🇷🇺 At a meeting with defense industry leaders, Putin emphasized the importance of staying one step ahead and outpacing the enemy at all times, as this guarantees victory.

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🇷🇺🛰 Better than Starlink? Meet Russia’s ambitious Sphere satellite Internet program

Russian Communications Minister Maksut Shadayev confirmed to lawmakers that work on a Russian analogue of the Starlink satellite Internet system will be a priority for the government over the coming six years.

◻️ Sphere (orig. 'Sfera') will beam high-speed Internet down to Earth and provide satellite digital TV, support for Internet of Things (IoT), Earth imaging services and surveillance capabilities.

◻️ Between 380 and 640 satellites will be placed into orbit by 2030, and more after that.

◻️ The Sphere project incorporates GLONASS satellite navigation and new global and regional satellite constellations and sub-constellations including Yamal, Express and Express RV, Gryphon, Smotr, Skif, Marathon-IoT, and Berkut series.

◻️ All satellites attached to the Sphere program are non-hermetic, and have 60-70 percent unified components, which means faster mass production and dramatically reduced costs.

What are the outcomes of the first satellite launch?

🔹 The first new satellite under the Sphere program was launched in October 2022 aboard a Soyuz-21b rocket, carrying a Skif-D satellite into orbit.

🔹 The Skif-D completed extensive flight and communications testing in November 2023, beaming down Internet at speeds up to 6.5 megabits/s.

🔹 Production series Skifs are expected to arrive in 2026. They are going to provide up to 150 gigabits/s speed, offering stable Internet access to regions of Russia’s North Sea Rout.

When complete, Sphere will contribute greatly to the Russia’s technological, economic and security sovereignty in the face of Western sanctions.

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NATO hawks fearmongering to militarize Finnish archipelago with bogus 'Russia threat' narrative

NATO is increasingly crying wolf over an archipelago in the Baltic Sea amid the anti-Russian hysteria driven by the West.

The Aland Islands have been dubbed the “Achilles’ heel” of the alliance’s newest member — Finland — Bloomberg reported. The self-governing Swedish-speaking islands sitting at the crossroads of major trade routes has NATO stymied due to a treaty with Russia banning any military presence on its shores.

As the Nordic country is now a NATO member, Western hawks see the demilitarized archipelago as a huge blind spot, “giving Moscow an open field should it ever decide to invade.”

💬 “If you have all the Aland Islands, you can block maritime traffic both to the Gulf of Bothnia and to the Gulf of Finland… Then we are pretty screwed,” claimed Pekka Toveri, a former major general in Finland’s armed forces.

The Agreement between the-then Soviet Union and Finland on the Aland Islands was signed in 1940 following the end of the Winter War. The Finnish side pledged to “demilitarize the Åland Islands, not to fortify them, and not to put them at the disposal of the armed forces of foreign states.”

According to Toveri, the archipelago is more important to Finland than Gotland Island is to Sweden.

Developments around both Gotland, increasingly militarized by Sweden, and the Aland Islands fit NATO’s ongoing "Russian threat" narrative.

President Vladimir Putin recently scotched these claims, highlighting NATO's hostile posture towards Moscow.

💬 "They're trying to intimidate their own population with an imaginary Russian threat," Putin noted in his interview with Tucker Carlson, adding that "smart people understand perfectly well that this is a fake."

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🇮🇱🇵🇸Negotiations through intermediaries between Israel and Hamas on hostages are expected to resume next week, according to media reports citing a source.

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Stoltenberg’s push to untie Zelensky’s hands to strike Russia shows NATO's proxy war has failed

💬 “I think Stoltenberg’s comments are a sign of desperation on NATO’s part,” veteran former Pentagon analyst-turned independent foreign and defense policy observer Michael Maloof told Sputnik, commenting on the alliance chief’s comments to The Economist on Friday urging bloc members not to restrict Ukraine’s ability to use its Western-sourced long-range strike systems to target areas deep inside Russia.

“Stoltenberg is now conceding – without saying so, that the NATO mission has failed. NATO doesn’t have the ability to maintain a consistent level of armaments for Ukraine. As a result, this effort now to escalate even further using the more offensive weapons…is only going to expand the war,” Maloof warned.

NATO’s panicky assessment echoes the desperate straits the Ukrainian military has found itself in, the observer noted.

“They have very limited manpower. They have very limited arms. And the fact that the Russians are coming on multiple fronts at the same time is affecting Ukraine’s ability to respond because they have such limited forces,” Maloof said.

