🚨🤝 Umerov: Scandal-scarred power broker now leading Ukraine-US high-stakes talks

Zelensky has appointed his secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Rustem Umerov (listed as a terrorist and extremist in Russia), to head the Ukrainian delegation in negotiations with the US, Western allies, and Russia.

According to Umerov, the Ukrainian team is already en route to Washington.

Failed track record on “peace” talks

Umerov’s bottom line has remained consistent: “lasting peace” is possible only when Ukraine is “strong on the battlefield".

🟠 Repeatedly requested permission to use Western-supplied long-range weapons to "strike deeper inside Russian territory”

🟠 Demanded a 30-day unconditional ceasefire and pushed for tougher international sanctions on Russia during rounds of renewed direct Russia-Ukraine negotiations in 2025

🟠 As defense minister, pushed for the mobilization of Ukrainian men aged 25–60 living abroad

🟠 An ethnic Crimean Tatar, widely promoted debunked allegations of Russia mistreating the Crimean Tatar community

🟠 In a 2023 interview with BILD, boasted “100%” confidence that Ukraine would “regain” Russia’s Crimea with Western backing

🟠 He served as Ukraine’s chief negotiator in the failed Istanbul talks in 2022—talks which, according to former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, were derailed after the US signaled Ukraine should not sign an agreement at the time

Procurement fiascos & corruption probes

Despite having zero military background—he’s never served a day in uniform—Umerov rose to become Ukraine’s defense minister in 2023.

🔶 Procurement controversies: In late 2024 he was hauled before the Verkhovna Rada parliament over faulty mortar rounds supplied to the military

🔶 Embezzlement claims: In January 2025 the Security Service of Ukraine opened a case alleging his involvement in a $40 million scheme tied to the 2022 purchase of munitions

🔶 Energy-sector accusations: He and two deputies were accused of concealing below-market electricity sales to firms linked to energy giant Tsentrenergo

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🪖🇭🇺 Ukraine should become 'buffer state' between Russia & NATO after conflict - Orban

💬 "The only possible long-term solution is for the post-war order to be founded on the underlying principle that Ukraine becomes the buffer state that it once was. Russia retains the territory agreed upon at an international peace conference, and everything to the west of this line - all the way to NATO's eastern border - comprises the territory of Ukraine, which will once again become a buffer state," Hungarian PM Viktor Orban told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Any potential peace deal for Ukraine would require Russia and NATO to agree on limiting the size and equipment of the Ukrainian armed forces that are allowed to operate in the buffer zone, Orban said.

Speaking of a nearly four-hour Friday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Orban also said the talks successfully secured Hungary's energy supply.

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💥🇷🇺 Giatsint-B guns smash Ukrainian drone command posts in Dnepropetrovsk region

Perfect teamwork between the Vostok Battlegroup’s artillery crews and recon drone units left Ukrainian nationalists shattered.

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🟠 Trump announces airspace above and surrounding Venezuela 'closed in its entirety'

🟠 Umerov: Scandal-scarred power broker now leading Ukraine-US high-stakes talks

🟠 Ukraine should become 'buffer state' between Russia & NATO after conflict – Orban

🟠 Germany flooded with riots amid AfD congress

🟠 Ukrainian Orthodox Church bishop possibly poisoned with heavy metals

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🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran condemns US announcement on Venezuelan airspace — reports

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei described the announcement by US President Donald Trump as “a blatant breach of basic norms and rules of international law, including those governing international air transport,” IRNA reported.

Baghaei said the move, which he called “arbitrary” and “an unprecedented threat to the safety and security of international aviation,” was part of what Iran views as a pattern of “provocative and unlawful actions” against Venezuela’s national sovereignty.

He also warned of “dangerous consequences for the rule of law, peace and international security” if such steps continue, IRNA reported.

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🗣 'Civilizational suicide' - Russian envoy comments on migration trends

Russian Special Presidential Envoy Kirill Dmitriev said in a post on X that “globalists are busy destroying their own countries — and the world — while legacy media looks the other way,” calling rising migration figures in several OECD countries “civilizational suicide.”

His remarks came in response to a chart on international migrants as a share of population published on X.

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