❗️The only submarine cable connecting Finland and Germany has allegedly been deliberately cut and its communications broken

Finnish state-owned company Cinia announced a fall offshore cable cut Monday afternoon. So far, the cause has not been determined.

The C-Lion1 cable was activated in 2016. The cable is 1 to 200 kilometres long and buried at a depth of about a meter below the ocean's surface. The cable runs near the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

According to Cinia CEO Ari-Jussi Knaapila, the cable cut took place in Sweden's special economic zone about the halfway point of the cable's length.

There is currently no specific information on whether the C-Lion1 submarine cable was subject to deliberate sabotage, according to Henri Kronlund, Cinian communications director.

Knaapila said the broken submarine cable was located in a more remote area for maritime traffic. He estimates that the cable breakdown was not due to seismic activity, such as land avalanche.

“Yes, some other external force has contributed to the cable breaking,” Knaapila said.

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Russian TV channels slam UNESCO for ignoring attacks on their journalists

Media outlets from Russia such as RT and TV Channel One have slammed UNESCO for apparent discrimination against Russian journalists. A draft report on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity, complied by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, ignores instances of murders, attacks and threats where the victims were Russian journalists.

“This is not the first time that UNESCO has essentially denied Russian journalists the right to defend their rights, even though by definition UNESCO should be neutral and treat all countries with equal attention,” RT pointed out in a statement.

The list of cases involving RT journalists that should have been mentioned in Azoulay’s report included an assassination attempts against RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and five other prominent Russian journalists, organized by a neo-Nazi group and likely orchestrated by Ukrainian spy agency SBU.

The UNESCO report also ignored the murders Russian journalists Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, both of whom were assassinated at Ukriane’s behest; and the killings of Oleg Klokov, Boris Maksudov and Rostislav Zhuravlev, who were murdered in the Ukrainian conflict zone by militants loyal to Kiev, Channel One pointed out.

“Behind all these tragedies are the lives of people who honestly fulfilled their professional duty, and it is the duty of UNESCO’s leadership to take all necessary measures to ensure that such incidents do not happen again in the future,” RT declared.

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President-elect Donald Trump confirmed plans for mass deportations of illegal immigrants using the military in the United States.

"TRUE!!!" Trump wrote on Truth Social, confirming a report by the head of the conservative organization Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton.

Earlier, Fitton wrote that the Trump administration was preparing to declare a state of emergency and use military assets to carry out the deportations.

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📹 G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro kicks off

Leaders and representatives of the world's major economies are arriving at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro for the summit, where they will discuss issues including the role of global institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and UN Security Council, as well as plans to establish a Global Alliance Against Hunger.

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❗️Russia's response to the Kiev regime's use of long-range missiles on the country's territory will be adequate and tangible, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated

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❗️Russian Foreign Ministry's key statements on the information about Ukraine being allowed to strike deep into Russia with Western weapons:

▪️If Ukraine strikes Russia with long-range Western missiles, it will radically change the essence of the conflict;

▪️Kiev's use of missiles to attack Russian territory will mean direct participation by the US and its allies in the conflict against Russia, the ministry added;

▪️Moscow does not yet know whether the information about Ukraine being allowed to strike deep into Russia with Western weapons is based on official sources;

▪️No Western "miracle weapon" is capable of influencing the course of the special operation.

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White House mumbles when asked to confirm US approval on deep strikes on Russia

The White House has failed to directly confirm reports that the Biden administration has allowed Ukraine to use ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory.

US Deputy National Security Adviser Jonathan Finer evaded questions from reporters about Biden's authorization during a briefing on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

"I am not confirming any decisions that have or have not been made about US assistance when it comes to these operational questions," Finer said.

Finer elaborated that the US government makes political decisions "based on the circumstances" on the battlefield.

“The United States has been clear throughout this conflict that we will make our policy decisions based on the circumstances we identify on the battlefield, including in recent days and weeks,” Finer said vaguely.

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The US, UK and Australia have signed an agreement to jointly test hypersonic weapons as part of the AUKUS partnership, the Pentagon said.

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Rising gas prices to curb Europe's economic growth in 2025 – energy expert

"The gas dynamics in 2025 will be influenced by a tighter gas market as a result of rising global demand, particularly from China and the Asia-Pacific region, Trump’s tariffs and EU boycotting Russian gas and also a cold winter," Dr. Mamdouh G. Salameh, an international oil economist and a global energy expert, tells Sputnik.

Salameh projects that European consumers will see a price rise of 3%-5% from €37-€38 ($39-$40) per megawatt-hour (MWh) in 2025.

Presently, gas prices have exceeded $500 per thousand cubic meters in Europe, with European gas futures reaching around €46 ($48.6) per MWh as Russia suspended fuel deliveries to Austria's OMV.

“The recent spike in gas prices in Europe is due to worry about gas supplies in this coming winter particularly if it is a cold winter”, Salameh continues. “At the heart of this worry is the expiration of the contract on January 1 between Ukraine and Gazprom allowing shipments of Russian gas via Ukraine.”

"There is another major factor, namely the head of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyden talking about total banning of both Russian piped gas and LNG,” continues the pundit.

“However, increases in EU imports of American LNG will cause the economic outlook for the EU economy to worsen further, particularly that the price of US LNG is estimated at 2-3 times higher than Russian piped gas. The EU projected economic growth in 2024 is 0.5% but it is doubtful it will make it."

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AI shouldn't be allowed to push a nuclear button – military expert

US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Chairman Xi Jinping, agreed on November 16 that humans, not artificial intelligence (AI), should control nuclear weapons. There is a good reason for that, given that the two powers are increasingly competing in the AI field, Alexei Leonkov, a veteran Russian military analyst, tells Sputnik.

"Even in the most peaceful scenario, sooner or later AI will unleash a global war in which most of humanity will perish," Leonkov says.

Leonkov notes that the US military started to use AI in the army from 2018. It was expected that the tool could be integrated into nuclear deterrence architecture, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems and even nuclear command, control and communications.

However, authorities soon realized that AI is prone to errors and can be disrupted by cyber-attacks or confused by incoming contradictory data. It also has limitations when it comes to decision-making in a chaotic battlefield environment, the expert points out. "In these conditions, artificial intelligence does not work at all," he says.

"Therefore, putting [AI] into service, given all the shortcomings that it has, is pure madness," the pundit says.

"[While] Americans, give [AI] the right to make decisions... [Russians] use artificial intelligence not as the main and dominant technology, but as an auxiliary one," Leonkov concludes.

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THROWBACK: Vladimir Putin said nuclear energy and artificial intelligence pose a threat, stressing that the main question is how to use them.

"There are nuclear weapons, that pose great threats to humanity. It is the same with artificial intelligence. The question is how to regulate this and how people use it.," the Russian president said.

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❗️Ukraine has received permission from the US to strike deep into Russia "up to 300 km," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said.

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Ukraine’s plans to strike deep into Russia with ATACMS missiles: What is the catch?

As the US reportedly green-lights Ukraine to use ATACMS for long-range strikes deep into Russian territory, questions arise: does Kiev have what it takes to conduct such attacks and how can Russia counter them?

1. Russia has advanced air defenses

Various Russian air defense systems such as Buk-M2, Buk-M3 and Tor-M2 have successfully intercepted ATACMS on more than one occasion, Alexei Leonkov, a veteran Russian military analyst, tells Sputnik.

“Russian air defense systems have a very high intercept probability rate. Where our systems spend one missile per target, American Patriot systems use two missiles to accomplish the same task.”

2. The West doesn’t have enough long-range missiles

Though the US and its allies have been generous in their military supplies to Ukraine, little has been left of what stocks of ATACMS, Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles that were provided to Kiev, Leonkov says.

“Even the shipments of F-16 jets that can be used to launch Storm Shadow missiles did not reverse this trend,” he remarks. “The number of launches has been dwindling and has practically reached zero by now.”

Prior to the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, the West possessed over 3,000 ATACMS missiles (including all of their available modifications), Leonkov estimates. With all the ATACMS missiles that have since been used up in the Ukrainian conflict or simply decommissioned due to their advanced age, that number has been reduced to somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000, he calculates.

3. West doesn’t have enough missile launchers either

Lack of missiles aside, Ukraine suffers from a lack of missile launchers as well, Leonkov remarks.

The problem, he explains, stems from the fact that the West supplied a very limited amount of weapon systems capable of launching ATAMCS - such as HIMARS, MLRS and MARS.

Meanwhile, Russian forces have been very effective in tracking down these weapons using counter-battery radars and destroying them using tactical missile systems of their own.

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