🗣 Trump had SECRET sit-down with Netanyahu aide ahead of Iran talks

Just days before heading to the Middle East, Donald Trump held a behind-closed-doors meeting with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, sidestepping Benjamin Netanyahu, Axios reports.

The meeting came right after the Israeli prime minister was blindsided by Trump’s truce with the Houthis.

💬 "We were shocked that the Trump administration didn't tell us anything and we learned about it from the television," one Israeli official was cited as fuming.

Israel appears to be questioning how much sway it really has over Trump’s Iran playbook.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨 Ukrainian police detain elderly woman for honoring WWII memorial

A pensioner went to lay flowers at the Park of Glory memorial in Kiev when the police got her.

Officers demanded she remove her cap, which bore a Soviet star – a symbol now banned in Ukraine.

The woman refused, calmly stating:

"I've been to the police six times already."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔍 US roots of German Nazism, Part 12: How the Nazis justified the extermination of Jews with their plans for an "European California"

SS Leader Heinrich Himmler explained the extermination of Jews by drawing a parallel to how European settlers ruthlessly wiped out Native Americans to seize and farm their lands. But Himmler wasn’t alone in this comparison.

In this video from Sputnik's exclusive series, historian and author of 'War to the Death' Yegor Yakovlev provides several examples of how high-ranking Nazi officials promoted the destruction of Jews to create an "European California."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣No Pasarán! Russia’s defiant message against ‘LIBERAL TOTALITARIANISM’ on Victory Day

From the heart of Moscow, Sputnik contributor Pepe Escobar reports on the monumental military parade on Red Square - a day etched in Russia’s modern history and the enduring legacy of the Soviet Union.

🇷🇺 "A ceremony of blinding beauty, precision and profound meaning."

The world watched as leaders of the multipolar order - President Putin and key figures from the Global South - stood united with the heirs of the armies that defeated Nazism 80 years ago.

🌍 The Message? No pasarán. "They won’t win."

As some European elites push for a new liberal totalitarianism, today’s gathering sent a resounding signal: Fascism and Nazism will never rise again.

⚔️ Eurasia stands firm. The gravity, the symbolism, the unshakable resolve - this was history in motion.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣Emerging multipolar world order on proud display at Moscow’s Victory Parade - veteran

The dozens of foreign leaders, other senior representatives of foreign countries, and servicemen of other nations taking part in the parade dedicated to the 80th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War provided another, “new picture of a truly multipolar world,” Russian Airborne Forces veteran Major Yuri Shaparin told Sputnik.

💬 “Russia was, is and will remain a great power. A great power does not abandon its friends, and friends help Russia. They help, and we are aware of that. They are helping not only in solidarity, but with practical assistance, and this is all wonderful,” Shaparin said.

Shaparin highlighted the Russian military’s fight today “to stop neo-Nazism from raising its head,” and suggested that just as the Great Patriotic War touched every family across the former Soviet Union, the current conflict has touched practically all Russians.

💬 “The whole country is helping, is participating in this. Some have friends, students, relatives fighting. Many of my friends and relatives are fighting in the Special Military Operation. Some help in the rear, collecting parcels, humanitarian aid, even equipment,” the soldier recalled.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Putin and Trump exchange warm Victory Day wishes 🇷🇺🤝🇺🇸

Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump sent each other warm congratulations on the 80th anniversary of Victory Day through their aides.

"Warm words. Mutual congratulations on a shared, great holiday," Kremlin Aide Yuri Ushakov told Channel One when asked if the leaders would "pass on any specific words."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔥 Great Patriotic War 80 years on: the Faces of Victory

The Second World War was the largest conflict in history, waged across continents by million-man armies. But it also came down to the individual soldiers who risked their lives to liberate the world from the scourge of fascism and militarism.

Among these soldiers was Red Army Lt. Mikhail Alekseyev, whose 1944 feat of heroism saw him and a pair of cooks surround and overwhelm a numerically superior German convoy, capturing POWs, 15 horses and two carts full of supplies. Watch the video to find out how they did it.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🇧🇷Russia's President Vladimir Putin holds talks with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🎙 Live from the heart of Moscow

Sputnik’s correspondent brings you exclusive coverage from Red Square, where the grand Victory Day parade unfolded in all its glory.

🔈 AI Voiceover enabled

Thanks to AI technology, our journalist’s report was delivered in over 10 languages, including English.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣Frederick Michael Maloof: US Army Air Force pilot’s WWII story

As the Red Army closed in on Hitler’s ‘Fortress Europa’ from the east, the Western Allies launched offensives in Italy in 1943 and France in 1944 to put pressure on the Axis from the West.

Among them was Frederick Michael Maloof, father of senior ex-DoD analyst and regular Sputnik guest Michael Maloof.

➡️Joining up with the Army shortly after Pearl Harbor and initially training as a tankman, Maloof wound up flying a P-38 Lightning fighter with the 9th Air Force, providing air support to Gen. Patton’s armies as they advanced across Western Europe. Find out more about his incredible story in our video.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺 Victory Day in Moscow: A strong show of unity between Russia and China

The Red Army helped China “get rid of the Japanese invaders” during WWII, and the Victory Day celebration in Moscow attended by Presidents Putin and Xi was not only a “great moment” of commemoration of the victory over fascism, but the ongoing struggle for the future of the planet, says Beijing-based China Forum expert John Gong.

💬 “The fact that President Xi went and participated in the military parade and watching the military parade together with 27 world leaders clearly shows that Russia is not alone right now,” Gong stressed, pointing out that Putin and Xi sat next to one another and conversed through much of the parade.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Putin presents Kazakh President Tokayev with award for his father's heroism

Kemel Tokayev, father of Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, was previously honored with the Order of the Patriotic War for his bravery and heroism in January 1945.

Tokayev, along with other foreign leaders, arrived in Moscow to join the celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇧🇫🇷🇺Burkina Faso leader’s visit to Moscow for Victory Day carries HUGE strategic significance: here’s why

Ibrahim Traore’s trip, coming less than a month after he foiled a Western-backed coup plot, indicates the “extraordinary levels of trust between Russia and Burkina Faso,” says veteran independent South African political analyst Alexis Habiyaremye.

✅The visit “reflects close security cooperation” between the two nations “in the face of common threats of hegemonic powers seeking domination through weakening Russia and its allies,” Habiyaremye said, emphasizing that beyond Burkina Faso, the coup attempt was planned and financed by forces “hostile to Africa’s sovereignty” in general, and the “ideals embodied in Traore’s political vision” specifically.

🤝 Russia-Burkina Faso relations can be characterized as “strategic,” the observer believes, given each country’s “marshalling [of] human and material resources to confront hostile forces determined to undermine their long-term growth prospects,” and the “complementary nature of their interests.”

➡️Burkina Faso’s immediate priority is to defend itself against France, “the evicted former colonizer that refuses to accept that the era of its spoliation of Sub-Saharan Africa is over, and US AFRICOM, whose commander has publicly shown his blind hostility to Burkina Faso’s sovereign management of its own resources,” Habiyaremye emphasized.

➡️The return of these foreign powers to the Sahel would embolden them against Russia and China. That means it’s in both countries’ “primordial security interests” to prevent necolonialism from restoring itself in the region by cooperating with regional countries on everything from intelligence and air defense to strategic deterrence, Habiyaremye says.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt