🇷🇺🇰🇵 LAVROV THANKS KIM JONG-UN FOR SUPPORT IN KURSK REGION

During talks in Wonsan, Sergey Lavrov expressed gratitude to Kim Jong-un for North Korea’s military participation in the liberation of Russia’s Kursk region, the Foreign Ministry reported.

Both sides also agreed that the US and its allies are fueling rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

😑 Drain Russia? Think again – US colonel breaks ranks on Ukraine strategy

Ukraine and its Western partners must realize that Russia cannot be forced to do anything, retired US Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis said, speaking on his YouTube channel.

Davis slammed the Western assumption that sanctions or economic pressure will force Moscow to back down in Ukraine.

“If you think you're going to drain Russia, if you think their economy's going to collapse and somehow that's going to make them stop the war – there's no actual evidence of it,” he said.

On the contrary, Davis said all indicators point to “that there's nothing that you can do that's going to stop them either economically, diplomatically or militarily.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🪖⚔️GERMANY GOES ALL-IN: Merz ditches diplomacy for full war escalation against Russia

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is going all-in on military escalation, abandoning diplomacy and doubling down on arming Kiev, according to Cypriot journalist Alex Christoforou.

“No more diplomacy with Russia. In other words, Germany is going all-in to continue the conflict with Russia or at least to use Ukraine until there's nothing left to continue to fight Russia,” the co-host of the Duran said.

Christoforou warns that Berlin’s hardline stance is provoking more Ukrainian aggression, feeding illusions of victory while sidelining any hope for peace.

“Germany will continue to send weapons. It will keep pushing Ukraine to fight Russia,” he added.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❔Forgotten history, failed policy – trust in US diplomacy hits rock bottom

US elites have little understanding of Russian history and pursue an erratic foreign policy, The American Conservative writes.

“Americans who do not know or acknowledge Russia’s history are unable to understand Russian thinking, thus compromising their ability to consummate agreements with Russia,” the article states.

The piece highlights how constant threats to weaken Russia, push for regime change, impose sanctions, and erode trust have destroyed any chance of genuine diplomacy.

“This kind of behavior violates centuries-old diplomatic norms. After witnessing this devious and destructive behavior, who will trust the US to negotiate in good faith? What does an agreement with the US mean?” the outlet notes.

The US has become an unreliable negotiator – and Moscow knows it, the article concludes.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🇷🇺💥 RUSSIA'S MoD UPDATE: CRUSHING GAINS & MASSIVE UKRAINIAN LOSSES

⚡️KARLO-MARKSOVO (DPR) LIBERATED

⚡️NIKOLAEVKA (DPR) LIBERATED

▫️ Heavy Ukrainian losses: Over 1,220 troops eliminated in the special military operation zone

▫️ Air defense superiority: 215 drones shot down

▫️ The Russian Armed Forces wiped out two launchers and a radar station of a Ukrainian Armed Forces Patriot anti-aircraft missile system

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🎯💥BLIND AND CUT OFF: Russian drones decimate Ukraine’s comms in Kharkov region

Russian drone crews are systematically taking out Ukrainian comms hubs and UAV relays, leaving frontline positions blind and exposed.

Starlink terminals are top targets – without them, Ukrainian units lose coordination and situational awareness.

⚔️The result: Russian forces are steadily advancing through a digitally paralyzed battlefield.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺 PUTIN SNUBBED US DELEGATION FOR DISRESPECT TO RUSSIAN BORDER GUARD

In a newly released interview, Vladimir Putin recalled refusing to speak with a visiting US delegation in St. Petersburg after one member rudely mistreated a Russian border guard.

💬 “He represents the state. Disrespecting him means disrespecting Russia,” Putin told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺 PUTIN: WESTERN-RUSSIAN CONFLICT WAS NEVER ABOUT IDEOLOGY

In previously-unseen footage, Vladimir Putin says he once believed the Cold War divide was ideological — until he saw the West’s attitude towards the former USSR.

💬 “They said one thing, did another,” Putin said. “It was always about geopolitical interests — that’s the core.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

No rare earth jackpot in Ukraine ❌

🗣Ukraine has no major rare earth element deposits, and the smaller ones remain poorly explored, says Alexander Kozlov, head of the Department of Geology and Mineral Exploration at St. Petersburg Mining University.