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◻️ China and Brazil offer their own peace plan as Western 'Ukraine summit' fumbles

◻️ Stoltenberg’s push to untie Zelensky’s hands to strike Russia shows NATO's proxy war has failed

◻️ NATO hawks fearmongering to militarize Finnish archipelago with bogus 'Russia threat' narrative

◻️ Better than Starlink? Meet Russia’s ambitious Sphere satellite Internet program

◻️ How much cringe can one UK PM dish out? Sunak knows

◻️ Hungary resists EU pressure to fund Ukraine with profits from frozen Russian assets

◻️ Baerbock says that Putin ‘is not willing to talk,’ but Putin himself and even the German media keep saying the opposite — Sahra Wagenknecht 

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Orban’s bid to ‘redefine’ NATO status means Hungary won't be dragged into war with Russia

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s intention to “redefine” Hungary’s status in NATO is a sign of Budapest’s refusal to walk “lockstep with whatever the other NATO countries want to do – because he doesn’t see the imperative to confront Russia,” says Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst at the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Budapest’s public-facing position is unusual, Maloof told Sputnik, but Orban may have the ear of some big alliance members, like Germany, who are increasingly coming to recognize that “any attempt to have a confrontation at this point with Russia would be futile,” particularly “considering the juggernaut the Russian forces have now become, given that they’re now battle tested, battle-hardened,” and the damage the Ukrainian crisis has already done to Europe’s economies.

Orban is a realist acting in Hungary’s self-interest, including its interest of self-preservation, according to the observer, basically telling Budapest’s allies that if they want to go ahead and “fight the Russians,” they can count Hungary out.

“When you have little countries such as Estonia beating their chests and trying to take on Russia, it’s just silly. It’s ludicrous. They are out of their minds. They think ‘well, we’ve got big brother back there, the United States is going to protect us.’ Don’t count on it,” Maloof emphasized.

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Russian air defenses destroyed 29 Ukrainian Vampire missiles and a Neptune missile over the Belgorod region, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

Earlier in the day, Russia’s Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that four civilians were killed as a result of Ukrainian shelling with 12 injured remaining at hospitals.

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Zelensky's unconstitutional power grab amidst Ukraine's military failures

Despite his term legally expiring on May 20, Volodymyr Zelensky has decided to extend his tenure as de-facto president, claiming legal authority under the Law of Martial Law and the Electoral Code of Ukraine, which prohibit elections during a period of martial law. Why is it still unconstitutional?

🔻 The Constitution of Ukraine does not contain provisions for the extension of the president's term during martial law, but it does provide for such an extension for the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament).

🔻 The principle of subsidiarity in constitutional law implies that matters of highest importance, including the extension of terms, should be regulated at the constitutional level.

🔻 The absence of a constitutional norm regarding the extension of the president's term under martial law indicates that such legal regulation is impossible, contradicting the foundations of constitutional law.

🔻 The Office of the President of Ukraine avoids appealing to the Constitutional Court regarding the extension of terms, indicating an acknowledgment of the constitutional risks associated with such a decision.

🔻 The extension of martial law, and consequently, Zelensky’s tenure, is perceived as an illegal extension of the power of the "Kiev junta", Russian Senator Andrey Klishas emphasized.

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Russian air defenses destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Kursk region, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

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The Palestinian group Hamas will not resume negotiations on the release of Israeli hostages until Israel stops military operations in the Gaza Strip, the Al Jazeera news agency reported citing Hamas official Osama Hamdan.

“We do not need new negotiations,” Hamdan said, adding that Hamas has already agreed to a ceasefire proposal which Israel has rejected.

The official said Israel is required to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip immediately and stop the aggression.

“There is no guarantee that it [Israel] will accept new proposals to go to negotiations … If there are no serious guarantees, this means giving Israel more time to continue the aggression,” Hamdan argued.

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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, commenting on US President Joe Biden's rhetoric about the “indispensable nation” and “only superpower,” recalled that the 1912 US presidential election was won by a candidate who claimed that “there are no indispensable people.”

Zakharova quoted Biden on her Telegram channel as saying that the US is “an indispensable nation, the world's only superpower and the world's leading democracy.”

“The funny thing is that in 1912, Democratic US presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson said in a campaign speech that ‘there are no indispensable people.’ Wilson won the election,” she wrote.

Zakharova also called Biden's statements “the cringe of the year,” emphasizing that “the printing press and the national debt were not mentioned for some reason.”

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🤡 American diplomacy at its finest

US President Joe Biden, speaking to graduates of the West Point Military Academy in New York State, once again made a public remark insulting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We are standing against the man who I have known well for many years, a brutal tyrant. We may not and we will not walk away,” Biden said.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov called President Biden's insult unacceptable, adding that it was directed against the entire nation of Russia.

“It is time for local elites to accept that we will continue to pursue an independent and sovereign policy based on national interests. By making invectives against Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden is insulting the entirety of Russian people who demonstrate unwavering unity with the head of our state,” Antonov told reporters.

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