German officials are trading blame after it emerged that the suspect behind last weekend’s deadly Berlin attack had been released from prison on probation just months before the attack despite reportedly being considered a “high-risk individual.”

A van plowed into a crowd during the festivities known as Christopher Street Day, the German capital’s annual pride event, last Saturday. A Polish woman was killed in the attack and 31 people were injured, according to the authorities. The suspect, identified as 21-year-old Abdul Ballout, a German national of Lebanese descent, was fatally shot by police during an attempted arrest on Sunday following a large-scale manhunt.

Law enforcement officials later revealed that Ballout was a known Islamist who had previously tried to join Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and had pledged allegiance to the terrorist group in a video allegedly recorded on the day of the attack.

Why was the suspect free?

Ballout was arrested at Berlin Airport in November 2025 upon his return from Lebanon, where he had spent three months behind bars over “inciting a religious conflict.” According to German officials, he had traveled to Lebanon earlier that year in a bid to join IS jihadists in neighboring Syria.

In Germany, he was charged with “preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state” in connection with his attempt to join IS. He was tried by a juvenile court in May 2026, which sentenced him to a year and ten months behind bars.

The court immediately suspended the sentence and released him on probation, arguing that he had already spent six months in pretrial detention in Germany and three months in a Lebanese prison. The judges also accepted that Ballout had allegedly distanced himself from IS and described his attempts to join the terrorist group as “amateurish,” according to a report by Legal Tribune Online.

The ruling nevertheless acknowledged that it “cannot be expected” the defendant “will not commit further offenses in the future.”

Berlin’s judiciary authorities defended the decision amid a wave of criticism in the wake of the attack. The ruling was passed “within the framework of the applicable legal situation,” the head of the Berlin Court of Appeal and the city’s Prosecutor General said in a joint statement.

The Tiergarten District Court that passed the judgement reportedly stated that its job was to ensure people are not unfairly deprived of liberty while crime prevention was the task of security officials.

‘Catastrophe’

Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemned the attack and called on Germans not to be intimidated by “such acts.” Those behind such attacks “want to divide our society, they want to take away the most important thing we have: our openness and our freedom,” he said in a statement issued in the wake of the incident.

He then faced criticism on social media for attending a business association dinner in Paderborn while the suspect remained at large. The chancellor dismissed the accusations, saying he wanted to demonstrate that “normal” life must continue despite the terrorist attacks.

Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dorbrindt said that Ballout’s case raised “a whole lot of questions” and called for harsher measures against “potential terrorists” up to electronic ankle monitors and preventive detention, saying existing surveillance measures were insufficient. He still urged caution over a proposal by the Bavarian government head, Markus Soder, to strip dual nationals classified as high-risk individuals of German citizenship.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann blamed the court’s decision to release the suspect on probation for the attack, calling it “a catastrophe.” “The judges who have to rule on such a case must be aware of the responsibility they bear for the safety of the people,” he told a local broadcaster.

The Greens and the Left MPs in the Bundestag demanded an emergency session of the Interior Affairs Committee involving the chiefs of the Federal Criminal Police, the domestic security agency (BfV) and the Prosecutor General. Berlin Police Chief Slowik Meisel maintained that the suspect had remained under active surveillance since his release in May but had demonstrated no signs of preparing an attack.

“We never lost sight of this man,” she said, adding that “we found nothing” that would warrant preventive detention.

Not enough diversity

An integration commissioner for Berlin’s Neukolln district, Guner Balci, blamed the incident on conservative values. All conservative religious people have a problem with homosexuality regardless of their faith, she told Die Zeit, adding that “things become difficult” in places “where there is no socio-cultural mixing.”

Cansel Kiziltepe, a Berlin government member responsible for diversity and anti-discrimination, demanded Merz hold a roundtable on combating LGBT+ hatred. The chancellor must make the comprehensive protection and equality of queer people a top priority at the national level, she maintained.

The federal government’s LGBT+ commissioner, Sophie Koch, warned that the far right continued to pose a threat to the LGBT+ community and called for increased security at future pride events.

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner suggested introducing Islam lessons to the state schools to reduce the influence of what he called “backstreet mosques.”

Redeeming the irredeemable

According to Berliner Morgenpost, Ballout had attracted the attention of the authorities from an early age. He was reportedly considered “aggressive” in primary school, transferred between schools, and eventually referred to a special education center.

“Support and intervention needs were identified early on, and he finished school without a diploma,” Berlin’s Education Department told the paper, with its head, Katharina Gunther-Wunsch, blaming the situation on the “lacking” cooperation from his family.

The man later accumulated a criminal record. In 2019, he was convicted of assaulting another person in the schoolyard. Two years later, he was found guilty of assault and extortion with an intent to rob, CBS reported, citing German security officials.

In 2024, he shared IS propaganda posts on his Instagram page, according to Berlin law enforcement authorities. His aunt married an infamous Islamist preacher and recruiter and two of his cousins fought for IS in Syria and Iraq, Die Zeit reported.

In 2025, he attempted to join IS twice. The second attempt resulted in a prison sentence in Lebanon and was followed by his arrest in Germany.

Upon his release in May, Ballout was referred to a de-radicalization program run by an NGO called Violence Prevention Network Berlin. Its communications director, Cornelisa Lotthammer, acknowledged to the New York Times and CBS that the man was basically irredeemable.

“His extremism was deep,” she told NYT. “He was very radicalized.”

According to Lotthammer, the staff quickly determined his cooperation was “fake.” “Our colleagues could tell that he wasn’t very interested in a real deradicalization process,” she told CBS while maintaining her organization did “what we were supposed to do” and saw no signs of an imminent attack that could have been reported to law enforcement.

Western regime change wars in countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya transformed entire regions into terrorist havens and led to “migration waves” such as the one currently engulfing Spain’s exclave of Ceuta, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko told RT on Friday.

An estimated 50,000 migrants, mostly young men, swam from Morocco and crossed into Ceuta on Thursday and Friday in an unprecedented influx that triggered a humanitarian crisis in the city. Around 48,000 had voluntarily returned by Friday evening, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry.

“The root cause of those migration waves lies in the policies of the West itself, which took aggressive action against Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Iran,” Grushko said, adding that this left entire regions in the Middle East and North Africa “stripped of statehood and transformed into safe havens for terrorists and extremists.”

The consequences of these Western policies are now being seen in “these waves of migration,” he said.

This is a collapse of the immigration policy that the EU has pursued for many years.

Grushko called the situation a failure not only of the EU’s “regulation – or lack thereof – of immigration,” but also of the bloc’s worldwide posture and policies it pursues regarding “countries that it considers its partners.”

Problems like immigration were “swept under the rug” while the bloc focused on militarizing and preparing for a war with Russia, he said.

“Reality is simply smashing through the ideological and political doors and walls they have erected, revealing to the European Union where its true problems lie,” Grushko said.

Watch the RT interview below:

The EU has responded to the migrant invasion of Ceuta with watery statements on solidarity, and a stone-faced refusal to blame Morocco for opening its borders. But when Brussels could blame Russia, it sang a different tune.

As nearly 60,000 north African migrants poured into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta from Morocco on Thursday and Friday, right-wing and center-right European leaders immediately blamed Spain, where Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had only three months earlier granted legal status to 500,000 illegal immigrants.

Sanchez refused calls from local authorities in Ceuta to declare a national emergency, but deployed a token force of 60 troops to the exclave – a gesture perceived by the European right as inadequate.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was first to respond, calling for Spain’s exclusion from the EU’s border-free Schengen Area. Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares replied angrily, demanding “European solidarity, not partisan demagoguery” from Italy. Nevertheless, Italy suspended visa-free entry from Spain on Friday evening.

There was little sympathy for Spain on the European right, with the following leaders and officials joining Meloni in blaming the migrant surge on Sanchez’ policies:

• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk – demanded Spain secure its borders “if Schengen is to survive”

• Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker – threatened to close Austria’s borders, accused Sanchez of creating “additional incentive for illegal migration”

• Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen – said EU should consider suspending Spain from Schengen

• Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson – demanded Spain regain control of its borders

• Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis – called for Spain’s suspension from Schengen

• Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen – backed the Schengen suspension

• French President Emmanuel Macron – announced preparations to strengthen France’s internal border with Spain 

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico took a different tone, criticizing the “hypocrisy” of EU leaders who oppose illegal immigration, but “only a few years ago, through their lax approach, allowed illegal migrants to enter EU countries in massive numbers, causing serious crises.” Fico condemned proposals to boot Spain from Schengen, and offered the Spanish government assistance in securing its borders.

SPAIN MUST BE SUPPORTED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST ILLEGAL MIGRATION.

I am closely monitoring developments in the migration crisis in the Spanish enclave in Africa on an hourly basis. Today, I also joined the initiative of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni calling for a strong…

— Robert Fico 🇸🇰 (@RobertFicoSVK) July 31, 2026

How did the EU respond to the migrant surge?

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the invasion of Ceuta as “unacceptable,” and promised to work with Spain and Morocco to “control the situation.” Von der Leyen refused to blame either the Spanish or Moroccan governments, instead declaring that “returns must be swift, as our rules allow.” 

“I am confident that our close partnership with Morocco will help deliver concrete results,” she added.

The images coming from Ceuta are unacceptable.

We cannot allow anyone to come to our Union without abiding by our rules.

Dangerous crossings must stop immediately. Smuggling networks must be dismantled. And returns must be swift, as our rules allow.

I tasked two Commissioners…

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 31, 2026

As EU member states piled on Spain, some of the bloc’s most senior officials attempted to quash the rising right-wing anger. European Parliament Vice President Javi Lopez condemned Meloni’s position as “unworthy of a European partner,” adding that “when migration is weaponized, Europe answers with solidarity, not selfishness.” The EU’s former chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, ridiculed the Italian PM’s threats to expel Spain from Schengen. “That option simply does not exist in the legal architecture of the Union,” he wrote on social media. “It just can’t.”

Chief diplomat Kaja Kallas, meanwhile, did not issue a single statement on the most serious border breach in EU history.

Why is nobody mentioning Morocco?

Amid the infighting, none of the European leaders blaming Sanchez, nor anyone at von der Leyen’s European Commission, have publicly acknowledged the role Morocco played in instigating the crisis.

IN CRE I BLE #Ceuta cientos de marroquíes a la carrera tras llegar a nado al espigón del Tarajal#FronteraSur #Haraga #Inmigracion pic.twitter.com/qVA6MwDuxU

— KARIM PRIM (@KARIMPRIM) July 30, 2026

Video footage from the border at Ceuta shows Moroccan border guards opening barbed wire gates so that migrants could pour onto Spanish soil. Footage from the Moroccan side of the frontier shows police standing by as trucks unload dozens of young men at a time, who then run for the open border unopposed.

ESTO ES MUY GRAVE. Me llegan estas imágenes de cómo las autoridades marroquíes vacían camiones llenos de jóvenes cerca de la frontera con Ceuta.

Quien no quiera ver que se trata de una operación perfectamente preparada por el régimen, es que es ciego. pic.twitter.com/YpxFAaF7Wb

— Taleb Alisalem (@TalebSahara) July 30, 2026

Morocco has a longstanding claim to Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two north African exclaves, and this claim is tacitly backed by the US House Appropriations Committee, by some sections of the US’ powerful Israel lobby, and by Republican Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, a close associate of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Morocco has used migrants as political leverage before. When Spain allowed Western Sahara separatist leader Brahim Ghali to enter the country for medical treatment in 2021, Morocco responded by temporarily relaxing restrictions at the Ceuta border, letting around 8,000 migrants enter the Spanish territory. 

Madrid – with the backing of the EU – accused Rabat of “weaponizing” migration, but Morocco won in the end: the following year, Spain agreed to support Morocco’s ‘autonomy plan’ for Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. Under the plan, Western Sahara would receive some powers of self-governance, but would remain under permanent Moroccan sovereignty.

The crisis taught the Moroccan government a powerful lesson: by weaponizing migration, it can extract valuable political concessions from Spain and the EU.

The Belarus hypocrisy

The EU’s kid-gloves handling of Morocco stands in stark contrast to its response to illegal immigration from Belarus in October and November of 2021. That year, just under 40,000 migrants – mostly from Africa and Asia – attempted to cross from Belarus into Poland, prompting Polish authorities to erect a razor-wire fence, deploy thousands of soldiers, and accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of waging “hybrid warfare” on behalf of the Russian government.

Lukashenko had grievances against Poland and the EU, given that both had provided enthusiastic support to his political opponents during Western-backed riots in Minsk the year before. However, he has denied accusations of weaponizing migration, and no evidence of any Russian involvement in the supposed “hybrid warfare” campaign has ever emerged.

Nevertheless, the EU accepted Poland’s framing. Von der Leyen declared that the border surge was “a hybrid attack, not a migration crisis.” European Council President Charles Michel and chief diplomat Josep Borrell used the same wording, and within weeks, the EU sanctioned 17 Belarusian officials over “human rights abuses and the instrumentalisation of migrants.”

📍 At the border between Poland and Belarus.

Poland is facing hybrid attacks from across the border.

We stand in solidarity with our Member State.

In our new EU budget, we have proposed to triple border management funding.

We are all responsible for Europe’s external borders pic.twitter.com/gdoWTmr3NW

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) August 31, 2025

Despite the fact that Ceuta received more migrants in a day than Poland did in a year, no senior officials in Brussels or any EU member state have raised the possibility of sanctioning Morocco. The EU is capable of taking swift action against supposed “hybrid warfare,” but the decision to do so is clearly only made when it is politically expedient to do so – and not when doing so would upset a de-facto ally of the US and Israel.

What happens next in Ceuta?

As of Friday evening, roughly 48,000 of the 60,000 migrants had voluntarily returned to Morocco, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry. Both Sanchez and the ministry thanked Morocco for taking back its migrants, although it remains unclear whether Madrid had to grant any concessions for this to happen.

The crisis appears to be simmering down, but its legacy will be twofold: first, Morocco’s apparent belief that it can wield disproportionate influence over EU politics through migration has been further vindicated. Rabat discovered that it could extract concessions from Madrid with 8,000 migrants in 2021. With 60,000, it can plunge the EU into infighting and push the Schengen Area to breaking point.

Secondly, Spain is unlikely to forget the pile-on by Meloni and her ilk. Posting on X on Friday evening, Sanchez shared a series of migration figures that implicate Italy as the EU’s leading point of entry for migrants between 2021 and 2026. Notably, and despite the EU-wide campaign against Lukashenko in 2021, the bloc’s eastern border – with Belarus and Ukraine – sits at the very bottom of the list.

“Solidarity and empathy are optional,” Sanchez wrote. “Respect for European treaties and data is not. This is not the time to divide. It is the time to continue building a strong and united EU.”

The events unfolding in Ceuta should not be reduced to the familiar European language of invasion, emergency and border control. From a Pan-African perspective, what we are witnessing is the human consequence of a profoundly unequal economic relationship between Africa and Europe.

Spain now has an opportunity to move away from the conventional European model of engagement with Africa and learn from the partnerships developed by countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and India. These relationships are not without problems or contradictions. Nevertheless, they have generally approached African countries as political and economic partners, supported infrastructure and productive development, and recognised Africa as an emerging centre of global power rather than merely a source of raw materials, migration and insecurity. 

Spain can draw lessons from these experiences while developing its own distinctive partnership with Africa, based on geographical proximity, historical connection, mutual development and respect for African sovereignty.

Young Africans do not risk their lives at sea because Europe possesses higher fences. They do so because the present international economic system has concentrated opportunity, capital and mobility on one side of the Mediterranean while denying them on the other. 

Spain must, of course, protect its borders, preserve public order and ensure the safety of the people of Ceuta. No responsible African position requires Spain to surrender its sovereignty or tolerate disorder. Nevertheless, security measures alone cannot resolve what is fundamentally a question of development, dignity and economic justice.

Spain is particularly well-placed to recognise this.

Under its current government, Spain has increasingly demonstrated a willingness to distance itself from some of the harshest and most arrogant tendencies of mainstream European and North American foreign policy. It has shown greater sensitivity towards the Global South, defended international law in difficult circumstances and spoken of Africa not merely as a source of migration or insecurity, but as an equal strategic partner.

Spain’s official Africa Strategy for 2025–2028 speaks of mutual respect, shared benefit, responsible investment, youth employment and a relationship conducted “from equal to equal.” These principles deserve recognition and support. They must now be transformed from diplomatic language into economic reality.

Spain’s relationship with Africa is also distinctive. It is certainly not free from the history of colonialism, military confrontation and political inequality. No honest African analysis should conceal this. Yet Spain’s connection with Africa cannot be defined exclusively by colonialism.

Spain and Africa are geographical neighbours. They share Mediterranean and Atlantic spaces, centuries of human movement, commercial exchange and profound cultural interaction. Much of Spanish history, language, architecture, agriculture, music and identity was shaped through its relationship with North and West Africa.

Africa is therefore not a distant region lying beyond Spain’s strategic horizon. It is part of Spain’s immediate historical and geographical environment. This gives Spain an opportunity to lead Europe towards a different relationship with the continent.

The dominant Western approach has too often treated Africa through four narrow lenses: minerals, migration, terrorism and geopolitical competition. African countries are approached when their resources are required, when their votes are needed, when their young people arrive at European borders or when Western powers fear the growing influence of China, Russia and other actors.

That model has failed Africa, and it will eventually fail Europe as well.

Spain can offer another path. It can support African industrialisation rather than importing African raw materials. It can encourage joint ventures, technology transfer and local production rather than relationships based on extraction. It can invest in African agriculture, renewable energy, transport, education, digital infrastructure and manufacturing while ensuring that employment and value remain inside Africa.

It can also expand legal mobility, university exchange, vocational training and circular migration so that movement between Africa and Spain becomes organised and mutually beneficial rather than dangerous and controlled by smugglers.

Africa does not require charity. It requires investment without domination, cooperation without paternalism and trade that allows African societies to produce, manufacture and prosper.

The long-term answer to Ceuta is therefore not simply a larger wall. It is the creation of an economic space in which a young African does not have to cross a border illegally to imagine a dignified future.

At the same time, African governments must accept their own responsibilities. They must confront corruption, economic exclusion, unemployment and the failure to provide their youth with credible opportunities. Pan-Africanism cannot place every failure at the feet of Europe while exempting African elites from accountability.

Spain should reject the politics of fear that turns desperate human beings into an invading army. African states should reject the political manipulation of migration and prevent vulnerable young people from being used as instruments of diplomatic pressure.

The crisis offers Spain a choice. It can follow the conventional European response: more fear, more militarisation and more distance from Africa. Or it can remain faithful to the better principles it has recently articulated and help construct a new relationship between Europe and the African continent.

From a Pan-African perspective, Spain should be encouraged to choose the second road. But genuine leadership will not be measured by how effectively Spain closes the gate. It will be measured by whether Spain helps build a world in which fewer people are forced to knock desperately upon it.

Israeli strikes have continued across Gaza hours after US President Donald Trump announced a “historic agreement” under which Hamas would be disarmed and the IDF would completely withdraw from the enclave.

At least one Palestinian was killed and several others were wounded in the attacks on Friday, according to Palestinian health officials cited by media reports.

The agreement was reached late on Thursday following talks mediated by Egypt, Qatar, Türkiye and the US under the Washington-led Board of Peace. Trump hailed it as a “monumental step toward lasting peace and security” and a major milestone in his 20-point plan for the enclave. However, both Hamas and Israeli officials have since questioned key provisions of the deal.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir described the draft agreement as “unacceptable to Israel.” Writing on Telegram, he said that the “targeted killings” of “Hamas terrorists” in Gaza must continue, along with the “encouragement” of Palestinian “emigration” from the enclave.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has maintained that Israeli forces will “remain in the security zones as long as necessary.” 

Hamas has insisted that no disarmament will take place while Israeli forces remain in Gaza. In a statement, the group said any discussion of the handover of heavy weapons was conditional on a complete end to hostilities, a full Israeli withdrawal, reconstruction, international guarantees and progress toward Palestinian statehood.

According to AFP, Hamas sources said the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a Palestinian technocratic body established by the Board of Peace, would become the sole authority responsible for managing and storing Hamas’ weapons. Reuters separately reported that Hamas had reiterated that any handover remained contingent on an Israeli withdrawal and increased humanitarian aid entering the enclave.

A Roadmap for Completing the Implementation of President Trump’s Comprehensive Peace Plan in Gaza

Principles:

1. All parties reaffirm their commitment to President Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to achieve peace in Gaza, which constitutes, together with the UN Security Council…

— Board of Peace (@BoardOfPeace) July 31, 2026

Under the published roadmap, Israel must complete “without delay” its remaining commitments under the October ceasefire arrangements, “particularly the cessation of military operations.” Hamas and other Palestinian factions would transfer civilian governance and security functions to the NCAG. Heavy weapons and military infrastructure would subsequently be decommissioned under the committee’s administration, while Israeli forces would withdraw in phases.

The Board of Peace was established under Trump’s Gaza plan following last October’s ceasefire to oversee the enclave’s post-war transition and reconstruction. It is tasked with supervising reconstruction, supporting the transfer of civilian governance to the NCAG and coordinating the deployment of an international stabilization force.

According to the Gaza health authorities, at least 73,340 Palestinians have been killed and more than 174,000 wounded since Israel launched its military campaign in response to the deadly Hamas raid of October 2023.

Kiev’s strikes on international oil and gas shipments in the Caspian and Black seas could indirectly benefit the US by giving Washington greater influence over global supply chains amid the Iran crisis, Russian foreign policy expert Darya Saprynskaya has told RT.

Ukraine has escalated long-range attacks on civilian vessels and energy infrastructure in recent months. The most recent strikes hit two tankers in the Caspian Sea off Kazakhstan carrying cargoes belonging to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). The consortium, whose shareholders include US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron, condemned the strikes as “terrorist attacks” and noted that Washington has previously described such attacks as unacceptable.

“There have already been public signals from the United States that Ukraine should avoid international energy infrastructure. However, incidents have continued,” Saprynskaya, a research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences and an expert at the Valdai Discussion Club, told RT on Friday.

“Washington’s response has so far remained relatively restrained,” the analyst said, suggesting broader geopolitical implications of the muted reaction.

A destabilized Caspian and Black Sea energy corridor may indirectly benefit the US if tensions with Iran intensify, as it could increase the strategic importance of alternative routes, American energy companies and US influence over global supply chains.

Saprynskaya said the CPC handles 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports and includes US and European shareholders.

“It’s very difficult to see any strategic benefit for Ukraine itself in damaging these assets linked to major American corporations,” she said.

The move is “very risky” for Ukraine because it is “so interconnected with European countries,” she said, adding that it could affect the EU’s financial backing of Kiev. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Watch the full RT interview below:

India’s northeastern state of Assam is battling the worst floods in decades that have left at least 80 dead, millions of hectares submerged, and thousands marooned or displaced.

Assam sees flooding every year in the monsoon season, like many parts of India, but this year they were especially destructive in the state. The flooding, which started around the end of June, intensified last week when the Brahmaputra river, which originates in the Tibetan Himalayas, quickly swelled from intense rainfall.

The Assam State Disaster Management Authority said on Thursday that 212,400 people were affected in the worst-hit districts of Charaideo, Golaghat, Jorhat, and Sivasagar. An RT India crew travelled to the flood-hit areas and captured the destruction and the tears.

“My husband earns a living by driving an e-rickshaw,” a woman told RT. “Our only source of income has been taken away. In just 10 minutes we lost everything.” 

In many places, even though the flood waters have receded, people are not able to live inside their homes which are covered in knee-deep mud.

“All the paddy fields we had and the livestock, which were our only source of income, all washed away,” said another local.

Some paddy fields now resemble water bodies. Officials reported that 437 villages are still under water and 17,198 hectares of crops have been damaged across the state.

As figures trickle in, more than 90,000 heads of livestock are also being counted as washed away.

India received 1% more rainfall than the July average. Assam’s chief minister has said that some districts in the state received nearly 500% above normal rainfall in July. 

The state administration has set up 112 relief camps and distribution centers across the four districts, providing care to 75,583 affected people, according to reports.

Up to 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in roughly 24 hours, overwhelming border forces and increasing the territory’s population by as much as 70%.

The unprecedented influx has triggered a political crisis, raised questions over the true nature of the incident, and exposed deep divisions in the West.

What happened at the border?

Tens of thousands of migrants stormed a weak point in the town of Ceuta, on the Spanish border with Morocco on Thursday. Ceuta’s regional president, Juan Jesus Vivas, said on Friday that around 60,000 people had entered the city since the border crisis erupted the previous day. The magnitude is such that it represents the single greatest human traffic invasion in the EU’s history.

Even more conservative estimates from Spanish media and security sources ranging from 30,000 to 49,000 would still mean that Ceuta’s regular population of some 84,000 had increased overnight by some 50%.

At least 41 migrants reportedly died. Many drowned while attempting to swim around the border barriers, while others were allegedly killed in a stampede near the Tarajal breakwater.

Widely circulated footage showed predominantly young adult men swimming around the breakwater, climbing border structures, and pouring through crossing points as Spanish officers struggled to contain them. Some later marched through Ceuta chanting: “Bye bye Morocco, hello Spain.”

Local police said they had been “completely overwhelmed” by the influx, while the regional government warned that reception facilities, hospitals, and other public services were nearing collapse.

So sieht das dann aus, wenn Tausende Marokkaner in #Ceuta nach Spanien übersetzen.
Das ist eine Landnahme und sie treffen auf ein sozialistisch regiertes Land, das gerade erst 1,2 Millionen illegale Migranten mit legalen Papieren ausgestattet hat und einen Regierungschef, der… pic.twitter.com/2Utuz8gJoW

— Birgit Kelle (@Birgit_Kelle) July 30, 2026

Madrid initially rejected Ceuta’s request to declare a national emergency but later deployed soldiers, special police, and additional Civil Guard units.

Morocco eventually reinforced its side of the border, deployed water cannons and tear gas, fired warning shots, and moved detained migrants away from the frontier. By Friday afternoon, the massive flow appeared to have largely stopped, although some people continued trying to swim into Spanish territory.

Hundreds of migrants also began walking back toward Morocco through the same breakwater route they had used to enter Spain.

Why Ceuta?

Ceuta is one of two Spanish territories on Morocco’s northern coast, alongside the enclave of Melilla. Together, they form the EU’s only land borders with Africa. Morocco claims both cities as part of its territory, viewing continued Spanish control as a legacy of European colonialism, while Madrid has considered them integral parts of Spain since 1580.

The enclaves have repeatedly become flashpoints in diplomatic rows between the two countries. Morocco is believed to have intentionally eased border controls during a dispute in 2021 to spark a migrant influx to pressure Madrid. However, that incident involved only about 10,000 migrants - several times less than the latest crisis.

What triggered the crisis?

It is currently unclear what exactly sparked Thursday’s incident but several possibilities have been raised. Spanish officials blame traffickers exploiting a recent court ruling, others suspect that Morocco deliberately eased border controls to pressure Madrid.

Some have also linked the timing to Spain’s rapprochement with Algeria, Morocco’s regional rival, and to the Sanchez government’s worsening relations with Washington.

🚨 BREAKING UPDATE: Spain's Civil Guard chief declares the border has "TOTALLY COLLAPSED," per @BillMelugin_

THOUSANDS of military-aged African men have poured over the border in the past several hours.

This is because Spain just gave AMNESTY to illegals. All amnesty does is… pic.twitter.com/1uR9dZGXaT

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 30, 2026

How did the Spanish court ruling increase the risk of mass migrant invasion?

The Supreme Court ruling in July asserted that immediate deportation can only apply to migrants crossing land barriers. Those intercepted at sea, on the other hand, must instead go through standard deportation procedures, including legal assistance and the chance to claim asylum.

The Spanish government has claimed that this ruling was misrepresented by traffickers as making sea crossings harder to reverse. The idea had allegedly spread “like wildfire” through human-smuggling networks and helped trigger the mass rush, Madrid suggested.

Critics have also linked the influx to Spain’s recent regularization of around 500,000 undocumented migrants, arguing that the measure encouraged further illegal entry.

Is Morocco applying pressure on Madrid?

The scale of the influx and the apparent lack of resistance on the Moroccan side have prompted accusations that Rabat deliberately loosened border controls to pressure Madrid, drawing parallels with the 2021 incident.

Tens of thousands of people were able to travel toward Ceuta and gather near the frontier before Moroccan forces intervened. Civil Guard sources described Rabat’s initial assistance as limited and insufficient, while footage showed migrants entering by sea and land as Moroccan security forces largely remained out of view.

Morocco, however, has vehemently denied its involvement in the latest influx, instead blaming criminal trafficking networks for the crisis.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has also maintained that cooperation with Morocco continues.

The Algeria dispute

Suspicions of Morocco’s involvement have further been fueled by the timing of the crisis, which comes as Spain has been seeking to restore relations with Algeria - Rabat’s main geopolitical rival.

The two North African states have long been at odds over Western Sahara. Morocco claims the territory as its own, while Algeria supports the Polisario Front’s demand for an independent Sahrawi state.

Spain had backed Morocco’s autonomy plan in 2022 and repaired ties with Rabat. However, that caused a diplomatic rupture with Algeria, an important energy supplier to Spain.

Last week, Sanchez visited Algiers for the first time in four years as the two governments seek to restore relations. The Ceuta crisis erupted ten days later.

Some have suggested that Morocco intentionally allowed the migrant influx to occur as retaliation for renewed Spanish engagement with Algeria and an effort to influence Madrid’s foreign policy. Morocco has rejected the accusations.

Is Washington part of the equation?

Some have also linked the crisis to tensions between Washington and the Sanchez government, which escalated after Madrid refused to allow its bases to be used for US strikes on Iran.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Madrid for refusing to commit 5% of GDP to defense and has threatened to cut trade off with Spain altogether.

Following the Ceuta breach, senior White House officials shared footage of the crossings, presenting the crisis as the result of Spain’s left-wing migration policies and directly targeting the Sanchez government.

The United States stands with the people of Spain, and all Europeans, against this egregious violation of their sovereignty and human rights.

This unacceptable incident is the direct result of the Spanish Government's deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal…

— Department of State (@StateDept) July 31, 2026

Washington has meanwhile maintained close relations with Rabat, reaffirmed its recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, and praised Morocco’s role in the US-backed Abraham Accords with Israel.

This has prompted claims that Morocco may have expected the Trump administration to tolerate political pressure on Sanchez, particularly when the crisis also served Washington’s own campaign against the Spanish government.

How has the international community reacted to the mass immigrant invasion?

The images of dense crowds streaming into Ceuta have prompted shock and ridicule that Spain has lost control of its border.

US President Donald Trump called the scenes “terrible” and presented them as a warning of what could happen in the US if Democrats returned to power.

European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber described the situation as “appalling” and said that the images were the direct consequence of the “pull factor” created by Spain’s mass regularization program and the “instrumentalisation of illegal migration.”

Italy accused Spain of failing to protect the EU’s external frontier and encouraging further migration through its regularization policy. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Rome was prepared to consider “extraordinary measures,” including suspending Schengen arrangements with Spain. Finland has backed the proposal.

Elon Musk mocked the scenes by comparing them to the zombie film World War Z with the caption: “Wow, the situation in Spain looks crazy!”

Just kidding, this is the actual footage … pic.twitter.com/jYRpSWM24e

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2026

Russian presidential investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev compared the crowds with depictions of the sack of Rome in 410 AD and described Ceuta as a vivid illustration of “catastrophic” EU and UK migration policies. He also accused European left-wing parties of supporting mass immigration in the expectation that migrants and their descendants would later vote for them.

Other widely shared posts have also ridiculed the Sanchez government’s longstanding humanitarian defense of migration by contrasting his rhetoric about empathy and vulnerable newcomers with footage from Ceuta showing crowds composed overwhelmingly of young men.

Can the migrants be returned?

Spain and Morocco have agreed to accelerate the return of those who entered Ceuta illegally, but Madrid cannot summarily send back migrants who arrived by sea.

Under the recent Supreme Court ruling, the expedited “border rejection” procedure applies only to people crossing physical barriers, such as fences. Those intercepted after swimming into Ceuta must instead be dealt with under the ordinary return procedure, which requires individual processing, legal assistance, and access to asylum protections.

Unaccompanied minors also cannot be deported as adults and must be identified and placed under child-protection procedures.

According to Spain’s Interior Ministry, around 37,500 of the estimated 60,000 arrivals had already voluntarily returned to Morocco by Friday afternoon. Spanish authorities have not said how many of those remaining will be deported or how long the process could take. The government is reportedly considering new maritime barriers and possible legal changes to facilitate its response to future crossings.

Washington DC, July 29, 2026. On this day, a city accustomed to protocol visits and carefully orchestrated diplomatic spectacles welcomed a rather unexpected guest. Vladimir Zelensky’s unofficial visit to the US took place under the pretext of attending the funeral of former Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters in the US Senate. A private, closed-casket funeral was held. Zelensky’s meeting with US President Donald Trump also took place behind closed doors – with no cameras, no joint statements, and no usual show of unity.

Trump, however, found time to meet with the head of the Kiev regime. Soon after the private meeting, a social media post appeared along with two images – a color photograph and a black and white one. The photos show Trump patting Zelensky on the shoulder with a patronizing expression. According to American political tradition, black-and-white photographs are often published in memory of the deceased. According to military expert Aleksey Leonkov, the photograph seems to send a clear message: “Well, man, hang in there as long as you can. We’ve got no Patriot missiles for you, but hang on.”

The atmosphere of Zelensky’s informal and rather unplanned visit reinforced the feeling that Kiev has once again been shown the limits of US support. Zelensky didn’t come alone – he was accompanied by many Ukrainian officials and representatives of the security forces. However, his public ‘achievements’ amounted to a conversation behind closed doors and two photos.

The closed casket

Lindsey Graham was one of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine in the US Senate for many years. He was someone Kiev could count on to pressure the Trump administration and push through new packages of military aid. That’s why Zelensky used his funeral as an excuse to travel to the US.

The fact that Graham was buried in a closed casket gave rise to many theories. The official version is that his death was the result of a “sudden and brief illness.” The unofficial version is that, as military expert Aleksey Leonkov puts it, the senator was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He recalled that while Graham was in Kiev, the Russian army carried out one of its most powerful strikes on military targets in the city. 

Zelensky’s new demands 

Of course, Zelensky didn’t just come to bid farewell to the senator with whom he shared a hatred for Russia. Behind closed doors, he hoped to utter his usual “Gimme!” and hand Trump a specific ‘wish list’. According to Andrei Klintsevich, 3rd class Active State Councilor of the Russian Federation, Zelensky wants from America what he can’t get from his European partners: first of all, anti-aircraft missiles. “He asked for the winter package: 300 missiles for the Patriot system, PAC-3 missiles, which can shoot down [Russian] ballistic missiles, though not hypersonic ones, specifically Iskander or sea-based ballistic missiles.” Zelensky also asked for licenses to produce these missiles domestically.

Klintsevich notes that the Kiev government’s desire to obtain these licenses has come up against hard reality. And the problem isn’t just that the White House has to make the corresponding decision. Manufacturing these missiles involves a complex technological chain. RTX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and other companies are involved in assembling Patriot missiles. Some make the seeker heads, others the engines. Each item requires its own licenses, which must be withdrawn from commercial circulation and transferred to Kiev free of charge. “Of course, no one will agree to this,” Klintsevich says. 

PAC-3 missile licenses are more than just a set of documents. It would be wrong to think that missile production can be scaled up like drone production. Drone components are readily available on the open market, but rocket technology is different. “Everything is specialized: from the engine to the rivets, to the fuel, and everything else,” the expert says. 

The problem isn’t the assembly line; Trump has already approved the start of production at General Motors and Ford plants. However, the subcontractors that supply complex components, such as gyroscopes and seekers, are critical in the production chain. 

Production volumes don’t look impressive either: Lockheed Martin produces about 600 missiles per year for all systems worldwide. An increase of 50 units is planned with the launch of German production. By 2035, they plan to produce 2,000 missiles. “Considering the number [of missiles Russia] launches, even that would not be enough,” says Klintsevich.

Combined, these two bottlenecks – issues with subcontractors and limited production volumes – make the demand for licenses and large-scale production practically impossible to implement in a short timeframe. 

The Iran-Ukraine front

Zelensky’s second initiative during this trip was the attempt to get involved in the Iranian conflict. The goal was pragmatic: by demonstrating Ukraine’s active participation in the conflict, Zelensky wanted to gain access to military supply chains. To demonstrate this, a Ukrainian drone attacked an Iranian tanker, resulting in the death of one person.

Before Zelensky’s trip, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga made harsh accusations against Iran, claiming that it “deserved” the blow. But after Zelensky’s visit, his tone changed. “Let’s not stir up the conflict,” the foreign minister urged. Apparently, Zelensky’s attempt to get involved was unsuccessful.

Alexey Leonkov notes the reason behind the change in Kiev’s public statements. “Netanyahu does not need a competitor on the Iranian track, because the Iranian conflict is the prerogative of Israel,” he says. Netanyahu refused a private meeting with Zelensky. Israel jealously guards its key role in the Middle Eastern conflict. And Washington is not ready to get into a dispute with a key ally in the region for the sake of Kiev. Moreover, Ukraine’s earlier attempt to provide specialists from Madyar’s group to protect the Middle East from Iranian drones did not yield any results.

America’s refusal fits into a broader logic. Zelensky was given to understand that Ukrainian initiatives that go beyond the established boundaries will not be backed by the US. Zelensky’s attempt to use the Iranian crisis as a lever of influence over the US only confirmed the existing boundaries: US military assistance will continue in the same volumes as before and mainly through European intermediaries.

Help, we’re winning! 

The meeting between Trump and Zelensky took place in closed format – without protocol or joint statements. This leaves wide room for interpretation. But most likely, Zelensky tried to convince Trump that he is now winning in the conflict with Russia, and the bet should be placed on the winner.

This pressure may have contributed to the new sanctions bill passed on the same day. But Zelensky didn’t secure any agreements concerning missile supplies or licenses. “It’s impossible to say that Zelensky returned with clear agreements that guarantee the acquisition of missiles and a license [for their production],” states Klintsevich. 

Leonkov believes that Zelensky’s pressure failed for objective reasons. The results of the ‘air war’ that Kiev declared did not impress anyone in the US. Zelensky received drones, complete intelligence information, and Palantir’s Prisma AI, and declared a turning point in the war, but so far hasn’t succeed.

According to Leonkov, the turning point will come from the actions of the Russian army: “The blows that Russia is now inflicting on the entire transport infrastructure – ports, as well as sea, railway, fuel and energy infrastructure – paralyze not only the activities of the Ukrainian army on the front line, but also complicate the logistics that the West established on the territory of Ukraine in 2023, when it started actively supplying weapons and military equipment.”

Expert assessments 

Moscow sees this as a simple protocol visit without any consequences. A meeting behind closed doors, two photographs, and no new obligations regarding missile supplies (in terms of volumes, dates, or licenses) – that’s all there is to it. Kiev had already received everything that it could count on through European channels. Attempts to exceed these agreements proved futile. 

In order to strengthen Ukraine’s image in the eyes of Western partners, during Zelensky’s trip, the Ukrainian armed forces carried out major drone raids on Moscow, which were countered. “That’s why we will continue to fight. So far, we haven’t encountered the overwhelming difficulties that we were promised,” explains Klintsevich. 

Western publications and Ukrainian sources interpreted the visit otherwise. Reuters and other major new agencies limited themselves to neutral language about “ongoing contacts.” Kiev’s statements, as often happens after negotiations behind closed doors, emphasized the very fact of dialogue and “mutual understanding,” rather than a specific result.

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon or the US Department of State issued any statements about new emergency military aid packages for Kiev after the visit. This in itself is more important than any interpretations. Perhaps, in the current situation, only the Russian army is capable of really ‘giving’ anything to Ukraine.

Conclusions 

Without a ‘winter package’ of 300 PAC-3 missiles and licenses for their production, Ukrainian air defense remains depleted. Even considering an increase in American production to 2000 missiles by 2035, taking into account the intensity of Russian missile launches, this will not be enough. This means that Ukraine will remain vulnerable during the winter campaign.

Speaking more broadly, there is no qualitative change in the situation for the Russian side. Attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure continue to impede Western-built logistics chains and drain Ukrainian resources.

Assessing the bigger picture, one cannot fail to note that the political (and sometimes not only political, as in the case of Lindsey Graham) existence of those who linked their fate with Zelensky ended rather ingloriously. Sadly, an entire country – Ukraine – has linked its existence with him.

As nearly 50,000 North African migrants surged into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta overnight, one group responded with mockery and glee: Israeli politicians and their Zionist supporters, who celebrated the slap in Spanish President Pedro Sanchez’ face.

An estimated 49,000 migrants, predominantly young Moroccan men, stormed across Morocco’s border with the Spanish exclave of Ceuta between Thursday and Friday, after guards on the Moroccan side seemingly decided to open the barbed wire gates built to prevent such a surge. 

As videos of the migrants marauding through Ceuta spread on social media, local authorities in the city begged for military intervention from Madrid. Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez refused to declare a national emergency, but sent a token force of 60 troops to the exclave. 

Right-wing politicians across Europe condemned Sanchez’ half-hearted response, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, and Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker all calling for Spain’s exclusion from the EU’s Schengen borderless travel zone.

In certain Israeli circles, however, the reaction was one of jubilation. Although Israeli politicians and influencers have spent decades lamenting the supposed “Islamization” of Europe, they celebrated on Friday as tens of thousands of Muslims poured into EU territory. After Sanchez labeled Israel’s war on Gaza a “genocide,” banned the transit of military goods to Israeli via its territory, and denied the US use of its military bases to strike Iran, Zionist commentators viewed the invasion of Ceuta as just punishment for Spain.

Israel’s UN ambassador embraces decolonization

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, used the crisis to call on Spain to surrender its two north African exclaves: Ceuta and Melilla.

“Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy,” he wrote on X, referring to the local emergency declaration in Ceuta. “Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”

Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy.

Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in…

— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) July 30, 2026

Meanwhile, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, the Golan Heights, and parts of southern Lebanon is considered illegal under UN and international law. While Israel does not officially support Morocco’s claims to Ceuta and Melilla, the Jewish state has strengthened relations with Morocco since the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair, hinted back in 2019 that his father could “fund NGOs in [Spain] calling you to give away Ceuta and Melilla.”

Journalist celebrates the ‘Spanish punishment’

Israeli journalist Edy Cohen was far from the only reporter celebrating, but in a lengthy post on X, he presented the invasion as divine punishment for the desecration of the Israeli flag at last month’s ‘Running of the Bulls’ in Pamplona.

“When you want to destroy Israel, you get the young Moroccans,” he wrote. “They raised a banner that said ‘Destroy Israel’. Fate, with almost divine cynicism, raised another one for them: ‘Receive Morocco’.”

El castigo español: cuando quieres destruir a Israel, recibes a los jóvenes marroquíes

Hace exactamente un mes, en el festival de San Fermín en Pamplona, miles de españoles vestidos de blanco y rojo corrían con los toros y desplegaban sobre sus cabezas un enorme cartel: «DESTROY… pic.twitter.com/rLOOIyiwVo

— إيدي كوهين אדי כהן 🇮🇱 (@EdyCohen) July 31, 2026

Cohen followed his celebratory message with a threat: “And don’t be surprised if in a few years those same young people who stormed Ceuta are the ones taking to the streets of Madrid and Barcelona shouting the new slogans… he who invites the destruction of the Jewish state suddenly discovers that destruction can also start in his own home.”

Ben-Gvir wants open borders for Spain

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joined in the mockery, congratulating Sanchez “for his profound commitment to welcoming immigration and ‘human diversity’.”

Ben-Gvir, who has called for the destruction of Lebanon, the execution of Palestinian prisoners, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war, called on Sanchez to go further and aid in the depopulation of Gaza.

Mis felicitaciones al Presidente del Gobierno de España, Pedro Sánchez, por su profundo compromiso con la acogida de la inmigración y la "diversidad humana".
Como alguien que demuestra una gran preocupación por Hamás y los residentes de Gaza, le llamo a traducir las palabras en…

— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) July 31, 2026

“As someone who demonstrates great concern for Hamas and the residents of Gaza,” he continued, “I call on you to translate words into actions: open the doors of Spain and grant refuge to the residents of Gaza who seek to emigrate. This is an excellent opportunity to contribute a little more to Spain’s ‘human diversity’.”

A two-state solution for Spain

Israeli influencer Yoav Kaufman posted a novel solution to the crisis on X: hand over half of Spanish territory to Morocco, in a modern re-do of the Islamic conquest of Spain. “2 States for 2 Nations. Living side by side. In peace and prosperity,” he wrote, mocking Spain’s support for Palestinian statehood.

2 States for 2 Nations. Living side by side. In peace and prosperity. pic.twitter.com/ZRXPQgXMER

— Yoav Kaufman 🇮🇱 (@yoavkaufman) July 31, 2026

Ironically, Kaufman describes Israel as “fighting the West’s future war” on his X profile.

The Israel lobby makes its offer

Israel’s powerful lobby in the US has also positioned itself against Spain in the argument over Ceuta. Michael Rubin, policy director at the pro-Israeli Middle East Forum think tank, suggested that “if Spain would return occupied Ceuta and Melilla to their rightful Moroccan sovereignty, Madrid would not be in this mess.” To ensure that as many people as possible heard his argument, Rubin posted in English, Spanish, Arabic, and Berber.

If Spain would return occupied Ceuta and Melilla to their rightful Moroccan sovereignty, Madrid would not be in this mess.

Si España devolviera Ceuta y Melilla ocupadas a su legítima soberanía marroquí, Madrid no estaría en este lío.

لو أعادت إسبانيا سبتة ومليلية المحتلتين إلى…

— Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) July 30, 2026

In an article for Israel’s Ynet news site in April, Moroccan journalist and Middle East Forum fellow Amine Ayoub called on Israel to help “Morocco recover Ceuta and Melilla,” so that the US and Israel could “punish a NATO member that has repeatedly chosen obstruction” and establish a military presence on the Strait of Gibraltar. 

The disastrous heatwave and drought across Europe have pushed the Rhine and Danube rivers to historic water lows, forcing two EU countries into atomic energy power-downs while disrupting industrial output and major trade routes.

The Rhine and Danube serve as vital commercial corridors, historic borders and a continuous navigable link between the North Sea and the Black Sea. Many European power plants rely on the rivers for cooling water, and that is why record-low levels have sharply reduced electricity output.

Hungary faces ‘unprecedented’ energy crunch

The Danube, which flows through or borders ten countries from southwestern Germany to the Black Sea, has reached historically low levels this July. In Budapest, the river fell to a record-low of 23 cm on Thursday, 10 cm below the previous record set in 2018, according to Hungary’s official water-monitoring service.

Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant, the country’s largest source of domestic power, generating nearly half of its electricity, was forced to cut output at three of its four reactors, reducing production to about 60% of capacity. On Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar warned the plant could be shut down altogether within 24 to 72 hours “for the first time in 44 years,” because its cooling-water intake nozzles can no longer reach the receding Danube.

“An energy crisis situation may arise from Monday,” Magyar warned, urging the public to reduce electricity use. He stressed the national energy supply remains secure for now, but warned that in the coming days “this unprecedented situation will require solutions we have not had to use before.” The government is preparing a series of measures, including mobilizing domestic generating reserves, securing electricity imports, asking major industrial consumers to reschedule production and voluntarily cut consumption, and reducing unnecessary energy use in government buildings.

Heatwave spreads across Europe’s nuclear sector

Downstream in Romania, one of two reactors at the Cernavoda nuclear plant – which generates roughly one-fifth of the country’s electricity – was shut down earlier this week because of low water levels. The Energy Ministry had planned to take the second reactor offline on Thursday due to “unfavorable developments in hydraulic conditions,” but kept it running overnight. It remains on standby for shutdown if river conditions deteriorate further, operator Nuclearelectrica said. The two reactors have never before faced simultaneous shutdown because of low water levels.

Analysts warn the reactor outages could increase Hungary’s and Romania’s reliance on electricity imports while driving up power prices across the EU, as both countries are normally major electricity exporters. The disruption could further deepen the bloc’s energy crunch, which began with the loss of cheap Russian gas following Ukraine-related sanctions on Moscow and has worsened this year amid the US war on Iran and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key global energy shipping route.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria is also on the brink of a severe grid emergency. Energy Minister Iva Petrova warned this week the country could be forced to temporarily shut down both operational reactors at the Kozloduy nuclear plant – its only nuclear power station – within days.

Elsewhere, French power providers are also feeling the strain of extreme heat. State-owned utility EDF shut down one reactor at the Golfech plant on Thursday after soaring river temperatures pushed cooling conditions beyond operating limits, and warned output at the Tricastin plant could also be reduced. Many of France’s reactors rely on river water for cooling, but environmental rules limit the discharge of heated water when river temperatures are already high. The outages have tightened electricity supplies, with French evening power prices climbing to around €200 per megawatt-hour on Thursday – among the highest summer levels since the 2022 energy crisis, according to Epex Spot data.

Switzerland’s Beznau plant on the Aare River has also been hit hard, with its two reactors cycling between full shutdowns and 50% power cuts over the past month after river temperatures reached the 25°C regulatory threshold.

Low water levels hit river traffic

Record-low river levels have also disrupted river traffic across Europe, affecting everything from shipping to tourist cruises. Cargo ships can no longer carry full loads, forcing operators to split shipments between several vessels or shift freight to road and rail, with surcharges driving up transport costs.

In Hungary, the Ministry of Transport and Investment said low water levels have halted most cargo traffic, with vessels still operating restricted to just 10% to 20% of their normal loads. Romania faces similar problems, with commercial barges barred from carrying full loads, while tugboats are limited to two barges per convoy, forcing multiple extra trips.

In Serbia, hundreds of small boats and dozens of cargo vessels have been stranded on the dried-out riverbank near Novi Sad, where the Danube has retreated up to 20 meters from its usual shoreline. Barges and tankers were carrying only about 30% to 40% of their normal capacity, local reports said. Serbia’s fuel imports plunged to just 25% of their July target because of constrained river transport, Serbian Mining and Energy Minister Dubravka Dedovic Handanovic said last week.

The Rhine traffic also affected

The Rhine flows about 1,230 km (765 miles) from the Swiss Alps through or along Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, France and the Netherlands before reaching the North Sea, making it one of Europe’s busiest shipping routes for grains, minerals, ores, coal and oil products, including gasoline. Navigable depth at Kaub – a key Rhine chokepoint for shipments to southern Germany and Switzerland – stood at 29 cm on Thursday, the lowest since 2018, according to German federal data.

Cargo vessels continue to pass through the chokepoint but are carrying only about 20% of their normal loads, Roberto Spranzi, director of German shipping cooperative DTG, which operates around 100 inland freight vessels, told Reuters. He said low water levels mean four to five times more vessels are needed to move the same volume of cargo. As a result, tanker barge transport from Rotterdam to Karlsruhe, Germany, rose to around €145-€150 ($165.84-$171.56) per ton on Thursday from €45 at the end of June, according to media reports citing commodity traders.

Reduced navigable depths are disrupting deliveries of essential petrochemical feedstocks, including naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), reports claim. Commodity intelligence provider ICIS reported that LyondellBasell had declared force majeure on butadiene supplies from its Wesseling plant after low water levels disrupted feedstock deliveries. German chemical giant BASF also warned of possible force majeures and product shortages because it relies heavily on the river for transport.

Heavy industry along the Rhine is also feeling the impact. German steelmaker Thyssenkrupp said this week the severe drought has created major bottlenecks in transporting raw materials to its main production hub in Duisburg, forcing it to curb hot metal production.

Forecasts show Rhine clearance could fall to 24 cm on Friday, the lowest level since records began in 1990, which could worsen the bottlenecks and further drive up shipping costs.

Meanwhile, another major heatwave – the fourth this summer – is forecast to hit Western Europe in the coming days, meteorologists warn. Temperatures are expected to soar above 40°C across the Iberian Peninsula and France, with some areas potentially reaching 45°C. As the system moves east, 40°C-plus heat is forecast to spread across Central Europe, from western Germany to Italy, Hungary and much of the northern Balkans.

The Gauteng Political Killings Task Team has discovered the body of a missing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party member, bringing a tragic end to the search for 51-year-old Aaron Makola, who disappeared earlier this month.

National police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said Makola was reported missing after he vanished on 10 July 2026. A day later, on 11 July, his vehicle was found abandoned, raising concerns about his whereabouts and prompting an investigation.

Mathe said the Gauteng Political Killings Task Team officially took over the investigation on 20 July after engaging with Makola’s family and obtaining information that investigators believed could assist in tracing him.

“An extensive investigation led members of the GP PKTT to Delmas on Thursday, July 30, 2026, where the EFF member was tragically found,” she said.

Mathe added that preliminary investigations indicate that Makola had been shot dead before his body was dumped in a bush. His family has since positively identified his remains.

“Investigations are at an advanced stage to identify and apprehend those responsible for the murder, including both the perpetrators and any individuals who may have orchestrated the crime,” said Mathe.

Authorities have not yet established a motive for the killing, and the Gauteng Political Killings Task Team continues its investigation.

In another case, a 34-year-old man appeared before the Cullinan Magistrate’s Court for the murder of Monica Dube, the Election Coordinator and Secretary for the EFF in Tshwane Region Two. Sipho Lucky Mahlangu is facing charges of robbery with aggravating circumstances and murder. He abandoned his bail application. 

It is alleged that during the early hours of June 13, Mahlangu and an accomplice broke into the deceased’s residence in Wallmansthal through a window.

The pair allegedly entered her bedroom and shot her in the head while her children were present. After fleeing the scene, they allegedly stole her cellphone, which was reported missing.

On July 4, Mahlangu was spotted at a taxi rank by the deceased’s daughter, who alerted the police, leading to his subsequent arrest. For further investigations, the matter has been postponed to September 17.

First published by IOL

Indian police have registered a case against Meta’s country head and several Facebook and Instagram users over posts deemed offensive toward Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Police are ​preparing to send a notice to Meta Platforms India head Arun Srinivas following complaints by two individuals, reports said citing senior officials of the cyber crimes unit in Hyderabad. The southern city hosts Meta’s main operations hub in the country.

The videos were reportedly posted during the student protests in New Delhi earlier this month that led to the resignation of the federal education minister.

The complainants alleged that the posts “contain offensive language, ridicule, and indecent remarks directed at the Hon’ble Prime Minister and other individuals” and also appear to have been digitally altered or AI-generated.

New Delhi has tightened content rules that protect online platforms from liability over user-generated content. Since February, platforms have been asked to remove ​unlawful content flagged by courts or the government within three hours. The window was previously 36 hours.

Earlier this week, Meta assured the government that safeguards had been put in place after a video posted from Narendra Modi’s account was briefly blocked on Facebook.

A Meta team will reportedly soon meet government officials to discuss key issues, including content regulation.

A parliamentary panel has also summoned representatives of Meta, X, Google, and Snapchat to discuss user privacy and public order.

Earlier this month, India raised concerns over the rollout of a new username feature by the messaging app WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, calling it a potential cybersecurity risk. WhatsApp is the top messaging platform in the country of 1.4 billion, with more than 500 million users.

In June, New Delhi temporarily banned the Telegram app, claiming it was a key facilitator of the leak of questions in a national entrance exam, which triggered student protests.

The combined user base of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in India is more than 1.15 billion, making it Meta’s largest market. 

The development also comes as student protests ignite a debate in the country about the surveillance technology that law enforcement agencies use to tackle unrest and how it holds up to scrutiny under Indian law.

The German government has approved a bill to deploy artificial intelligence in processing asylum, visa and residence permit applications.

The initiative aims to accelerate procedures and reduce pressure on immigration authorities. It was endorsed by the cabinet on Wednesday but still requires backing from the federal parliament and Federal Council.

The EU’s economic powerhouse, Germany has long been the bloc’s leading destination for asylum seekers. In 2025, the country received more than 163,000 applications, accounting for about one in five claims lodged across the bloc’s 27 member states, according to the EU Agency for Asylum. The country also hosts the EU’s largest migrant population in absolute terms, with nearly 17 million foreign-born residents accounting for about 20% of Germany’s population.

Over the past year, the federal government has tightened Germany’s migration policy by expanding border checks, increasing the number of migrants turned back at the border, and accelerating asylum procedures and deportations. The measures marked a sharp break with the open-border policy adopted by Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015.

Under the proposed AI Migration Administration Act, based on legislation adopted in November 2025, the authorities would be allowed to use personal data from asylum and immigration proceedings to develop AI systems and other automated software. The government says the tools would help analyze administrative workflows, process applications more quickly and support decision-making, stressing that final decisions would remain the responsibility of migration officials.

The bill would also allow AI in cases where there are justified doubts about the accuracy of an applicant’s statements to compare information submitted in applications with publicly available information online.

The proposal has drawn criticism from several German human rights groups, which argue that the use of AI in migration procedures could undermine privacy and lead to discriminatory outcomes. Deutsche Welle cited digital rights watchdog AlgorithmWatch as saying that the government was seeking to use migrants and tourists as “guinea pigs” for the technology. The experts also said that the system could not guarantee the protection of personal data or prevent discrimination.

Advocacy groups Pro Asyl and AWO reportedly warned of the risk of “algorithmic bias,” arguing that overburdened officials could become overly reliant on AI-generated recommendations instead of exercising independent judgment. Charity Caritas also cautioned that the use of AI in processing applications could increase the risk of errors.

The move comes amid a broader shift toward stricter migration rules implemented by the EU that has recently adopted the updated Pact on Migration and Asylum, which tightens border procedures, asylum screening and rules for managing migration flows across the bloc.

A similar AI-based measure is being explored in Britain, where there is a plan to deploy Facial Age Estimation technology at the border to help assess the age of migrants claiming to be minors. The proposal has also faced criticism from dozens of rights groups, which warn that the technology could produce inaccurate results, reinforce algorithmic bias, and raise concerns over the handling of sensitive personal data.

A Ukrainian commander instructed squad leaders to open fire on soldiers attempting to flee their positions, according to an audio recording cited in a new media investigation into alleged abuses on the conflict front line.

The report, published on Thursday by the Western grant-funded outlet Texty.org.ua, focuses on the 225th Separate Assault Regiment. The unit reportedly ranks second in the number of complaints filed by soldiers, behind only the 425th Separate Assault Regiment, known as “Skelia,” which became the subject of a formal investigation following a similar exposé in late June.

The recording reportedly captures the commander of the 225th Regiment, Major Oleg Shiryaev, telling subordinates that “anything that moves” without authorization should be treated as an enemy.

“Anyone who flees their position, deserters – they are the enemy too,” the officer reportedly said, adding that “there is no such thing as our guys.”

The investigation was based on interviews with current and former members of the regiment, including soldiers who had deserted, as well as troops from units deployed near the 225th, the outlet said. Their testimony allegedly points to systematic mistreatment intended to enforce discipline among rank-and-file service members.

According to the report, soldiers were effectively detained between combat deployments and compelled to return to frontline positions under threat of death. Those accused of breaking the rules were allegedly beaten, with some reportedly stripped naked and tied to trees as an additional form of humiliation.

As with the earlier allegations involving the 425th Regiment, the reported abuses in the 225th have been linked to former Ukrainian Armed Forces commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky, who was removed from his post earlier this month.

Syrsky had clashed with former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, who also lost his position during a government reshuffle. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky initially intended to retain Syrsky but ultimately replaced him amid domestic and international criticism surrounding Fedorov’s dismissal.

Texty reported that Shiryaev participated in Kiev’s military crackdown in Donbass following the 2014 armed coup before later retiring from service. In 2018, he was accused of organizing the illegal seizure of a grain-storage facility in Kharkov Region, although the case reportedly remains unresolved.

He returned to active duty after the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022 and was appointed commander of the 225th Regiment the following year.

India should consider appointing a “polar ambassador” to pursue “polar diplomacy” more effectively, a parliamentary panel has recommended.

“Creating such a position will not only help India project the importance given to these regions in its foreign policy architecture but will also help put across its policy stance in relation to polar areas/pursue polar diplomacy in a more effective manner,” lawmakers on the committee said. 

A parliamentary panel in India is a small group of MPs that weighs in on bills and budgets, and the work of various ministries. 

India established a scientific presence in Antarctica in 1982 and has three active research stations there now. New Delhi came out with an Arctic Policy in 2022.

The Arctic has become increasingly important for New Delhi amid the shipping disruptions in the Middle East caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. India is considering increasing the use of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), also called the Arctic route, Russia’s minister for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, Alexey Chekunkov, said last month.

Russia is investing heavily in developing the NSR, which is the shortest shipping route between East Asia and Europe. Indian shipyards are in talks to build four non-nuclear icebreaker ships for Russia.

The committee noted that all Arctic Council member states, and most non-Arctic observer states have polar or Arctic ambassadors, and dedicated polar or Arctic affairs departments.

It recommended that the government enter into an agreement with Japan, Singapore and South Korea, which, along with India, are observers in the Arctic Council, to enhance Asia’s collective voice in the forum. Having a polar ambassador will also help India work toward getting full-member status of the council, it said.

An “Indian narrative of the Arctic” should be formulated to enhance New Delhi’s leadership position in the polar areas, it said, adding that the government should strengthen its role as a representative of the Global South to advocate their collective interests in the polar regions.

The panel led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor also made a slew of other recommendations including that the government buy polar research vessels as the shortage of such ice-class vessels was impacting India’s polar research and other activities. It also said the Indian government should explore fishing in polar regions while taking into consideration the fragile ecology there.

“Being a country of more than 11,000 km long coastline and multiple islands, any sea level rise will have significant economic and strategic impact on India. Melting of sea ice surrounding Antarctica and Arctic will also have a significant impact on the Indian monsoon climate system,” the panel said.

The military-technical balance of power is a key element of every political system and changes in that balance, including those brought about by the emergence of new forms of warfare, shape political intentions and determine what is possible in international affairs. The rapid transformation of warfare, driven by the drone revolution and demonstrated over the past year in both Ukraine and the conflict around Iran, offers an opportunity to reassess familiar concepts and how they are evolving.

The spirit has changed, but let us leave the military aspects of drone warfare to the specialists and focus instead on the political consequences.

August 2025 can be seen as the turning point, when Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held their much-discussed meeting in Alaska. Whether any concrete agreements were reached remains disputed, but what’s clear is the essence of what became known as the ‘spirit of Anchorage’.

Trump believed that although Ukraine was resisting stubbornly, its defeat was ultimately inevitable and the sooner Kiev accepted concessions, the less severe the damage would be. The understandings reportedly reached reflected what Russia was prepared to settle for, the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Donbass, and where meaningful political negotiations could begin. The White House then turned to the other interested party, the Ukraine-Western Europe partnership.

It’s difficult to judge how much pressure Trump actually placed on his European counterparts. Some effort appears to have been made, but neither Trump nor his advisers were prepared to invest significant political capital and that was especially true given that parts of his administration didn’t share his hostility towards Vladimir Zelensky. 

The Western Europeans, for their part, played the situation skillfully. The post-Anchorage pilgrimage of leaders to the White House, mocked by many at the time, as they appeared to indulge Trump’s often boorish behavior, served its purpose. The objective of the EU and UK was simple: to slow down the process that appeared to have begun in Alaska and buy enough time to convince the American president that his assumptions were wrong. Ukraine, they insisted, was still capable of changing the course of the war.

Almost a year later, it is fair to say that Brussels and London, together with Ukraine, achieved at least part of that objective.

Meanwhile, Western perceptions of the conflict have changed and at this summer’s G7 and NATO summits, the US president displayed a noticeably more neutral, at times even supportive, attitude towards Kiev. In effect, he acknowledged that his earlier confidence in Ukraine’s inevitable defeat had been, at the very least, premature.

Whether this shift reflects genuine changes on the battlefield or the success of an effective political and media campaign is open to debate, but either way, the change is real and the much-discussed ‘spirit of Anchorage’ has faded because the political climate itself has changed.

Fear and hatred in Europe

Ukraine’s growing ability to conduct long-range drone strikes is the product of three years of sustained financial and technological support from Western Europe, and despite Trump’s repeated claims that “Sleepy Joe” squandered hundreds of billions of American dollars on Ukraine, it’s European governments, Germany above all, that are now carrying the greatest burden of supporting Kiev’s war effort. That’s why assistance didn’t collapse after Trump returned to the White House and sharply reduced American aid.

Western Europe finds itself in a difficult position as it faces persistent economic problems alongside growing concerns about Ukraine and its own internal stability. Maintaining support for Kiev is politically sustainable only if it is presented not as solidarity with Ukraine, but as an investment in the half-continent’s own security.

Public rhetoric, particularly in Germany, increasingly suggests that a military confrontation with Russia around the turn of the next decade is a genuine possibility. The argument is straightforward: As long as Ukrainians are fighting, Western Europe has time to prepare and therefore the conflict should continue for as long as possible, although how much of this militaristic rhetoric reflects genuine belief remains open to debate.

The circumstances have undoubtedly revived Western Europe’s long-standing historical suspicion of Russia, a powerful and, from the their perspective, unpredictable giant to the east. During periods of close economic cooperation these fears receded into the background, replaced by the pursuit of mutual benefit, but this political crisis has quickly pushed commercial interests aside.

In that sense, today’s expectation of a future military confrontation isn’t entirely artificial as it reflects deeply rooted attitudes within Western Europe’s political consciousness.

There is, however, another dimension that is both more rational and perhaps not fully appreciated in that the EU and UK’s political establishment is searching for a new basis for internal cohesion at a time of profound economic and social change, and that faced with mounting uncertainty, it requires a unifying idea.

Nothing serves that purpose better than an external threat.

The African Union (AU) supports South Africa’s proposal for a continent-wide discussion on migration following recent tensions over illegal immigration, the South African Foreign Ministry has said.

Clayson Monyela, the head of public diplomacy at South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), said on X on Thursday that Pretoria has “defeated the attempt to single out & isolate” the country during discussions at the AU. 

“The AU has agreed with us. The AU will discuss the migration issue broadly & look at the ‘Pull & Push’ factors,” he wrote. Monyela added that countries should examine the factors driving migration and said sending, transit, and destination countries “must collaborate to find solutions.”

Monyela’s comments came after Ghana asked the AU to discuss what it described as “xenophobic attacks in the Republic of South Africa against African nationals” as a separate agenda of an upcoming meeting.

The request followed a diplomatic dispute between the two countries after Ghana said one of its nationals was killed during anti-immigration protests in South Africa and raised concerns over the safety of African migrants. Pretoria rejected the claim, saying police investigations showed the man was shot a day before the protests in what authorities described as an extortion-related criminal attack.

Last week, South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola also stated the AU had agreed that migration should be discussed through a broader continental framework rather than by focusing on individual countries.

“We welcome any discussion that will be comprehensive on migration to deal with all issues, including the root causes of illegal migration,” the minister said.

South Africa has stepped up deportations and border enforcement in recent months as part of its migration policy. Government figures show that more than 53,000 foreign nationals had been processed for deportation or repatriation as of July, after the authorities intensified a nationwide crackdown on illegal migration.

The debate has intensified following anti-immigration demonstrations held across South Africa in June. Protest organizers demanded tougher action against undocumented migration, while rights groups warned against xenophobia and attacks on foreign nationals.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has renewed his criticism of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has said the Israeli leader could be arrested on war-crimes charges if he visits the city.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024 over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Mamdani has said his administration would seek to enforce the warrant if presented with an opportunity to do so.

Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity this week, Netanyahu accused the mayor of siding with Iran, which he described as a mortal enemy of both Israel and the United States.

“The army of Israel, the young men and women of Israel, the public in Israel… stand up and say, ‘Yes, we’re willing to stand up at this moment and stand in the breach with the United States.’ This is the ally that Mamdani and his ilk are vilifying,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu claims NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani "supports Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah."

Source: Hang Out with Sean Hannity pic.twitter.com/3Lahrohbcc

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 30, 2026

“And what is he supporting? Iran. Who is he supporting? Hamas. Who is he supporting? Hezbollah,” he added, accusing Mamdani and other critics of Israel of “moral cynicism” and “absurdity.”

Iran, Hamas, and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah movement are part of what Tehran calls the regional “axis of resistance,” an alliance opposed to Israel and its influence in the Middle East.

Public opinion in the US has shifted against Israel in recent years as Netanyahu’s government expanded military operations in Gaza and Lebanon and lobbied Washington to join forces for an air campaign against Iran. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 47% of respondents said they believed Netanyahu had committed war crimes in Gaza, while 49% supported enforcing the ICC warrant if he entered the US.

Israel’s influence on American foreign policy, particularly President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran, has also fueled divisions within the MAGA movement. Prominent Trump allies, including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have publicly broken with the president over the issue.

Mamdani is regarded as a rising figure in the Democratic Party. His victory in the New York mayoral election was widely seen as proof that outspoken criticism of Israel is no longer necessarily a barrier to electoral success in the US, even in a city with one of the world’s largest Jewish communities. The Israeli government equates criticisms of its policies with anti-Semitism.

A US government map misplaced every African country it highlighted during a presentation at a major international AIDS conference, prompting an apology from the State Department.

The map appeared on Sunday during a presentation by Jeff Graham, the top US health official overseeing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), at the AIDS 2026 Conference in Rio de Janeiro. The session focused on Washington’s new health funding agreements with African governments, but all six countries identified on the map were incorrectly positioned.

Nigeria was placed in the Sahara, making the West African coastal nation appear landlocked, while Mozambique was moved from southeastern Africa to the Horn of Africa. Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) appeared on the opposite side of the continent, and the locations or borders of Cameroon, Malawi, and Uganda were also inaccurate.

An examination of the image found a watermark indicating that it had been created using OpenAI technology, Reuters reported. The company was quoted as saying that it is investigating the incident.

The State Department said it takes “full responsibility for the confusion and misrepresentation” caused by the blunder, including among its African partners.

“This was an unfortunate error caused by a team member who hastily altered the slide deck immediately before the presentation at the AIDS 2026 Conference,” a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday.

🇺🇸🌍 The U.S. State Department can’t even locate African countries on a map.

During an official presentation in Rio de Janeiro, the American delegation displayed an AI-generated map placing Nigeria in the Sahara, Mozambique on the Horn of Africa, and Côte d’Ivoire on the… pic.twitter.com/3iuvPRr7gH

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) July 30, 2026

The error was first publicized by AIDS campaigner Emily Bass, who described the slide as “disrespectful to African collaborators.” Matt Petit, an artificial intelligence and geopolitics specialist at the Atlantic Council, said whoever created and approved it “did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work.”

The presentation concerned Washington’s America First Global Health Strategy, introduced as part of an overhaul of foreign assistance following the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development after President Donald Trump returned to office last year.

The State Department says agreements concluded with 34 countries include more than $14.3 billion in US assistance and $9.6 billion in investment from recipient governments. However, the initiative has faced resistance elsewhere in Africa. Ghana and Zimbabwe rejected proposed agreements over demands for access to sensitive health data, while Zambia suspended negotiations in May over data provisions and Washington’s attempt to link health assistance to a critical-minerals deal. Kenya signed a five-year agreement in December, but its implementation has faced a legal challenge over privacy and constitutional concerns.

The map incident is not the first geographical gaffe by a US administration. In 2017, Donald Trump twice pronounced Namibia as “Nambia” while addressing African leaders. In 2022, Joe Biden thanked Colombia instead of Cambodia for hosting an ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh, according to the official White House transcript.

The US has sanctioned a Delhi-based company that represents Iran’s Mahan Air in India, along with entities in Russia and China that do business with the privately owned carrier.

“India-based Skiez Travels and Logistics Private Limited… and Russia-based Air Cargo Pro Limited… serve as general sales agents for Mahan Air in India and Russia, respectively,” the Treasury Department said in a statement on its website.

“Those who provide financial services, logistics, or commercial support to the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps] or Mahan Air are helping sustain a terrorist enterprise,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

Mahan Air is itself under US and European Union sanctions.

The US Treasury claimed that although Mahan Air presents itself as a civilian carrier, it has played a central role in enabling the IRGC by providing “travel services for IRGC‑Qods Force personnel, facilitating military training, and supporting Iran’s procurement and transport of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems and weapons.”

Skiez has represented Mahan Air in India from 2020, according to its website. General sales agents are official representatives for an airline in a country where it doesn’t have a local office, and manage ticket and cargo sales, as well as customer support.

The other entities sanctioned are Chinese-based Shanghai Wings International Logistics Co, which serves as a general sales agent for Mahan Air in China, the Shanghai Elite International Travel Co, which represents Mahan Air in China, and its executive director, Tang Xin. DadeNegar Startup Studio, which the Treasury described as a “front company affiliated with Iran’s IRGC,” has also been targeted.

The US and Iran have exchanged several rounds of attacks in the latest escalation of hostilities. The conflict was triggered by US-Israeli attacks on Iran, and has led to the near-complete blockade of the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of the world’s energy used to pass.

Dozens of Indian companies and individuals were targeted by the US in earlier sanctions rounds.

As Europe endures another summer of record-breaking temperatures, the heat is no longer just a Mediterranean story; it is increasingly an Arctic one.

A recent study demonstrates that accelerating sea-ice loss in the Barents Sea is increasing the likelihood of simultaneous summer heatwaves across Europe and East Asia, underscoring how changes in the High North reverberate across continents. The Arctic is, therefore, no longer a distant frontier defined solely by ice, energy resources, and great-power rivalry; it is a global climate regulator whose transformation directly affects the well-being of both the Global North and South.

The Arctic may not be a ‘global common’ under international law, but it has become so in terms of its consequences; its climate system impacts monsoon rains in South Asia, heatwaves in Europe, extreme weather events in North America, and food security in Africa. In this sense, the Arctic is often described as the ‘kitchen of the world’s weather’. It may, therefore, be more appropriately understood as a ‘shared climate common’, reflecting the transboundary nature of its environmental impacts. This reconceptualization highlights the potential role of institutions such as BRICS in addressing Arctic-related climate challenges, even though most of its members are non-Arctic states.

Against this backdrop, India’s 2026 BRICS chairship arrives at a pivotal moment. As the leading voice of the Global South and an increasingly active Arctic stakeholder through scientific research and polar diplomacy, India is uniquely positioned to broaden the Arctic conversation beyond traditional geopolitical competition.

By placing the interconnected challenges of climate resilience, sustainable development, scientific cooperation, and inclusive governance at the center of the BRICS agenda, New Delhi can help build a bridge between the concerns of the Global South and the rapidly changing realities of the High North. For India, it is an opportunity to reshape how emerging powers engage with Arctic governance.

India has recognized this transformation gradually. From establishing the Himadri research station in Svalbard in 2008 to adopting its Arctic Policy in 2022, New Delhi has steadily expanded its scientific and diplomatic engagement. Yet the country’s Arctic approach remains largely science-driven and relatively cautious. Unlike Arctic coastal states, India does not possess territorial ambitions in the region. Instead, it seeks responsible participation based on scientific research, environmental stewardship, sustainable development, and international cooperation.

BRICS offers a unique platform through which India can elevate this vision.

BRICS push

The Arctic itself is undergoing profound geopolitical change. Russia remains the dominant Arctic power, possessing approximately half of the Arctic coastline, the world’s largest fleet of nuclear icebreakers, and extensive energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, Western sanctions and the deterioration of Russia-West relations following the Ukraine conflict have significantly disrupted established mechanisms of Arctic governance and cooperation.

Governance for the Arctic Eight or Governance through Cooperation? The latter concept implies institutionalized changes and broader claims to participation in Arctic governance based on the indivisibility of contemporary environmental challenges, the global consequences of climate change, and rising international tensions that affect all states.

The rationale for such claims has become particularly pronounced in recent years, as the Western Arctic states suspended cooperation with Russia within the framework of the Arctic Council. As a result, the Arctic Council has become largely inactive. This has provided non-Arctic states seeking a greater role in Arctic affairs with a compelling argument for promoting more inclusive governance arrangements.

From the perspective of Russia and the Arctic states, however, such initiatives are viewed more as a challenge than as an opportunity. Russia remains interested in restoring the full functioning of the Arctic Council.

From Russia’s perspective, the most unfavorable scenario would be one in which governance through cooperation evolves into the internationalization of the Arctic — that is, the opening of Arctic governance to all interested stakeholders on an equal basis. Russia’s current priority is, therefore, to preserve the unity of the Arctic Council while engaging non-Arctic states through the most acceptable forms of cooperation in the Arctic region.

Such engagement may take place either bilaterally or through multilateral arrangements, provided that these mechanisms complement rather than replace the Arctic Council. Their development should be guided by Russia’s national policy priorities as well as the expectations of its partner states.

At the same time, BRICS has expanded both geographically and politically. With the admission of new members, including countries from West Asia and Africa, BRICS increasingly presents itself as a Global South platform. Although not all BRICS members possess direct Arctic interests, many are affected by Arctic-driven climate change, changing global shipping routes, and evolving energy markets.

This creates an opportunity to broaden the discourse on Arctic governance beyond the traditional Arctic Eight. Rather than viewing the Arctic exclusively through the lens of military competition or resource extraction, BRICS can emphasize climate justice, sustainable development, and scientific cooperation.

India is particularly well positioned to facilitate this conversation in consonance with its relationship with Russia. India maintains longstanding strategic partnerships with Russia while simultaneously deepening cooperation with the other important Arctic states such as the United States, Norway, Denmark, and Canada. This diplomatic flexibility enables New Delhi to engage across geopolitical divides without becoming exclusively aligned with any side. India’s ability to maintain dialogue across competing geopolitical camps could become an asset rather than a liability.

India’s Arctic engagement rests on five interconnected pillars: scientific research, climate resilience, sustainable economic development, maritime connectivity, and international governance. Research conducted through Himadri and India’s Arctic expeditions contributes to understanding the connections between Arctic processes and the Indian monsoon, Himalayan glaciers, and extreme weather events.

However, this scientific credibility and India’s growing role in Arctic governance do not imply support for the internationalization of the region in the legal sense. A broader process of internationalization based on recognizing the Arctic as the ‘common heritage of humankind’ — effectively extending to the region a legal regime comparable to that governing Antarctica — is neither feasible nor consistent with the existing legal framework. The Arctic is not terra nullius. Instead, it is governed by a complex body of international law, principally established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Why BRICS matters

India’s BRICS chairmanship arrives at a time when global governance institutions face increasing fragmentation. Although scientific cooperation continues in various forms, political dialogue has become significantly more constrained.

BRICS cannot replace the Arctic Council, nor should it seek to do so. Instead, it can complement existing institutions by focusing on issues where emerging economies possess shared interests.

There are four areas which need attention.

First is climate adaptation. Many BRICS countries are among those most vulnerable to climate change despite contributing relatively less to historical emissions. Arctic warming accelerates global climatic disruptions that disproportionately affect developing countries. A BRICS dialogue linking Arctic science with Global South climate adaptation would fill an important governance gap.

Second is scientific cooperation. Joint polar research involving BRICS universities, research institutes, satellite programs, and oceanographic missions would diversify knowledge production beyond traditional Western research networks.

Third is sustainable shipping. The gradual opening of Arctic maritime routes presents both opportunities and uncertainties. While the Northern Sea Route will not replace the Suez Canal in the foreseeable future, seasonal navigation could reshape portions of Eurasian trade. India, with its growing maritime economy and interest in the International North-South Transport Corridor and the Chennai-Vladivostok Maritime Corridor, has reasons to understand these evolving logistics.

Fourth is clean energy. The Arctic contains significant reserves of critical minerals, rare earths, natural gas, and emerging renewable energy opportunities. Cooperation on technological innovation, environmental standards, and responsible resource management would benefit both Arctic and non-Arctic developing economies.

The Russia factor

Russia’s support for a larger BRICS role in the Arctic is driven by an effort to strengthen and expand cooperation in the region. By bringing trusted emerging powers, especially India, into Arctic energy, shipping, science, and infrastructure, Moscow seeks to diversify partners to overcome constraints of Western sanctions, strengthen the commercial viability of the Northern Sea Route, reduce overreliance on China, and embed Arctic development within the institutions of an emerging multipolar order.

In this vision, BRICS complements rather than replaces the existing Arctic governance architecture, broadening participation without undermining the sovereign prerogatives of the Arctic states. No discussion of India’s or BRICS Arctic engagement can ignore Russia, as it is the only Arctic state in the grouping.

Russia remains India’s principal Arctic partner. Cooperation extends beyond hydrocarbons to include scientific exchanges, higher education, maritime logistics, and polar research. Russian expertise in icebreaker technology, Arctic port management, cold-climate engineering, and northern infrastructure represents capabilities that few countries possess.

Connecting the Global South and the High North

Perhaps India’s greatest contribution lies not in material capabilities but in narrative innovation. The Arctic has often been portrayed as an exclusive domain of Arctic states or major powers. Yet climate change demonstrates that Arctic transformations generate consequences extending far beyond the Polar Circle.

India can, therefore, advance a broader conceptual framework linking Arctic governance with Global South priorities. Rather than securitizing the Arctic further, India could advocate ‘responsible globalization of Arctic governance’, an approach recognizing both the sovereign rights of Arctic states and the legitimate interests of non-Arctic stakeholders affected by climate change in the Arctic.

India’s ongoing BRICS chairship provides an opportunity to move from rhetoric to practical cooperation in the Arctic for BRICS countries. A BRICS Polar Research Network could connect universities, climate institutes, and polar research centers for collaborative projects and research exchanges.

A BRICS Climate Data Platform could integrate satellite observations, cryosphere research, and climate modelling to improve adaptation planning across developing countries. India could initiate annual BRICS dialogues on Arctic governance involving policymakers, scientists, indigenous representatives, and industry experts.

The New Development Bank could explore financing mechanisms for sustainable Arctic-related infrastructure, renewable technologies, and climate adaptation projects, provided these conform to environmental standards.

Educational exchanges focusing on polar engineering, cold-region technologies, and Arctic environmental management could strengthen human capital across BRICS. None of these initiatives would challenge existing Arctic institutions. Instead, they would complement them while expanding Global South participation in scientific and policy discussions.

Challenges ahead

Nevertheless, India will have to proceed cautiously. The Arctic is becoming increasingly militarized. NATO’s growing northern presence, Russia’s security concerns, and intensifying US-China competition all complicate the strategic environment. India should avoid being drawn into geopolitical rivalries that could undermine its scientific credibility.

Similarly, environmental concerns remain paramount. Increased shipping, hydrocarbon development, and mineral extraction raise legitimate ecological risks. Any Arctic engagement should, therefore, remain firmly anchored in sustainability and international law. Balancing economic opportunities with environmental responsibility will determine the credibility of any future initiatives.

Emerging necessity

Climate change, scientific research, maritime connectivity, and sustainable development have linked the High North with the aspirations and vulnerabilities of the Global South. India’s 2026 BRICS chairship arrives at a moment when these connections are becoming impossible to ignore. Rather than treating the Arctic solely as a theater of strategic competition, New Delhi has an opportunity to promote a more inclusive vision that combines scientific cooperation, climate resilience, and responsible governance.

Success will depend not on attempting to reshape Arctic institutions but on building bridges between regions, disciplines, and political divides. India can leverage its scientific credentials, diplomatic flexibility, and longstanding partnerships, including with Russia to foster constructive dialogue among both Arctic and non-Arctic actors.

If pursued with consistency, India’s BRICS presidency could mark an important step in connecting the concerns of the Global South with the future of the High North. In an era when Arctic warming increasingly influences weather, economies, and societies across the globe, such a connection is no longer aspirational, it is an emerging necessity.

Russian security officers have detained a self-styled revolutionary accused of collecting intelligence on military transport and infrastructure for Ukrainian special services, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Friday.

The 50-year-old suspect was identified as a member of Artpodgotovka, an opposition movement that was outlawed in Russia in 2017. According to the agency, the group’s founder, former Saratov regional lawmaker Vyacheslav Maltsev, acted as an intermediary between its members and Ukrainian handlers.

The FSB alleges that the man posed as an employee of a logistics company to gain access to military cargoes. He reportedly gathered information about shipping routes, identifying markings and other operational details, as well as vulnerabilities at military facilities.

Although the suspect was detained in Novgorod Region, his alleged activities extended across seven Russian regions, the security service said.

He has been charged with participation in a terrorist organization. Artpodgotovka was designated a terrorist group in 2021, having previously been classified as extremist.

Maltsev established Artpodgotovka in 2013 while active in regional politics in Saratov. Initially presented as an art club, it later developed into an opposition political movement. Maltsev gained followers by repeatedly claiming that a popular revolution would break out in November 2017.
Footage shared by investigators showed the suspect’s Artpodgotovka membership card that identified him as a “member of the revolution.”

Maltsev fled Russia in 2017 and later received asylum in France. He has since appeared regularly on Ukrainian television, offering political commentary and predicting Russia’s imminent collapse.
The FSB also claims that Maltsev is linked to French intelligence and is shielded from Russian efforts to extradite and prosecute him.

The German government is developing a “secret plan” to prevent regional authorities from potentially obstructing the deployment of NATO troops to the Russian border, according to a joint investigation by The Telegraph and Die Welt.

The “contingency” measures are reportedly driven by fears that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could secure enough support in upcoming regional elections in two eastern states to form local governments.

Known for criticizing Berlin’s anti-Russia policies as harmful to Germany’s national interests, the right-wing party has grown to become the country’s most popular political force after once again being excluded from last year’s federal coalition talks.

In the state of Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD currently enjoys the support of 41% of voters, a recent survey suggested, compared with only 24% for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD is polling at 36%, seven points ahead of its closest competitors, the Social Democratic Party.

Berlin has long accused the AfD of extremism, while Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has claimed that the party has “undeniable” ties to Russia and must be deprived of access to classified information if it comes to power.

The federal government is now seeking a way to rein in what The Telegraph bluntly described as “pro-Kremlin traitor states” in the event that NATO decides it is time to go to war with Moscow.

NATO roundabout

The scenario centers on NATO’s Reinforcement and Sustainment Network, which involves moving large troop contingents, heavy equipment, and logistical supplies to bloc members in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. Germany is set to play the role of what The Telegraph and Die Welt described as NATO’s “roundabout,” with its geographical location making it a central logistics hub.

The head of Germany’s Joint Operations Command, Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, stated last year that Berlin is prepared for a war with Moscow and stands ready to facilitate the deployment of 800,000 NATO troops toward the Russian border in less than six months.

Moscow has repeatedly stated that it has no intention of attacking NATO unless attacked first and has dismissed such allegations as “nonsense” designed to justify Russophobic hysteria and rampant militarization.

Nevertheless, the NATO mechanism could be triggered without any hostile move by Russia, “at the first sign” reported by a Western intelligence service that Moscow was preparing an attack, according to The Telegraph.

Protests and obstructionism

The issue poses significant challenges for Berlin because such a deployment would technically take place before any conflict with Russia had actually broken out, while regional authorities enjoy broad powers over activities on their territory during peacetime.

An uncooperative regional government could potentially delay troop movements through “bureaucratic obstructionism” by withholding the necessary permits or refusing to provide NATO troops with police escorts and priority access to local roads.

Merz’s government also reportedly expects the deployment to trigger protests among local residents and debates within regional authorities about the extent to which they want to become involved in a process that could “expose them as part of NATO’s logistical hub.”

Bending the rules

Under German law, the federal government has very few ways to limit states’ independence short of declaring a state of emergency or imposing martial law. “The key question is how to circumvent a state not adhering to the federal idea without violating the constitution,” Roderich Kiesewetter, an MP from Merz’s CDU, told The Telegraph and Die Welt, adding that the Interior Ministry is drawing up relevant plans.

Berlin has already set the secret plan in motion to “create mechanisms that would make it possible to overrule individual states or to take the necessary measures,” added Tobias Krull, deputy chairman of the Saxony-Anhalt parliament’s Interior Committee.

Few details have emerged about what such plans could entail, but nationwide emergency regulations are reportedly being revised as part of the scheme. “Federal law takes precedence over state law – it’s as simple as that,” an unnamed lawmaker told the outlets.

Germany’s Basic Law allows for so-called “federal enforcement” if a regional government violates an obligation under federal law, but the clause has never been invoked.

During a state of emergency or under martial law, the federal parliament could also activate certain provisions allowing the government to intervene in state affairs and simplify military logistics. This would still require a two-thirds majority – something Merz’s government would be unlikely to secure, given that the AfD controls more than 23% of the seats in the Bundestag, while another 10% are held by the Left – another party the chancellor has ruled out cooperating with.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is caring more for Ukraine than his own nation, an opposition MP, Marcus Frohnmaier, told Rick Sanchez on the latest episode of Sanchez Effect aired on Wednesday.

The government has neglected the ongoing competitiveness and energy crisis in Germany while directing billions of euros in aid to Kiev, according to the lawmaker from the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Merz “is the chancellor of Ukraine and not the chancellor of Germany,” Frohnmaier stated.

Merz, who came to power in 2025 following a snap election, has become the least popular German chancellor in decades in less than two years since taking office. A total of 84% of Germans were dissatisfied with his performance, including more than half of his own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party supporters, according to an ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll published earlier this month.

According to Frohnmaier, Merz either reneged upon or failed to deliver on almost all his campaign promises. The chancellor “promised people to [build] a strong economy, to make Germany safe again, and so on, and he failed,” said the MP, who represents the nation’s most popular party, according to the polls.

The lawmaker also argued that the Merz government outright ignored the most pressing issues faced by the nation. “German companies [are] leaving the country, they’re going to Poland, they’re going to the US,” he said, adding that those that are “not big enough” just go “bankrupt.” Frohnmaier blamed it on high energy costs and excessive regulation and taxes.

The German economy did take a hit in the wake of the Ukraine conflict escalation in 2022 – partly due to Berlin’s decision to abandon cheap Russian energy imports in line with the EU sanctions imposed against Moscow. Before Germany’s decision to de facto impose a Russian energy embargo upon itself, Moscow supplied 55% of the country’s natural gas imports.

Merz himself admitted earlier this month that the nation’s “ongoing energy crisis [was] due to the lack of Russian gas” but suggested no way out of it. Earlier, he also repeatedly blamed Germany’s economic troubles on its people by telling Germans to work more and claiming that the “welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed.”

At the same time, he actively pushed for a massive military spending increase, vowing to make the German army the strongest conventional force in Europe, with his government also repeatedly pledging more support for Ukraine amid plans to cut social spending.

According to Frohnmaier, the current chancellor’s story is that “of incompetence.” “I think this guy is not able to be a head of a government and to take responsibility,” the MP said.

Watch the full report below:

US President Donald Trump has cast doubt on whether Washington will allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot interceptor missiles, despite previously promising to grant Kiev a production license.

Trump told the Financial Times in a telephone interview on Thursday that he was “not sure” whether Ukraine would receive permission to produce the missiles, adding that Washington was still considering the request.

Describing the Patriot as a “very extraordinary weapon,” Trump said the US had to be “a little bit careful” about granting other countries access to its advanced military technology.

The remarks appear to contradict Trump’s public pledge at the NATO summit in Türkiye earlier this month, when he told Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky that Washington would provide Kiev with a license to manufacture Patriot interceptors.

“We’ll give them the right to make Patriots. We’ll show them how to do it,” Trump said at the time, suggesting that Ukraine could produce the missiles rather than complain that the US was not supplying enough of them.

Zelensky emerged from closed-door talks with Trump at the White House on Tuesday, claiming that they had discussed licenses for interceptor production. Trump, however, offered no indication that any agreement had been reached, saying only that “many things were discussed” and that the meeting went “very well.”

The initiative is also facing resistance from US manufacturers, with Boeing reportedly reluctant to transfer sensitive technology used in the seeker warheads of PAC-3 interceptors, according to Die Welt. Lockheed Martin manufactures the missile bodies, while Boeing supplies key components for the warheads.

Kiev’s push for at least 300 additional missiles to sustain its air defenses through the winter has also been complicated by a worldwide shortage, as Washington has expended large numbers of interceptors in its ongoing war with Iran.

Trump has denied reports that the US military is running short of munitions, insisting last week that it has “far more” missiles than it needs. US media reports have nevertheless suggested that concerns over dwindling Patriot and THAAD stocks have affected the scale and timing of American military operations against Iran.

The US president told the FT that his priority is negotiating an end to the Ukraine conflict rather than supplying more weaponry. “I’m not looking for missiles. We’re looking for peace,” he said, adding that his envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, would visit Ukraine in the coming days.

Moscow has repeatedly argued that Western weapons deliveries prolong the hostilities without changing their ultimate outcome. Russian officials have also warned that transferring increasingly sophisticated military technology to Kiev makes NATO countries direct participants in the conflict.

European football’s 55 member associations have unanimously voted to boycott the World Cup if its governing body goes ahead with its plan to sell stakes in its competitions to private investors.

In a statement on Thursday, UEFA, which oversees Europe’s football, said it rejects a proposal by world football governing body FIFA to transfer ownership interests to stakeholders, calling it an “ultimatum.”

“The moment external investors acquire ownership interests in FIFA competitions, football changes forever… From that moment onwards, every decision… is no longer driven by what best serves the game, but by what best serves shareholders,” it wrote. “The World Cup is not for sale”

UEFA stressed that none of the teams in its national associations would take part in any FIFA competition while the private equity bid remains on the table. The boycott would cover all of the global body’s competitions, including the men’s and women’s World Cups.

Statement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 National Associations

— UEFA (@UEFA) July 30, 2026

The proposal includes the creation of a new commercial subsidiary valued at up to $20 billion to run major football events.

In a press statement on Tuesday, FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who is up for reelection next year, said private investors would receive a minority stake. “Regulation, development and governance of the game” would stay with FIFA, he said.

If members vote in favor of the deal, they would receive up to $20 million per association for the 2027-2030 cycle, Infantino said. If they reject the proposal, they would receive the currently planned $10 million.

The uproar comes just weeks after FIFA courted controversy at the World Cup, which was jointly hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico. FIFA overturned a one-match suspension for US striker Folarin Balogun after intervention by US President Donald Trump. The decision drew harsh criticism from UEFA, who called the move “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable.”

Palestinian militant group Hamas has agreed to completely disarm in Gaza under US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace plan, although Israel must also meet a series of conditions as part of the agreement, according to a senior official.

Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas negotiating delegation, confirmed to Al Jazeera on Friday that an agreement has been reached, adding that an official statement will be released soon.

“These negotiations were difficult and hard, and we tried to reach the best possible formula that was achievable,” Hamad, whose remarks were also carried by Reuters and the BBC, was cited as saying. He stressed, however, that Israel must approve the phased disarmament, adding that Hamas will not implement any part of the agreement unless Israeli forces fulfilled their obligations, particularly withdrawing from Gaza and advancing reconstruction in the Palestinian territory.

“We will not take any action regarding disarmament prior to Israel’s withdrawal from the [Gaza] Strip,” he stated.

Hamad also told the BBC that the group insists on the wording “inventorying and storing weapons” under Palestinian oversight rather than handing them over to Israel.

Trump breaks the news

The news first emerged when Trump announced on Truth Social on Thursday that his Board of Peace has reached a “historic agreement” on the complete disarmament of Hamas and every other armed group in Gaza, calling it a “monumental step toward lasting peace and security” and a major milestone in his 20-point plan for the enclave.

“The agreement will be carried out in carefully structured phases,” the US president wrote. “As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors.”

Trump said Gaza would eventually be governed by a “new Palestinian government” working closely with the Board of Peace. He thanked Egypt, Qatar, and Türkiye for mediating the talks, insisting the territory would no longer be allowed to serve as a base for attacks against Israel.

Board of Peace Director-General and High Representative for Gaza Nickolay Mladenov confirmed the breakthrough in a post on X.

“Today, agreement has been reached on the decommissioning of weapons and civilian transition in Gaza. It took months of very difficult negotiations to get here,” he wrote, adding that there were several moments when he “did not believe we would make it” and insisting the Israeli withdrawal “must move in lockstep” with Hamas decommissioning.

Today, agreement has been reached on the decommissioning of weapons and civilian transition in Gaza. It took months of very difficult negotiations to get here. There were several points when I did not believe we would make it... What the agreement says matters. What happens next…

— Nickolay E. MLADENOV (@nmladenov) July 31, 2026

Reports published shortly before Trump’s announcement, however, suggested significant details remain unresolved. Hamas reportedly wants to retain “personal” small arms, while heavy weapons would be stored under the supervision of a Palestinian body rather than destroyed. It also seeks amnesty for members of the disbanded armed formations and wants the process synchronized with an Israeli withdrawal rather than surrendering all weapons in exchange for a promise that Israeli troops would later leave.

It is realistic to expect Hamas to disarm now that the group has “made the strategic decision” to do so, Ramallah-based journalist Mohammed Najib told RT. He added, however, that the reported deal can only succeed if it is backed by international guarantees and Israel follows through on its commitments.

”Hamas concluded that no construction can take place in Gaza if it continues to reject the disarmament. So they agree to this issue,” he said, adding that “as this agreement was declared by US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu cannot say no to it.”

Saad Nimr, a professor of political science at Birzeit University, also argued that Hamas is unlikely to give up its weapons before Israel begins withdrawing from Gaza, as the group no longer trusts Israel to honor ceasefire commitments.

“The more Israel gets out of Gaza, the more Hamas will give up their weapons,” he told RT, arguing that any disarmament would have to happen in parallel with an Israeli pullout.

Israel’s reaction

Earlier in the day, unnamed sources told Reuters that talks in Cairo between mediators and Hamas leaders on implementing the Gaza peace plan had made rare progress, though an Israeli official said the proposed terms were not satisfactory. Following Trump’s announcement, the Times of Israel reported, citing an unnamed source, that the agreement had been signed by Hamas negotiators, the board, and the mediating countries, but that “the Israeli office” issued a statement saying the disarmament proposal did not meet Israel’s demands.

Israel has yet to comment officially, although members of the government have already voiced skepticism and opposition.

“Israel says it will not take any action until Hamas is disarmed with its weapons, tunnels and infrastructure and we all understand the complexity of this,” Moshe Sa’ada of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party told public broadcaster Kan News. “Hamas is already saying that it’s the other way around: that it expects Israel to withdraw and only afterwards it will disarm.” Sa’ada added that he still believed there would ultimately be “no other option” in Gaza “apart from military rule and end-to-end occupation.”

Right-wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also blasted the emerging deal before Trump’s social media post.

“You only talk with Nazis through the crosshairs – and no other way,” he wrote on X. “The only solution in Gaza to which Israel is willing to be a partner is encouraging emigration and destroying Hamas.”

An official told the BBC that if Israel decides not to withdraw as part of the peace plan, Trump would be “very disappointed.”

The announcement came as Israeli strikes continued across Gaza despite the ceasefire introduced last October. The Gaza Health Ministry said hospitals received the bodies of six people on Thursday, along with 34 wounded patients. The dead reportedly included an eight-year-old child killed in a strike on a displacement camp in Khan Younis and an 18-month-old baby killed when a home in the Bureij refugee camp was bombed. According to Gaza health authorities, at least 73,341 Palestinians have been killed and more than 174,000 wounded since Israel launched its military campaign in retaliation for the deadly Hamas raid of October 2023.

Trump’s Board of Peace was initially presented as a temporary body overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction and the transition to an unelected Palestinian technocratic administration. Its founding charter, however, authorizes it to pursue “peace-building” initiatives in other conflict-affected regions and grants Trump sweeping personal authority.

Trump holds veto power over all decisions, can issue directives on the organization’s behalf and serve without a fixed term. He can be replaced only if he resigns or is unanimously declared incapacitated by the executive board, and he personally designates his successor. Invited members normally receive three-year terms, but that limit does not apply to those contributing more than $1 billion.

Palestinians have no representation on the board’s upper governing bodies and participate only through its technocratic arm, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). The 15-member civilian body, led by Ali Shaath and operating under the board’s oversight, is tasked with managing Gaza’s day-to-day public services. It is also the interim authority to which Hamas has agreed to transfer governing powers.

The NCAG welcomed the Hamas disarmament agreement, calling it “the opening of a path toward beginning” implementation of the broader peace roadmap. In a statement on X on Friday, it said it was ready to “assume its responsibilities” and “take over the administration of the [Gaza] Strip” to ensure the roadmap leads to “practical steps that have a tangible impact on citizens’ daily lives.” Since it was established by the Board of Peace in January, the NCAG has been unable to enter Gaza, largely due to Israeli objections.

Statement by the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza

The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) welcomes the progress announced yesterday regarding the roadmap, and the opening of a path toward beginning its implementation.

This development…

— اللجنة الوطنية لإدارة غزة - NCAG (@NCAG) July 31, 2026

The military and political confrontation between the United States and Iran is becoming less a crisis than a permanent feature of the international landscape. A new center of chronic instability is emerging in south-western Eurasia, and it will shape political and economic developments across the wider region for years to come.

This matters not only because of Iran’s geopolitical position, but because it’s now a permanent member of both BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Unlike Russia’s confrontation with the West, which is mediated through the conflict in Ukraine, Iran’s dispute with Washington is direct and that reality inevitably raises questions about how BRICS and the SCO will function as organizations and what role they can play in an increasingly fragmented international order.

Both groups emerged from the crisis of the liberal world order that became apparent in the early 2000s when the American-led ‘war on terror’ and the invasion of Iraq convinced many governments that the promised unipolar world had failed to deliver stability or impartial global leadership.

The SCO, founded in 2001, was designed to strengthen regional cooperation in Eurasia while BRICS, launched in 2009, sought broader coordination among leading non-Western powers on global issues. Both represented a growing lack of confidence in institutions dominated by the United States and its allies.

Yet neither organization has attempted to build a direct alternative to the Western-led international system. This restraint has always served two purposes in that first, it allows countries with very different attitudes towards the West to remain within the same framework, and second, it avoids alienating the many states of the Global Majority that prefer to maintain productive relations with both China and Russia on one hand, and the United States and Western Europe on the other.

As a result, BRICS and the SCO have generally adopted cautious and consensual positions and their public rhetoric has often created the impression that Western behavior presents no fundamental challenge to international stability, and that there’s little urgency in constructing alternative institutions of global governance.

This has always been something of a contradiction, given the very existence of BRICS and the SCO is itself a vote of no confidence in the post-Cold War order. If their members genuinely believed that the US and the EU could provide fair and effective leadership in global governance and Eurasian security, there would have been little reason to create entities from which Western powers are largely absent.

Sooner or later, both organizations were always going to confront the question of what comes next and Iran’s confrontation with the United States has simply accelerated that debate.

It also exposes the limits of consensus politics as only Russia has unequivocally condemned what it describes as American and Israeli aggression against Iran. Other members, including China, have adopted far more cautious public positions; while welcoming the ceasefire in April and the memorandum signed in June, the diversity of views makes coordinated political action difficult.

At the same time, the conflict creates several practical challenges that BRICS and the SCO cannot ignore, and the first is energy security. The assumption that the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz would eventually return to their previous stability is no longer realistic given Washington has transformed its relationship with Tehran from political confrontation into military-political rivalry. That shift will permanently alter one of the world’s most important energy corridors.

For resource-rich powers such as Russia or the United States, this is manageable, but for countries heavily dependent on imported energy, including China and India, the implications are considerably more serious.

The second challenge concerns transport and logistics because Iran occupies a central position in the International North-South Transport Corridor linking Russia with the Middle East and South Asia and persistent instability will inevitably complicate investment and long-term planning.

The situation may become even more complicated if tensions between Israel and Turkey continue to grow beneath the surface and Central Asian states, increasingly viewed as attractive destinations for investment and trade, will have to adjust their own development strategies accordingly.

The third issue concerns America’s regional alliance system. As Washington becomes more deeply involved in confrontation with Iran, it places growing pressure on its Middle Eastern partner, but the wealthy Gulf monarchies have little desire to transform themselves into heavily militarized societies resembling Israel and their strategic calculations are becoming more complicated with every escalation.

These are immediate concerns, but the longer-term consequences may prove even more significant as the continuing confrontation between Washington and Tehran represents not only a challenge for BRICS and the SCO, but also an opportunity.

The broader international environment is changing and increasingly, the United States and the wider West are no longer viewed as providers of stability and development. Instead, many countries see them as sources of geopolitical disruption as confidence in the Western-led order continues to erode, while its ability to present itself as the natural center of global governance weakens.

A prolonged American confrontation with Iran is likely to reinforce that trend, given it will consume diplomatic attention and expose the limitations of US power in managing multiple crises simultaneously. For organizations such as BRICS and the SCO, this creates opportunities that don’t require ideological confrontation or institutional overreach.

Attempting to forge a unified foreign policy among such diverse memberships would only generate internal divisions. The strength of both groups lies precisely in their flexibility and they provide platforms where countries with different interests can cooperate without requiring complete political alignment.

That model is becoming increasingly valuable as the existing international system loses coherence.

So, rather than trying to mirror Western alliances, BRICS and the SCO should continue offering frameworks for practical cooperation while allowing members to pursue their own national interests because as confidence in Western institutions continues to decline, their relevance will grow naturally.

The collapse of the international order built around Western dominance isn’t a temporary phenomenon and the task for BRICS and the SCO is therefore not to create artificial unity where it does not exist, but to take advantage of the strategic space opened by that transformation and that may ultimately prove to be their greatest strength.

This article was first published by Valdai Discussion Club, translated and edited by the RT team.

Spain has deployed just 60 troops to its North African exclave of Ceuta after thousands of migrants overwhelmed security forces and stormed across the border from Morocco, with up to 30,000 more people reportedly swarming the frontier.

The Spanish Interior Ministry said the military contingent consisted of three platoons of 20 soldiers each, sent to reinforce the Guardia Civil after officers admitted that the border had “totally collapsed.” Madrid also dispatched specialized police units, bringing their total number to around 200, as well as 30 additional Guardia Civil officers.

The small military deployment came after Ceuta’s regional government pleaded with Madrid to take “decisive” action, close the border and declare a national emergency, warning that local police, hospitals and migrant reception facilities had been overwhelmed.

The Spanish Army is moving toward the Ceuta border with Morocco. pic.twitter.com/UV5swszyU2

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 30, 2026

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government rejected the emergency request, arguing that migration does not qualify under legislation covering natural disasters, major accidents and other national catastrophes.

Migrants continue to flood into Spain pic.twitter.com/Dluot7MRUR

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 30, 2026

The soldiers were ordered to support the Guardia Civil “in the exercise of its powers” and perform any additional tasks deemed necessary to maintain security. However, Madrid announced no expanded rules of engagement or independent authority for the troops to seal the frontier, detain migrants or carry out expulsions. Their publicly defined role therefore remains one of supporting the police rather than taking control of the border.

🔴 #URGENTE | INVASIÓN EN CEUTA

Avalanchas de marroquíes saltan la valla de Ceuta y entran ilegalmente en territorio español sin ningún control. pic.twitter.com/KQQYrnCKSO

— Vito Quiles 🇪🇸 (@vitoquiles) July 30, 2026

Footage showed large groups swimming around the Tarajal breakwater using inflatable tubes, climbing border structures and rushing through an opened gate as overwhelmed officers struggled to contain the flow. Moroccan forces later deployed reinforcements and used water cannon to disperse crowds gathering near the Bab Ceuta crossing.

Die spanische Exklave Ceuta wird derzeit überrannt: Bereits mehr als 1.500 Migranten, vorwiegend aus Marokko und Algerien, gelangten in kürzester Zeit in die EU. Ihr Ziel dürfte mutmaßlich Deutschland sein. Grenzen müssen jetzt geschlossen und Abweisungen rigoros durchgesetzt… pic.twitter.com/hW7RtKi2OE

— Alice Weidel (@Alice_Weidel) July 30, 2026

“The situation is absolute chaos,” local Civil Guard chief Rachid Sbihi told AP. “It’s not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing,” he said, adding that the border had “totally collapsed.”

Spanish state television initially reported that between 2,000 and 3,000 people had crossed the border, while local outlet Ceuta al Día claimed that around 20,000 had arrived. Antena 3 cited Guardia Civil sources as estimating that almost 40,000 people had swarmed the frontier, although it acknowledged that the figure was approximate. Thousands more were reportedly traveling toward the border from Tangier, Tetouan, Fez, Rabat, Casablanca and other Moroccan cities.

Fourteen bodies were recovered from the sea around Ceuta within 24 hours, but no deaths have been attributed to clashes with Spanish or Moroccan security forces. The victims are believed to have died while attempting the maritime crossing.

Sanchez and Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska are scheduled to visit Ceuta on Friday. Spain and Morocco have meanwhile promised closer coordination and the rapid return of migrants who entered illegally, although Madrid has not explained how that pledge will be reconciled with a recent Supreme Court ruling restricting the summary expulsion of people arriving by sea.

The French police have admitted that they have orders to let illegal migrants get on small boats and head across the English Channel for the UK, according to a video released by British Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp.

In a video posted on X on Wednesday, Philp speaks to members of the French police on a beach in northern France and confronts them about a group of migrants piling onto a small boat just a few yards away.

“Our order is to let them go like that… We just have to say to them, ‘don’t do that, it’s dangerous’,” one officer says.

Just leaving this here for you @ShabanaMahmood….. https://t.co/n4HtXdLL9m pic.twitter.com/otYzGwhaah

— Chris Philp MP (@CPhilpOfficial) July 29, 2026

Speaking to Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine on Thursday, Philp stressed that the French officers could have “easily stopped the migrants” by puncturing the rubber dinghy without putting anyone at risk, as the water was “knee deep.”

“Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, is paying the French government over half a billion pounds, £660 million of our money to the French government to stop these boats,” he said.

The £661 million ($889 million) migration agreement, inked in April, is intended to boost French enforcement action, build up police presence on beaches and increase surveillance with new helicopter units, cameras and drones, according to the Home Office.

Nevertheless, at least 1,487 migrants crossed over to the UK in small boats in the past seven days, with almost 800 arriving on Wednesday, according to government figures.

Successive UK governments have repeatedly promised and failed to reduce the arrivals, despite escalating tensions following a number of attacks and high-profile murder and rape cases involving migrants in recent years.

Just last week, Keir Starmer was replaced by Andy Burnham as prime minister. Starmer lost support following his deeply unpopular handling of anti-immigration protests and his crackdown on internet speech.

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov has claimed he was dismissed because reforms to overhaul military procurement and tackle entrenched interests within the ministry triggered a backlash.
 
Fedorov was removed by Vladimir Zelensky earlier this month after just six months in office as part of a sweeping government reshuffle. At the time, Zelensky cited tensions between the defense minister and commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky, while Ukrainian media reported that disagreements over military reform lay behind the rift.
 
In an interview with Ukrainskaya Pravda published on Wednesday, Fedorov suggested the broader government reshuffle may have served as cover for his dismissal. He said changes to procurement rules and defense tenders had angered vested interests.

“Very many people surrounded the Ministry of Defense and me as minister because we started rebuilding many internal processes,” he said. The reforms had “caused great dissatisfaction” among those whose interests they affected, Fedorov added.
 
He also said private companies and law enforcement exerted influence over the Defense Ministry. He alleged that some department heads in the ministry had been appointed by such companies, saying his team had sought to reform the “system” rather than “fight specific people.”
 
Fedorov, 35, became Ukraine’s youngest-ever defense minister in January after serving as minister of digital transformation since 2019. During his six-month tenure, he deepened Kiev’s cooperation with US data-mining and military technology company Palantir while pursuing reforms at the corruption-plagued ministry. In his farewell statement following his dismissal, Fedorov acknowledged that he had failed to reform the ministry in accordance with “NATO standards.”

The Ukrainian outlet Strana, citing sources, previously suggested the government reshuffle may also have been intended to remove Fedorov, claiming Zelensky had grown dissatisfied with what it described as the minister’s “independent political game” and his ties to circles close to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).
 
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has repeatedly faced procurement scandals under Zelensky. Previous ministers Aleksey Reznikov and Rustem Umerov were both removed after their tenures became embroiled in allegations related to military supplies and Western-funded weapons contracts.

The co-founder of Palestine Action has been granted permission to challenge the group’s prohibition at the British Supreme Court, as police arrested hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists in London.

The court ruled on Thursday that Huda Ammori, who co-founded Palestine Action in 2020, could appeal the proscription later this year. Palestine Action was listed as a terrorist organization last July, and although Britain’s High Court ruled the ban unlawful earlier this year, an appeals court later reinstated it, citing the group’s “support for violence.”

“We will continue to fight this proscription all the way to the Supreme Court and, if necessary, to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn what has become one of the most extreme attacks on free speech and the right to protest in modern British history,” Ammori said in a statement.

The ban placed Palestine Action in the same legal category as Al Qaeda and the IRA, and criminalized public displays of support for the organization. More than 3,500 Palestine Action sympathizers have since been arrested for displaying t-shirts, flags, and placards supporting the group at protests.

As the first trials for these Palestine Action supporters were scheduled to begin at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on Thursday, police arrested another 115 people outside the courthouse for expressions of support for the group.

Palestine Action was proscribed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who served under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Starmer led a nationwide crackdown on pro-Palestine activism, following the ban with calls for the “policing of language” and banning of anti-Israel protests.

Starmer’s replacement, Andy Burnham, has said that the Labour Party “didn’t get it right” on the war on Gaza and “needs to do better.” However, Burnham’s home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has left the prohibition in place.

It is unfathomable that Andy Burnham's new Government is continuing with the proscription of Palestine Action meaning huge numbers of police resources are being redeployed and used to police and arrest pensioners peacefully protesting a genocide. pic.twitter.com/JvyYXHcD0l

— Cllr Martin Abrams (@Martin_Abrams) July 30, 2026

Last month, four Palestine Action members were sentenced as terrorists for vandalizing an Israeli arms plant near Bristol in 2024. After ramming their way into the Elbit Systems factory with a decommissioned prison van, they destroyed computers, drones, and other equipment inside, causing around £1.2 million ($1.6 million) in damage.

Joint US-Saudi strikes on alleged Iran-aligned militia positions across Iraq have sparked political backlash, with Baghdad condemning the attacks as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. RT’s Ali Rida Sbeity reported on the ground.

The strikes targeted positions of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in seven provinces, according to Iraqi officials, with the group saying at least 20 of its members were killed and 32 wounded. Washington and Riyadh said they had targeted Iran-linked militants in response to a drone attack on Saudi oil facilities, a claim denied by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

The PMF is formally part of Iraq’s security structure, meaning the strikes are being treated “not as simple attacks on armed factions, but as attacks on institutions belonging to the Iraqi state,” Sbeity said.

Tensions deepened after US President Donald Trump claimed the strikes had been coordinated with Baghdad. “That stands in sharp contrast to the public Iraqi position, which describes the strike as a violation of sovereignty,” Sbeity added.

The current escalation comes after a brief pause in direct US attacks on Iran-linked targets. Earlier this week, Tehran launched missiles at US military installations in Jordan in its first regional attack since fighting subsided.

Former IRGC commander Hossein Kanani Moghaddam has warned that the strikes would prompt a coordinated response from Iran and its regional allies. “An attack on Iraq is considered an attack on Iran due to the strategic bond between Iran and Iraq,” he told RT.

Ahmed Al-Shahri, head of the Saudi Experience Forum, described the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s strategic infrastructure as crossing a “red line.”

The US-Saudi strikes have “once again” placed Iraq at the center of a wider regional confrontation that Baghdad has “repeatedly tried to avoid,” Sbeity said.

The first patient to receive Russia’s personalized melanoma vaccine is feeling well and has developed the immune response needed to fight the disease, said Aleksandr Ginzburg, the scientific director of the Gamaleya Research Institute, which helped develop the treatment.

Last year, the Russian Health Ministry approved two domestically developed personalized cancer treatments: an mRNA-based vaccine for advanced melanoma named Neooncovac and a peptide medicine targeting colorectal cancer dubbed Oncopept.

Neooncovac was administered to its first patient in April. The recipient is a 60-year-old man with stage-three melanoma and metastases, who is being treated at the Herzen Moscow Oncology Research Institute.

According to Ginzburg, the patient is “feeling completely normal” and continuing treatment. Tests have shown “very positive” immunological responses, with the body producing the active compounds needed for the immune system to fight the tumor and its metastases, he told RIA Novosti on Thursday.

The patient is expected to receive two further doses of the medicine. His immune response will continue to be monitored throughout the treatment, Ginzburg said.

He also announced that personalized melanoma vaccines are being prepared for ten more patients and should be ready within one-and-a-half to three months.

Andrey Kaprin, head of the National Medical Research Center of Radiology, previously described the technology used to develop the vaccine as a fundamentally different approach to cancer treatment. Rather than simply treating the disease, the method is intended to teach the immune system to identify and destroy the cells posing a threat, he said.

Samples of the patient’s tumor and healthy tissue are used to analyze their genetic characteristics and create a customized vaccine designed to train the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells.

Russian health officials have meanwhile reported that patients receiving Oncopept have also developed the required immune response. The Gamaleya Institute is additionally working on treatments for pancreatic, kidney, and non-small cell lung cancer.

Beijing has lodged an official protest with New Zealand’s Foreign Ministry over controversial remarks made by the country’s top diplomat, Winston Peters, to a Chinese-born MP during a heated parliamentary exchange.

The Chinese Embassy in Wellington made the announcement on Thursday, a day after the event, citing “negative China-related remarks.”

On Wednesday, during debate on the country’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Peters, founder and leader of the right-wing populist NZ First party, was asked by China-born Green Party MP Lawrence Xu-Nan whether he had been vaccinated.

In response, Peters alleged that the lawmaker, who was born in the Chinese city of Tianjin but grew up in New Zealand, had “come here five minutes ago.”

“Go back to your own country. That's where they lie like a flatfish, but they don't lie like that here,” Peters said. “This is called a democracy, unlike what you’re used to. Go back to where you’ve come from, you loudmouth.”

The incident also prompted a rare public intervention by China’s ambassador to New Zealand, Wang Xiaolong, who said on X that while he generally avoided commenting on domestic politics, “sometimes, a statement says more about the person that makes it than anything or anybody else.”

On the ambassador's comments, Peters said that his remarks were a defense of democracy and free speech. In a post on X, he argued that the envoy had “proven the point” he made in parliament, contrasting New Zealand’s democratic freedoms with what he described as “communist and dictatorship countries.” Peters added that he would “not resile from that point.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, whose National Party currently governs in coalition with NZ First, dismissed Peters’ remarks as “inappropriate attention-seeking.”

Commenting on Peters’ attack, Xu-Nan said: “It’s a little bit unbelievable to have a Minister for Foreign Affairs, I guess, scapegoating the migrant communities as a distraction to shift the blame away from all of the harm that this government is doing.”

NZ First has previously faced criticism over similar remarks. Last year, deputy leader Shane Jones shouted “send the Mexicans home” at Philippines-born MP Francisco Hernandez, prompting a diplomatic protest from Mexico. Peters later said the comments “may have been expressed differently” in the heat of the moment.

Thousands of north African migrants have broken into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta from Morocco. Regional authorities have pleaded with Spain’s socialist government to send in the military, but Madrid has refused.

Groups of migrants began swimming around the border fence separating Ceuta from Morocco earlier this week, but the trickle became a surge on Thursday when a large group overwhelmed border guards and broke through the fence.

The head of Ceuta’s regional government estimated that up to 2,000 people had arrived by midday on Thursday, overcrowding reception centers and creating “a humanitarian and social emergency.” The majority of the arrivals are young men, the Associated Press reported.

Video footage shared on social media showed hordes of migrants cheering as they poured into the Spanish territory by land and sea.

IN CRE I BLE #Ceuta cientos de marroquíes a la carrera tras llegar a nado al espigón del Tarajal#FronteraSur #Haraga #Inmigracion pic.twitter.com/qVA6MwDuxU

— KARIM PRIM (@KARIMPRIM) July 30, 2026

Ceuta’s mayor-president, Juan Jesus Vivas, called on the Spanish government to declare a national emergency and deploy police officers and soldiers at the border. The Spanish Interior Ministry, however, said that it does not consider migration to be an emergency.

No es una crisis migratoria en Ceuta, es una declaración de guerra de Marruecos. pic.twitter.com/FaqS2z0u6E

— David Santos (@davidsantosvlog) July 30, 2026

🔴 Miles de inmigrantes ilegales asaltan la frontera y entran en la ciudad autónoma: "Es una invasión sin precedentes".https://t.co/FwIknSSM8p pic.twitter.com/l99I8lH7sI

— Bipartidismo Stream (@Bipartidismo_) July 30, 2026

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez – who legalized 500,000 illegal immigrants earlier this year – offered an ambiguous response. “We are mobilizing all necessary resources… and preparing the necessary measures to restore normalcy as soon as possible,” he wrote on social media. “This is the moment to build solutions, with responsibility and cooperation.”

Russia has reportedly proposed a mechanism for settling trade with Bangladesh in Indian rupees to bypass US sanctions and facilitate payments for the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, local media has reported.

Dhaka has been unable to make the loan repayments for the Russian-financed plant due to US sanctions on Russian banks.

Moscow’s proposals to overcome the disruption in payment are likely to be discussed at bilateral talks to be held later this year, Bangladesh media reported, citing unnamed officials in Dhaka’s Economic Relations Division (ERD).

RT sources have not confirmed the reports, but they acknowledged that the issue of making payments for the Rooppur nuclear power project remains unresolved.

Bangladesh media also reported that Moscow has proposed establishing a bilateral payment infrastructure and renewed its proposal to open a local branch of a Russian bank.

However, RT sources pointed out that, excluding the nuclear power plant, trade between Moscow and Dhaka is too limited to justify building a mechanism for making national-currency payments from scratch.

The estimated cost of the two-reactor 2,400 MW-plant is about $13 billion, with Russia providing a government loan covering 90% of the amount. Russia has also taken on long‑term obligations to supply nuclear fuel, perform technical maintenance, and manage spent nuclear fuel.

The plant’s first reactor is expected to begin commercial operation next month, with an initial supply of about 300 megawatts. 

Part of India and Russia’s bilateral trade is settled in Indian rupees. Dhaka also reportedly trades with New Delhi in Indian rupees, along with the US dollar and other foreign currencies.

Dhaka exported goods worth $245 million to Russia during the July-May period of the current fiscal year, data provided by the Export Promotion Bureau of Bangladesh showed.

Since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the West has consistently sought to draw Türkiye into its policy of confrontation with Moscow. This was particularly evident at this month’s NATO summit in Ankara when the West attempted to pressure the Turkish leadership into adopting a clear anti-Russia stance.

For Washington and Europe, Türkiye is particularly valuable. It is not just a member of the North Atlantic Alliance, but a country with the second-largest army in NATO, a developed defense industry, a strategic location in the Black Sea region, and significant influence in the Middle East and parts of Eurasia. Therefore, for the West, it is crucial to not just secure Ankara’s formal loyalty (which is already ensured by its NATO membership), but to make it part of the unified anti-Russia front. 

Ankara, however, continues to pursue a policy that significantly differs from the course of most NATO states. Calling Türkiye completely neutral would be a mistake. It supports Ukraine’s narrative concerning territorial integrity, maintains military-technical ties with Kiev, participates in meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Council, and occasionally makes political statements in support of Ukraine. However, Türkiye has not joined EU sanctions against Russia or curtailed Russian-Turkish economic cooperation; moreover, it has maintained direct channels of communication with Moscow. The European Commission’s 2025 report noted that Türkiye has consistently refrained from joining EU restrictive measures against Russia, although it has taken steps to prevent sanctions from being circumvented through its territory. The trade turnover between Russia and Türkiye also remains high, despite external pressure.

Türkiye’s independent policy irritates the particularly radical elements of Western elites. The West wants Türkiye to act not as an autonomous regional center of power, but as a disciplined participant in its strategy of exerting pressure on Moscow. However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan views NATO membership not as a rejection of his own foreign policy, but as a tool for strengthening the Turkish state. Ankara is prepared to utilize the alliance’s capabilities, demand the lifting of restrictions on the Turkish defense industry, and seek access to modern weapons and European funding. However, it is not prepared to automatically sacrifice relations with Russia for the interests of Washington, Brussels, or Kiev.

This was clearly demonstrated by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s three-day visit to Russia on June 15-17. The packed agenda demonstrated Ankara’s desire to develop relations with Moscow. Fidan met with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Secretary of the Security Council Sergey Shoigu, representatives of the Russian leadership and the business community, and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin. Fidan was also received by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The discussed topics included bilateral cooperation, energy, transport, regional security, and prospects for resuming Russia-Ukraine negotiations. 

Such active diplomacy demonstrates that Türkiye is unlikely to be drawn into an anti-Russia bloc. Russian-Turkish relations are based not only on personal dialogue between Erdogan and Putin. Major energy, trade, investment, and infrastructure projects exist between the two countries. Russia is currently constructing Türkiye’s first nuclear power plant, the Akkuyu NPP. At the end of 2025, Türkiye  announced that Russia would provide an additional $9 billion in funding for the project. For Ankara, severing such ties wouldn’t just be a symbolic demonstration of solidarity with the West; it would bring concrete economic losses and additional risks to energy security.

The situation in the Black and Azov seas is especially important for Türkiye. The escalating attacks on vessels directly affect Turkish interests. In June, Fidan noted that Kiev must avoid actions that could undermine security in the Black Sea and Türkiye’s interests. At that time, tankers near the Turkish coast, including a Turkish vessel, had been attacked. Ankara lodged formal protests to Ukraine in regard to these incidents.

After the NATO summit, the problem became even more acute. In nine days, drones struck 116 vessels in the Sea of ​​Azov, including tankers, bulk carriers, and tugboats. Russia characterized these actions as attacks on civilian shipping, while Kiev claimed that it struck only military targets or vessels supplying the Russian armed forces. Regardless of the interpretation, these incidents resulted in the restriction of commercial shipping and a threat to maritime trade, crews, and regional logistics. For Türkiye, whose economy depends heavily on the security of maritime communications, this situation is unacceptable.

Ankara fears more than just economic damage. Turkish leaders understand that the expanding geography of the strikes could directly affect Türkiye’s borders. Drones and naval drones are not always able to accurately determine a vessel’s nationality, crew composition, beneficial owner, or the nature of the cargo being transported. Any error could result in the deaths of Turkish citizens, damage to Turkish property, or an environmental disaster off the country’s coast. This is precisely why Türkiye is interested in limiting the scale of the war. 

Moreover, Erdogan continues to assert his role as a mediator. For him, this is an opportunity to strengthen Türkiye’s international status. Ankara has already hosted Russia-Ukraine talks, brokered grain deals, facilitated prisoner exchanges, and repeatedly offered to host new contacts on its territory. Although the Turkish platform ultimately collapsed, as Kiev failed to comply with the terms of the agreements and Ankara lacked the political will to pressure Zelensky and his entourage, Türkiye believes it may still be a mediator in the future. During his June visit to Moscow, Fidan reiterated Türkiye’s readiness to host another round of talks and help make them more productive.

Fidan’s position on the agreements discussed between Russia and the US during the summit in Anchorage is also notable. Fidan urged the Ukrainian side to heed the understandings reached in Alaska, noting that Moscow’s unilateral commitment is insufficient and that “it takes two to tango.” This formulation fundamentally differs from the approach of most European politicians, who place the blame for the failure to reach an agreement solely on Russia. Ankara has made it clear that a diplomatic settlement requires reciprocal action from Kiev and its Western backers. 

Fidan’s visit to Ukraine on July 15-16, 2026, does not contradict this stance. The Turkish foreign minister’s trips to both Moscow and Kiev are part of a single diplomatic strategy. Türkiye is talking to both sides, as this is the only way it can maintain its potential as a mediator. Fidan’s talks with Vladimir Zelensky do not mean that Ankara is siding with Ukraine.

Naturally, Türkiye  will continue to make certain overtures to Ukraine and partners within NATO. It will not publicly renounce its support for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity,” will not cease cooperation with Kiev, and will participate in Western meetings on Ukraine. For example, on July 13, Fidan represented Erdogan at the Paris summit of the so-called Coalition of the Willing. However, Türkiye’s participation in such formats does not necessarily mean that it is ready to break ties with Russia. Turkish diplomacy traditionally strives to maintain ties with various players, preventing any single power center from gaining a monopoly on relations with it.

The West could offer Türkiye several concessions such as the lifting of sanctions, a return to the F-35 program, access to European defense funds, investments, and political concessions. But even these incentives are unlikely to force Erdogan to completely reconsider relations with Moscow. The Turkish leader understands that without Russia’s involvement, it is impossible to resolve issues concerning Syria, the Middle East, the South Caucasus, the Black Sea region, as well as energy and Eurasian policy issues. Furthermore, demonstratively joining the anti-Russia front would deprive Türkiye of its mediator status and transform it from an independent player in international relations into just another tool used by the West to implement its strategy. 

Therefore, Western attempts to draw Türkiye into an open confrontation with Russia are not likely to yield the desired result. Ankara may make certain concessions, bargain with Washington, expand cooperation with NATO, and strengthen ties with Ukraine; but it will probably avoid crossing the line that would directly damage relations with Russia. Türkiye will not choose between Russia and the West: its goal is to force Moscow, Washington, and Brussels to consider Turkish interests.

This is the essence of Erdogan’s policy. It’s neither neutrality in the classical sense, nor equidistance. Rather, it is strategic autonomy based on pragmatism, balance, and the desire to extract political and economic advantages from the competition among major powers. The West would like to see Türkiye as part of a united anti-Russia front. However, Türkiye prefers to see itself as a separate center of power. And as long as Erdogan retains control over the country’s foreign policy, the likelihood that Ankara will fully submit to the West’s anti-Russia strategy remains low. 

The US Senate has unanimously urged President Donald Trump not to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker who helped Jeffrey Epstein recruit and abuse underage girls.

Maxwell, the daughter of disgraced British newspaper tycoon and former MP Robert Maxwell, who had suspected ties to Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and related offenses.

The resolution, introduced by Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen and approved without objection from either party on Wednesday, states that Maxwell should not receive “a pardon, commutation, or any other form of executive clemency.”

Rosen stated that it was “horrifying” that Trump had even entertained the possibility of clemency, arguing that Maxwell should never receive a pardon for helping Epstein abuse underage girls.

Trump has repeatedly declined to categorically rule out pardoning Maxwell. When asked about the possibility last year, he stressed that he had the authority to do so but said nobody had approached him with a request. He later also said he would consult the US Justice Department following the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Maxwell’s appeal in October 2025.

Speculation over possible clemency further intensified after Todd Blanche, then deputy attorney general and now Trump’s nominee for attorney general, interviewed Maxwell for around nine hours over two days as part of the Justice Department’s Epstein investigation.

Maxwell was granted limited immunity for the interview and was transferred to a lower-security federal prison shortly afterward. Her lawyer denied that she had sought anything in return for cooperating but acknowledged that she would welcome relief from her sentence. Blanche has said he would not recommend a pardon.

The Senate move comes amid continued anger over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files. The disclosure process has faced criticism over delays, extensive redactions and the absence of major new prosecutions, disappointing supporters who had expected the records to expose powerful figures connected to Epstein.

Trump and Maxwell moved in the same social circles in New York and Florida during the 1990s and early 2000s, when the president was also acquainted with Epstein. After Maxwell’s arrest in 2020, Trump drew criticism for saying, “I just wish her well, frankly.”

The US president has denied any wrongdoing connected to Epstein and says he ended his relationship with the financier years before his 2019 arrest. Maxwell later told Justice Department officials that she had never witnessed Trump behaving inappropriately.

India’s labor market and educational system should adapt to the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem, a top advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said.

Disagreeing with the idea that AI will eat away human jobs, Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, told RT India that new technologies will also create new kinds of jobs.

“Textile technology of the early 19th century caused losses of jobs. Today’s textile industry worldwide employs a lot more people than existed in the 18th century,” he said in the latest episode of the ‘India, Russia, and the World’ podcast.

Sanyal said rather than wasting time on ways to protect today’s jobs, the workforce should be retrained.
Citing the example of podcasting, he asked, “Who knew that podcasting would be a profession? This profession did not exist, you know, half a generation ago.”

Stressing the need for the higher education system to become attentive to how the job market and opportunities evolve, he said, “The old system of giving lectures and curriculums is changing… at a glacial pace, all that has to go.”

He said in the future people will join the workforce at an early age. “And they may be going back and refreshing themselves well into middle age or even old age.”

The concept of concentrating all your higher education right in the beginning of your life without developing new skills the rest of your life is “probably now an outdated model,” Sanyal said.
India is already a reasonably important player in AI, he noted.

“The global capability centers of Microsoft or Google or Meta or Apple, you know, are huge in India,” Sanyal said. “Even parts of the foundational [AI] models being developed by these companies are developed in India.”

He said the latest data suggests that India’s economy grew at 7.8% in the first quarter of this year, despite geopolitical shocks. India will not pursue growth by risking macroeconomic instability, he said, citing this as the “reason we have been very careful about controlling inflation.”

India has tamed inflation in the 2 to 6% target range in the last decade.
 
The country is creating a network of bilateral free trade pacts to counteract the breakdown of the old multilateral system, he said.

He said energy is not the only problem posed by the Iran war. “There are 10 million Indians who live in that area. We have to worry about them. They are also not only a source of remittance, but their physical safety is an issue,” Sanyal stressed.

Sanyal also talked of the hundreds of thousands of Indian sailors. “Recent conflicts have had casualties, a lot of them in West Asia, but very recently also in the Black Sea,” he said.

RT has opened submissions for the 2026 Khaled Alkhateb International Memorial Awards, which honor outstanding war reporters working in conflict zones around the world.

This year’s contest will accept news reports or series of reports from conflict zones, with a maximum running time of ten minutes. Submissions are accepted in Russian, Arabic, and English, or with subtitles in any of the three for reports in other languages. Qualifying videos must have been published between October 1, 2025, and September 30, 2026.

The competition is open to reporters from major media organizations, independent journalists, freelancers, and bloggers.

RT launched the award in 2018 to commemorate its Arabic stringer Khaled Alkhateb. The 25-year-old freelance warzone correspondent was killed in 2017 in a shelling while covering a Syrian government offensive against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in Homs.

“This is the ninth year we’ve honored the best war correspondents with the Khaled Alkhateb Award, and each year we see the job getting harder and harder for our people – especially in the Special Military Operation zone, and especially in our region, because Israel and Ukraine are deliberately targeting journalists,” RT Arabic chief Maya Manna said.

Sometimes journalists are killed live on air, and the West says nothing at all – it just stays silent. So we feel compelled, and duty-bound, to make sure people know that a war correspondent’s work can get you killed. And every year we show the heroes who go to the front regardless, and bring us the truth.

The jury for this year’s competition will include journalists from leading news organizations, each with firsthand experience covering conflict zones around the globe. The members will be announced at a later date on the award’s official website. Submissions will be accepted via a form on the site.

Ukraine’s deadly attack on an Iranian cargo ship named Anna in the Caspian Sea was Vladimir Zenensky’s “gift” to Israel and the US, the former senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Kanani Moghaddam, told RT.

The strike, which killed one Iranian sailor and injured another on Saturday, came three days before Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington for talks with US President Donald Trump.

Zelensky acknowledged the operation shortly after it occurred, hailing the “very strong results” of strikes on vessels that he claimed “were involved in the transportation of military cargo” linked to Iran.

“This shows that Zelensky, on the eve of his trip to America, wanted to give a gift to the Zionists and Trump, and thus took this action,” Moghaddam said.

The former commander also warned that if Ukraine continues to attack Iranian ships in the Caspian Sea, Tehran will retaliate using medium-range missiles. Iran possesses missiles with ranges of around 2,000km, which, according to publicly available estimates, could reach parts of eastern Ukraine.

Watch the full statement below.

Five children from Russia and Ukraine are about to be reunited with their loved ones under an international humanitarian initiative, Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova reported. According to Moscow, the process is being coordinated by US First Lady Melania Trump and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, praised Melania Trump for what he called “a vital global humanitarian and peacemaking role” in helping Russian and Ukrainian children separated from their families reunite with their relatives. “Under her coordination, 33 children have already been reunited with their families,” he wrote in a post on X on Thursday, adding that “more reunifications” are ahead.

According to the White House, this is the fifth group of children the US first lady has helped reunite. “This milestone marks another step toward ensuring that innocent kids can safely return to their homes, communities, and the people who care for them,” it said in a statement.

“While diplomacy and peacebuilding are important to this effort, they are surpassed by our collective ability to place children above international disputes,” Melania said, commenting on the reunition.

A five-year-old boy has just arrived in Russia, where he was reunited with his mother, Lvova-Belova said, adding that the child had lived with his father in Ukraine back in 2020.
Earlier this year, the boy’s mother learned that his father had died, and Russian authorities helped the family reconnect.

A Ukrainian woman also came to Russia from Germany for her daughter on Thursday, according to the commissioner. The girl had been living with her grandmother since 2023.

Three more children are about to reunite with their relatives in Ukraine and Germany.

Another six-year-old boy is about to be reunited with his Ukrainian mother, who has been living in Russia with his grandmother since 2022. A 15-year-old teen, who has been living with relatives in Russia, will also soon go to his mother, who is living in Ukraine, according Lvova-Belova. One more 15-year-old will travel to Germany to live with his older sister, who has requested custody of him.

All the humanitarian efforts are being carried out upon the orders of President Vladimir Putin on the basis of requests of parents or close relatives of the affected children, the commissioner said, maintaining that the child’s interests are taken into account in each particular case. “Soon, all the children will be reunited with their loved ones!” she added.

A total of 31 children have been returned to Russia, and 145 children returned to Ukraine or other countries as part of the humanitarian initiative backed by the Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner’s Office, according to Moscow’s data.

A quarter of young Africans believe US foreign aid cuts could benefit their countries by pushing governments to tackle domestic challenges instead of relying on external assistance, African Youth Survey 2026 shows.

At the same time, nearly half of respondents said the closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) would have a negative impact.

The survey found that 26% of respondents viewed the aid cuts positively, while 46% expected adverse consequences, 16% said they would make no difference, and 11% were unsure. Optimism about the cuts was strongest in Ghana and Nigeria, whereas concern was highest in Mozambique, Rwanda and Kenya.

The report said just over half of respondents (53%) expected healthcare services and disease prevention to be the sectors hardest hit by the reduction in US funding. “Concern [was] felt most acutely in Zambia and Mozambique, where over four-in-five (83%) already report experiencing the impact, and in Kenya, where three-quarters (75%) say the same,” it said.

Education, economic development and food security were also among the areas most likely to be affected, according to those surveyed.

African Youth Survey 2026 was conducted by the Ichikowitz Family Foundation among 4,901 people aged 18 to 24 across 16 African countries. Researchers carried out face-to-face interviews in Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Togo, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The findings echo the views of some African policy experts, who argue that the reduction in foreign aid could encourage governments to rely more on domestic resources.

“The collapse of USAID funding provides Africa and its leadership an opportunity to take a fundamental rethink of its over-reliance on Western foreign assistance and donor aid,” Michael Owuor, a researcher at the Global Centre for Policy and Strategy (GLOCEPS), told RT.

The findings come after US President Donald Trump’s administration moved to dismantle the agency. In February 2025, it announced that most of its employees would be placed on administrative leave. A month later, the US State Department said it was terminating around 6,300 USAID programs worldwide.

The Italian mafia is seeking to buy up some of the 800,000 firearms reportedly missing or stolen from Ukraine since 2022, including drones and other advanced arms, senior prosecutors have warned.

Some 780,465 items sent to Ukraine have reportedly disappeared since the escalation of the conflict, including around 149,000 during the first five months of 2026. The Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper reported on Wednesday that much of the arsenal consisted of European military supplies intended for Kiev.

The outlet noted that European law enforcement authorities have struggled to track the flow of these arms, given that Western governments conceal the details of their extensive military shipments to Ukraine.

The weapons have since reportedly ended up on the European black market and are now said to have attracted the attention of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, which would like to upgrade its arsenal with military-grade systems.

Palermo chief prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia told Italy’s parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission this week that the criminal organization was trying to build a “quality arsenal” and has already obtained access to AK-47 rifles and powerful explosives.

De Lucia said that the mafia is also trying to obtain more advanced weaponry, such as mine-dropping drones, warning that Italian security services are not prepared to deal with such weapons systems.

Concerns over weapons leaking from Ukraine into European criminal networks have persisted since the early months of the conflict. Europol reported back in 2022 that arms were being trafficked into the EU for organized crime groups, with several countries, including Finland, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain, having since stated that weapons sent to Kiev had reached local criminals.

The latest report comes amid repeated corruption scandals involving Ukraine’s military and state institutions. Recent investigations have uncovered millions of dollars in illicit sales of military equipment and theft from military repair contracts and drone funds, alongside wider schemes involving defense procurement and foreign donations.

Commenting on the Italian prosecutor’s warning, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow had long warned that Western weapons sent to Kiev would spread through illicit markets and eventually threaten Ukraine’s European sponsors.

Zakharova explained that some of the weapons supplied to Kiev never actually reach their stated destination because of corruption, while those that do arrive are divided between the front, black-market buyers, and armed groups in other regions.

Russian officials have also accused Ukraine of supplying weapons and drone expertise to militants in Africa, while Mali has alleged that Kiev provided kamikaze drones to terrorist organizations operating in the Sahel.

The US is pushing to secure a role for American companies in a $12.5 billion Ethiopian Airlines airport project. Washington is seeking greater commercial and infrastructure influence in Africa, where China now has a stronger presence.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Middle East and Africa Mark Mitchell described Bishoftu International Airport as a “transformative” project during a virtual briefing in Addis Ababa on Wednesday.

“Across agencies… the Department of Commerce has closely engaged in pushing to secure strong United States participation,” he said after talks with Ethiopian Airlines officials.

Mitchell did not identify potential companies or contracts, but said US involvement could result in “more Boeing aircraft powered by GE Aerospace engines.” Ethiopian Airlines agreed in April to purchase six additional Boeing 787-9s.

Construction began in January about 40 km southeast of Addis Ababa. Ethiopian Airlines says the first phase will be completed in 2030 and handle 60 million passengers annually. Capacity is expected to reach 110 million when fully developed, making it Africa’s largest airport.

The project is intended to accommodate the state-owned carrier’s rapid expansion. Ethiopian Airlines reported a 20% increase in revenue to a record $9.1 billion in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, according to the Ethiopian News Agency. It transported 20.7 million passengers and added nine aircraft and four international routes. The carrier now operates more than 170 planes and serves 150 international destinations.

Under a financing mandate signed last August, the African Development Bank plans to provide a $500 million loan and lead efforts to mobilize $8.7 billion for Bishoftu.

The US initiative comes as Washington competes with Beijing for trade, technology, and infrastructure cooperation in Africa. Ethiopian business newspaper Addis Fortune reported in January that China Communications Construction Company and Beijing Urban Construction Group were conducting initial site clearing and groundwork at Bishoftu.

Ethiopian Airlines has separately confirmed on its website that several Chinese firms and joint ventures were shortlisted to bid for the airport’s main construction and infrastructure packages.

The push comes despite lingering trade tensions. Ethiopia remains excluded from the US African Growth and Opportunity Act program after Washington suspended its eligibility in 2022, citing human rights violations during the conflict in northern Ethiopia.

Statehood Day in Kiev. Very important. Very historical. “So how can I make it all about me?” the EU said. Here comes Brussels to put the “hood” in “statehood” day, and bring some muscle to Kiev’s mobilization hustle.

What a great opportunity for the EU to come back into town for another photo op, another summit, and another round of butt- and back-slapping.

‘Queen’ Ursula von der Leyen set the tone: “It’s a special moment. Ukraine has built a strong military momentum. The tide is turning. I will announce new initiatives to integrate our defense industries. So we can produce more, and faster. We will also discuss accession and preparations for this winter.”

At this point, all those same talking points have had more comebacks than Madonna. The tide’s been turning for so long that you’d expect it to have actually arrived somewhere by now. So what’s the occasion this time, beyond pretending that you actually had Statehood Day on your calendar in Brussels? Because let’s pretend that an excuse to drop by is actually necessary, and that you’re not just the Karen of the northern hemisphere block watch.

Excuse me! It’s the prestigious occasion of the fifth Ukraine-Southeast Europe Summit. Because the first four were obviously so productive that they have to fish the same talking points out of the recycling bin.

Stop me if you know this one: support, integration, EU accession somewhere down the road. Ukraine’s promised path to the EU seems to consist primarily of summits announcing that the path exists. Then there’s the “Coalition of the Willing.” Which is basically the European version of the Avengers. Except that instead of superheroes assembling, it’s the EU clown posse assembling to celebrate their assembling superpower.

They also assembled in Paris, promised coordination, and produced the usual result: another round of commitments to future commitments. But hey, they’re planning some military exercises for September. Poland says that they’ll go ahead on that, with British and French troops involved. Except that Germany reportedly isn’t joining, with Berlin noting that the drills are limited and mainly staff-focused. Which is like RSVPing ‘yes’ to a wedding because you like the idea of the marriage, but in reality you just can’t be bothered. Hopefully they’ll at least have enough tact to send an Amazon gift card.
And while France is stepping up as the new lead war drummer, Bulgaria seems to be looking to exit stage left. “We have exhausted our capabilities to provide military support. I mean weapons and commissions from the warehouses of the Bulgarian Armed Forces. We have provided 13 packages. We don’t have anything else to supply to Ukraine,” said Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev.

So basically he’s saying, “Look, we checked the warehouse. Do you want the broken chair that’s left in there, or what?”

Then there’s the EU’s latest move on Ukrainian refugee arrivals. Europe has entered a new phase of messaging. The kind where they say the quiet part a lot less quietly.

Specifically, the part about Ukrainians not being able to defend Ukraine while also kicking back on a patio somewhere in the EU. So unless you’ve already got a reservation for that patio and have been hanging out there for a while now, you can forget it.

They need to first satisfy their military obligations in Ukraine amid full mobilization, the EU says. And if they happen to survive that, then they can give asylum a shot, I guess.

So while leaders continue to promise Ukrainians support, anyone actually taking them up on their offer had better make a point of keeping up with the fine print. Because they’re using tactics normally associated with the guy who sells you a lemon at the used car lot. Come for the shiny asylum offer – and get a swift kick to the behind back to Kiev.

There are also reports that Ukraine itself has asked EU countries to tighten access for its citizens under temporary protection rules. Which is a unique and novel dynamic. Because usually when people leave a country during a war, the government of the country they’re leaving doesn’t get to call ahead and ask if maybe fewer of them could be let in.

Speaking of truth masseuses, Hungary’s new defense minister has been talking tough on Russia.

“It is necessary to see the interests and values ​​of the nation and the allies. We are closing the door in the face of the Russians,” said Hungarian Defense Minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi.

So dramatic. You can almost hear the door slam in the background. But when you actually take a closer look under the blustery rhetoric, it turns out they don’t seem all that interested in actually locking that door. It’s more of a swinging pet door. Because for all the public tough talk, Hungary recently refused to send weapons to be used against Russia. Like Slovakia, the US, and the Czech Republic with the recent NATO package. Poland and the Netherlands say that they’ve already given what they can. So this united front is starting to look like a group project where everyone says that they’re psyched but then discreetly bails.

So where does that leave the grand coalition? A lot of countries are still saying the ‘right’ things, but fewer of them are willing to reach into their pockets for anything that isn’t self-serving involving their own military industrial complexes. And everyone is trying very hard not to stare at the glaring gap between those two things.

Meanwhile, over in Kiev, the EU’s collective message is that momentum is building. And it seems that they figure that if they keep saying that often and loudly enough, then eventually they might stop getting pestered by Kiev about when exactly the momentum-powered ride is supposed to end in an EU fairytale. At this rate, it’s all starting to look like Disneyland’s hellish It’s a Small World ride: an endless refrain with no obvious final stop.

Europe isn’t positioning itself for a resolution to this conflict anytime soon, but rather a marathon. Like an endless relay for Ukraine. One that they’re willing to sponsor as long as they don’t have to personally do the sweating. And now they seem to be aligning policy to make sure that it has the people to keep going. Whether those people had other plans or not.

Boeing is reluctant to share the technology used in the warheads it manufactures for the Patriot PAC-3 interceptor missiles which Ukraine and its Western supporters want to manufacture in Europe, German media outlet Die Welt has reported, citing sources.

US President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that Ukraine would receive a license to produce the coveted Patriot systems. Manufacturing is expected to be based in a European NATO country, potentially Germany, where the facilities would be considered safe from potential Russian attacks.

In a report on Wednesday, Die Welt correspondent Christoph Wanner outlined several obstacles facing the initiative, including what he described as Boeing Defense’s unwillingness to transfer sensitive technology to foreign partners.

Boeing manufactures the seeker warheads used in PAC-3 interceptors, while Lockheed Martin produces the missile bodies. Boeing Defense CEO Steve Parker recently said that the company intends to manufacture 850 of the warheads this year, compared with 650 in 2025.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said Kiev needs an additional 300 interceptor missiles to sustain its air defenses through the coming winter.

Media reports have pointed to a worldwide shortage of Patriot interceptors and other costly US-made munitions. The supply crunch has reportedly intensified as a result of Washington’s ongoing conflict with Iran.

Germany remains one of the Ukrainian government’s main military donors as it is also seeking to expand its own armed forces, citing what officials describe as a growing threat from Russia. Berlin’s rearmament plans have faced financial pressures and a widespread public reluctance to volunteer for military service.

Moscow maintains that the Ukraine conflict was engineered by NATO as a proxy war against Russia. Russian officials have accused the bloc of using Ukrainians as “cannon fodder” while supplying Kiev with weapons, funding and intelligence.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case into the attempted murder of an entrepreneur in the city of Tula. RIA Novosti has identified the victim as the head of a company that produces drones.

According to investigators, the incident occurred in the early hours of July 29 as the businessman was entering his apartment in a residential building in the center of Tula, a city about 193 km (120 miles) south of Moscow. An unidentified assailant fired several shots before fleeing the scene. The victim was rushed to a local hospital.

Russian Laboratory of Air Transport (RLAT), the Tula-based manufacturer of Ovod FPV drones, told RIA Novosti that the victim of the assassination attempt was Andrey Cherezov, the company’s founder, owner, chief designer and lead developer.

“After 2022, he began developing drones based on combat experience, turning a small company in Tula into an enterprise with a global reputation,” the company’s press office told the news agency.

Local news outlets later reported that Cherezov was returning home from work and had just reached the door of his fourth-floor apartment when the attack occurred. The assailant fired three shots at point-blank range before fleeing. The businessman’s wife opened the door after hearing the gunfire.

According to Izvestia, Cherezov was being treated in intensive care and remained in serious but stable condition.

Kommersant reported that Cherezov’s company develops drones, aerospace systems and related technologies, including secure communications, portable anti-drone radars and electronic warfare-resistant UAV systems. RLAT reportedly supplies Ovod FPV drones and UAV components to the Russian military.

According to the company’s financial statements as cited by the newspaper, RLAT reported revenue of more than 1.3 billion rubles ($16.3 million) in 2025 and a net profit of nearly 28 million rubles (about $358,000).

RIA Novosti reported on Thursday that Cherezov is listed in Ukraine’s controversial state-backed Mirotvorets database, which catalogs individuals Kiev considers enemies of the country. Earlier this month, RLAT was included in the EU’s 21st package of sanctions against Russia.

It remains unclear whether the attack on Cherezov was linked to his business activities, with investigators yet to determine the motive behind the attempted killing. Law enforcement officers are searching for the gunman, whose identity remains unknown.

Former US Coronavirus czar Dr. Anthony Fauci is facing a state investigation after declining to answer questions during a US Senate hearing on the origins of Covid-19 and the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the probe after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times on Wednesday.

“Fauci’s lack of candor to Congress is unbelievable. My office is launching an investigation into Dr. Fauci. It’s past time we get the truth of what happened during COVID,” Uthmeier wrote on X.

Senator Rand Paul, who led the hearing, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis argued that Fauci had no legal basis to invoke the Fifth Amendment because former President Joe Biden had granted him a blanket pardon covering potential federal offenses.

Fauci justified his actions by citing what he described as Paul’s “obvious obsession” with his “prosecution.”

Both Paul and DeSantis called for Fauci to be held in contempt of Congress – a formal finding that a witness has obstructed a congressional investigation.

DeSantis also said that the former White House medical adviser could face legal action at the state or local level, noting that Biden’s pardon applies only to potential federal crimes.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz called for Fauci to face criminal charges following the hearing. Speaking to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, the Texas lawmaker called the former White House medical adviser “the most damaging bureaucrat in the history of America” and said he “should go to jail.”

The investigation comes after years of clashes between Florida officials and Fauci over the federal Covid response. Under DeSantis, the Republican-run state became one of the leading critics of lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine policies promoted during the pandemic.

Australia has taken legal action against Telegram over alleged failures to tackle terrorism-related content. Just the day before, Russia launched its own case against the messaging platform and its founder, Russian-born entrepreneur Pavel Durov.

The Australian eSafety commissioner announced on Thursday that it had started civil proceedings in federal court for Telegram’s “alleged failure to detect and remove pro-terror material from the platform including videos of terrorist executions and mass shootings,” despite complaints from users.

The regulator said videos of the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre and the 2022 Buffalo supermarket shooting remained accessible on the platform for around three months before being taken down. The regulator is seeking penalties of up to A$54.6 million ($38 million).

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant argued that leaving such material online risked “normalizing extremist content” and facilitating the “recruitment and radicalization of at-risk individuals.”

The Australian case comes just a day after Russia charged Durov with facilitating terrorism. The Federal Security Service (FSB) on Wednesday accused him of failing to shut down channels allegedly used by Ukrainian special services to recruit Russian citizens to carry out terrorist attacks. The agency said it would place the Dubai-based billionaire on an international wanted list.

