❗️Chairman of Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin will lead the Russian delegation at the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with the chairman of the Iranian parliament.

He also expressed hope that relations between the two countries will continue to develop as steadily as they did under the late President Raisi.

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Which countries are the most expensive to live in?

Switzerland is the most expensive country to live in, the latest world cost-of-living study has shown. The Swiss face the highest prices for food and rent in 2024. Second place was taken by Singapore, while Hong Kong came third.

The Cost of Living Index (COLI) is calculated based on the cost of a basket of goods and services, including food, transportation, housing, utilities and other basic daily expenses.

Take a look at Sputnik's infographics showing the top 10 most expensive countries to live in.

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What we know about long-range US missiles being deployed in Germany

The US ramped up strategic tensions in Europe to a level unseen since the Cold War this week by announcing plans to deploy an array of long-range missiles in Germany.

The US long-range fires, set for deployment by 2026, will include:

◻️ The Tomahawk - America’s premier, 1980s-designed land-attack cruise missile. Manufactured by Raytheon, the $2 mln apiece weapon has a 450 kg high explosive payload, but can also carry a low-to-intermediate yield nuclear warhead. Tomahawks have a range of 460-2,500 km.

◻️ The Standard Missile 6 - the US Navy’s principle long-range air and missile defense projectile, doubling as an anti-ship and land-attack missile. Built by Raytheon and priced at nearly $5 mln each, these weapons have been fielded since 2013, feature a 64 kg blast fragmentation warhead, and have a range of 240-460 km.

◻️ The Pentagon also plans to deploy mystery ‘developmental hypersonic weapons’ in Germany. Details are scarce, but the only one of the over half-a-dozen US hypersonics anywhere close to operational is the Army’s ground-based Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon. The Lockheed Martin-developed LRHW has a reported range up to 3,000 km. Its payload is unknown.

Russia has vowed to issue a balanced military response to Washington’s plans. Russia has an array of conventional and strategic ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles, as well as missile defense systems, to counter the US threat.

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🇦🇫 The Taliban government is building the most expensive canal in its history. Why are its neighbors worried?

The Afghan Qosh Tepa canal project, branching from the Amu Darya river, is expected to cost $684 million. The canal will run for 285 kilometers and measure 100 meters wide. The first stretch of 108 km is already finalized. The canal will become operable in 2028.

The canal is important for Afghanistan as it will:

◻️ Revitalize 580,000 hectares of land in three Afghan provinces. Northern Afghanistan, now plagued by droughts, will become the country’s main farm.

◻️ Create 200,000 jobs in construction alone. 

◻️ According to the Taliban’s spokesmen, the project will allow Kabul to feed Afghans without food imports and will be paid for without foreign loans.

However, the Qosh Tepa canal branches off the Amu Darya before the river flows through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, two ex-Soviet republics, which get 80% of their water from the river. Experts warn the Qosh Tepa will divert a quarter of the Amu Darya’s water, leading to droughts in Central Asia. 

Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev has repeatedly expressed concern that the project “will disturb the water regime.”

🔹 Afghanistan did not sign up for agreements that regulate water use in the region. It does not participate in the Interstate Coordination Commission of Central Asian Countries, which every year determines each country’s quota for use of the river’s water. 

🔹 Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan have signed the UN’s Water Convention, which requires countries to share the waters of border rivers. The Taliban government has not joined the convention. It has also not clarified its stance on the Soviet-Afghan agreements of 1946 and 1977, which determined the Afghan quota of the Amu Darya’s water.

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Trump criticizes George Clooney after actor urges Biden to drop out of presidential race

Trump, responding to actor George Clooney's call for Biden to exit the presidential race, took on the role of a film critic.

"So now fake movie actor George Clooney, who never came close to making a great movie, is getting into the act. He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are. What does Clooney know about anything?" Trump questioned on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Clooney urged Biden to step down in a New York Times column, which was particularly surprising given his recent concert appearance, where Obama guided Biden off the stage by hand. Less than a month after the event, Clooney changed his stance, writing about the sitting president: "The one battle he cannot win is the fight against time."

Trump was outraged by the actor's betrayal. "Clooney should get out of politics and go back to television. Movies never really worked for him!!!" declared the former president.

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Aegis Ashore: 'Defensive' missile platform or irritant for itchy trigger fingers?

NATO has announced that its ‘purely defensive’ Aegis Ashore missile defense facility in Redzikowo, Poland, is now fully operational and 'mission ready’. 

Why Aegis Ashore isn’t a ‘defensive’ weapons platform

◻️ Aegis Ashore is the ground-based version of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, a US Navy program that became operational in the mid-2000s and was an outgrowth of Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ initiative. The first Aegis Ashore facility was created in Deveselu, Romania, in 2016. 

◻️ The system has two principle interceptor missiles, the SM-3 and the SM-6, with a Glide Phase Interceptor (GPS) in the works for hypersonic defense. The SM-3 and SM-6 have a range of 1,200 km and 240–460 km, respectively, and feature inertial, semi-active, or active radar guidance. Both are fired from the MK 41 VLS platform, which can also fire offensive, nuclear-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles. 

◻️ The system’s primary danger stems from its interplay with the Pentagon’s Prompt Global Strike concept, which envisions the firing of thousands of conventional cruise missiles. If Pentagon planners think they can reduce the number of missiles that make their way to their targets using systems like Aegis Ashore, this may increase the temptation for them to launch large-scale conventional aggression. 

Aegis Ashore’s deployment in Eastern Europe comes after decades of false assurances to Russia that a US missile defense shield in the region would defend against the missiles of small ‘rogue actors’. President Putin tested Washington’s sincerity on the issue in 2007, proposing a joint Russian-US missile defense system in Azerbaijan. Washington rejected the idea.

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Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico assured in a video message that the deputies of his party will not support Ukraine's accession to NATO.

In his opinion, Ukraine's membership in the alliance would guarantee a Third World War.

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🇷🇺 How Putin’s whirl of diplomatic engagement left Western elite biting the dust

The West’s attempts to isolate Vladimir Putin have failed miserably. Just check out Putin’s packed schedule both at home and abroad.

Since being reelected for his fifth presidential term in March, Putin has made six foreign visits, while holding dozens of meetings with leaders of Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

◻️ Putin’s first foreign tour since his inauguration for a fresh term was a two-day state visit to China on May 16 and 17.

◻️ Putin went on a working visit to Belarus on May 23–24 to meet with his counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, and to Uzbekistan on May 26–27 at the invitation of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

◻️ Putin’s state visit to the North Korea took place on June 18–19, where he met with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un.

◻️ The Russian president called Vietnam one of Russia's most reliable strategic partners during his state visit to the Southeast Asian country on June 19-20.

◻️ Putin met leaders of Turkiye, Qatar, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Mongolia in Kazakhstan on July 3-4 during a meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Back in Russia, Putin hosted:

🔹 India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a two-day visit on July 8.

🔹 Hungarian PM Victor Orban on July 5.

🔹 President of the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso on June 27.

🔹 Zimbabwean leader Emmerson Mnangagwa and Bolivian President Luis Arce at the 2024 SPIEF in early June.

🔹 King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain on May 23.

🔹 Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on May 9.

🔹 Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon on May 8-9.

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Alex Soros backs Biden: "stop running against ourselves and focus on Trump"

Alex Soros, the son of billionaire Democratic activist George Soros and chair of Open Society, which is considered to be the largest donor to the US Democratic Party, voiced his support for President Joe Biden on Wednesday, urging fellow Democrats to cease calls for Biden to step down.

“Let’s stop running against ourselves and run against the existential threat that is Donald Trump! Biden-Harris 2024!” he stated emphatically.

A quasi-Civil War has erupted within the Democratic Party this week, with some calling for Biden to step aside and others insisting he remain in the race. This internal conflict was highlighted on Wednesday when actor and Democratic activist George Clooney, who recently hosted a fundraiser for Biden, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times urging the president to step down.

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🇪🇹 Chairman of the Ethiopian Federation Council Agegnehu Teshager commented on the country's cooperation with Russia and BRICS in an exclusive interview with Sputnik on the sidelines of the BRICS Parliamentary Forum in St. Petersburg.

We are happy to have a good relationship between the parliaments of Russia and Ethiopia, and also the relationship between the BRICS parliaments and other parliaments, a strong tie between the parliaments, because the parliaments, they lead the budget, they oversight the government officials.

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The first International Tolstoy Peace Prize will be awarded on September 9

The award ceremony for the inaugural International Tolstoy Peace Prize will take place on September 9, 2024, at the Bolshoi Theatre. This announcement was made during the round table discussion "The Struggle for Peace in the 21st Century: Active Peacekeeping in the Context of Transforming the International Relations System," held on July 11, 2024.

"The Tolstoy Prize will be an important contribution from Russia to preventing a third world war and a significant step towards creating a new comprehensive, universal, global security system in the transition to a new world order," said Vitaly Naumkin, Scientific Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and RAS academician.

"The name Leo Tolstoy is not meaningless to Africans," said Irina Abramova, Director of the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Corresponding Member of the RAS. "Leo Tolstoy studied Arabic. He noted the complacency and disdain of Europeans towards the local population and spoke about how Europeans imposed civilization with fire and sword."

The Tolstoy International Peace Prize Foundation was established on June 22, 2022.

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The total amount of military support for Ukraine from the United States during Biden's presidency has exceeded $54.4 billion, according to the Pentagon.

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Scholz called the Pentagon's plans to deploy long-range weapon systems in Germany a "very good decision."

Moscow promised on Wednesday morning that there would be a "military response." The Russian ambassador in Berlin noted that such Western actions lead to increased confrontation.

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Pentagon’s push to put Tomahawks in Germany signals 'death rattle' of US hawks failing to defeat Russia

The Biden administration’s escalatory behavior may constitute a “death rattle of the West against the East,” a “last-ditch effort to try and bolster and show ‘strength’ at a time when they’re failing,” former senior DoD security policy analyst Michael Maloof told Sputnik.

NATO’s continued deliberate escalation of tensions with Russia through provocative measures like the deployment of missiles in the heart of Europe may turn the risk of a hot war with the country into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and demonstrates once and for all that the Western bloc is an “offensive alliance,” the Pentagon analyst fears.

“NATO has clearly now become an offensive alliance. I think this is worrying more and more people, and it makes it a much more dangerous world,” Maloof said. In such a situation, even a minute escalation may quickly spiral out of control and engulf the planet in a world-ending conflict.

“The problem is that NATO was designed to be a 'defensive' entity against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union went away and so did the Warsaw Pact. But yet NATO not only remained but expanded to the Russian border,” the analyst said, commenting on what he characterized as the “truly escalatory” US decision to station offensive Tomahawk and hypersonic missiles to Germany.

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Canada to bolster Ukraine’s defense with $500M and pilot training

"Canada plans to reinforce Ukraine’s defence with $500 million more in military support — and train more Ukrainian fighter pilots to defend their skies against Russia," Canadian PM Justin Trudeau announced on his X account.

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◻️ Pentagon’s push to put Tomahawks in Germany signals 'death rattle' of US hawks failing to defeat Russia

◻️ How Putin’s whirl of diplomatic engagement left Western elite biting the dust

◻️ West’s ‘open season’ on Hungary’s Orban for his trip to Russia

◻️ Violator-in-chief: How US systematically sullied INF Treaty before scrapping it

◻️ Aegis Ashore: 'Defensive' missile platform or irritant for itchy trigger fingers?

◻️ The Taliban government is building the most expensive canal in its history. Why are its neighbors worried?

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NATO’s tantrum about Chinese ‘challenge’ to ‘rules-based order’ signals terminal decline of West’s hegemony

NATO’s shortsighted decision to label China a “challenge” to the alliance and a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine is another sign that the sun is setting on the West’s unipolar moment, veteran geopolitical analyst and former US Marine Brian Berletic told Sputnik.

“It’s important first to understand that when NATO mentions a ‘rules-based international order’, they are referring to a geopolitical order in which wealthy Western nations determine the ‘rules’ in order to serve their own best interests,” Berletic explained.

“These ‘rules’ are enforced by what was until now the West’s monopoly on global financial, economic and military power,” according to the observer. “China’s rise, its cooperation with nations like Russia and the many members of BRICS undermine both the monopolies the West has enjoyed for decades, as well as the impunity those monopolies granted the West.”

The rise of China, Russia, and the developing world undermines the “primacy” and “hegemony” of the West, but is not any sort of actual threat to the national security of NATO’s members, Berletic believes.

NATO’s communique says loudly that the alliance has no intention to find a constructive role. In its pursuit to impose its ‘rules’, NATO exposes itself as the greatest threat to global peace, stability and prosperity, Berletic summed up.

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Volyn massacre: a crime of Ukrainian Nazis played down in Poland, hushed up in Ukraine

On July 11 1943, Nazi-allied groups of Ukrainian nationalists began their massacre of the Polish minority in the region of Volyn. The aim of the ethnic cleansing was “to remove anti-Ukrainian elements” before the Wehrmacht left Ukraine. The Banderites, followers of Ukrainian Nazi Stepan Bandera who did the killing, wanted to rule an “ethnically pure” Ukraine without Poles.

The issue of Volyn still divides Poland and Ukraine, despite their apparent friendship in recent years. In 2023, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski said that without resolving the issue of exhumation of the remains of Poles in Ukraine from mass graves of the victims of the Volyn massacre, Ukraine "has nothing to dream of joining the EU."

In 2017, Polish foreign minister Witold Waszczikowski said that Poland “would not allow Ukraine to enter Europe if Kiev wants to take Bandera along.”

Why was the Volyn massacre one of the worst crimes of the World War II?

◻️ The estimated number of the victims is about 150,000

◻️ The Banderite gangs left almost no witnesses. They encircled Polish villages on Sundays when Polish Catholics were attending church. Whole families were killed and even babies were slaughtered.

◻️ One of the few survivors was Polish astronaut Miroslaw Germaszewski, who lived in the village of Lipniki in Volyn. 19 members of his family were killed in one day in 1943. Germaszewski, then a small boy, survived by hiding in a forest. His village no longer exists, since all the other inhabitants were killed.

The impunity enjoyed by the Banderite groups which perpetrated the massacre is now played down in Poland and hushed up in Ukraine. The UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army)* and the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists)* that were responsible for the massacre continue to exist with support of the Kiev's government.

*terrorist groups banned in Russia.

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