🇮🇱🇵🇸 Latest updates on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

▪️Israel's operation in Gaza to be at a high-intensity stage in the coming weeks, according to reports;

▪️The number of Palestinian victims from Israeli strikes exceeds 15,500 and more than 41,300 have been injured, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported;

▪️Houthis in Yemen say they will resume attacks on Israel after the end of the truce in the Gaza Strip;

▪️UK-owned ship attacked by Yemen's Houthis in Red Sea, according to maritime trade authority;

▪️Israel and Hamas currently do not want to continue negotiations on humanitarian pauses and hostage exchange, according to the White House;

▪️The IDF's chief of staff said that the army is fighting in the south of the Gaza Strip, which will not be inferior in intensity to the battles in the north of the enclave;

▪️Israel's military claims it has destroyed about 500 shafts to Hamas tunnels in Gaza since October 2.

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🇺🇸 US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned Israel that it's heading towards a "strategic defeat"

"In this kind of a fight the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat," Lloyd Austin said.

He added that he has repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a "moral responsibility and a strategic imperative."

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Pentagon is Aware of Reports About Attack on US Destroyer in Red Sea

The US Department of Defense stated that it was aware of reports about an attack on its destroyer USS Carney in the Red Sea.

🗣"We're aware of reports regarding attacks on the USS Carney and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and will provide information as it becomes available," the Pentagon said.

Earlier in the day, Al Jazeera reported that the US Navy destroyer USS Carney came under attack by drones and missiles fired from Yemen.

Previously, Yemen's rebel Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, said they would resume attacks on Israel, following the end of a week-long truce in the Gaza Strip.

The Houthis then attacked two Israeli ships in the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea, as confirmed by the movement's spokesman, and a UK-owned merchant ship, the UK maritime trade authority said.

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What’s behind Russia’s drive to provide African nations with grain?

Russia’s push to provide African nations with grain reflects Moscow’s “real interest” in integrating them within an expanding community of BRICS economies, Sergio Rossi, professor of macroeconomics and monetary economics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, told Sputnik.

Echoing him was Richard D. Wolff, a professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, who said that Russia signals its “eager integration into the BRICS side of the world economy allied with the countries of the Global South.”

Earlier this week, a ship carrying “a much-needed” aid shipment of 25,000 tons of grain from Russia arrived in Somalia's capital Mogadishu. The arrival came in line with President Putin’s previous pledge to deliver free grain to six African nations.

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🚚 More than 2,500 trucks have been stuck in line at the Ukrainian-Polish border due to a strike by Polish carriers

Polish carriers started blocking automobile checkpoints on the border with Ukraine in early November to protest what they said was the Polish government's inaction over their loss of business to foreign competitors.

Their disconnect is associated with the fact that Ukrainian truckers have been exempt from obtaining permits to cross the Polish border since February 2022, which has made their services cheaper and more attractive to customers.

The protesters demand the reintroduction of restrictions on Ukrainian truckers entering Poland and a ban on Poland-based transport companies with capital from outside the European Union. The strike is expected to last until January 2024.

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🌾 Different approaches to one grain problem

Ukraine used the grain deal to create instability in the Black Sea, and Western countries, in turn, transported Ukrainian weapons and drugs along this corridor, Ruhollah Modabber, an Iranian political scientist and international relations specialist, commented.

"In this regard, it is important to understand that Russia withdrew from the grain deal primarily due to the failure of the Western side to fulfill its obligations to supply grain to poor countries, especially African ones," he said.

Modabber added that Russia's initiative to supply grain to African countries is aimed at fighting hunger in Africa, while the West and the United States intend to use this problem to increase pressure on the international community within the framework of the conflict in Ukraine.

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🇷🇺🚀 Russia's Progress MS-25 cargo spacecraft, launched on December 1 from the Baikonur spaceport atop a Soyuz-2.1a rocket, docked on Sunday to the Poisk module of the International Space Station (ISS), according to a broadcast by Russian state space corporation Roscosmos.

The Progress MS-25 has brought more than 2.5 tonnes of supplies to the ISS, such as dry cargo for the crew and systems of the station, fuel, drinking water, nitrogen to maintain the atmosphere on the space station, and equipment for space research, including an incubator to study the development of quail egg embryos in space and equipment for corrosion research to be installed in outer space.

"We are observing a contact. Docking," a specialist at the Mission Control Center in the Moscow Region said.

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📹 Footage of the attack by Russian airborne units on the village of Artemovskoye (Khromovo) in the Donetsk region, which was liberated last week. The Russian Defense Ministry said that the enemy fled, leaving the dead, and part of the Ukrainian military surrendered.

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🇪🇺Ukraine may not get €50 bln from EU

Political disputes in the European Union ahead of the December 14-15 summit in Brussels make the prospects of additional funding for Ukraine look dim at best, Financial Times reports, citing unnamed sources.

The consensus on funding Kiev has been seriously weakened by the election victory of the populist right-wing Freedom Party in the Netherlands, whose leader Geert Wilders opposes money for Ukraine and anti-Russian sanctions, and budget turmoil in Germany.

Without funds, Ukraine faces the prospect of defaulting on its sovereign debt. In other words, Kiev will not be able to pay its debts.

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🇺🇸 Pentagon warns of US arms production lag - reports

The US is unable to build its weapons fast enough, and the mismatch between quality and speed "presents a growing strategic risk" as Washington needs to support active combat operations "while deterring the larger and more technically advanced peer threat looming in the Indo-Pacific," according to a Pentagon draft.

Over the past 30 years, China has become a global manufacturing hub, and its industry now "far exceeds the capacity of not only the United States, but also the combined output of our major European and Asian allies," the document said.

At the same time, the US has the largest defense budget in the world, accounting for about 40 percent of global military spending in 2022 and dwarfing China's military spending several times over.

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🪖Ukraine alone is incapable of increasing military production to the level of Russia, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak admitted.

"Ukraine is ready to reach the end... When [Ukraine] will be provided with the necessary number of weapons, because Ukraine itself will not be able to increase such an amount of military production to achieve parity with Russia," Podolyak said.

Western countries have been providing military aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia's military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. The Kremlin has consistently warned against continued arms deliveries to Ukraine, saying it would lead to further escalation of the conflict.

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