🇷🇺🇳🇪 The visit of Russian Deputy Defense Minister Col. Gen. Yunus-Bek Evkurov to Niger will strengthen cooperation between the two countries, Niger's military-appointed Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine told Sputnik.

In early December, a Russian delegation led by Evkurov visited the Nigerien capital of Niamey.

"Niger has been cooperating with the Russian Federation for a very long time. So this visit of the Deputy Minister of Defense is part of strengthening and deepening this cooperation," Zeine said.

Niger has been facing challenges related to terrorism for about ten years, so the country requires support from friendly states, he added.

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❗️ The death toll from a magnitude 6.2 earthquake in northwestern China has risen to 111, China Central Television reported on Tuesday.

So far, the earthquake has killed 100 people in Gansu province and 11 people in Qinghai province, the report added.

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A new poll by YouGov is giving a stark perspective on the mistrust Americans feel with the news media.

Both Democrats and Republicans trust their “friends and family” more than “poll results” or the “news media”. But Democrats were significantly more likely than Republicans to trust poll results, the news media, and political campaigns.

At least 68% of Americans do not trust social media as a viable place to get their news information, and 26% do. For political campaigns, 70% distrust these efforts to persuade voters while 24% of people showed trust in them.

Age, too, was a factor in the polls. Younger voters (people under the age of 30) were more likely to trust non-family sources for their information than those older than them. They were also much more likely to trust social media than those who are older than them, and seem to view social media with nearly the same trust as the news media.

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🇺🇦 Over 70% of Ukrainian men are ready to renounce their citizenship in order to avoid serving in the Ukrainian armed forces, a poll conducted by the deputy head of the Ukrainian parliamentary Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, Mariana Bezuhla, showed on Monday.

"An experimental survey. Now only for men. So as not to be mobilized, am I ready to renounce Ukrainian citizenship?" Bezuhla wrote on social media.

Out of 3,773 respondents, 74% answered satisfactorily, while the rest said "no." Earlier on Monday, she also polled women, asking whether they were ready to renounce citizenship in order not to be sent to rear positions and defense enterprises. Over 3,500 people took part in the poll, with 63% agreeing with this proposal.

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🇮🇸🌋 A volcanic eruption has begun on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula following an earthquake, as reported by the local news agency Iceland Monitor.

The report details that around 9:00 p.m. local time, an earthquake occurred with an estimated magnitude of 4.2. Subsequently, at approximately 10:46 p.m. local time, a volcanic eruption began near the town of Grindavik, as noted by the media.

On November 10, Icelandic authorities announced the evacuation of Grindavik, situated in the southern part of the country, due to the threat posed by potential lava flows, which may have been accumulating beneath the city following recent seismic activities.

Iceland Review, citing Hulda Ragnheidur Audnadouttir, the director of the Icelandic state organization for natural catastrophe insurance, reported that the damages from the earthquakes could exceed 70 million dollars.

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🔥 Prominent Ivanovo paratroopers

📹 Russian paratroopers seize a Ukrainian stronghold northwest of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut).

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🇺🇦 Spying devices found inside Zaluzhny's office sign of 'growing chaos' within the Kiev regime, Larry Johnson, a retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official believes.

The discovery of eavesdropping equipment is an incident that could work in favor of Zaluzhny and make him be seen as an unfairly persecuted war hero in the eyes of Ukrainians, the analyst told Sputnik.

“I don't mean to be conspiratorial, but as soon as you see that story come out, my first reaction was that Zaluzhny was putting that out himself, maybe even having planted the bugs in order to create a narrative that will justify him moving against Zelensky and possibly [Kyrylo] Budanov, that he wants to establish the fact that he has been subject to this unwarranted spying," Johnson stressed.

The ex-CIA officer also speculated that there could be other culprits responsible for the incident, including Zelensky's aides, Budanov's subordinates, or the SBU head.

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Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has launched a new campaign attack ad against President Joe Biden. In the 30-second attack ad, Haley accused Biden of being “too old”.

“I’ll just say it: Biden’s too old. And Congress is the most exclusive nursing home in America,” Haley begins. “Washington keeps failing because politicians from yesterday can’t lead us into tomorrow.”

Haley, 51, served as governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 and served as the 29th US ambassador to the UN for two years. She is currently polling behind Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) by 1 percentage point as Republicans’ first choice. Though, a majority of Republicans chose DeSantis as their second choice. Former President Donald Trump, 77, is leading polls with 61% of Republicans support.

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The Northern Sea Route can provide navigation to those operators who want to rebuild the route due to attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, provided that a number of requirements are met, the Russian Foreign Ministry told Sputnik.

One by one, global companies are announcing the suspension of shipments through the Red Sea amid Houthi threats to attack any ships linked to Israel.

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💥 Crews of MLRS "Grad" artillery units of the Airborne Forces destroyed a group of infantry of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, thus effectively disrupting the rotation of enemy units north of Artemovsk.

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In Serbia, supporters of the pro-Western opposition, dissatisfied with the ruling coalition's victory in the capital's parliamentary elections, nearly lynched the elderly head of the statistics department, tried to block traffic in the city center, and broke into the election commission, pelting the building with eggs and rolls of toilet paper.

The riots began late in the evening near the administration of the Serbian capital, from where thousands of demonstrators from the "Serbia against Violence" bloc marched to the Election Commission building, demanding that the election results be annulled.

The climax was an attack on the 70-year-old director of the Republican Statistical Office as he left the building. The demonstrators threw him to the ground and beat him. Colleagues literally pulled the official out of the crowd and returned him to the Electoral Commission. Later, the press was shown a bag in which protesters were trying to bring knives, clubs and bats into the building.

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What is Putin up to today? Let's take a look at his big plans in the military sphere.

The Russian president will:

▪️visit the National Defense Management Center;

▪️ hold an extended meeting of the Defense Ministry's board of directors;

▪️ discuss the results of the Air Force's activities in 2023, set goals for the next year;

▪️ to set priorities for the further development of the Russian Army and Navy;

▪️ to listen to the report of the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu;

▪️inspect with modern and promising models of equipment, weapons, ammunition and protective equipment.

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Americans feel gloom-and-doom over US economy, point fingers at Biden

Despite US liberal economists touting the Fed Reserve and Bidenomics for seemingly averting recession, American voters don't feel the much-discussed "soft landing," according to national polls.

A staggering 78% of US respondents say the national economy is in "poor shape," while 67% don't see any signs of improvement, according to the latest Fox News poll.

The sentiment is at least partly driven by the fact that soaring prices are eating into people's wages, with both credit card debt ($1.1 trillion) and interest rates on those credit cards at record highs, US conservative think tanks warn. Against this backdrop, President Joe Biden's approval rating remains low, spelling trouble for his re-election bid.

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