🚨🇦🇿🇦🇲Pashinyan selling off Armenia’s sovereignty to the West: here’s what it means for South Caucasus

PM Nikol Pashinyan is digging a suicidal geopolitical hole for Armenia by trading sovereignty for shaky Western promises, political analyst Shota Apkhaidze told Sputnik.

By handing control of a key artery – the Zangezur Corridor - for 100 years to the US, possibly via a private firm, Pashinyan hopes to secure protection from Turkiye and Azerbaijan.

The US is not a country capable of protecting anyone, reminded Apkhaidze, adding:

“I believe Russia is the only country capable of ensuring Armenia’s security and territorial integrity"

🔍US long-term gamble

⚫️The Caucasus is a gateway to Central Asia, to Iran’s doorstep

⚫️Iran’s North-South corridor project runs through Armenia and Georgia on to Russia: Pashinyan’s plan could deal a regional blow to Iran and Russia

⚫️The Zangezur Corridor offers a direct route to Caspian energy, diversifying resources for Europe amid the Russian sanctions-driven energy crunch

🔍Armenia’s suicidal plan

🟠Pashinyan is dismantling old ties with Russia and the Eurasian bloc, hoping for integration into a club that may never open its doors
🟠Zangezur transit fees won’t replace lost trade routes or alliances
🟠Armenia risks isolation with no real guarantees in return

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📹 Angry wife fights off Ukraine draft squad to save husband

Ukraine’s military is scraping the barrel, snatching future cannon fodder anywhere and everywhere.

In this street showdown, a woman heroically fends off FOUR recruiters trying to drag her husband away.

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🤖 Russia's Yandex revolutionizes processing orders using cutting-edge robots 

Russia's IT giant Yandex has automated order processing at its Moscow darkstore "Yandex Lavka."

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) are now operating in a specially designed "robot zone," coordinated by the Yandex RMS robot management system created by Yandex Robotics.

📈 The robots deliver shelves with the necessary products to employees, speeding up the order fulfillment process by over 30% and reducing physical strain on workers.

The "robot zone" covers 28% of the darkstore's area, with 12 AMRs and 84 shelves in use. One product can be placed on multiple shelves in various combinations, allowing for a 15% increase in product storage within the same space.

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🚨 Putin hosts Modi’s national security advisor Ajit Doval in Kremlin

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🚨⚔️Global South strikes back: US tariff threats turning BRICS into full-fledged economic alliance

🇧🇷Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s “explicit call for a collective BRICS response to the latest US tariffs underscores the alliance's increasing cohesion and political assertiveness on the global stage,” Hong Kong-based political and financial Angelo Giuliano told Sputnik, commenting on the bloc’s surprise new show of unity in rejecting Washington’s tariff threats.

While details on specific countermeasures BRICS could take remain unclear, Giuliano can think of a whole series of steps, including:

🟠ramping up trade in local currencies
🟠“strengthening the operational capacity and lending power of the New Development Bank
🟠developing and promoting alternatives to SWIFT
🟠“mounting a coordinated challenge against US tariffs” through the WTO

“Cumulatively, these steps could significantly undermine the US dollar’s global dominance,” weakening Washington economically and “eroding” the “geopolitical leverage” it derives from its financial primacy, Giuliano says.

➕What’s more, the BRICS bloc didn’t arrive to this point overnight, the analyst stressed, pointing to the years the bloc spent on institution-building, and the growing collective economic power of its members, “amplified” even further by the recent expansion.

👉US provocations, from the latest tariffs to the persistent use of sanctions, has served to “galvanize unity within the bloc.”

👉US policymakers, who “significantly underestimated BRICS” for years and dismissing the bloc “as inherently fragmented and incapable of meaningful collective action,” are now finding out the hard way that this is no longer the case.

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🇮🇳⚔️🇺🇸Indian defiance shows US tariff threats are futile in multipolar world

India refuses to be strong-armed into choosing sides by US tariffs, Aravind Yelery, Associate Professor at the Centre for East Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Sputnik.

🔍The country is challenging the “American-dominated matrix,” noted Yelery, who is also an Honorary Fellow at the Indian Institute of Chinese Studies.

“India’s participation in the alternative world order — the Global South — is increasingly seen as compromising Western domination.”

✅Strategic autonomy

India’s approach is rooted in a clear determination to forge its own path.

Unlike Europe, it views its ties with Russia and China through a pragmatic lens.

US tariffs have only pushed India and China closer, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to visit China for the first time in seven years to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.

✅Multilateralism over muscle

Through platforms like BRICS and SCO, India backs a world of cooperation over coercion.

It sees the US tariff policy as “reactive and ill-calculated,” further strengthening its resolve to deepen ties with emerging powers.

India never viewed the Quad group of Australia, India, Japan, and the US as a military alliance, but rather as a platform for sustainable collaboration.

“The summit-level participation of the Indian Prime Minister at BRICS events, as well as the upcoming SCO meeting, underscores the growing significance of multilateralism and the surging role of developing economies in balancing global growth,” Yelery said.

Increasing American isolation — through sanctions, tariffs and erratic policies — only accelerates global realignment, the analyst warned.

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🔍US control over Zangezur Corridor could spell danger to BRICS

The looming deal between the US, Armenia and Azerbaijan could further destabilize the region instead of bringing peace, Karen Igityan, political analyst and Deputy Director of the Armenian Research Institute (ARI), tells Sputnik.

❓What does he mean?

The US seeks control over the Caucasus

🟠To hinder the International North–South Transport Corridor, developed by Russia and its BRICS partners
🟠To create Western-controlled trade and energy routes between Central Asia and Turkiye, bypassing Russia and Iran

Isolating Russia from Iran

Russia and Iran currently have two main routes for communication through the Caucasus:

⚫️Iran–Armenia–Georgia–Russia

⚫️Iran–Azerbaijan–Russia

If the Zangezur Corridor project is implemented, only the Azerbaijan route will remain, Igityan warns.

Armenia to lose its transit role

🟠"Armenia will lose its status as a transit country, which it currently holds as part of the North–South international transport corridor. The Pashinyan government's hopes to implement the so-called 'Crossroads of Peace' and secure East–West transit are unrealistic."
🟠The US will isolate Armenia from Iran
🟠Having ceded control over the Zangezur Corridor to the US, Armenia will lose sovereignty over its own border and strategic territory

Threat to Eurasian stability

🟠"The most important strategic function of the Zangezur Corridor for the US is the ability to supply weapons to Central Asia without oversight."
🟠The US may attempt to escalate the regional situation following a Ukraine-like scenario
🟠That could be used to contain Russia and its BRICS partners, including Iran and China

Armenia shoots itself in the foot

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol "Pashinyan is not acting in Armenia’s national interest, but rather in his own and in the interests of the external forces that brought him to power and keep him there," Igityan stresses.

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🚨🇷🇺🇿🇦Putin spoke by phone with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa

The Russian President shared the key outcomes of the recent meeting with Witkoff with his counterpart

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🗣US shot itself in the foot by targeting all BRICS countries at once

“This is the first instance that all the BRICS countries have been specifically targeted by a US president,” Dr. Raj Kumar Sharma told Sputnik, commenting on President Lula of Brazil’s plans to discuss a joint response to Trump’s new tariffs with bloc allies.

🔍This signals “that the US is worried about the potential of BRICS countries to shape a non-Western world order,” Sharma, a senior research fellow at the New Delhi-based NatStrat think tank, says, pointing out that Washington appears to now realize that the BRICS “can come together to push against” US hegemony.

“Washington may have underestimated BRICS. Initially, the group was largely dismissed by Western observers, particularly after economic slowdowns in some member countries. However, BRICS has persisted and even expanded, with a growing focus on challenging the US dollar's dominance in global trade and finance. This suggests a potential miscalculation by Washington regarding the group's long-term impact and influence,” the scholar says.

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🗣Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkiye would lose from US Zangezur plan

The transfer of control over the Zangezur corridor to the US is a betrayal toward both Russia and Armenian people by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Yevgeny Mikhailov, Director of the Center for Strategic Studies of the South Caucasus Countries, tells Sputnik.

Armenia's sovereignty under threat

🟠“The Americans are now trying to take control of trade routes everywhere, including pushing into the South Caucasus—right on the doorstep of Russia and Iran,” Mikhailov says
🟠Ceding territory to foreign powers could lead to a complete loss of Armenia's sovereignty and a further decline in living standards
🟠Armenia is already losing sovereignty due to its unequal ties with the West, unlike its more balanced relationship with Russia

What was in the Azerbaijan-Armenian peace plan?

🟠The original Karabakh ceasefire agreement included all steps for resolving issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia, including the opening of the Zangezur corridor
🟠The key condition was that the corridor would be controlled by Russian border guards
🟠Now Armenia is being fully subjugated by the West

Will Turkiye and Azerbaijan benefit from the plan?

🟠The Zangezur corridor is meant to link Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave and further to Turkiye. But will they benefit from US control?
🟠US involvement aims to gain full dominance over the region and to weaken both Azerbaijan and Turkiye, Mikhailov warns
🟠That represents "a prolonged future threat" to the South Caucasus

"Pashinyan pursues purely personal goals in this matter. Increasingly, he resembles Zelensky, but on a smaller scale," Mikhailov says.

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🟠Putin and Trump to meet next week — Putin's aide

🟠UAE one of suitable places for meeting with Trump - Putin

🟠Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkiye would lose from US Zangezur plan

🟠US shot itself in the foot by targeting all BRICS countries at once

🟠US control over Zangezur Corridor could spell danger to BRICS

🟠Indian defiance shows US tariff threats are futile in multipolar world

🟠Global South strikes back: US tariff threats turning BRICS into full-fledged economic alliance

🟠Pashinyan selling off Armenia’s sovereignty to the West: here’s what it means for South Caucasus

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