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

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❗️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.

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❗️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.

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

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🗣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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Ocean 2024: All you need to know about Russia’s biggest naval exercises in 30 years

On September 10, multiple elements of the Russian Navy engaged in a strategic military exercise dubbed “Ocean 2024” that takes place in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.

Over 400 warships, submarines and support vessels of the Russian Navy, along with more than 120 aircraft and helicopters of the Russian Naval Aviation and over 90,000 personnel took part in this exercise.

According to a statement issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense, the goal of the Ocean 2024 exercises is to “test the readiness of the command staff of the Russian Navy formations and units to manage heterogeneous force groups in their areas of responsibility, solve non-standard operational tasks, comprehensively use high-precision weapons, advanced and modern weapons and military equipment during the practical part of the exercise, as well as expand interaction with the naval forces of partner countries in solving joint tasks at sea.”

Here is an example of the tasks to be accomplished by the exercise’s participants (in this case, by an Arctic expeditionary group of the Russian Northern Fleet):

🔺Ensuring the safety of Russia’s coastal infrastructure in the Arctic region

🔺Investigating potential areas for military operations within the Arctic Sea zone

🔺Conducting joint training counterterrorist operations

Warships and aircraft of the China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy also took part in the Ocean 2024. Representatives from 15 other foreign states were invited to act as observers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin himself presided over the launch of the exercises via a video link, stating that Ocean 2024 became the first naval exercise of such magnitude to be held by Russia in the last 30 years.

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How to replace Taliban with Taliban: Brief recap of the US invasion of Afghanistan

The US House Foreign Affairs Committee released its report on the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan last week, calling out the White House over this disastrous conclusion of the country's campaign that ended in a humiliating defeat.

The report reveals that the Biden administration had all the means to “take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government” and to safely evacuate the US personnel and local collaborators, but instead “picked optics over security," as Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul put it.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as part of the so-called Global War on Terrorism under the pretext of punishing notorious terrorist leader Osama bin Laden (the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks) who was supposedly being harbored by the Taliban at the time.

Having quickly subdued major Afghan population centers, the US then initiated a de facto military occupation of the country under the auspices of Operation Enduring Freedom, which was succeeded by Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in 2015.

In the years that followed, the US military and a motley collection of military contingents sent by the United States’ allies (also known as the International Security Assistance Force or ISAF for short) tried in vain to eradicate the Taliban guerrillas.

Meanwhile, Washington poured vast quantities of money and military equipment into the puppet government in Kabul and its armed forces.

This house of cards came crumbling down twenty years later in August 2021 when, even before the US finished pulling out its troops, the Taliban quickly re-seized control of Afghanistan, prompting the pro-US troops to flee the country.

In a nutshell, the results of the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan can be summed up with this joke: “If you ever feel useless, just remember that it took the US four presidents, thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.”

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❗️A strike was carried out on a group of almost 100 Ukrainian soldiers who arrived for reinforcements under their control in Zaporozhye, the pro-Russian underground told Sputnik.

They also reported a strike on equipment and a group of 30 Ukrainian military personnel in a Kiev-controlled part of the Zaporozhye region.

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NATO starts drills near Russian borders

The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance has launched a series of drills near Russian borders that will last until late fall.

The Steadfast Foxtrot ’24 exercises in Germany are overseen by NATO’s SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) command structure which is controlled by US four-star General Christopher Cavoli. The Ramstein Flag 24 drills in Greece are overseen by NATO’s AIRCOM (Allied Air Command). The Cyber Coalition exercises will be conducted in Estonia on November.

Apart from alliance-level exercises, there will be a series of national drills backed by NATO – like Poseidon 24 in Bulgaria and Hammer 24 in Finland.

Check out Sputnik’s infographic to learn more about NATO’s drills.

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Russia’s and Iraq’s mutual history of partnership

Eighty years ago, on September 9, 1944, USSR and Iraq formally established diplomatic relations with one another.

The economic cooperation between the two countries grew over the years, with Iraq eventually emerging as one of Russia’s most prominent partners in the Middle East.

This harmonious development was disrupted in 2003 when the United States invaded Iraq on false pretenses, but Moscow and Baghdad have been working tirelessly since to mitigate this setback and to further deepen the ties between the two nations.

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