🇫🇮 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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🐾 In Malaysia, a cat got stuck inside an ATM — and a civil defense officer had to climb into the machine to rescue it, with the shaken feline escaping unharmed. 🐾

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🚨🪖 Pentagon puts 1,500 troops on alert for possible Minnesota deployment — reports

The Pentagon has placed about 1,500 active-duty troops on alert for a possible deployment to Minnesota, as President Donald Trump considers invoking the Insurrection Act, Axios reported.

According to Axios, there is no confirmed plan to send troops at this stage. A Pentagon spokesperson said the military is “always prepared to execute the orders of the Commander-in-Chief if called upon.”

The move comes amid escalating tensions following the killing of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE officer and growing clashes between state officials and the federal government. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said deploying troops would be a “shocking step,” while state leaders have urged de-escalation.

Axios noted the Pentagon has neither confirmed nor denied the alert, though multiple outlets reported the troops would come from the 11th Airborne Division based in Alaska.

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🇨🇦🇩🇰 Canada weighs troop deployment to Greenland amid NATO exercises — reports

Canada is considering sending a small contingent of soldiers to Greenland to take part in Danish-led NATO military exercises, as a show of solidarity with Denmark, The Globe and Mail reported, citing senior government officials.

According to the report, the Canadian Armed Forces are awaiting final approval from Prime Minister Mark Carney. If approved, the troops could be deployed as early as this week.

🪖 The Globe and Mail noted that Canada already has CF-18 fighter jets and a Cormorant helicopter in Greenland as part of a NORAD exercise involving the United States.

Carney said recent US tariff threats linked to Greenland represent a “worrisome intensification” of the situation, adding that NATO is capable of safeguarding the island’s security. The potential deployment would be part of Operation Arctic Endurance, a NATO exercise aimed at reinforcing allied commitment to Denmark and Greenland.

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