Fear of legal retribution may have pushed UK to scale back arms sales to Israel – expert

💬 “I suspect that behind the Starmer government’s decision there was the fear of possible juridical actions against the government for its so far blatant inaction in [the face] of Israeli violation[s]. A possible class action by many NGOs for not implementing British laws might have pushed the British government to act, unfortunately very late,” Dr. Marco Carnelos, a veteran Italian diplomat and former prime ministerial advisor on Middle East affairs, told Sputnik, commenting on London’s surprise move to suspend 30 of 350 licenses to Israel on the grounds that they could be used to violate international humanitarian law.

“The level of violence reached by Israeli forces operating in Gaza and the evident violation of the laws regulating the armed conflicts could not be ignored any longer by the UK, especially under a Labour government,” Carnelos suggested.

With that said, the veteran diplomat does not expect the move to have much of an impact on the power of the Israel lobby, neither in Prime Minister Starmer’s Labour Party nor in Whitehall.

“[The] pro-Palestinian lobby in UK has been very active but its capacity to influence the British political establishment pales in comparison to the Pro-Israel lobby. This is an initial modest success. I do not believe this decision will strain the UK-Israel relations. The Labour Party under Keir Starmer’s leadership remains very pro-Israel no matter how many crimes Israel might have committed in Gaza,” Dr. Carnelos emphasized.

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Russian forces hit a target near the Poltava air base, coordinator of the Nikolayev underground Sergey Lebedev told Sputnik.

"Someone serious was caught in the aviation facility area. There is a cordon now, ambulances are flying," he said, adding that the explosion did not cause a secondary detonation but was still very powerful.

Russian Council for the Integration of New Regions Vladimir Rogov said the Poltava Military Communications Institute was hit. He said the site was used for training Ukrainian troops in radar and electronic warfare.

"It was these personnel who were hit by the missile strike,” Rogov said. “This happened at the time of construction, in which over half a thousand troops initially took part. The enemy's losses are in the hundreds."

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Telegram apologizes to South Korea for ‘deepfake’ porn of girls on chat group

South Korea's media regulator has said encrypted messaging app Telegram complied with a request to remove ‘deepfake’ pornographic images from its platform – and has apologized for failing to stop the crime sooner.

Last month a South Korean TV channel exposed a chat group where male university students shared doctored porno pics with the faces of female classmates matted on – which is a crime in the Republic of Korea.

The police have launched a probe into the Telegram company for suspected involvement in facilitating the acts.

Telegram’s East Asia representative emailed the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) to confirm that the company had removed 25 items of sexual exploitation material from the app as its had requested, the commission said.

Telegram also apologized for poor communication on the issue and gave an exclusive email address for media watchdogs to get in touch, it said.

The KCSC said it had asked Telegram to set up a hotline with authorities to help combat illicit content on the platform.

"We wish to strengthen cooperation with Telegram by securing a hotline, starting with an exclusive email address, to resolve the circulation of deepfake sexual exploitation materials and ultimately eradicate digital sex crime content," a KCSC official said.

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Eastern Economic Forum signals Russian ‘strategy of orienting toward the Orient’

The economic development of the Russian Far East “is of immense interest to China, for several reasons,” University of International Business and Economics professor John Gong told Sputnik, commenting on the Eastern Economic Forum, which kicked off in the Russian city of Vladivostok on Tuesday.

“First of all, as a result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia has adopted a strategy of orienting to the orient, essentially against the backdrop of massive sanctions against Russia imposed by the Western countries. What it means is that there are lot of investments being made to improve the infrastructure in the Far East to accommodate more trade, more economic interactions with countries in Asia, particularly with China,” Dr. Gong explained.

“Against that backdrop, this conference speaks volumes about how the Russian economy is totally transforming, in my opinion, and further highlighting the importance of this economic forum,” the academic added.

Pointing to Russia’s new Asia-focused infrastructure initiatives, from the Northern Sea Route to new energy pipelines heading east, Gong said he expects these multi-billion dollar mega-projects to “contribute immensely to the bilateral economic relationship between China and Russia.”

What’s more, Dr. Gong said, Russia is responding to the continued shift to Asia of the “global economic epicenter,” including China and Southeast Asian nations. “I think we are rapidly entering a multipolar world, and the world is no longer monopolized by the richest club in the world – I’m referring to the G7 club,” Gong summed up.

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Ukrainian losses: "there are twice as many graves as I saw a year ago"

💬 "There seem to be twice as many graves of killed soldiers as I saw exactly a year ago," said a Polish journalist, who provided the Washington Post newspaper with a video of endless rows of graves in the Ukrainian military cemetery in Kharkov, extending beyond the horizon.

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How does the US use sanctions to try to bring countries to heel?

The US has seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's executive jet in the Dominican Republic, claiming it was bought in violation of Washington’s unilateral sanctions.

Weaponized penalties are a tried and tested US tool to force countries to do their bidding. Here are some other examples:

Magnitsky Act

US Congress adopted the Magnitsky Act in 2012 following the death of Russian auditor Sergei Magnitsky – arrested on charges of tax evasion – in a Moscow prison in 2009. The Act barred Russian officials accused of involvement in Magnitsky's death from entering the US or using its banking system. It was later expanded to punish targeted individuals anywhere in the world with visa and financial sanctions.

Navalny-linked sanctions

The US imposed penalties on Russian individuals over their alleged ties to the death of Alexey Navalny in February 2024. Navalny died while serving a 19-year sentence at a Russian penal colony for fraud and “extremist activities.” The US blamed Navalny’s death on Russia despite an investigation determining he had died of natural causes.

Georgia's foreign agents’ law

Georgia's attempt to shield itself from foreign meddling through NGOs funded from abroad elicited an immediate sanctions response from Washington. After Georgia adopted the foreign agents registry law – which harks after similar legislation in Western countries the US imposed visa restrictions on dozens of Georgian government figures said it would rethink relations with the country.

Venezuelan elections

Washington dipped into its toolbox of sanctions when trying to push through regime change in Venezuela. After President Nicolas Maduro won elections in 2018, the US backed opposition Popular Will party leader and National Assembly speaker Juan Guaido’s claim that he was the country’s legitimate leader. Guaido invoked a clause in the constitution that the speaker takes over if the president is incapacitated or abandons the country – although Maduro had not. When that failed with Washington imposing harsh economic sanctions on Venezuela.

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Eastern Economic Forum: Russia, BRICS breathing new life into spirit of the Non-Aligned Movement - economist

The new force in international politics and economics represented by the growing BRICS bloc is a powerful new take on an old idea dreamt up by one of Southeast Asia’s most celebrated leaders, Rajah Rasiah, executive director of the University of Malaya’s Asia-Europe Institute, told Sputnik, commenting on the Eastern Economic Forum’s role in shoring up ties between the economies of Eurasia.

“The Eurasian Economic Union has recently started brightly to establish political and economic ties with ASEAN and the APEC, albeit its initiatives do not cross the US-centered partners. This is a good start as it rekindles the initiative Indonesia’s first president – Sukarno, began when organizing the 1955 Bandung Africa-Asia Conference on the Non-Aligned Movement,” Dr. Rasiah recalled.

“The recent visit of Russian officials, including the deputy prime minister, to Malaysia is one example that has triggered interest among some Southeast Asian countries to join the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) group,” the academic said, citing the BRICS, in combination with initiatives at the EEU level vis-à-vis ASEAN, as multilateral tools through which “all countries will have sufficient space to address their interests without any coercion from any one or more superpowers.”

Russia, “endowed with enormous oil and gas reserves” and “seeking to extend [cooperation projects] beyond India and China to include the ASEAN countries” has tremendous significance and potential to contribute to the infrastructure, trade and investment development environment of the Asia-Pacific region, Rasiah said.

The Eastern Economic Forum kicked off in Vladivostok, Russia on Tuesday, with the platform formally aimed at boosting the economic development of the Russian Far East, and expand cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.

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Surprise reshuffle in Ukraine's government: what's known so far

The Kiev regime saw a surprise reshuffle of senior officials on Tuesday evening, with one senior member of the government sacked and at least half a dozen others quitting.

The resignations include:

◻️ Iryna Vereshchuk, deputy prime minister responsible for the so-called 'reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories'.

◻️ Minister of Justice Denys Maliuska

◻️ Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna

◻️ Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin

◻️ Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strilets

◻️ Vitaly Koval, the head of the State Property Fund.

◻️ Meanwhile, Rostyslav Shurma was dismissed from his post as the deputy head of Zelensky’s office.
But that’s not all.

◻️ David Arakhamia, head of Zelensky’s Servant of the People parliamentary faction in the Verkhovna Rada, has promised that the government reshuffle could affect up to half of all members of the cabinet of ministers, warning that tomorrow will see “big reset of the government” and the day expected to be a “day of firings, and the day after the day of appointments.”

A final list of those getting the boot is expected to be drawn up at a meeting Wednesday, Arakhamia said.

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◻️ ‘Orienting towards the Orient’: what message does the Eastern Economic Forum bring?

◻️ As Putin has wrapped up his state visit to Mongolia, see our historical explainer about Soviet-Mongolian victory over Japan in 1939

◻️ How does the US use sanctions to try to bring countries to heel?

◻️ The latest updates from Russia’s border areas following Ukraine’s botched incursion

◻️ What has pushed UK to scale back arms sales to Israel?

◻️ Recruitment ads from across the globe: feel the difference

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📹 Watch footage of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arrival in Vladivostok, where he is set to participate in the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).

On September 4, the Russian president is scheduled to hold talks with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, and Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin on the sidelines of EEF-2024.

The Eastern Economic Forum officially kicked off in Vladivostok, Russia, on Tuesday, with the platform primarily focused on boosting economic development in the Russian Far East and expanding cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.

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Intel’s strategic shakeup could doom Biden’s bid to reshore microchip manufacturing

Intel stock has had a rough year-to-date, plummeting nearly 60% since January and falling off a cliff in early August as investors led by Warren Buffett began a massive selloff which led leading tech stocks to shed nearly $3 trillion in value amid a perfect storm of recession fears, concerns over rising AI-related capital expenditure, and inflation.

The shock stock drop shed light on Intel’s difficulties, with a flurry of reports beginning late last week citing informed sources revealing that the company is in the “most difficult period in its 56-year history,” looking for strategic advice from big banks, and considering a selloff its chip making business.

The news carries grave significance for the US government. Intel isn’t just one of America’s oldest US chipmakers, but “a key national security asset,” as Axios put it, signaling Washington’s ability (or as it happens, inability) to compete with Taiwan, South Korea, China and other chip-making goliaths.

Intel currently has more than two dozen fab and post-fab sites, most of them in Oregon, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Colorado and Ohio, but also in Ireland and Israel. The potential slash in investment threatens to jeopardize the company’s ambitious expansion plans, with capital expenditures expected to drop by $10 billion in 2025.

Intel’s troubles are bad news for the Biden administration specifically, which pumped $8.5 billion into the company’s coffers in March from the 2022 $280 billion CHIPS & Science Act, which includes $39 billion in subsidies for US chip manufacturing, $13 billion for semiconductor research and workforce training, and lucrative tax incentives.

The current administration has made subsidies to microchip manufacturing a key plank in its economic agenda. In addition to civilian uses from computers to vehicles, Intel products are used in an array in military and space applications.

If Intel is reformed and restructured to the point where it loses its chip-manufacturing might, a major plank of the current administration’s economic agenda could go up in smoke, just in time for November’s elections.

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The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has suspended Roman Gladky, Chief of Staff of the Unmanned Systems Forces Command

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) will conduct an additional investigation into Gladky, according to the Ukrainian General Staff.

Previously the Ukrainian parliament called for an investigation into Gladky due to his alleged “ties with Russia:” reports surfaced that his wife holds a Russian passport and his daughter has competed in sporting events under the Russian flag.

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