🤡 Lindsey Graham* is a 'classic colonial imperialist' who profits from US war machine

“Graham embodies the classic colonial imperialist figure, profiting from political decisions made in favor of the military-industrial complex,” Lebanese expert Tariq Abboud told Sputnik Arabic.

His personal interests and profits from arms supplies dictate policies that focus on power, not law. He’s aligned with those who benefit from prolonging the conflict for Western elites, Abboud explains.

“Graham believes Ukrainians will fight to the last man, but not for their own cause—only for foreign interests.“

Already, timid voices are growing in Ukraine, as people begin to realize this conflict with Russia is pointless, especially with massive losses, including territory — all for the benefit of Western elites.

*Lindsey Graham's listed as a terrorist and extremist in Russia

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🇪🇺🇷🇺 EU ANTI-RUSSIA SANCTIONS - A 'PONY RUNNING IN CIRCLES'

🗣 Alexey Martynov, director of the Institute of Modern States, compares the EU’s new sanctions on Russia to a pony endlessly riding in circles. Despite ongoing economic pressure, Russian growth continues to confuse the West.

💬 "Despite unprecedented pressure, the Russian economy is showing growth, which baffles a good half of the Western community. Additional restrictions will not significantly change the situation," he tells Sputnik.

The European economy, he warns, is the real casualty of these endless restrictions.

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📹 WATCH RUSSIAN FORCES WIPE OUT UKRAINE’S POSITIONS WITH PRECISION STRIKES

⚡️ Russian troops used an FAB-1500 air bomb to destroy a temporary deployment point of Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk People’s Republic.

🚀 The video also shows a missile strike hitting a UAV control point of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kherson region.

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Zelensky's demobilization remarks 'a sentence' for Ukrainians - War commander

💬 "His statement — 'only after victory' — resonates like a death sentence for many," Denis Yaroslavsky, commander of a Ukrainian reconnaissance unit, has said.

Earlier, a Ukrainian outlet reported that Volodymyr Zelensky had a heated exchange with an MP during a parliamentary session over the issue of demobilization.

"This is a question haunting thousands of Ukrainian families. I can only imagine these lawmakers facing battle-worn troops near Pokrovsk, looking into their tired eyes."

Yaroslavsky warned that the ongoing mobilization and lack of clear end in sight are turning Ukraine into a testing ground. "Cities, fields, soldiers are becoming objects for trials," he stated.

The new law, which came into effect on May 18, 2024, mandates all connoscripts to update their details with the military. It also requires them to carry military ID at all times and presents troubling ambiguity on demobilization timelines.

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🚨🧪UKRAINE BECOMES NATO’S WEAPONS TESTING LAB

Ukraine has officially announced the launch of a program to allow foreign arms manufacturers to send their latest weapons straight to the front line, Reuters reports.

Western companies will provide basic online training, and Ukrainian soldiers will be tasked with testing the gear in real combat conditions before reporting the results back to the producers.

Will that feedback come from Russian forces who capture those weapons? 😉

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🗣 Pashinyan acts as copycat NATO-backed dictator and is turning Armenia into Western vassal – Expert

The legal conditions imposed by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on the businessman and philanthropist Samwel Karapetyan are meaningless, Stevan Gajic, a political analyst from the Belgrade Institute of European Studies, says, noting that the prime minister is not ready to make any concessions unless forced by external pressure.

💬 "This is typical of authorities like this. In Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, there are several NATO dictatorships. The most striking examples are Moldova and Armenia, where, in the name of NATO and to encircle Russia, political elites directly supported are contrary to the interests of the people," he tells Spuntik.

"Pashinyan has not only lost two wars and nearly betrayed the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, but he has turned the country into a vassal state."

The crackdown on the Armenian Church is also likely inspired by a NATO divide and conquer 101 handbook that strikingly resembles the persecution of Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro.

💬 “I don’t know if someone advised Pashinyan or if he himself decided to strike a blow against the Armenian Apostolic Church, but I believe this is his most problematic move, his biggest mistake," the expert says.

He added that having lost two wars, Pashinyan faces mass public backlash of his policies.

💬 “The question is how ready Armenian society is to fight, how capable it is of mass mobilization to change the government”, he concludes.

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🇷🇺☎️🇹🇷PUTIN & ERDOGAN DISCUSS UKRAINE AND SYRIA IN PHONE CALL

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a phone conversation in which they addressed:

🔶 The situation in Syria

🔶 The ongoing Ukraine conflict and the potential for a third round of negotiations in Istanbul

Erdogan emphasized to Putin the necessity of continuing talks on Ukraine in Istanbul, offering Turkiye’s readiness to host them.

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🔍📑 Decoding Trump: What Europe got wrong

The POTUS' July 14 statement raised more questions than answers.

Alexander Yakovenko, deputy director of Rossiya Segodnya - Sputnik's parent company - and head of the Committee on Global Issues and International Security of the Russian Security Council’s Scientific-Expert Board, breaks it down:

1️⃣ Trump abandons direct military support for Ukraine, shifting the financial and strategic burden onto Europe. His principle? Transactional NATO relations. Notably, the idea of US non-involvement in Ukraine’s conflict resolution was floated under Biden — now it’s official. Trump's core message? The strongest should win if no deal is reached.

