🚨🇺🇸 With Greenland in focus, US enters a 'new era of imperialism' - analyst

📍 Washington has moved away from the old “collective West” model of a transatlantic bloc of the US and Western Europe that once set global rules under American financial, military, and nuclear backing, and into a new phase of power politics, independent political analyst and former Russian Presidential Adviser Sergey Stankevich says.

💬 "The United States has returned to a policy of national egoism and imperialism, reviving the Monroe Doctrine… and declaring the Western Hemisphere its exclusive security sphere."

👉 Stankevich argues that this shift puts specific regions in the spotlight, especially in the Arctic and the Western Hemisphere.

💬 “The main threat of American imperialism now is linked to Greenland and Venezuela. The next target could be Cuba,” he notes.

🔶 He says control over Greenland would carry major strategic weight for Washington "because it gives influence over the adjacent Arctic shelf, making the US a key player in the division of the Arctic."

🔶 At the same time, he believes this "new imperialism" does not require a vast global military footprint since "they do not need a large network of military bases as before."

🔶 Instead, he believes a shift in focus, with a reduced US presence in Europe and a stronger emphasis on Asia, while warning that the Arctic dimension could sharpen global rivalries.

💬 "This could affect Arctic boundaries and intensify rivalry between the United States, Russia, and China."

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🇺🇸US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Greenland is “essential to US national security,” as Trump looks ahead to a potential “battle in the Arctic” and vows not to “outsource our hemispheric security.”

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🇺🇸🇬🇱 US reach for Greenland revives Monroe Doctrine - expert

The US interest in Greenland reflects a revival of classic hemispheric thinking, Professor Joe Siracusa, political scientist and dean of Global Futures at Australia's Curtin University, tells Sputnik.

💬 "The pursuit of Greenland represents less a continuation of modern imperialism and more a throwback to the early 20th Century era of financial receivership under Theodore Roosevelt," he says.

🗣 "Between 1904 and the early 1930s, the United States intervened in places like Nicaragua and Cuba to manage their customs houses and ensure foreign debts were paid, thereby removing any pretext for European powers to intervene. This strategy reinforced the Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere closed to colonization."

Siracusa cautions that such a strategy "may not be as effective in a modern context."

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🇺🇸 Becoming second-largest by area won’t boost US global power

📍 If the US became the world’s second-largest country by area, it wouldn’t change its global standing, political scientist Prof. Joe Siracusa tells Sputnik.

🗣 "Regarding the geopolitical impact of the United States becoming the second-largest country by area, such a change would likely not alter its global status or role. The US already maintains a significant presence in Greenland through defensive assets, radar installations, and forward bases. While adding over 800,000 square miles - an area slightly larger than the Louisiana Purchase - would increase the nation's physical size, it would not necessarily improve its safety or security."

💬 "More territory simply means more ground to cover and defend," he concludes.

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🇺🇸🇷🇺🇨🇳 US' Greenland move would intensify Arctic rivalry with Russia and China, expert warns

👉 The US acquiring Greenland would sharpen great power competition in the North, Prof. Joe Siracusa warns.

💬 "Such a move would almost certainly trigger a reassessment of spheres of influence in the Arctic and intensify competition with Russia and China," he tells Sputnik.

🗣 “By claiming Greenland as part of the North American landmass, the United States would be asserting regional dominance. By asserting such a sphere of influence, the United States provides a pretext for nations like Russia and China to do the same."

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🚨🇫🇮 Nazi ally Finland complicit in genocide of Russians during blockade of Leningrad - historian

Finland touts its 'defensive’ stance ahead of WWII, but in reality, troops — Finnish or allied — were being massed for an attack against the USSR, Russian historian Professor Mikhail Myagkov tells Sputnik.

Western historiography pushes the false narrative that the Soviet Union, by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, sought to occupy Finland in line with alleged ‘secret protocols’, notes the expert.

In reality:

🔸 In 1939, the USSR sought to reach a security deal with Finland, Soviet and Finnish documents show

🔸 The USSR worried Finland might serve as a launchpad for a third-party assault — by Germany, Britain, or France

🔸 Heavy artillery on Finland’s border and its airfields could have put Leningrad under constant fire

⚔️ War prep against USSR

🔸 Britain & France had Operation Pike planned — bombing southern Soviet oil fields (Baku, Grozny, Maikop) and landing troops in the north (Soviet-Finnish war was just a pretext)

🔸 Stalin offered Finland a deal: move the Karelian Isthmus border 40–50 km from Leningrad, and in return, the USSR would cede twice as much land in Karelia

