🙅GERMANY TURNS ON UKRAINE REFUGEES: ‘Enough is enough’

📊 A new YouGov/DPA poll shows shifting attitudes:

🟠77% of Germans favor reducing special benefits for Ukrainian refugees
🟠Only 11% support maintaining current levels
🟠Majority prefer aligning support with standard asylum-seeker benefits

❓Why is this happening?

🔵2+ years into the refugee influx
🔵Germany hosts over one million Ukrainian refugees
🔵Growing budget pressure across the EU

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🗣While the Ukraine peace process is moving forward and a deal is becoming "closer and closer," it is essential for both sides to want peace and to come to the table to finalize it, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said on Thursday.

💬 "The process is moving forward. Sometimes it ebbs and flows… We are moving closer and closer," Waltz told Fox News.

💬 "Russia needs to come to the table. Both sides have to want peace. Both sides have to want to stop the fighting, and we think there is still a deal to be had," Waltz added.

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❗️Ukrainian attack on the market in Alyoshki was DELIBERATELY CARRIED OUT ON A HOLIDAY – Russian MFA

💬 "This is yet another bloody war crime by Ukrainian Nazis against peaceful Russian citizens," the Foreign Ministry statement says.

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🔥Arms of victory: ZiS-3 field gun

Sputnik presents the heavy weapons used by the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War to crush the Third Reich.

One of the main symbols of victory, the ZiS-3 was among the most massively-produced artillery pieces during World War II.

The ZiS-3 earned the noscript "Cannon of Victory" due to its ease of manufacturing, impressive firepower, and excellent mobility.

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❓US-Ukraine deal: Which resources does it cover?

The newly-inked agreement pertains to the extraction of 57 resources in Ukraine, local media reported, including:

1️⃣Rare Earth Elements (REEs): Cerium, dysprosium, erbium, europium, gadolinium, holmium, lanthanum, lutetium, neodymium, praseodymium, samarium, scandium, terbium, thulium, ytterbium, and yttrium.

2️⃣Metals: Aluminum, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, hafnium, indium, lithium, magnesium, manganese, nickel, niobium, palladium, platinum, rhodium, tantalum, titanium, tin, uranium, vanadium, zinc, and zirconium.

3️⃣Metalloids: Antimony, arsenic, germanium, tellurium.

4️⃣Minerals and native elements: Barite, fluorite, graphite, wolframite (tungsten ore).

5️⃣Other elements: Cesium, potassium, rubidium (alkali metal), fluorine (halogen).

6️⃣Oil and natural gas 🛢⛽️

Crucially, this applies only to new deposits, licenses for which will be issued after the agreement comes into force. Any expansion of the list must be mutually agreed upon.

Notably, US firms get equal, but not exclusive, access to new Ukrainian mining rights.

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Russians ❤️ North Korea

Sputnik asked Moscow residents how they felt about North Korean troops helping to liberate Kursk region.

Ordinary Russians don’t believe Western propaganda about North Korea!

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🚨Game-changer AI: Is China’s new model READY TO RUN CIRCLES AROUND GPT-4?

China’s advanced artificial intelligence model DeepSeek R2 could make OpenAI's GPT-4 look like old news, reports suggest.

The soon-to-be released AI model reportedly:

😮 Boasts 1.2 trillion parameters, making it 10 times bigger than GPT-4.

💵Was developed with a so-called hybrid mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture, making it 97.3 % cheaper to run than GPT-4, per South China Morning Post.

🏋️‍♂️ Trained on Huawei’s Ascend 910B chips, not American NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs).

ℹ️ Trained using huge datasets from legal, financial, and patent info, unlike most models (trained on general Internet text).

Could DeepSeek R2 become a game-changer in cutting-edge AI?

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⚡️US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and his deputy Alex Wong are expected to leave their posts in the wake of the SIGNAL CHAT SCANDAL, CBS reports citing sources.

They are expected to depart on Thursday. Additional resignations are likely to follow.

The White House has not yet commented.

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🗣Netanyahu's priorities: Victory first, hostages later

At a Bible quiz event, the prime minister made a head-scratching comment:

💬 "In war, the ultimate goal is victory over our enemies" – while barely mentioning the 59 hostages still held by Hamas.

Netanyahu spoke as IDF Chief Zamir vowed a "decisive blow" on Hamas soon: "Our sovereignty was bought with blood," he said. "We defend it at all costs."

Hostage families are livid: "The return of the hostages is not less important, it is the supreme goal that should guide the Israeli government."

The irony:
🔻The same government that vowed "bring them home at any cost"
🔻Now treating hostages as secondary to military goals
🔻Gaza operations set to escalate further

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🚀 China’s Long March 12 carrier rocket heads to launch pad at Hainan commercial spaceport

Set to lift off on May 5, this beast has a diameter of 3.8 meters, with a fairing size of either 5.2 meters or 4.2 meters in diameter. It can carry up to 10 tons to near-Earth orbit, or six tons to a 700-kilometer Sun-synchronous orbit.

Designed for commercial missions, the Long March 12 is all about boosting low-orbit constellation networking. Looks like China’s space game just leveled up! 🌍✨

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🇬🇧🇫🇷🇵🇸 Why could the UK and France recognize Palestine? Spoiler – it’s not about sympathy

There’s a bigger game at play, geopolitical analyst Mehmet Rakipoglu tells Sputnik.

◻️ Strategic autonomy: Recognizing Palestine may not yield immediate political gain – but it could be a move to challenge US hegemony, noted the researcher at UK-based Dimensions for Strategic Studies think tank. It could send a message that London and Paris are not pawns of the US and Israel or fully aligned with Donald Trump policies, he added.

◻️ Public pressure: The British and French governments are not suddenly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause – domestic protests and global outrage over Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza have forced their hand, argues the pundit. Anti-Zionist sentiment is surging in all Western capitals, with silence no longer an option for British and French leaders.

◻️ Ethical crossroads: If the UK and France claim to uphold Western values, staying silent on Israel’s war in Gaza creates a moral dilemma, noted the analyst, since you cannot preach human rights and ignore genocide.

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📹 US-Ukraine minerals deal: ‘Trojan Horse’ for creating a frozen conflict?

The agreement simply doesn’t add up on the financial side of things, says veteran conflict studies expert Dr. Greg Simons.

💬 “What this means is this façade is a distraction from the real intent, which is not financial – it’s geopolitical, because the US is still pursuing its primary geostrategic objective, which is to maintain primacy, that is, its hegemony, globally” after proving unable to defeat Russia on the battlefield, Simons stressed.

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📹 Ukraine’s mineral riches will take years if not decades to develop

If they lie in Russia’s new territories, for example, the US can basically forget about them, says Daffodil University Professor Greg Simons.

💬 “And if you look how the US manages its client states, this means to keep Ukraine as a client state, which is both obedient to US demands and dictates, but also is under the direct protection as a protectorate of the United States because of the presence of these minerals,” the academic said.

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📹 US-Ukraine minerals deal’s terms left DELIBERATELY VAGUE and weasel-worded

💬 “If something is vague, it can be interpreted to mean whatever you want it to mean,” points out veteran conflict studies expert Dr. Greg Simons of Daffodil International University.

💬 “This is an attempt at card stacking, because currently the playing field is definitely in Russia’s favor and against the United States and Ukraine.”

The deal “will most definitely mean a continued arming, supplying, training, equipping of the Ukrainian forces for a future war against Russia” if a ceasefire is agreed, Simons believes.

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📹 US-Ukraine mineral deal: A smokescreen to lure Russia into a false PEACE TRAP?

The new US-Ukraine mineral deal looks like “an attempt to try and create a smokescreen” about US intentions to “lure Russia” into a disadvantageous peace, says Dr. Greg Simons. The professor doesn’t expect Moscow to fall into the trap.

💬 “If you look at Trump, he’s been active during his presidency in arming Ukrainians against Russia. I mean he’s been…boasting how he gave them Javelins to use against Russia,” Simons pointed out.

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❗️RT journalist Chay Bowes detained after arriving in Romania to cover elections

Bowes, who arrived in the country to cover the May 4 first round of the redo of Romania’s scandal-ridden presidential elections, was detained in Bucharest, with six police officers boarding the plane he arrived in to escort him out, saying higher-ups wanted to “talk” to the correspondent.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the detention illegal, stressing that Bowes entered Romania legally, did not violate any laws, but was still prevented from engaging in his work.

💬 “There is more and more democracy in Romania every day,” Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik’s parent media group, wrote on her social media, commenting on the situation.

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🇺🇸 US Army revamp includes 10,000 new drones

Plans involve equipping the Army’s ten active-duty combat divisions with about 1,000 drones apiece over a two-year period, with the news UAVs to be tasked with strike, surveillance and supply missions.

Officials and experts told WSJ the Army’s plans are based on the experience of the ongoing anti-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, where drones have proven to be a game-changing pillar of modern warfare.

💬 “Land warfare has transitioned to drone warfare. If you can be seen, you can be killed,” retired general and former Army vice chief of staff Jack Keane told WSJ. “A soldier carrying a rocket-propelled grenade, a tank, command and control facilities, an artillery position can all be taken out by drones very rapidly.”

The Army’s plans also include spending $3B on anti-drone warfare equipment. This, the drones themselves and revamped electronic warfare capabilities are expected to cost some $36 billion over five years as part of the “Army Transformation Initiative,” which also calls for new tanks, missiles and other weaponry.

To raise the funds, the Army plans to halt purchases of new Humvees, JLTVs, M10 light tanks and to retire older Apache helicopters. Cuts of some civilian personnel are also planned.

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❗️Russian forces struck a site near the city of Sumy where Ukrainian militants who had fled from the Kursk region were gathering to form a new unit, Sergey Lebedev, a coordinator of the pro-Russian underground movement in Nikolayev region, told Sputnik.

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❗️Trump announced that he would nominate Waltz for the position of US Ambassador to the UN. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rubio will temporarily assume the role of US National Security Advisor.

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