🗣‘Climate lunatics’ think global warming is ‘existential threat’ – but nuclear weapons that can ‘blow your head off’ are REAL risk for humanity, Trump told Fox News.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🏭 A century ago US businessmen built factories in Donbass – now Russia invites foreign partners for rare earth metals

President Putin said Russia is open to working with foreign companies, including from the US, on rare earth metal mining in the Donbass and Novorossiya regions which have rejoined Russia. Russia has a history of foreign partnerships there – here are some examples👇

🇺🇸 US

🔸 In the late 1920s and early 1930s, US companies helped industrialize the USSR. The cooperation was mutually beneficial as the US was suffering the Great Depression, while the Soviets needed rapid growth after World War I, the 1917 revolution and the Civil War.

🔸 The USSR partnered with Albert Kahn, known as "the man who built Detroit." His firm, Albert Kahn Associates, designed 570 industrial sites across the USSR, including in the Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov regions. Among them were a foundry in Lugansk and a heavy machinery plant in Kramatorsk.

🇧🇪 Belgium

🔹 In the late 19th century, Ernest Solvay and other Belgian industrialists invested in Donbass, founding a soda factory in Lisichansk and the Lyubimov, Solvay & Co. company with Russian partners.

🔹 Between 1896 and 1900, they turned Konstantinovka into an industrial hub with glass, mirror, ceramic and chemical factories.

🇬🇧 UK

◼️ Charles Gascoigne founded the Lugansk Factory in 1797 to produce cannons and ammunition for the Black Sea Fleet.

◼️ In the 1870s, John Hughes built ironworks in Donetsk – then Yuzovka – supplying iron rails for Russia’s railway network. Some claim he founded the city, but settlements already existed there.

🇩🇪 Germany

🔶 Germans settled in Donbass in the mid-18th century. In 1788, Catherine II invited German Mennonites, who boosted local agriculture.

🔶 They founded many colonies, some of which became towns – such as Boykovskoye (Telmanovo), originally Ostheim ("Eastern Homeland").

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💰 Much-touted Trump crypto summit proved much ado about nothing: digital money expert

🗣It was “a first-class public relations event for media consumption,” Paul Goncharoff told Sputnik.

💬 “The bottom line is that Bitcoin, Ethereum and similar cryptocurrencies in possession of the US Government will be concentrated in a special fund to be considered an asset of the United States,” the veteran financial analyst and consultant said.

✍️ Other key takeaways:

🔸 The fund will include cryptocurrencies that have been seized, impounded or otherwise similarly obtained, and not be bought using taxpayer dollars.

🔸 Also noteworthy is the administration’s support for stablecoins – a type of crypto that can be pegged to the dollar, other fiat currencies and other assets.

🔸 Trump’s support for blockchain, AI and other innovative tech is important, according to Goncharoff, given that previous administrations have threatened to penalize some of them.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️The Russian Battlegroup Sever has liberated the settlements of Malaya Loknya, Cherkasskoye Porechnoye, and Kositsa in the Kursk region, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣Elon Musk just delivered a brutal takedown of Polish Foreign Minister

When Radoslaw Sikorski – husband of Russophobic US war cheerleader Anne Applebaum – claimed Poland was footing the bill for Starlink in Ukraine, Musk shot back: “Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost.” Ouch 😨

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇮🇷 Iran ‘won’t wait for any letter’ from Trump on nuclear deal

💬 “Using enormous domestic capabilities and opportunities for developing relations with other countries, we believe we can reach a position that leaves the enemy with no choice but to lift sanctions,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said, reacting to Trump’s letter to Khamenei.

This can be done “within the framework of continuing negotiations with the remaining parties of the JCPOA,” Qalibaf said, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal that the US walked out on in 2018.

Trump’s calls for talks are a “deception” designed to “disarm” Iran, Qalibaf said, and Tehran knows US threats and demands for concessions won’t result in any sanctions relief in the end.

🗣Ayatollah Khamenei said Saturday “some bully governments’” insistence on talks is aimed at “asserting and imposing” their will, and that Iran “will not accept their expectations”.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

👁 Five Eyes would go blind without US backing - here is why

💬 “The US share is huge,” retired Army Lt. Col. Earl Rasmussen told Sputnik, commenting on a report that non-US Five Eyes allies are mulling the creation of a separate ‘Four Eyes’ arrangement.

The US provides:

🤔Signals intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities including info from satellites (about 5K of the world’s 8K satellites are American)

🤔a military feed from the US Defense Intelligence Agency

🤔substantive human intel

🤔real-time open-source info collection and analysis capabilities

🤔security intel via cooperation between the FBI and the Five Eyes’ domestic analogs.

If the Five Eyes were to break up, Rasmussen doesn’t exclude the creation of new, regional intel-sharing alliances, like

🔸 Australia and New Zealand partnering up with Japan and South Korea

🔸 The UK ramping up intel cooperation with France and Germany

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔸 German intel chief wants Ukraine to bleed for NATO for another five years

🔸 Romanian rector challenging Georgescu’s candidacy is on Soros’ payroll

🔸 Surging violence in Syria: what you need to know

🔸 Five Eyes would go blind without US backing - here is why

🔸 The Greens’ freefall in the EU explained

🔸 A century ago US businessmen built factories in Donbass – now Russia invites foreign partners for rare earth metals

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️ "Romania is under TYRANNY!" — Calin Georgescu

"A direct blow to the heart of democracy worldwide! I have one message left! If democracy in Romania falls, the entire democratic world will fall! This is just the beginning. It’s that simple! Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny!" he wrote on X.

He earlier won the first round of election in November, but the Constitutional Court annulled the results.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🇺🇸 Russia, US demand urgent UNSC Syria talks

Closed-door consultations on civilian attacks in Western Syria are requested for March 10, Russia’s UN envoy Dmitry Polyansky announced.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt