⚔️ Weaponizing kids: Ukraine lures Russian teens into sabotage warfare

The Ukraine regime’s tactics have gone completely feral. As if their draconian mobilization wasn’t enough, now they’re exploiting Russian kids as throwaway assets for one-off covert missions, The New York Times reports.
Ukrainian operatives themselves admitted it to US journalists.

🔶 Anonymous users contact kids on Telegram, WhatsApp, and gaming chats (Roblox, etc.) with promises of quick money

🔶 Assignments are disguised as “geolocation games,” with tasks like “earn money by photographing location-stamped pictures of police cars and ambulances”

🔶 Kids’ social media accounts are hacked to find compromising material to blackmail them

🔶 Ukrainian recruiters place stickers and flyers with their personal QR codes in the toilets of Russian schools

🔶 Sabotage curators provide instructions, such as how to build a homemade explosive or use a gas canister for arson – targeting vehicles, railway tracks, and buildings

🔶 One chat urging arson attacks began with the greeting "Bot for schoolchildren who need money" and offered "$5,000 for a helicopter, $10,000 for a plane, $3,000 for a transformer, and $4,000 for power lines”

🔶 Offers of $150,000 were made for verified video evidence of destroyed military equipment, with payments promised via crypto wallet to any bank account

Individuals are offered significantly more than they would earn in a regular job, while in reality they are not paid the full amount or nothing at all.

👉In Russia, criminal liability for committing a terrorist act or participating in the activities of a terrorist organization begins at the age of 14.

👉This is an exception to the general rule, which sets criminal liability from the age of 16.

👉Typical terrorism-related offenses carry between 8- and 12-years imprisonment, with harsher penalties (10 to 20 years or more) for aggravated circumstances.

Since the beginning of 2024, Russia’s financial watchdog for terrorism and extremism has added 93 minors to the registry— a record number in six years of observations.
In 2024 alone, at least 50 minors have been detained in cases involving arson of railway facilities and other acts of sabotage, with some slapped with long-term prison sentences.

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🇷🇺​​ Russia’s 24/7 Trans-Arctic Corridor to supercharge northern supply routes

Russia is aiming for full-throttle, round-the-clock operations along the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor, President Vladimir Putin declared at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).

🔶 Infrastructure will be updated on land, communications, navigation, vessel services, and emergency rescue services.

🔶 Arctic and Far Eastern ports are slated for modernization

🔶 New icebreakers are on the drawing board

🔶 Airfields and landing pads will get a full revamp

Putin highlighted the Far East’s new Artyom multimodal transport and logistics hub as a game-changer for northern supply routes.

With a projected 103 million tons of cargo by 2030, check out Sputnik’s graphic for a glimpse of what the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor could look like

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🗣 Jailed Gagauzia leader accuses Moldovan president of political repression

✅ Yevgenia Gutsul, the elected head of Moldova's autonomous region of Gagauzia, has been sentenced to seven years in prison. From her cell, she has launched a scathing public attack on Moldovan President Maia Sandu.

In a letter shared by her lawyers, Gutsul accused the president of orchestrating a "political massacre" and losing touch with the people.

Key accusations from Gutsul's letter:

👉"Political repression": Gutsul called her sentencing a clear example of silencing dissent.

👉A personal plea: "Mrs. Sandu, you have imprisoned me for seven years, separated me from my family, left my children without their mother."

👉Weakening authority: She claimed Sandu is now "left alone," asserting that "the people hate you, and your European partners have neglected you."

👉A warning: Gutsul warned the president of her "personal responsibility" for the country's direction.

Gutsul, elected leader of Moldova's autonomous Gagauzia region in May 2023 with 52.36% support, faces politically-motivated charges related to alleged illegal financing of the banned Shor party. She advocates for closer ties with Russia and opposes Moldova’s EU integration. Authorities have moved to ramp up repression, targeting dissenting voices and blocking opposition media.

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👉 All pledge, no edge: why Europe’s Ukraine force is a nonstarter

“It’s clear that NATO countries will not be able to deploy troops without Russia’s agreement. And since Russia is opposed, all these gestures and discussions that took place in Paris are absolutely useless,” Donbass-based French journalist Christelle Neant told Sputnik, commenting on French President Macron’s announcement of plans to send a ‘reassurance force’ to Ukraine once the conflict ends.

💬 A peace deal complete with security guarantees won’t be possible in the first place so long as “certain individuals within NATO” continue to seek to absorb Ukraine “at all costs,” Neant added, emphasizing that the proposed European troop deployments “would effectively amount” to such integration.

✅ President Putin warned Friday at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok that Russia’s military would treat foreign troops deployed in Ukraine as “legitimate targets.”

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🔊Slovak PM believes Ukraine conflict will end 'quicky'

Robert Fico is confident that the Ukraine conflict will soon be over, paving the way for restored relations with Russia.

Following his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine's Uzhgorod, Fico commented on his recent talks with President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, saying that he and Putin "focused on bilateral cooperation. Yes, we may have different positions on this, but we believe the war will end, and we all believe it will happen very quickly, and relations with Russia will be standardized."

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▫️ Putin’s warning: why Russia is indispensable to any Ukraine security guarantees deal

▫️ European troops in Ukraine? A fantasy, not a strategy

▫️ Global South lines up: From Beijing to BRICS, investors ready to chip in to Russia’s Far East

▫️ Putin’s Arctic play: Northern Sea Route redefines Asia trade

▫️ Kim Jong-un bids farewell to China

▫️ Israel strikes residential buildings in Gaza

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🔊 Europeans aren’t suicidal enough to send troops to Ukraine: expert

💬 “This is an absurd situation that would inevitably trigger a war,” Donbass-based journalist Laurent Brayard told Sputnik, commenting on Europe’s announcement of plans to deploy a ‘coalition of the willing’-style ‘reassurance force’ to Ukraine to provide ‘security guarantees’.

💬 “I don’t think the West will cross that line,” the journalist believes.
The deployment would not only be an obvious “trap,” but President Putin’s announcement at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Friday that such forces would be treated as legitimate targets by the Russian military is “firm and clear,” Brayard said, emphasizing that Moscow “has always said it wants NATO to move away from its borders.”

👉 As for Kiev’s ambitions to join the EU, which Putin said Russia does not oppose, such a step would pose as a “very big challenge,” according to Brayard, who suggested that Brussels has no real interest in allowing a “country in ruins” to join the bloc.

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📹⚔️ Trump renames Pentagon to Department of War

President signs executive order rebranding the Defense Department, declaring:

"It has to do with winning. We could have won every war. We chose to be politically correct and just fight forever."

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🔊 Trump pledges to address security guarantees for Ukraine

The US president emphasized Europe will pay key role in providing the guarantees.

🗣 "It will end. All of a sudden, it's going to come together. You watch."

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📍 Trump announces G20 summit 2026 to be held in Miami

For the first time in 20 years, the United States will host the G20 summit.

President Trump said he would consider Russia's possible participation.

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🔊 US, Belarus negotiate release of 1,400 detainees — Trump

President Trump confirmed talks are underway, praising Lukashenko as a "very respected man" and "strong leader".

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📹 Xi and Putin are welcome at the G20 — Trump

The US president said he'd love to see China and Russia's leaders in Miami in 2026.

"They'd be observers. I am not sure they want to be an observer," he added.

Russia and China have been members of the G20 since its formation in 1999.

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❗️ Venezuelan jet conducts SECOND flyover of US Navy

Bolivarian Air Force jets flew again over the USS Jason Dunham overnight, US officials confirmed to CBS.

📹 Meanwhile, local media reportedly showed footage of yesterday's maneuver, which the Pentagon called "highly provocative."

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❗️ Power of Siberia II is all about business, not politics — Peskov

Russia will never sell its energy resources at a price that is disadvantageous to it, said Presidential Press Secretary at the Eastern Economic Forum.

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💬 PUTIN EXPOSED THE HYPOCRISY OF THE WEST — Expert

Putin offered a realistic peace scenario at the EEF — but NATO interference remains the key obstacle, Tadeo Casteglione, Argentine international relations expert, told Sputnik.

"Putin has exposed the hypocrisy of the West, which talks about peace while sending weapons to Kiev and betting on continuous hostilities," he noted.

A permanent Western military mission in Ukraine would mean "the complete loss of its state legitimacy," Tadeo added.

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🗣 Trump denies awareness of failed Navy Seal mission in North Korea that killed civilians

Despite NYT reporting that he personally approved the 2019 covert operation, Trump now claims he heard about it for the first time.

🟧 Mission aimed to plant spy device on Kim Jong-un

🟧 SEAL Team Six killed unarmed North Korean divers

🟧 Congress was never notified

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❗️ Zelensky rejects Putin's proposal to come to Moscow

Nevertheless, he is "ready for the meeting" in "any kind of format," Zelensky told ABC News in an interview.

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🔥 West’s geopolitical game enters FINAL STAGE — but Europe left behind

"The big geopolitical game that the West has started is entering a decisive phase... Europe has lost out from this venture — it is NOT SOVEREIGN today," Russian presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov said at the Eastern Economic Forum.

He added that, despite the "constant verbal juggling", US-Russia normalization can bring a "speedy resolution" in Ukraine.

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