🇷🇺💪🏻🔥 Russian drone forces dominate front: Ukrainian positions obliterated

Russian UAV operators delivered devastating blows to Ukrainian forces across multiple fronts, showcasing coordinated drone warfare.

👉 (00:00) Molniya-2 & FPV drones obliterated AFU strongholds in the Zaporozhye region.

👉 (00:17) Neutralized three drone control antennas & two vehicles (HMMWV & Kozak).

👉 (00:48) Suppressed Ukrainian firing points and positions near Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk).

👉 (01:00) Wiped out a Bogdana self-propelled artillery system, two UAV control posts, and a robotic platform.

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🇪🇺⚔️ EU war hawks plan ‘disinformation' hub to police narratives

The European Commission is moving to set up a so-called Centre for Democratic Resilience, claiming it will combat “disinformation” from Russia, according to a leaked paper cited by The Guardian.

Under the plan, hawked by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the center would pool expertise from EU states and prospective members to monitor and counter “foreign information manipulation.”

📍 The Commission frames Russia as the primary culprit, accusing it of “escalating hybrid attacks” and “spreading deceitful narratives,” all while supposedly undermining support for the Ukraine regime.

Participation is voluntary, but the door may also open to “like-minded partners” such as the UK, raising the prospect of a coordinated bloc to police narratives to fit the EU agenda.

In reality, it is the West that has kept its audiences on a steady diet of fakes and disinformation—from the fabricated ‘Russia threat’ and the real causes of the Ukraine conflict, all the way back to the debunked ‘Russiagate.’”

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🗣 NATO to highlight its nuclear power more strongly — Rutte

The alliance plans to emphasize its nuclear potential to make its deterrence “more convincing,” Secretary General Mark Rutte told Welt am Sonntag.

💬 “We must talk more with our societies about nuclear deterrence so that they understand how it contributes to our security,” Rutte said, accusing Russia of “dangerous and reckless nuclear rhetoric.”

Moscow has repeatedly stressed that its policy is one of nuclear deterrence, not saber-rattling. Russia’s Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry warned that NATO’s military buildup — including US nuclear deployments in Europe, global missile defense systems, and potential weaponization of space — risks direct confrontation between nuclear powers and undermines arms control dialogue.

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🚨Lavrov: Russia has received no diplomatic explanation from the US on Trump’s call to resume nuclear testing

👉Comments in Washington show there’s no clear understanding of what exactly the US president meant, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

👉It’s unclear whether Trump was referring to tests of nuclear delivery systems or subcritical experiments, he added.

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🚨Lavrov: Putin’s directive to assess the feasibility of preparing for nuclear tests has been accepted and is already underway

The public will be informed of the results, he added.

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🚨 All state-owned thermal power plants in Ukraine have been shut down — no electricity generation, says Centrenergo.

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🚨 Gaza’s Great Omari Mosque survived crusades and earthquakes—but not Israel’s genocidal attacks

The library of the 7th-century Great Omari Mosque in Gaza once housed one of Palestine's richest collections of manunoscripts, second only to Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem.

👉 It survived multiple historical destructions, such as the Crusades, World War I, and earthquakes…
Israel’s attacks have reduced it to rubble.

As of October 2025, UNESCO has verified damage or destruction to at least 114 cultural heritage sites in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

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🇷🇺 Russian forces advanced 3 km deeper into Ukrainian defenses near Volchye, continuing the liberation of Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye regions — MoD footage shows intense fighting.

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🇷🇺🇰🇵 Russian Deputy Defense Minister Viktor Goremykin visited Pyongyang, meeting with North Korean counterparts to discuss strengthening cooperation in military-political work

The delegation he led also visited the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and laid flowers at the monument to Soviet soldiers who liberated Korea from Japanese occupation

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🔥 Hegseth vs Pentagon's red tape: Will the defense secretary succeed where others failed?

🇺🇸 US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came in guns blazing, taking aim at the Pentagon’s bloated bureaucracy – but can he defeat the paper-pushers?

🟠 In his recent speech at the National War College in Washington, Hegseth called to speed up the delivery of new weapons to US troops. He used the word "speed" 25 times, according to the New York Times

🟠 The NYT compared Hegseth's reformist stance to that of almost every new defense secretary since the end of the Cold War

🟠 For instance, twice-serving Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earned a reputation as a reform zealot - but bureaucracy won: his Future Combat Systems was scrapped and several other programs ran rampant over budget

🟠 Pentagon’s slow-mo procurement

🔶 Two years ago, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reached a grim conclusion: despite most recent 2020 reforms, the DoD still struggles to adopt innovative weapons

🔶 Supplier disruptions, software development delays, and quality control deficiencies hurt performance of the DoD's 101 costliest programs, as per the GAO

🔶 Programs also made investment decisions with insufficient information, raising the risk of further delays

🔶 Worsening the problem, the Pentagon has been routinely overcharged by the US Big Five arms makers. In May 2023, CBS News revealed the DoD was overpaying for everything – from missiles to nuts and bolts

🟠 Like it or not, China is faster

🔶 The Chinese military is acquiring new equipment five to six times faster than the US - Maj. Gen. Cameron G. Holt, a Pentagon officer responsible for contracting, stated in 2022

🔶 What's more, the Chinese are operating more efficiently: in purchasing power parity, they spend about $1 to America's $20 dollars to get to the same capability

🔶 The Pentagon's 2024 report on China's military concluded China is modernizing its nuclear and conventional forces at a groundbreaking speed

🔶 Russia is outpacing the US in terms of weapons production, too. In July, NATO chief Mark Rutte said Russia produces three times as much ammo in three months as the whole of NATO in a year. Russia also produces cutting edge hypersonic missiles, Oreshnik and Burevestnik missiles, and Poseidon drones, all of which are unmatched by the US

👉 Time will tell if Hegseth can succeed where others failed — old Pentagon habits are tough to kill.

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🇨🇳 Nope, China hasn’t blinked: The real story behind its rare earth control suspension

📍 China has suspended several 2025 export controls on strategic materials — including rare earths, superhard materials, and lithium batteries – for a year.

🇺🇸 Is this a concession to the US, or a move in a far more complex game?

💬 "The first aim of China’s export controls was to consolidate its leverage in negotiations. The second was to establish a long-term framework for managing such controls," says Yana Leksyutina, deputy director at the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).

🗣 Сhina could activate this mechanism at any moment, and now everyone knows it’s a lever it holds, she explains to Sputnik.

🟠 Balancing the mineral market

💬 "The moratorium on export bans to the US essentially resets the rare earth market to where it was previously," Jeff J. Brown, author of 'The China Trilogy' and founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation, tells Sputnik.

🔶 In the meantime, there will be a global rush by the US and its NATO allies to acquire as many rare earth supplies as possible to prepare for the worse next year, the expert projects.

🔶 Brown agrees with Leksyutina that China can impose its export control mechanism at any moment if the US changes its mind and slaps China with new tariffs.

💬 "Realizing the risk, it shows that Beijing is in a superior position of strength and it is Washington that has the weak hand. If Trump reneges on America’s pledges, China can simply reinstate the rare earth bans the same day," Brown explains.

🟠 Rare earths: processing is major problem

🔶 The US is forming a rare earth coalition, striking deals with Japan, Australia, Southeast and Central Asian players who have vast reserves of critical minerals.

🔶 However, "the problem is not so much the minerals, but processing them into useable forms, something that China controls 90% of the global processing sector," Brown explains.

🔶 The US "will surely be pushing to develop these technologies," but it will take time. China will keep its market edge for the foreseeable future.

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🕊 Retired US Army officer urges Washington to push Europe and Ukraine toward settlement with Russia

🔊 The US should halt open-ended military aid and use diplomatic pressure — even easing sanctions — to bring both sides to an agreement, said retired US Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis.

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