🪖 More women may be drafted in the Ukrainian military, as Kiev reportedly mulls the step after losing 90,000 soldiers in its botched counteroffensive.

Roughly 43,000 women currently serve in the nation's armed forces - a 40% increase since 2021, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. Restrictions preventing women from serving as machine-gunners, tank commanders and military truck drivers have also been lifted while the age limits for female recruits increased from 40 to 60.

While connoscripting women is nothing new, in Ukraine, new female recruits would be thrown into the conflict's meat-grinder, as the Ukrainian Armed Forces lacks soldiers, ammo, equipment and morale amid the stalled counteroffensive.

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Is there a weapon that could solve Ukraine's problems?

🖖"I imagine he [Zaluzhny] watched Star Trek and said, "You know, some phasers and photon torpedoes would be nice, that'd do the job"

Garland Nixon, host of our podcast The Critical Hour and Mark Sleboda, international relations and security expert discussed General Valery Zaluzhny's recent interview.

📣#GarlandSpeaks

The Palestinians in the West Bank witness the genocide and ethnic cleansing of a captive population in Gaza and know they are next, according to professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian nonviolent activist, Bethlehem resident.

"Since October 7th, the occupation army and settlers have already slaughtered 163 Palestinians in the West Bank. The situation is expected to worsen. Israel has blocked our cantons and arrested or kidnapped over 2,500 Palestinians. These political prisoners, now totaling over 11,000, are being subjected to torture through physical abuse and denial of food and medicine. The mood among Palestinians is bitter and angry. It is difficult for us to comprehend how the US government and its Western allies have colluded, collaborated, and funded this carnage for 75 years."

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📹 Could Iran and US tensions escalate amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

🗣 "Someone once joked, who put Iran in the middle of all of our bases. It's that silly and so it's meant as a deterrence on the one hand, but on the other hand it provides an Achilles heel really because it exposes U.S. forces to counterattack if necessary," Michael Maloof, former Pentagon senior security policy analyst told Sputnik.

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📹 A chemical plant is burning in Texas, eyewitnesses share footage of a giant column of black smoke. The authorities are evacuating people.

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🐼🇨🇳 The end of panda diplomacy

China is repatriating pandas amid reports of an upcoming meeting between Xi and Biden in San Francisco on the sidelines of the APEC forum.

Three giant pandas, long residents of the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, are returning to their homeland in China after 23 years in the United States.

China has been using pandas for diplomatic purposes since 1972 when its leader Mao Zedong promised two animals to the 37th US President Richard Nixon.

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On October 7, some 40 Israeli teenagers were killed at the Re'im festival and 32 captured in Hamas attacks.

Meanwhile, on the Palestinian side, over 4,000 children have been killed during the month-long conflict.

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🇵🇸🇮🇱 Latest updates on the Palestine-Israel conflict:

▪️Release of 10-15 hostages of Hamas in exchange for 1-2 days of humanitarian pause in Gaza discussed as part of Qatar-mediated talks;

▪️Israeli airstrikes kill 18 people in Nuseirat refugee camp in central part of Gaza Strip, according to reports;

▪️Israel's refusal to cease fire for several hours prevented Russian hostages from being released, the Hamas' spokesperson told Sputnik;

▪️Death toll among UNRWA staff in Gaza Strip increases to 92, according to UNRWA.

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🗣 Ukraine is a lost case for the West

"How are you going to win this war? Because the soldiers are not there anymore. And recently they also made a campaign in France for new mercenaries. So they are desperate. They're really desperate", independent journalist, writer Sonja Van Den Ende told Sputnik.

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

👉 You can watch every episode of the podcast on Rumble

📻 Catch us at 105.5FM, 1390AM (Washington DC) and 104.7FM, 102.9FM, 1140АМ (Kansas City)

❗The US Defense Department has confirmed its MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down in the international airspace off the Yemen coast, media reported, citing a senior US defense official.

🇩🇪 Less than a fifth of several hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who fled to Germany since February 2022 have found a job at their new host country, with the rest being seemingly content to live off unemployment benefits provided by Berlin.

The upkeep of each of the Ukrainian refugees may cost German taxpayers up to 45,000 euros annually, said Gunnar Beck, member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

He also warned that “many Ukrainians are abusing the German system” by busing into some town in Germany “every fortnight to register for benefits” and then promptly returning back to Ukraine.

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🧐 Does Team Biden have something to hide?

The Biden administration acknowledges that it is taking care not to provide "too much detail" about its military deliveries to Israel, whereas it used to be very vocal about its Ukrainian weapon supplies.

🗣 "The difference is there is much more directly at stake for the US both militarily and politically in the Middle East," retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik.

While militarily US forces are operating in close proximity to Israel's adversaries – Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria, Yemen, Iran, and Lebanon – politically, Washington is on thin ice with erstwhile allies in the Saudi, Kuwaiti and Qatari elites as well as with the Turkiye leadership.

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🇿🇦 South Africa proposes plan to resolve Israeli - Palestinian conflict

The plan includes an immediate comprehensive ceasefire and complete opening of humanitarian corridors, according to South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor.

Apart from that, Pandor said a zone free of nuclear weapons should be established in the Middle East, and Palestine and Israel should resume dialog, adding that a rapid reaction force of the United Nations should be deployed in Palestine to observe the ceasefire and protect civilians.

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📹 A Russian mobile group of paratroopers destroys a Ukrainian armored vehicle close to Artyomovsk

By launching a guided missile from the Kornet anti-tank missile system, the Ukrainian armored vehicle was destroyed.

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📹 A Russian Uragan MLRS crew destroys a Ukrainian stronghold in South Donetsk direction

The power of MLRS is sufficient to destroy not only heavy hardware, but also fortified command posts, and even fortifications with concrete walls.

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The United States intends to kill Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project through sanctions coordinated with the Group of Seven (G7) partners and others, US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt said.

"Our objective is to kill that project, and we are doing that through our sanctions, working with our partners in the Group of Seven and beyond," Pyatt stated during a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Earlier this month, the United States sanctioned the Arctic LNG 2, which is the second-largest liquified natural gas production project and is owned by the Russian energy company Novatek.

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Fierce clashes between US forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on one side and the Syrian army and its allies on the other have broken out in Deir ez-Zor Governorate in eastern Syria, Lebanese broadcaster reported Thursday, citing a source.

"Fierce clashes between American forces and the SDF on one side and the Syrian army and its allies on the other are underway, and various medium-caliber weapons, heavy artillery and rockets are being used," the source told the broadcaster.

The source added that US forces and SDF units are fighting from east of the Euphrates, while the Syrian army and its allies are engaged in clashes from their positions west of the Euphrates.

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🇷🇺🇰🇿 This morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Kazakhstan for talks, where he was met by his Kazakh counterpart

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GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy: “Ukraine is not a paragon of democracy. This is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties. It has consolidated all media into one state TV media arm. That’s not democratic. It has threatened not to hold elections this year unless the U.S. forks over more money. That is not democratic.”

“It celebrated a Nazi in its ranks — the comedian in cargo pants, a man called Zelensky — doing it in their own ranks. That is not democratic."

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The Houthis showed a video in which they allegedly shoot down an American MQ-9 Reaper UAV over Yemeni territorial waters. A few hours later, the Pentagon confirmed the report.

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An American military base near the Al-Omar oil field east of the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor came under fire several times last night, an Arab TV channel reported.

According to the channel, at least 15 rockets were fired at the base.

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