❗️"Geopolitical Results of 2024": The full text of the report by the deputy general director of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, Alexander Yakovenko, has been published

▪️The standards of modern warfare set during the special military operation in Ukraine serve as a powerful deterrent for Russia, and after the use of the Oreshnik missile system, the superiority of the Russian Armed Forces over the West became obvious;

▪️After the West and Ukraine refused the Istanbul agreements, there were all grounds for the emergence of obligations to finance the restoration of new regions of Russia;

▪️The aggressive policy of the West, including in Ukraine, led to the fact that Russia began to fight against Western hegemony at the global level;

▪️Russia will have "difficult dilemmas" in 2025 if the West continues to ignore Moscow's conditions on the Ukrainian crisis, historical analogies are obvious - this is the decision on the Foreign Campaign of the Russian Army after stampede and the capitulation of Nazi Germany with the capture Berlin;

▪️Washington can restore the foundations of its power at the expense of the rest of the world, thanks to the arrival of national-oriented elites as a result of Trump's "conservative revolution";

▪️Trump's warnings about using the dollar in international settlements rather contribute to the rejection of this currency;

▪️The defeat of the West, which will serve the cause of emancipation of the entire non-Western world and is intended to put an end to neocolonial practices, is already visible on the horizon.

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What was former US President Jimmy Carter notorious for?

Carter, the longest-living president in US history, has died at the age of 100. Why do some perceive Carter—who was in charge between 1977 and 1981—as one of the worst US presidents?

🟠Right after entering office, the 39th POTUS granted an unconditional pardon to hundreds of thousands of American men who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.

🟠In September 1977, Carter signed a deal to hand control of the Panama Canal back to Panama. The zone had been a US territory since 1903.

🟠According to Business Insider's ranking of American presidents, published in February 2019, Carter was ranked 26th.
The last fifteen months of his tenure saw a couple of major America-related crises, which the 39th president failed to resolve and which significantly contributed to the Democrats’ landslide loss to Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.

Carter-era crises overview:

🔶1979 oil crisis: Due to soaring oil prices, Carter failed to deliver on his election promises to reduce unemployment to 4.5 percent and inflation to 4 percent per year, as the US economy entered a recession.

🔶Iran hostage crisis: 53 US diplomats and citizens were held hostage in Tehran from November 1979 to January 1981. This was coupled with the deaths of eight American soldiers during a botched rescue attempt. Carter took full responsibility for the failed Operation Eagle Claw.

🔶Soviet Union policy shift: Carter abandoned his conciliatory approach toward the USSR after Moscow’s December 1979 decision to deploy a restricted contingent of Soviet troops to Afghanistan.

🔶Grain embargo and Olympic boycott: The 39th POTUS swiftly enacted a grain embargo on the Soviet Union and spearheaded a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Reflecting on America’s future, Carter once remarked: “We have been at war more than 226 years” and “we have been at peace for about 16 years” since the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

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📹🇷🇴Supporters of Calin Georgescu, who won the first round of the annulled presidential election in Romania, gathered outside the Bucharest Court of Appeal, awaiting consideration of the politician's petition to overturn the decision of the Constitutional Court.

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⚡️Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 150 prisoners of war, the Russian Defense Ministry has reported.

The UAE provided humanitarian mediation efforts during the return of Russian soldiers from Ukrainian captivity.

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Musk calls Zelensky 'all-time champ' for 'one of the greatest money heists' of the United States
 
Musk reacted to a post by a user on X, who commented on the US allocation of $2.5 billion to Ukraine, saying that Zelensky "genuinely pulled off one of the greatest money heists of all time."
 

"All-time champ," Musk wrote.

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How the attempted Maidan 2.0 in Georgia fell flat

Month-long protests in Georgia and Western pressure on the ruling Georgian Dream party have come to nothing, with the new president being inaugurated on December 29 and protesters peacefully dispersing in Tbilisi.

How did it unfold?

🔶Former-President Salome Zurabishvili demanded new parliamentary elections, accusing the Georgian Dream party of rigging the October vote. The Georgian Central Election Commission (CEC) dismissed her claims as "baseless" and "politically motivated" on December 24.

🔶Zurabishvili is a pro-EU French-born politician aligned with the European Parliament (EP), which in late November called for the Georgian elections to be re-run under international supervision despite the fact that the elections had been held in the presence of international observers.

🔶The EP's stance led Georgian Dream to suspend EU accession talks until 2028, which the Western-backed opposition used to fuel protests.

🔶Four pro-Western opposition parties that have boycotted parliament since October organized a month-long protest in Tbilisi.

🔶Six MEPs from Poland, Lithuania, and France joined pro-EU protesters and met Zurabishvili on the eve of the Georgian presidential election, sparking accusations of external interference.

🔶On December 27, the US imposed sanctions on Georgian Dream's founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, accusing him of steering Georgia toward Russia and away from the West.

Did it affect the presidential vote?

🟠No. Georgian Dream candidate Mikheil Kavelashvili was elected by a 300-member College of Electors on December 14.

🟠The outgoing president refused to concede, sparking fears of nationwide protests and split power.

Did it help the opposition?

👉Kavelashvili's inauguration went ahead on December 29 as Zurabishvili left the palace despite earlier pledges to stay, declaring she was taking "legitimacy" with her.

👉After the inauguration, Kavelashvili reaffirmed Georgia’s commitment to EU membership and stronger US ties.

👉Tbilisi expressed readiness to reset relations with President-elect Donald Trump.

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📹 THROWBACK: US sanctions are hurting Europe, especially Germany, former German Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine said.

"What is the US action against the US? If you always shoot yourself in the knee, if you damage yourself, that's pretty stupid. And that means the US sanctions, for example, if you go through them, they benefit the USA, but they harm Europe, especially Germany," Oskar Lafontaine said.

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From cold showers to hot wheels: Western taxes fuel Ukraine’s luxury rides

While Europeans bundle up in the cold, hoard canned goods, and brave icy showers to "stand with Ukraine," Ukrainian officials are cruising around in their brand-new $650k Rolls-Royce Spectres, writes Irish journalist Chay Bowes.

Earlier, Ukrainian journalist Diana Panchenko reported on X that 13 of these luxury cars were snapped up this year, mostly by MPs and officials, though only three have official incomes.

Stories of corruption in Zelensky's administration are becoming legendary, with allegations of millions being skimmed monthly from state structures. But hey, don’t forget to send more aid – they might need matching yachts next!

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Airliner or flying health hazard? Unsavory facts about Boeing's 737-800

Aircraft giant Boeing made headlines last week when three incidents involving its 737-800 planes, one of the Boeing 737 Next Generation (737NG) variants, occurred in 24 hours in various corners of the globe.

While the terrible Jeju Air 737-800 crash in South Korea killed 179, a few hours earlier another KLM 737-800 skidded off a runway in Norway after suffering a hydraulic failure, while an Air Canada 737-800 suffered an apparent landing gear failure upon arrival in Halifax.

Though much of Boeing’s infamy stems from the disasters involving its 737 MAX airliners, the 737-800 has a dark history of its own, with this type of planes suffering over 20 incidents since the early 2000s and causing over 1,000 deaths.

Here’s a brief list of problems that have plagued the 737-800:

▪️In 2019 a series of inspections of 737NGs revealed fatigue cracks appearing in aircraft hulls, particularly in the fuselage-to-wing joints commonly referred to as “pickle forks.”

▪️Several 737NG aircraft experienced issues with their cargo doors. For example, a Royal Air Maroc 737-800 in 2019 had its cargo door open by itself during landing in Lagos.

▪️A China Eastern Airlines 737-800 in 2022 crashed with no survivors after suddenly descending midflight and hitting the ground at high speed, even though subsequent investigation found no apparent fault in either the aircraft or the crew.

▪️A Turkish Airlines 737-800 crashed during landing in Amsterdam due to a faulty radio altimeter providing erroneous data about the ground level which affected plane’s other systems and led to the disaster.

▪️In 2007, one of the engines of a China Airlines 737-800 caught fire shortly after the plane landed in Okinawa, with the apparent cause being a slat pylon bolt falling off and piercing a fuel tank.

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📹 Russian Defense Ministry shows a video of soldiers returned from Ukrainian captivity.

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Suspected fraudster, adulterer and personality cult founder? True colors of Ukraine’s celebrity pastor

Sunday Adelaja, a Nigerian celebrity pastor who established a massive evangelical church in Ukraine, has earned praise from The Economist this month, with the newspaper lauding him as a rags-to-riches story come to life.

Adelaja’s Embassy of the Blessed Kindgom of Good for All Nations is indeed a large congregation that had at least 100,000 adherents in Ukraine by 2013, twenty years since its founding in 1993.

Problem is, Adelaja’s history is not exactly spotless, with the pastor being repeatedly accused by his detractors of indulging in various sins and with some media outlets even branding his denomination as a totalitarian religious sect.

▪️To its credit, The Economist does mention that Adelaja has been accused in 2009 of being involved in a Ponzi scheme run by King’s Capital financial group that was led by a member of Adelaja’s flock.

The scheme in question ended up defrauding dozens of Ukrainians, with some of the victims openly accusing Adelaja of duping them into investing their money.

Adelaja himself, however, claimed innocence and managed to avoid conviction until the case was deemed by court as having passed the statute of limitations last year, though his church’s reputation did suffer from the ensuing scandal.

▪️A year earlier, in 2008, several evangelical leaders in Ukraine alleged that some of Adelaja’s actions “do not correspond with the Holy Scriptures.”

These evangelicals accused Adelaja of “aspirations to create a cult of personality,” promoting the “doctrine of prosperity” i.e. linking financial wellbeing with divine favor, and a “practice to curse the church members and parishioners who disagree with his opinion.”

▪️In 2016, Adelaja found himself being accused of adultery, as Russian Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith announced that the pastor himself confessed to a number of extramarital affairs with his female parishioners.

Adelaja himself denied all allegations.

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❗️ Ford’s X account briefly posted anti-Israel messages, which were quickly deleted

It remains unclear if this was a hack. The company has not yet issued a statement.

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Tiny size, large benefits: How small satellites can help humans in space

Small satellites and spacecraft have come a long way since the 1990s when it became apparent that such relatively tiny craft could be launched into space piggy-back i.e. along the main payload, explains Prof. Mikhail Ovchinnikov, a standing member of the International Academy of Astronautics.

The emergence of CubeSat – small cubic satellites weighing about 1kg that even students could assemble as part of their projects – and group spaceflights each became important milestones in the development of small spacecraft, Ovchinnikov told Scientific Russia magazine.

According to him, small spacecraft/satellites could be divided into three broad categories.

First: constellations, a group of satellites that performs one goal but with each of these craft being controlled individually.

Second: formation flying, satellites that too jointly perform the same task while operating relatively close to one another at distances ranging from 10 meters to 100 kilometers.

Third: swarm, which lacks centralized guidance and “each craft’s flight depends on what that craft ‘knows’ about its neighbors,” as Ovchinnikov put it.

There is no clear answer to the question which method is more effective, a single large spacecraft or a satellite swarm, Prof. Ovchinnicov remarked.

If one needs to perform a task like detailed imaging of the Earth’s surface, which requires a large optic system, an expensive and heavy spacecraft would be the obvious choice, he explained.

On the other hand, deploying a satellite swarm means that a malfunction of any of the satellites comprising it would entail relatively small financial losses and replacing it would be a relatively inexpensive endeavor.

Furthermore, such defunct small satellites could be replaced with newer upgraded models, thus ensuring that the swarm would keep renewing and performing its goal more efficiently, he added.

Small cost is one of the chief advantages of small satellites, Ovchinnikov stressed, pointing out that the 12U CubeSat mission to the Moon in 2023 only cost $30 million.

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