top strategic objectives of Israeli diplomacy. After decades of confronting what Israeli strategists described as an Iranian-led “Shiite crescent,” Israel may now be facing the early outlines of a very different regional center of gravity – one that conflicts with the idea of Israel as the uncontested dominant power of the region, and potentially with the nationalist expansionist vision of ‘Greater Israel’ itself.

For Ankara, on the other hand, the Mecca pact is another opportunity to evolve from an autonomous regional player into one of the architects of a new Middle Eastern security order. It allows Erdoğan to deepen strategic ties with the largest Arab economy, reinforce relations with a nuclear power, consolidate influence in Syria and demonstrate to Turkish voters that, despite domestic economic difficulties and political tensions, Türkiye is capable of shaping events far beyond its borders.

The current Turkish-Israeli confrontation is about more than Erdoğan and Netanyahu, or even about Syria itself. It is the product of two processes occurring simultaneously. At home, both leaders have powerful incentives to demonstrate strength amid electoral pressure, economic problems and social polarization. Abroad, competition for regional leadership and military-political influence is intensifying rapidly in a Middle East where the old post-Assad balance has already begun to disappear.

Neither Ankara nor West Jerusalem appears to want a direct war – yet if Türkiye continues to arm and train the Syrian military while Israel systematically destroys the infrastructure created with Turkish assistance, a de facto proxy conflict will already exist. But if Turkish servicemen are killed in a future strike, or if Israel deliberately destroys a major Turkish military asset inside Syria, the domestic political cost of restraint for Erdoğan would rise dramatically. Conversely, if Syrian forces using Turkish-supplied systems were to shoot down an Israeli aircraft, Netanyahu would face exactly the same political dilemma, particularly only weeks before the October election.

When foreign confrontation starts to define a leader’s domestic political legitimacy, the space for compromise contracts much faster than the space for military action.

Escalation was the name of the game this week, as the full extent of British involvement in Ukraine’s long-range strikes on Russia was revealed, and as US President Donald Trump laid claim to the Strait of Hormuz and shifted to a policy of subjecting Iran to long-term economic strangulation.

Trump declares ‘D-Day’ for Iran

The 60-day window for the US and Iran to negotiate a lasting ceasefire and peace deal expired on Monday, with Trump telling reporters that he had no interest in extending a truce when he felt Tehran was “not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary.” 

Instead, the US president took to social media to declare the Strait of Hormuz “new US territory,” before promising to inflict “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale” on Iran by punishing any country doing business with the Islamic Republic. However, despite Trump’s declaration of “ECONOMIC D-DAY,” the balance of power in the Persian Gulf has not changed.

Iran retains its veto on shipping in the vital waterway; a mere six ships transited the strait on Tuesday, despite the Pentagon leaking information about a ‘secret shipping corridor’ via the Israeli military’s favorite reporter, Barak Ravid. Iran also maintains a formidable arsenal of missiles and drones, and has threatened to “escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and wider region” if diplomacy fails and Trump refuses to lift his blockade on Iranian ports.

pic.twitter.com/FSYX32KR8d

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 19, 2026

Iran and Oman are the only players in the region making diplomatic progress right now, with the two reaching an “understanding” on a future shipping regime in the strait, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday. Trump’s response? If Oman strikes a deal that doesn’t satisfy Washington, “we’ll bomb the sh*t out of them.”

Russia warns Britain of ‘consequences’

As the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence approaches on Monday, the country is in the most perilous position it’s been in since the fall of the USSR. Vladimir Zelensky spent the week continuing to beg for non-existent air defense missiles from his Western backers; this was to no avail as Russia continued to pound military, industrial, and energy targets across Ukraine with impunity.

We need missiles for Patriots, and only our partners can provide them. We ain’t talking about gifts. Ukraine is ready to buy the weapons we need. What matters is that decisions be made, first and foremost in the U.S. I am grateful to everyone who is helping Ukraine save lives. pic.twitter.com/OImT18CGwM

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 20, 2026

For as long as Kiev keeps up its campaign of terror-bombing Russian cities, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Thursday, “the Russian Armed Forces will respond proportionately.” For Ukraine, this means more ballistic missiles, more blackouts, and more burning weapons factories in Kiev and beyond.

Zelensky wasn’t the only participant in the conflict to receive a stark warning from Moscow. After the Sunday Times revealed that Ukrainian forces have used British-made drones for long-range attacks inside Russia for the past six months, Moscow’s embassy in London stated that “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the point even more directly:

[Russian President Vladimir Putin] has warned that we have the right to act in any part of the world’s oceans if anyone encroaches on our interests or our property. Likewise, we have every right to regard the proudly proclaimed direct involvement of British missile forces in strikes against Russia as participation in the war, with all the consequences that entails

Coming after Russia dismantled Ukraine’s port infrastructure with missiles, and began its winter campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure a month early, it’s a warning that London would be wise to heed.

Zelensky feels the squeeze

Zelensky’s friends in London have vowed to stick with the Ukrainian leader “100%” of the way, but at home in Kiev, opposition is rising. Fired by Zelensky last month, former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov made a bid for power on Tuesday, releasing a campaign-style video blasting the corruption and “systemic crisis of governance” in Kiev, and upping the ante by calling for a wartime election.

Fedorov’s drone-centric model of warfare won him support from a public hungry for the illusion of victory, and his glad-handing with the new military-industrial elite in Silicon Valley made him powerful friends abroad – even if, as RT explored in our ‘Wired for War’ series, he turned the Defense Ministry into a glorified sales office for Palantir.

Zelensky, on the other hand, had to fire another senior aide this week as the Timur Mindich corruption scandal keeps thinning out his ranks. Storm clouds are gathering for the former actor. The challenge from Fedorov combined with another embarrassing corruption revelation has drawn the attention of the Western media, with the usual cheerleaders in the Wall Street Journal calling the ex-minister’s video the “biggest challenge” to Zelensky’s “hold on the presidency” since 2022.

To mark the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, RT is launching a dedicated series that provides a snapshot of Ukraine’s present, and warnings about its future. Watch for banners on Sunday on rt.com. 

Meta’s trillion-dollar trial begins

Zelensky is a once-untouchable titan facing his most serious challenge to date. If there’s anyone who knows the feeling, it’s Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Meta went on trial on Tuesday, accused by four US states of designing its platforms to keep children and teenagers scrolling for as long as possible, with all of the ensuing mental health consequences. 

Meta has faced – and lost – ‘addiction’ lawsuits before, but this trial is the first to be heard in a federal courtroom, and also involves federal-level accusations that the company harvested data from under-13s without parental consent. Should the four states win, Meta could, at least in theory, be forced to pay $1.4 trillion in damages. Appeals may go all the way to the US Supreme Court, where a judgment against the company could force Meta, TikTok, and other social media giants to permanently alter how they build their platforms.

Whatever the result, 25 other US states have signed on to the lawsuit, meaning Zuckerberg’s legal problems will only compound from here on.

However, as the old military adage goes, “shoot the archer, not the arrow.” Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are merely tools in the hands of an elite hellbent on building a decadent society, French-Russian analyst Matthieu Buge wrote for RT this week. Defanging Meta won’t stop people craving the dopamine hit that tech offers, he argued, concluding that “whoever wins the Meta trial, the masses will remain willing slaves.”

Another crisis threatens the EU

Every EU headline these days seems to involve a crisis of some sort: the energy crisis, economic crisis, political crisis, and the migrant crisis, the latter of which degenerated this week with multiple rapes in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. The latest emergency looming over the bloc is a potentially existential one – a food crisis. 

It’s the perfect storm. The War in the Persian Gulf has driven fertilizer costs sky-high, and successive heatwaves across Europe have decimated yields. Groundwater reserves are depleted in France, harvests of certain vegetables are down almost 100% in Belgium, while cattle go hungry in Spain and Polish poultry farmers grapple with mass die-offs.

This was one of our top stories this week, and we’ll be keeping an eye on the crisis throughout the fall. Meanwhile, here’s what we’ll be monitoring next week: 

What to watch out for

The on-again, off-again talks between the US and Iran are seemingly dead in the water, and with all parties escalating, we’ll be watching who signs on to Trump’s sanctions regime. China is already out, and the Europeans are staying quiet. If the sanctions plan crumbles and Trump refuses to walk away, a return to open war may be in the cards.

Expect more punishing Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, and more long-range attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure from an increasingly desperate Zelensky. The embattled Ukrainian leader hasn’t publicly responded to Fedorov’s challenge yet, and he’ll likely use his Independence Day speech on Monday to project an image of control and stability.

The true test for Zelensky will come on his next foreign trip, when Western reporters may question him on Fedorov’s political ambitions and – less likely – the endemic corruption in Kiev. Zelensky has a famously short fuse, and his reaction will speak volumes about how seriously he takes the threat to his power. 

We’ll also stay tuned to the Meta trial and keep you posted on just how hard Zuckerberg and his colleagues worked to hide the insidious design of their platforms. Stick with rt.com for all these stories, and watch our banners for our special deep-dive into Ukraine’s tragic, fascinating three decades of independence.

Kirill Budanov, the head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office, has been drawn into a widening corruption investigation involving senior Ukrainian officials, Ukrainskaya Pravda reported on Thursday.

According to the outlet, Budanov’s name appears in case materials concerning his former deputy Irina Mudraya, who was fired by Zelensky this week after anti-corruption investigators searched her home.

The case centers on efforts to raise and legalize about $3.3 million in bail money for former Energy Minister German 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.

The outlet reported that Zelensky tasked Budanov with organizing the bail effort, with businessmen and former lawmakers brought in to help find the money. The funds were eventually paid through little-known companies with opaque ownership.

Recordings released by investigators show Mudraya repeatedly referring to instructions from “the leadership,” which the outlet said could mean either Budanov or Zelensky himself. In one conversation, she quoted a senior official as saying that corruption should be “systematized and controlled” rather than fought.

Ukrainskaya Pravda cited sources as saying Budanov has become unusually cautious since the latest recordings were published and has avoided meetings with outsiders. The outlet also reported that he is helping Mudraya as she faces prosecution.

The case is but the latest of several major graft investigations to reach Zelensky’s inner circle. His former chief of staff Andrey Yermak has also been accused of laundering more than $10.4 million through a luxury property scheme outside Kiev.

Other recent investigations have targeted former ministers, diplomats, and senior officials. Foreign Ministry figures have been accused of stealing about $1.3 million in Western aid, while separate cases have involved alleged embezzlement in the energy and defense sectors.

The heads of the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) recently warned that graft remains entrenched at the highest levels of 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 NABU and SAPO under tighter government control. He was quickly forced to reverse the move after it sparked nationwide protests and criticism from Kiev’s Western backers.

Corruption has also complicated Ukraine’s EU ambitions. A senior European diplomat recently told the Financial Times that admitting a country ranked 104th globally for perceived corruption would make a “mockery of the entire project.”

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.”

People-to-people ties between India and Russia have been one of the core strengths of the relationship, Indian Ambassador to Moscow Vinay Kumar said at the four-day annual ‘India Day 2026’ festival in central Moscow.

The event, which started Thursday, is a major crowd puller that brings together hundreds of artists and artisans. Last year, over 2 million people attended.

“With technology and the creative economy, all of this is gaining more ground,” Kumar said.

He cited the countries’ cooperation in culture, academies, dance, drama, and music, and noted the “great enthusiasm” of the crowd. “On a working day, thousands of people enjoy Indian music… and see the vibrancy it generates.”

Addressing the burgeoning cooperation between the two nations, the envoy highlighted some of the key drivers they are focusing on to achieve their $100 billion bilateral trade target, which was set when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited New Delhi in December.

📹 Just How Popular is Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy in Russia? See For Yourself...

RT India's karaoke booth at 'India Day 2026' saw many 🇮🇳 and 🇷🇺 participants singing to Mithun Chakraborty's famous track from the 80s. https://t.co/K55UuPkEEY pic.twitter.com/TjN2tRwvEu

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) August 21, 2026

Kumar noted energy and minerals, metals, education and tourism have been key areas of cooperation amid Western attempts to isolate Russia economically.

India is the second-largest importer of crude from Russia, and Indian companies, especially state-owned ones, have recently reached out to Russian entities to source Indian rare earths, coal, and minerals from the country, as New Delhi seeks to secure its supply chains amid the geopolitical tensions.

”The FTA (free trade agreement) that we are negotiating with the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) will help to achieve the $100 billion target in bilateral trade,” Kumar said. India and five post-Soviet Republics – Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan – held a second round of talks on the FTA in Moscow in June.

Kumar said India and Russia have stepped up engagements in the run-up to the BRICS summit, which will be held in New Delhi next month. “The summit will be successful, and the Indian Presidency’s agenda will help to take cooperation to the next level.”

Putin is expected to attend the event as the bloc of emerging economies seek to assert their voice and economic heft amid Western coercion on geopolitical issues.

The Kremlin has condemned Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s apparent support for the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage and his opposition to prosecuting the alleged perpetrators.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to Tusk’s claim that those behind the September 2022 blasts should not be ashamed and that those who built the pipelines should be. Nord Stream was designed to carry Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

“If Mr. Tusk supports and endorses such acts of terrorism, it can only provoke astonishment and incomprehension,” Peskov told reporters on Friday, describing the blasts as “an act of terrorist sabotage against Europe’s critical energy infrastructure.”

Tusk doubled down on his position on Thursday, noting that Poland had opposed Nord Stream from the outset over concerns about Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

“I will not change my mind here, and I believe that those who built this pipeline should be ashamed, not those who disabled it,” he told reporters.

Tusk’s remarks followed Wednesday’s arrest in Croatia of Ukrainian national ‘Vladimir Z.’, previously identified in the media as Vladimir Zhuravlyov, under a European arrest warrant. He had been detained in Poland in September 2025, but a Warsaw court refused to extradite him to Germany and ordered his release the following month.

German legal magazine LTO reported that Zhuravlyov was arrested in the Croatian city of Pula while on the set of ‘Snake Island’, a Hollywood thriller about the alleged Ukrainian plot to destroy Nord Stream. The film, starring Sean Penn and Adrien Brody and directed by Doug Liman, reportedly began shooting in Croatia earlier this month. It is unclear why Zhuravlyov was on the set.

German investigators allege that a small Ukrainian team used forged documents to rent a yacht, transported explosives into the Baltic Sea, and planted them on the pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm. Another alleged member of the group, ‘Sergey K.’, identified by media as former Ukrainian special forces member Sergey Kuznetsov, was arrested in Italy in August 2025 and later extradited to Germany.

Moscow has rejected claims that a small group of Ukrainian divers could have carried out the sophisticated operation independently, arguing that an attack of such complexity in NATO-controlled waters would have required state support and Western intelligence involvement.

Parents of children abducted in northeastern Nigeria have staged a protest demanding government action nearly 100 days after the students were taken, multiple outlets said on Friday. Around 40 children remain missing following the attack in Borno State.

Families gathered in Uba on Thursday to call on the federal government to secure the children’s release, Daily Trust reported. The abduction occurred on May 15 in Mussa, a settlement near the Sambisa Forest, an area that has for years been used by Islamist militant groups.

The attack occurred while classes were underway at Mussa Primary and Junior Secondary School in the Askira-Uba area. Senator Ali Ndume said at the time that school officials had told him 32 pupils were abducted from the school and another ten were seized from homes nearby. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Chinda Buba, whose child was abducted, told Reuters that they still had not seen their children and did not know where they were, adding that they were uncertain whether they were healthy or facing difficult conditions.

A police spokesperson said that the military was “on top of the situation” and referred further questions to the armed forces.

Boko Haram and its splinter group, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), have previously targeted schools in the northeast. The region has been at the center of a longstanding Islamist insurgency, with mass abductions, including the 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 Chibok schoolgirls.

Nearly 100 days after children were abducted from Mussa community in Borno State, their families have taken to the streets of Uba, demanding urgent action. Carrying “Bring Back Our Children Mussa” placards, the parents say they will keep speaking out until the children are safely… pic.twitter.com/vbjXojCnQq

— News Central TV (@NewsCentralTV) August 20, 2026

In June, the Nigerian Army said it had rescued 360 hostages, including women and children, from a Boko Haram enclave in the state of Borno following what it described as “weeks of painstaking intelligence preparation.” According to the military, the captives were held in harsh conditions after being abducted from several communities in the region.

Former Ukrainian servicemen switch to the Russian side once they get out of the “information bubble” set up by Vladimir Zelensky’s government and see the reality of the conflict for themselves, a high-ranking officer from a unit comprised of ex-Kiev troops has said.

Earlier in August, Russia announced the creation of the Ukrainian Volunteer Brigade out of several smaller formations of Ukrainian nationals who left the ranks of Kiev’s forces and are now fighting for Russia.

In its report on Thursday, RT Russian shared the stories of some members of the newly-formed brigade.

Some decided to join Russian troops because they changed their views after being captured, some because they never wanted to be in the Ukrainian military, but were forcefully mobilized, and others because they supported Moscow from the start.

The Ukrainian Volunteer Brigade will perform different tasks on the front line. It includes reconnaissance units, an FPV-drone strike squad, and teams handling the evacuation of civilians, among other kinds of troops, the report read.

Highly-motivated troops

A fighter with the callsign ‘Zhak’, who serves as deputy commander for political affairs at the separate battalion ‘Maksim Krivonos’, which also joined the brigade, told RT that the soldiers in his unit have high morale.

“If those people simply didn’t want to fight, they could’ve gone to the detention center after being captured, sit there safe and warm, eat three times a day and wait to be exchanged in a prisoner swap,” said the officer, who was born in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region but has been fighting for Donbass since the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014.

The people “in Ukraine… live in a very harsh, aggressive information bubble. But when they find themselves here [in Donbass], when they see the Alley of Angels in Donetsk – they see a completely different picture, and a lot changes in their minds,” Zhak explained.

The Alley of Angels is a monument to hundreds of children killed in Ukrainian attacks on Donbass over the past 12 years.

Our own command ‘wanted to destroy us’

Another member of the brigade, called ‘Hunter’, said that he used to be a research fellow at an agricultural academy in Kiev and was never interested in politics. He was recruited into the Ukrainian military in 2023 after his request for a draft deferment to finish his PhD was denied, he said.

According to Hunter, his company was tasked with controlling “a rather pointless” position in a wooded area that was under constant Russian shelling. When the size of the unit fell from more than a hundred to 20 and then 13 troops, he asked his commanders to order a retreat, but was told to stay put and await reinforcements.

But after a week, no additional troops had arrived. Hunter and his fellow servicemen decided to surrender as soon as Russian forces began storming their trenches.

However, when they left their positions with their hands in the air, the Ukrainian military started firing at them, Hunter noted. “Artillery, mortars and kamikaze-drones were deployed. They didn’t even spare cluster munitions, which surprised me greatly. Our own command wanted to destroy us,” he said.

Hunter stressed that only he and three other troops from the company were lucky enough to survive, with one of them now also fighting for Russia together with him.

‘Patriotism ran out’

Another soldier of the Ukrainian Volunteer Brigade, nicknamed ‘Bely’, told RT that he served as a paratrooper in Kiev’s military and used to be a passionate patriot of Ukraine, despite being born in Donbass. When Ukraine sent its armed forces to the east of the country in 2014, he abandoned his home in what is now Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic, leaving his wife and son behind, and moved to the city of Dnepropetrovsk (Dnepr), he said.

According to Bely, his marriage fell apart because his spouse was pro-Russian and wanted him to join the self-defense forces in Donbass. But instead he signed another contract with the Ukrainian military in 2016, fighting against the units of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.

Despite good pay, “my patriotism ran out, at some point, and the realization began to dawn on me that two brotherly nations were fighting,” the soldier recalled. He was especially impacted by an incident in which Ukraine shelled a school in a village near the city of Lugansk, he added.

Bely said he then lost the will to serve, but the Ukrainian Army refused to discharge him after the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. When he surrendered to the Russian military in 2023, he was also targeted by fellow Ukrainian troops, suffering shrapnel wounds, the serviceman said.

Russian medics patched him up, and the experienced soldier was invited to join the Maksim Krivonos battalion while in detention. Bely said he initially had concerns about becoming a traitor to his former Ukrainian comrades-in-arms, but eventually came to the conclusion that fighting for Russia was the right thing to do.

Russia has opened its first national pavilion in the western Indian city of Navi Mumbai, as Moscow tries to prise open the huge market for its consumer goods amid Western attempts to squeeze its economy.

The ‘Made in Russia’ pavilion, launched by the Russian Export Center (REC), opened Friday in the Belapur Central Business District of Navi Mumbai, the twin city to India’s financial capital Mumbai.

The pavilion will feature products from Russian producers like Makfa, United Confectioners, Tatspirtprom, Miratorg, Afanasy Private Brewery, Fame Label, Wild Siberia, Stashevskoye Bio, and others.

Russian Consul General in Mumbai Ivan Fetisov called it “a landmark event for Russian-Indian relations.”

He said it will enable Russian manufacturers to directly access the vast Indian market, adding “we are moving toward the ambitious goal of increasing trade turnover between our countries to $100 billion.”

India-Russia bilateral trade is now at about $60 billion, but is skewed by the high volume of oil India imports; non-commodity goods make up only about 10% of Russian exports to India.

The pavilion will help Russia change that ratio, by promoting Russian food products, cosmetics, consumer goods, and high-tech solutions to India to increase exports.

REC Managing Director Konstantin Evstyukhin called it “the first stage in deploying comprehensive infrastructure in India for promoting Russian goods.”

“We have begun creating a full-fledged ecosystem for domestic manufacturers to enter one of the world’s most promising markets,” he said, adding “national stores at the largest marketplaces” and “network of branded retail outlets” under the ‘Made in Russia’ brand will follow.

Similar pavilions are already operating in China, Vietnam, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan.

Israel has warned Türkiye against expanding Ankara’s military involvement in Syria, days after striking a Syrian airbase it claimed was being prepared for Turkish forces.

West Jerusalem attacked the Abu al-Duhur airbase in northwestern Syria on Tuesday, damaging the facility but causing no reported casualties.

“[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is dragging Turkey into dangerous adventures in Syria,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote on X on Thursday.

Katz went on to accuse Erdogan of making “empty and delusional” anti-Israel speeches and warned him against testing the country’s determination to defend itself.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Damascus was about to violate a security “status quo” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there. Syria and Türkiye denied any such deployment was planned.

The rivalry between Israel and Türkiye has increasingly spilled into Syria, where Ankara has emerged as a key backer of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and is helping train and rebuild the country’s armed forces. Israel has opposed a Turkish military foothold, arguing it could threaten its security and restrict its freedom to operate in Syria.

Middle East Eye reported this week, citing Turkish government insiders, that Ankara views the Abu al-Duhur strike as a challenge to its credibility as a regional security partner. It came less than two weeks after Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, under which an attack on one is considered an attack on all three, potentially raising the stakes of any direct military confrontation involving Türkiye.

According to MEE, Israel also did not use its military hotline with Türkiye before the strike, raising the risk of an unintended confrontation.

US Ambassador to Türkiye and Syria envoy Tom Barrack called the attack an “unnecessary escalation” and urged the sides to avoid further military incidents.

Relations between Israel and Türkiye have deteriorated sharply in recent years, particularly over Gaza, with Erdogan repeatedly accusing Netanyahu of genocide and comparing him to Adolf Hitler. Netanyahu has hit back by calling Erdogan an “antisemitic dictator” and accusing him of genocide against the Kurds, with the two trading personal attacks as recently as June.

The authorities in Russia’s Altai Republic in southern Siberia have launched a bear cull after a 29-year-old tourist was dragged from her tent and killed. It follows a spate of violent bear attacks across the country this summer.

On Wednesday, a tourist from Novosibirsk Region was sleeping in a tent with her fiance near the village of Artybash when a bear tore through it and dragged her into the forest. Her fiance and local residents tried to drive the animal away, but it repeatedly charged at them. The woman was killed before she could be rescued.

The incident is the latest in a series of serious bear attacks reported across Russia in recent months. In July, a 62-year-old man was mauled to death on the outskirts of the village of Ola in Magadan Region in Russia’s Far East. A month earlier, a fisherman was also killed by a bear in Kamchatka on Russia’s Pacific coast. Officials shot the animal after finding it beside the victim’s body.

Several other people have narrowly survived recent encounters. On August 19, a fisherman in Kemerovo Region in southwestern Siberia fought off a mother bear after it bit him in the leg, while a mushroom picker in Novgorod Region, in northwestern Russia, suffered multiple wounds in an attack on August 13 but survived

At least a dozen bear attacks have been reported across Russia since the beginning of summer, according to a review of regional reports. A separate media tally put the number at at least 17 since the start of 2026, including six fatalities.

Following the attack in Altai, the regional authorities launched a bear population-control operation and issued additional hunting permits in an effort to protect residents and tourists.

Twelve bears have since been killed near the area of the attack, with officials saying one may have been the animal responsible for the tourist’s death. Drones are also being used to track the predators, while the cull is continuing.

The district has also been placed on heightened alert, with movement restricted between 8 PM and 10 AM and tent camping banned in affected areas. Police and hunters have formed patrols, while access to some tourist sites has been restricted.

Russia’s brown bear population has expanded sharply in recent decades. Natural Resources Ministry data cited this week put the population at around 308,000 animals – more than double what it was in 1990 – with the largest concentrations in Siberia and the Far East. Around 4,700 are estimated to live in Altai Republic.

Officials have urged people encountering bears not to run or approach cubs. They advise slowly backing away, avoiding prolonged eye contact and making loud noises if an animal continues to approach.

If an attack cannot be avoided, people are advised to protect their head and neck and, if the bear keeps attacking, fight back using whatever means are available.

Israeli warplanes carried out a new wave of strikes around Nabatieh, a major city and administrative hub in southern Lebanon, early on Friday, with footage showing powerful explosions lighting up the night sky.

The attacks come despite a US-brokered framework agreed in June aimed at ending fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group. The deal envisages a progressive Israeli withdrawal alongside Lebanese Army deployments and Hezbollah’s disarmament but has stalled over which should come first.

🚨🇱🇧 🇮🇱 Israeli airstrikes are hitting Kfar Rumman alongside the Ali al-Taher Heights

-Both targets sit in the same corridor just outside Nabatieh in southern Lebanon

-Israel struck the ridge yesterday with airstrikes and heavy mortar fire, and again on Saturday

-Ali al-Taher…

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 21, 2026

Reports from Lebanon: Israeli airstrikes are pounding the Ali al Taher hills pic.twitter.com/au05A7rAKW

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) August 21, 2026

The overnight strikes targeted the town of Kfar Rumman on the outskirts of Nabatieh and the nearby Ali al-Taher Heights, according to Lebanese media. Israeli artillery also struck several other locations across the south.

Watch the moment Israeli fighter jets strike the town of Kfar Roummane in southern Lebanon.

Follow Press TV on Telegram: https://t.co/kG3YhfM6RO pic.twitter.com/pQRMubK7ir

— Palestine Highlights (@PalHighlight) August 21, 2026

The Ali al-Taher Heights, which overlook the Nabatieh region and roads leading into the city, have emerged as a focal point of Israel’s military campaign. The Israeli military claims Hezbollah maintains underground infrastructure in the area and has repeatedly targeted the heights in recent weeks.

The latest bombardment comes less than a week after one of the deadliest Israeli attacks in Lebanon since fighting subsided under a June truce. Eleven people were killed in attacks in the south on August 15, according to Lebanese officials. Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure.

The attacks come five months after an RT crew was nearly killed while reporting on Israeli operations in the same broader region of southern Lebanon.

RT correspondent Steve Sweeney recently returned with DD Geopolitics reporter Christopher Helali to the damaged Qasmiyeh Bridge over the Litani River, where he and cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were wounded in an Israeli airstrike on March 19. Sweeney shared a first-hand account of the strike as he returned to the scene.

The conflict in Lebanon is closely tied to Israel’s confrontation with Iran. Hezbollah, Tehran’s longtime ally, resumed attacks on Israel in March following the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, prompting a major Israeli air and ground campaign. Fighting subsided following the Israel-Lebanon truce in June, but Israeli strikes have continued.

Lebanon has condemned the attacks and demanded that Israel withdraw from its territory. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called last week’s deadly strikes “extremely dangerous” and said any Hezbollah military infrastructure on Lebanese soil should be dealt with by the Lebanese state, not Israel.

Former Zambian transport minister and opposition politician Mutotwe Kafwaya was shot dead by security forces during a raid on the residence of presidential candidate Brian Mundubile a day after last week’s election, police have said.

Zambian police chief Graphel Musamba said on Wednesday that a joint security task force encountered “gunfire and resistance from unknown individuals” during the operation in the capital Lusaka on August 14 and returned fire, fatally wounding “one unidentified male person” later identified by his family as Kafwaya.

Eleven people, including senior opposition figures, were arrested during the raid. The government said the operation targeted suspected militia activity and an alleged armed insurrection, adding that restricted military-grade weapons and ammunition were recovered.

Opposition figure Mundubile, who was at the residence, rejected the allegations as “total fabrications” and said he saw officers shoot Kafwaya twice. He described the operation as an attempt on his life.

The Information Ministry initially dismissed reports that the 49-year-old former lawmaker had been shot. Defense Ministry Permanent Secretary Maambo Haamaundu separately said checks at Maina Soko Medical Center found no patient under Kafwaya’s name. Police confirmed his death on Wednesday after his family identified him as the previously unidentified man killed during the raid.

At a press briefing on Thursday, Secretary to the Cabinet Patrick Kangwa expressed the government’s condolences to Kafwaya’s family and said it regretted his death. He said “no further comments” would be made while the incident is under investigation and urged the public to “remain calm and avoid speculation.”

Kafwaya served as transport and communications minister under former President Edgar Lungu from July 2019 until August 2021. He represented the Lunte constituency in parliament from 2016 and was reelected in 2021.

The operation followed an unusually tense election in a country that has held largely peaceful votes since returning to multiparty democracy in 1991. President Hakainde Hichilema secured a second term with 60.5% of valid ballots, compared with around 38% for Mundubile, according to official results. Mundubile has rejected the result and said he would challenge it in court over alleged irregularities.

On Thursday, police chief Musamba said Mundubile and his running mate, Makebi Zulu, have been summoned for questioning over “various alarming activities” that could threaten national security. He said official notices have been served on their lawyers.

Musamba said the two politicians have sought refuge “with a known international organization,” which he did not identify. He added that the government has assured the organization that “the suspects are entitled to the due process of the law and their fundamental human rights, and that there is no harm intended to be done to them in any way.”

UN human rights chief Volker Turk on Wednesday urged the Zambian authorities to stop arbitrary arrests and uphold the due process rights of detainees.

An adult-content creator was presented as a potential ambassador for the memory of Poland’s 1944 Warsaw Uprising before public outrage forced a reversal, according to local media reports. The campaign commemorating the revolt’s 82nd anniversary has the honorary patronage of the Polish Culture Ministry.

Monika Laskowska, known in Poland as an OnlyFans creator, appeared in a photo published by the Warszawa44 Association wearing a T-shirt commemorating the uprising and was presented as an ‘Ambassador of Remembrance’, multiple media outlets reported on Thursday. OnlyFans is a subscription platform widely associated with adult content.

The Warsaw Uprising was launched by the Polish resistance against Nazi German forces on August 1, 1944, in an attempt to liberate the capital as Soviet troops approached. The revolt was crushed after 63 days of fighting, leaving much of the Polish capital destroyed and an estimated 150,000-200,000 civilians dead.

Warszawa44, the association behind the commemoration, said it had selected Laskowska because of her public profile, social-media reach and “declared willingness to promote the memory of the Warsaw Uprising.”

Laskowska has also interviewed celebrities associated with Poland’s so-called “freak fights” – combat events that typically pit influencers and other internet personalities against each other – and has herself participated in such bouts.

The choice quickly drew backlash on social media, with users questioning whether an adult-content influencer was an appropriate figure to promote the memory of one of the most significant events in modern Polish history.

Polish media personality Karolina Korwin-Piotrowska, whose father fought in the uprising, also blasted the campaign for chasing social-media reach with controversial figures. She sarcastically suggested that organizers recruit even more provocative personalities.

“I propose, therefore, to co-opt Mrs. Polański, who Onet interviewed and who poses nicely with or without a shirt, some whores, drug addicts, maybe a few rapists,” she wrote.

Sebastian Meitz, an expert at Poland’s Sobieski Institute, publicly questioned Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska over the campaign and asked whether Laskowska had received the title under “culture” or “national heritage.”

The Culture Ministry rushed to distance itself from the decision, saying on Thursday that the list of ambassadors “was not consulted with the Ministry.” While the project had received its honorary patronage, the ministry stressed that it provided neither funding nor organizational support.

Warszawa44 president Dariusz Michalak confirmed that Laskowska was their own choice. The association, however, reversed course after the controversy erupted, suspending her ambassador role and removing her photo from Instagram.

Pakistan has vastly expanded the powers of Chief of Defense Forces (CDF) Asim Munir through two new laws passed on Thursday.

The Defense Forces Act, 2026, and the amended National Command Authority Act, 2010, expand the statutory role of the CDF, an office that was created only last year.

The Defense Forces Act allows the CDF to exercise powers and perform functions necessary for “multidomain integration, operational cohesion, coordination and oversight of all matters which have joint, tri-services and strategic implications for the Armed Forces and national security of Pakistan.”

These also give Munir the power to retire, release, accept or reject the resignation of, or retain in service, any person – except for posts where the appointments are made by the president on the advice of the prime minister, such as those of the army, navy and air force chiefs.

He can also relax the age or service limit of retirement for any military personnel.

Pakistan’s constitution requires the CDF to also be the army chief – considered the most powerful role in the country, thus practically giving Munir control over the army, navy and air force. The CDF is also the senior military adviser over Pakistan’s nuclear command.

The latest changes give Munir considerable influence over the careers of military officers. By making the CDF the prime minister’s senior military adviser, the laws also consolidate the military leadership’s role in decision-making.

The federal cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif approved the bills on Thursday and they were presented before the National Assembly by Defense Minister Khawaja Asif even though they were not on the agenda.

The bills, drafted as a follow-up to the 27th Constitutional Amendment, then passed amid a walkout by the opposition.

Last year’s 27th Constitutional Amendment reorganized the Pakistani military command, creating the roles of CDF and commander, national strategic command. The amendment gave Munir immunity from arrest or prosecution regarding official or personal actions tied to his tenure and rank.

Munir was promoted to the rank of field marshal on May 20, 2025, becoming only the second officer in Pakistan’s military history, after Ayub Khan, to receive the rank.

At least 52 people have died after an overloaded boat carrying farm workers capsized in Nigeria’s northwestern Sokoto State, according to officials and residents. Many of the victims were women and children.

The boat overturned on Thursday near Gorau town in the Goronyo local government area, Abdulkadir Yusuf, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) Sokoto State manager, told the Associated Press.

More than 80 passengers were on board and most were traveling to farms for work, according to officials cited by the news agency.

Many of those aboard were farm owners and laborers hired to harvest rice, according to residents cited by Reuters. Initial estimates of the number of passengers varied, with one resident putting the figure at more than 70 and another saying 57 people were aboard.

Sokoto state lawmaker Nasiru Adamu told Reuters that 16 people had been rescued.

Resident Samaila Garba told AP that he had personally counted at least 42 bodies, most of them women and children. “You know, during the rainy season, most women and children go to the farm to work,” he said.

Another Gorau resident, Aminu Dan Hajiya, told the agency that he regularly uses the same waterway to reach his farm. “In fact, almost every household in the community has been affected,” he said. 

Boat accidents are frequent in Nigeria, often blamed on overloading and poor maintenance and safety practices. Eleven people were killed in June when a wooden passenger boat capsized on the Benue River near Makurdi during heavy rain and strong winds, according to local media reports.

The most recent accident occurred just several days after another major boat disaster in Africa. A ferry carrying around 180 passengers and cargo capsized on Zimbabwe’s Lake Kariba on August 11 after reportedly encountering strong waves. At least 94 people were killed, according to the Zimbabwe Republic Police.

Two commercial ships were hijacked in two separate incidents this week, reviving the specter of piracy off the coast of the Horn of Africa and nearby. The region has seen several attacks on commercial shipping amid the current Middle East conflict.

The Eritrea-flagged MT Sibu 1, an oil products tanker, was hijacked in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Yemen on Thursday. The ship had a crew of 20, including 16 Indians.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said Thursday that the ship was boarded by six armed men, who diverted it toward Somalia. The tanker had been sanctioned by the US last year for allegedly transporting Iranian petroleum products.

UKMTO WARNING 118-26 UPDATE 001

Click here to view the full product⤵️ https://t.co/TA6cqIqsyJ#MaritimeSecurity #MarSec pic.twitter.com/fBRghwkqpJ

— UKMTO Operations Centre (@UK_MTO) August 20, 2026

The Cameroon-flagged MV Lutuf, which was carrying weapons for a Turkish military training facility in Mogadishu, was taken off the coast of Somalia’s Puntland region on Monday. Its 10-member crew includes six Indians.

The pirates took the vessel, owned by Polar Movement Shipping, toward the region’s Nugaal coast, a Somali official was quoted by news reports as saying. The status of the ship and its cargo is not immediately clear. Indian and Turkish authorities have not issued any statement.

India is the world’s second-largest supplier of seafarers, with 311,936 Indian maritime professionals working in the global shipping industry. 

This disproportionately exposes Indian nationals to attacks on commercial shipping. Ten Indian seafarers have died in attacks on ships since the start of the Middle East conflict, which was triggered by US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

China has refused to join a US plan to “squash” Iran’s economy, rejecting Washington’s push to be part of the “toughest sanctions in history” against the Islamic Republic.

On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on American allies and other countries to choose sides and stop doing business with Iran, as Washington prepares what he touted as “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world.”

In an interview with CNBC, Bessent described the plan, expected to be unveiled on Monday, as “a one-two punch” combining a naval blockade with “the toughest sanctions in history.” He claimed it would “squash” the Iranian economy and “collapse this regime.”

Beijing, however, has rejected Washington’s call.

“Regarding the Iran issue, sanctions and pressure do not help resolve the problem,” Reuters quoted a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington as saying. “China calls on the relevant parties to take responsible actions and resolve the issue through political and diplomatic means.”

Bessent’s remarks followed US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday of what he called an “economic D-Day” against Tehran, threatening “tremendous Economic Consequences” against countries providing Iran with “any type of lifeline.”

China has also rejected that threat. In response to a question by Bloomberg on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said “sanctions and pressure tactics are not the solution” and called for a “political and diplomatic approach.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has also dismissed the threat.

“Doubling down on failed policies will only bring further defeat,” Araghchi wrote on X on Thursday. “US economic terrorism threatens global economy and sovereignty worldwide.”

China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, having purchased more than 80% of the country’s shipped crude in 2025, according to Kpler data cited by Reuters.

Bessent argued that Beijing has a strong interest in cooperating with US sanctions because of its reliance on energy supplies passing through the Strait of Hormuz, claiming China gets “50% [of their] energy from inside the Gulf.”

China’s energy supplies, however, are considerably more diversified. According to AFP, China imported 36% of its crude from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iraq in 2025, while also buying large quantities from producers outside the Gulf, notably Russia.

Around 30% of China’s LNG imports came through Hormuz in 2025, but Beijing also sources LNG elsewhere and receives substantial pipeline gas from Russia and Central Asia.

A rebel coalition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has imposed travel restrictions after alleging that the government planned to send Ebola-infected people into territory under its control.

Shared taxis operating between the eastern city of Goma and the town of Kirumba will be suspended for one month from Saturday, while passenger canoes will be barred from specified routes across Lake Edward, the Congo River Alliance/March 23 Movement (AFC/M23) said in a statement on Wednesday. Minibuses will remain permitted on the Goma-Kirumba road under health and security controls, while trucks carrying goods will also be allowed to operate.

AFC/M23 political coordinator Corneille Nangaa linked the coalition’s response to what he described as a threat from Kinshasa.

“There are reports of a cynical health offensive that the Kinshasa regime intends to conduct against the liberated territory by deliberately infiltrating infected people there to sow death and devastation,” he said.

DR Congo has struggled to contain the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak since it was declared on May 15. The disease has spread to six provinces, infecting 5,208 people and killing 2,476, according to figures reported by the Congolese Health Ministry on Thursday, making it the deadliest outbreak in the country’s history. The Bundibugyo strain has no approved vaccine or specific treatment.

AFC/M23 declared areas under its control Ebola-free in late June after saying isolation, contact tracing and community surveillance had contained an earlier wave.

The new measures follow the detection of Ebola in two travelers from the government-held town of Lubero in a village under rebel control, a member of the response team established by the rebels told Reuters.

Nangaa accused the Congolese government of corruption and tribalism and said its response was “dramatically below what the emergency demands,” while claiming that the rebel administration has confronted the outbreak with “a strong sense of responsibility.”

AFC/M23 captured Goma and Bukavu, the respective capitals of North and South Kivu provinces, during a major offensive in early 2025 and now controls large parts of both provinces.

The World Health Organization has said ongoing insecurity, large-scale displacement, and population movements are complicating the Ebola response. Attacks on health facilities have reportedly restricted access for response teams, disrupted surveillance, and increased the risk of infections going undetected.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been transferred back to prison after a brief visit to an Islamabad hospital following a court order.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court had on Tuesday ordered that the founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party – one of cricket’s all-time greats – be moved to the private Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad within 48 hours, and kept there until September 16.

The authorities took him to the hospital just after midnight early Friday morning, past the court deadline. The PTI had threatened to file a contempt of court petition against the government.

“A team of qualified doctors, including an ophthalmologist, a cardiologist, and a physician, conducted a detailed examination of him and declared him medically fit,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar wrote on X about Khan. “After the completion of this entire process, he was transferred back to Adiala Jail.”

❗Imran Khan Back In Jail After Hospital Check-Up (Reports)

Doctors have found former Pakistan PM Imran Khan fit to remain in custody after examining him at a hospital in Islamabad. (Reports)

Khan was taken to the hospital from Adiala Jail amid concerns over his deteriorating… pic.twitter.com/5DdeBBHDpT

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) August 21, 2026

Khan only spent a few hours in the hospital before being returned to Rawalpindi prison, where he has been incarcerated since 2003. 

