💰 Trump’s choices for top government positions look more like a billionaires’ club

It appears that many of the people tapped by US President-elect Donald Trump for his upcoming administration have at least one thing in common – they are rich. Filthy rich.

▪️Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and X owner who will lead Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has a net worth of over $335 billion.

▪️The net worth of Trump’s pick for the NASA administrator, Shift4 Payments founder Jared Isaacman, is estimated at $1.9 billion.

▪️Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur who also was tapped for DOGE, has approximately $1 billion to his name.

▪️Businessman and former Soros Fund Management partner Scott Bessent, nominated for Treasury secretary, also has a net worth of $1 billion.

▪️The family of Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law and likely future US ambassador to France, has a net worth of $7.1 billion.

▪️World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder Linda McMahon, Trump’s choice for secretary of education, has a net worth of about $3.2 billion together with her husband Vince McMahon with whom she is currently separated.

▪️The net worth of financier Howard Lutnick, who may become the next secretary of commerce, has been estimated by US media to be at least $2.5 billion, and possibly even more.

The combined net worth of the Trump 2.0 administration has been estimated by media outlets such as the New York magazine at over $340 billion – a massive increase from the $6 billion his previous cabinet was worth.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇫🇷 The resonant resignation of the French prime minister was preceded on Thursday by mass demonstrations across the country, including in Paris, Sputnik's correspondent reports.

Thousands of public sector workers took to the streets in the capital – they are unhappy with the government’s “austerity” budget, which was expected to be adopted for 2025. According to media reports, employees are complaining about low salaries and layoffs.

The resignation of Barnier and the cabinet could have eased the situation – this means that instead of the proposed 2025 budget, the current conditions will continue to apply.

But de facto little has changed – employees are still wary of the government’s policies and are afraid that things will only get worse. The demonstrators chanted “Macron resign!” and the slogans on their posters expressed contempt for the country’s leadership.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📑 Budapest Memorandum row: much ado about nothing?

On December 5, 1994, Russia, Ukraine, the US, and the UK signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine’s return of its nuclear weapons to Russia. The Zelensky regime has repeatedly invoked the memorandum to urge the US and its NATO allies to provide more military assistance, while the West and Ukraine regularly accuse Russia of breaching the agreement.

What does the memorandum say, and why are Western arguments hypocritical?


Is the document legally binding?

✍️ Western perspective: Yes, it is legally binding under the 1969 Vienna Convention and is subject to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
🇷🇺 Russian Perspective: It was never ratified by the parties; the US and Russia do not recognize the court's jurisdiction.


Did it provide security and territorial integrity "guarantees"?

✍️ Western Perspective: It provided significant, politically binding security assurances.
🇷🇺 Russian Perspective: The document's language is vague and does not explicitly mention "guarantees"; instead, it "reaffirms" "commitments" and "obligations."


Could Ukraine have retained the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal?

✍️ Western Perspective: Ukraine agreed to relinquish it but could have remained a nuclear state.
🇷🇺 Russian Perspective: Under Ukraine's Declaration of Sovereignty of 1990, it is non-nuclear; both the US and Russia sought to remove nuclear weapons from Ukraine.


Did Russia violate the Budapest Memorandum?

✍️ Western Perspective: Yes, twice, in 2014 and 2022.
🇷🇺 Russian Perspective: No, in both cases, Moscow acted within the UN Charter’s framework, including as regards the rights of peoples to self-determination and self-defense.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️ Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: "We would like to have normal relations with all our neighbors, of course, but generally with all countries especially with the great country like the United States. And President Vladimir Putin repeatedly expressed his respect for the American people, for the American history, for the American achievements in the world, and we don't see any reason why Russia and the United States cannot cooperate for the sake of the universe."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️ The launch of the Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile system has sent a clear signal to the West that Russia will be ready to do anything to defend its legitimate interests, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told American journalist Tucker Carlson.

"The message is that you, I mean the United States, and the allies of the United States who also provide this long-range weapons to the Kiev regime, they must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call the strategic defeat of Russia," Lavrov underscored.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Russia hopes its signal with Oreshnik was taken seriously - Lavrov

Moscow and Washington are not formally at war, but Ukraine's strikes deep inside Russia with US-made weapons, alongside Pentagon officials' rhetoric regarding limited nuclear strikes, is really worrying, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told American journalist Tucker Carlson.

"We don't want to aggravate the situation, but since ATACMS and other long-range weapons are being used against mainland Russia as it were, we are sending signals. We hope that the last one, a couple of weeks ago, the signal with the new weapon system called Oreshnik, was taken seriously," Lavrov said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Zelensky's regime doesn't represent people of Donbass and Novorossiya - Lavrov

The West should respect the right of self-determination of the people of former eastern and southern Ukraine that is enshrined in the UN Charter, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told American journalist Tucker Carlson.

"The right to self-determination is the international legal basis for the decolonization process... The people in the east and south of Ukraine, people in Donbass and Novorossiya, they don't consider the Zelensky regime as something which represents their interests. How can they do that when their culture, their language, their traditions, their religion, all this was prohibited?" Lavrov asked.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️ "We would certainly like to avoid any misunderstanding. And since the people, some people in Washington and some people in London, in Brussels, seemed to be not very capable to understand, we will send additional messages if they don't draw necessary conclusions," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told American journalist Tucker Carlson.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Territorial integrity is respected when the government respects their peoples' rights - Lavrov

The very first article of the UN Charter, which calls for "respecting human rights for all" has never been invoked by the West in the context of Ukraine's suppression of Russian speakers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told American journalist Tucker Carlson.

"So when people say, 'Let's resolve the conflict on the basis of the Charter,' - yes. But don't forget that the Charter is not only about territorial integrity. And territorial integrity must be respected only if the governments are legitimate and if they respect the rights of their own people," Lavrov said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Unlike US, Russia fights for people, not for natural resources - Lavrov

US policymakers visiting Ukraine openly say they want to lay their hands on the nation's natural resources with the help of the subservient Kiev regime, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told American journalist Tucker Carlson.

"We fight for the people who have been living on these lands, whose ancestors were actually developing those lands, building cities, building factories for centuries and centuries. We care about people, not about natural resources which somebody in the US would like to keep and to have Ukrainians just as servants," Lavrov stated.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Russia hates even to think about war with the US - Lavrov

It was the US who rejected Russia's December 2021 draft security proposals concerning Ukraine's NATO membership and the Western military bloc's expansion, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told American journalist Tucker Carlson.

"We hate even to think about war with the United States, which will take on a nuclear character," Lavrov said. "Our military doctrine says that the most important thing is to avoid a nuclear war. And it was us, by the way, who initiated in January 2022... the joint statement by the leaders of the five permanent members of the [UN] Security Council saying that we will do anything to avoid confrontation between us."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

End result of US peace plan would be ceding Russian-speakers to neo-Nazi regime

The West is using back-channels solely to inform Moscow about their unilateral plans to settle the Ukraine conflict while snubbing Russia's interests or those of the people of new Russian regions, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told American journalist Tucker Carlson.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️ We did not start this war – Lavrov

Describing Ukrainians as "brothers and sisters to the Russian people," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recalled that the US has not even tried to cover up its role in fueling the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine, including through the 2014 coup.

"We did not start this war. We have been, for years and years and years, sending warnings that pushing NATO closer and closer to our borders is going to create a problem," Lavrov said in an interview with Tucker Carlson.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️📹 Watch the full interview of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with American journalist Tucker Carlson.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Ukrainian regime's goal is to 'kill as many Russians' as possible - Lavrov

While Russia has never considered "killing people" as its goal in the Ukrainian conflict, the same cannot be said about the Ukrainian authorities, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Tucker Carlson.

"The former Ukrainian ambassador to Kazakhstan, Pyotr Vrublevsky, became famous when he gave an interview and looked into the camera (that was recorded and broadcast) and said: 'Our main task is to kill as many Russians as possible so that our children have less things to do,'" Lavrov noted. "And such statements are everywhere in the regime's vocabulary," he added.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt