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

🔸 The Russian Armed Forces hit military airfield and Ukrainian energy facilities.

🔸 Ukraine lost over 440 soldiers in the Russia's Battlegroup Zapad area of responsibility.

🔸 Ukraine lost over 370 militants in the Russia's Battlegroup Tsentr area of responsibility.

🔸 Ukraine lost over 140 troops in the Russia's Battlegroup Vostok area of responsibility.

🔸 Ukraine lost up to 625 servicemen in the Russia's Battlegroup Yug area of responsibility.

🔸 Russian aviation shot down four HIMARS missiles and 102 Ukrainian drones.

🔸 Ukraine lost up to 110 soldiers in the Russia's Battlegroup Dnepr area of responsibility.

🔸 Ukraine lost up to 70 troops in the Russia's Battlegroup Sever area of responsibility.

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📑What could Trump 2.0 mean for US healthcare?

US President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “bring down costs” and increase the quality of healthcare.

What changes can be expected?

🔸 During his first term, Trump tried but failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare.

🔸 Trump called Obamacare “lousy health care” and floated replacing it, saying, "If we can come up with a plan that's going to cost our people, our population, less money, and provide better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it."

🔸 Trump has vowed to protect Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older and younger people with disabilities.

🔸 Cuts to Medicaid, the largest government health-insurance program that covers low-income Americans, may be expected under Trump.

🔸 During his first term, Trump proposed cutting the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and eliminating the Medicaid expansion that was passed as part of the ACA.

🔸 A work requirement might be added for some able-bodied adult beneficiaries, with federal spending on the program capped.

🔸 Trump has promised to veto a federal abortion ban “under any circumstances", saying, "It is up to the states to decide.”

🔸 Trump didn’t rule out banning certain vaccines, promising to “make a decision” after RFK Jr. hinted at the possibility of ending vaccine mandates.

🔸 With an estimated 108,000 people dying from drug overdoses in the US last year, Trump blamed it on the migrant crisis. Although he criminalized all fentanyl-related substances in 2018, overdose deaths continued to soar.

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🇬🇪Georgian Dream Party wins parliamentary elections with 53.93% of votes
 
The Georgian Central Election Commission approved on Saturday the final report of the parliamentary elections held on October 26, with the ruling Georgian Dream Party receiving 53.93% of the votes and 89 seats in parliament.
 
The ruling Georgian Dream Party advocates for maintaining relations with Russia and opposes anti-Russian sanctions.

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💣 Israeli strike hit an apartment building in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Lebanon's Beirut.

This area is a refugee camp for Palestinians established by the Red Cross in 1948.

Video by Sputnik correspondent

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❗️Latest updates on protests in Abkhazia

🔸 Abkhazian President Aslan Bzhania announced his readiness to resign if protesters vacate the government building

🔸 Bzhania stated he would run for the presidency again if an early resignation occurs

🔸 The president claimed parliamentary deputies are being pressured with unlawful demands for the president's resignation

🔸 The number of people injured during the unrest near the government complex has risen to 14, the Apsnypress news agency reported

🔸 The opposition parties have ended talks with the government and plan to "strengthen their position," opposition deputy Kan Kvarchia declared

🔸 Protesters at the presidential administration building rejected Bzhania's proposal for early elections and refused to leave the government complex, Sputnik's correspondent reported

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📹They stand and watch the devastation

For many Lebanese, Israeli strikes have already become routine.

Whenever the Israeli army announces where and what will be hit in Beirut, not only do journalists flock to the sites of the impending strike to watch, but citizens who have simply gotten used to the hell they live in.

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📑 Pentagon loses battle with auditors, fails seventh financial review in a row

The US Department of Defense has failed its seventh consecutive audit, with more than half of its departments unable to provide the 1,700 auditors working on the financial inspection with sufficient data to accurately evaluate the status of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of assets under the Pentagon’s domain.

DoD comptroller and Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord – appointed by President Obama in 2014, and under whom the Pentagon failed every one of its audits since they began in 2017, assured that the Pentagon had “turned a corner in its understanding of the depth and breadth of its challenges” and will do better in the future.

The Pentagon hopes to receive a passing grade by 2028, as required in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act.

The DoD spent $187 million on this year’s audit.

Also this week, the DoD Inspector General’s Office calculated that Congress has now appropriated nearly $183 billion in assistance to Ukraine since February 2022, including $131.36 billion for security-related assistance and activities, and $43.84 billion for ‘governance and development’.

The problems at the Pentagon in accounting for taxpayer money aren’t new. On September 10, 2001, a day before the 9/11 attacks, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon could not “track” some $2.3 trillion in transactions.

This echoed a February 2000 report by the DoD Inspector General that “$2.3 trillion was not supported by adequate audit trails or sufficient evidence to determine their validity, $2 trillion was not reviewed because of time constraints, and $2.6 trillion were supported.”

