🪖 Ukraine risks Trump’s wrath if it snubs Russia’s humanitarian ceasefire idea

Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of research at the Russian Council on Foreign & Defense Policy, breaks down the key takeaways from Monday’s Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Istanbul, including one Russian proposal he finds particularly clever.

💬 “Trump wants a ceasefire, everyone is talking about a ceasefire, so Russia is proposing a humanitarian ceasefire. Not the [30 day] kind that Ukraine and Europe insist on, which would be used by Ukraine’s military to regroup, and pump the armed forces up with weapons, but a humanitarian ceasefire,” Suslov told Sputnik.

“It’s impossible to fundamentally improve one’s positions on the battlefield in two days. But the humanitarian effect would be immense,” according to the observer. Specifically:

🔸 Ukraine’s military would get the opportunity to recover its dead.

🔸 Russian troops wouldn’t have to encounter decomposing corpses and face threats of infections and epidemics.

If Ukraine refuses, it will risk angering Trump, Suslov pointed out.

Best possible outcome

Monday’s humanitarian issue-focused negotiations were basically “the best possible results possible in the current conditions, when the positions of the two sides fundamentally diverge,” and especially so given Ukrainian attempts to sabotage the talks.

With Ukraine insisting on a 30-day ceasefire, rejecting demilitarization or a freeze in mobilization, and rejecting any restrictions on military cooperation with NATO, the humanitarian track was the only one where agreements could be reached, proving that Russia is interested in the diplomatic track, Suslov said.

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🚨 TARIFF WAR brewing again? China accuses US of breaching trade truce

🇨🇳 China’s Ministry of Commerce slammed the US on Monday for provoking fresh trade frictions and violating hard-won consensus from the Geneva economic talks — all while accusing China of doing the same.

🔸 China says it followed through: scrapping tariffs, honoring agreements, and acting in “good faith.”

🔸 Meanwhile, the US tightened microchip export controls, cut China's access to key tech tools like EDA software and even cancelled visas for Chinese students.

Beijing calls it a clear breach of the January 17 presidential call and the Geneva consensus, accusing Washington of double standards and destabilizing ties.

If the US continues to harm China's interests, China will take measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests, MOFCOM warned.

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🔸 What Russia and Ukraine agreed on in Istanbul during round 2 of talks

🔸 Russia-Ukraine talks, round 2: Kiev's 'memorandum' is ULTIMATUM dressed as diplomacy

🔸 Key points from the Russian memorandum on Ukrainian settlement

🔸 Trump’s Ukraine hot potato: US fears Russia-China alliance more than Zelensky's defeat

🔸 UK SHIFTS TO WAR FOOTING: Starmer announces Britain moving to 'WAR-FIGHTING READINESS'

🔸 Poland’s new Prez Nawrocki: Not your typical pro-Ukraine hero

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🚨 DEMOCRATS IN SHAMBLES: Even CNN’s own pollster can’t believe the train wreck

“How is that possible, Democrats?!” he wonders.

Once the champions of the middle class... now? Adios, amigos!

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🚨Ukraine’s stark choice: make peace with Russia or waste more time and lose more lives and territory

The memorandum of demands handed to the Ukrainian side by the Russian delegation is basically unchanged from the proposals laid out by President Putin a year ago, and the Zelensky regime should consider it if it doesn’t want to see Ukraine shrink any further, says Russian security expert Alexander Mikhailov.

🗣“Russia’s demands to Ukraine would not have been made in principle if Volodymyr Zelensky, who came to power in 2019 and inherited the need to implement the Minsk agreements, had fulfilled their main points.”

💬 “If he had done so, it wouldn’t have been necessary to launch the special military operation, and Ukraine would not have had to relinquish the territories that were previously Ukrainian, but now, after the [2022] referendums, became part of the Russian Federation,” Mikhailov said.

Zelensky and his entourage likely also remember the spring 2022 Istanbul negotiations, where Russia presented a much shorter list of demands, and Ukraine faced far fewer losses, political and otherwise.

👉Unfortunately, Zelensky’s position – rejecting demilitarization and the abandonment of its pro-NATO course, signals that he hasn’t learned anything in the past 11 years.

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🤡 UK BRACES FOR WAR AGAINST ITS OWN FANTASIES

Britain’s new “Strategic Defence Review 2025” is out — a glossy brochure for a military it doesn’t yet have.

The review lists:
🇷🇺 Russia as “an immediate and pressing threat”
🇨🇳 China as “a sophisticated and persistent challenge”
🇮🇷🇰🇵 Iran and North Korea as “regional disruptors”

🏳️ Meanwhile, the UK’s supposedly “10x more lethal” army will rise from 74,400 troops (to a whopping 76,000😱), amid a recruitment crisis and crumbling barracks — powered by lasers, drones, and teenage cadet gap years.

Do 76,000 imaginary troops stand a chance against Russia's 2,389,130?

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🚨 ‘WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM’ – Trump

Iranian officials have repeatedly made it clear that NO deal with the United States is possible if Washington insists on a complete halt to uranium enrichment.

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💥 CIA involved in Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian airfields – ex-CIA analyst

💬 “It was reported, and I've seen no confirmation of it, that Pete Hegseth was watching the attack in real time — which means he absolutely knew it was coming off,” former CIA analyst Larry Johnson told Judge Andrew Napolitano, commenting on Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russian airfields.

💬 “I think Starlink, Elon Musk’s operation, was involved with this as well. You can’t rule out satellite communications,” he added.

📍 Johnson emphasized that, under the New START Treaty, Russia is obligated to make its nuclear-capable bombers visible to US reconnaissance satellites as part of reciprocal transparency measures.

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💥 Iran BLASTS ‘INCOHERENT’ US proposal as nuclear talks flounder — CNN

Hopes for reviving a nuclear deal between Iran and the US are rapidly fading, as Tehran reportedly slammed Washington’s latest proposal as “incoherent and disjointed,” CNN reported, citing a senior Iranian official.

💬 “At first glance, [the proposal] is assessed as incoherent and disjointed, very unrealistic, and with excessive demands,” the official told CNN — criticizing the US for repeatedly shifting its position.

📉 The talks, which Trump recently described as "going pretty good," are now “more difficult than ever,” the Iranian official added.

💬 “The fact that the Americans constantly change their positions has so far been the main obstacle to the success of the talks and now makes the work more difficult than ever.”

According to CNN, the US has floated a new idea: allowing Iran to enrich low-level uranium under a multinational consortium — a sharp shift from earlier demands of zero enrichment. Unsurprisingly, the suggestion has reportedly enraged Iran hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, Trump publicly dismissed any enrichment concessions, posting on Truth Social that:

🗣 “WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM.”

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🔥 'RECKLESS, CRAZY, DEMONIC' – Maduro BLASTS Starmer over war talk

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro went scorched earth on UK PM Keir Starmer for saying Britain is “preparing for war.”

💬 “Can a prime minister of a country as powerful as Great Britain be in his right mind, talking about preparing for war? Is it ethical, is it moral to talk about wanting war? Does humanity need more wars?” Maduro asked during his Con Maduro+ program.

He then called on the world to rise up against the “militarism summoned by this reckless, crazy, demonic prime minister named Starmer.”

💬 “No to war. Yes to peace and justice. Yes to a multipolar world,” the president stressed.

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💸 US economic survival depends on tariffs – Trump

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❓ ‘Are we just PLAYING WITH DOOM right now?’ – Prof. Sachs

💬 “The technical needs of this operation almost surely required US intelligence all along the way,” Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs told Judge Napolitano, commenting on Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russian airfields.

💬 “If we DID know – it's completely shocking. If we DIDN'T know – it's completely shocking,” Sachs emphasized.

💬 “Well, the American interest is NOT to have Russian nuclear bombers blown up as they're sitting on the tarmac,” the professor stressed.

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🤡From gaffes to global stage: Germany’s Baerbock SHOOTING FOR THE TOP at UN

Annalena Baerbock, elected to the annual symbolic role of UN General Assembly chair, might just be eying a higher leap, Berliner Zeitung speculates.

🔍This might be her warm-up act for the real prize: to replace Antonio Guterres when his term as UN secretary-General ends in 2026.

The paper suggests that maybe Baerbock will pull a classic move and propose someone else take over, paving her own path to bigger things.

➡️Baerbock parachuted into the candidacy at the last minute in March, bumping out seasoned diplomat Helga Schmid, whose name had been in the UN hat earlier.

➡️It’ll be interesting to watch Germany’s ex-foreign minister in action at the UN – especially given her past gems, like urging Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to do a “360-degree” turn to solve the Ukraine crisis (which means he'd end up facing the same direction).

Oh, and don’t forget speech fails, like confusing “Ostukraine” (Eastern Ukraine) with “OstCocaine.”

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🚨Ukraine's desperate gamble FAILS: Drone attacks only WEAKEN Kiev's position – report

The terrorist attack on Russian airfields was Ukraine’s last chance to improve its position on the battlefield—and it failed, the British outlet UnHerd writes.

💬 "The operation, planned for over a year, is Ukraine’s latest high-risk attempt to ‘shift the trajectory’ of the conflict that is increasingly moving in Russia’s favour," the article notes.

According to the publication, this kind of risky gambit not only brought Ukraine no advantages, but could also weaken Kiev’s position both at the negotiating table and on the battlefield. In addition, the attack might cost Ukraine its remaining US military support.

💬 “This is a high price for a fragile Ukraine to pay,” UnHerd concluded.

➡️Earlier, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that Ukraine had carried out a terrorist attack using FPV drones against airfields in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. All of the attempted attacks on the airfields were repelled.

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💵Greenback in retreat: Markets brace for deeper dollar DECLINE

As the US dollar weakened against its major rivals on the first trading day of June, Wall Street is betting the slide is just beginning.

💵The Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of currencies including the euro and yen, dropped 0.69% to 98.67.

The prospect appears dim, as Morgan Stanley forecasts the dollar will fall roughly 9%, hitting 91 by around this time next year – levels not seen since the depths of the COVID-19 crisis, per Bloomberg.

🔍What’s driving the bearish outlook?

🟠a widely expected rate cut from the European Central Bank
🟠softening US economic growth
🟠report that US factory activity contracted in May for a third consecutive month
🟠uncertainty around Donald Trump’s trade and tax agenda

No wonder more countries, like BRICS, are increasingly committing to the de-dollarization plan, betting on anything that doesn’t dance to Washington’s tune.

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West planned to seize Kursk Nuclear Plant, forcing Russia into unfavorable talks – Apti Alaudinov

💬 "When summing up the Kursk operation—which the enemy conceived as an operation meant to bring Russia to its knees, to force us to sign a treaty on humiliating terms—it’s clear their initial plan involved seizing the nuclear power plant in the town of Kurchatov," the Akhmat special forces commander told Sputnik.

➡️Earlier, Alaudinov told Sputnik that NATO’s Joint Chiefs had been preparing a Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk region for more than six months.

During the fighting on this section of the front, the enemy has lost over 76,550 militants, according to Russia's Defense Ministry.

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