🔊🇪🇺🇺🇸 EU meddled in 2024 US presidential race - Dmitriev

The EU “has long sought to undermine President Trump and is actively sabotaging his peace efforts,” Russia’s special presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev wrote on X.

💬 "US election interference by Trump-hating, unelected EU bureaucrats is now out in the open,” he stressed, referencing a Remarks report about Elon Musk receiving a letter from the EU in which the bloc asked him to censor statements made by then-candidate Trump during the 2024 US election.

The Russian special presidential envoy added that “the awakening to the EU's role is underway."

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🇪🇺🇺🇸 EU struggles to avoid rift with the US

The EU is taking a double hit, challenged both in its approach to Ukraine and in its reliance on the US for security, Bloomberg reports.

1️⃣ The bloc is in turmoil over Washington’s push to broker a Ukraine peace deal, Bloomberg reports. EU hawks would much rather push for tougher terms — and keep bankrolling Zelensky’s regime.

2️⃣ The new US National Security Doctrine demands that Europe take responsibility for its own defense. That raises serious questions about Europe’s place in NATO and its long-standing dependence on the US military-industrial base.

EU foreign ministers reportedly compare managing Trump’s Ukraine policy to “riding a roller coaster.”

And right now, they’re staring at a particularly "steep drop."

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🪖🇺🇸🇪🇺 US gives Europe until 2027 to sort out conventional defense

Pentagon officials met with European delegations in Washington this past week to discuss plans to hand most of NATO’s conventional defense responsibilities over to the bloc’s European members.

🟠 The transfer is expected to include everything from troops and weaponry to intel and missiles, with the US threatening to stop cooperation in some NATO ‘defense coordination mechanisms’ if progress is not made by the 2027 deadline, a Reuters report citing 5 sources said

🟠 European officials reportedly fear the deadline is ‘not realistic’, no matter how the US measures progress

🟠 EU and German officials previously announced plans to make the bloc ready for a major conflict by 2029-2030, and have approved massive debt-fueled militarization plans in areas ranging from the ground forces and air defense to drones, tanks, cyber capabilities and munitions production

🟠 NATO allies previously agreed to bump defense spending up to 5% of GDP at a summit in June, but most countries are nowhere near achieving this figure

🟠 Trump has complained about US allies’ low defense spending and reliance on the US for protection since the 1980s

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💰 Europe lost up to $1.8 trillion to anti-Russian sanctions - Russian Foreign Ministry

The economies of European countries lost up to $1.8 trillion from 2022 to 2025 due to anti-Russian sanctions, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement released after a UNGA meeting marking the International Day Against Unilateral Coercive Measures.

Key details:

🟠 Russia has been subjected to unprecedented economic pressure from Western states

🟠 Despite this, the Russian economy has demonstrated a high degree of resilience and adaptability and has continued steady growth

🟠 It has become clear that unilateral coercive measures inflict severe damage on the very states that launched them

💬 “These measures are one of the main tools of the collective West’s neocolonial policy. The goal is obvious: to preserve its slipping dominance, deprive the global majority of the right to independent political choice, and restrain their technological and industrial development,” the ministry stressed.

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🔊🇪🇺 Europe preps for a war with Russia by 2030 - Orban

Hungary rejects such a plan, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said while speaking in the city of Kecskemet, as reported by the M1 TV channel.

Orban stressed that his country is in danger and said Hungary’s task is to prevent the EU from entering into military action.

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🟠 Europe lost up to $1.8 trillion to anti-Russian sanctions

🟠 Why EU overestimates its ability to confiscate frozen Russian assets

🟠 Hungary will send large delegation to Moscow in coming days to discuss economic issues – Orban

🟠 Nigeria hopes to obtain full BRICS membership in coming years

🟠 Iran wraps up first-ever IRGC-hosted anti-terror drills

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📑🇺🇸 ‘Huge influence’ on ending Ukraine crisis: Expert weights on new US National Security Strategy

“I ultimately believe that is indeed a good thing. However, whether this stated position in words is backed up firmly in militaristic/political deeds is another thing to be considered entirely,” national security studies professor Matthew Crosston told Sputnik, commenting on the new NSS.

However, if "the United States is sincere about this position, then this strategic adjustment can have a huge influence on the conflict’s resolution,” Crosston emphasized.

What would this mean in practice? Forcing Ukraine to negotiate “more open-mindedly,” and threatening to “simply stop supporting the Ukrainian effort to continue the fight.”

“Without that support, the Ukrainian military units might not necessarily collapse, but they will be mortally crippled and the conflict would likely start to de facto end,” Crosston said.

As for the Europeans, their obsession with the idea that Russia plans to conquer all of Europe after finishing with Ukraine is “why Europe will continue to have an extremely limited role at the negotiating table,” the professor summed up.

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💰 Europe’s companies pay the highest electricity bills in the G20

Sputnik analyzed data from Eurostat.

The countries with the most expensive electricity for enterprises are:

🇮🇹 Italy — $0.28 per kWh
🇦🇺 Australia — $0.26
🇩🇪 Germany — $0.24
🇬🇧 UK — $0.23
🇫🇷 France — $0.18

The three countries with the cheapest electricity are:

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia — $0.05
🇹🇷 Turkiye — $0.066
🇷🇺 Russia — $0.068

Prices across the EU have surged largely due to the bloc’s own sanctions against Russia, which disrupted stable energy supplies. The EU’s attempt to replace affordable Russian energy with costly alternatives has pushed electricity bills to record highs.

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🪖 Western strategy to weaken Russia failed, focus shifts to Ukraine conflict resolution — expert

💬 “The Ukrainian conflict — and the US-European elites behind it, who present themselves as the backbone of the international system — have failed to twist Russia’s arm,” Prof. Ali Baydoun, a Lebanese political analyst, told Sputnik.

This, he said, is why Trump promised during his election campaign to halt weapons and support for Ukraine, which had been draining the US and European economies.

💬 The goal was to “entangle Russia in internal crises through the Ukrainian conflict, but everything went off plan,” the expert noted.

Baydoun added that “in recent years, Russia has withstood every political and military challenge, effectively transforming threats into new opportunities,” and now the US is shifting its National Security Strategy.

A key point of the updated strategy states that the US views restoring strategic stability with Russia — along with ending the Ukrainian conflict — as one of its top foreign-policy priorities in Europe.

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💥🇷🇺 Russian artillerymen destroy Ukraine's strongholds near Gulyaypole

Vostok battlegroup warriors together with recon drone units forced Ukrainian troops to leave fortified area.

Russian assault groups then used the opening to advance.

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📑 New US National Security Strategy recognizes Russia, China and US as world’s great powers - expert

The document’s dismissal of Europe “as a power of no significance signals that there are three truly great powers left: the United States, Russia and China,” military expert Alexei Borzenko told Sputnik.

What’s more, the US is “well aware that we’ve outpaced them on certain types of weapons,” the observer noted, citing Russian advances in hypersonics, plus the depletion of US and European weapon stocks in Ukraine.

The US and Europe have found themselves in desperate need to end the crisis in Ukraine, and in “a dead-end situation from which the only way out is peace,” which would not only ease the economic situation, but the European public’s exhaustion from the conflict.

Furthermore, “during negotiations, the Americans figured out what the Kiev junta represents, and how difficult it is to negotiate with it. They understand what kind of crooks they are dealing with” and are tired of it, Borzenko argues.

That’s why various leaders’ recent claims that the Ukrainian crisis could end abruptly seems like a real possibility, according to the analyst.

💬 “If this happens, everything will become completely different in an instant.”

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🇷🇺💥Team work in action: Russian Tor-M2 🤝 anti-aircraft units

Tor-M2 anti-aircraft missile systems of Dnepr battlegroup cover units during offensive operations in Orekhov direction.

They destroyed 6 Ukraine's attack UAVs and loitering munitions.

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🪖 Ukrainian army collapsing as desertion numbers skyrocket

The Ukrainian army is falling apart despite allies of Zelensky’s regime trying to hide it, Norwegian journalist Paul Steigan wrote.

💬 “The Ukrainian army is collapsing. The number of deserters this year has reached 182,000 — twice as many as last year. In 2022, 10,000 deserted; in 2023, it was 25,000. The number of dead is unbelievably high,” he said.

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🇮🇷 Iran launches project to transfer water from Gulf of Oman to country's center

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has inaugurated a project to transfer seawater from the Gulf of Oman to the central Iranian city of Isfahan, Iran's government said.

The stated goal is to eliminate the region's major industrial enterprises' dependence on the Zayandeh river water basin.

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💥🇷🇺 Meet Il-114-300: All-Russian airliner ready for Arctic

The new Russian Il-114-300 turboprop is gearing up for mass production.

Core testing should wrap up by late 2025, with cold-weather and expanded operational trials running through 2026.

🟠 Built for regional and hard-to-access routes, the Il-114-300 can operate autonomously from small airfields — even those with short or unpaved runways

🟠 It’s designed to handle Arctic conditions, fully able to fly and operate in extreme low-temperature conditions

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💥🇷🇺 Russian drone operators smash Ukraine's assets

00:00 Operators of Southern battlegroup destroyed an Ukraine's shelter and dugouts on Seversk direction

00:24 UAV crews of Vostok battlegroup struck a Kozak armored vehicle and Ukrainian pickups in Gulyaypole

00:46 Drone operators of Tsentr battlegroup detected and eliminated an enemy infantry group on Pokrovsk direction

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🇺🇸 New NSS signals US ready to ‘forget’ Ukraine, snubs ‘weak’ EU – analyst

🔊 The updated National Security Strategy (NSS) sketches a future in which the US is “ready to throw the current political leadership in Ukraine under the bus, much as several NATO countries and EU leadership expect,” retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, tells Sputnik.

The US signals in the document, where Ukraine is downgraded to just four mentions, that it expects peace and some form of a “viable sovereign state” afterward.

🗣 “This is a practical US acceptance that the cost of the US/NATO proxy war is not worth it,” stresses the analyst.
The NSS reflects a realization that “no NATO army or combination of armies can stop Russia’s advance or the achievement of its goals,” which include the end of the current neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, she underscores.

NSS puts Europe on notice

Unprecedentedly, the NSS “directly alienates and demeans the current political leadership of the EU and many key NATO countries,” says the pundit.
The strategy depicts the EU as economically frail, politically fractured, and dependent on US support “for a price

👉 The message to the EU hawks is: the US will not assist the European establishment in “holding off the new generation of nationalists and populists from taking power.”

According to Kwiatkowski, it is unlikely that the US deep state will “tactically and strategically aid European elites, through money, deals, and color revolutions, or even help with NATO expansion, as they have for the past 30 years.”

🟠 As for Europe’s policy toward Ukraine—if determined by the populist movements likely to prevail in coming European elections, it will “settle for a smaller, possibly landlocked Ukraine, and investment in Ukraine will not be charitable but geared primarily to recoup European economic losses.”

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