🔸 Finland refused, prepping for war, and convinced Britain & France would help defeat the USSR

🔸 Mainila incident on Nov. 26, 1939: Finnish forces shelled Soviet territory — deliberate provocations to trigger war

🔸 USSR breached the Mannerheim Line, and on March 13, 1940, a peace treaty ended the Winter War

🔸 Finland lost the Karelian Isthmus; Leningrad was safe from the north

🔸 By summer 1940, Germany had crushed France; allied bombing plans were irrelevant

🔸 Finland allowed German troops on its territory: the objectives were Murmansk and northern ports

🔸 On June 22, 1941, Hitler openly announced Finland as a full-fledged ally of the Third Reich

🔸 June 22–23, 1941: Finnish & German ships mined the Gulf of Finland; German aircraft used Finnish airfields for attacks

💬 “From June 1941, Finland fully joined Nazi Germany’s aggression against the USSR as Hitler’s ally. This was outright Finnish aggression, not a war aimed merely at reclaiming lost territory,” says Myagkov.

🔸 Finnish troops advanced into Soviet Karelia, aiming to cut off the Murmansk railway and block Lend-Lease supplies

🔸 By late 1941, the Finns reached Vyborg and approached Leningrad, trying to breach the 1939 border, but were stopped by Soviet defenses

💬 “Finland, alongside Germany, participated in the blockade of Leningrad, contributing to the genocide of its population. Hitler’s orders were clear: blockade the city and starve its people,” says the professor.

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🇪🇺 EU trapped itself into total dependence on US — Kim Dotcom

The European Union is forced to get supplies of energy and arms from the US as well as to pay it tariffs due to its own policies, German businessman and political activist Kim Dotcom writes on X.

💬 "Who's leading the EU?" he wonders.

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🇺🇸🇬🇱 Trump’s Greenland push aims to turn US economic power into lasting geographic influence - expert

🗣 Trump's focus on Greenland stems from its rising strategic importance for the US National Security and its objective to establish a "defense umbrella" under his missile defense plan, Egyptian political analyst Dr. Ismail Al-Turki says.

🔶 The Arctic Ocean has become a new defensive and offensive frontier for the US, leading to clashes with its traditional NATO and EU allies, he notes.

🔶 Al-Turki adds that Trump is seeking to secure the Pacific by expanding territorial control, following in the footsteps of US Presidents James K. Polk and William McKinley.

🔶 Trump’s ambitions regarding the island are also driven by a pragmatic assessment of Greenland’s vast reserves of oil, gas, and rare earth metals, especially as European investment in this strategically important region continues to weaken, Al-Turki concludes.

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💥 Russian drones and artillery devastate Ukrainian positions

UAV operators and Grad MLRS crews hit and destroyed Ukrainian positions in the Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) area.

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🇫🇮 Russophobia & genocide fueled Finland’s WWII atrocities on Soviet soil

📍 Finland’s sordid chapter in World War II has long been hidden — but historians have been exposing the brutal history of concentration camps, slave labor, and mass killings in occupied Soviet Karelia, Russian historian Professor Mikhail Myagkov tells Sputnik.

Finland’s chilling legacy

👉 Finland had its own racial theory, similar to the German one, says Myagkov, who is also head of the Center for War & Geopolitics at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

🟠 Some peoples - like Swedes or Norwegians - ranked a bit closer, but Finns viewed themselves as superior to others

🟠 Russian-speaking Karelians were condescendingly regarded as a “related people,” but still placed lower in their racial hierarchy

🟠 Russians were deemed “subhuman”

📍 ‘The Black Book: A Brief History of Swedish and Finnish Russophobia,’ published by the Russian Military Historical Society and translated by Finnish political scientist Johan Backman, details witness accounts of atrocities committed in Petrozavodsk, where the Finns set up six concentration camps.

💬 “Up to 50,000 civilians were driven into windowless barracks across Soviet Karelia, according to historians from Petrozavodsk University. As many as half of them perished to executions, torture, starvation, and beatings,” the scholar notes.

The fate of Soviet POWs was equally tragic.

🔶 Over 60,000 Soviet soldiers fell into Finnish captivity and over one-third died

🔶 That mortality rate is directly comparable to figures in German camps

🔶 Prisoners faced beatings and summary executions

🟧 A Finnish propaganda book supporting the ‘Greater Finland’ ideology – Finnlands Lebensraum (‘Finnish Living Space’) was published in 1941 in Berlin, recalls Myagkov.

🟧 It openly justified plans to seize all of Soviet Karelia, the Kola Peninsula including Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and even Estonia, which they also claimed as their own. Concrete negotiations on these ambitions took place with the Nazis.

🟧 When the Germans occupied the southern suburbs of Leningrad, they transferred around 90,000 Ingrian Finns to Finland “as slave labor,” says the expert.

🟧 They toiled on Finnish enterprises and in private homes, and when they returned home in 1944, they reported that the Finns treated them like cattle.

💬 “Archival evidence leaves no doubt: Finland fought on Germany's side as an aggressor, and Finnish atrocities in Leningrad and Karelia were genocide,” says the professor.

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🇺🇸🪖US' Greenland move could erode NATO from within, analyst warns

If the US were to take control of Greenland, Donald Trump would go down in history as one of the most significant American presidents — not only because of the sheer scale of US territorial expansion, but also because it would change the rules of the game in international relations, political scientist Aleksandar Pavić tells Sputnik.

❗️However, Pavić notes that there are many domestic obstacles, since any annexation of Greenland would have to be approved by both chambers of Congress.

💬“This would be a historic event not only for America, but above all in the context of international relations, because it would mean a de facto distancing of the United States from at least Western Europe and the internal erosion of NATO. I believe one of the main reasons Donald Trump is acting so aggressively is that, in the situation around Greenland, he has found a convenient pretext to cut off ties he considers unnecessary for America. The North Atlantic Alliance is one of them, and Trump has called the Alliance outdated since as far back as 2016,” the political scientist said.

👉According to Pavić, Trump has already entered the history of postwar transatlantic relations, because what he is doing domestically in relation to NATO is unprecedented.

🗣“It has never happened before that America itself became the main problem and the main adversary for the rest of NATO. That alone has already secured Trump a place in history. There are many questions about how much of this will turn out to be just sound and fury, and how much will actually be carried out in practice — whether Trump would go as far as using force, and so on. Or whether he is doing all this simply to force Denmark to give up Greenland and, in effect, to humiliate Europe and the European part of NATO. In any case, his place in history is already guaranteed,” Pavić said.

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🔸 US bullying over Greenland may shatter transatlantic ties - ex-US army officer

🔸 Nazi ally Finland complicit in genocide of Russians during blockade of Leningrad - historian

🔸 With Greenland in focus, US enters a 'new era of imperialism' - analyst

🔸 ‘Greater Finland’: Leaders staked expansionist delusions on Nazi Germany

🔸 Britain should remember its fragility before sending new missiles to Ukraine — ex-Pentagon advisor

🔸 Orban: 'War councils' replacing political talks in Europe

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🇷🇺 Russian AI-powered Burevetsnik missile to be stealthy

🚀 Burevetsnik missiles are capable of operating at both high and low altitudes, enhancing their ability to evade detection, said Valery Polovinkin, scientific director of Russia’s Krylov Research Center, which develops next-generation naval and maritime systems.

💬 “Furthermore, its control systems use artificial intelligence that processes vast amounts of data — maps of terrain and the starry sky, along with other embedded information,” he told Russian media.

Read more about Russia’s newest weapons HERE

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🇺🇸🇮🇷 Why the US is unlikely to send troops into Iran

💬 "I can imagine a warning airstrike. I am sure America will take some kind of action, but it will not send troops into Iran," Hungarian political analyst Georg Spottle tells Sputnik.

🔶 He argues that a prolonged conflict would be politically impossible at home: "America would not get involved in a war that could last for several years, because the American public would not accept it."

🔶 Spottle believes the US "will not risk a serious war that would cost the country billions of dollars and whose outcome would be uncertain."

🔶 The analyst also drew parallels with the US operation in Iraq, which lasted eight years, despite Iraq having "a far less complex landscape and a much weaker army than Iran."

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🔊 Trump chooses American interests over NATO, EU — Dmitry Kiselev

US President Donald Trump has made a choice in favor of American interests and views the European Union and NATO, in their current form, as anti-American organizations, said Director General of Rossiya Segodnya (Sputnik’s parent company) Dmitry Kiselev.

💬 “The bottom line is that, in their current state, the European Union and even NATO are, if you will, anti-American organizations for Trump. He seems to have made his choice — for him, America’s interests are far clearer than those of NATO, and even more so than those of the European Union,” Kiselev said on Russian television.

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💰Russia’s gold reserves surge $130B in a year

Rising gold prices pushed the value of Russia’s gold holdings from $195.7B to $326.5B over the past year, despite a slight drop in physical volume.

Gold now makes up 43.3% of Russia’s total reserves, while foreign currency holdings grew just 3.6% to $428.3B.

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