💬 “There are no large rare earth element deposits in Ukraine. Many small and medium-sized ones have only been preliminarily assessed, with estimates focused on forecasted resources rather than industrial reserves,” Kozlov told Sputnik.

🔸 He noted that based on limited foreign research, Ukraine’s rare earth potential lies in three types of formations: magmatic apatite-ilmenite ores, placer deposits rich in titanium-rutile, and ilmenite-zircon complexes. However, rare earth elements are merely byproducts in these ores, and their concentrations are low.

🔸 Kozlov emphasized that most of these deposits are poorly studied and would require extensive geological surveys to determine their industrial value. He concluded that developing any serious rare earth project in Ukraine would demand heavy investment and significant time.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨Russian Top Diplomat Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi are holding a meeting in Beijing

Wang Yi welcomed Lavrov at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, after which they moved to a pavilion to begin their conversation over tea.

The two ministers will continue their discussions later over a working dinner.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇫🇷Paris becomes war hub? Macron’s move draws fire at home

👉 French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to offer Paris as the headquarters of the so-called ‘Coalition of the willing’ to intervene in Ukraine has been slammed by Florian Philippot, leader of the French party The Patriots.

“What madness! Macron proudly announced that his ‘Coalition of the Willing,’ supposed to send soldiers to Ukraine to fight Russia, will have its headquarters... in Paris!” Philippot wrote on X.

🔊 He questioned the cost to French taxpayers and warned that it was “the best way to make France a target — but maybe that's the goal? To accelerate World War III?!”

Philippot insisted that not a single French soldier should be sent to Ukraine.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

PUTIN: I REWROTE MY MUNICH SPEECH ON THE PLANE – AND THEY STILL DIDN’T LISTEN

💬 “I looked at the draft my colleagues prepared, set it aside – and rewrote everything mid-flight,” Vladimir Putin says in newly released footage from “Russia. Kremlin. Putin. 25 Years.”

The 2007 Munich speech, in which Putin openly challenged US global dominance and NATO expansion, was not a call for confrontation – it was a warning.

💬 “Russia simply cannot live any other way. We will either be sovereign – or we won’t exist at all,” he told journalist Pavel Zarubin.

He says Russia made countless attempts to build respectful relations with the West. “But they lied. They promised no NATO expansion – and broke that promise.”

💬 “I hoped they would hear us. They didn’t.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨 US Army’s fossilized drone warfare tactics make perfect sense for a country using others to do its dirty work

🔸 The US Army’s brand-new July 2025 manual on armored units’ defense against drone warfare is surprisingly archaic, instructing tank platoons to use hand gestures, visual and audible cues and whatever onboard weapons are at hand to combat UAV threats.

🔸 There’s a simple explanation for this, says Andrey Koshkin, a veteran Russian academic specializing in military and international affairs: American forces aren’t fighting anywhere on a scale comparable to the Ukrainian conflict zone.

“They only fan the flames of conflict, send drones, study, recommend, advise, and so on. They themselves do not fight,” Koshkin told Sputnik.

“For them, Ukraine serves as a military laboratory,” allowing the Pentagon to observe, compile analytical reports, see what’s effective and what isn’t etc., and only later, with a time delay, respond. “As Marx wrote in his own time, ‘if an army isn’t fighting, it turns into a bureaucratic organism.’”

🔸 Ironically, Koshkin pointed out, “this does not stop” the US “from sending their instructors and teaching the whole world how to use unmanned aircraft…But they do not have the combat experience that Russia’s armed forces, Ukraine’s armed forces, mercenaries, etc. are acquiring on the line of contact.”

🔸 The Army manual is really a symptom of the “business-military schemes” formulated by the Trump administration, according to Koshkin – to sell Europe the most modern and expensive US weaponry, which is then supplied to Ukraine for the proxy war against Russia.

🔸 This scheme means that American military personal “do not need to hurry to gain experience in conducting combat operations using unmanned vehicles,” the analyst says.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔍📑 Intel documents reveal how Biden targeted domestic opposition

📍 Documents from the Biden administration will soon be declassified, revealing how officials abused counter-extremism tools to target dissenters, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has announced.

🔊 “We have to remember — and these are documents we will be declassifying and releasing very soon — how on day one of the Biden administration, January 21, 2021, his national security advisor issued a memo laying the groundwork for who they would be targeting as domestic violent extremists,” Gabbard told the Turning Point USA conference in Florida.