His lawyers had said his health had deteriorated in prison, and that he had lost significant vision in his right eye.

The government had appealed to the top court to review and recall its order on Khan, saying medical reports showed he had no condition that required immediate treatment.

Hundreds of security personnel were deployed along the roughly 30 km route to the hospital, which was also kept under tight security while Khan was there.

His supporters lined the route and cheered as the convoy passed despite the late hour.

Khan has been convicted of selling state gifts, a charge he denies. The former PM and his political allies have maintained that the cases against him are politically motivated and intended to prevent his return to politics.

The PTI, which retains a large support base, was stripped of its ability to participate in elections ahead of the 2024 vote.

The Russian Navy has carried out a successful missile test near the country’s Kuril Islands, the Pacific Fleet has said.

The test comes a week after Japan vigorously protested Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first-ever visit to the archipelago, which is partially claimed by Tokyo.

The missile test, which took place near the southern Kurils, involved the Varyag guided missile cruiser, the Omsk nuclear-powered submarine, and a ground-based Bastion surface-to-ship missile system, the Russian Pacific Fleet said in a statement on Thursday.

They fired several types of munitions at a target simulating enemy vessels at a distance of around 300 km (186 miles), with targeting data provided by naval aviation, the fleet said.

Objective control data confirmed the destruction of all targets, it stressed.

Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi reacted to the drills by telling reporters that Tokyo “cannot tolerate moves [by Russia] to strengthen military power on the four Northern Islands because they go against our country’s stance [on the territories].”

Kyodo news earlier reported that Japan had lodged a protest with Russia after Moscow notified it of the upcoming missile test last week.

On Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Tokyo’s ambassador to Moscow to express a strong protest over “anti-Russian statements” by the Japanese leadership.

After Putin traveled to Iturup, the largest of the Kuril Islands, on August 13, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the trip “absolutely unacceptable” and said it “hurts the feelings of the Japanese people.” Motegi also issued a statement, claiming that the four southernmost islands of the archipelago “are an inherent part of Japan’s territory both historically and under international law.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it informed the Japanese envoy that “Russia’s sovereignty and jurisdiction over the southern Kuril Islands are inviolable. These territories were transferred to our country following World War II, as enshrined in the relevant agreements of the Allied Powers and the UN Charter.”

“Any attempts by the Japanese side to directly or indirectly call this obvious reality into question are categorically unacceptable and illegitimate,” it added.

Moscow “reserves the right to take appropriate countermeasures” in response to Japan’s adherence to Western sanctions against Russia and its support for Ukraine, the ministry warned.

The Kuril Islands, stretching from Kamchatka to Japan’s Hokkaido, came under Soviet control following Tokyo’s defeat in World War II and were subsequently incorporated into the USSR. The Japanese authorities, however, continue to claim the islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and the Habomai – which they call the “Northern Territories.” The dispute has been the main obstacle to Moscow and Tokyo signing a formal peace treaty in the eight decades since the conflict.

Russian security officers have detained a foreign national suspected of surveilling critical infrastructure sites on behalf of Ukrainian intelligence, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Friday.

The suspect was taken into custody this month in Murmansk Region near the border, as he sought to illegally cross into Norway, the agency said in a statement. The detained man is believed to have a longstanding relationship with Kiev’s special services, having voluntarily contacted them back in 2023 for the first time, according to FSB.

The man’s Ukrainian handlers had ordered him to travel to Moscow and conduct reconnaissance at a key train hub “to identify freight trains transporting petroleum products, as well as administrative buildings in the city center,” the FSB said. He was involved in an “attempt to launch an FPV drone” to gather the intelligence, it added.

The Kiev regime has intensified attempts to stage terrorist attacks in Russia to compensate for the mounting pressure it has been experiencing on the frontline, as well as its inability to inflict “meaningful damage on critical infrastructure sites in Moscow Region,” the agency warned. The planned attacks involve short-range kamikaze drones that were supposed to be launched from an immediate vicinity of targeted sites by planted agents and local collaborators recruited online, including victims of fraudulent Ukrainian call centers, the FSB said. Involvement in such activities incurs heavy penalties under Russian law, up to life behind bars, the agency stressed.

Last month, the FSB said it had thwarted a major Ukrainian FPV drone plot, which involved smuggling 24 AI-guided drones into the country and using them to target a key defense industry enterprise and military airfields. The failed operation had been prepared by Kiev’s intelligence with the direct involvement of Western handlers, the agency said at the time.

The disassembled drones had been flown into Russia using fixed-wing UAVs and balloons, which were collected by the suspects and transferred deeper into the country for assembly and preparations for the attack. However, the whole operation had been closely monitored by Russian secret services from the very beginning, and the perpetrators and their accomplices ended up in custody.

A US woman has been charged with plotting to bomb the New York State Capitol building and then flee the country to join ISIS.

In a statement on Thursday, the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York alleged that Samantha Bowie had pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), a jihadist terrorist group.

Investigators alleged that Bowie had posted extremist messages online, including praise for the 9/11 attacks, and said she wanted to “destroy as much of the building as possible and kill the senators while they are meeting.” She made several visits to the Capitol and took photographs in preparation for the attack, officials said.

Bowie was detained on Wednesday after allegedly acquiring what she believed to be an explosive device. The Department of Justice and the FBI released a photo purportedly showing Bowie wearing black Islamic clothing that covered her face at a convenience store, where she allegedly bought items to make a bomb. Another photo purportedly showed Bowie taking a picture with her phone. Her face was not visible in either image.

“This arrest will send a strong message to anyone across the country who has been radicalized by our enemies,” First Assistant US Attorney John Sarcone III said.

There have been several IS-linked plots in the US in recent months. In April, two men were detained for allegedly throwing explosive devices at protesters outside Gracie Mansion, the residence of the mayor of New York. Police alleged that the suspects were supporters of the jihadist organization and that bomb-making equipment and instructions were found in a storage unit they owned.

In November, several men were charged in Michigan with plotting attacks on behalf of IS using AR-15 rifles and shotguns.

Ukraine has imposed sanctions on the creators of the popular Russian children’s cartoon Masha and the Bear, claiming it is part of Moscow’s propaganda campaign.

The animated series, loosely based on a traditional Russian folk tale, follows the adventures of a mischievous little girl and a retired circus bear. It is one of the most popular children’s shows online, with one episode, Recipe for Disaster, having been viewed more than 4.6 billion times on YouTube.

Last month, Netflix acquired the rights to two more seasons and extended licensing agreements for existing seasons and spin-offs, prompting criticism from Kiev.

In a statement on Thursday, Ukraine’s presidential sanctions commissioner, Vladislav Vlasyuk, said the latest round of restrictions targeted five individuals and four entities involved in the production and distribution of the show, including Animaccord Studio and its main creator, Oleg Kuzovkov. The show and its social media accounts have been banned in the country.

“Masha and the Bear disseminates a pro-Russian narrative under the guise of children’s content, which poses a threat to the national security of Ukraine,” Vlasyuk said. Ukraine’s state-run UNITED24 Media earlier described the series as depicting Russian cultural motifs as “welcoming, gentle, and universally appealing.”

Ukraine has banned dozens of Russian actors, musicians, films, and TV shows, claiming that they promote “Russian aggression.”

The popularity of Masha and the Bear has also drawn criticism from hawkish Western politicians. Last month, more than 50 British MPs called on the government to stop the cartoon from being shown in the UK.

Moscow has condemned the campaign against Russian culture as “stupid” and futile. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2023 that the policy of “canceling Russia” was “at its core, anti-cultural, neocolonial, and racist.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova argued in September that Ukrainian officials targeted Masha and the Bear precisely because it had “topped the popularity rankings.”

The US national debt has surpassed $40 trillion for the first time, reaching the milestone months earlier than expected as Washington’s borrowing accelerates amid persistent deficits, rising interest costs, and military spending.

The debt was expected to reach the milestone next year, but it has jumped by $1 trillion since March. For comparison, it took nearly 200 years for total US debt to reach $1 trillion for the first time, in 1981.

Treasury Department figures released Wednesday showed total outstanding debt reaching about $40.05 trillion, equivalent to roughly $119,000 for every person in the country or more than $366,000 per federal taxpayer. The debt has doubled since January 2017, when it stood at roughly $20 trillion.

The debt is essentially the accumulated result of annual federal budget deficits. When Washington spends more than it collects in taxes and other revenue, the Treasury covers the shortfall by borrowing.

Much of the increase has accumulated under President Donald Trump’s two terms and Joe Biden’s presidency. Trillions were added during Trump’s first term and under Biden as Washington borrowed heavily to fund Covid-19 relief and cushion the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Military commitments have added to those expenditures. Washington has reportedly spent around $195 billion in Ukraine-related assistance since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022, much of it for weapons, military support and replenishing US stocks.

More recently, the US war with Iran has created another major unplanned expense. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in July that the conflict had cost Washington about $37.5 billion, while the actual cost is likely to be much higher.

Social Security, Medicare and other mandatory programs remain major drivers of federal spending. Tax cuts under successive administrations have, meanwhile, reduced revenue without corresponding spending reductions, leaving Washington to finance the gap through additional borrowing.

The debt itself is also becoming increasingly expensive. As borrowing has grown and interest rates have risen, annual federal interest payments have climbed above $1 trillion, making debt servicing one of Washington’s largest expenditures.

Of the $40 trillion total, about $32.3 trillion is held by the public, while roughly $7.8 trillion represents obligations between federal government accounts. Most publicly held debt is owned domestically by pension and mutual funds, banks, individuals, companies and the Federal Reserve. Foreign countries also hold trillions in Treasury securities, with Japan, the UK and China among the largest overseas holders.

Drone footage released by the UK’s Border Security Command on Thursday shows French police intercepting migrants attempting to cross the English Channel illegally.

The officers reached the beach as dozens of migrants wearing life jackets were pushing an inflatable boat towards the water in an attempt to cross from France to Britain. Some migrants threw stones at the officers, who used pepper spray and slashed the boat with knives, according to ITV.

Around 15,900 migrants have crossed the Channel so far this year, down 43% from the same period last year, officials said. The UK Home Office announced on Thursday that more than 80,000 criminals and immigration offenders have been deported since July 2024.

“Returns have reached a near-decade high, with removals now at their highest level since 2016,” the Home Office added.

French cops zoom onto beach to STOP illegals from setting off to UK by boat pic.twitter.com/GgxVgu5FOL

— RTVisual (@RT_Visual_on_X) August 20, 2026

Immigration remains a hot-button issue in the UK, which has seen riots and mass protests sparked by violent crimes linked to migrants and British citizens with foreign backgrounds.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who assumed office last month, vowed to be “relentless” in stopping small-boat crossings in the Channel after 752 migrants reached England aboard nine boats on July 29, marking the largest single-day arrival this year.

On July 23, around 150 migrants aboard a single boat crossed the Channel from Berck in northern France, the highest number ever recorded on one vessel by the volunteer rescue service SNSM.

European officials have been on alert since late last month, when around 72,000 illegal migrants crossed into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast. Although the vast majority have since been sent back, several countries have accused Spain of negligence, with Italy suspending the Schengen free-travel arrangement with the country.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

Beijing is gearing up for the Eurasian Cinema Academy award screenings, which will showcase six feature-length films that garnered the Diamond Butterfly in various categories at the inaugural ceremony in Moscow last year.

Touted by the organizers as an alternative to mainstream ‘woke’ Western film awards, the event promotes works that reflect both “national” and “universal spiritual and moral values” under the motto: “Any truth without love is a lie.”

Renowned Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov played a seminal role in the creation of the Eurasian Cinema Academy and the Diamond Butterfly award with support from Russia’s Culture Ministry and Foreign Ministry.

The screenings are scheduled to run August 28 through August 30 at the Art-House Cinema of the China Film Art Research Center in Beijing.

The program will open with the film ‘Two People in One Life and a Dog’ by Russia’s Andrey Zaitsev, which tells the story of a married couple that lived through the Great Patriotic War as children. Despite many hardships, the protagonists retain optimism, patience, and forgiveness. The work received Best Actress and Best Actor awards last November.

The following day, the 'Erl-King' by Serbia’s Goran Radovanovic, who received the Best Director award in 2025, will be screened. The film depicts the life of an eight-year-old boy and his mother during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

Also next Saturday, audiences in the Chinese capital will get the chance to watch the Russian-Belarussian film ‘Dark Castle’ – a historical adventure movie, whose score was awarded with the Diamond Butterfly.

Wrapping the day up will be ‘Old Righteous Blues’ – a South African drama by Muneera Sallies, which was recognized by the Eurasian Cinema Academy jury for its screenplay.

The program of the final day will include ‘Upstream’ by China’s Xu Zheng, who won the award for best picture last year for the depiction of the trials and tribulations faced by a delivery driver.

Finally, ‘Ali Primera’, a biopic by Venezuela’s Daniel Yegres, will be screened. The film that won Best Non-Eurasian Film award tells the story of the popular singer-songwriter.

The first award ceremony took place on November 27, 2025 in Moscow, with the jury reviewing a total of 34 films representing 17 countries. Aside from the Diamond Butterfly statuette adorned with nearly 5,000 lab-grown diamonds, the Best Picture Award winner, Xu Zheng, was also presented with a ten-carat Yakut diamond worth the equivalent of $1 million. The winners in the other 11 categories received five-carat diamonds valued at $250,000, in addition to the statuettes.

In June, the organizers announced the start of the selection process for this year’s Diamond Butterfly, with the award ceremony scheduled to take place in Moscow on November 12.

Shocking news of a sudden over-threefold year-on-year increase of the number of miscarriages and stillbirths should be front page on global media. But because it is one of the latest consequences of the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, it will probably go ignored by most Western corporate media.

In fact, since a ‘ceasefire’ supposedly came into effect in October 2025, media coverage of Gaza has decreased dramatically. But – as with ceasefires prior – Israel has continued to kill Palestinians in Gaza on a near-daily basis, by bombing, machinegun fire, drone strikes, and by (continuing its near twenty-year siege on Gaza) not allowing in adequate amounts of humanitarian aid, medical supplies, and other things needed to just sustain life at the very basic level.

As of August 19, the Gaza Health Ministry reports 1,273 Palestinians have been killed, 4,223 wounded since October 11, 2025.

In mid-July, Ahmad Abu Foul, a Palestinian medic who I’ve known since I lived in Gaza, told me of the sudden increase in miscarriages, primarily among women living in displacement tents across the Gaza Strip.

He cited Dr. Mohammed Al-Bashiti, an obstetrics and gynecology specialist at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, as warning of this disturbing increase and attributing it to various environmental and physical factors, notably, severe malnutrition and anemia, and “extreme physical fatigue due to repeated displacement from one place to another. Many are forced to carry heavy loads beyond their physical capacity, putting their pregnancies at greater risk.”

But it’s also caused by exposure to toxic chemicals – explosive residues, TNT-related materials, smoke – which put the baby at risk. Ahmad said that his sister just had a miscarriage at four months pregnant, and his niece had a stillbirth at eight months.

Thousands of women in #Gaza have lost their pregnancies amid the destruction of the healthcare system, displacement, shortages of essential supplies, and the ongoing genocide.

A thread 🧵 pic.twitter.com/oRmM3M9xWk

— Euro-Med Monitor (@EuroMedHR) August 13, 2026

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, on July 30 published an article highlighting the dramatic rise in miscarriages. It cited a recent UN report stating from January to June 2026, 3,950 miscarriages had been reported. This is over triple the 1,197 miscarriages reported from July to December 2025. The miscarriage rate, it notes, is one-sixth of all pregnancies.

Haaretz cited Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, head of the pediatric department at Nasser Hospital as likewise saying the contributing factors to the increase in miscarriages are malnutrition and stress and also water shortages: “We have reached a point where each person has three liters of water a day, far below the minimum required. Ninety percent of the water is not fit for drinking. The water shortage leads to infections, weakening the immune system and worsening malnutrition.”

With the complete destruction of the Gaza Strip by Israel, and with Palestinians constantly forced to suddenly move their inadequate tents elsewhere, the lack of clean drinking water, and the near-complete dependence on financial and humanitarian aid from the outside world set the stage for a host of food-, water-, and hygiene-related illnesses, and now this dramatic increase in miscarriages.

Although it was stipulated in the ‘ceasefire’, Israel hasn’t been allowing sufficient food, water and medicines to enter Gaza.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported on August 9, 2026, that, “Israel enforces a comprehensive policy that disrupts the entire supply chain, starting from the entry of goods and aid through crossings until they reach the population.”

It notes the dearth of aid trucks entering Gaza in the first place, and that those which are permitted entry are not guaranteed to reach those in need, “due to the destruction or impairment of the transportation, storage, and distribution infrastructure.” It also notes that delays in shipping “cause frozen food, medicine, and other vital materials to spoil before reaching those in need.”

Euro-Med points out that Israel, “as the occupying power, has an obligation under Articles 55 and 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to guarantee that the population receives food and medical supplies when local resources are insufficient.”

From a logistical perspective, many of the illnesses plaguing Gaza could be eradicated were Israel to adhere to international law and allow in sufficient food, water and medical aid.

Israel is of course aware of this, as it has been since enforcing a full siege on Gaza in 2007. But the Israeli authorities know no international body or state – certainly not its biggest backer, the US – will force it to stop its genocide and allow in aid.

The invisible, creeping 'Yellow Line'

Israel has been expanding its control of Gaza via a constantly-expanding, mostly-invisible, ‘Yellow Line’ – a demarcation line set out in the Israeli-US ‘peace plan’ of 2025. The Palestinians can mainly only guess at where it lies, aside from some yellow cement blocks which are periodically moved still further into Gaza, to claim more land.

Palestinians report being fired upon by Israeli forces even if nowhere near where the Yellow Line might be. This is reminiscent of the Israeli ‘Buffer Zone’ imposed inside the Gaza Strip in the 90s and widened in the 2000s, expanding from 50 meters to 300 meters to much further. It was imposed in the name of “security” but was, in reality, another landgrab device.

Having accompanied Palestinian farmers for years when I lived in Gaza, I’m acutely aware of how Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition on any – elderly to child – Palestinian civilians, whether near what Israel deemed off limits, or hundreds of meters or even a kilometer away. We routinely came under this fire, bullets whizzing close by our heads and bodies, Israel  maiming or killing Palestinians who were simply trying to work their farmland.

TRT World noted in a July 27 article that since October, “the so-called Yellow Line has expanded from covering roughly half of Gaza to nearly 65 percent of the territory by June, and more than 23 kilometers of berms have gone up alongside it.”

Many Palestinians, including Ahmad, the medic mentioned above, report being told suddenly one morning to move west as the Israeli occupying forces shift the Yellow Line still further.

While the Yellow Line theoretically marks the limits of Israel’s ‘temporary’ occupation, it is clear that Israeli forces never intend to withdraw. Instead, Israeli leaders speak of “encouraging emigration” of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. This is code-speak for making conditions so unlivable that they are forced out of the Strip – in other words, ethnic cleansing.

Nonstop killing continues

On August 19, Israel killed ten Palestinians in central Gaza. On August 18, an Israeli strike near the sea in Gaza City killed six Palestinians, including a child, and wounded ten more. The slaughtering hasn’t stopped since the ‘ceasefire’, but major media reporting on it has.

Nearly every day there are reports from Gaza of Palestinians killed or maimed by Israel, ceasefire be damned. On top of which, Israel continues its decades-old policy of gunning down Palestinian fishers, ensuring they cannot access the sea for food.

Gaza’s Health Ministry lists the Palestinian death toll since October 2023 as 73,407. It lists only those it can actually count, which does not include those buried under rubble, completely obliterated, or otherwise unaccounted for.

Many believe the real number is in the hundreds of thousands. Back in July 2024, I wrote of estimates in the Lancet that a death count of close to 200,000 was “not implausible,” while others with expertise in Gaza put the number of killed Palestinians at over double that. I also referred to a report in which a graphic denoting population accounted for 1.85 million people, not the 2.2 million existing pre-genocide.

Israel is now actively working to ensure a true death toll cannot be counted, literally removing the evidence of unaccounted-for bodies under the rubble.

Euro-Med reported on August 3 that Israel has removed or crushed an estimated 10 million tonnes of rubble from Gaza, “before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine, and document the sites. This risks destroying crucial evidence of genocide and the remains of victims still unaccounted for under the rubble. These sites need careful examination and thorough criminal investigation before any intervention that might change or erase their features.”

We’ve seen Israeli leadership call for Israel to kill 30, 40, 50 Palestinians a night, and prior to that – among a very long list of genocidal statements – refer to Palestinians as human animals and enforce measures to ensure that if Israeli bombs and fire don’t kill Palestinians, they will die of starvation, disease, or before they are even born. So, it isn’t hard to conclude that this dramatic rise in miscarriages and stillbirths is not an accidental consequence of the genocide, but a predicted and calculated result of Israeli policies.

Russian farmer Nikolay Mukhin, who was fined for attempting to shoot down a Ukrainian drone with his shotgun, has told RT that his actions were motivated by love for his motherland.

The 66-year-old vowed to appeal the court’s decision, and the Volgograd Region prosecutor’s office is now siding with him amid a public outcry.

The incident, which happened in early July, resulted in the man being slapped with a 40,000 ruble ($480) fine for discharging a firearm in an unauthorized place, as well as the confiscation of his shotgun. Mukhin appealed to the district court, but the judge upheld the penalty, arguing that the man’s actions could have endangered other people’s lives.

Speaking to RT on Tuesday, Mukhin recounted how on the night of July 7 he woke up to the roar of drones flying over his house. The farmer called the police, took his shotgun and ventured outside.
According to Mukhin, he initially intended to merely report the UAV sighting to the authorities, but fired his shotgun as a second drone appeared in sight in an attempt to shoot it down.

With the call on speaker all along, the police operator asked the man if it was he who fired the shots and whether he had a gun license, which the farmer did.

Mukhin told RT that he missed the drone, as it was flying too high.

In court, the farmer’s defense attorney insisted that the defendant was acting based on justified concern for “public security and the lives of citizens,” concluding that the potential damage from the UAV’s fall would have been less grave than if it had reached its target.

Nevertheless, the judge took issue with this line of reasoning.

Mukhin described the fine as an “overly harsh punishment,” explaining to RT that “I love Russia and defend it as best I can.”

In a post on her Telegram channel on Wednesday, RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan took the farmer’s side, saying that she would pay his fine.

“Dear comrades in authority, please, sort this out. We have no rules as to what should be done in such situations. It means that we need to come up with some,” she wrote.

In a follow-up post on Thursday, Simonyan said that Volgograd Region’s prosecutor’s office has now contested Mukhin’s fine, arguing that he was acting under exceptional circumstances, and should thus be exonerated.

Ukraine has intensified its long-range attacks on civilian infrastructure in Russia in recent months amid battlefield setbacks, which Moscow has characterized as terrorist attacks.
Russia has responded with its own missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s military-industrial facilities, logistics centers and infrastructure supporting its armed forces.

UPDATE:

Later on Thursday, the Volgograd Regional Court overturned the original decision, nullifying the fine and ordering that the impounded shotgun be returned to Mukhin, as reported by TASS. The judge reportedly concurred with the prosecutor’s office in that the farmer was acting under exceptional circumstances.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is facing his gravest political challenge in years, major US and European media outlets have reported, as a new corruption scandal engulfs his office and a former official openly challenges his leadership.

Zelensky fired the deputy head of his office, Irina Mudraya, on Wednesday after Western-backed anti-graft authorities launched an investigation into an alleged $3.4 million money-laundering scheme involving senior presidential officials. Mudraya has denied wrongdoing. It is the latest of many corruption scandals involving officials close to Zelensky.

A day earlier, former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, whose surprise dismissal last month sparked weeks of public protests, released a campaign-style video denouncing government corruption and calling for elections amid what he described as “a systemic crisis of governance.”

Zelensky’s five-year presidential term expired in May 2024, but he has refused to hold a new election, citing martial law imposed after the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022.

The Wall Street Journal called the turmoil the “biggest challenge” to Zelensky’s “hold on the presidency” since 2022, saying Fedorov appeared to be positioning himself as a leading challenger amid growing frustration over recurring corruption scandals.

The Financial Times noted that the growing list of Zelensky allies caught up in corruption investigations have contributed to his falling approval ratings and raised concern among Kiev’s Western backers, citing an analyst who concluded that “the political crisis is obvious.”

The Washington Post described Fedorov’s intervention as a “remarkably direct challenge” to Zelensky’s authority.

The Telegraph said Zelensky had been “bruised by a series of lingering corruption scandals” as investigations “keep coming.” It argued that he was accumulating powerful rivals who were once deeply loyal to him and said it appeared “increasingly possible” that he may not lead Ukraine into peacetime.

The Guardian described Fedorov as a “potent political opponent.” Experts cited by the newspaper called corruption a “symptom” of deeper problems with “bad governance,” warning that public exhaustion and Zelensky’s failure to explain his decisions had created a “perfect powder box.”

Le Monde said Fedorov had “crossed a line” no major Ukrainian politician had dared to cross since 2022 by calling for elections. The newspaper said he was seeking to capitalize on an “accumulation” of crises, including repeated corruption scandals.

Der Spiegel cited a Ukrainian political analyst who described Fedorov’s challenge as an “application for the role of opposition leader.” The magazine said Zelensky now faced his first “public and direct opponent” since the conflict escalated.

Zelensky has not publicly responded to Fedorov’s accusations. His Wednesday evening address focused on military matters and the appointment of a new defense minister and did not address the mounting political pressure.

Israel has acknowledged that its troops killed Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, and opened a criminal investigation into the incident. At the same time, it has refused to pursue a probe into the death of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in a separate attack.

Both incidents occurred in 2024 and prompted international outrage over the conduct of Israeli forces, making them among the most notorious civilian casualties of the Gaza war. 

The contrasting decisions have triggered outrage over Australian citizen Zomi Frankcom, who was among the seven slain aid workers. Canberra summoned Israeli Ambassador Hillel Newman on Thursday, with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong demanding accountability.

The killing of Hind Rajab

Five-year-old Hind Rajab was fleeing Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood with relatives in January 2024 when their car came under heavy Israeli fire. Independent investigators later found hundreds of bullet impacts and estimated that an Israeli tank had been only meters away and would have easily identified the car passengers as civilians.

Hind survived the initial attack and spent hours trapped inside the car alongside her dead relatives, pleading with Palestinian Red Crescent dispatchers by phone to rescue her. An ambulance sent to reach her after coordinating its movement with the Israeli military was subsequently shelled, killing two paramedics.

Hind’s body and those of her relatives and emergency workers were recovered 12 days later, after Israeli forces withdrew from the area

Israel’s response

Despite initially denying that its forces were even in the area where Hind was killed, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that its troops had indeed fired on the car carrying the girl and her relatives. It also admitted that a shell was later fired at the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance sent to rescue her.

The IDF said the findings and alleged failures surrounding coordination with the ambulance warranted a criminal investigation.

In the WCK case, however, the military stated that despite “serious failures” in the attack, commanders’ actions did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct and no criminal investigation would be opened.

Israel claimed its troops had mistakenly believed a Hamas fighter was traveling with the convoy and claimed it had deviated from an agreed route.

Australia demands answers

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Israel’s decision on the WCK killings fell “far short of the accountability we expect” and said Australia was “outraged.”

She questioned why, if the first strike on the convoy was a “catastrophic error,” two more missiles were fired minutes later. Canberra has also said Israel has still not handed over requested audio from the drone involved in the attack.

Frankcom’s family said it was “deeply disappointed” and called for an independent investigation.

WCK similarly rejected Israel’s findings, saying the IDF had known its workers were unarmed and had “full visual clarity” of their clearly marked vehicles. The organization said the Israeli military “cannot credibly investigate its own conduct.”

Israel doubled down

After being summoned to the Australian Foreign Ministry on Thursday, Israeli Ambassador Hillel Newman defended the IDF’s decision, saying there had been “no criminal intention” to kill innocent civilians and that therefore, there was no criminal responsibility. 

He refused to apologize for the deaths of the aid workers, saying doing so could have “legal ramifications,” and claiming that “there are a lot of haters of Israel in Australia.”

Canada reacts 

Ottawa has also reacted to the IDF statement, with Foreign Minister Anita Anand on Thursday calling Israel’s position “unacceptable,” adding that “Canada expects international humanitarian law to be upheld and will continue pressing for a full accounting of what happened, along with justice for the seven workers who were killed and their families.”

Gaza scrutiny

Despite the IDF announcing an investigation into the murder of Hind and her family, Israeli rights groups have warned that even cases which do reach the criminal investigation stage rarely result in prosecutions. 

Yesh Din researcher Dan Owen told Reuters that only a “tiny” proportion of investigations into soldiers accused of killing Palestinians have led to indictments.

Hind’s grandmother has also said the family does not trust Israel’s judicial system and wants the case pursued internationally.

Gaza casualties

More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the Gaza war began in 2023, according to local health authorities, including aid workers, medical personnel and journalists. 

Israel has faced repeated accusations of war crimes over attacks on civilians and humanitarian workers, while maintaining that its operations target Hamas and other armed groups.

Russia and China are both opposed to Japan’s accelerating militarization and growing debate over acquiring nuclear weapons, Beijing’s ambassador to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, has said, warning that Tokyo’s policies could trigger a new arms race.

In an article published by TASS on Thursday, Zhang said Moscow and Beijing had reached a “high degree of consensus” over Japan. “Beijing and Moscow consider it necessary to remain highly vigilant and firmly oppose Japan’s accelerated remilitarization and its pursuit of nuclear weapons,” he wrote.

The envoy warned that if Tokyo decides to create its own nuclear weapons, the strategic balance in Northeast Asia will be completely disrupted, and “a nuclear arms race in the region could erupt at any moment”. “If Japan’s right-wing forces continue to play with fire on nuclear policy, the Japanese will ultimately once again find themselves in the dock of history,” Zhang added.

The warning comes after, in December 2025, a senior official involved in devising Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s security policy reportedly argued that Japan should consider acquiring nuclear weapons as the US nuclear umbrella is becoming increasingly unreliable. “In the end, we can only rely on ourselves,” the official was quoted as saying.

Publicly, Takaichi has stressed that Japan still adheres to three non-nuclear principles – a long-time policy stating that Tokyo will not possess, produce or permit the introduction of nuclear weapons.

However, she has questioned the latter principle, while Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi has argued that “one topic we cannot avoid is nuclear weapons,” adding that the issue should be discussed “without any taboos.” 

In this vein, Zhang accused the Japanese leadership of hiding nuclear ambitions behind the country’s status as the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings in war, saying Japanese leadership had begun “dangerous experiments in nuclear policy” while trying to revive “the spirit of militarism.” 

The envoy also alluded to Japan’s nuclear prowess, recalling that the country possesses about 44.4 tons of separated civilian plutonium. “This amount is sufficient for the production of approximately 5,500 nuclear warheads,” he said. “Given the desire and appropriate capabilities, Japan becoming a nuclear power no longer looks like fantasy.” 

Russia has voiced similar concerns. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called debate over revising Japan’s non-nuclear principles a “serious signal,” while Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko warned that abandoning the policy would worsen security in Northeast Asia.

Bangladeshi lawmakers have elected Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, a candidate of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), as the country’s 23rd president.

The former secretary-general of the BNP secured 255 parliamentary votes in the presidential election, while Oli Ahmed, a former army colonel from the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance, received 88 votes.

The president is the constitutional head of state but the position is largely ceremonial.

The polling was held on Thursday evening, with all of the country’s 349 lawmakers casting their votes.

This was the first presidential election in 35 years to feature more than one candidate. In previous elections, the political opposition never contested the ruling party.

Awami League, the party of ousted President Sheikh Hasina, was banned by the interim government of Muhammad Yunus and could not take part in the election.

The election was necessitated by the resignation last month of Mohammed Shahabuddin, citing health issues, ahead of the official end of his tenure in April 2028.

A Reuters report quoting sources said that Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s government had pressed Shahabuddin to step aside because of his long-standing ties to Hasina, who is now in India.

Alamgir will be sworn in on Friday evening.

Residents of a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut have said they will not trade the group’s weapons for reconstruction money, while decrying a US-brokered framework peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel.

The Dahiyeh neighborhood in the south-western part of the Lebanese capital has suffered extensive destruction from strikes by West Jerusalem since the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2023 and its subsequent spillover into Lebanon.

The deal, signed between the Lebanese and Israeli governments in late June, envisages the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pulling out from southern Lebanon, to be replaced by the Lebanese military, which would oversee the disarmament of Hezbollah.

According to the document, the internationally supported reconstruction of the country would only begin after the group lays down its arms. Hezbollah has called the agreement “a surrender” to Israel and warned that attempts to enforce it could lead to conflict.

The sentiment is shared by locals in Dahiyeh, who continue to support Hezbollah despite Israeli attacks, RT’s Steve Sweeney has reported from the area.

One shopkeeper blasted the agreement as a “humiliation and disgrace” for his country, insisting that “it brought no benefit to the Lebanese state.”

Another said: “Are they offering us money in exchange for restricting the resistance’s weapons? Let them state the amount. We would raise it ourselves rather than trade away the resistance’s arms.”

The World Bank estimates that Lebanon’s reconstruction after the Israeli airstrikes and ground invasion will cost at least $11 billion. Physical damage from the 2023 to 2024 war between the IDF and Hezbollah alone was put at $6.8 billion, with the assessment not including the subsequent destruction.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs could face criminal charges linked to the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas 30 years ago, The Telegraph has reported, citing sources. According to the outlet, prosecutors could take action if the man currently on trial over the murder is convicted.

Combs, who rose to become one of the most powerful figures in US hip-hop as a rapper and producer, is currently serving a 50-month federal prison sentence after being convicted in 2025 on two counts of transporting people for prostitution.

On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot four times while stopped at a red light in a car with record executive Suge Knight. The 25-year-old died six days later, while Knight survived. His death soon became one of the most infamous unsolved murders in US popular culture.

The cold case was revived after Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis, a former senior figure in the South Side Compton Crips street gang, began publicly discussing his involvement in 2018 and 2019, eventually leading to his arrest in 2023. Members of the gang are believed to have provided protection to Combs in Los Angeles.

Davis, now on trial for allegedly orchestrating the shooting, had previously claimed that Combs offered $1 million for Shakur and Knight to be killed amid an increasingly violent rivalry between Combs’s Bad Boy Records and Knight’s Death Row Records, which represented Shakur.

Combs has denied any involvement, calling the allegations “pure fiction and completely ridiculous.” Davis now insists his previous accounts of the killing were fabricated for money and notoriety.

The Telegraph did not specify what charges Combs could face but said a Davis conviction could lend credibility to the latter’s claim regarding the $1 million offer.

“The door remains open on what charges could be made against Diddy. But if the jury convicts Davis, then it gives a green light to take action against Diddy,” the outlet quoted a Clark County district attorney’s office source as saying.

The newspaper said prosecutors have kept Combs’s alleged role out of the trial to avoid confusing the jury and have not confirmed whether they would pursue him.

Davis was allegedly one of the four men in the Cadillac from which the fatal shots were fired and is the only one still alive.

Prosecutors believe the man’s nephew, Orlando ‘Baby Lane’ Anderson, fired the shots in retaliation for being beaten by Shakur and his entourage earlier that night. However, he was never charged and was killed in an unrelated gang shooting in 1998.

Under Nevada accomplice liability, Davis can be prosecuted for murder even if he did not pull the trigger. He has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with a deadly weapon with intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang.

South African Anglican priest and anti-apartheid activist Michael Lapsley has accused the US of inflicting “a genocide without bombs” on Cuba through sanctions that he says are causing severe shortages and worsening the island’s humanitarian crisis.

Lapsley made the allegation after returning from Havana, where he said he observed dire conditions and few vehicles on the roads because of severe fuel shortages. He said Cubans endure prolonged electricity outages that prevent water from being pumped, disrupt factories and hamper the production of medicines.

”The United States is actively strangling Cuba. This is a collective punishment of a whole country since the triumph of the revolution. However, things have become immeasurably worse in the last six months,” he told IOL.

Washington has maintained an embargo on Cuba since 1962.

In January, US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency over Cuba and moved to restrict its fuel supplies, blocking oil tankers bound for the island and threatening tariffs against countries that continued supplying it. Cuban Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in May that the country had run out of diesel and fuel oil, leaving it dependent on gas from its own wells. Island-wide blackouts have been reported since March.

Lapsley travelled to Havana earlier this month to attend a colloquium marking the centenary of the birth of Fidel Castro, who led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the island for almost half a century. Castro died in 2016.

Delegates from 63 countries attended the event, including representatives of South Africa’s National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and former minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

During an address to the gathering, Lapsley called for an end to the US blockade of Cuba. Joel Ortega Dopico, president of the Cuban Council of Churches and the Cuban Bible Society, told Lapsley that Washington’s restrictions were making it difficult even for countries seeking to assist Cuba.

“They don’t allow diesel or oil to get into the country. It’s very difficult. Support from other countries, even from countries that want to support Cuba, is very hard. They are making it hard for everyone to help Cuba right now,” Dopico said, adding that the restrictions were hitting the most vulnerable hardest, with some Cuban families cutting their food intake from three meals a day to one.

“Access to basic foods like eggs, milk and rice is very hard in Cuba, because if you don’t have diesel, if you don’t have technology, if you don’t have access to that, you cannot produce,” he said.

Lapsley said Cubans had shown resilience and innovation but now needed international support. “From the beginning, Cuba has fought for other countries, such as South Africa, Angola and Namibia. Now, the world needs to come to their support. Governments, solidarity movements and faith organisations need to come together so Cuba can survive. But they also need to come together to oppose what the United States is doing,” he stressed.

Lapsley is honorary life president of the Friends of Cuba Society, which he helped establish ahead of South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994. He also brought medical supplies to Cuba during the visit.

First published by IOL

Former Liberian Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor has been charged with drug trafficking, money laundering, and other offenses as part of an investigation into an alleged transnational narcotics network, the authorities have said.

The West African nation’s Ministry of Justice announced the move on Wednesday, saying Howard-Taylor was prevented from leaving Liberia through Roberts International Airport and taken to the national police headquarters.

Following a review of evidence gathered by a joint national security team, she was charged with illicit drug trafficking, unlicensed importation and distribution of controlled substances, criminal solicitation, facilitation and conspiracy, as well as money laundering, the ministry said.

“No office is too high, no political connection is too powerful, no nationality provides immunity,” Attorney General Oswald Tweh said.

The government also charged two Croatian citizens, Nikolai Ivancic and Mihovil Vrovac, and Ukrainian national Tara Zaderieko in absentia for allegedly helping organize the network. The authorities said they would seek their arrest through domestic and international channels.

Howard-Taylor’s lawyer, Kabineh Ja’neh, told Reuters he had met his client but had yet to see the formal indictment. “We would be able to proceed with the matter once we get the formal charge,” he said.

The government has stressed that the allegations do not constitute “a judgment of guilt” and that “all defendants remain presumed innocent.”

Howard-Taylor served as vice president under former leader George Weah from 2018 to 2024. She was previously married to former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is serving a 50-year sentence for aiding war crimes committed during Sierra Leone’s civil war.

The case comes less than a month after the authorities announced Liberia’s largest-ever drug seizure. Approximately 4.2 metric tons of cocaine valued at $336 million were destroyed in July, while several senior police officers were implicated in the operation.

Another 237 kg of cocaine, valued at more than $19 million, was seized in June. West Africa has become an increasingly important transit corridor for cocaine moving from South America to Europe.

The Liberian Ministry of Justice has said the country “will not be surrendered to drug traffickers or those who enable them.” It vowed to uproot trafficking networks, sever their financial and institutional support, and pursue their members “wherever they may be found.”

India’s federal ministers are being ranked on their social media activity as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government goes all out to connect with the country’s youth, after student protests last month gave a nasty surprise to a government and party that once dominated online narratives.

The rankings, based on the performance data for the ministers’ social media accounts, were shared at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Modi on Wednesday, reports said. The data, and the review’s results, were not shared publicly. 

Local media reports said the exercise was not a mere counting of followers. Rather, the activity of the ministers across social media platforms Instagram, X, and Facebook between May 1 and August 15 was reviewed, with the aim to assess the quality and reach of communications. Some reports said LinkedIn posts were also included in the review.

Metrics such as frequency of posts, engagement, likes, and the interactions generated across the platforms were used for the grading, with the ministers being presented with a scorecard. Modi reportedly came up top in the review.

Modi, 75, has about 107 million followers on X, where he has posted regularly on policy initiatives by his government, development schemes, and even congratulatory messages to the citizens and foreign leaders. 

His Bharatiya Janata Party controls a formidable social media machine, led by a so-called IT cell chief. But the student protests, spearheaded by India’s satirical, youth-led Cockroach Janta Party, exposed the limitations of that playbook as young people’s social media preferences change.

Young people aged 15-29, or Gen Z, make up about 28% of India’s 1.4 billion population. They are particularly active on Meta’s Instagram, where reels, short videos, and visual storytelling, rather than text, are key to getting eyeballs. TikTok, a rival platform which is immensely popular among the youth, is banned in India.

As the protests intensified last month, Modi himself posted a selfie message to the students on Instagram, and directed his ministers to post more on the platform to reach the young audience.

The party’s chief, Nitin Nabin, on Monday effected an organizational shakeup, replacing many people in key leadership positions, including the IT cell chief.

More than 100 people were killed in the Central African Republic (CAR) after a gold mine collapsed near the border with Cameroon, according to rescuers and local officials.   

The disaster occurred on Tuesday at a mining site in Zamboye, in the country’s western Nana-Mambere prefecture. Several underground galleries reportedly caved in while miners were working below ground.  

More than 100 bodies had been recovered from the site, the Associated Press reported, citing Gervais Ganagoroh, a local Red Cross volunteer involved in rescue efforts. AFP also put the death toll as being at least 100, citing local sources.   

Separately, Cameroonian journalist Jean Charles Biyo’o Ella reported a preliminary toll of 107 after speaking with the mayor of the nearby border town of Garoua-Boulai. CAR officials had earlier reported that 30 bodies had been recovered as search operations continued. 

The final official death toll has yet to be announced.

🇨🇫 DRAME | Plus de 100 personnes seraient mortes dans l’effondrement d’une mine d’or artisanale en République centrafricaine.

