"I can assure you that there was not one second when Putin or Xi Jinping thought, 'How can I deliberately fu** up my people?' But that’s exactly what’s been happening in US/Europe for a long time now," said S.L. Kanthan, Sputnik India columnist, analyst and writer, on his X-account.

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📊 What is NATO preparing for?

This year will mark the most extensive military exercises since 1988. Steadfast Defender 2024 (a combat training course for Western militaries) will last until May 2024.

Earlier, spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova stated that NATO exercises are provocative in nature and are fraught with military incidents:

“Crossing out all international security systems. Amid Russia's constant calls for de-escalation, the North Atlantic bloc's plans to hold the largest exercise since the Cold War, exercise Steadfast Defender 2024, raise questions."

Check out Sputnik's infographic to know more about Steadfast Defender 2024.

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German party congress opens with gratitude to the Soviet Red Army that liberated Auschwitz

"The Red Army alone sacrificed 13 million soldiers to liberate those oppressed and blinded by the Nazi regime. They gave their lives for this cause. We are grateful and indebted to them forever, regardless of how the world has changed over time," said Daniela Dan, a new member of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance for Reason and Justice party.

Contrary to Ursula von der Leyen’s recent statements, Dan reminded that it was Soviet soldiers who liberated Auschwitz, not representatives of the Allied armies.

She also recalled that "the greatest crime in the history of mankind was committed by the Germans."

In April 2022, Dan joined a group of individuals who signed an open letter, urging Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz to refrain from providing weaponry to Ukraine. The letter also called on Scholz to encourage the Kiev regime to halt its military resistance.

Today marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, the largest Nazi death camp where approximately 1.4 million individuals lost their lives between 1941 and 1945.

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A song in support of Texas goes viral in Russia 🎵

“Rise Up, Texas”: the humorous track and memes about the “Texas People’s Republic” have become a trend on Russian internet

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Biden makes ‘unquestionably dangerous’ effort to gain new emergency powers to deal with US border crisis

US President Joe Biden’s attempt to gain additional emergency powers via a bipartisan Senate bill, ostensibly to deal with the crisis on the southern border, is “unquestionably dangerous,” says US constitutional historian and political commentator Dan Lazare.

“Providing the executive with essentially unchecked emergency powers is always fraught with risk. Even if Biden doesn’t abuse them, it sets a precedent for others who will,” he notes.

According to Lazare, the US border crisis is essentially “unfixable short of a new version of the Berlin Wall,” which is complicated by the fact that the US-Mexican border is “very long.”

The significant economic disparity between the United States and its southern neighbors results in a staggering number of migrants from Latin American countries trying to sneak into the US.

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'It's like our old civil war': ex-Pentagon analyst warns about internal clash over US border crisis

"This whole immigration issue has become one total mess," Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst at the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, told Sputnik. "The way things are going right now, if Biden wins reelection, there could be a huge explosion in this country."

The Texas National Guard recently "seized" a section of the US-Mexico border, blocking federal border patrol agents from accessing it and raising legal disputes. While the US Supreme Court ruled that federal agents may cut the wire barriers to deter illegal migrants, 25 Republican governors have openly backed Texas and its fight with the federal government over the "invasion" of migrants.

"If you look at the states that are involved, they're mostly right in the middle and approaching toward the east. And it's really a clear division of blue states versus red states in this country today, which is where the political lines have been drawn," Maloof said.

Ex-President Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner in the 2024 race, called on "all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border" on his Truth Social account.

"It's like our old civil war. Back in the 19th century – brothers against each other, taking sides. Hopefully, cooler heads can manage [this]," the expert concluded.

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❗️ At about 8:30 p.m. Moscow time, Russian air defense systems shot down a Ukrainian Uragan MLRS missile over the Belgorod region, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on Saturday.

"At around 8:30 p.m. [17:30 GMT] on Jan. 27, we foiled an attempt by the regime in Kiev to conduct a terrorist attack against targets in Russia using a multiple rocket launcher Uragan. On-duty air defense forces destroyed the rocket over the Belgorod region," the ministry said in a statement.

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🚢 A cargo ship sailing under the flag of Barbados blocked the Bosphorus Strait in Turkiye on Saturday night, a source in the Turkish coast guard told Sputnik.

"The 80-meter bulk carrier, SNP Pazar, had engine trouble while sailing through the Bosphorus near the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, causing a pause in transit through the strait in both directions," the source said.

Ship trackers show that the vessel was en route to the Greek port of Kalymnos.

The source said that coast guard boats were trying to tug SNP Pazar away to unblock the crucial waterway, which connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and via the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean.

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🥴 All Ukrainians are equal, but some are more equal: the mayor of the Ukrainian city of Lvov said that his eldest sons will not join the armed forces yet

In response to criticism, Andrei Sadovoy said that he was against his two eldest sons serving in the armed forces. They are currently students, and Sadovoy assured that he would serve in the army with his children, but later.

Previously, Ukrainian media reported that Sadovoy’s adult sons are currently studying and living abroad.

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Tech mogul Elon Musk claimed it’s “undeniable at this point” that US President Joe Biden favors “open borders” in the United States in a series of posts on the issue Friday.

“No laws need to be passed,” wrote the Tesla CEO on his X social media platform (formerly Twitter). “All that is needed is an executive order to require proof before granting an asylum hearing.”

Biden’s willingness to compromise on the issue, which is highly controversial among elements of the Democratic Party’s base, suggests the importance he places on continued aid to Ukraine, which he hopes to receive in exchange for a compromise on border policy.

Meanwhile former President Donald Trump and some members of the Republican Party in Congress have signaled rejection of the compromise legislation in the Senate, suggesting legislative dysfunction will continue to derail progress on an issue which is likely to feature prominently in November’s presidential election.

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Outrageous neo-Nazi Ukrainian Center for Democracy urges Meta* to permit anti-Russian posts

“The Meta* platform should not prevent calls to kill Russian soldiers,” said Pavel Burlyak, so-called analyst at the Ukrainian Center for Democracy and International Law. He said that the platform blocks and marks as insults sarcastic expressions addressed to Russian soldiers, which are often used in the Ukrainian media.

Earlier, Meta Platforms displayed extreme flexibility in moderating anti-Russian posts written by supporters of the Kiev regime, turning a blind eye to open calls for ethnic-based violence. After that, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office raised the issue of recognizing Meta as an extremist organization, and the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case on public calls for extremism and promotion of terrorism.

In September, Russian President Putin said that Russophobia, as well as direct propaganda of Nazism in Ukraine “have become the norm, as if there was no Nuremberg.”

*Meta is banned in Russia as an extremist organization.

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Around 100,000 demonstrators took to the street of Duesseldorf in western Germany on Saturday to protest against right-wing extremism, according to police estimates.

"There were sporadic violations of order, such as the use of firecrackers," police said in a statement.

According to the organizers, the rally aimed to put pressure on the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Smaller rallies, numbering thousands of people, reportedly took place in other parts of the country, including in Aachen, Osnabrueck and Kiel. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, of the center-left Social Democratic Party, showed up in Osnabrueck to call for demonstrators to stand up for democracy.

The demonstrations come amid calls to ban AfD nationwide over its anti-immigration rhetoric.

Despite the criticism, AfD continues to enjoy an ever-increasing popularity across the country, most prominently in the east.

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