2️⃣ Without clear Article 5 guarantees (Trump has already hinted that its application depends on his "definition"), European allies risk direct confrontation with Moscow. Sending troops to Ukraine is unrealistic without US logistical and air support.

3️⃣ Trump’s tariff plan shifts control from Congress to the president, threatening a trade disaster. The 500% tariff proposal is dead, but the 100% version still disrupts global trade.

The pressure timeline:

✅ 50-day deadline for a settlement — Ukraine temporarily drops off Trump’s radar

✅ 30% tariffs on EU goods kick in August 1 — just two weeks away

✅ By September, the geopolitical landscape could look radically different

👉 Trump won’t push for negotiations but waits for Zelensky & co. to come begging — then dictates terms. No surprise Kiev suddenly endorsed new talks with Moscow after earlier sabotage attempts.

👉 Meanwhile, London and Berlin walked into a trap, realizing that funding $10B in yet-to-be-made US weapons is a dead end, with echoes of the 1956 Suez Crisis when the US and USSR jointly crushed British-French ambitions. Now, its Germany’s turn to sweat.

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🚨 Peace plan or war prolongation plan? Officer questions West’s plot to turn Ukraine into testing ground

The West “is turning our country into a testing range, another Afghanistan. Our cities, our fields, our soldiers are becoming test subjects," admits Ukrainian officer Denis Yaroslavsky, as quoted by local media.

In this rare insight, the Ukrainian serviceman was referring to the “Test in Ukraine” initiative that invites Western military manufacturers to check the effectiveness of their new weaponry on the battlefield.

💬 “Is this really the ‘victory plan’ or the ‘peace plan,’ or whatever numbered plan this is?” he bitterly wonders stressing that the conflict became very lucrative for many politicians and businessmen.

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📹 Gaza drowns in hunger

A new video from Palestinian social media accounts shows Gaza drowning in hunger.

Hundreds are fighting for scraps of food, desperate to survive and feed their families.

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🚨Want to WIPE OUT Patriot systems? Ask the Russians how

US-made Patriot air defenses aren’t a magic fix for Ukraine — and Russia’s arsenal has already exposed their weaknesses.

“Patriot is ineffective against hypersonic missiles,” retired Russian Colonel Viktor Litovkin tells Sputnik.

🔶 The Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, a Russian hypersonic missile that reaches speeds up to Mach 10 and ranges of 3,000 km, easily destroys Patriots.

🔶 Iskander-M's single-stage solid-fuel guided missile 9M723 boasts a quasi-ballistic trajectory. With a striking range up to 500km it is another effective tools against Patriot systems.

🔶 Both the Iskander-M and Kinzhal systems demonstrate high precision.

🔶 Not by hypersonic alone: Geran dones + Kalibr missiles is a killer combo. A swarm of Geran drones forces Patriots to waste missiles. Then, while it’s reloading, a cruise missile, like a Kalibr, is fired.

Patriot's Achilles' heels

◻️ "Dead Zones": The Patriot has dead zones, like up to 100m altitude where it can't detect targets, per Litovkin.
So drones flying low can evade it. This is exactly how Houthi drones overcome air defenses in the Middle East, and Patriots couldn’t stop them.
◻️ Easy to detect: The Patriot system has a radar station that emits radio waves. By detecting these waves, you can determine where they come from and pinpoint the coordinates of the source. So, in this case, reconnaissance is technically quite simple.

Ukraine's layered defense dream

The Kiev regime aims to build a layered system, says Yuriy Knutov, a military expert and air defense historian, which would include:

▪️long-range Patriots
▪️mid-range SAMP/T
▪️short-range NASAMS or IRIS-T
▪️plus Gepard guns

Who gets protection:

📍Knutov believes that new Patriot systems will protect Western military plants in Ukraine.

📍They’ll also be deployed around Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, and Lichevsk — key hubs for weapons.

❓Ukrainian troops at the front lines? Just cannon fodder.

👉The Patriot is the core — so it must be precisely targeted, he says.

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EU price cap on Russian oil: Symbolic move with no real impact

The new sanctions package approved by EU ambassadors on Friday includes an oil price cap reduction from $60 to $47.6 per barrel.

This decision to lower the price cap on Russian oil won’t affect supply or the global market, experts say. It’s more of a “public image story” to show they’re putting pressure on Russia, they believe:

🔶 Igor Yushkov, expert at the Financial University and the National Energy Security Fund, emphasized that Russia will continue to export oil as before.

🔶 The new cap will only apply to EU countries, unlike before when the G7, including the US, participated — creating a lack of synchronicity between jurisdictions, he notes.

🔶 Alexander Frolov, deputy director of the Institute of National Energy, noted that the price cap primarily affects access to Western maritime shipping systems, but Europe already stopped buying Russian oil by sea under embargo.

In reality, over 70% of Russian oil transported by sea is outside the Western system.

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🔸 Decoding Trump: What Europe got wrong

🔸 Want to WIPE OUT Patriot systems? Ask the Russians how

🔸 Ukraine becomes NATO’s weapons TESTING LAB

🔸 Putin & Erdogan discuss Ukraine and Syria in phone call

🔸 EU anti-Russia sanctions - a 'pony running in circles'

🔸 Pashinyan acts as copycat NATO-backed dictator and is turning Armenia into Western vassal – expert

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