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⚡️Hostages have been taken in a restaurant in the French city of Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. Police are on their way to the scene, and the area has been cordoned off, according to media reports.

The hostages in the Paris suburb were taken by the restaurant owner, and they are reportedly several staff members of the establishment, media say.

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🚨Three or four employees are being held hostage at a restaurant in the Paris suburbs. No customers are inside, according to the Figaro newspaper.

UPD: Employees of a restaurant in a suburb of Paris were taken hostage by the owner's son, the newspaper says.

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☢️ Russia cuts uranium exports to US. What’s next?

The Russian government has imposed temporary restrictions on the export of enriched uranium to the United States. This was a tit-for-tat move after the Biden administration signed a law banning Russian uranium imports until 2040, with exceptions allowed until 2028, despite warnings that the move could backfire on the American economy.

What consequences could Russia’s ban have?

🔸 Russia is the world's largest supplier of enriched uranium. It accounts for about 44% of the global capacity to separate the uranium isotopes needed in nuclear reactors. Its share of the enriched uranium market boasts an estimated export value of $2.7 billion.

🔸 As Russia was America’s top foreign supplier of fuel for its commercial nuclear reactors in 2022, the current measure may generate potential supply risks.

🔸 Some reactor operators may struggle to find an alternative supplier, said Jonathan Hinze, president of nuclear fuel market information and analysis company UxC.

🔸 The US has its own deposits of uranium, but its domestic enrichment capacity has been in decline. Biden’s bill banning imports of Russian enriched uranium also provided some $2.7 billion in federal funding to build new enrichment capacity in America.

🔸 Currently, the US has just one commercial enrichment facility in New Mexico, owned by a British, Dutch and German consortium, Urenco Ltd. It supplies about one-third of the enriched uranium used in American reactors.

“We don’t have enough enriched uranium here… They should have been stockpiling enriched uranium in anticipation of this happening,” nuclear analyst Chris Gadomski told BloombergNEF.

What about prices?

🔹 Restrictions on uranium supplies may affect prices as this automatically increases demand from other sources, where the enriched fuel has not yet been produced in the required quantity, analysts warn.

🔹 Bids for November 2025 uranium delivery soared $4 to reach $84 a pound after the news, per UxC.

🔹 Shares of other uranium or uranium-related companies have surged. Shares of Canada’s Cameco Corp. jumped by 6%, and those of US’ Ur-Energy Inc. and Uranium Energy Corp. rose by 10% and 13%, respectively.

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🛥War games show UK’s beleaguered flagship aircraft carriers ‘get sunk’ every time
 
In most war games carried out by the UK military, its costly flagship aircraft carriers “get sunk", The Times cited a source as saying. HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, commissioned into the Royal Navy in 2017 and 2019, respectively, together cost £6.2 billion. ($7.8 billion) to build but are reportedly vulnerable to missiles.

A “whole load of scenarios” was run during war games to test the Royal Navy’s “ability to survive” against an “overwhelming force", a British military source was quoted as saying, adding:

“We stretch everything to the limit. At some point you will get to a scenario where it [the carrier] is sunk.”

The report comes amid an ongoing Strategic Defence Review commissioned by Britain’s Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and overseen by the Defence Secretary John Healey. Both ministers and military chiefs have been pressured to implement cost-cutting measures due to financial constraints. Hence, large assets like the aircraft carriers are under heightened scrutiny to decide whether they are still a vital staple for modern warfare.

“There will be casualties,” a source hinted, indicating that the prospect of scrapping at least one of the carriers was raised.

Former Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Lee of Trafford told the outlet that the military was struggling to afford the requisite numbers of F-35 aircraft for the carriers, along with escort ships and support vessels.

Decades of defense cuts by successive British governments have left the country’s military understaffed and underequipped, resulting in delays in production and upgrades. The HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales have both been plagued by technical malfunctions, with humiliating breakdowns affecting Britain’s ability to participate in large-scale joint NATO drills.

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🇷🇺 Russian foreign ministry urges Germany to break with Nazi past as Baerbock calls to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has announced that “it's time finally find the strength to do what our partners are already doing” and send Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova took to Telegram to ask the German foreign minister some uncomfortable questions about the Nazi past.

1️⃣“First, isn’t it time to abolish the status of honorary resident to Hitler and other criminals of the Third Reich?” Zakharova asked, referring to the fact that many cities in western Germany have yet to “shy away from a legal break with the Nazi past” and continue to commemorate Nazi leaders with honorary noscripts.

2️⃣“Second, isn’t it time to rename German military bases named after Wehrmacht soldiers and officers?” the spokeswoman inquired, pointing out the Bundeswehr has about 40 barracks bearing the names of Nazi military leaders, including Adolf Heusinger, a general who helped planned the invasion of the USSR, who went on to chair the NATO Military Committee.

3️⃣“Third, isn’t it time to stop spending federal and regional budget money maintaining Nazi graves?” Zakharova asked, pointing out that graves, including of SS and NSDAP members, and even the former concentration camp commandants, are cared for at public expense.

4️⃣“Fourth, is it not time to stop supporting SS veterans at the legislative level in Germany?” the spokesman wondered, noting that “tens of thousands of former SS members and their relatives receive social benefits in Germany as ‘victims of war’.”

5️⃣“Fifth, isn’t it time for Germany to pay compensation to the survivors of the Leningrad Siege, no matter their nationality?” Zakharova asked, pointing out that while Berlin has agreed to pay the Siege’s Jewish victims, it continues to ignore “the suffering of the remaining residents of Leningrad,” and refuses to recognize the Siege as genocide, “even though historians estimate that more civilians died from the blockade than in the hell of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.”

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Biden arrived at the second day of the APEC Summit in Peru with a two-hour delay

During his absence, the seat bearing his nameplate was occupied by Daleep Singh, the US Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics, who is often referred to by the media as the "architect of sanctions against Russia."

The US delegation to the summit includes 600 military personnel, including US Marine Corps troops wearing bulletproof vests as they escort delegation members around the event. The US also brought helicopters and aircraft to Peru ahead of the summit.

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Russia halts gas deliveries to Austria

Russian gas giant Gazprom shut off deliveries of natural gas heading to Austria starting November 16, Austrian energy company OMV stated.

The move came after Austrian energy company OMV announced that it would stop paying for deliveries of Russian energy after winning an arbitration award from the International Chamber of Commerce related to a contractual dispute with the Russian gas giant.

🔸 Austria had relied on affordable and dependable pipeline-delivered Russian gas since the 1960s, with deliveries helping to ensure the Central European nation’s energy security, and fueling an ‘economic miracle’ which made Austria one of the wealthiest countries in the EU by per capita GDP.

🔸 As recently as July 2024, Austria was buying over 80% of its natural gas from Russia.

🔸 Vienna is now expected to buy gas from Germany, presumably paying a premium for the privilege, since Berlin itself now relies on imports of liquefied natural gas – which is more expensive owing to the need to transport it by ship, compress and decompress it.

🔸 Austria’s economy slipped into recession in 2023, with 3 in 4 local companies fearing deindustrialization, according to a recent Deloitte survey. Industry accounts for about 22% of Austria’s GDP. A prolonged shutoff of Russian gas would likely exacerbate the country’s economic woes, with European gas prices hitting their 2024 high late last month amid tight supply as winter approaches.

🔸 Although Chancellor Karl Nehammer said that Vienna had been “preparing” for Gazprom’s decision in a televised address to the nation Friday, his coalition government earlier announced plans to end Russian gas imports only by 2027.

🔸 The government suffered a dramatic defeat in elections in September, with the opposition Freedom Party of Austria winning 28.8% of the vote and a plurality of seats. Nehammer has vowed not to form a coalition with the opposition party, which has urged Vienna to keep Russian gas a part of Austria’s energy mix.

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🔸 Trump team to write off ‘Project Ukraine’ as sunk cost

🔸 Russia cuts uranium exports to US. What’s next?

🔸 Russia halts gas deliveries to Austria

🔸 Pentagon loses battle with auditors, fails seventh financial review in a row

🔸 What could Trump 2.0 mean for US healthcare?

🔸 War games show UK’s beleaguered flagship aircraft carriers ‘get sunk’ every time

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Who is Boris Epshteyn, Russian-born Trump lawyer reportedly floated as Ukraine peace negotiator?

Republican strategist, lawyer and long-time Donald Trump ally Boris Epshteyn had floated his name for the tough job of brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine, the NYT has reported citing sources.

🔸 A Russian-American, Epshteyn was born in Moscow in 1982 and lived there as a child, a fact seized upon by Western and Ukrainian media concerned over his possible appointment to the peacemaker job, which Trump has reportedly heard out but has yet to agree to.

🔸 Epshteyn served as a senior advisor to the Trump campaign in 2016, and briefly, as an assistant communications director for the Trump White House until March 2017.

🔸 He’s also been one of Trump’s top legal advisors, helping to build the case against the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020, and coordinating Trump’s legal defense strategy in the criminal “witch-hunt” cases brought forward from 2023 on aimed at blocking the business mogul’s return to the White House.

🔸 Among the purported obstacles to Epshteyn's appointment are his lack of diplomatic experience and the case opened against him in Arizona over the 2020 election interference. Epshteyn has also been under the Russiagate probes swirling around Trump after 2016, coming up clean in investigations by the House Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department.

🔸 Epshteyn had reportedly previously expressed hopes to remain an outside advisor to Trump, but has now become a “significant gatekeeper” in his transition team, reportedly helping to finalize GOP lawyer William McGinley’s return to the White House as Trump’s counsel, and advocating for Congressman Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general.

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🔥🛢️ Ending the second day of occupying government buildings, the Abkhazian opposition lights fires in courtyards to keep warm at night.

The protesters have no intention of leaving, Sputnik reported from the scene.

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