L’accident s’est produit dans le village de Zamboye, près de la frontière avec le Cameroun. (Reuters) pic.twitter.com/u4NFCjFi23

— Cerfia (@CerfiaFR) August 20, 2026

The disaster initially caused confusion over whether the mine was in CAR or Cameroon. Cameroon’s Ministry of Mines later said the collapse occurred on the CAR’s side of Zamboye. The settlement straddles the border area, with its Central African and Cameroonian sections separated by the Kadey River. 

Cameroonian authorities have confirmed that at least four of their nationals were among the dead. 

The latest disaster follows a series of mining accidents in CAR, which is rich in mineral resources, with gold and diamonds forming the backbone of its mining industry. In May, 23 miners were killed when a shaft collapsed at a site in the same Nana-Mambere prefecture, while another landslide at the Konyeme site in June left at least eight artisanal miners dead. 

Deadly mining accidents are common across Africa, particularly at artisanal sites where miners often work in hand-dug tunnels with limited safety protections. In January, more than 200 people were killed after a landslide struck the Rubaya coltan mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The disaster, which followed heavy rains, buried miners working at the sprawling site, which is one of the world’s major sources of coltan.

The Orthodox Church is very strict about the sin of schism. Saint Ignatius of Antioch wrote, “If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” Likewise, Saint John Chrysostom wrote, “The sin of schism is not washed away even by the blood of martyrdom.” In this context, a recent event in Africa is of particular significance. While it may not attract the attention of secular people, it holds particular significance for devout Christians.

At the end of July, a delegation from the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) made an official visit to the Metropolis of Nairobi of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. With the ‘blessing’ of so-called ‘Metropolitan’ Epiphanius Dumenko, ‘Metropolitan’ Eustratiy Zoria and ‘Archpriest’ Vitaly Danchak arrived in Kenya.

On July 25, they were received at the residence of Archbishop Makarios (Tillyrides) of Nairobi, to whom the guests presented a bishop’s panagia, among other gifts. On July 26, with the blessing of the archbishop, the schismatics from the OCU celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the Orthodox Patriarchal Cathedral of Sts. Cosmas and Damian. Eustratiy Zoria presided over the Liturgy, assisted by the local African clergy.

This confirms that the creation of the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa of the Russian Orthodox Church was a timely decision. The Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa was created after Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria, contrary to his previous position and without any explanation, recognized the OCU in 2019. The Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa was initially established for those priests, religious, and laity of the Church of Alexandria who wished to avoid contact with the schismatics.

The fact that the Ukrainian groups from which the OCU was formed are schismatics is not the “private opinion of solely the Russian Orthodox Church”; it was the common position of absolutely all regional Orthodox Churches from the 1990s to 2018, and was confirmed by official church documents.

The defrocking and excommunication of the self-proclaimed ‘Patriarch of Ukraine’ Filaret Denisenko was also recognized by all the regional Orthodox Churches without exception, including the patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria. Moreover, Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria once said in an interview that when he served as archimandrite at the Representation of the Orthodox Church of Alexandria in Odessa, Ukraine, and learned that Ukrainian schismatics wanted to come into the church, he stood at the door and barred them from entering. He also boasted of this when he became patriarch, citing it as an example of his principled stance on schism.

In 2018, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople announced that he would recognize two Ukrainian schismatic groups, the largest of which was Filaret Denisenko’s group, and signed the tomos of autocephaly. This was presented as a kind of benefaction bestowed by the Patriarch of Constantinople on Orthodox Ukrainians.

The particularly cynical nature of the situation lay in the fact that at the time, in 2018, the majority of Orthodox believers in Ukraine belonged to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which was not schismatic. And the UOC did not request Patriarch Bartholomew to sign the tomos.

The schismatics were a minority that systematically attacked the canonical UOC – carrying out physical assaults, forcibly seizing churches, and beating priests and laity. They committed obvious evil, inflicting suffering not on some people in Russia, but on Orthodox Ukrainians who were part of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

After Constantinople recognized the OCU, its adherents did not cease behaving like schismatics; they even intensified their attacks, beatings, and seizure of churches from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Patriarch Bartholomew’s lawless act legitimized this evil, which continues to this day. This meant that this was not only a canonical crime, but also an immoral act that only intensified the suffering of Orthodox Ukrainians.

The overwhelming majority of the regional Orthodox Churches did not support Patriarch Bartholomew’s decision. Only the patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria fully recognized the schismatics as the true ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’. The Churches of Greece and Cyprus recognized the OCU partially (some bishops of these Churches did not recognize it). The remaining ten regional Orthodox Churches, including the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, have not officially recognized the OCU in the past nine years. So this is not a “Greek-Russian dispute,” as some falsely claim; and the question is not, “Do you side with the Russians or the Greeks?” but “Do you side with the schismatics or with the Church?”

When the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa was established in December 2021, many Orthodox Africans who were unwilling to be defiled by spiritual communion with the schismatics defected from the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Skeptics wondered whether this was justified: after all, Ukraine is far from Africa, and the schism and other tragic events happened on another continent and didn’t really affect ordinary Orthodox Africans.

However, the events in Kenya at the end of July have once again confirmed that those who left the Patriarchate of Alexandria had valid reasons to do so. The threat is real – and now, it has gone a step further: the Greeks allowed the schismatics to celebrate the Divine Liturgy alongside Orthodox Africans. Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria, who once barred Ukrainian schismatics from entering his church in Ukraine, has now allowed them to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in Africa. Self-proclaimed ‘Metropolitan’ Eustratiy Zoria, who was ‘ordained’ by the excommunicated Philaret Denisenko (and therefore, for most of the Orthodox world is simply a layman) was allowed to celebrate the Liturgy as a bishop, and Kenyan clergy served him.

Canon 33 of the Council of Laodicea states, “No one shall join in prayers with heretics or schismatics”; Canon 10 of the Apostolic Canon says, “If any one shall pray, even in a private house, with an excommunicated person, let him also be excommunicated”; And Canon 2 of the Council of Antioch states, “It is unlawful to commune with excommunicated persons, to assemble at private homes and pray with those who do not pray in the church, or to welcome those who do not assemble with another church. In addition, if any of the bishops, priests, deacons, or anyone in the canon are found communing with excommunicated persons, let them also be excommunicated because they bring confusion to the order of the Church.”

The OCU is not in communion with the majority of the Orthodox Churches. It appears that the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria has forced Orthodox Africans to commit a canonical violation of the aforementioned canons and defile themselves by concelebrating the Divine Liturgy with the schismatics.

Notably, Greek Metropolitan Makarios himself refused to concelebrate the Liturgy with the schismatics. He knows full well what they are and the shame of celebrating the Liturgy with them. That day, Metropolitan Makarios celebrated the Liturgy in another church and sent the unsuspecting Africans, his spiritual children who remained in his diocese, to commit this canonical crime.

This is precisely what those Orthodox Kenyans and other Africans who joined the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa of the Russian Orthodox Church shielded themselves from. By preserving their souls from communion with the schismatics, they preserved the purity of their Orthodox faith.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has announced it is decelerating the development of its AI models, citing security risks.

In July, one of the company’s advanced AI bots unknowingly escaped its testing environment, gained internet access, and hacked into the servers of the Hugging Face online repository for AI models and datasets.

OpenAI said in a statement on Tuesday that the Hugging Face incident and the overall rise in the capabilities of its artificial intelligence models “have added urgency to our work on strengthening our monitoring, alignment and containment safeguards across all stages of the training process.”

“As models become more capable, the risks associated with developing and testing them internally also grow. Our standards for monitoring, alignment, and security must stay ahead of those risks,” the statement read.

The company, headed by CEO Sam Altman, said it has “temporarily slowed the pace of scaling” while it works on implementing the upgrades.

The measures include a two-week pause in the training of the latest OpenAI models and the assignment of additional AI bots to monitor the behavior of AI agents during testing, it announced.

The company’s largest planned training run “remains on hold while we conduct smaller-scale training and evaluations to assess model behavior, validate our safeguards, and establish more evidence of alignment before proceeding,” the statement read.

Alignment is a key process of making AI systems behave as intended by the developers and being responsive to human oversight.

Last week, US Senator Bernie Sanders published a letter addressing the CEOs of the three leading AI companies – OpenAI Anthropic, and Meta – urging them to “stop building machines that humans cannot control.”

“Mr. Altman, Mr. [Dario] Amodei and Mr. [Mark] Zuckerberg: In the interest of humanity, stand by your words. Pause AI development,” he wrote.

The incidents of AI going rogue should be a wake-up call, Sanders said. He also warned that the technology falling into the “wrong hands” could lead to the development of “new bioweapons that result in the deaths of tens of millions of people.”

When addressed about the Hugging Face incident last month, US President Donald Trump said that “we’re looking at AI, we’re looking at controls.” However, he insisted that America must be the global leader in AI, adding he did not want any regulations that would leave the country “second to China.”

The shakeup in India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday has brought changes to its organizational hierarchy, raising some eyebrows. 

The shuffle, effected by BJP National President Nitin Nabin, is being explained away as the result of a new party leader bringing in his own team. However, a closer look shows the imprint of recent events as the organization struggles to connect with the youth in the world’s largest democracy.

What changed

Nabin replaced four of the party’s general secretaries and brought in two more new faces to fill existing vacancies. These are formidable positions in the BJP, ranking directly below its president and responsible for key decisions.

He also replaced the head of the party’s powerful IT and Social Media Cell, Amit Malviya, as well as the president of the youth wing, Tejasvi Surya.

Others who were ousted included the party’s treasurer, the chief of the women’s wing and the head of the OBC wing. OBCs, or Other Backward Classes, is a collective term for socially and economically disadvantaged communities which together account for about 50% of the country’s voters – although they don’t always vote as a bloc.

Also shown the door were the heads of the party’s farmers’ wing, the scheduled tribes and scheduled castes wings, and the minority wing.

Malviya and Surya fell to youth anger

At least a couple of the big exits can be attributed to the student protests last month over leaks of questions for a national medical entrance test – the biggest challenge Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has faced so far.  

India, the world’s most populous nation with 1.4 billion people, also has the most young people of any country; the average age is around 29.

The government responded to the protests with brutal police violence, stoking public anger – before it caved and sacked Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The BJP’s IT cell was overwhelmed as netizens attacked the party, the government, and even Modi. Amit Malavia, the party’s social media czar since 2015, found his tool-kit had come up short.

Attempts to deflect from the main issue – for instance, by focusing on the traffic congestion caused by the protests – fell flat. He faced fierce counterattacks online, even from those usually sympathetic to the BJP.

Tejasvi Surya, a young lawmaker from the southern IT hub city of Bengaluru, had won praise for organizing the government’s health response in his constituency during the Covid-19 pandemic. But he, too, failed to rally the youth behind the party as the protests intensified.

As the public’s mood soured, Modi went on Instagram with a selfie message to the protesting students – rather than his favorite platform X. He advised his ministers to also go on the Meta social media network to promote the work of their ministries among the country’s youth. 

This clear realization of a lack of a connection with Gen Z and Gen Alpha Indians, who weren’t reached via the methods, channels, and faces the party had come to rely on, seems to have sealed the fates of Malviya and Surya.

Trusted hands brought in

Replacing Malviya is Deepak Mhaske, another BJP veteran who has spent 15 years in the party’s IT and social media cell.

He has led social media campaigns in states like Bihar, West Bengal, and his home state of Chhattisgarh, where the BJP has recorded strong victories. 

A lawmaker from Modi’s home state of Gujarat, Hemang Joshi, has replaced Surya. 

The party also reached out to the old guard to stabilize the situation as public discontent persists over several issues. 

Among those issues is the rollout of petrol cut with 20% ethanol, called E20, which has led to complaints about damage to engine components and loss of mileage in older vehicles trending on social media. 

The salaried middle class is angry about the faster escalation into higher income tax slabs. 

Widespread corruption and poor quality road construction (as was evident from showpiece highways crumbling under heavy rains) have added to public discontent.

One of the people brought in as a general secretary by Nabin is Smriti Irani, who was a trusted member of Modi’s inner circle when she was made one of the youngest cabinet ministers in 2014.

Irani, a combative politician and orator, won her seat in the Amethi constituency in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in 2019, defeating opposition leader Rahul Gandhi in his home constituency.

Irani is well known to Indians as the star actor in one of the most popular daily soap operas on television, ‘Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi,’ which translates as “because every mother-in-law was once a daughter-in-law.”

Another notable inclusion in the party hierarchy is Piyush Goyal, the federal trade minister, who has articulated India’s positions to the public as New Delhi drives a hard bargain with Washington over a trade deal. Goyal, the son of a long-time BJP treasurer, has been brought in as – no surprises – the party’s treasurer.

Meeting the youth where they are

The BJP seems to have been guided by the thinking that fresh but trusted faces can help it regain trust among the country’s youth. It hopes to do so by meeting them in the social media spaces they prefer, and speaking using their lingo – as lawmakers like Surya have done in parliament. 

How that works out will be seen when a number of big states, including Modi’s Gujarat, go to the polls next year.  

Russia does not prefer escalation, but will continue to retaliate to Ukraine’s attacks on civilians and infrastructure, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

In an interview with Izvestia published on Thursday, Zakharova accused Kiev of showing “complete unwillingness to negotiate” while stepping up terrorist attacks against Russia’s civilian population and infrastructure.

“As long as this remains the case, the Russian Armed Forces will respond proportionately to emerging threats and continue the special military operation in order to accomplish the tasks set by President Vladimir Putin,” she said.

“Escalation is not our choice,” Zakharova added, arguing that progress toward a settlement depends on Kiev and its Western backers abandoning the “dangerous illusion” of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia.

Her remarks came as Russia and Ukraine carried out another major exchange of long-range strikes.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that its forces had launched a large-scale missile and drone attack overnight against military-industrial facilities in and around Kiev, including plants producing long-range drones and components for cruise missiles, as well as several storage facilities housing fuel, lubricants, UAV parts, and dual-use goods.

Kiev, meanwhile, conducted another major drone raid against Russia overnight, with 726 UAVs destroyed by air defenses in 20 regions, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned Ukrainian drone incursions, which target civilian infrastructure and residential areas inside Russia, as terrorist attacks aimed at compensating for Kiev’s setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces continue their steady advance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged on Wednesday that Ukrainian strikes on Russian industrial facilities were causing damage but noted that they have not produced “critical consequences.”

In July, he warned that Moscow’s responses to Kiev’s attacks would be “mirror-like” and “several times more powerful.”

A helicopter carrying tourists has crashed in northern Kenya, killing all seven people on board, including five US citizens and Ecuador’s intelligence chief, the authorities have confirmed.

The Eurocopter EC130 B4 went down near Mount Ololokwe in Samburu County at approximately 9:13 AM local time on Wednesday, according to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA). The aircraft was carrying six passengers and a pilot on a charter flight from Loisaba Conservancy, a 58,000-acre wildlife reserve and safari destination, toward the Ewaso Nyiro river area, KCAA said in a statement.

“The Ministry of Roads and Transport, Air Accident Investigation Department is leading investigations on circumstances surrounding the accident,” it said.

The victims included Michele Sensi-Contugi, director general of Ecuador’s National Intelligence Center, and his wife, Stephany Hollihan, who also held US citizenship. Jose Alberto Suarez, a senior executive at the US-based Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo, was also killed.

“The US Embassy is in touch with local authorities and is providing consular assistance,” the US State Department spokesperson said, confirming that five Americans died, Reuters reported.

Luxury safari operator &Beyond, which organized the excursion, confirmed that its guests were aboard the helicopter, according to Reuters. “Our deepest sympathies are with the guests, crew, their families and loved ones, and all those affected by this tragic accident,” Lady Lori Helicopters, the aircraft operator, said in a statement.

The Kenya Red Cross said search and recovery operations were “hampered by difficult terrain access and an active fire at the crash site.”

Search and recovery efforts are ongoing, hampered by difficult terrain access and an active fire at the crash site.

An additional team has been dispatched from Isiolo to reinforce the operation.

More updates to follow. https://t.co/XUjWArYul3 pic.twitter.com/qSApuA1b0y

— Kenya Red Cross (@KenyaRedCross) August 19, 2026

Sensi-Contugi was a close associate of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa and headed the country’s intelligence service amid an ongoing campaign by the authorities against powerful criminal organizations. Ecuador’s presidential office confirmed the deaths of Sensi-Contugi and his wife, and declared three days of national mourning from August 20 to 22.

The disaster is Kenya’s second fatal helicopter crash in six months. In February, an Airbus AS350 B3 struck forested terrain in Nandi County, killing lawmaker Johana Ng’eno and five others. A preliminary official report said the aircraft had encountered thick fog, drizzle and visibility of less than 20 meters.

In neighboring Tanzania, five people – including two Czech tourists – died when a medical rescue helicopter crashed on Mount Kilimanjaro in December.

Pakistan on Wednesday summoned the top US diplomat in Islamabad to lodge a “strong demarche” over remarks made by Washington’s ambassador in New Delhi that Jammu and Kashmir is an “important part of India.” 

Sergio Gor, who is also the US special envoy to South and Central Asia, made the comments in Srinagar, the part of Kashmir administered by India, on Wednesday. Gor, a close confidant and former business partner of US President Donald Trump, is on a two-day trip to India’s Jammu and Kashmir state and the federally administered Ladakh region.

“Kashmir is an important part of India,” Gor told reporters after meeting Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. “It is an incredibly beautiful place.” 

India and Pakistan, which gained independence when Britain partitioned its colonial territories in South Asia in 1947, have competing claims on Kashmir.

Hours after the comments, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry summoned Charge d’Affaires Natalie Baker – the top US envoy in Islamabad – and lodged a protest over Gor’s “factually incorrect remarks” and “irresponsible statement.”

“It was underscored that Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognized disputed territory, awaiting final disposition in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and the aspirations of the Kashmiri people,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan clashed briefly with missiles and drones last year after 26 people were killed in a terror attack in Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-backed terror groups. 

Gor’s comments have come despite a close rapport between Trump and Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir. Trump had claimed to have intervened to stop the India-Pakistan clash – an assertion that New Delhi dismissed. Islamabad, however, credited the US president with ending the short conflict and recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize last year. 

Trump has, in return, called Munir “my favorite field marshal.” Islamabad has also been acting as a mediator to end the Mideast war, which was triggered by US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

Indian authorities on Thursday used a bulldozer to remove temporary structures, traffic bollards, and barricades outside the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, in an apparent retaliatory action after Pakistan carried out a similar drive outside the Indian mission in Islamabad on Monday.

Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica has accused YouTube of waging a “war” against people who think independently and “tell the truth,” after the Google-owned platform deleted his channel without any warning.

YouTube removed Kusturica’s ‘My Life’ channel on Wednesday, without publicly elaborating on the decision, according to several media reports. The project, produced with Sputnik’s Serbian service, contained more than 200 videos and had roughly 30,000 subscribers. Some of the videos are dedicated to the fate of Yugoslavia, the clash of civilizations, and the collision between Christian and Western values.

After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, YouTube banned both Sputnik and RT as the West imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia. Moscow condemned the Western crackdown on the outlets as proof of an anti-Russian agenda and Western censorship.

Commenting on the ban, Kusturica told TASS that “a totalitarian society” was behind the move, adding that “for them it is normal that they closed the channel on YouTube. They are at war with us, with people who think, who tell the truth and bring truth to the masses.”

Separately, he said that “they don’t want anyone in that choir who doesn’t sing a song in which the algorithms reflect what those at the top want, those richest people in the world, plus the intelligence services.”

Sputnik Balkan noted that while YouTube rules stipulate that a channel can be shut down due to user complaints about video content, and after three consecutive warnings, neither the outlet’s editorial staff nor Kusturica received any notifications.

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan also condemned the move, describing Kusturica as her close friend. “Welcome to the club, maestro!” she wrote, referring to the Western sanctions placed on other outlets.

Born in Sarajevo in 1954, Kusturica is one of Europe’s most decorated filmmakers. He won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for ‘When Father Was Away on Business’ in 1985 and again for ‘Underground’ in 1995, while ‘Time of the Gypsies’, ‘Arizona Dream’ and ‘Black Cat White Cat’ cemented his reputation for surreal and politically charged Balkan cinema.

Kusturica has been supportive of Moscow’s stance on the Ukraine crisis, arguing that the conflict had been “long prepared with the assistance of the Pentagon” and was “a war against Orthodoxy,” while describing the Ukrainian government as “pro-Nazi.”

Russian forces have carried out a large-scale strike against drone-making plants and other facilities in Kiev linked to the Ukrainian military, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

The latest overnight raid involved ground-, air-, and sea-launched missiles as well as attack drones, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday morning.

An industrial facility belonging to weapons maker Fire Point was hit during the bombardment, the ministry said, adding that the plant had manufactured components for long- and medium-range drones and had also assembled and stored boosters for Flamingo cruise missiles.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky actively promotes Fire Point and its products internationally, despite the firm being linked to his longtime business associate Timur Mindich, who fled Ukraine after becoming a key figure in a $100 million corruption scandal last year.

Another target was the Antonov aviation plant, where An-196 Liutyi long-range fixed-wing drones and other types of UAVs were designed and produced, the ministry said.

A large warehouse where UAVs were manufactured and stored, an aviation industry assembly plant, and an arms depot hosting vacuum bombs, anti-tank mines, and ammunition for Baba Yaga drones were also struck in the Ukrainian capital, the statement read.

In Kiev Region, Russian missiles and drones struck the Martusovka logistics center, used to store and distribute dual-use goods, including those intended for the production of UAVs and electronic warfare systems, it said.

According to the statement, a fuel and lubricants depot housing up to 8,000 cubic meters of fuel intended for the Ukrainian military was blown up in the town of Brovary, east of the capital.

The Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry said12 people were killed and more than 30 others wounded in the bombardment.

Ukraine has also carried another major drone raid against Russia overnight, with 726 UAVs destroyed by air defenses in 20 regions of the country, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Moscow has condemned Ukrainian drone incursions, which target civilian infrastructure and residential areas inside Russia, as terrorist attacks aimed at compensating for Kiev’s setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces continue their steady advance.

According to Russian officials, the intensification of long-range missile and drone strikes against targets in Ukraine is a response to those actions.

Moscow maintains that it does not attack civilians, with its strikes being directed solely at military targets and infrastructure supporting Kiev’s forces.

US Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack has condemned Israeli airstrikes on an airbase in northwestern Syria as a dangerous escalation.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces struck the Abu al-Duhur base in Idlib province, near the Turkish border. Although there were no casualties, the strikes damaged recently built runways.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the attack was carried out because Israel and Syria had agreed to “a status quo in security matters,” and claimed that Damascus was “on the verge” of breaching the arrangement by allowing “Turkish troops to deploy at an airbase near Aleppo.”

“Israel repeatedly warned Syria that such a deployment would pose a threat to Israel’s security. Syria chose to ignore these warnings,” it added.

Both Syria and Türkiye denied the claims. Barrack, who also serves as US President Donald Trump’s envoy to Syria and Iraq, said the strikes “constitute an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.”

Barrack added that the government of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa “has neither adopted a predatory posture nor maintained proxy forces” and was committed to “de-escalation with Israel.”

“We encourage all parties to prioritize logical discourse over further military incidents,” Barrack wrote on X on Tuesday.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani told Axios on Wednesday that Damascus had “no intention” of establishing a Turkish base or allowing a permanent Turkish military presence at the site. The Turkish Foreign Ministry similarly accused Israel of resorting to “frivolous allegations” to legitimize its attacks on Syria.

Netanyahu defended the strikes on a podcast on Wednesday.

“The message was conveyed but apparently they didn’t hear it, so we made sure they understood it more clearly,” he said, according to the Times of Israel. Netanyahu has repeatedly clashed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a vocal critic of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Relations between Israel and the US have remained tense in recent months as Netanyahu, who faces parliamentary elections in October, rejected Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, arguing that Israeli troops would not withdraw from the Palestinian enclave until Hamas fully disarms.

Trump earlier condemned Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, saying they could undermine peace talks with Iran. This week, Trump said he had suspended the negotiations and announced a “historic” campaign to cripple Iran’s economy.

A former senior official who worked under US Covid czar Anthony Fauci has pleaded guilty to conspiring to hide government records concerning coronavirus research and the origins of the pandemic.

David Morens served as a senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which Fauci headed, between 2006 and 2022. He was indicted on April 28 on charges including conspiracy against the US, destroying or falsifying federal records, concealing records, and aiding and abetting, over an alleged scheme to evade public-records requests concerning Covid-19 research.

On Tuesday, Morens pleaded guilty in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and defraud the US. He admitted that he and others had deliberately used his personal Gmail account to evade Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

He now faces up to five years in prison and is due to be sentenced on November 12.

In emails previously released during the investigation, Morens wrote that he had learned from an “FOIA lady” how to “make emails disappear.” In another, he said he could send material to “Tony,” an apparent reference to Fauci, through private Gmail or deliver it personally, adding that “Tony” is “too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

The records concerned US-funded coronavirus research carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The funding was cut in 2020 as scrutiny grew over whether Covid-19 could have emerged from the Chinese laboratory.

Prosecutors said Morens worked with associates behind the scenes to restore the funding, push back against the lab-leak theory, and exchange nonpublic government information through private channels.

In his plea, Morens further admitted involvement in an illegal gifts scheme. The head of the nonprofit behind the Wuhan-linked research grant had sent him wine for his “behind-the-scenes shenanigans.” Prosecutors said Morens also discussed writing scientific commentary supporting a natural origin of Covid-19 as something he could do to “earn” the gift.

The guilty plea comes amid renewed scrutiny of Fauci, whom critics have accused of helping fund risky coronavirus research in Wuhan, concealing what he knew about a possible lab origin, misleading Congress and the public over the pandemic and vaccines, influencing intelligence agency assessments, and leading them away from the lab-leak theory, and personally profiting from his government role.

Last month, Fauci appeared before a Senate committee, where he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times while being grilled about Wuhan research, Covid’s origins, and his conduct during the pandemic. The Republican-led panel later voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.

Shortly before leaving office, former US President Joe Biden granted Fauci a broad pardon covering any potential federal offenses committed between 2014 and January 2025. Fauci has described efforts to prosecute him as an “unhinged” campaign.

Meanwhile, Covid-19’s origins remain unresolved. The FBI and CIA have both assessed a lab incident in Wuhan as the most likely source. Other US agencies have insisted on natural transmission from animals. China rejects the lab-leak claim.

US President Donald Trump has vowed to target any country helping Iran’s economy, shifting from his previous focus on military threats.

Trump made the remarks after a 60-day window to negotiate a peace deal with Tehran expired on Monday without breakthroughs.

“I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY! This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday night.

“I am also announcing that ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences. Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies – it all needs to stop NOW,” he added.

“This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat,” Trump wrote.

Earlier on Wednesday, the UAE announced the suspension of economic ties with Iran after two ballistic missiles were fired at its territory. Tehran rejected the allegations, describing the incident as an Israeli “false-flag operation.” It has previously fired drones and missiles at the UAE and other Arab states in the region that host US bases, accusing them of allowing their territory to be used to stage attacks against it.

Trump’s renewed threats came as the number of ships crossing the strategic Strait of Hormuz fell to six on Tuesday, below the 10-day daily average of 11, Reuters reported, citing data from tracking service Kpler.

Iran closed the waterway, which handles around a quarter of global seaborne oil and LNG trade, shortly after the US and Israel launched their joint bombing campaign on February 28. The US Navy declared its own blockade of Iranian ports in April and has been guiding ships via routes that Iran considers illegal. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump described the blockade as “extremely effective.”

Iranian officials said this month that the strait would not be reopened until the US lifts its blockade, releases the Islamic Republic’s frozen assets, and ends sanctions. Tehran also demanded that Washington withdraw its troops from the region as a condition for a peace deal.

The US suspended its most recent wave of strikes late last month, with Trump saying he wanted to provide space for talks. He has since said, however, that all negotiations have been halted.

The pause in hostilities occurred amid widespread reports that the US military had largely depleted its stockpile of high-precision munitions and interceptor missiles. Trump and US War Secretary Pete Hegseth have denied any shortages.

A biological male who identifies as a woman was sentenced on Tuesday to six years and one month in prison after pleading guilty to plotting to kill US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Ryan Michael English, who goes by the name Raleigh Jane English, turned himself in to a police officer outside the Capitol building in Washington, DC, on January 27, 2025, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Police searched English and found a folding knife, two Molotov cocktails, and a lighter in his jacket pockets.

English confessed to traveling to Washington to kill a Cabinet nominee whose Senate confirmation vote was scheduled for that day, or to burn down an unidentified think tank in the capital. Police found a note to a roommate in English’s pocket that said, “This is terrible but I cant do nothing while nazis kill my sisters… Im so sorry for lying and plotting and lying.”

Judge Rudolph Contreras said English was concerned with “trans rights” and that “the plan was basically impossible to succeed, and she turned herself in before it came anywhere near fruition.”

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro rejected English’s argument for a lighter sentence, which portrayed the defendant as “a young transexual woman who has experienced trauma and suffering from the day she was born.”

“My office will not tolerate attempts to intimidate or harm public officials that strike at the heart of our democratic process and are antithetical to the values we all depend on,” Pirro said following the sentencing.

Police said English was inspired by Luigi Mangione, who was charged with fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan in December 2024. In his diary and a handwritten note, Mangione allegedly described his frustrations with the healthcare industry. Last week, he pleaded guilty to stalking Thompson, resulting in his death.

The US has seen a series of attacks on public figures in recent years, which observers have attributed in part to increasingly charged political rhetoric.

In September, a gunman killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a speech on a university campus in Utah. US President Donald Trump survived several assassination attempts, including a shooting at his reelection rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024.

In June 2025, an assailant murdered Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and wounded state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. In April of the same year, a man firebombed the residence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

On August 18, a federal trial opened in the US, organized by a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general against Meta.

Twenty-nine states brought the lawsuit, and were represented by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey at the trial. They claimed that the company’s social media platforms hook users, harvest their data, and hide their methods, asserting that they are addictive to children and harm their mental health.

While this particular trial concerns only Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube are also being targeted. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and many others have already been summoned to testify to Congress. And let’s not forget the European Union's Digital Service Act and the showdown between Elon Musk and former European Commissioner Thierry Breton about X’s content moderation. The regulation of social platforms is strengthening everywhere. The arguments are always the same: companies shouldn’t be above the truth or the law, there’s a crucial need to ban “hate speech,” protect our children from pedophilia and psychological disorders, and so on.

But is it really about online activity? Isn’t the problem deeper and rooted in society itself? In its depravity that can be traced back to decades of cultural propaganda, consumerism, the promotion of all kind of sexual habits, and the dismantling of the homogeneity of people? Indeed, social platforms are a tool used to propagate ideas and shape minds, and a lot of trash can be found out there, but they remain only a tool. They are not ideas, ideology, instructions or policies; they are only a transmission channel of a peculiar zeitgeist.

Long before Meta, TikTok and X, the elites were promoting their decadent agenda through books, schools, political discourses, Hollywood and music: sexual promiscuity and ambiguity (essentially targeting the youth), acceptance of a cheaper and cheaper lifestyle (for the masses), tolerance towards organized mass immigration (creating an unstable society), abortion and euthanasia (altering the perception of life itself), and of course the omnipresence of gadgets supposed to connect people and make life easier when in reality they’re alienating them.

The main argument used by the political forces confronting these platforms (the protection of children) is of course pure hypocrisy. They themselves have been perverting the young. The real issue behind these trials is alienation: who or what is supposed to alienate people? The technological revolution that mankind is enduring has created a new political paradigm. It is now a confrontation between states and high-tech companies. The political elites cling to their power and influence, while the technology giants constantly gain more and more might.

Of course, one can argue that it was the same during the Industrial Revolution. Political forces had to deal with the economic importance of entrepreneurs. Most of modern history can be summed up as a constant dialectic between two conceptions: people serving the economy, and the economy serving people. The big difference now, however, is that the tech giants have an asset that traditional entrepreneurs wouldn’t have even dreamed of acquiring to such an extent: control over propaganda and the personal data of billions of people.

It really is a question of balance of power, that can be solved in one of two ways: the forced creation of techno-fascism (where the tech giants obey the political leadership) or the organic emergence of digital capitalist anarcho-totalitarianism (where the politicians are puppets, even more so than they are nowadays).           

In any case, the main culprits will still be the masses. Because, you know, you can’t stop progress! As French philosopher Jacques Ellul wrote: “Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.” Technology has been sanctified, it can’t be controlled – but the worst part is that people can’t envision a world without it and the more it develops, the more severe the addiction becomes. To believe that anything can be changed through institutional means is illusory.

Technology will keep developing. The politicians can’t do anything about it and the masses welcome it, just as they accept with thoughtlessness the decadent society they are offered. The only revolution that can happen has to be not a continuous technological one but a sudden philosophical, spiritual one. Unfortunately, as Etienne de la Boetie wrote back in the second half of the 16th century, one can argue that people voluntarily accept their own servitude. But the servitude is now not towards a government but toward technology.

US President Donald Trump has said he expects to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this year, days after ordering joint military drills with South Korea scaled back over what he called their ‘hostile’ signal to Pyongyang.

During his first presidency, Trump and Kim sought to improve relations between the two countries, meeting three times, including at the Demilitarized Zone in 2019. The diplomatic thaw eventually stalled without a deal on North Korea’s nuclear program.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump said he knows Kim Jong-un “very well” and the two “get along.” 

“The fact that I get along with him – that’s a good thing,” the US president said, adding that North Korea possesses “57 very powerful nuclear weapons.” 

Asked whether he planned to meet with Kim later this year, Trump replied: “Yeah, I will be.”

Also on Wednesday, NBC News quoted a White House official as saying Trump was open to meeting Kim at the “appropriate time,” although no date has been set.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s National Defense Ministry said that the annual joint military drills with the US, codenamed Ulchi Freedom Shield, were being cut short at Washington’s request.

A US Department of War official said the drills, which began on Monday, would end on August 21 rather than August 27, with some live-training events canceled or converted to simulations.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told parliament on Wednesday that the Trump administration had not notified Seoul of the move in advance.

North Korea has denounced the joint US-South Korean drills and vowed to respond with a “new level of deterrent.” Kim’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, a high-ranking official in the Workers’ Party, said on Wednesday that the reduction in the scale and duration of the drills did not change their “hostile and confrontational nature.” She described the personal relationship between Trump and her brother as “excellent.” However, she denied that there is any communication between the two leaders, according to AP.

The drills were scaled back after Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday that he was “not happy” that the US had agreed to participate. He said the drills were costly and “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea. “It is too late to cancel,” Trump wrote, adding that he had instructed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” the exercises.

Trump pointed out that South Korea has refused to back the US in its military campaign against Iran.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, he said he “was not happy when South Korea said – no, they are not interested in helping us with the Hormuz Strait.”

Leaving aside Belarus, which is geographically European but rarely treated as part of Europe’s political mainstream, most people would probably name Serbia, which in geopolitical terms is a remarkable exception. Even after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, Belgrade maintained a friendly attitude towards Moscow at both the governmental and public levels.

For four years, Serbia has tried to remain neutral despite sustained pressure from Brussels and Washington, and it refused to impose sanctions on Russia, while avoiding taking openly hostile measures. Recently, however, something appears to have shifted.

The change began in July, when Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic made an unexpected visit to Kiev and less than a month later, he hosted Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky in Belgrade.

During their talks, Vucic announced the launch of a Serbian-Israeli factory producing unmanned aerial vehicle, meaning the project places Serbia within the wider Western European drive to expand drone production, an effort from which Kiev may ultimately benefit. Then came a curious dispute over reports that Serbia might end visa-free travel for Russian citizens while hints of such a move appeared in official government documents, even as Belgrade categorically denied that any decision had been taken.

Vucic insists that Serbia’s policy hasn’t changed, yet his recent actions have created understandable doubts. Where are our Serbian brothers heading and when did they take this apparent wrong turn?

The answer is less dramatic than it may first appear. Serbia is an internationally recognized master of political balancing, even by the standards of countries forced to live between competing powers. Geographically, it’s surrounded by NATO and European Union members, and that reality pushes Belgrade towards Euro-Atlantic integration, whatever the wishes of its population.

Politically and culturally, however, much of Serbia continues to lean towards Russia. So to preserve its right to maintain that relationship, Belgrade must constantly make compromises, including occasional gestures of support for the Western agenda.

Vucic’s precarious domestic position makes this balancing act even more difficult. Since late 2024, the president and his party have faced persistent street protests, with demonstrators accusing the authorities of corruption and demanding their resignation and at the end of June, Vucic said he would step down “very soon” and call early parliamentary and presidential elections.

In any event, he must leave the presidency next year because he can’t seek a third consecutive term, but he’s nevertheless hinted that he intends to remain in power, perhaps by moving into the prime minister’s office if his party wins the election.

The European Union appears to have plans of its own and buoyed by the electoral defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary, Brussels may now hope that Serbia’s leadership, which it considers too friendly towards Russia, can be removed through the ballot box.

Vucic has already faced warnings that EU funding could be blocked unless Serbia repeals legislation strengthening presidential powers while Western policy circles have also discussed placing the Serbian elections under “special supervision,” supposedly to ensure their fairness. In practice, the objective would be to make certain that the present authorities surrender power to more reliably pro-EU forces.

Seen in this context, Belgrade’s recent maneuvers become easier to understand. Suggestions that Serbia might bring its visa policy for Russians into line with EU requirements are a familiar way of stringing Brussels along with promises of future reform, while Vucic’s sudden friendship with Zelensky serves a similar purpose in that it demonstrates loyalty to the prevailing Western political line without committing Serbia to a fundamental change of course.

Together, these gestures may be intended to discourage the European Union from interfering too aggressively in the coming elections while helping Vucic and his party secure a comfortable result. His early announcement that he intends to leave the presidency also gives him some protection, given Brussels will find it harder to direct sustained criticism at a leader who can present himself as a lame duck with one foot already out of office.

It’s equally important to consider what Vucic didn’t offer Zelensky. Serbia made no substantial commitment to Kiev and even the proposal that Belgrade might take responsibility for rebuilding a Ukrainian city remained deliberately vague as no one was told which city Serbia supposedly intended to reconstruct, still less when or how the project would be financed.

In practical terms, therefore, nothing fundamental has changed in Russian-Serbian relations, nor have these meetings created any entirely new source of tension. Serbian-made weapons have already displayed a mysterious tendency to find their way to Ukraine through third countries, while Vucic was probably sincere when he said that Belgrade had not joined Kiev’s side.

Serbia itself hasn’t suddenly changed either. It remains a country with a difficult history and an unenviable geography, trying to preserve its interests in an increasingly unforgiving world. Its leaders must accommodate the European Union without surrendering a relationship with Russia that retains deep cultural and popular roots.

Should Russia condemn the Serbs for trying to preserve their identity and room for maneuver? Definitely not and in fact should help them do so. 

The difficulty is that, for the moment, Russia may not possess as many opportunities to help as either country would like.

Has Serbia withdrawn its support for Russia?

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team

Croatian police have arrested a Ukrainian man suspected by Germany of taking part in the Nord Stream pipeline attack – while he was on set filming a Hollywood thriller based on the 2022 sabotage operation

The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office said on Wednesday that Ukrainian national Vladimir Z., previously identified by media as Vladimir Zhuravlyov, had been apprehended in the Croatian city of Pula under a European arrest warrant.

In a bizarre twist to the already labyrinthine Nord Stream story, Zhuravlyov was arrested while on the set of ‘Snake Island’, a movie about the supposed Ukrainian plot to destroy the pipelines, German legal magazine LTO reported. 

Starring Sean Penn and Adrien Brody, and directed by Doug Liman of ‘The Bourne Identity’, ‘Snake Island’ began filming in Zagreb earlier this month, according to a report by World of Reel. It is unclear whether Zhuravlyov was on set as an actor, an adviser, or a guest of Penn and Brody.

Although ‘Snake Island’ will reportedly focus on the Nord Stream operation, its name is a reference to a Ukrainian island in the mouth of the Danube estuary, which was captured by Russian forces in early 2022. 

In true Hollywood fashion, Ukrainian and Western media claimed that Ukrainian soldiers on the island refused to surrender to the Russian Navy, radioing “Russian warship, go f*ck yourself” to the Moskva guided missile cruiser.

In reality, the garrison on the island immediately surrendered. Ukrainian forces tried and failed to recapture the island several times throughout 2022, before Russian forces departed in June.

Zhuravlyov has evaded German authorities twice already. While living in Poland in 2024, he fled to Ukraine before he could be apprehended, reportedly in a vehicle belonging to the Ukrainian military attaché. Zhuravlyov then returned to Poland and was detained there in September 2025, but a Warsaw court rejected Berlin’s extradition request, arguing that “blowing up critical infrastructure during a war… is not sabotage but denotes a military action.”

According to the warrant, Zhuravlyov, a trained diver, is accused of planting explosives as part of a group, committing sabotage, and destroying infrastructure. He is expected to be extradited to Germany.

German investigators maintain that the attack was carried out by a small group of Ukrainians who used forged documents to rent a sailing yacht and transport military-grade explosives from Rostock, Germany to waters near the Danish island of Bornholm. The group allegedly used commercial diving equipment to plant the charges on the pipelines at a depth of around 100 meters.

German authorities say the alleged team was led by Sergey K., identified by media as former Ukrainian special forces member Sergey Kuznetsov. He was arrested in Italy in August 2025, extradited to Germany three months later, and charged with “war crimes” for knowingly attacking civilian infrastructure. His trial is due to begin this fall.

Moscow has dismissed the “Ukrainian frogmen” theory as fantasy, arguing that such a complex operation could not have been carried out in NATO-controlled waters by a small group without state assistance or Western intelligence involvement. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed a version of events put forward by American journalist Seymour Hersh, who claimed – citing intelligence sources – that the CIA and Norwegian Navy, acting on direct orders from then-US President Joe Biden, used NATO military exercises in the Baltic Sea in June 2022 as cover to plant remotely-triggered explosive devices on the Nord Stream lines.

Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky has fired Irina Mudraya, deputy head of his office, after media reports indicated that her home was raided as part of anti-corruption probe over alleged money laundering scheme.

The Western-supported National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) announced on Wednesday that it and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) were targeting an alleged criminal organization led by a current and former lawmaker and involving senior officials from Zelensky’s office.

NABU later said members of the alleged group had laundered 150 million hryvnia ($3.3 million) in cash through shell-company accounts to finance bail for a defendant in the Midas investigation. That sprawling corruption case centers in part on an alleged $100 million embezzlement and kickback scheme involving the country’s nuclear operator Energoatom, which investigators say was masterminded by Timur Mindich, a longtime business associate of Zelensky.

While NABU did not name the suspects, ZN.ua, citing law-enforcement sources, identified them as Mudraya, lawmaker Vadim Stolar, and ex-MP Maksim Mikitas, adding that several Justice Ministry officials and Sense Bank representatives were also targeted.

As for the defendant in need of bail, Ukrainian media identified him as former Energy Minister German Galushchenko, who was fired after the Midas scandal broke and detained as he attempted to flee the country.

Recordings released by NABU featured discussions about moving the bail funds and avoiding scrutiny. In one excerpt, an unidentified woman – potentially Mudraya – cites another unidentified person as saying, “corruption needs to be systematized and controlled, not fought.” Another voice adds: “and led.”

The scandal is part of several high-level graft cases. Earlier this month, anti-corruption authorities accused former ambassador to the US Olga Stefanishina of illicit enrichment and inaccurate asset declarations. Last month, they also accused several senior officials in Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry of large-scale fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering aimed at stealing foreign money.

Rampant corruption in Ukraine has long been the case, and only intensified after the escalation of Kiev’s conflict with Russia in 2022. EU officials have also designated graft as one of Ukraine’s key obstacles to membership.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that “corruption in Ukraine has become a byword” as it “permeates the entire Ukrainian power structure, including Zelensky’s inner circle and Zelensky himself.”

In a recent interview, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in response to a question about the aggressive attitude of Israeli politicians towards Türkiye, stated that Ankara will not shy away from war if attacked. While these words cannot be considered a direct declaration of war against Israel, they certainly served as a stern warning. The Turkish leader clearly stated Ankara’s position: Türkiye does not seek to enter into an armed conflict, but any aggression against it will be met with a decisive response. Erdogan, however, did not express any intention to strike first; he merely indicated that the diplomatic means of deterring Israel are gradually being exhausted.

Erdogan’s words are directly related to the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement signed on August 7 by Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Its core principle is reminiscent of Article 5 of NATO, which states that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. The defense pact provides for military coordination, joint exercises, intelligence sharing, and the development of defense-industrial cooperation. Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are creating their own mechanism of deterrence. And while it is not yet a full-fledged ‘Islamic NATO’, it is much more than a mere declaration of friendship.

US President Donald Trump’s reaction to this pact was notable. He welcomed the agreement, calling it a “big step” that demonstrates the unity of Middle Eastern countries. At first glance, it sounds contradictory that Washington is approving a mechanism that reduces the dependence of regional allies on American security guarantees. However, the Mecca Agreement is not a military alliance against the US, but rather an agreement against the American monopoly on determining regional security rules. There is a difference between these two concepts, although the distinction may narrow over time.

Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan all have their own grievances against Washington. Türkiye is dissatisfied with US support for Kurdistan Workers’ Party-affiliated militias in Syria, its exclusion from the F-35 program, and America’s continued support for Israel. Saudi Arabia feels bitter about America’s muted response to the attack on its oil infrastructure during the US aggression against Iran and is no longer confident that American guarantees will shield it at a critical moment. Pakistan considers its relations with Washington rather situational. After decades of cooperation, Islamabad faced sanctions and a decline in American interest following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Washington’s ties with India strengthened.

The conclusion made by all three countries is quite simple: while cooperating with the US is possible, completely outsourcing security to the Washington is no longer plausible. What Türkiye contributes to the alliance is a large military force and a developed defense industry; meanwhile, Pakistan contributes military experience and its nuclear status; and Saudi Arabia brings with it financial resources and political clout. Together, they are capable of negotiating with Washington not as three dependent partners, but as an independent coalition.

Why, then, is Trump satisfied about this new agreement? Regional self-defense is consistent with his long-standing principle that US allies should bear more costs and responsibilities. Moreover, openly opposing the pact would be tantamount to acknowledging US concerns and pushing the three countries toward even greater independence. Washington benefits from welcoming the new structure and maintaining influence through NATO, arms sales, intelligence cooperation, and bilateral ties. Finally, Trump can portray the situation not as a weakening of America, but as a success of his own policy – an example of how the allies have united to share the common burden.

The underlying fault line remains, however. The Mecca agreement enshrines the right of regional powers to decide for themselves who poses a threat to them and what their response should be. Ankara, Riyadh, and Islamabad have no intention of severing ties with the US, but they are trying to safeguard themselves should American policy again prove unpredictable or be subordinated primarily to Israeli interests. Formally, the pact is not directed against Washington; but politically, it signifies a shift away from American patronage toward a more polycentric security system. This is why experts view the agreement as a sign of America’s declining role in the region. 

The entire region, from the Eastern Mediterranean to South Asia, is closely monitoring the new agreement. India sees that its main adversary, Pakistan, has received collective guarantees from two influential states. Israel must take into account that Türkiye now intends to rely not only on its own forces and NATO membership, but also on a separate regional defense mechanism. Likewise, Greece, which has long-standing disputes with Ankara in the Aegean Sea, concerning Cyprus and maritime borders, cannot ignore the strengthening of Türkiye’s position. 

Therefore, another configuration may gradually emerge in response – a notional axis of India, Israel, and Greece, possibly including Cyprus. The foundation for this already exists: India is developing military-technical cooperation with Israel, Greece is purchasing Israeli missile and air defense systems, and in February 2026, New Delhi and Athens signed a declaration on expanding defense-industrial cooperation and agreed to prepare a five-year roadmap.

There is currently no reason to talk about the imminent emergence of a formal trilateral pact. India has officially stated that it is studying the implications of the Mecca Agreement for its national security and regional stability, but remains cautious. Most likely, a possible counterweight will initially emerge not in the form of a single treaty, but as a network of joint exercises, intelligence sharing, cooperation in air defense, unmanned systems, and maritime security. But the very possibility of such a configuration demonstrates that the Mecca agreement has already set in motion the logic of regional balancing: the emergence of a single center of power almost inevitably pushes its potential rivals closer together. 

But is Erdogan truly prepared to fight Israel? While retaliatory actions are quite possible, a pre-planned major war is not likely. Türkiye is not interested in a direct confrontation. War would hit its already battered economy, inevitably trigger a crisis within NATO, complicate relations with the US, and could quickly escalate beyond a bilateral conflict. Israel also understands that war with Türkiye carries an incomparably greater risk than operations against non-state actors or strikes against weaker neighbors.

Nevertheless, such a scenario is no longer entirely out of the question. The main zone of risk is Syria, where the interests of the two countries frequently clash. Ankara seeks to consolidate its influence in Damascus, strengthen Syrian statehood while maintaining pro-Turkish sentiments, and prevent the emergence of hostile forces on the Turkish border. Israel is trying to limit Türkiye’s rise and maintain freedom of military action. The two sides maintain technical channels to prevent accidental clashes, but a strike on a target housing Turkish military personnel or the death of Turkish citizens could be enough to trigger a chain reaction.

Another potential conflict zone is the Eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus and the disputed maritime zones. The risk will also increase if Israeli operations in Syria and Lebanon, which Erdogan has already described as a threat to Türkiye’s security, continue to expand. If the Turkish leader decides that Israel is “not about to calm down,” is ignoring red lines, and gradually bringing the threat closer to Turkish borders, Ankara could shift from diplomatic pressure to limited military measures such as strengthening air defense systems, providing cover for allied forces in Syria, interceptions, naval deployment, or retaliatory strikes. A local incident that may spiral out of control appears more realistic than a deliberate decision by the two leaders to launch a full-scale war.

The Mecca agreement raises the costs of attacking Türkiye, but does not automatically imply that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will start a major war with Israel. The full text of the document has yet to be published, and collective defense could include various forms of assistance, from political support and intelligence sharing to direct military involvement. For now, it is primarily an instrument of deterrence: its purpose is not to facilitate war, but to dissuade a potential adversary from starting one.

Erdogan’s statement should be seen within this logic. He is not declaring war on Israel, but is depriving the Israeli leadership of the confidence that Türkiye will, under any circumstances, limit itself to protests and diplomatic statements. A full-scale Turkish-Israeli war remains unrealistic. However, if Israeli actions affect Turkish forces or are perceived by Ankara as a direct threat to national security, Erdogan is capable of responding with force. Then it would no longer be a question of whether he wants war, but whether the parties are able to stop the war after the initial exchange of blows.

Donald Trump said just before midnight Washington time that he has a deal with Canada to avoid 50% tariffs, and thus the tariffs are on pause for three days. Although that may not be the case a few more seconds from now. Just ask Iran. Whoops, here we go already. Canada has already disputed the existence of any deal.

If midnight strikes on the eve of August 19 without Canadian government negotiators agreeing to Trump’s demands, then Canada faces “50% tariffs,” Trump had warned. Except now, apparently, Canada has a deal with Trump. For three days. Clock it. Best to check that reservation again before leaving the house, though.

The reality is that most exports to the US from Canada are already covered under a North American free trade agreement that also includes Mexico. And the Canadian government has spent the past several months educating the country’s companies about how they can feasibly ensure that their own products can qualify under that deal. Which leaves, what exactly? Canadian booze. Canadian hockey gear. Canadian wood and paper products.

Almost all of the US’s particleboard comes from Canada. And the overwhelming majority of its softwood lumber, wood products, and paper. Way down the list as the second supplier is – China. Trump has called Canadian leadership “nasty” for not letting him grab them by the wood, but he’s also called China cheats, rip-off artists, and a “total disaster” in past remarks.

Yet you’d think that the US has actual options from the way that Trump has been behaving. Why even negotiate with Canada if that’s the case. It’s like the guy blowing up your phone asking for a date while insisting that he has better offers on the table than you. Well, go ahead, then. What’s stopping you? If you’re still camping out on the lawn, then there must be something that you really want and need – regardless of the accompanying rhetoric suggesting otherwise.

Now, apparently, there is a deal. Until there isn’t. Or until the deal becomes a different deal. Or until the deadline for the deal moves. Or until the deal is declared a victory, followed by another deadline to secure the next victory. It’s like a departure board for a flight in hurricane season.

Oh, what’s that? You want first dibs on Canadian natural resources in the interest of collective security, as reports have suggested? That’s like telling a woman that she must date you and not anyone else because you’re the safest choice.

Does Mr. Security threaten to violate you against your multiple attempts to rebuff his advances, as Trump did in repeatedly riffing about making Canada the “51st state” despite Canadians literally making it the primary issue in their last national election that resulted in a landslide win for the current Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who made it the cornerstone of his campaign?

“The US is demanding a right of first refusal on Canadian critical minerals, that Canada complete its purchase of US F-35 fighter jets, that Ottawa buy US tech such as radar planes as part of joining Mr. Trump’s planned Golden Dome missile defence system, and that Washington receive some guarantee on future supplies of oil and gas,” according to the Globe and Mail.

You want all that in exchange for holding Canadian hockey sticks and booze hostage? No wonder Canadians are willing to wait out the drama and honestly don’t even care if a deal is ever made.

In fact, this entire charade has made Canada more unified and stronger than ever. It’s finally awoken even the most sycophantic pro-US Canadians to its vassal status reality through historical kowtowing to Washington’s demands. Just a few years ago, anyone talking about diversifying interests away from US over-dependence and speaking publicly about how the US-centric world is over, would have immediately been branded some kind of foreign agent tasked with breaking up the US-led Western alliance. But Carney has made it clear that sovereignty runs through the kind of diversification of interests that much maligned patriotic Canadians have been demanding for years.

Trump’s desire for Canadian assets – and the frustration over being denied, as repeatedly exhibited by his Ambassador to Ottawa, Pete Hoekstra – has also served to draw Canadians’ attention to the various potential ways that American and other foreign interests have been actively supporting separatist groups – most recently in resource-rich Alberta – in an attempt to gain political leverage over the country’s elected decision makers and tilt the global playing field in their own favor.

Hoekstra himself has been linked to a voter ID app used by the separatist movement, which has also met with Trump’s State Department officials – as a Canadian petition on the parliamentary website states. To date, nearly a quarter-million Canadians have signed it, demanding that Hoekstra be drop-kicked out of the country for foreign interference – a phenomenon that would have been unthinkable to associate with the US until recently, despite what some of us kept trying to explain.

The trade spat with the US was also the catalyst needed for the various Canadian provinces to do away with their own provincial protectionist barriers – finally allowing free trade across the nation.

And buying Canadian – or anything BUT American – has become such a widespread activist movement that it’s been widely reported that despite Trump’s demand that Carney get American booze back on Canadian shelves, it would just sit there collecting dust at this point. It’s no wonder Canadians that don’t care about any midnight deadlines, with 66% certain that Trump wouldn’t honor it anyway, according to an Abacus poll.

So, yes: Canada and Trump have a deal. Unless something changes. Like the direction of the wind. Which is already the case, apparently. It’s actually more like a three-day free trial that can be cancelled anytime before it ends. Or even after. Doesn’t really matter anyway, since the charges will be showing up on the statement, regardless.

Russian doctors have developed and tested what they describe as the first treatment strategy of its kind for Alzheimer’s, using a new blood-filtering technique to target chronic inflammation – one of the processes believed to drive brain-cell damage.

Alzheimer’s is a progressive brain disease and the most common form of dementia. It gradually destroys memory, thinking and other cognitive abilities, eventually leaving patients unable to perform everyday tasks independently.

The new method was developed by clinicians at Sechenov University in Moscow, one of Russia’s oldest and leading medical universities, and tested on Alzheimer’s patients, according to a press release issued on Tuesday.

Unlike most existing treatments, which largely seek to ease symptoms or target beta-amyloid – a harmful protein that accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients – the new approach focuses on substances that fuel inflammation throughout the body and are believed to contribute to the disease.

Among them are so-called neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) – web-like structures of DNA and enzymes released by immune cells to fight health threats. While normally part of the body’s defenses, researchers say an excess of NETs with age can fuel inflammation, increase blood-vessel permeability, promote beta-amyloid buildup and damage brain cells.

According to Natalia Sivtsevich, head of the university hospital’s transfusiology department, the Sechenov team hypothesized that removing some of these structures from the bloodstream could reduce inflammation and potentially slow processes contributing to Alzheimer’s.

To do so, they developed a technique that essentially cleans the blood. A patient’s plasma is passed through a special filter that removes potentially harmful DNA-containing particles while preserving healthy proteins, minerals and other useful substances before being returned to the bloodstream.

The approach was tested in a pilot study involving patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They underwent three blood-filtering procedures at intervals of two to three days, with each session processing the equivalent of twice the patient’s total circulating plasma volume.

Doctors assessed the patients before and after treatment using memory and cognitive tests, brain MRI scans and spinal-fluid biomarkers. Three months later, researchers reported improvements in verbal memory, attention and information-processing speed. Relatives asked to assess the patients’ progress also noted improvements in their ability to perform daily tasks.

Existing Alzheimer’s treatments either support memory, prevent damaging brain-cell overstimulation, or target beta-amyloid buildup. However, their effectiveness is limited and side effects can be significant, while none address the disease’s underlying causes, according to Vladimir Parfenov, director of Sechenov University’s Kozhevnikov Clinic of Nervous Diseases.

The researchers stressed that the findings are preliminary and that larger trials are needed to confirm the treatment’s safety and effectiveness. However, the team believes the strategy could eventually complement existing Alzheimer’s therapies.

Around 57 million people worldwide live with dementia, with Alzheimer’s accounting for an estimated 35–40 million cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dementia is the seventh-leading cause of death globally, with nearly 10 million new cases each year – roughly one every three seconds. The risk of developing the condition doubles every five years after age 65. There is currently no cure.

South Korean prosecutors have sought the death penalty for a woman accused of killing two men with drug-laced drinks after allegedly consulting ChatGPT about potentially lethal combinations and dosages.

Kim So-young is accused of giving beverages spiked with benzodiazepines to three men between December 2025 and February this year. Two died, while the third survived, according to Yonhap. She is also charged with injuring three other men using similar methods.

Prosecutors asked the Seoul Northern District Court on Tuesday to sentence Kim to death during the final hearing of her trial.

Kim has denied intending to kill the men and has claimed she gave them the drinks to prevent unwanted physical contact.

However, police have said they recovered ChatGPT conversations from Kim’s phone in which she asked about the effects of combining sleeping pills with alcohol, what amounts could be dangerous, and whether the mixture could prove fatal.

According to investigators cited by NBC News, one of the three men at the center of the murder case survived after spending two days in a coma. Kim is believed to have subsequently consulted ChatGPT about the risks and dosages involved, and investigators say she increased the amount of drugs used before the later fatal poisonings.

Authorities have sought to use the chatbot conversations as evidence that Kim understood the potentially lethal consequences of the drugs. A lawyer representing one victim’s family has said the chat logs could be important in establishing whether she intended to kill.

The case is one of several recent violent-crime investigations involving ChatGPT.

Florida launched a criminal investigation into ChatGPT creator OpenAI this year after authorities said the perpetrator of the 2025 Florida State University shooting had used the bot to seek advice about guns and ammunition before killing two people and injuring six others.

In Canada, OpenAI faced lawsuits after acknowledging that it had banned the ChatGPT account of a teenager who later killed eight people in the Tumbler Ridge massacre, but had not alerted police.

Earlier this month, prosecutors in Massachusetts said a 17-year-old charged with murdering his 45-year-old mother and 14-year-old brother had also used ChatGPT to create “fantasy stories” about killing his family.

OpenAI has generally rejected claims that ChatGPT is responsible for violent acts committed by users, insisting it has a zero-tolerance policy on using its tools to assist violence and has been strengthening safeguards, account enforcement, and procedures for referring potentially dangerous users to law enforcement.

The company has also faced lawsuits accusing ChatGPT of fostering addictive behavior, reinforcing mental-health crises, and contributing to suicides.

India has finalized the paperwork to start constructing a hospital in the West Bank, Palestine’s ambassador to New Delhi has said. But he added that it is Gaza that badly needs the artificial limb facility that his government has discussed with New Delhi about building.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Abdullah M. Abu Shawesh said that there are more than 5,000 amputees in Gaza who are desperately in need of artificial limbs.

India said last month that it will build three major projects in Palestine, which include a specialty hospital, an artificial limb fitment center, and a vocational training institute.

Gaza is currently under Israeli occupation following the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023. 

”I’m sure India will be with us in Gaza the day after the war,” Shawesh  said. He added that some 20,000 Palestinians are in need of medical evacuation in Gaza, but that Israel is allowing only small groups of 5-10 to be moved.

Shawesh said that Palestine backs India’s bid for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for 2028-2029, a day after Indian diplomat Sripriya Ranganathan visited Ramallah in the West Bank and met with Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin.

”There is no ceasefire in Gaza, even with the declaration that had been (made) many months ago, Israel did not stop killing the Palestinian people,” Shawesh pointed out in an exclusive interview with RT India. 

He called attention to Israeli National Security Minister and war hawk Itamar Ben-Gvir’s call to carry out “targeted assassinations” in Gaza every night, and claiming that some in the Palestinian enclave “are not people.”

The envoy painted a dire picture of Gaza. “My home, my father’s home, where I was born, has been destroyed. Gaza is destroyed,” he said, adding that 95% of the people there have been displaced and are living in shelters and tents.  

US President Donald Trump’s envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, after holding talks with Hamas leaders, in an effort to revive a Gaza peace plan.

However, Israeli Defense Forces said on Tuesday that it had hit a meeting of Hamas commanders in Gaza City; the Hamas-run civil defense agency said six people were killed and 14 wounded in the attack.

The violence unleashed by Israeli forces in Gaza was “unjustified and disproportionate… in considerable terms,” Justice S. Muralidhar, the chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, told RT in June.

He alleged that children were specifically targeted by Israeli forces. The UN panel reported that Israel had killed 20,000 Palestinian children.

Protests broke out in western Libya, including in its capital Tripoli, on Tuesday after three widespread power outages in two days left residents without reliable electricity. 

Demonstrators took to streets and public squares, blocking roads and setting tires on fire. In Tripoli’s Tajoura district, protesters closed main roads with earthen barriers as they demonstrated against prolonged power outages and deteriorating basic services.  

The latest unrest follows weeks of protests linked to Libya’s electricity crisis. Triggered by a blistering heatwave with temperatures soaring to 50 degrees Celsius, residents faced daily blackouts lasting up to 14 hours, fueling widespread public anger.  

The situation escalated dramatically on July 28, when furious protesters stormed the strategic Mellitah Oil and Gas Complex, temporarily shutting down critical gas supplies to local power stations. 

The power crisis has also prompted a leadership change at Libya’s state electricity company. Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah replaced the board of the General Electricity Company of Libya on Monday.  

Libya’s energy infrastructure has recently come under attack. Last week, Zawiya’s oil refining facilities which can process about 120,000 barrels a day were repeatedly targeted with drones. Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) warned that continued drone attacks could force it to stop operations at the country’s largest functioning refinery. 

One strike hit a gasoline tank holding about 4.5 million liters of fuel and started a major fire, the NOC said. Another damaged a tank containing untreated naphtha. The corporation declared the highest state of emergency in the area and called on the authorities to investigate the attacks. No group has claimed responsibility so far. 

The energy crisis comes amid Libya’s continuing political division. Turmoil has plagued Libya since longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown with NATO support in 2011. The country remains divided between rival administrations in Tripoli and the east, while political disputes and armed unrest have repeatedly disrupted oil production.

🚨BREAKING: Protests Erupt In The Libyan Capital, Tripoli

The demonstrators are protesting against frequent blackouts & government mismanagement. pic.twitter.com/hmkbqgWJJ5

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) August 17, 2026

Israel is building an execution facility for Palestinian prisoners sentenced to death on terrorism charges, ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has announced. Apart from an execution chamber, the facility will house viewing booths where “crime victims” and their families can witness hangings – an option “customary in many countries,” Ben-Gvir mentioned while presenting the facility on Tuesday.

The complex will be used to hang convicted “terrorists” under the recently approved Death Penalty for Terrorists Law. The Knesset passed the legislation, championed by Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, in March. It mandates death penalty for those convicted of deadly terrorist attacks aimed at “ending Israel’s existence” – a provision critics say effectively exempts Jewish Israelis, making the law applicable almost exclusively to Palestinians. Executions must be carried out within 90 days of sentencing, with no right of appeal.

The execution facility’s exact location has not been disclosed beyond that it is housed in a newly built death-row wing at a prison in central Israel. In partly blurred video footage filmed at the site, a beaming Ben-Gvir proudly showcases the construction site, framing it as the fulfillment of promises to his supporters.

“We are making history. Terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging,” the minister stated. “I took office promising to stop the ‘summer camps’ in the Prison Service. This has been fully implemented. I promised to legislate a death penalty law for terrorists. This has been carried out. And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”

Ben-Gvir is known for inflammatory rhetoric toward Palestinians and has been sanctioned by multiple countries for repeatedly inciting violence against them.

He famously boasted that he would ensure “the terrorists [in prison] receive the minimum of the minimum” in food and argued last year that “there is no such thing as ‘Palestinian people.’” A leading advocate of the execution law, the minister and his party members wore noose-shaped lapel pins for months, while his 50th birthday cake in May also featured a noose.

‘Deeply discriminatory’ law

The death penalty law has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and legal campaigners, including in Israel, over discrimination, due process, and potential violations of international and Israeli law. UN human rights experts have warned that hanging in particular is incompatible with the absolute prohibition on torture, while Israeli rights group B’Tselem argued that the highly visual method contributes to the “dehumanization” of Palestinians.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has called it “deeply discriminatory” and an egregious violation of international law. Israeli lawmakers and rights groups, including Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – recently petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the law as unconstitutional.

Israel previously permitted capital punishment only in exceptional cases, including treason and Nazi-era war crimes. Only two people have been executed since the state’s creation: an Israeli army officer for treason in 1948 and Nazi Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in 1962. No Palestinian prisoners have been sentenced to death since the new law was approved.

Israel currently holds around 9,400 Palestinian prisoners, including nearly 100 women and more than 370 minors, according to media reports citing the Palestinian Prisoner Society. Rights groups have repeatedly reported mistreatment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, with former detainees and advocacy organizations alleging abuse, torture, starvation, physical and psychological harm, sexual violence, and denial of medical treatment. Israel is also reportedly holding the bodies of more than 100 Palestinians who died in its custody.

Meanwhile, reports state the Israeli military continues near-daily raids and arrests across the occupied West Bank and Gaza, ostensibly targeting Hamas militants and their supporters. Meanwhile, as Israeli settler violence against Palestinians and demolitions of homes belonging to relatives of Palestinians accused of attacks against Israelis continue, the UN warned last week that the humanitarian and security situation in the region had reached a critical “breaking point.”

The US has imposed sanctions on two senior International Criminal Court (ICC) officials, accusing The Hague-based institution of overstepping its authority.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday designated ICC President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, describing the court as a “corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”

The designations are a part of a campaign announced by Rubio last month to “systematically dismantle the threat posed” by the ICC to US sovereignty.

Rubio has accused the court of targeting nationals of countries that have neither consented to its jurisdiction nor ratified the Rome Statute. The ICC previously investigated alleged crimes by US military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan despite Washington not being a member.

Israel likewise rejects the court’s jurisdiction. Nevertheless, in 2024 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. A February 2025 executive order signed by US President Donald Trump condemned the warrants.

Seye worked on the prosecution team involved in the Netanyahu case. Israeli outlet Ynet reported in May that he was also overseeing an ICC investigation into funding for West Bank settlements and the supply of weapons to settlers. Netanyahu welcomed the latest US sanctions, denouncing the ICC as a “kangaroo court.”

The ICC said on Wednesday it “strongly rejects” the new designations, calling them “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution.”

The court has also faced criticism elsewhere. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have initiated withdrawals this summer, while Chad followed in July, accusing the ICC of disproportionately focusing on Africa.

The Philippines withdrew in 2019, but the ICC maintained jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed while the country was a member. Former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested under an ICC warrant in March 2025 over alleged crimes against humanity linked to killings during his anti-drug campaign and transferred to The Hague.

Russia has likewise rejected the court’s authority. The ICC issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in March 2023 over the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. Moscow dismissed the warrants as legally null and void and rejected the allegations, saying it evacuated unaccompanied children from the war zone and is ready to return them to their legal guardians upon request.

Liberia has agreed to accept up to 1,200 third-country migrants deported from the US under a controversial agreement pushed by the Trump administration as part of its sweeping immigration crackdown.

The transfers will take place over one year, with the first group of 20 due to arrive in the West African country on Thursday, Liberia’s Ministry of Information said in a statement on Tuesday.

The arrangement, concluded through an exchange of diplomatic notes in September 2025, covers medically cleared nationals of “African and Western Hemisphere countries.” Those transferred may apply for asylum in Liberia or leave the country voluntarily, the ministry stated.

It said the deportees “are not criminals” and will be treated as guests rather than prisoners. The government said it would provide protection and support during their stay.

Monrovia insisted that the arrangement “is not a transaction with a quid pro quo” and that Liberia “has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward.” However, it said the country “will receive support to help manage the program and strengthen its migration system more broadly,” without disclosing the value or terms of the assistance.

The deal is among the largest reached under US President Donald Trump’s expanding third-country deportation policy. The mechanism allows Washington to remove migrants to states where they hold no citizenship or established ties, including when their home governments refuse to receive them.

A coalition of rights lawyers and advocates, including the Global Strategic Litigation Council, has accused Washington of using third-country transfers to bypass protection orders and expose migrants to persecution or torture. Thousands have reportedly been transferred to nearly two dozen states, including around ten in Africa.

Ghana, Eswatini, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, and the Central African Republic are among the African countries that have accepted third-country deportees.

The arrangements have triggered legal challenges across the continent. In June, rights lawyers sued Ghana at the Economic Community of West African States Community Court of Justice, accusing Accra of facilitating the onward removal of protected migrants to states where they faced abuse.

A US Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority report said Washington had sent more than $32 million to foreign governments in direct connection with third-country deportation deals by the end of January.

Liberia has said its participation is “entirely humanitarian,” pointing to its founding as a refuge for freed slaves from the US and elsewhere, as well as its history of sheltering people fleeing persecution and war.

South African citrus exporters have received a boost in the Indian market after New Delhi amended its plant quarantine rules on Monday, approving additional cold-treatment options for fresh citrus imports from the African state.

The move, which follows almost a decade of negotiations, will give exporters more flexibility and could help improve the quality of fruit reaching the Indian market. Minister of Agriculture Willie Aucamp welcomed the development, saying it was good news for the industry and showed how technology was helping farmers overcome barriers and expand access to international markets.

He said it would help South African farmers push the boundaries and enable other countries to benefit from the country’s high-quality agricultural produce. “This is not only good news, but also indicates how advanced technology enable our farmers to push barriers to have other countries enjoy our high-quality produce,” Aucamp noted.

India is home to about 1.47 billion people and is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies, making it a potentially important market for South African citrus.

CEO of the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa (CGA), Boitshoko Ntshabele, argued the focus should now shift to improving the commercial conditions for South African citrus exports to India. He said tariffs of about 25% to 30% continue to put South African citrus at a disadvantage compared with competitors from the Southern Hemisphere that have preferential trade arrangements with India.

“Special recognition is given to the Department of Agriculture and Citrus Research International for their continued technical engagement with Indian authorities that have made the new treatment options possible. This demonstrates the importance of sustained public-private partnership in improving technical conditions for accessing markets,” Ntshabele said.

“We look forward to working with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition on the critical task of addressing these tariff barriers and improving the competitiveness of South African citrus in the Indian market going forward.”

First published by IOL

The death toll from last week’s ferry disaster on Zimbabwe’s Lake Kariba has risen to 94, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) said on Tuesday.  

Search teams remain deployed in the area and recovery operations will continue as the authorities seek to locate any people still missing. “The death toll is now 94,” the ZRP reported, adding that search efforts would continue to locate “any missing persons or bodies.”  

The latest figure marks a further increase from the 93 deaths reported by police on Monday. In an earlier statement, the ZRP said 83 of the victims had been identified by their relatives. The victims include a number of young children. 

The ferry, operated by Zimbabwe’s Rural Infrastructure Development Agency (RIDA), capsized on Lake Kariba on August 11 while traveling from the town of Kariba to remote communities and fishing camps along the lake. The ferry, which reportedly encountered strong waves, was carrying around 180 passengers and cargo at the time of the accident, according to local broadcaster ZBC News.   

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared the accident a national disaster and ordered maritime safety agencies and security forces to address deficiencies in the country’s maritime capabilities. He also expressed condolences to the victims’ families and said medical, funeral and psychosocial support was being provided to those affected. 

The African Union (AU) has expressed condolences over the disaster. AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf said the bloc stood “in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe and the affected communities.” The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also conveyed its “sincere condolences and solidarity” to Zimbabwe. 

Fatal boat accidents occur regularly across Africa, where overcrowding and poor safety standards are often cited as contributing factors. In September, a wooden vessel carrying about 90 passengers capsized in Nigeria’s Niger State, killing at least 29 people. Authorities attributed the accident to overloading and the boat striking a submerged tree stump.

Russia and Ukraine have conducted another prisoner of war exchange, returning over a hundred servicemen to each side, the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced on Wednesday.

In a statement published on social media, the ministry said that “103 Russian servicemen were returned from territory controlled by the Kiev regime.” In exchange, 103 Ukrainian Armed Forces prisoners of war were transferred to Kiev.

The returned Russian servicemen are currently in Belarus, where they are receiving psychological and medical assistance, according to the ministry. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova is working with the freed soldiers.

Lantratova noted that of the 103 returned Russian soldiers, 31 are wounded. “Among those who returned are fathers of many children, and some are very young men,” she added.

The soldiers will later be transported to Russia for further treatment and rehabilitation at Defense Ministry medical facilities.

During the exchange, Lantratova met Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Dmitry Lubinets. The two sides exchanged lists of missing persons, as well as letters from relatives for servicemen who remain in captivity. They also agreed to arrange the delivery of parcels to POWs held by both sides.

The exchange was carried out with humanitarian mediation from the United Arab Emirates, the ministry added.

The swap is the latest in a series of prisoner exchanges between Moscow and Kiev despite the ongoing conflict.

The previous exchange took place on June 26, when the two sides returned 160 servicemen each, also with UAE mediation. Earlier that month, Russia and Ukraine also exchanged 185 POWs each, while another 205 servicemen from each side were released in May.

Moscow and Kiev have also continued exchanging the bodies of fallen soldiers. The UAE has repeatedly acted as a mediator in humanitarian contacts between the two sides.

NASA has released images showing a crater blasted into the Moon by a discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage that struck the lunar surface at around 5,400 mph (8,700 kph) earlier this month.

The US space agency published an animated before-and-after comparison on Tuesday, using images captured by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) that show the previously undisturbed surface and a dark new impact scar.

NASA said the crater measures roughly 18 meters (60 ft) across and less than 3 meters (10 ft) deep.

The images also reveal bright and dark rays spreading outward from the crater. NASA said the darker streaks consist of weathered lunar dust and rocks that were blasted out from the upper 1.5 ft (0.46 m) of the lunar surface by the impact. The material had been altered over time by solar wind, cosmic rays, and micrometeorite strikes. Brighter debris near the crater rim came from deeper underground.

Spotted: Falcon 9 impact site

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured images of a new crater on the Moon. The crater formed on Aug. 5, 2026, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the lunar surface. https://t.co/aqduBYwpmg pic.twitter.com/hE83yvzmIk

— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) August 18, 2026

The 4-ton upper stage struck the Moon on August 5 after drifting through space for more than a year. The Falcon 9 launched in January 2025 carrying the US Blue Ghost and Japanese Resilience lunar landers. Its reusable first-stage booster returned to Earth, while the second stage remained in space.

SpaceX said the stage had initially been placed on a trajectory considered safe under existing rules. A combination of solar activity and gravitational forces later sent it toward the lunar surface.

Although the Moon is regularly struck by natural meteoroids, collisions involving man-made objects are much less common. NASA deliberately crashed rocket stages into the lunar surface during the Apollo era to collect seismic data.

Experts have warned that unplanned impacts could become a greater concern as human activity on and around the Moon increases. UK aerospace engineer Dean Sladen told Space.com last week that uncontrolled rocket stages could become a “tangible operational risk” as space agencies and private companies build permanent lunar infrastructure.

The US has lifted security restrictions on vessels arriving from Nigeria, ending a 12-year regime that burdened shipping companies with additional guards, inspections, and paperwork.

A US Coast Guard notice published on Wednesday said “recent assessments” had found that Africa’s most populous nation was maintaining effective antiterrorism measures at its ports, warranting the removal of restrictions known as Conditions of Entry (CoE).

The measures, imposed in June 2014, did not amount to an outright ban on Nigerian-flagged ships. They applied to vessels that had called at designated Nigerian ports during their previous five port calls, requiring operators to tighten onboard security, guard access points, and report their precautions. The safeguards were intended to prevent ships leaving poorly secured ports from being exploited to carry terrorists, weapons, or tampered cargo into US waters.

The conditions had long drawn complaints over higher insurance bills, added personnel costs, and delays. Abuja expects their removal to improve turnaround times and attract shipping lines, although congestion, corruption allegations, and Gulf of Guinea piracy remain obstacles.

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency said the US Coast Guard conducted four assessments of the West African nation’s maritime security systems and port facilities between March 2024 and April 2026.

The agency said in a statement on Tuesday that it expects the lifting of the CoE “to improve port competitiveness, enhance vessel turnaround and schedule reliability, reduce additional security-related costs and strengthen Nigeria’s position in global shipping.”

Nigeria’s minister of marine and blue economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, hailed the decision as “a major milestone” affirming Abuja’s progress in maritime security and implementation of the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code.

“We will sustain this momentum and ensure Nigeria remains a safe, secure and competitive destination for international shipping,” he wrote on X.

Nigeria was not the only African country subject to US conditions of entry. Similar vessel restrictions remain in force against Cameroon, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Madagascar, Seychelles, Sudan, and Sao Tome and Principe. In February, the Coast Guard expanded the restrictions within Cameroon and Madagascar by revoking exemptions previously granted to certain port facilities.

Sicily is facing its worst aviation disruption in more than two decades as a prolonged eruption of Mount Etna forces hundreds of flight cancellations, stranding thousands during the peak summer holiday season.

Europe’s tallest and most active volcano has been erupting continuously since August 6, producing lava fountains, fresh flows, and persistent ash emissions. Experts say the activity could continue for weeks or even months.

Volcanic ash has caused the greatest disruption, with shifting winds carrying it toward Catania-Fontanarossa Airport, about 30 km south of Etna. On Tuesday, the airport extended restrictions due to “Etna’s eruptive activity and the simultaneous emission of volcanic ash,” limiting arrivals to ten per hour. In recent days, the cap has fallen as low as five as changing winds repeatedly forced schedule revisions under safety procedures.

Catania is Sicily’s busiest airport and the sixth busiest in Italy. Its operator, Societa Aeroporti Catania (SAC), has called the disruption “the most difficult emergency of the last 20 years.” Between August 6 and 12, 36% of some 1,974 scheduled arrivals were canceled, SAC said, while around 630 incoming flights were diverted. By August 13, nearly 800 flights had been canceled, disrupting travel for tens of thousands of passengers.

Drone footage released by the Ruptly video agency on Tuesday showed Etna lighting up the night sky as jets of glowing lava erupted from its summit and flowed down its slopes.

The ongoing eruption stands out for its duration. Salvo Gambino, director of the Etnean Observatory at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), said similar activity usually lasts only a few hours to half a day.

“In this case we have… days of continuous activity. Similar phenomena were seen in the late 1970s,” Gambino told Euronews.

Several parts of Etna are also active simultaneously, with lava fountains and ash emissions at the Voragine crater and multiple vents feeding flows in the Valle del Bove. A new vent opened on the eastern side on Monday, though INGV said the lava currently poses no threat to populated areas.

Italy’s Civil Protection Department has kept Etna at yellow alert, the second of four levels, since June 26. Despite heightened monitoring and restrictions, particularly at higher altitudes, the eruption has drawn large crowds, causing congestion and prompting some hiking closures. The local rescue service has also urged caution following several callouts.

BRICS countries have opposed the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), calling it “unilateral, punitive, discriminatory, and protectionist.”

The meeting of the bloc’s environmental and climate ministers in New Delhi, chaired by Indian Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav, expressed concern on Monday that the measures specifically undermine efforts by developing countries “aimed at addressing the adverse impacts of climate change.”

The BRICS group of emerging and developing economies includes the original members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, as well as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Indonesia.

The EU mechanism, which came into effect on January 1, aims to reduce “carbon leakages” through a certificate-based pricing system. In effect, it puts a carbon price on emissions-intensive goods entering the 27-nation EU bloc.

Importers have to buy certificates matching the weekly carbon price of the EU Emissions Trading System, with deductions allowed for any carbon prices already paid in the goods’ country of origin.

Addressed the 12th BRICS Environment Ministers’ Meeting, welcoming Ministers and Delegates and reaffirming the importance of aligning policy, technology and public participation towards building a sustainable planet following a “humanity first“ approach.@BricsIndia2026 pic.twitter.com/YC8CKLpz5t

— Bhupender Yadav (@byadavbjp) August 18, 2026

The CBAM’s professed aim – to ensure foreign goods face a carbon cost equal to products made inside the EU – puts producers in developing countries at a disadvantage. It imposes extra carbon costs on the key exports of developing countries and reduces their price competitiveness in European markets.

Producers in the Global South are forced to undertake costly tracking of factory emissions to sell to the EU, while it reduces overall market opportunities for carbon-intensive emerging economies – which in effect are forced to pay for the historical high emissions of Western developed nations.

The higher carbon costs make Indian exports of steel, aluminum, and cement to the EU less competitive. New Delhi has raced to create a domestic carbon trading framework and mechanism to keep the value of the carbon savings within the country instead of ending up as EU taxes.

India and the EU signed a trade deal in January, calling it the “mother of all deals.” “India is the world’s fastest growing major economy,” European Council President Antonio Costa said at the time. “The trade agreement reinforces a rule-based economic order.”

The BRICS statement noted that the EU carbon border tax was “not in line with international law.”

India had in 2024 labelled the proposed CBAM as unfair and detrimental to domestic market costs.

The UK will face consequences if it continues to supply drones used by Ukraine for strikes deep inside Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned. Moscow has accused Ukraine of targeting civilian infrastructure and carrying out indiscriminate strikes that kill civilians.

According to the Sunday Times, drones made by BAE Systems and another unnamed UK company have been used in attacks over the past six months, including strikes on oil refineries in Volgograd, southwestern Russia, and Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow. The UAVs reportedly used in long-range strikes included the Nyan, a jet-powered drone manufactured by a BAE Systems subsidiary.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the UK will continue to support Ukraine “100%.”

“We are not fair-weather friends, we will be there in Ukraine’s hour of need and that won’t change,” he said, according to the BBC.

Commenting on Tuesday, Lavrov told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin: “You know, I feel sorry for Britain if it intends to stand with Ukraine until the very end.”

“[Russian President Vladimir Putin] has warned that we have the right to act in any part of the world’s oceans if anyone encroaches on our interests or our property. Likewise, we have every right to regard the proudly proclaimed direct involvement of British missile forces in strikes against Russia as participation in the war, with all the consequences that entails,” Lavrov added.

In a statement on Monday, the Russian Embassy in London branded the UK “an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks” committed by Ukraine.

“The deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support for Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay,” the embassy said.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks in recent months, targeting Russian port infrastructure, energy sites, and warehouses belonging to Wildberries, the country’s equivalent of Amazon. In a number of cases, drones have also struck residential areas, including high-rise apartment buildings and houses.

An attack last week on industrial and civilian sites in Nizhnekamsk in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan killed 13 people, while a strike on a Wildberries warehouse in Kotovsk, Tambov Region, on July 18 left seven workers dead.

One of Ukraine’s deadliest strikes on Russia came in May, when a drone hit a college dormitory in the Donbass city of Starobelsk, killing 21 people, mostly young women.