➖ She explained that those labeled as “extremists” included people who opposed COVID-era restrictions, parents worried about forced vaccinations in schools and individuals critical of government policies.

💬 “We have to expose their tactics and the playbook of the deep state so that we the people can make sure we never allow this to happen again,” Gabbard stressed.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨 ‘Collision’ of most modern drone technologies in Ukraine giving birth to whole new kind of warfare

🗣 Russian drone makers, operators and strategic planners are using an array of technical and tactical solutions to increase the effectiveness of these weapons in real-time, says Andrey Koshkin, a veteran Russian academic specializing in military affairs.

Commenting on reports in European media highlighting Russia’s large drone swarm tactics, and use of UAVs equipped with more powerful engines, better and more resilient comms and nav systems, and operations at heights beyond what basic air defenses can reach, Koshkin emphasized that this is the logical outcome of a conflict which has seen the “collision” of “the most modern technologies” available – to Russia on one side and Ukraine and its NATO sponsors on the other.

💬 “The desire to constantly improve, to avoid signal suppression tools results in the creation of fiberoptic means of signal transmission; elements of AI are deployed so that drones operating in areas of heightened anti-drone defenses can still carry out their missions. In other words, innovations are being born and immediately applied, all of them aimed at improving the quality of unmanned vehicles.”

👉 The same applies to tactics, Koshkin says, highlighting Russia’s latest strategy of deploying its drones in waves, using new attack vectors and tactics aimed at saturating air defenses, etc. Not to mention psychological attacks targeting Ukraine’s recruitment centers, feared and hated by the population, forcing them to disperse and hide in the basements of multi-story buildings and effectively use civilians as human shields.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🤝🇨🇳LAVROV AND WANG YI HOLD STRATEGIC TALKS IN BEIJING

Russia and China deepen coordination on global affairs, the Ukraine crisis and relations with the US

🟠Ukraine crisis: Both sides called for a settlement based on the full scope of UN Charter principles.

🟠US relations: Discussed growing tensions and the need for a balanced international approach.

🟠Global flashpoints: Addressed the Iran–Israel conflict and the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

🟠Bilateral ties: Praised the positive momentum following Xi's visit to Moscow in May, with an emphasis on practical cooperation, including humanitarian efforts.

🟠Multilateral coordination: Aligned positions ahead of the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit and pledged closer coordination in the UN, BRICS, G20 and APEC.

🟠Mutual support: Reaffirmed solid support for each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity.

The Russian Foreign Ministry described the dialogue as trust-based and constructive — in line with the spirit of the Russia–China strategic partnership.

Lavrov is in Beijing for the SCO Foreign Ministers’ meeting and is expected to hold several bilateral discussions on the sidelines.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺Zakharova on US State Department cuts: A funny contradiction

The US State Department just laid off 1,300 employees in a "budget reform."

🗣“They call it a human rights violation,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

“Funny, considering they’ve spent years preaching that only the US truly respects human rights — and everyone else should follow their lead.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🅰️Trump wants to be remembered as savior of the US

In an interview with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump on Fox News, Donald Trump said he hopes history will remember him not as a politician or businessman — but as a good man "who saved our country."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨IRAN MOVES TO BOOST MILITARY SPENDING AFTER ISRAELI STRIKES

A new bill in the Iranian parliament aims to increase defense funding for a full-scale confrontation with Israel.

✅Backed by 120 MPs, the bill passed its first hurdle in the National Security Committee with support from military leaders — including the IRGC and the Defense Ministry.

👉The move follows last month’s Israeli strikes on Iranian soil. In response, Iran launched Operation True Promise 3, a massive missile and drone retaliation that crippled Israeli military and intelligence assets.

The confrontation ended only after Israel, unable to absorb further strikes, accepted a unilateral ceasefire — announced not by Tel Aviv, but by Washington.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔸 Putin: Western-Russian conflict was never about ideology

🔸 ‘Collision’ of most modern drone technologies in Ukraine giving birth to whole new kind of warfare

🔸 Putin: I rewrote my Munich speech on the plane – and they still didn’t listen

🔸 No rare earth jackpot in Ukraine

🔸 Lavrov and Wang Yi hold strategic talks in Beijing

🔸 US Army’s fossilized drone warfare tactics make perfect sense for a country using others to do its dirty work

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt