💸 After plundering one of the world's poorest countries, Clintons look to cash in on ‘aid’ for Ukraine

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) has announced plans to launch a ‘Ukraine Action Network’, ostensibly to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Ukrainians amid the West’s ongoing proxy war against Russia in the troubled Eastern European country.

The Ukraine Action Network is expected to help “mobilize existing CGI partners, as well as new leaders from around the world, to create and finance new commitments for Ukrainians.” The details of the program, including which “Ukrainians” specifically are expected to benefit, have yet to be elaborated.

👉Follow the link to learn more

📹 Lethal combination: Russian mortar crews destroyed Ukrainian strongholds near Krasny Liman while UAV teams guided the strikes and helped assess the results.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💵👀 Ukraine searches for cash as fighting drains coffers, foreign aid drops, creditors close in

Kiev faces a staggering budget deficit of over $40 billion+ in 2024, and has been informed of the fact that a failure to cough up the cash will cripple the military.

“If the government cannot cover its budgetary gaps, then the government will not be able to finance its military effort,” a Kiev-based brokerage firm researcher whose company is consulting authorities on ways to raise money told US business media on Monday.

The brokerage has proposed a novel idea: selling Ukrainian government bonds to foreigners to help account for at least some of the budgetary shortfall.

👉Follow the link for more details

🗣️ On the UAW strike and the working-class people of America being fed up with low wages:

“Look, if an inflation happens again, and let's remember last month, that is the month of August 2023, the inflation, which everyone said was going down, surprised everyone and went up. We're pushing 3.5% to 4% in inflation now. Well, what good is a wage increase of, say, 5% a year if the prices of everything are going up 4% this year, maybe five or six next year? Before you know it, the life of a contract of three or four years will leave workers behind at the end of that contract, where they are now. Their wages will not have gone up as much as prices. So what this union is saying 'We have every right to protect ourselves against inflation,” Richard Wolff, economy professor, told Sputnik.

🎧 Listen to more of Wolff’s analysis in our podcast The Backstory

👉 Watch the full episode of our show on Rumble

🗣️ On the devastating floods in Libya and how they are connected to the destruction of the country by NATO:

“Libya is the corruption central right now, is what I would call it. And of course, that is all because of the greed of the NATO states… Up to date, nobody has told us how many people were killed by the 24/7 bombing for 10 months, how much infrastructure was destroyed. In fact, these dams, these very dams that ultimately flooded, who knows if part of the structural condition of the dams were not weakened by the 10 months of NATO bombings and the corruption,” Milton Allimadi, chief editor of Black Star News, producer, and author, told Sputnik.

🎧 Listen to more of Allomadi’s analysis in our podcast By Any Means Necessary

🇺🇸🇮🇷 Biden gave $6 billion for 5 people, Iran gave $0, he's dumb as a rock: Trump commented on the recent US-Iran prisoner exchange deal.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣️ On the planned trip of President Zelensky to Washington, DC:

“My first reaction is hold onto your wallet, because this guy's coming to fleece us again. Didn’t he just get a billion dollars last week? I mean, this guy's got a spending problem. But seriously, this is a changed environment, now. This is not the world of when Zelensky was here last time and he addressed Congress... It's a different world now, especially when you look at the post-NATO summit, where he was almost shunned. So he's coming into a Washington that's heading into election season, and this has become a political issue. So this is not the slam dunk that it's been in the past for him,” Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, told Sputnik.

🎧 Listen to more of McAdams’ analysis in our podcast The Backstory

👉 Watch the full episode of our show on Rumble

🇮🇷 Demand for Iran’s military unmanned aerials vehicles has outpaced the defense sector’s ability to produce them, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Baqeri has revealed.

“Our defense industries have grown tremendously. We used to need to import the simplest equipment from abroad, but the defense industries of our country have made tremendous progress. We were once prohibited from buying anything [related to defense, ed.] but today we are prohibited from selling anything. Today, the customers of our drones exceed our production capacity many times over, and major countries of the world look to our weapons,” Baqeri said at a conference.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️ In the Shebekinsky urban district of the Belgorod region, the air defense system shot down 3 air targets on approach to the city, the governor reported. Preliminary data shows there's no victims.

🇷🇺🇨🇳 Lavrov and the Chinese Foreign Minister have discussed during recent talks the situation in Ukraine, noting the futility of attempts to resolve the crisis without taking into account the interests of Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported.

The ministry added that Lavrov and Wang Yi noted the similarity of positions regarding US actions in the international arena that are anti-Russian and anti-Chinese.

It was also reported that the Chinese Foreign Minister informed Lavrov about the content of negotiations with US Presidential Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💰 The US national debt has exceeded $33 trillion for the first time, the US Treasury Department revealed

❗️ Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will hold Russian-Chinese consultations on strategic security in Moscow on Tuesday - Russian Security Council

🔺Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow
🔺Gen. Mark Milley: US should avoid open armed conflict with China by all means
🔺Canada to allocate $24mln for supply of air defense systems to Ukraine

The Critical Hour will cover these and more stories! Tune in to Radio Sputnik at 6pm EST|3pm PST|12am CET via the website or app

📻 Also in the United States at 105.5FM, 104.7FM, 102.9FM, 1390AM, 1140AM

🇺🇸 The US officially surpassed 500 mass shooting cases for 2023 this past weekend, data collected by the Gun Violence Archive has revealed.

As of Sunday, the Archive's records paint a somber picture of 2023, with 501 reported shooting incidents. The 500-mark was reached after a shooting took place in Denver, Colorado, on Saturday night. The Denver Police Department detailed the incident resulted in four individuals being hospitalized, with a fifth victim subsequently found.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt