🚨 France faces ballooning debt, broken politics

📉 France recorded a government budget deficit equal to 5.8 % of the country's GDP in 2024.

💬 PM Francois Bayrou warned:

🟠In 3-4 years, debt interest could hit over $108 billion per year — equal to the combined budgets of education and defense.

🟠A sharp rise in debt servicing costs alone could trigger an economic and financial crisis of historic proportions.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🤷‍♂️'It was a MISTAKE': Killed son of Finnish politician RUED joining Ukrainian mercs

Leo Aland endured brutal conditions and abuse at the hands of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Here’s what we know:

🟠Aland, 20, volunteered to fight in Ukraine after his Finnish military service, despite his family’s strong objections, Yle reported.
🟠The service contract bound him to six months with Ukrainian forces.
🟠The Finnish Foreign Ministry’s guidelines warn that contracts are nearly impossible to break – something he never got the chance to learn.
🟠As a precaution, Ukrainian commanders confiscated his passport and restricted his phone use, his father told the outlet.
🟠Leo served for just over four months, with messages to his father revealing his deep regret over the decision.

💬 “Sometimes I just don't know what I'm doing here,” the young man wrote, adding that “coming here was a mistake.”

🟠On April 13, his father was notified of his death by fellow fighters.

➡️In the past three years, around 10 Finns have died fighting in Ukraine, according to the Finnish Foreign Ministry.

Like other foreign fighters seeking an “eastern European adventure," they are quickly confronted with the brutal realities of modern warfare, most often meeting an untimely and inglorious end.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🌐 Putin believes the trend towards the reduction in the G7 countries’ share in the global economy, and therefore in world affairs, will continue over the next 25 years.

🇷🇺🇨🇳 Relations between Russia and China are of a strategic nature today and strengthen global stability amid conditions of global turbulence, Putin said.

🤝 The national interests of Russia and China largely coincide, he added.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🪖Key statements from the Russian MoD daily briefing on the special military operation:

▪️Russia’s Tsentr Battlegroup wiped out over 520 soldiers and two tanks, including AMX.

▪️Russian aviation shot down 146 drones and two aerial bombs.

▪️Russia’s Sever Battlegroup wiped out over 190 soldiers;

▪️Russia's Yug Battlegroup eliminated 275 militants;

▪️Russia’s Zapad Battlegroup wiped out over 255 soldiers;

▪️Russia's Dnepr Battlegroup eliminated 60 militants.

▪️Russia’s Vostok Battlegroup wiped out over 170 soldiers;

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺Putin on successor: I think about it all the time, but ultimately the choice will be up to the Russian people

✅Putin confirms that he looks at and evaluates everyone's potential when thinking about his successor

✅In Russia, there must be several people who can earn the trust of the people.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💬 Putin: I hoped the reaction of society on the special operation would be EXACTLY like this

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

‘Laughable’: 💪🇸🇰Slovak PM reacts to 🤡Zelensky’s veiled threat to world leaders coming to V-Day parade in Moscow

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔥 Arms of Victory: BP-43 armored train

Sputnik continues to explore the unique arms used by the Soviets to crush the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War.

The BP-43 was a unique behemoth of an armored fighting machine, so powerful that only one of 21 trains built was ever destroyed in battle.

Where rail infrastructure was available and intact, the train would provide much-needed fire support to frontline units, taking on enemy aircraft and tanks alike using its 37 mm M1939 anti-aircraft guns, 76 mm tank guns, and 7.62 mm machine guns.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🗣 Warren Buffett calls it quits: kind of man of Wall Street or vicious shark?

The 94-year-old billionaire has announced plans to step down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of the year after 60 years at the helm.

While the mainstream press and business leaders from Tim Cook to Jamie Dimon sing his praises as a “visionary” standard bearer of “ethical investing” with “unmatched business acumen and philanthropic contributions,” here are the shabbier aspects of Buffett’s legacy.

🏴‍☠️ Corporate Piracy

🟠BNSF Railway (2010): Berkshire’s $34B purchase raised concerns over Buffett’s influence with regulators and the Obama administration to delay the competing Keystone Pipeline.
🟠Clayton Homes (2025): This Buffett investment is facing lawsuits over predatory, high-interest lending to low-income families, drawing attention from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

😮 Shady Practices

🟠SEC Probe (1974): Buffett was investigated for trying to interfere with a competitor’s bid to buy Wesco Financial, resulting in a $115K payout to shareholders.
🟠Salomon Brothers (1990): A major Berkshire Hathaway investment slapped with a $290M fine for fraudulent Treasury securities bids.
🟠Goldman Sachs Investment (2008): Buffett’s $5B buy-in to Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis has been praised for helping stabilize markets. But critics say he used insider info on the bank’s financials to strike the deal.
🟠Wells Fargo (2016): Buffett’s investment came under scrutiny after the bank created over 2M unauthorized accounts. Despite possible insider knowledge, Buffett did nothing.

🤫 Shady Relationships

🟠The Giving Pledge: A philanthropic campaign created by Buffett and Bill Gates in 2010, seen by some as a PR move to disguise billionaire tax write-offs.
🟠George Soros Connection: Buffett joined the board of Soros' Open Society Foundations in 2013.

⛓ Corporate Slavedriver

An array of Berkshire Hathaway companies, including BNSF, NetJets and Dairy Queen have faced grievances over low wages, poor conditions and union suppression.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

👊 JD Vance SPANKS neocon warmonger Bill Kristol over Trump pope image criticism

💬 “As a general rule, I’m fine with people telling jokes and not fine with people starting stupid wars that kill thousands of my countrymen,” Vance wrote on 📱, after Kristol asked him if he was “fine with” the “disrespect and mocking of the Holy Father” the AI-generated pope Trump supposedly showed.

➡️Kristol, 73, co-founded the arch-neocon Project for the New American Century with Robert Kagan in 1997, and provided ideological justifications for US invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran. Collectively, over 7,000 US servicemen were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus up to a million locals.

➡️Vance, a former Marine, did a six-month tour of Iraq in 2005 as a military journalist.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⭐ Musk’s Starbase City is a go

Residents of Boca Chica Village, Cameron County, Texas have voted 212-6 to incorporate as the city of Starbase.

SpaceX began building its private spaceport at the location, situated near the Gulf of Mexico on the southern tip of Texas, in 2018. Most of its 500 or so residents are SpaceX employees and their families. Elon Musk has a home there on Meme Street.

Incorporation is expected to offer SpaceX zoning and development control, and the ability to independently approve construction and commercial projects, create a police or fire department, libraries, public parks and even a municipal court.

Starbase is used exclusively to launch Starship super-heavy rockets, with eight launches carried out to date (four successful, four failed).

As for the original residents of the once sleepy beachfront community, most have moved away to escape constant construction, noise and rocket launches.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📡NATO urges EU to develop own military satellites as ties with US sour

💬 “There can be no European sovereignty without efforts in space. Today, a major awakening is necessary, even urgent, for Europeans to get started,” NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Transformation Pierre Vandier said.

💬 “The Americans themselves are calling for a form of emancipation, for Europeans to come of age and be better on a number of subjects – and that includes space,” Adm. Vandier, a former Chief of Staff of the French Navy, told European media.

🗣 At the moment, European allies rely mostly on Musk’s SpaceX for their space-based battlefield communication and intelligence-gathering needs, with the EU’s owned system, the IRIS Squared dual-use constellation, not expected to come online until 2030.

✅ Europe should rely more on cheaper low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites instead of far pricier geostationary orbit satellites, Vandier believes.

👉 Today, dependence on the Americans and the lack of domestic alternatives is a “huge hindrance” for “European sovereignty.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹🇨🇳China unveils humanoid robot to revolutionize government services

🤖The robot, presented in Shenzhen, southern China, can even work night shifts.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔥 Heroes remembered in Rome: 80 years of Victory! 🇷🇺🇮🇹

🎉 Up to 400 people gathered in the square near the ancient Circus Maximus in Rome to hold the Immortal Regiment event.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

😢Barely afloat? UK Navy's SHRINKING fleet amid Russia's naval surge

The British Royal Navy is flexing its muscle, with the flagship HMS Prince of Wales leading its Carrier Strike Group (CSG) on NATO drills to the Indo-Pacific.

The harsh reality, though, is that the Royal Navy is running on fumes, Responsible Statecraft suggests.

🇬🇧The UK has just 10 war-ready ships to its name, it claimed, citing defense sources.

🛳 2 destroyers
🚢 5-6 frigates
🚤 2 attack submarines (not counting Vanguard-class deterrents)

❔ Where are the rest? Reportedly in dry dock:

🟠3 Astute-class attack subs launched in 2014 (Ambush, Artful, Audacious) stuck in port for over 1.5 years under repair
🟠HMS Daring, commissioned in 2009, has clocked 2,748+ days in refit.
🟠2 Albion-class assault ships decommissioned due to budget cuts.
🟠Around 9 ships in dry docks

🇷🇺 What about Russia?

✅49 naval vessels of various classes built in the past five years, President Vladimir Putin announced in April
✅Four Borey-A-class strategic nuclear-powered missile-carrying submarines with enhanced acoustic discretion & superior situational awareness
✅ Four Yasen-M-class multipurpose nuclear-powered attack subs with advanced stealth capability
✅Modernized frigates, corvettes, and nuclear subs armed with cutting-edge Zircon hypersonic missiles that no air defenses can stop!

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt