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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❗️ Russian air defense forces destroyed an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over the sea near the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev stated. He added that no damage to infrastructure has been reported.

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❗️ The Colorado Republican Party filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court to overturn Trump's ban from state ballot.

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⚛️ Kudankulam: biggest Russian-Indian project & flagship costing billions of dollars

🇷🇺 🇮🇳 India's EAM S. Jaishankar and Russia's trade minister, Denis Manturov on Tuesday signed agreements for future units at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu.

The project, in partnership with Russian nuclear company Rosatom, targets electricity shortages and economic growth in South India, with Tamil Nadu aiming to become a trillion-dollar economy by 2030.

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“Maybe the problem isn’t with them, maybe the problem is with you,” journalist Esteban Carrillo emphasized.

The Beirut-based analyst speculated that UN member nations’ antipathy towards Israel may have more to do with their decades-long brutality against Palestinians than any alleged “anti-Israel bias” within the organization.

The journalist joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program to discuss news emanating from the Middle East in recent days, including renewed claims Israel is harvesting organs from dead Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the US retaliated against pro-Palestine groups in the region Tuesday by launching airstrikes on Baghdad, proving that the more things change in the Middle East, the more they remain the same.

But Carrillo suggested the growing power of forces opposing the United States in the region suggested there “won’t be such an uneven playing field anymore” in the years to come.

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Gaffes, mistakes & bloodshed: Scandals that enveloped Joe Biden in 2023

With 2023 coming to a close, it is worth reflecting on US President Joe Biden’s third year in office and all the gaffes, stumbles and mistakes he made along the way.

From the "double standards" of the classified documents case to chasing high-altitude balloons and his no-show in East Palestine after the devastating chemical fire, take a trip down memory lane for a round-up!

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The Colorado Republican Party filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court challenging the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the state ballot in the upcoming election, a court filing revealed.

"The state has interfered in the primary election by unreasonably restricting the Party’s ability to select its candidates," the court document stated on Wednesday. "As a natural and inevitable result, the state has interfered with the Party’s ability to place on the general election ballot the candidate of its choice. And it has done so based on a subjective claim of insurrection the state lacks any constitutional authority to make."

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The US Department of Defense has finally released an internal report on extremism in the military, which has left many questions unanswered. In its 262 pages, the report - obtained by US media - does little to shed light on extremism issues in the US military. Instead of offering new data, it gathered existing data from sources that included the military’s inspector general.

The report found—through public data which included the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) database—that “participation rates for former service members appear to be growing.”

The report was first commissioned by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot; a separate report showed that more than 80 of those charged in crimes related to the attack had some ties to the US military, and many of those with a military background were veterans.

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🇹🇷 Turkiye is urging the United States to make good on promises to sell the country 40 F-16 fighter jets, an anonymous Turkish diplomatic source told US media on Wednesday.

The country’s foreign minister made the request to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a phone call after a Turkish parliamentary commission voted to move forward with Sweden’s ascension to NATO.

Turkiye has repeatedly held up Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership, attempting to extract concessions from the countries in exchange for Ankara’s approval.

The $20 billion fighter jet sale still requires the backing of the US Congress.

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US President Joe Biden’s approval rating dipped to a historic low in December: below 40% for the fifth time this year. His approval rating is also the lowest when compared to the past seven presidents at the same point during their first term in office.

“It’s a credibility problem, I think they’re kind of damned if they do, damned if they don’t, and that’s why I think they’re ultimately going to air on the side of safety and probably keep him [as a Democratic presidential nominee]” said Peter Coffin, a journalist and author. “I don't see Biden winning, honestly, the way that things are going it just doesn't look like Biden has a legitimate chance.”

Biden’s lowest job approval rating was 37% which occurred three times, and was most recently recorded in November. Meanwhile, his average approval rating has lingered around 43% for his first term.

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Russian air defenses destroyed two Ukrainian drones over Crimea at night, the Russian Defense Ministry stated.

“During the night, attempts by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack using aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles on facilities on the territory of the Russian Federation were stopped. Air defense systems on duty destroyed two Ukrainian UAVs over the territory of the Republic of Crimea,” the ministry said.

Earlier in the day, Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said one drone had been destroyed by air defenses, adding that no damage to infrastructure had been reported.

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