How Israel-Gaza war morphed into a multi-arena conflict

"We already see a multi-front war against Israel which was started of course by Hamas but was joined by Hezbollah and also by the Houthis in Yemen," Professor Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told Sputnik. "We also see activities of Iranian-led militias, Shiite militias in Syria and also in Iraq, all of them participating in a war against Israel."

Israel's war in Gaza will be long and tough, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned Jewish lawmakers on December 26, adding that the Israeli military is currently fighting on seven different fronts – in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Yemen and Iran.

"[The conflict] might spill over to the region," Ayman Yousef, professor of political sciences at the Arab-American University in Palestine, told Sputnik. "If Israel continues to kill Palestinians in this indiscriminate way, (…) that might ignite a kind of a new regional configuration and new regional forces."

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Political highlights you couldn't miss in 2023: Ukraine, Gaza, BRICS

With the countdown for 2024 already underway, Sputnik rolls out a video showcasing a whole array of political highlights that grabbed the global headlights of the outgoing year.

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Israel will stop granting automatic visas to United Nations employees, accusing the UN of being “complicit partners” in Hamas’ tactics.

Government spokesman Eylon Levy said that Tel Aviv will consider visa requests from UN employees on a case-by-case basis.

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The newest bicaliber MLRS "Vozrozhdenie" (lit. Revival) is being created in Russia; it will go into production in the first half of 2024, Sergey Chemezov, general director of the Rostec state corporation, told Sputnik.

"In just a few months we received the first serial two-caliber vehicle, which can both mine terrain with 140 mm caliber rockets and hit targets with 220 mm caliber rockets," he said.

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What are the UK PMs actually doing when they say they are working

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📹 "There are only three hospitals in which major operations can be performed," the head of the department of cardiovascular surgery at one of the hospitals in Gaza, Mohammed Callum, said.

Callum is a Russian citizen. His family was evacuated, but he stayed to work and help women and children.

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"Josep Borrell seems to be bent on offering Europeans daily reminders of his diplomatic ineptitude”

Such was the analysis of Politico which awarded the EU’s foreign policy chief the dubious “Borat award for diplomacy” on Tuesday.

The media outlet noted the EU top diplomat’s propensity for gaffes – earlier this year he drew ridicule for congratulating Ecuador for “peaceful elections” after a candidate was assassinated.

Borrell was also criticized for comments referring to Europe as a “garden” in need of protection from the “jungle” of the outside world.

Politico also noted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s struggle against Borrell and European Council President Charles Michel to represent the bloc to the public.

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Russian drones rule the skies of Ukrainian conflict battlefields

Kiev's troops may soon be forced into a retreat as their military hardware keeps getting destroyed by Russian drone strikes.

While President Vladimir Putin pays close attention to drone production in Russia, the powers that be in Ukraine apparently have no vision for the drone industry of their own, if the recent revelations of the Ukrainian Center for Aerial Reconnaissance’s head Maria Berlinskaya are to be believed.

During a recent interview with Ukrainian media, Berlinskaya complained about Russian drone strikes taking out much of Kiev regime forces’ military hardware and claimed that Ukrainian authorities have no vision for Ukraine’s drone industry.

👉 Read more

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Accused Pentagon leaker Teixeira was nicknamed 'active shooter kid' by colleagues, a new report found

Newly-obtained documents revealed Jack Teixeira, who was indicted on six counts in relation to the ‘Discord Leak’, was described by his colleagues as “the active shooter kid.” According to the report, Teixeira shared his fringe interests with a close colleague, expressing his desire to live “off the grid” so he could “blow stuff up.”

The findings detailed that Teixeira—arrested in April by the FBI—worried his fellow airmen, who feared he might “shoot up the place” after the since-accused leaker was told off for looking at classified information that had little to do with his job as a computer technician at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod.

🗣“From all our training, this was a red flag, it was tripping all the indicators,” said a fellow guardsman of Teixeira’s.

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Why Russian liberation of Maryinka is so significant

The city of Maryinka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, which for years remained a major stronghold for the Ukrainian forces, was finally liberated by Russian troops.

Aside from dislodging the Kiev regime forces from a heavily fortified settlement, the victory makes it harder for Ukrainian troops to shell Donetsk.

“There were firing positions for long-range artillery and MLRS that shelled Donetsk. Now Maryinka is taken and thus the threat was moved away from Donetsk,” says military analyst Anatoliy Matviychuk, a retired colonel of the Russian Armed Forces.

The liberation of Maryinka also dealt a heavy blow to the morale of Ukrainian forces, and this will significantly contribute to the further success of the Russian army.

👉 Read on for a full analysis

Year-end review: How did the US push deeper into Asia in 2023 while world focused on Ukraine & Israel?

While the world was distracted by the US-backed conflicts in Ukraine and Israel in 2023, Washington was quietly bolstering its military presence in Asia, which it calls the “Indo-Pacific” and considers to be a key theater for “great power competition” against Russia and China.

The US has accused both nations of seeking to overturn what it calls the “rules-based international order,” referring to the post-World War II global order in which the US calls the shots politically, socio-economically, and militarily.

