Israel’s credit rating cut by Fitch as Gaza war 'could last well into 2025’

Israel’s war with Hamas continues to batter its public finances, with the country’s sovereign debt rating cut a notch from “A+” to “A” by Fitch Ratings. The agency retained a negative outlook on the credit, signaling it could cut the rating further in the future.

As the firm listed the rating drivers, such as heightened geopolitical risks amid ongoing military operations, it voiced the opinion that the conflict in Gaza “could last well into 2025,” and cited “risks of it broadening to other fronts” in a statement on August 12.

The rating agency went on to cite Israel’s projected budget deficit of 7.8% of GDP in 2024, and a debt set to “remain above 70% of GDP in the medium term.”

Back in February, Moody’s Ratings gave Israel its first sovereign downgrade. In response to the cut by one notch to A2 with a negative outlook, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured that Israel’s credit rating would go back up the moment the war would be over.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Chemical munitions used by Ukraine to shell Russia's Rosseti power company brigade in the Kursk region are typical of US and German armaments - Russian MoD

The Rosseti power company brigade went to restore the power supply in the Belovo district of the Kursk region on Monday, when the Ukrainian troops shelled them with chemical weapon ammunition.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Most powerful laser installation in the world: meet Russia’s UFL-2M Tsar Laser

Construction of Russia’s UFL-2M Tsar Laser is proceeding as has been foreseen, and the installation will reach full power in four to five years, Sarov Nuclear Center director Valentin Kostyukov has revealed.

▪️ The UFL-2M consists of 192 laser beams, introduced simultaneously into a sphere-shaped interaction chamber from all sides. The 120-ton chamber has a 10 m diameter, and is covered by a 100 mm-thick aluminum alloy.

▪️ The laser hall is 130 m long, and built on a special foundation to protect it from seismic influences. The facility consists of 16,000 sq m of clean rooms.

▪️ Once fully operational, the UFL-2M will have a power capacity of a whopping 4.6 megajoules (MJ). For comparison, the US Lawrence Livermore Labs’ National Ignition Facility’s laser achieved a power of 2.2 MJ, resulting in a useful yield of 3.4 MJ of fusion energy. France is the only other country with a similarly powerful laser, with its Laser Mégajoule facility featuring a power generation capacity of up to 2 MJ.

▪️ The Tsar Laser is indispensable for the development of Russian nuclear weapons. Since the introduction of a moratorium on nuclear weapons tests, the installation can be used for modeling processes occurring at the moment of a nuclear explosion.

▪️ The UFL-2M can also assist in research in high energy density physics, namely, the study the properties of matter in extreme states, including ultra-high pressures and temperatures, which could be helpful in the study of processes occurring in stars. In some sense, the Tsar Laser itself is a miniature star created in a lab environment.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Netanyahu-Gallant rift exposes ‘different approaches’ to resolving Gaza war – analyst

Verbal barbs traded between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Yoav Gallant expose their “different approaches” to resolving the Gaza conflict, Dr Shaul Bartal, a researcher at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told Sputnik.

Gallant scotched the PM’s goal of “total victory” over Hamas in the Gaza Strip as “nonsense.” The leaked details of his meeting with the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee infuriated Netanyahu.

The rift between the two stems from “different military concepts regarding the capabilities and role of the military in war,” noted Bartal.

“Netanyahu's approach is that Hamas has indeed received severe blows but has not yet been finally defeated. A complete victory according to Netanyahu is a situation in which Hamas as a political organization no longer controls the Gaza Strip and Hamas as a military organization is unable to threaten Israel similar to what happened on October 7,” the retired lieutenant colonel noted.

To achieve this, the IDF would need “another period of fighting,” said the pundit.

Gallant wants a deal for Israel that “will allow a time-out for organizing and equipping,” and to “save a significant part of the abductees.”

“Gallant's approach is that a deal now will lead to a political settlement in the north with Hezbollah,” Bartal said. “Israel's withdrawal and a deal will allow Hamas to rehabilitate in the Strip, but it will take the organization several years to recover and it can always be attacked again militarily.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️There is no solid front line in Kursk Region: the enemy is trying to break through in certain areas, but Ukrainian troops have been successfully blocked, according to a confidant of the region's acting governor Alexei Smirnov.

The situation remains difficult but controlled and manageable, he said. Individual groups of enemy troops are being destroyed and the fighting continues in several areas.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️ Russian Defense Minister held bilateral meetings with the heads of delegations from Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Mali and the Central African Republic, who arrived in Moscow to take part in the Army-2024 forum.

During the talks, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov discussed the current state and prospects for the development of bilateral cooperation in the defense sphere. The sides exchanged views on the most pressing issues of the international situation and regional security.

Belousov and his Lao counterpart Chansamone Chanyalath signed an updated bilateral agreement on defense cooperation.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

The Ukrainian Armed Forces struck the city of Kakhovka in the Kherson region. A nine-story apartment building caught fire – city mayor

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt