💰Slovakia becomes the largest buyer of Russian goods in the EU

🥇🇸🇰 Slovakia has hit a record, becoming the main buyer of Russian goods in the European Union in August, Sputnik calculated based on Eurostat data. The EU country increased its purchases of products from Russia by 2.1 times to 320.9 million euros at the end of the summer.

🥈🇮🇹 Second place in purchasing Russian goods is taken by Italy, with 319.2 million euros.

🥉🇭🇺 The top three is rounded out by Hungary, with 300.3 million euros.

Earlier this month, Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico told the national parliament that he supported restoring relations with Russia. Fico said his goal was to build a balanced relationship with Moscow.

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🚘 Pummeled by shrinking sales, Volkswagen mulls pay cuts as threat of union strikes looms

Battered by shrinking sales, Volkswagen is asking its workers to agree to a 10% pay cut and revised bonus system.

The beleaguered German automotive giant contends that such drastic cost-cutting measures are the only way to avoid shutting down factories and retain competitive status.

💬 The carmaker’s proposals were hailed as a “small signal” of progress in negotiations by Daniela Cavallo, the automaker’s top labor leader. However, she added that shuttering plants isn’t completely off the table. Overall, VW is considering more than 10 billion euros ($10.8 billion) in cost cuts, according to its finance chief Arno Antlitz.

Volkswagen’s next round of talks with labor unions is set for November 21. Failing further breakthroughs, strikes are likely from December 1. Ahead of the negotiations, Volkswagen reported a 42% drop in third-quarter profit – its lowest level in three years.

High energy prices spurred by Western-backed sanctions against Russia, and the escalating trade spat between the EU and China over Chinese EVs imports have wreaked havoc on the car making industry and the economy of what was once Europe’s powerhouse.

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❗️Russian troops liberated the settlement of Yasnaya Polyana in the Donetsk People's Republic, the Russian Defense Ministry announced.

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🇷🇺🪖Key statements from the Russian Defense Ministry's daily briefing on the special military operation's progress:

◻️ Russian Air defenses shot down 11 HIMARS missiles and 95 Ukrainian drones over the day.

◻️ Ukranian forces lost up to 565 troops and five armored vehicles in the Russia's Battlegroup Tsentr area of responsibility over the day.

◻️ Ukranian losses in Russia’s Battlegroup Yug combat zone amounted up to 810 militants.

◻️ Ukranian forces lost up to 610 troops in the Russia's Battlegroup Zapad area of responsibility over the day.

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🔇 Democratically ‘speaking’, your voices must be heard, so shut up!

While delivering a campaign speech and paying lip service to democracy, Kamala Harris proclaimed “everybody has a right to be heard,” but then she snidely insisted, “but right now I’m speaking.”

Such democracy in action, a presidential contender who democratically drowns out her voters’ voices that she claims to ‘champion’.

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⚔️Russian TV channels suing Google for $20 decillion dollars: what’s the beef about?

17 Russian television channels’ compensatory demands toward Google have reached 2 undecillian rubles (2 followed by 36 zeros), or 20 decillion dollars ($20,560,840,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to be exact).

How did it come to such a sum?

🔸 The channels’ beef with the tech giant relates to the blocking of their YouTube accounts, with the case affecting major federal channels and smaller media alike.

A court previously ordered Google to restore channels, ruling that if this is not done in a nine-month period, a fine of 100,000 rubles would be slapped on the company daily, and double every week until Google complied, with no limit on the total fine.

Russian media vs. Google

🔸 Russian media first started a series of legal battles with Google in 2020, after YouTube blocked the accounts of Tsargrad TV over alleged “sanctions legislation and trade rules”-related violations. Tsargrad took Google to court, with a judge ordering the company to unblock the account or face escalating fines.

In 2022 and the start of the conflict in Ukraine, YouTube blocked Sputnik, RT, NTV and Rossiya 24’s accounts, followed by others, prompting Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service to slap Google with 4 billion ruble in fines.

🔸 In June of 2022, Google’s Russia-based entity filed for bankruptcy, citing debts in excess of 19 billion rubles and assets of only 3.5 billion rubles.

The affected Russian media channels have also taken Google to court in other countries to enforce Russian court decisions. In June 2024, the High Court of South Africa granted a Russian request to seize Google’s assets in that country. Google shot back in August with lawsuits in US and British courts against Russian media to try to block them from initiating further legal proceedings outside Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the issue on Thursday, suggesting that the 2 undecillian sum is “filled with symbolism,” and “demonstrate[s] the essence of the claim of our channels to Google.”

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🇷🇺 🪖 Key statements from the Russian Ministry of Defense's daily briefing on the situation in the Kursk region:

◻️ Russia’s Battlegroup Sever hammered ten Ukrainian formations and repelled four counterattacks in its combat zone. The enemy lost as many as 30 soldiers and two armored vehicles.

◻️ Russian forces thwarted an attempt by Ukrainian troops to breach the state border near Novy Put settlement. Ukrainian forces lost up to 10 militants.

◻️ Russian aviation and artillery strikes hit concentrations of personnel and equipment of eight Ukrainian brigades in the Sumy region.

◻️ In total, Ukrainian losses over the day amounted to more than 300 militants, with four armored vehicles destroyed and nine cars.

◻️ Since the beginning of combat operations in the Kursk region, Ukraine has lost more than 28,600 troops.

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Europe's small and medium-sized arms makers flounder to expand production as supporting Ukraine drains stocks

Small and medium-sized European defense companies are struggling to expand production as supporting Ukraine continues to bleed the West’s weapons stockpiles white.

Cash-strapped firearms makers are hamstrung by lack of access to public funding, red tape, and reluctance of banks to give out loans to smaller players in the field, sources told Reuters.

While global military expenditure soared to an all-time high of $2.44 trillion in 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, getting financing is problematic for smaller companies. Production will continue to stall until European governments figure out how to manage cash flows, arms makers, government officials, and defense experts were cited as saying.

The EU’s small and medium-sized defense enterprises face a debt financing gap of between $1.08 billion and $2.2 billion, a European Commission report estimated at the beginning of the year.

At the same time, not only has the US war machine been profiting off NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, venture capital (VC) investment in military startups is booming in the US. VC money funneled into defense startups in the United States doubled in size to reach $33 billion between 2019 and 2022.

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Russia’s top diplomat slams Zelensky's ‘stupid’ peace formula, rips Kiev’s ‘victory’ plan as ‘schizophrenic’

While delivering a speech at the Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov bashed the "formula," "plan," and "fantasies" of Ukraine joining NATO or the European Union under the Zelensky regime, warning that this scheme won’t bring Europe any closer to peace.

Russia’s top diplomat stated that the prospect of negotiating a resolution to the Ukrainian conflict "in a draw" is unlikely to adequately safeguard the interests of both parties involved.

Lavrov also remarked that Russia is aware that Zelensky's request for American Tomahawk missiles has surprised officials in Washington.

Furthermore, Moscow’s diplomacy chief expressed confidence that the United States would exercise restraint should Zelensky attempt to escalate the conflict into a war against Russia.

🇷🇺🇮🇷 Russia & Iran to forge closer ties

Lavrov also announced that a partnership agreement between Russia and Iran is set to be signed soon. He remarked that the United States is seeking to fabricate justifications for establishing military infrastructure in Central Asia.

Furthermore, he stated that while the door remains open for Western countries to participate in shaping a new security architecture in Eurasia, dialogue can only occur on the basis of equality.

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🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia building strong relations with BRICS member countries - industry minister

"Saudi Arabia has strong cooperation with the BRICS countries. There are serious points of contact with some of them, especially with South Africa, which has a lot of experience in the mining industry. Brazil is also an important partner for the kingdom in the industrial sector," Bandar Alkhorayef, minister of industry and mineral resources, told Sputnik on the sidelines of the 8th Future Investment Initiative conference.

He said the kingdom expects these countries to build long-term partnerships, "not just a relationship between a customer and a supplier or an exporter and an importer."

Alkhorayef also said Saudi Arabia would like to engage in integration and exchange experience and technology with BRICS.

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🐼Subtle cues for China: US First Lady Jill Biden wore a panda costume at the White House Halloween party.

Or is there some additional meaning in choosing such a costume?

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🗣FBI unleashes crackdown on Russians living in the US, affirms Russian youth leader

Russian compatriots residing in the US have come under massive persecution right now, because the FBI has been carrying out search raids, seizing cell phones and groundlessly accusing them of being agents of Moscow, Igor Kochin, President of the Russian Youth of America Association, told Sputnik on the sidelines of the 8th World Congress of Compatriots Living Abroad.

"This FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] is the law which they're working with. Using this law, they can blame anyone, any person from another country, for working on their own country, even if they do something simple like buying sneakers in the store and sending them to a Russian friend. As people who are working strictly with culture, working with churches, we feel a lot of pressure right now," he explained.

Kochin also noted that preserving cultural, historical and spiritual ties with Russia really matters to him and other Russian compatriots in the United States.

"I've lived long enough in the United States, in New York City, about 18 years. And right after I moved, I felt the need to be in [a] community with Russian-speaking people, with people who have the same mindset as I do, coming from Russia. Keeping Russian culture in the United States was a big step. That was always one of my biggest focuses," he explained.

During the opening ceremony on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that the Council of Russian Compatriots is grappling with challenges in Western countries that seek to undermine Russian culture and language.

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