In East and Southeast Asia, the US sought to pry nations away from their partnerships with Beijing and Moscow by casting them as threats to sovereignty that only a military showdown can deter, and to either sell them weapons or place military assets there.

👉 Read on to get the specifics

More than 42,000 people in the United States died as a result of gun violence in 2023, according to data collected by the Gun Violence Archive

Most of the deaths, 23,760, occurred as a result of suicide, the GVA data published Tuesday said. Another 18,507 people died of unintentional shooting, murder and defensive use, GVA said.

The figure includes 650 mass shooting incidents, 40 mass murders, 1,161 defensive use cases and 1,543 unintentional shootings, GVA said.

More than 1,600 children between the ages 0-17 were killed in gun violence incidents and 4,444 others were injured, added the association.

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Turkiye moves closer to final vote on Sweden's NATO bid

Turkiye may have just moved de jure closer to green-lighting Sweden's NATO membership, with the country's foreign affairs committee officially endorsing the bid. The development follows complex diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Ankara, with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan reluctant to admit Sweden to the alliance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that NATO's expansion does not contribute to international peace and security, calling the policy a "relic of the Cold War." The Russian president also stressed that the US was doing its best to thwart Moscow's rapprochement with Europe.

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❗️Russia has developed a new kamikaze drone "Supercam" with a high degree of protection from electronic warfare systems, which is now being tested, the head of Rostec Sergey Chemezov told Sputnik.

He also said that the latest Russian howitzer, the Coalition, should soon appear in the field of its own defense to buy provide a significant advantage over NATO howitzers in range.

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🇩🇪🇱🇹Germany's army general warns of equipment gaps due to brigade's deployment in Lithuania

The Bundeswehr is currently only 60% equipped, "at the limit of what is acceptable," "lacking everything from "A" to "Z," "from artillery pieces to raincoats," Lt. Gen. Alfons Mais, the chief of the German Army Headquarters at Strausberg in Brandenburg, said in a letter addressed to German Defense Chief Gen. Carsten Breuer.

"The establishment of a new major brigade without additional investment would reduce this number to 55%," Mais is quoted as saying in the letter.

Last week, Lithuanian National Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas and his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, in Vilnius signed an action plan for the deployment of a Bundeswehr brigade in Lithuania by 2027, with up to 5,000 German troops with their families arriving in Lithuania.

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📹 Russian paratroopers destroyed a detachment of Ukrainian soldiers using FPV drones near Artemovsk (Bakhmut), the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.

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"Isn’t this preparing for war?": China has criticized Taiwan's decision to extend compulsory military service from four months to one year.

"Isn't this preparing for war, forcing Taiwanese youth to go to the front and become cannon fodder for Taiwanese independence?" said the official representative of the State Council Office of the People's Republic of China.

China has repeatedly spoken out about Taiwan's unity with the mainland, opposes the incitement of separatist sentiments and condemns all those who support them. Russia reaffirms its commitment to the "one China" principle and opposes Taiwan independence in any form.

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🇦🇷Argentine President Milei plans to save citizens from the "torture" of having to carry "bags" of money to pay in cash.

Milei promises to print banknotes in denominations of 20,000 and 50,000 pesos. Now the largest bill is 2,000, but that is barely enough to pay for coffee and a pastry in a cafe.

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EU preparing $22Bln plan to sidestep Hungary's veto to fund Ukraine - reports

Since Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed an increase in the EU budget for 2024-2027, including 50 billion euros in macro-financial aid to Kiev, EU officials have been searching for alternatives to provide Ukraine with funds, and one model funded by debt has gained traction as the most practical way to sidestep Orban's objections, Financial Times reports.

The scheme requires EU member states to issue guarantees to the EU budget, enabling the European Commission to borrow up to 20 billion euros on capital markets for Kiev in 2024, sources told the media, adding that discussions are still underway.

The report also said that the scheme wouldn't require guarantees from all member states of the bloc as long as the main participants included countries with top credit ratings, allowing the EU to sidestep unanimous backing and Orban's veto.

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❗️Russian FM Sergey Lavrov will be interviewed live by Rossiya Segodnya* CEO Dmitry Kiselev on current issues of international politics on Dec 28 at 11:30 am local time

*Sputnik's parent media group

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Liberation of Maryinka: why this development is so crucial and how the Russian army can benefit from it? Sputnik's experts explain.

• “Ukrainian forces turned that the town into a fortification, with firing positions for long-range artillery and multiple launch rocker systems that shelled the city of Donetsk. Now Maryinka has been captured, and thus the threat was moved away from Donetsk,” military analyst and retired Russian army colonel Anatoliy Matviychuk said.

• The Russian victory in Maryinka also means that Ukrainian forces suffered a huge blow to their morale, losing confidence in their ability to hold on to their positions, Colonel General Georgy Shpak, ex-commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, pointed out.

• The liberation of Maryinka marks the start of Russian forces breaking through into Ukraine’s multilayered defense in the area, which may be followed by further advances on the Artemovsk and Avdeyevka frontlines, according to Ret. Col. Rustem Klupov, a military analyst and Russian military intelligence veteran.

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Monday that the Russian Armed Forces had freed Maryinka, a heavily fortified town in the DPR, which for years served as a key stronghold for Ukrainian troops.

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