🚨LIVE: Putin takes part in Ocean-2024 naval drills

Watch the livestream here or on Sputnik's website

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️During the Ocean-2024 exercises, the most difficult tasks close to combat will be worked out, Russia's President Vladimir Putin said.

According to him, Russia is conducting such large-scale exercises at sea for the first time in several decades.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💬Russia must be ready for any development of events, the Russian Armed Forces must be ready to repel possible military aggression in any direction — Putin

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️The United States seeks to achieve a tangible military advantage which provokes an arms race - Putin

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️The United States is increasing its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region and the Arctic in an attempt to contain Russia and China, Russia's president said.

He added that the US openly declares plans to deploy medium-range and shorter-range missiles, including in the Asia-Pacific region.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️China's armed forces are involved in the Ocean-2024 exercises - Putin

Representatives of 15 states are involved as observers in the Ocean-2024 exercises, the Russian president stressed.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣 During the Ocean-2024 exercises, issues of the integrated use of high-precision weapons will be worked out, Vladimir Putin said.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣Vladimir Putin on the aggressive policy of the United States, which is provoking an arms race without any regard to its European and Asian partners

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Aussie Cossack: The Russian economy is extremely strong

Russia’s economy grew stronger thanks to NATO and the sanctions imposed by the US, independent Australian journalist Aussie Cossack @AussieCossack tells Sputnik.

“These hundreds of billions of dollars that used to be leaving Russia every day, every year, it’s now staying in the country,” he explains.

If Russia had not be exploited in the 1990s and the 2000s, Russia would have been the richest country in the world, as it should be, he also notes.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Holding a gun to Armenia's head: EU's visa-free regime is nothing but tool of manipulation - expert

"The [EU's] geopolitical game with the Armenians is a struggle to deprive Russia of its influence [in the Caucasus]," political scientist Stanislav Tarasov tells Sputnik.

At the same time, the new visa-free regime is a kind of weapon for the EU to influence a certain part of Armenian society, as per Tarasov. "It's like holding a gun to their head," he said.

Armenia and the EU have announced negotiations on visa liberalization. Brussels clarified that Yerevan would have to implement "substantial reforms", adding that the visa liberalization dialogue would be "a multi-year process" under the EU's close watch.

The EU-Armenian visa liberalization program is similar to Brussels' efforts to bring Ukraine and Georgia into its fold, according to Tarasov.

"Georgians were also granted a liberalized visa regime," he says. "But when the Georgian government adopted the law on foreign agents… [the EU] immediately threatened them with the cancelation of the visa-free regime. You see, this is a leverage of influence."

Ukraine

▪️Visa liberalization dialogue between Ukraine and the EU was launched on October 29, 2008.

▪️Ukrainians were granted visa-free travel to the EU for a period of stay of 90 days in any 180-day period in 2017, almost 10 years after the start of the dialogue and following a 2014 coup d'etat in Kiev.

Georgia

▪️EU-Georgia visa liberalization dialogue was launched on June 4, 2012, under then-President Mikheil Saakashvili who came to power in the wake of the EU-backed "color revolution" of 2003.

▪️Georgia was granted a visa-free access to the EU in 2017. In 2024, the EU meddled in Georgia's domestic policies by criticizing the nation's sovereign laws, threatening to halt bilateral programs, and endorsing the public unrest.

The EU's attempt to 'Westernize' Armenia is doomed, as the bloc is not ready to seriously invest in the nation's economy, Tarasov emphasizes.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

US ‘election interference’ order: What is it all about?

President Joe Biden has extended the executive order that allows the White House to impose sanctions on foreign companies and individuals for purportedly meddling in the US elections for another year.

What’s behind the effort?

🔸Executive Order 13848 noscriptd “Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election” was signed by former US President Donald Trump on September 12, 2018;

🔸The document opens by pointing out that foreign persons’ ability “to interfere in [any US] elections […] constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy” of the country;

🔸The term “foreign interference” pertaining to an election includes “any covert, fraudulent, deceptive, or unlawful actions or attempted actions of a foreign government, undertaken with the purpose or effect of influencing, undermining confidence in, or altering the result or reported result of, the election, or undermining public confidence in election processes or institutions.”

Trump actually starts the document underscoring that “there has been no evidence of a foreign power altering the outcome or vote tabulation in any United States election.”

Despite this, the disputed idea of mysterious Russian interference in the US election process has driven Biden to follow through with the document, accusing the Russian state and media in meddling with Washington’s domestic politics.

Earlier this month, the US introduced sanctions against Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya international media group (Sputnik’s parent company) and the RT broadcaster over their alleged attempts to influence the 2024 US election, something that was dismissed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as complete nonsense.

The sanctions, however, were followed by representatives of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) stating that US authorities have not detected any attempts by foreign actors to directly interfere in the country’s upcoming presidential election.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt