❗️Russian troops liberated the village of Voznesenka in the Donetsk People's Republic, the Russian Defense Ministry announced

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🎥🎥 Lavrov holds talks with Colombian Foreign Minister

👉 Watch live in our Telegram or on Sputnik's website

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💬 Ex-CIA analyst: Trump’s foreign policy team will ‘double down on stupid’ in Ukraine, the Middle East, and China

Donald Trump's foreign policy appointments for his incoming administration show that “he didn’t learn a thing during his first term,” Larry Johnson, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, told Sputnik.

“He talked one thing during the campaign about ending needless wars. And yet he is staffing himself with really a lot of young people who are locked up with old ideas,” Johnson noted.

❌ In his opinion, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, is “just an absurd joke.”

❌ Florida Сongressman Michael Waltz, tapped as Trump’s national security advisor, is also “a disaster,” Johnson argued, underscoring that he “represents everything that Donald Trump said that Donald Trump stood against.”

❌ New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, tapped to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations, “comes in with a very strident pro-Zionist point of view,” the expert remarked.

👉 With a foreign policy team like that, Johnson said, Trump is “going to double down on stupid” when it comes to most important international areas, such as Ukraine, the Middle East, and China.

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📹 No more tears - stay cryo

A parody ad for a fictional company called ‘Cryo’ offers to cryogenically freeze liberals and wake them up when Trump’s presidency is over.

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

◻️ The Russian Armed Forces hit military airfield and energy facility infrastructure of Ukraine's military-industrial complex.

◻️ Ukrainian losses amounted to up to 570 troops and three warehouses in Battlegroup Zapad's area of responsibility.

◻️ Russian air defenses shot down six HIMARS missiles and 78 Ukranian drones.

◻️ Ukrainian losses amounted to 655 militants and three tanks in Russia’s Battlegroup Yug area of responsibility.

◻️ Ukrainian forces lost up to 485 militants, one German-made armored vehicle and five Kozak armored fighting vehicles in Russia’s Battlegroup Tsentr area of responsibility.

◻️ Ukrainian losses amounted to 90 soldiers in Russia’s Battlegroup Dnepr area of responsibility.

◻️ Ukranian forces lost up to 80 servicemen in Russia’s Battlegroup Sever combat zone.

◻️ Russia's Battlegroup Vostok repelled two counterattacks. The Ukrainian forces lost up to 145 soldiers.

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📑Ukraine could build nuclear bomb within months if Trump cuts off military aid – report

The Kiev regime could build a nuclear bomb in a matter of months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, The Times reported, citing a briefing paper prepared by researchers for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

What is known about Ukraine’s potential bomb?

🔸 A rudimentary nuclear device could be developed using plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods taken from Ukraine’s nuclear reactors (since it cannot build and run facilities to enrich uranium);

🔸 Ukraine still controls nine operational nuclear reactors and has retained significant nuclear expertise despite giving up its arsenal in 1996;

🔸 The technology could be similar to the “Fat Man” plutonium implosion bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945;

🔸 The plutonium would have to be imploded using “a complicated conventional explosion design, which must occur with a high detonation wave velocity simultaneously around the entire surface of the plutonium sphere”;

🔸 The exact nuclear yield would be “unpredictable,” since it would use “different isotopes of plutonium”;

🔸 The briefing document suggested that although the technology is “challenging,” it is ostensibly within Ukraine’s expertise.

A bomb of this kind would boast about one-tenth the power of “Fat Man” – “enough to destroy an entire Russian airbase or concentrated military, industrial or logistics installations,” claimed the briefing paper published by the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS).

The paper also claimed that Ukraine has formal grounds for withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) it signed in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

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📹 Sputnik correspondent's footage of a powerful strike on the neighbourhood opposite Beirut International Airport, where a passenger plane was preparing to take off.

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Neocon Congressman Michael McCaul missed his flight and was detained by police at a US airport for being intoxicated, NBC News reports.

McCaul, who reportedly has a fear of flying, mixed sleeping pills with alcohol before the flight. After missing his scheduled flight, he attempted to rebook on another but accidentally locked his phone, complicating the situation.

"I made a mistake – one for which I take full responsibility," McCaul said in a statement. The congressman was neither arrested nor posed any threat during the incident.

McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is one of the most extreme anti-Russia hawks in the US House of Representatives.

He has previously urged President Biden to allow Ukraine to use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory.

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❓Who is Trump DNI pick Tulsi Gabbard?

Donald Trump has nominated ex-congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence – effectively the head of US intelligence and top aide to the president on intelligence matters, including responsibility for daily intel briefings.

▫️ Gabbard is a standout in a Trump transition team already mired in the neocon swamp, once saying that she sees “war and peace” as the “one main issue…central to the rest.”

▫️ The 43-year-old Iraq War vet was as a member of House of Representatives from Hawaii from 2013 - 2021, and between 2013 - 2016 was vice chair of the Democratic National Committee before resigning in protest over the 2016 “rigged” primaries against Bernie Sanders. Gabbard quit the Democratic Party in 2022, saying it was “now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.”

▫️ Gabbard has been an outspoken critic of US wars abroad, visiting Syria in 2017 to meet with President Assad. In early 2022, she said the US military-industrial complex needed a war in Ukraine to justify arms spending. In 2023, she said it was “obvious” the US was responsible for sabotaging Nord Stream.

▫️ In a 2020 debate during the Democratic presidential primaries, Gabbard slammed Kamala Harris’s record as California AG so hard that Harris was forced her to drop out.

▫️ In 2019, Hillary Clinton called Gabbard a “Russian asset.” Gabbard shot back by calling Clinton “queen of warmongers” and the “embodiment of corruption and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

▫️ While sympathetic to Trump, Gabbard hasn’t been afraid to call him out. In 2019, she accused him of acting like a rich Gulf state’s “b*tch” amid fears that Trump would launch a new Mideast war. In 2020, she slammed Trump over the assassination of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani. In 2020, Gabbard urged Trump to pardon Snowden and Assange for “expos[ing] the deception and criminality of those in the deep state.”

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🤖 Little robot, big talker: Midnight ‘kidnapping’ goes viral

In a sci-fi comedy moment come to life, a pint-sized robot in China "kidnapped" 12 larger robots—not with force, but with charm and a few well-placed commands, convincing them "to go home" like a bossy little sibling.

As the video of the incident went viral and the internet continues to buzz, people are still debating whether it is hilarious, terrifying, fake, or simply a staged stunt.

It appears that even robots can be swayed by a smooth talker!

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❗️❗️❗️🚨🇷🇺 What Does Russia Expect From Trump 2.0? Senior Russian Lawmaker Explains

Vice Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev joins Sputnik to discuss what Trump’s return to the White House means for Russia.

(0:25) Trump will be very uncomfortable for Russia
(9:12) Trump’s Ukraine peace plan
(14:09) Russia doesn’t fear American missiles or sanctions
(20:58) Will Trump destroy NATO?
(23:21) Sputnik’s 10th year anniversary

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From military overreach to shrinking revenues: What’s driving the US deficit and debt explosion?

The new US fiscal year has just begun but the federal budget deficit has already ballooned some 287% to $257 bln in October, up from $67 bln in October 2023, the Treasury has announced.

The deficit bump – the largest since 2020, was attributed to shrinking revenues (down $77 bln, or 19%), growing spending ($114 bln or 24% more, mostly military, Social Security and Medicare-related), and various “one-off” factors.

In annual terms, the deficit reached $1.8 trln in 2024, up from $1.7 trln in 2023, with $1 trln+ in interest payments on America’s gargantuan $36 trln debt – the largest expense after Social Security, accounting for well-over half of expenses.

Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency has vowed to tackle the deficit by providing “advice and guidance” on how to slash spending, cut bureaucracy and regulations, but the vote is still out on how effective it will be.

The US has run deficits for all but 12 years since World War II, with spending ramping up dramatically during the Reagan and Bush years (fueled mostly by defense spending and foreign wars), the post-2008 Great Recession, Covid bailouts and Biden’s multi-trillion dollar infrastructure agenda.

Washington has largely been able to avoid penalties associated with spendthrift spending thanks to the dollar’s status as the world’s de facto reserve currency, with the US able to borrow and print money without suffering anywhere near the same sort of inflation other nations would in similar circumstances.

In recent years, more and more countries, including the BRICS bloc, have sought to ramp up trade using national currencies, and mulled alternatives to the dollar.

With the US share of global manufacturing declining steadily since the 1970s, and especially from the 2000s onward with China’s rise, the risks of the US becoming an economic ‘Upper Volta with nuclear weapons’ (as US analysts derisively dubbed the USSR in the 1980s) will only continue to grow.

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Frightened by US Republican surge, EU liberals go after alternative political views

The stunning success of Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the presidential and congressional elections appears to have spurred desperate efforts to clamp down on anti-establishment dissent across Europe.

Right-wing political gains in recent months have been driven by concerns shared by Trump's base in America: disillusionment with the ruling elite, the rising cost of living, increased migration, and economic insecurity.

But the neoliberal ruling class in Europe has no intention of taking this lying down.

👉 Germany:

🔸 More than one hundred lawmakers from several factions of the Bundestag have signed a motion to initiate proceedings to ban the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, ZDF reported. They cited concerns about the AfD's "anti-democratic behavior and anti-constitutional goals."

🔸 The upcoming snap election in early 2025, announced after the collapse of Germany's coalition government, means it is critical to do this during the current legislative period, Marco Wanderwitz, a lawmaker from the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told the media.

🔸 The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the domestic intelligence agency, classified the AfD as a "suspected right-wing extremist case" in 2021, allowing it to use phone taps and informants against it.

👉 France:

🔸 A Paris prosecutor has requested five years in prison and a five-year ban from holding public office for Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing National Rally parliamentary group. Both Le Pen and 24 other party members are accused of embezzling EU funds. The trial is scheduled to last until November 27, with a verdict expected in early 2025.

🔸 The prosecutor has requested a provisional execution, which would mean that the disqualification would take effect immediately if the court finds her guilty. Le Pen would thus be barred from running in the 2027 presidential election.

🔸 Le Pen, who has denied any wrongdoing, accused the prosecution of fabricating “preconceived ideas” about the case.

🔸 She assured that her party has “not violated any political and regulatory rules of the European Parliament.”

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