🇷🇺🪖 Key points of Russian MoD briefing on progress of special military op in Ukraine:

▪️ In the Kupyansk region, Russian forces repelled six attacks by Ukrainian troops. Ukrainian losses amounted to 45 soldiers;

▪️ In the Krasny Liman area, two attacks were repelled. Ukrainian losses amounted to 190 servicemen and two IFVs;

▪️ In the Donetsk region, two attacks were repulsed. Ukrainian losses amounted to 370 servicemen and two armored personnel carriers.;

▪️ Russian air defenses shot down one Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter, seven HIMARS shells and 17 drones during the day.

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Why are Ukraine & US brushing aside Maryinka’s strategic importance?

The Zelensky regime seems to be ignoring Ukraine's deteriorating position on the battlefield, while Russia celebrates the recapture of Maryinka, a former Ukrainian stronghold in the Donetsk People's Republic.

In mid-December, President Zelensky appeared to have completely forgotten about the losses of Artemovsk (Bakhmut) in May and Artemovskoye (Khromovo) in November. When speaking to Fox News anchor Bret Baier in Washington, DC, Zelensky boldly claimed that the Russian military had not taken a single new settlement in 2023.

The US media is also downplaying the significance of Russia's retaking of Maryinka, suggesting that the town had little strategic value. The Kiev regime's reluctance to admit defeat is likely driven by the fear that their diminishing Western support will soon evaporate.

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🇷🇺🇮🇳 Russian FM Sergey Lavrov discussed the North-South transport corridor with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Moscow

The North-South transport corridor – of which Russia and India are members – doesn’t need a second breath because the project “has already been revitalized as it attracts active attention from all the countries involved,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Sputnik on Wednesday.

The remarks came after Lavrov’s talks with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Moscow earlier in the day, negotiations that focused on an array of pressing issues related to bilateral cooperation in various sectors.

Both diplomats confirmed the high level of the Moscow-New Delhi partnership, with the Russian foreign minister touting the relations as a “specially privileged” one.

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📹 Scott Ritter on the chances of the Russian Army in the event of a theoretical clash with a NATO force

"The Russian Army that would go against them, is an army that's prepared for modern warfare, whereas nobody in NATO's prepared for modern warfare because they can't sustain it within a period of a week. These NATO forces would be depleted to the point that they were no longer a cohesive combat unit. So their combat effectiveness had dropped to zero," the former US Marine intelligence officer and former UN weapons inspector said.

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Bioweapons — the potential Black Swan event of 2024?

Sputnik correspondent Russell Bentley (@TXDPR) warned that one of the greatest dangers in the coming year is Ukraine or one of its Western sponsors attempting a biological weapons attack.

“As Russia makes solid gains in the military and economic arenas, the depletion of Western economic and conventional military power brings up the increasing possibility of the use of unconventional weapons, such as the nuclear, chemical and biological ones that already exist in the hands of those who have used them before. The danger is very real, and the greatest danger of these is the use of biological weapons, not only against the Russian (and allies) population, but also against their agriculture and food security.

Biological weapons against people, livestock and crops have long been in the arsenal of the US hegemon, and like nuclear and chemical weapons, the US has used them, and more than once, before. It is a well known and documented fact that the US operated dozens of laboratories in Ukraine that handled, developed and modified some of the most toxic and deadly substances on the planet. In fact, there is strong evidence that the US continues to do so, and may have already released them.

These biological weapons can wreak havoc on national populations and food security, and have the added bonus of a certain degree of "plausible deniability". And what would be the appropriate response to a biological weapons attack, especially one for which there is no clear and direct evidence? Think about it. Biological weapons have the very real potential to be more destructive than even nuclear weapons, yet can be deployed covertly and deniably, and to which there is really no appropriate symmetrical response.”

Read full analysis here.

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📹 Michael Hudson on the US exploiting the dollar as a means of ensuring global control

“So, the Arab Islamic countries have been put on notice that all of the money that they’ve been saving in the form of US dollars is held hostage for them, supporting American policy to take over the Near Eastern oil away from them and to essentially westernize the Islamic populations… You’re having the whole non-dollar world trying to avoid using the dollar because the Americans can grab it at any point in time and because they realize that you really don’t need a dollar,” the US economist and former Wall Street analyst stressed.

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🇪🇹 Ethiopia on the brink of default: What are the plausible risks?

• Ethiopia became Africa's third default in as many years on Tuesday after it failed to make a payment on a $1 billion Eurobond;

• The economic strain of the COVID-19 pandemic and the two-year civil war are the prerequisites for the default announcement;

• In November 2020, Zambia became the first African nation to default on its Eurobond debt after the government missed a coupon payment of $42.5 million on its 2024 Eurobond;

• In December 2022, Ghana declared its default after the country’s officials declared over 50% in annual inflation;

• A default might start an economic downturn or exacerbate existing problems;

• State default implies lower investor confidence, restricted credit availability and higher borrowing costs.

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⚡️ US announces a new package of security assistance to Ukraine estimated at up to $250 million, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.

According to the statement, the aid is being pulled from "previously directed drawdowns for Ukraine" and will include a variety of arms such as: air defense munitions, high mobility artillery rocket systems and anti-armor munitions, among over "15 million rounds of ammunitions."

The aid package is just one of over 50 similar drawdown packages provided to the Kiev regime by the Biden administration that bypasses a typically-required congressional clearance by tapping on the Foreign Assistance Act.

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Incapacitated hegemon: US geopolitical sway will continue to shrink in 2024

"China, Russia and indeed much of the developing world have determined that continued relations with the US (...) would be detrimental to them, that they don't want American hegemony. They're looking for a multilateral world where everybody operates as equals," Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, tells Sputnik's Big Radio Marathon.

The next year will see Ukraine's dwindling military prowess and the wrapping up of Israel's Gaza war, Ritter says.

The unfolding crises have indicated Washington's incapability to fight a large-scale "battle of attrition" with a peer great power and indicated gaps in its military prowess vis-à-vis smaller and less technologically advanced rivals. The world is changing and the US can do nothing about it, Ritter summed up.

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🇲🇩 The Moldovan Commission for Emergency Situations said on Wednesday it had decided to extend restrictions on grain imports to the country until March 2024, even after the state of emergency ends.

"Today the governmental commission for emergency situations decided to introduce licensing on imports of a number of grains, namely wheat and corn, for three months starting from the day the decision was made," the commission said in a statement.

In the summer and late autumn, Moldovan farmers staged mass protests in the country, demanding a reduction in VAT on grains, restrictions on Ukrainian grain imports and access to European funds for the agricultural sector, as well as an increase in the national agricultural development fund.

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💵 US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he is empowering US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to provide $20 million in aid to Ukraine under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.

“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 621 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, I hereby delegate to the Secretary of State the authority… to determine whether it is important to the security interests of the United States to furnish up to $20 million in assistance to Ukraine,” Biden stated in a memorandum to Blinken.

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Western economy in dire straits amid economic war against Russia

The existing “bifurcated economy” in the West favors the rich but not ordinary wage earners, US economist and former Wall Street analyst Michael Hudson said during a Sputnik Radio marathon today.

“There is talk now in both Europe and America, ‘is America a failed economy? is Europe a failed economy?’ That’s really what we should be talking about, not simply whether the economy is growing or not,” Hudson suggested.

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The Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) representative office in the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) of issues related to Ukraine's war crimes said Ukrainian troops had shelled the DPR territory 54 times over the past day.

"Over the past day, the office reported 54 cases of fire by Ukrainian armed forces," the office wrote on Telegram.

According to the statement, two civilians were wounded in Donetsk. The DPR said that the Kiev regime fired 174 rounds of various ammunition.

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📹 Scott Ritter on visible changes in the world order and the changing roles of Russia, China and the United States in the global economy

"Both China, Russia and indeed much of the developing world have determined that continued relations with the United States along these lines would be detrimental to them, that they don't want American hegemony. They're looking for a multilateral world where everybody operates as equals," the former US Marine intelligence officer and former UN weapons inspector said.

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🇮🇱🇱🇧 The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will push Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah away from the northern border if Lebanon's authorities and other countries fail to do so as time for diplomatic solutions is running out, Israel's National Unity Party head and war cabinet member, Benny Gantz, stated on Wednesday.

"The situation in the north must change. The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out. If the world, and the Lebanese government, won't stop the shooting towards the northern communities from Lebanon, and won't act to remove Hezbollah from the border - the IDF will," Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Gantz as saying.

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Meet the new Russian marksman rifle by Kalashnikov Group

The first batch of the new Chukavin sniper rifles (SVСh) has been delivered to the Russian military after seeing action in the Ukrainian conflict zone.

SVCh is a new Russian-designed marksman rifle made by Kalashnikov Concern, which is meant to become a successor to the ubiquitous Dragunov sniper rifle (SVD.)

Designed for combined arms warfare, the SVCh can be used to hit targets at a distance of up to 1,000 meters, though it can also be used in a close-range firefight.

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🇮🇱🇹🇷 Several Western countries say "the end" for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is near since "the world has already seen" the Jewish state's "brutality" in actions in the Gaza Strip, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Chief Adviser Akif Cagatay Kilic said Wednesday.

"Netanyahu made a statement today about our president. You are ruthlessly and indiscriminately dropping bombs on people... Our president spoke loudly about this in Germany and Greece. While many European capitals remained silent, our president demonstrated his position. Netanyahu is trying to wash the blood off his hands. But the world has already seen it. A permanent ceasefire and peace will only come when peace comes to Gaza. Israel is brutal, its policies are brutality. How can you explain bombs being dropped on children being treated for cancer? Many Western countries say this is the end of the road for Netanyahu," Kilic stressed in an interview with Turkish broadcaster TRT Haber.

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“Russia has continuously expanded its military industrial base while at the same time the West allowed theirs to atrophy”

Geopolitical analyst and former US Marine Brian Berletic slammed US military technology in an interview with Sputnik while noting Russia’s emergent parity, and even supremacy, on the battlefield.

Western technological development has been stunted, according to Berletic, from years of only engaging with “irregular forces in failed states.”

Now, Russian military technology is leapfrogging the West in terms of both quantity and quality, as seen in the country’s tanks, projectiles, and electronic capabilities in Ukraine.

Russia’s advances place it in the position of developing clear superiority in the technologies that will define modern warfare for years to come.

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US House Republicans are investigating whether President Joe Biden tried to influence or obstruct his son Hunter Biden's cooperation with the House impeachment inquiry, Congressmen James Comer and Jim Jordan stated in a letter to the White House.

"In light of an official statement from the White House that President Biden was aware in advance that his son, Hunter Biden, would knowingly defy two congressional subpoenas, we are compelled to examine as part of our impeachment inquiry whether the President engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding of Congress," the congressmen stressed in the letter to White House Counsel Edward Siskel on Wednesday.

The letter asks the White House to provide by January 10 all documents and communications sent or received by employees of the Executive Office of the President regarding Hunter Biden’s deposition.

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