Another State Dep official resigns in protest over US support of Israel's actions in Gaza

US diplomat Stacy Gilbert, who served in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, has quit in protest over Washington's support of Israeli conflict in Gaza, The Washington Post said. She reportedly cited disagreements with a recently published government report that claimed Israel was not impeding humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

Gilbert is not the first US official to stand down in protest against US policy towards Israel and the crisis in the Gaza Strip.

🔸 Hala Rharrit, a seasoned State Department official responsible for relations with Arab media, became one of the first career diplomats to stand down amid the Gaza crisis. As she stepped down in April, she said that US support of Israel was detrimental for American Mideast positions.

🔸 Annelle Sheline, an officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, resigned in March, concluding there is no much space currently left for human rights with Israel constantly shelling the Gaza Strip. She said that “as long as the US continues to send a steady stream of weapons to Israel” she could not do her job anymore.

🔸 Major Harrison Mann resigned from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in November 2023, explaining that US support of Israel “enabled and empowered the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians."

🔸 Josh Paul, director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, resigned in October 2023. He argued that “Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity” were extensively documented, meaning that US support of Tel-Aviv contradicted “the very values that we publicly espouse."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

'This is how the CIA does its regime change ops' - Jeffrey Sachs on Ukraine's 2014 coup

"I know again, from firsthand experience, the US was profoundly implicated in that. American senators standing up in Kiev, saying to the demonstrators: 'We're with you 100%.' Victoria Nuland famously passing around the cookies. And so the US conspired with the Ukrainian right to overthrow [Viktor] Yanukovich. And his security people told him: 'You're going to get killed.' And so he flew to Kharkov and then flew onward to Russia. That day, the US immediately, in a nanosecond, recognized the new government," the economist Jeffry Sachs stated during an interview with well-known US journalist Tucker Carlson.

After the coup, Crimean citizens decided that they wanted to be part of Russia, instead of staying "with this new post-coup government," Sachs further noted.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

A $32 million MQ-9 Reaper drone operated by the US military was downed by Houthis over Yemen, as images and footage circulating on social media indicate.

The visuals show a group of men standing beside the wreckage of what appears to be a US MQ-9 Reaper drone in the Yemeni desert.

US Central Command acknowledged the rumors of a drone downed in Yemen’s Marib province, though neither the Yemeni government nor the Ansar Allah movement (Houthis) have confirmed the incident.

In February, another MQ-9 Reaper drone was downed off the coast of Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

US has not encouraged Ukrainian strikes outside of Ukraine, but Kiev has to make it's own decisions about how to defend itself, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has claimed

Earlier, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proposed that Western countries must allow the use of weapons they supply to Ukraine for attacks deep into Russian territory, but NATO members are divided on the move.

📌 Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Germany begins eviction of Ukrainian refugees

The administration of the Erzgebirgskreis district in Saxony, Germany, has sent a letter to about 1,000 Ukrainian refugees demanding that they vacate their apartments by mid-June, after which they will have to find housing on their own.

According to the MDR news agency, the district's official reason for the refusal was the expiration of the leases.

What do Germans think about the fact that the local authorities have finally shown their true attitude towards Ukrainians?

Comments from social networks:

💬 "I can only say: keep up it that way. It's time for something to change here. Unfortunately, in this country, the hardworking are punished, but the lazy are allowed to do everything. Ukrainian refugees have already realized this and are shirking their jobs."

💬 "There is no shortage of housing in Germany, there are just too many migrants and refugees. If they were finally deported, we would have enough room to live."

💬 "It would be nice if apartments were available to Germans and not to 'other migrants'."

💬 "There is peace in the west of Ukraine. What are they doing here at our expense?"

💬 "It is still interesting why Ukrainians crossing the border with Germany suddenly began to be automatically classified as poor and given social benefits!"

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Who is the new head of Russia's State Council?

President Vladimir Putin has appointed his aide Alexei Dyumin as the secretary of Russia’s State Council.

Dyumin previously held the office of the Tula Region’s governor since 2016 until his appointment as Putin’s aide in the presidential administration this May.

Born in 1972, Dyuimin graduated from the Voronezh Higher Military Engineering School of Radio Electronics in 1996.

From 1996 to 2013, Dyumin served in the Federal Security Service and in 1999 was assigned to the security detail of Putin himself.

In 2013, Dyumin was transferred to the General Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces. From December 2015 until February 2016, he held the office of deputy minister of defense.

Dyumin holds the rank of colonel general of the Russian Armed Forces and was awarded the noscript of Hero of Russia.

Russia's State Council: what is it?

The State Council is a constitutional body formed by the Russian president. Its purpose is to act as an advisory body to the president and to assist him with matters such as the primary vectors of foreign and domestic policies and issues related to social and economic development.

The council is comprised of top government officials such as the prime minister, heads of both chambers of the Russian parliament, chief of the presidential administration and governors of Russia’s regions.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🌋🌋A fresh volcanic eruption commenced in southwestern Iceland.

Residents of adjacent areas were evacuated as a precautionary measure.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Authorities have discarded the theory that sabotage caused late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's helicopter to crash, according to Iran's general staff.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Allies getting ‘junk’? Find out what weapons Poland supplies to Ukraine

Poland has given Ukraine the green light to utilize the weapons it received from Warsaw to attack targets inside Russia.

Since the beginning of 2022, Poland has promoted itself as a leader in offering support to Ukraine, running up an aid bill totaling $3.5 billion. However, a key question has come to the fore: are these weapons from Poland truly new?

▪️Polish President Andrzej Duda was clear in stating that Poland will not be providing Ukraine with the modern weapons it purchases for its own army. This includes US-made Abrams tanks, Patriot air defense systems, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), as well as South Korean-made K2 Black Panther tanks and K9 howitzers.

▪️Poland has provided Ukraine with a number of Soviet-era T-72M tanks as part of their support, which are a simplified export version of the original T-72 model. These tanks lack advanced features such as multi-channel sights, a modern fire control system, and dynamic protection.

▪️Warsaw also provided Kiev with Poland’s former USSR-supplied BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, which entered service with the Soviet army back in 1966. Forbes magazine described the BMP-1s as vehicles that “don’t actually fight” because “they’re too lightly armed, too lightly protected.”

▪️Additionally, Poland furnished Ukraine with ten Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets, which the Economist reported were “not in flyable condition and were being used for spare parts.”

▪️One more mothballed piece of military hardware that Kiev received from Poland was the S-60, a Soviet short- to medium-range, single-barrel anti-aircraft gun that entered service in the 1950s.

In conclusion, it is worth noting the statement made by General Waldemar Skrzypczak, the former commander of the Polish Land Forces and deputy defense minister of Poland, regarding these shipments of outdated weapons, often labeled as "junk," to Ukraine.

📌 Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Houthis add new anti-ship ballistic missile to arsenal

Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Yemen’s Houthis have obtained the necessary technology to produce Qadr missiles, Iran’s first homegrown naval ballistic missile. The weapon has a range of 1,600 - 1,900 km.

📌 Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Dollar's fall inevitable and US accelerates it

"The key event will be when the primacy of the US dollar breaks. We all know it's going to break sometime or other because it's abnormal," former foreign minister of Singapore, George Yeo, said at UOBAM's 2024 mid-year investment outlook.

The former politician was speaking about the implications of US tariffs on the economy of the Southeast Asia region, outlining the negative effect they could bring to the country itself.

"Do we know when the cookie will crumble? We don't know. But the way the US is moving is bringing forward that day," Yeo added.

📌 Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Israel can make Gaza unlivable, but it cannot destroy Hamas

"For [Israel], a full victory involves releasing the captives and most importantly, ending Hamas' rule in Gaza completely," Dr. Tamer Qarmout, an associate professor in public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, tells Sputnik. "It has been almost eight months of this war, and obviously Israel hasn't been able to achieve any of these goals."

Israel dispatched tanks on raids into Rafah on May 29 after conducting a deadly strike on a displacement camp located in the region on Sunday. According to CNN, US-made munitions were used during the Sunday attack that claimed the lives of at least 45 people and injured 200 others. Nonetheless, the Biden administration insists Tel Aviv's actions do not constitute a major ground operation that crosses any US red lines.

According to Qarmout, Israel is continuing to push ahead with the Gaza war despite growing condemnation across the world because of US protection in the UN Security Council. "The US is very complicit in this conflict," the academic stresses.

On May 29, Tel Aviv signaled that its war in Gaza would likely continue throughout 2024 at least.

"The Israelis so far don't have an exit, a way out of the Gaza swamp, the way I put it. And so far, what they're doing is destroying the civil order in Gaza, destroying the livelihood of Gaza itself," Qarmout says, asking how long the international community will tolerate this genocidal war.

What the Benjamin Netanyahu cabinet can achieve is destroying Gaza from a civil perspective, making it an unlivable place, but it does not mean they would finish Hamas, according to the academic.

📌 Subscribe to @SputnikInt

“River of Death": Ukrainians drown en masse fleeing the draft

The Economist has reported on dozens of deaths among Ukrainian men of military age trying to cross the Tisa River, a deadly but popular escape route out of the country.

Up to 40 people cross the river every day, trying to escape being sent to the war zone. One of the guides spoke about a group of 96 fugitives.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt