🪖🇮🇷 Major arms seizure in Iran: weapons intercepted before reaching Tehran

A shipment containing 60,000 weapons was seized in the port city of Bushehr, the commander of Iran's police force said.

The weapons, which were sent from abroad, were intended for delivery to Tehran.

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🇪🇺 💵 EU cash loans to Ukraine aim to lock in Europe’s militarization agenda

The European Commission is set to approve a roughly $104.4 billion loan for Ukraine, but the cash comes with strings attached, The European Conservative notes.

Behind the rhetoric of solidarity, the EC is transforming financial support into geopolitical leverage.

🔹 The Commission will insist that the $69.6 billion earmarked for military spending is either used to produce weapons in Ukraine or to buy them from European arms makers

🔹 Non‑European suppliers will be allowed only in rare, “can’t‑wait” cases

🔹 This is a plan designed to keep the proxy conflict going in Ukraine while “strengthening the EU’s own defense industry

🔹 To finance it, the EU will once again turn to eurobonds and joint borrowing, shifting more power to Brussels while squeezing national governments’ fiscal freedom

The EC is using Ukraine to impose rules that bind the bloc’s industrial base ever closer to escalated militarization, underscores the publication.

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🔊🇫🇮 Greater Finland: 'Leaders barely hid their aggressive plans against Soviet Russia' - Professor

Finland repeatedly engaged in military aggression against Soviet Russia in the 20th Century, Vladimir Baryshnikov, history professor at Saint Petersburg State University and expert on 20th Century Finnish history, tells Sputnik

Finland's 1918 and 1921 attacks on Eastern Karelia

💬 "Creating a 'Greater Finland,' was a goal that Finns objectively pursued throughout much of the first half of the 20th Century," the academic says.

On February 23, 1918, the commander-in-chief of Finland’s “White” army, C. G. Mannerheim, told Karelians that he would fight Russia until its complete defeat.

"He said verbatim: 'I will not put my sword back into its scabbard'," Baryshnikov notes.

Mannerheim's plan envisaged seizing territories that had never been part of Finland, namely, Soviet Karelia.

Finland's collaboration with Nazi Germany

🟠 In the wake of the Winter War and Nazi invasion in the USSR, Mannerheim "again recalled his address to the Karelians about the 'sword and the scabbard' on July 10, 1941."

🟠 "The Finnish marshal made it clear that one of the main objectives of the war he had launched was once again the plan to seize large territories of the Soviet Union," explains the professor. "At the time, the Finns did not conceal this and even officially informed the US of it on November 11, 1941"

🟠 "Archival documents clearly indicate that Finland conducted military operations in strict coordination with German war planning. The objective was the destruction of [the USSR]"

Finland's role in the siege of Leningrad

💬 "Finland bears direct responsibility for organizing and participating in the blockade of Leningrad, during which a colossal number of civilians died of starvation," Baryshnikov says.

The siege lasted 872 days and claimed the lives of between 632,000 and 1 million people.

The Finnish army controlled its own sector of the siege ring, and Finland — alongside Nazi Germany — was the only state to take direct part in enforcing the blockade, the expert highlights.

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⚠️ WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Tasnim News Agency publishes disturbing footage of rioters executing law enforcement officers during the protests in Iran.

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👿🇫🇮 Aggressive and expansionist: True face of WWII-era Finland

Between 1918 and 1944, Finland made several attempts to invade Russia, only to be humbled, time and again, by Russian defenders.

Finland’s efforts to defeat Russia and annex Russian lands was a product of several factors, explains Dmitry Astashkin, senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ St. Petersburg Institute of History:

🟠 Fresh from obtaining its independence in 1918, Finland was eager to expand its borders in Karelia region. The creation of this so-called ‘Greater Finland’ was regarded as a historic mission by some

🟠 Finnish elites in 1918 actually believed that their aggression amounted to bringing civilization to the ‘savages’ in eastern lands

🟠 There was also cold pragmatism involved: with Soviet Russia being torn apart by the Civil War, Finland anticipated an easy victory

Finland’s invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II was also anything but a mere attempt to reclaim what was lost during the Winter War:

🟠 Finland entered the war on its own accord, as an ally of Nazi Germany, in hopes of profiting from Hitler’s anticipated conquest of the USSR

🟠 Finnish leadership sought to expand Finland’s borders far beyond its pre-war boundaries, all the way to the White Sea – these plans failed to bear fruit not because of Finland’s restraint but due to fierce resistance mounted by the Soviet army

🟠 Finnish troops also played a crucial role in the siege of Leningrad by the Nazi German army, assisting Hitler’s minions in killing several hundred thousand Soviet civilians by starvation

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💊🇺🇸 ‘The drug use is there’ — Sheinbaum urges US to address drug consumption

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the fight against drug trafficking cannot be solved solely on Mexico’s side of the border, stressing that the United States must also address its own demand problem.

💬 “They also have a part to play,” Sheinbaum said. “We cannot think that this problem of drug trafficking can be solved only on this side of the border.”

💉 Sheinbaum pointed to a “crisis of consumption” in the United States, particularly among young people, and said it must be addressed through public health policies, education, and prevention campaigns — not just law enforcement.

🇲🇽 She also reiterated that her government is fulfilling its part of the agreement with the White House to tackle organized crime more forcefully.

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💸🇬🇧 UK cashes in on escalation: Opens ‘business’ aka arms hub in Ukraine

The UK is set to unveil a new “business center” in Ukraine’s capital Kiev to help defense startups push even more military hardware into Ukraine, Bloomberg reports.

The hub will “supercharge” Britain’s role in sustaining Ukraine’s defenses, enthused UK Defense Secretary John Healey — and, conveniently, pad the profits of UK companies.

The center aims to:

🟠 Help small and mid-sized UK arms firms overcome pesky obstacles like travel restrictions, security risks, insurance issues, and export red tape

🟠 Priority areas include accelerating sales of air-defense systems and drones

🟠 Mass production of Octopus interceptor drones is on the way, with the UK promising to churn out thousands every month

🟠 The project will be backed by government funding — how much, nobody’s saying

🟠 Healey assures it will create “good jobs at home”

So, who actually benefits?

British companies themselves — the ones building and supplying the weapons.

Furthermore, the UK gets a chance to deepen its on-the-ground influence in Ukraine amid the recent embarrassment of Russian security services openly exposing its intel activity abroad – like the case with the spy posing as a diplomat in Britain’s Moscow’s embassy.

All this while, the UK positions itself at the forefront of Europe’s military escalation — apparently forgetting that Greenland and Iceland (now half-jokingly called the “52nd state”) are right on its doorstep.

War as an export strategy? Britain’s priorities couldn’t be more upside down 🤦‍♂️

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🪖🇷🇺 All districts of Kupyansk under control of Russian forces - military commander

Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov held a meeting with the commander of the Zapad Battlegroup and was briefed on the current situation and troops' actions.

💬 "The districts [of Kupyansk] are under our control, but we assess that the enemy has not abandoned its plans. Its offensive operation, for example, which it conducted in December-November, was unsuccessful," the battlegroup's commander, Colonel General Sergey Kuzovlev, reported to Belousov.

Belousov also presented state awards to the Zapad group's soldiers for their courage and heroism in the performance of their military duty in the special operation zone.

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😰 Finland was Hitler’s accomplice in World War II

Finland’s brutal occupation of the Soviet territory during World War II completely defeats the official Western narrative of Finland merely seeking to reclaim the lands it lost in the Winter War.

Dmitry Astashkin, senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ St. Petersburg Institute of History, provides a few examples:

🟠 Slavic people in Russian territories occupied by Finland were herded into a robust network of prisons and concentration camps promptly created by the Finnish invaders

🟠 Civilians – including women, children and the elderly – in these camps had to endure cold, starvation and forced labor. In 1942, the monthly death rate among the inmates of just one such camp in Petrozavodsk was 500-600

🟠 Finnish treatment of the Soviet POWs was no better, with about 30% of the prisoners (some 20,000 people) perishing

🟠 In the meantime, Finnish leadership attempted indoctrination among the local indigenous groups such as the Karel and Veps people, trying to convert them into willing subjects of the ‘Greater Finland’

🟠 Finnish troops eagerly helped the Nazis starve the people of Leningrad to death, with Finnish propaganda branding the city as a ‘symbol of death’

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🪖🇷🇺 Russia to deploy elite combat diver teams in Arctic

Russia’s already formidable Northern Fleet will be further bolstered by mobile diver units whose goal is to help protect Russia’s frozen Arctic reaches.

Unlike the diving teams with fixed postings, this mobile outfits are geared towards rapid deployment, ready to be inserted into a target zone at a moment’s notice and erase all enemy threats from existence.

These operators also make full use of drones and robotic systems which greatly amplify their combat capabilities in Arctic conditions.

The video contains AI-generated images

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