Telegram’s CEO responded to the charges by posting a picture of himself raising a middle finger on X. He has previously claimed Moscow’s attempts to restrict Telegram were an attack on freedom of expression.

Durov is also under criminal investigation in France, where prosecutors accuse Telegram of failing to curb criminal activity on the platform, including child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, and organized fraud. French investigators questioned him for a fourth time earlier this month.

He has dismissed the allegations, asserting that Paris is using the charges to pressure him into imposing political censorship on behalf of the West.

For much of the outside world, Africa is still imagined primarily as a rural rather than an urban continent. Its familiar visual language consists of savannahs, deserts, tropical forests, ocean shores, safaris and villages.

With a few exceptions – Cairo, Cape Town, perhaps Marrakesh – African cities have rarely become destinations or cultural symbols in their own right. Yet anyone trying to understand the continent’s future should look not only at its mines, farms and ports, but also at its construction sites, commuter routes and rapidly expanding suburbs.

The decisive process is urbanization. More than 700 million Africans already live in urban areas, and this number is expected to reach approximately 1.4 billion by 2050. Around 80% of the continent’s population growth over the coming decades will be absorbed by cities and towns. More than 60 African cities already have populations above one million; by the middle of the century, there may be around 159.

Big city life

These numbers may seem abstract until one imagines what they mean on an ordinary weekday morning. In Lagos, Nairobi, Abidjan or Dar es Salaam, urban growth is experienced as a queue for a minibus, a new row of shops beside a road, an apartment block rising behind a market, or another hour added to the daily commute.

A city expands first not in an architect’s drawing, but through millions of private decisions: a family moving closer to work, a trader renting a stall, a landowner dividing a plot, a developer adding three floors to a building originally designed for one.

For many urban residents, mobility remains a daily negotiation. Nairobi has its brightly painted matatus (minibuses); Abidjan its gbakas and shared taxis; Johannesburg its minibus networks; Lagos its motorcycles, ferries and trains.

These systems are often criticized as chaotic or unsafe. Yet they also demonstrate how quickly informal institutions emerge when formal infrastructure fails to keep pace. For many passengers, every day becomes a struggle: several forms of transport may be needed to travel between home and work, while congestion and the spatial legacies of colonial planning stretch journeys across entire metropolitan regions.

It is a restructuring of the economy. Migration from villages to cities usually involves a change in employment: agriculture ceases to be the only mass source of income, while work emerges in construction, trade, transport, services, manufacturing and public administration. Cities create consumer demand, concentrate education and healthcare, and support the formation of new professional and middle classes. Standards of housing, employment and leisure change with them.

African societies are still, in many respects, learning to live in cities of unprecedented scale. The urban culture associated with regular transport, predictable municipal services, codified land use and stable public space has not become universal.

The African city therefore often appears disordered to the outside observer. Roads turn into markets; garages become workshops; residential houses acquire shops, offices and additional floors; undeveloped land is occupied before officials complete a plan for it. But chaos is not necessarily the opposite of urban development. It may be one of its early forms.

“Announcement of the future” – or a dysfunctional community?

The architect Rem Koolhaas, who spent years studying Lagos, Nigeria, initially described it as “the ultimate dysfunctional city.” He later became interested in the initiatives that allowed it to function despite weak formal structures. At another point, he called Lagos not a backward city, but “an announcement of the future.”

Lagos often seems to anticipate problems that other global cities are only beginning to face: extreme density, informality, infrastructure operating above its intended capacity, and a constant overlap between trade, transport and public life. But there is also a danger in romanticizing improvisation.

What looks inventive to an architect visiting for a week may feel exhausting to a resident who spends four hours commuting or buys water from a tanker because the public network does not reach the neighborhood. The future African city cannot depend on improvisation alone.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, six African metropolitan areas are expected to have populations above ten million by 2035: Cairo, Lagos, Kinshasa, Greater Johannesburg, Luanda and Dar es Salaam. Another 17 cities may exceed five million residents. Africa’s 100 leading cities are expected to account for more than 60% of the continent’s GDP by that year.

This means an extraordinary rise in demand for housing, roads, railways, offices, schools, hospitals, electricity, water and urban administration. It also means that municipal governments will increasingly resemble the governments of small countries.

Changing the scale

Lagos State illustrates the change in scale. Its proposed 2026 budget amounted to ₦4.237 trillion (around $3.06 billion). Such a figure no longer describes a municipal treasury in the traditional sense. A megacity must do more than collect waste, issue building permits and repair roads. It has to construct transport systems, manage land, organize the supply of energy and water, attract investment, create employment and respond to flooding, heat and coastal erosion.

The opening of the first phase of the Lagos Blue Line in September 2023 was therefore more than the launch of a railway. The 13-kilometre line connected Marina with Mile 2 and introduced electric urban rail to a city long dominated by roads and informal transport.

The project had been delayed for years, a reminder of the financial and administrative difficulty of building infrastructure in a rapidly changing metropolis. Yet its eventual opening also showed that African megacities are gradually acquiring the institutions needed to complete complex projects.

The physical appearance of the continent’s cities is changing alongside their systems of movement. Older images – informal settlements, unfinished buildings, rubbish dumps and overcrowded markets – have not disappeared. But beside them are new business districts, residential compounds, transport corridors, parks and administrative quarters. International firms including OMA, Foster + Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, UNStudio and SOM now treat Africa as a serious market for architecture and urban development.

What skyscrapers are for?

Skyscrapers occupy a special place in this transformation. At first glance, Africa does not need them. In many countries, land remains available, while the immediate urban problems are not a shortage of vertical space but insufficient electricity, water, sewage, transport, safety and waste management. A high-rise cannot exist apart from these systems and is therefore a test of the city beneath it.

For decades, the symbol of African high-rise construction was the Carlton Centre in Johannesburg, completed in the 1970s and rising to 223 meters. It reflected the corporate power of Johannesburg’s old central business district.

Later, South African leadership passed to The Leonardo in Sandton, which reaches 234 meters. The change was geographically revealing. Johannesburg’s business life had moved north from the historic center towards a district offering stronger private security, newer offices and more concentrated capital.

In the 2020s, the geography of African skyscrapers expanded dramatically. Egypt completed the Iconic Tower in its New Administrative Capital, reaching approximately 394 meters.

Morocco built the 250-metre Mohammed VI Tower near Rabat.

In Abidjan, the planned 421-meter Tour F is intended to become the tallest building on the continent. Addis Ababa has also produced proposals for headquarters towers exceeding 300 meters.

These projects form part of a continental competition for a new skyline. They express political confidence and the desire to place African capitals on the visual map of global modernity. Yet their meaning differs from that of many post-independence towers built during the second half of the twentieth century.

At that time, high-rises often functioned primarily as monuments to sovereignty. They declared that a newly independent state possessed ministries, banks, airlines and corporations worthy of monumental headquarters. Their economic role was sometimes secondary, and some remained partially vacant or poorly connected to the surrounding city.

Today, a skyscraper is more likely to be presented as an investment asset. It may combine offices, apartments, hotels, retail and conference facilities. It can help capitalize expensive land and meet demand from banks, telecommunications companies, energy firms and state holdings. Investment in office space can also support the formal economy: contracts, taxation, registered companies and stable employment.

But Africa’s architectural future cannot consist simply of importing the skylines of Dubai, Shanghai or New York. Glass towers designed without regard to climate can become enormously expensive machines for producing heat.

They require constant air conditioning, imported materials and uninterrupted electricity. Their façades may look modern in computer renderings but prove badly adapted to dust, humidity, intense sunlight or unreliable maintenance.

When African architects find local ways 

A different approach can be seen in the work of Burkinabè architect Diebedo Francis Kere. His buildings use local materials, shade, natural ventilation and community participation not as decorative references to tradition, but as practical technologies. The Pritzker Prize jury praised his understanding that architecture is “not about the object but the objective” and emphasized the importance of buildings rooted in place and community.

Kere’s career began not with a tower, but with a school in his home village of Gando. The building used compressed earth blocks and a raised roof to create ventilation and protect classrooms from extreme heat. Villagers participated in its construction. Years later, reflecting on the project, he said: “I wanted to give something to my people, and that has given me an international career.” This may offer a more important model for African architecture than height alone. The innovation lies in combining modern engineering with local climate, labor and materials.

Climate is already becoming one of the defining problems of African urban design. Heatwaves, floods and coastal erosion are intensifying precisely as cities grow denser.

Freetown has responded through its “Freetown the Treetown” program, which pays residents to plant and maintain geotagged trees. The program treats vegetation not as beautification but as infrastructure: shade, slope stabilization, water retention and protection against urban heat.

Across the continent, reflective roofs, shaded streets, urban forests, green roofs and climate-resilient road materials are gradually entering municipal policy. The African city of the future may therefore look less like a forest of sealed glass towers and more like a layered system of courtyards, arcades, planted streets, mixed-use districts and buildings designed to function even when electricity is interrupted.

What African urbanization means for the world

The central dilemma of African urbanization is the balance between symbol and system. Architecture cannot compensate for the absence of urban governance. Without strategic planning, a city grows as a collection of fragments: a luxury tower beside an unpaved road, a gated district beyond the reach of public transport, a railway without sufficient feeder buses, a new administrative capital separated from the population it is intended to govern.

Africa in the twenty-first century is not only a continent of demography, resources and conflicts. It is a continent of future cities. It must still answer fundamental questions: what will form the center of the city beyond the port, market and government quarter; who will finance new infrastructure; who will maintain it; and how density, accessibility, climate and local identity can be combined.

These answers matter far beyond Africa; some of the world’s largest urban agglomerations of the coming century will grow here. Their architects and governments will be forced to experiment with forms of density, transport, housing and climate adaptation for which no established global model is entirely adequate.

African urbanization is thus becoming a laboratory of the future. The skyscraper is not its main invention. It is simply one of the most visible instruments by which the success – or failure – of that experiment will be measured.

The violence in New Delhi last week amid mass student protests has ignited a debate in the country about the surveillance technology which law enforcement agencies use to tackle unrest – and how it holds up to scrutiny under Indian law. 

In addition to the shutdown of Internet services in the protest area, the jamming of mobile phones, and the recording of protesters’ Instagram handles, Delhi police also reportedly deployed facial recognition technology and biometric surveillance.

What was the technology used?

According to local media, Delhi police deployed at least three ‘Ikshana’ mobile surveillance vans, equipped with powerful cameras that continuously captured live images and compared them using AI-enabled facial recognition technology to a police database, reportedly in order to “identify criminal elements among the protesters.” 

‘Ikshana’ means vision or eye in Hindi, and each van is equipped with eight state-of-the-art cameras mounted on a telescopic mast, offering a 360-degree view. The system is integrated with artificial intelligence capabilities for facial recognition and video analytics. The vans were originally inducted by the Delhi police in 2023, ahead of the G20 summit.

Inside, officers monitor the screens as the facial recognition software processes live video feeds of the crowd, and throws up images for comparison against “a large database of criminals.” 

The AI software helps identify, or verify, the identity of the individual captured in the image by analyzing facial features and comparing them against a database of stored images in order to find potential matches.

Additional CCTV cameras were also installed around the protest site in Jantar Mantar in Delhi and connected to a mobile police control room. The police also allegedly used Meta smart glasses to snap pictures of the protesters.

Investigative journalist Srishti posted a video clip on X last week of seeing her face on the monitor of a police control van while reporting for the independent news site Article14 from the protest site. ”Delhi police were caught on camera surveilling a journalist on duty,” she claimed. 

The satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which led the protests, posted a similar video, claiming “mass-scanning citizens exercising their legal right to protest is unconstitutional.”

The overt signs of mass surveillance forced many young people, some of them students, to wear masks at the protest site. They feared the simple act of holding a poster or a placard would get them into a police database and would be used against them. Some reports quoted protesters as claiming police officers threatened to send their photos to their parents.

No surveillance, says government 

Interestingly, even as the on-site evidence and statements by senior police officers confirmed the AI-enabled surveillance, India’s Solicitor General Tushar Mehta – the government’s top lawyer – told the Delhi High Court that the recordings were routine and had been conducted in order to maintain law and order: “There is no snooping. There is no surveillance.” 

The Indian government has claimed anti-social elements had infiltrated the protests. The Delhi police reportedly identified about 1,000 people with criminal records, including murder cases, from the gathering of thousands of people. 

These are, however, accusations against those individuals and not necessarily convictions.

’Manufacturing suspects’

Activists have raised several questions regarding the legality of the surveillance under Indian law. 

The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) wrote last week to the Delhi police demanding that live surveillance and the facial recognition monitoring of peaceful protests be ceased immediately.

In an article published on its website, it said, citing older records of its correspondence with the Delhi police, that the force has “no specific rule for the use of facial recognition technology.”  It pointed out that a similarity score of 80% and above is treated as a positive result. “Applied to a crowd, this arithmetic manufactures suspects,” the IFF wrote.

The IFF said the police had admitted that no privacy impact assessment of facial recognition technology had ever been conducted. India’s Supreme Court recognized privacy as a fundamental right in 2017.

Curiously, the use of the databases by police rests on a 1920 law, which was only repealed in 2022. “What legal basis they rest on today is unknown,” the IFF said, adding there was ‘function creep,’ with a court permission to use the databases to trace missing children being used in other purposes.

It is also not clear which database the police are using. There are concerns that the police system is linked to the biometric and other information in the national identity database, Aadhar – which rolled out facial recognition in India.

Surveillance challenged

Student activist Aishe Ghosh has implored the Delhi High Court to declare the mass surveillance of ​protesters unconstitutional and has demanded the destruction of all personal data collected during the demonstration. She has also requested the court to frame guidelines on how surveillance technology can be used. 

Ghosh is a former president of the students union of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a member of the student wing of the opposition Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM.

On Tuesday, the police visited the party’s Delhi office to arrest her over her alleged role in a 2021 protest. Party leaders and lawmakers shielded her from the police. 

The party has called it an attempt to “intimidate” her for taking part in the protests. When the issue was raised in Parliament, Indian Health Minister J.P. Nadda called it “a routine law-and-order action.” On Wednesday a Delhi court stayed the arrest warrant against Ghosh.

A party lawmaker filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court challenging the Delhi police’s use of the technology.

The Ukrainian Embassy in India provoked controversy with an X post on Wednesday subtly pressuring New Delhi to take a harder line on Russia and questioning the safety of Indian sailors. The post was deleted soon afterward.

Thirteen Indian seafarers are stranded aboard the MV Amir1 in Chornomorsk, Ukraine, as Russia intensifies its attacks on Ukrainian ports and other military-related infrastructure.

The Ukrainian Embassy claimed New Delhi had yet to respond to its request for a conversation between External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha to discuss the situation. 

It also shared India’s advisories to its nationals serving on board ships in the Strait of Hormuz and the Black Sea – both conflict zones that have seen the deaths of Indian sailors – saying they offered “two different levels of protection” and testily asked whether the Russian envoy would be summoned “once again” for further explanations.

The tweet has since been deleted but it was reported on by several India media outlets.

The Indian Foreign Ministry has not commented on the Ukrainian embassy’s tweet.

India had summoned the envoys of both Russia and Ukraine to protest attacks on commercial shipping in the Black Sea in the last two weeks, in which five Indian sailors have died.

New Delhi also issued a maritime advisory telling Indian seafarers in the conflict zone to exercise utmost caution and take voyage-specific risk assessments before entering the region. 

The Black Sea notice and India’s earlier one on the Strait of Hormuz  – despite their slightly differing language – are just advisories. Ship owners and captains ultimately decide where their ships go and it is not practical to disembark, and re-embark, sailors while transiting a conflict zone.

In response to India’s earlier protest, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that Russia had explained its position to India, and that “our armed forces are striking and will continue to strike those vessels involved in transporting ammunition, weapons and so on for the Kiev regime.”

Breaking: Ukraine President Zelensky thanks US Senators for bill that threatens India and four other countries with up to 100% tariffs for buying Russian oil and gas pic.twitter.com/jHXeB9URH1

— Shashank Mattoo (@MattooShashank) July 29, 2026

The embassy tweet came soon after Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, who is currently in Washington, welcomed the US Senate advancing legislation that would see the top five buyers of Russian energy hit with 100% tariffs on their exports to the United States. India is the second largest buyer of Russian oil.

India’s embassy in Ukraine said on Wednesday that the MV Amir1’s situation has been brought to its attention. “We attach the highest priority to this and are in constant touch with all concerned to ensure safety and security of all Indians onboard,” it posted on X.

A situation regarding MV AMIR1 with Indian seafarers onboard has been brought to our attention. We attach the highest priority to this and are in constant touch with all concerned to ensure safety and security of all Indians onboard. @MEAIndia

— India in Ukraine (@IndiainUkraine) July 29, 2026

Ukraine’s ambassador to New Delhi, Aleksandr Polishchuk, told news agency ANI that “India definitely has a very good relationship with the Russian Federation, and its reputation internationally is very big. We are always asking the Indian government to support us in bringing Russia to the negotiation table.”

The Ukrainian military unit at the centre of multiple torture and murder investigations has warned the public to focus on supporting the army, and not on  scandals linked to brutality in the ranks.

The 425th Separate Assault “Skelia” Regiment is alleged to have suffered a significantly high number of non-combat deaths, allegedly linked to the systematic mistreatment of trainees and other unlawful practices.

An investigation set up following media reports of brutality and death during training resulted in arrests, the latest of which were on Tuesday, involving two Skelia medics.

The Skelia Assault Regiment responds to critics

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Skelia’s command accused “political forces, public organizations, bloggers and some media outlets” of exploiting the scandal.

“We appeal to everyone trying to speculate on the negative things that happened in the unit: do not prevent us from doing our job – destroying and driving out the enemy,” the statement said.

Support our achievements and heroism, help the military and the investigation, but don’t try to score ‘likes’ on social media or boost your political capital on the unit’s problems.

Several Ukrainian public figures have accused former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov of amplifying the scandal to weaken former Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Aleksandr Syrsky. Both officials lost their posts during a government reshuffle earlier this month.

Shortly after the first reports brutality and mistreatment emerged, Skelia commander Lt. Col. Yury Harkaviy was suspended, while this week two combat medics have been arrested on suspicion of unlawfully detaining and torturing soldiers.

Another Skelia member has been arrested for allegedly attacking a military chaplain and a lieutenant colonel from a separate unit.

Ukraine's military scandals not limited to Skelia

The former commander of Ukraine's 154th Separate Mechanized Brigade, Stanislav Luchanov, who served in the 425th brigade, is under arrest in connection with the murder of two civilians who were allegedly in dispute with his wife, by two soldiers under his command.

The latter case triggered further controversy after military veteran Col. Aleksandr Gremarchuk published a social-media post appearing to justify the killings.

Gremarchuk accused “crooked politicians, schemers and draft dodgers” of fostering hostility toward the armed forces and said he would respond violently to anyone who insulted his family.

“If someone wants to know whether I would waste a civilian for my family: I say yes. A civilian, or a military man. I’d personally carve one up like a pig for Easter,” he wrote.

The Facebook post was liked by an account belonging to former Commander in Chief and current Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK, Valery Zaluzhny, widely seen as a potential rival to Vladimir Zelensky in any election. 

Ukraine's growing military-civilian divide

Relations between the armed forces and civilian society have already been strained by the military's frontline losses, rampant defense sector corruption and Kiev's deeply unpopular mobilization campaign.

Roaming conscription gangs frequently use brutal force to detain potential recruits in public places, a practice widely referred to in Ukraine and internationally as ‘busification.’

The conscription system is known to be widely corrupt, with critics claiming that wealthy or politically connected men can use bribes and influence to avoid service.

Before the escalation of the conflict in 2022 Ukraine ranked 122nd out of 180 countries for corruption, alongside Eswatini and behind Zambia, Nepal, Egypt, Algeria, and the Philippines.

Widespread public anger at the brutal, corrupt and deeply unpopular system has triggered several large protests in recent months, most notably a major disturbance in Lviv, known as a Ukrainian nationalist heartland. The military cracked down on the riot and reportedly began a campaign of harassment against suspected participants.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmitry Lubinets, has warned that the country could soon face cases of mob justice as public confidence in the military’s accountability sinks to new lows.

The events in Lviv “must show all of us that the boiling point in Ukrainian society has almost been reached,” he said.

Five Kenyan security officers were killed after their patrol vehicle struck an improvised explosive device near the Somali border allegedly planted by Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militants, Kenyan police have said.

The officers included four members of Kenya’s elite Special Operations Group (SOG) and one National Police Reservist. The reports also said gunfire was exchanged after the blast before the suspected terrorists fled the area.

“A patrol team from SOG Alungu came into contact with Al-Shabaab militants in the general area of Wantey Dam,” a police officer said as quoted by Reuters.

The attack took place at around 12 PM in El-Raamo in the Kutulo area on the Alungu route, a road commonly used by Kenyan security forces near the border with Somalia. According to the reports, the victims included Administration Police officers Ngaira Wekesa, Patrick Mwaura Karumba, Peter Mbugua Mburu and Yasin Kiptoo Lomer, as well as National Police Reservist Adan Adow Gedi. 

The attack is the latest in a series of security incidents in northeastern Kenya, where Al-Shabaab has targeted security personnel and civilians near the Somali border. In January, suspected militants killed Senior Chief Abdi Gani Owl and primary school teacher Stephen Musili in neighboring Garissa County.

Al-Qaeda-linked insurgent groups, particularly Al-Shabaab, have been carrying out regular attacks in several African countries since 2007. The terrorist group continues to conduct raids, bombings, and targeted assassinations in an effort to destabilize the Somali government and regional security structures, and also establish its own rule based on a hard-line interpretation of Sharia law.

The latest attack comes months after Somali government forces reported major operations against Al-Shabaab. In June, Somalia’s Ministry of Defense said government troops, supported by airstrikes, killed more than 30 militants in the Somali Middle Shabelle region. 

In March, Somali troops eliminated nine terrorists in another operation in Lower Shabelle, while two separate security operations the same month left 22 more fighters dead.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) and Rwanda have traded accusations over a proposed plan to disarm a militant group operating on the Congolese side of their shared border, exposing renewed tensions over a peace deal mediated by US President Donald Trump.

Kinshasa announced on Tuesday that the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) has signed a protocol covering disarmament, demobilization, and relocation to designated cantonment sites.

Congolese Regional Integration Minister Floribert Anzuluni said FDLR members would not be forcibly returned to Rwanda, while fighters and their dependents could relocate to a third country if conditions for voluntary repatriation were not met. He said there was no agreed estimate of the number involved, while the cantonment sites and implementation timetable were still being determined.

The FDLR, formed by ethnic Hutu fighters including some linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has operated in eastern DR Congo for decades. Kigali has accused Congolese forces of cooperating with the group, which it considers a threat to Rwanda.

Congolese government spokesman Patrick Muyaya described the protocol as a “major turning point” in addressing the FDLR issue, saying it complies with the Washington Accords and demonstrates Kinshasa’s progress toward fulfilling its commitments.

He accused Rwanda of using the FDLR’s presence as a pretext to justify aggression against DR Congo for 30 years.

Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe rejected the protocol as a “delaying maneuver” by Kinshasa, arguing that the FDLR is not a party to the Washington Accords but the armed group targeted by their security provisions.

“The FDLR genocidaires are not a party to these accords; they are instead their subject,” he wrote on X, adding that DR Congo’s principal security obligation was supposed to be fulfilled within 90 days.

Nduhungirehe also accused Kinshasa of intensifying military support for the FDLR and integrating many of its fighters into the Congolese army since the accords were signed on December 4, 2025. DR Congo has previously denied supporting the armed group.

The leaders of DR Congo and Rwanda formalized the Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity in the US capital last December. The deal commits both sides to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, cease hostilities, support the disengagement of armed forces, facilitate the return of refugees, and promote regional economic cooperation. It requires Kinshasa to neutralize the FDLR and Rwanda to lift its “defensive measures,” which DR Congo says means withdrawing Rwandan troops from its territory.

Relations between the two African states have been strained for decades by the rebel war in eastern Congo. Kinshasa has repeatedly accused Kigali of backing the M23 rebel group, allegations the Rwandan government has denied.

Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced since fighting between M23 and Congolese forces escalated in January 2025, with the rebels seizing Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu.

Russian forces carried out long-range strikes across Ukraine overnight, targeting airfields, defense industry facilities, telecommunications infrastructure and logistics hubs, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

The attacks struck targets in Kiev and Lviv, as well as in the regions of Ivano-Frankivsk, Zhitomir, Rovno, Vinnitsa and Dnepropetrovsk, the ministry announced on Thursday morning.

According to Ukrainian media, around half of the Russian missiles and drones launched during the barrage were directed at western Ukraine. Metro stations in Kiev reportedly became overcrowded as residents sought shelter ahead of the expected attacks.

The Russian military said the operation focused on facilities used to manufacture, store and deploy Ukrainian missiles and drones involved in long-range strikes against Russia. Three vessels suspected of transporting military cargo were also targeted, the ministry added.

In a later update, the ministry listed the specific locations it had selected for the strikes. They included The Mayak plant in Kiev, which produces components for FP-1 and FP-2 kamikaze drones, and another drone plant in the Ukrainian capital. The two locations hit in Lviv were involved in the production of missile engines and electronic components for long-range missiles, it said.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia struck locations involved in the production of FB-5 Flamingo and Neptun-MD missiles and other long-range weapons as well as naval drones, the ministry added.

Meanwhile, overnight Ukrainian attacks reportedly struck two warehouses belonging to the Russian e-commerce company Wildberries in Penza and Sarapul. The firm said one person was injured.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian military said that it had lost another F-16 fighter jet during a combat interception mission. The pilot ejected and was rescued, according to Kiev.

Ukraine has intensified attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure and commercial vessels since Vladimir Zelensky announced a 40-day “pressure campaign” against Moscow last month. Ukrainian officials have said the campaign is intended to damage the Russian economy and make the public feel the effects of the conflict more directly.

Zelensky traveled to Washington this week for talks with US President Donald Trump; he is seeking additional Patriot interceptor missiles for Ukraine’s air defenses. However, American stockpiles have reportedly been substantially reduced by the conflict with Iran and could take years to replenish, suggesting that Kiev’s shortage of key air-defense munitions is unlikely to be resolved soon.

Russian operations aimed at disrupting Ukrainian maritime shipments have meanwhile reportedly brought commercial traffic close to a standstill, with shipping companies considering the route too dangerous. Ukraine relies heavily on its Black Sea ports to export wheat, metals and other major commodities.

British energy regulator Ofgem on Wednesday proposed fees and stricter rules for AI data center developers to cull “unviable, stalled or speculative projects” that are taking up scarce grid capacity amid skyrocketing electricity demand.

It comes as the UK moves to grow its cloud computing and artificial intelligence industries but grapples with a sharp spike in grid connection requests – which Ofgem says have more than tripled in less than a year.

The amount of electricity capacity being sought by firms wanting to plug into the UK’s grid spiked from 41 gigawatts to 125 gigawatts between November 2024 and June 2025, driven largely by demand from data center projects, the regulator said in a press release on Wednesday.

The figure is nearly triple the UK’s 2025 peak electricity demand of around 46 gigawatts.

Under the proposed rules, developers would have to pay a refundable fee of between £237,500 and £712,500 ($316,000 to $947,000) per megawatt of electricity, Ofgem said. The fee would be forfeited if a project exits the grid connection queue before reaching energization.

The measure is expected to “tackle unviable, stalled and speculative projects,” according to the regulator.

In March, the UK government announced reforms aimed at clearing speculative grid connection requests, which it said more than quadrupled in the six months prior.

The reforms come as Brits face an ongoing energy price crunch; electricity and gas prices more than doubled in the UK in 2022 following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, when most European nations imposed sanctions on Russia and began phasing out cheap Russian gas supplies for more expensive alternatives. According to Ofgem, this year’s average household energy bill is expected to be around £1,862, almost 50% higher than in 2021.

While the Western restrictions had a detrimental impact on the Russian economy, it has adapted to them and learned to “minimize their effects,” according to Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has warned that “sanctions are a double-edged sword” and hurt both Russia and the countries that impose them.

The US military has warned troops in the Middle East against filming the aftermath of Iranian drone and missile attacks, with some personnel in Jordan reportedly told that their mobile phones could soon be confiscated to strengthen “operational security.”

The head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), Admiral Brad Cooper, claimed in a July 28 letter obtained by Reuters that photos and videos published by American service members were helping Tehran improve the accuracy of its strikes.

Cooper complained that journalists and online “open-source intelligence” researchers were effectively conducting battle-damage assessments for Tehran.

“Iran knows the weapons were fired; however, their forces do not know if they missed by 50 meters, hit an empty tarmac, or successfully struck a crowded facility,” Cooper wrote. “Detailed lists, descriptions, and analyses of what was hit, openly published by news outlets, are essentially performing Iran’s Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) for them, free of charge.”

One video cited by Cooper was recorded using Meta smart glasses during a deadly Iranian missile and drone attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan on July 17. The footage showed US troops running for shelter and entering a bunker as warning sirens blared.

Video captures the moment that several Iranian medium to intermediate-range ballistic missiles struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan overnight, killing at least two and injuring several other American Servicemembers. pic.twitter.com/cJz39E1LvP

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) July 18, 2026

Separate close-range footage from the same night appeared to capture multiple ballistic missiles directly striking the Jordanian facility. The Pentagon later confirmed that three American service members had been killed in the attack.

Two sources told Reuters that troops stationed in Jordan had been informed that their phones would be taken away in the coming days. A third said broader restrictions were being considered across the region, although CENTCOM described Cooper’s letter as merely a general security reminder.

While the Pentagon’s stated concern is that Iran may take advantage of the footage, the restrictions would also make it considerably harder for the public to independently assess the true impact of Iranian attacks.

The possible phone seizures would give Washington greater control over the flow of information. CENTCOM routinely publishes short, curated clips of American aircraft taking off, missiles being launched and Iranian targets being struck.

Meanwhile, firsthand recordings of Iranian attacks are rare, as allies hosting US bases in the region have also imposed strict bans on filming and penalties for violations. Such videos have contradicted the limited picture presented in official statements, which routinely emphasize successful interceptions or describe Iranian attacks as unsuccessful without detailing damage, casualties or equipment losses.

Concerns about transparency have grown since the US Department of War quietly updated its database over the weekend to show that 18 service members had been killed and 624 wounded since the war began on February 28. Lawmakers have demanded more information about damage to radar systems, aircraft hangars, barracks and other infrastructure at US bases.

The US has launched a “powerful” bombing raid against Iran after US President Donald Trump warned that it was “our turn to hit them,” following Tehran’s ballistic missile attack on American forces in Jordan the previous night.

US Central Command said the new strikes began at 8 PM Eastern Time on Wednesday.

“The strikes are a powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attacks on US forces based in the Middle East,” CENTCOM announced.

The command did not immediately identify the targets, disclose how many aircraft or missiles were involved, or say how long the operation was expected to continue.

Iranian media reported explosions across several southern regions shortly after the US operation began. Press TV said areas around the southwestern city of Abadan had come under missile strikes, while blasts were also heard on Qeshm Island and in the southern port city of Bushehr. There were no immediate reports of casualties or details about the facilities targeted.

Trump had warned earlier on Wednesday that Iran was about to face a harsh response, reportedly telling Fox News: “We’re going to beat the f***ing s**t out of them.”

Speaking later at the White House, Trump said Iran had fired five missiles at American forces and credited US Patriot air-defense systems with intercepting all of them. “We’re going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn to hit them,” he added.

CENTCOM described Tuesday’s missile launch as an attempted “surprise attack,” claiming that all the incoming projectiles had been intercepted. The command did not initially mention Jordan, saying only that the missiles had targeted US forces “based in the Middle East.”

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps later claimed responsibility for the attack. The IRGC said it was responding to “aggressive actions” by the US military and warned that its operations would continue as long as Washington persisted with what it called “illegal and malicious actions” against Iranian interests.

The renewed US bombing ended a brief pause that began after Trump suspended a 13-night campaign of strikes last Friday to allow negotiations with Tehran to proceed. He had warned, however, that military action would resume if diplomacy failed.

German auto giant BMW is planning to slash some 8,000 jobs globally by the end of 2027, according to several news media outlets, including Reuters and Bloomberg. German workers are expected to be particularly affected as the manufacturer is dealing with high production costs in Europe, as well as plunging sales in China, according to the reports.

The company allegedly offered buyouts to those in research, development, planning and other corporate departments as part of a deal aimed at pushing through with the plan. Factory workers would not be eligible for the deal, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

BMW CEO Milan Nedeljkovic is expected to announce a voluntary reduction program at a staff meeting this week, the sources said, adding that the scheme would be launched in October and run through 2027. The company will reportedly slash around 5% of its total workforce.

The automaker employed 87,436 people in Germany as of late 2025, which accounted for more than a half of its global headcount. The company has already been making gradual reductions, with a reported decrease of 2.3% compared to 2024, according to Bloomberg.

It comes just a day after another German carmaker, Porsche, announced plans to eliminate another 5,000 jobs by 2035, bringing its total planned reduction to around 9,400 positions. Its parent company, Volkswagen, is considering slashing up to 100,000 jobs amid a protracted industrial slump caused by high energy prices.

The Federation of German Industries (BDI) warned last week that the nation’s industrial sector was losing 15,000 jobs every month in what it described as a “critical” situation.
Once Europe’s industrial powerhouse, Germany has struggled with near-zero growth for years. It contracted in both 2023 and 2024, the first back-to-back annual decline in more than two decades, and is forecast to grow by just 0.5% this year. Corporate insolvencies also rose by more than 22% in each of those years, according to official data.

The crisis has been repeatedly linked by officials and business representatives to high energy costs resulting from Berlin’s decision to abandon cheap Russian oil and gas imports. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz admitted earlier this month that Germany’s “ongoing energy crisis [was] due to the lack of Russian gas.”

Before Germany’s decision to join the EU’s sanctions and de facto impose a Russian energy embargo upon itself, Russia supplied 55% of the country’s natural gas imports. Last week, the newspaper Berliner Zeitung reported that the nation had been paying five times as much for imported gas as it did before abandoning long-term Russian supply contracts.

A suspected drone has struck an American-owned floating liquefied natural gas facility at Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Damietta, setting two vessels ablaze and prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten retaliation against Iran.

British maritime security firm Ambrey assessed that at least one drone had hit the Energos Winter, a floating storage and regasification unit moored at the port on Wednesday. The maritime risk group Vanguard separately said an unidentified projectile had struck the vessel’s starboard side.

The resulting fire reportedly spread to the nearby LNG carrier GasLog Salem. Crew members were evacuated, both vessels were moved outside the port as a precaution, and firefighters brought the blaze under control. No casualties were reported.

BREAKING: Footage shows crews working to put out a fire on the US-owned floating platform in Egypt following a drone attack, with initial reports Iran struck it. pic.twitter.com/sFpRt2nfSD

— The Hormuz Letter (@HormuzLetter) July 29, 2026

The Energos Winter can store 138,250 cubic meters of LNG and deliver up to 650 million cubic feet of gas per day into Egypt’s energy network. Its US-based owner, Energos Infrastructure, operates four floating LNG facilities in the country that collectively supply around 35% of Egypt’s natural-gas demand.

No group has claimed responsibility for the incident, and neither Egyptian authorities nor the maritime-security firms have publicly attributed it to Iran.

President Trump, however, told reporters that he had been briefed on the incident, describing it as “a little more of the same,” before signaling that US retaliation against Tehran was imminent.

2/2 While no one claimed responsibility, Iran is the prime suspect. Meanwhile, the IRGC launched ballistic missiles at merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Watch emergency crews racing to cool down the burning LNG tanker in Egypt 👇 pic.twitter.com/FdIiL4M9np

— Predictivemoney (@Predictivemoney) July 29, 2026

“We’re going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn to hit them,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “They know it’s coming. They’re asking us not to do it.”

"We're going to hit them very hard."

President Trump warns adversaries that the U.S. is prepared to respond forcefully following a drone attack on an LNG tanker off the coast of Egypt.

Trump signaled that retaliation is imminent despite requests from adversaries to hold back.… pic.twitter.com/SMOUuj5qGT

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 29, 2026

Trump had issued an even more explicit threat earlier in the day after Iran launched several ballistic missiles at US forces in Jordan.

“We’re going to beat the f***ing s**t out of them,” Trump reportedly told Fox News, adding: “We’ll be hitting them hard. They’re going to get a beating.”

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed that its Aerospace Force had targeted a US air base and what it described as CENTCOM’s headquarters in Jordan. US Central Command called it an attempted “surprise attack” and claimed that all the incoming missiles had been intercepted.

Trump said Iran had fired five missiles and credited US Patriot systems with destroying them. “It’s our turn,” he said, while suggesting that diplomatic negotiations could eventually resume after the threatened retaliation.

The renewed hostilities came days after Trump suspended a 13-night US bombing campaign to allow negotiations with Tehran to proceed.

The fragile pause has since unraveled, with the US tightening its blockade of Iranian ports and threatening to seize Iranian funds frozen abroad – moves that Tehran considers clear violations of the agreements reached so far.

Former US Coronavirus czar Dr. Anthony Fauci was hauled before Congress on Wednesday to testify on the origins of Covid-19. Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to silence, but RT kept the receipts.

Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in a hearing orchestrated by Senator Rand Paul. A Kentucky Republican and vocal critic of Fauci’s handling of the pandemic, Paul released thousands of pages from Fauci’s personal diaries over the weekend, which suggested that the Covid chief knew the virus did not originate in a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan, China, but insisted in public that it did.

Former US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also released documents suggesting that Fauci pushed the wet market theory in meetings with the intelligence community, before denying under oath that he ever held such discussions.

“I hope today Dr. Fauci will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China, admit that the risk of this dangerous research exceeded any possible benefits, ask forgiveness, and pledge to help our government devise safeguards so a manmade epidemic never happens again,” Paul said in his opening statement at Wednesday’s hearing.

My full opening remarks: pic.twitter.com/QZSn437FfF

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) July 29, 2026

Any hopes that Paul would get answers, however, were dashed when Fauci pleaded the Fifth more than 100 times during questioning from Paul and other Republicans on the committee.

Here’s what Fauci was asked, and what the record shows.

Did Covid-19 come from a laboratory?

Fauci was asked multiple times whether Covid-19 originated in a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology; whether he was aware that the virus bore the hallmarks of gene editing; and whether he knew that the lab had more than 100 man-made viruses in storage that could have been precursors to Covid-19.

Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, gave the same answer to every question: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.”

Based on Fauci’s own diary, he believed in January 2020 that “the market was not the source, it was the amplifier.” After a call with a dozen government scientists on February 1, Fauci remarked that the group was split, with only two believing the wet market theory, and the rest believing that a lab leak was more likely. Fauci insisted on the wet market theory, and on April 17 publicly declared that the virus was “totally consistent” with a natural species jump. He reiterated this point in a National Geographic interview in May, stating “everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.”

It has not been conclusively proven that Covid-19 was created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but the lab leak theory is now the official position of the White House.

Did Fauci fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan?

Fauci shot down any questions concerning his own role in coronavirus research in Wuhan. He has previously testified under oath that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the parent organization of Fauci’s NIAID, did not conduct “gain-of-function” research into bat-borne coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab.

However, documents released in 2021 and 2022 prove that the NIH paid a private firm, EcoHealth Alliance, to conduct this research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that some of this money was doled out even after the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) rejected the proposal as overly risky.

In a 2020 email, Fauci stated that he knew gain-of-function research was being carried out at the lab. The NIH’s role in funding research on bat-borne coronaviruses specifically is described in publicly available grant information, although the words “gain-of-function” are not used in the grant proposal.

🚨BREAKING🚨

New emails reveal that Dr. Fauci was aware of risky gain-of-function research occurring in Wuhan, China prior to the emergence of COVID-19.

Why didn’t he tell the American people?@COVIDSelect is demanding answers👇 pic.twitter.com/pvxtaCRB5s

— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) July 13, 2023

Gain-of-function research refers to the process of modifying animal viruses to make them more likely to infect humans, in order to weaponize them or develop vaccines against them.

Was Fauci involved in the Pentagon’s monkeypox research?

Paul asked Fauci whether he was aware of gain-of-function research on the monkeypox virus at the NIAID’s ‘Integrated Research Facility’ in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Fauci stayed silent, but monkeypox has been studied at the facility for years.

In 2015, the facility – which also experiments with highly lethal pathogens like ebola – conducted research that boosted the transmissibility and virulence of monkeypox, although the NIAID never referred to this research as ‘gain-of-function’. After a worldwide outbreak of monkeypox in 2022 – which primarily affected gay men – research on the virus continued at Fort Detrick under the supervision of the US Army until the facility was shut down last April over repeated safety violations.

One week later, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning “dangerous gain-of-function research” in foreign labs, and pausing funding for such projects on US soil. In guidance released on Tuesday, the White House made the funding pause permanent, and issued new reporting requirements for all “projects that may increase the harmful consequences of biological agents.”

Did Fauci work with the CIA?

Paul asked Fauci whether the NIH had ever received funds from the CIA, and whether the NIH had ever conducted research “for or in coordination with” the CIA or Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The CIA funded bioweapons research at Fort Detrick, under ‘Project MKNAOMI’, although the project was shut down in 1976, a decade before Fauci took over leadership of the NIAID. While the extent of the CIA’s subsequent involvement in gain-of-function research is unclear, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – often characterized as a CIA cutout – did fund such research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In testimony to Congress in 2024, however, former USAID Administrator Samantha Power refused to label the research ‘gain-of-function’.

Paul claimed on Wednesday that “the CIA transferred funds to NIAID through interagency agreement,” and submitted documents purportedly proving this claim. The documents have not been made public.

What’s next for Fauci?

Fauci received a pardon from former President Joe Biden last January, shielding the former NIAID chief from prosecution over any offense committed between January 1, 2014 and January 20, 2025. Given the pardon, Republicans argued that Fauci had no grounds to plead the Fifth and shield himself from self-incrimination.

However, as the hearing took place after January 20, 2025, Fauci could have opened himself up to obstruction or contempt charges by giving false answers.

Throughout today's hearing, Anthony Fauci repeated the following script 111 times.

And yes, his refusal to testify is grounds for contempt. pic.twitter.com/mu1wkN6iLN

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 29, 2026

“It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify,” Paul told Fauci as the two-hour hearing wrapped up. Afterwards, Paul told reporters that the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will vote next week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

“We believe that with his… immunity from criminal liability, that he didn’t need to hide behind the Fifth Amendment and that maybe the Fifth Amendment doesn’t attach when you have a pardon in place,” Paul explained.

Russia can only preserve itself by achieving victory in the Ukraine conflict because the West is seeking to destroy the country through Kiev, former President Dmitry Medvedev has said.

Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the remarks on Wednesday while addressing young politicians and representatives of parliamentary parties at the ‘Territory of Meanings’ youth forum. He said Russia was facing an unprecedented challenge, citing Western sanctions and political pressure.

“Our common task is to preserve our country,” Medvedev said. “The only way to preserve our country is victory in the special military operation,” he added.

Medvedev stated that Russia has long endured Western efforts to undermine its sovereignty, asserting that its adversaries harbor disdain for “our country – large, strong, proud and self-sufficient, one that cannot be commanded.” He claimed that Western nations are now employing Ukraine as a “battering ram” to bring about Russia’s downfall.

While political parties may disagree on economic and social issues ahead of the upcoming State Duma election, Medvedev said they must remain united on issues affecting the country’s survival, expressing confidence that Russia will ultimately prevail.

Moscow has repeatedly said that it considers NATO expansion towards its borders to be a major national security threat, and cited Kiev’s ambitions to join the US-led bloc among the key reasons that led to the Ukraine conflict. Russian officials have long accused Western governments of waging a proxy war against Russia through military and financial support for Kiev.

On Monday, President Vladimir Putin told State Duma lawmakers that no one would ever succeed in breaking the Russian people, saying “This has not happened and will not happen in the future.” He added that the country’s political system and state institutions are prepared to repel any hostile actions.

Putin also said that Russia’s opponents have failed on the battlefield and are now resorting to terrorist attacks. He argued that the Western sanctions have failed to damage Russia as intended and have instead inflicted the greatest harm on the European and other states that introduced them.

Russia’s Federal Security Service has brought terrorism-related charges against Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire behind popular messaging app Telegram, once again placing the entrepreneur at the center of a dispute over whether technology platforms should be held responsible for crimes organized through their services.

The case stems from an alleged Ukrainian recruitment operation targeting young Russians through a Telegram dating chatbot. According to the FSB, victims were manipulated or coerced into committing arson, sabotage and other crimes.

On Thursday, Russia’s financial watchdog, Rosfinmonitoring, added Durov to its register of extremists and terrorists. Under Russian law, those on the register face a range of legal and financial restrictions.

FSB argues that as the owner of Telegram, Durov should be held accountable for failing to stop Ukrainian activities. The agency has said he is being placed on an international wanted list, although the process has not yet been completed.

The Dubai-based billionaire, who advocates a maximalist stance on freedom of speech, has had tenuous relationships with multiple governments, which he accused of trying to pressure him into political censorship and mass surveillance of Telegram users.

What is the link between Durov and Ukrainian spies?

The FSB does not allege that the two cooperate in any nefarious way. The statement it released on Wednesday focuses on Ukrainian recruitment efforts through a dating chat bot popular among Russian youths.

The service, which investigators named as ‘Daivinchik / Leo – match and meet new friends,’ claims to serve over 13 million users per month.

According to the FSB, Ukrainian agents are using it for multistage scam and coercion operations and have successfully recruited at least 46 Russian citizens, aged between 12 and 22, since July 2025. The agency claims that Telegram has failed to block Daivinchik / Leo, along with several other services that are similarly exploited by Ukrainian special services.

According to the statement, Durov is accused of facilitating terrorism. If convicted, he could face a sentence of 15 years or more in prison. The charges against him involve either actively encouraging or providing direct material support for a terrorist plot, which may be challenging for Russian investigators to substantiate in court.

The FSB said it considers placing Durov on an international wanted list, but Russia’s ability to secure his extradition remains in question.

Telegram’s long dispute with Moscow

The latest case marks a sharp escalation in Telegram’s long and complicated relationship with the Russian state.

Russian authorities previously demanded that the company provide encryption keys needed to access messages linked to terrorism investigations. Durov refused, arguing that Telegram could not compromise private communications without undermining the security of all its users.

A court ordered the blocking of Telegram in Russia in 2018; however, attempts to enforce this ban were largely ineffective. The restrictions were officially lifted in 2020 after regulators acknowledged that the company had demonstrated a willingness to cooperate in efforts to combat terrorism and extremism.

Tensions have resurfaced as Moscow has tightened regulation of foreign-owned and privately controlled communications platforms. Telegram experienced access disruptions in Russia earlier this year, while authorities have also restricted or blocked a range of Western services.

At the same time, the government has promoted Max, a domestically developed messenger presented as part of Russia’s push for technological sovereignty. Telegram, however, remains deeply embedded in Russian public life and is widely used by officials, media organizations, and businesses.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week that Russian officials remained in contact with Telegram’s management over continuing access problems. “Contacts are taking place, but there has not been much activity from the messenger’s side so far,” he said.

The statement suggests that Moscow has not abandoned negotiations with the company, even as the FSB pursues a criminal case against its founder.

Durov’s battle with France

Russia is not the only country seeking to hold Durov responsible for activity conducted through Telegram.

The entrepreneur remains under judicial supervision in France following his arrest in 2024, although his travel restrictions were reportedly lifted in November 2025. French investigators have accused Telegram of failing to cooperate adequately in cases involving organized crime, illicit transactions and abusive content.

Durov has dismissed the notion that a platform owner should face prosecution for crimes committed by its users. He views the French case as an effort to compel Telegram to censor political discourse and undermine its privacy safeguards.

He sharpened that criticism after French cybercrime police raided the Paris offices of X as part of an investigation into the platform’s algorithms and its Grok artificial intelligence chatbot.

“Don’t be mistaken: this is not a free country,” Durov wrote, describing France as the only nation “criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom.”

He has also accused President Emmanuel Macron of seeking to turn the European Union into a “digital Gulag” and argued that European governments increasingly want citizens to rely on established media rather than social platforms for information.

His claims echo criticism contained in the US national security strategy released in December. The document warned that Europe faced not only economic stagnation but the prospect of “civilizational erasure,” citing immigration, falling birth rates, declining national confidence, and the “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition.”

Why Telegram is becoming a geopolitical issue

The dispute surrounding Telegram is also part of a wider struggle over technological sovereignty. For much of the internet era, US corporations have dominated the global market for social networks, search engines, mobile operating systems and digital communications. Governments outside the United States have become increasingly concerned that essential communications infrastructure is controlled by companies subject to American law and political pressure.

Russia, China, the European Union and other powers have responded in different ways, ranging from data-localization rules and antitrust investigations to platform bans and the development of domestic alternatives.

Telegram occupies an unusual position in this contest. It is neither a conventional US technology company nor a Russian state-controlled platform. Durov was born in Russia, operates Telegram from Dubai, and reportedly holds several citizenships, exposing him to competing legal demands from multiple governments.

Durov has increasingly cast Telegram as an alternative to US-owned rivals, arguing that privacy has become part of geopolitical competition. He has repeatedly challenged WhatsApp’s security claims, recently saying a person would have to be “braindead to believe WhatsApp is secure in 2026” and asserting that Telegram’s engineers had identified multiple vulnerabilities in the Meta-owned platform’s encryption.

His comments came amid a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accusing Meta of misleading users about the extent of WhatsApp’s privacy protections. The complaint alleges that Meta can access or analyze communications it publicly describes as protected by end-to-end encryption.

Meta has denied the allegations. Company spokesman Andy Stone said WhatsApp cannot access users’ encrypted messages and vowed to contest the lawsuit.

The claims have not been proven in court, and WhatsApp maintains that neither the company nor outside parties can read the content of properly encrypted conversations. Still, the litigation illustrates how privacy has become both a competitive weapon and a political issue in the global messaging market.

Durov’s challenge is that he is attempting to defend Telegram from several directions at once. Russia wants greater cooperation against Ukrainian operations and other security threats. France is pursuing him over alleged criminal misuse of the platform. Other governments want stricter content moderation, data access or compliance with local laws.

In an increasingly fragmented digital world, his multiple passports and Telegram’s lack of a clear national allegiance may provide flexibility. They may also leave him exposed to pressure from every side. Across the world, governments are becoming less willing to tolerate globally operating communications platforms that sit outside their legal and political control.

Former Wall Street lawyer and federal prosecutor Jay Clayton has been confirmed as the next US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) despite having no traditional intelligence background, following his nomination by President Donald Trump.

Following US Senate approval in a 51-47 vote on Tuesday, Clayton will replace acting DNI Bill Pulte, has filled the role since Tulsi Gabbard resigned last month, citing personal family matters.

Trump has welcomed the confirmation, describing Clayton as “outstanding in every way” and saying he would do “a spectacular job” leading the US intelligence community.

However, Clayton’s background, rooted primarily in corporate law, financial regulation, and federal prosecution, as well as his lack of direct intelligence experience and record in several politically sensitive cases, has raised concerns about how he will approach the role.

Who is Jay Clayton?

Clayton spent more than two decades at Sullivan & Cromwell, an elite Wall Street law firm representing major banks and corporations. He later chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during Trump’s first term.

He subsequently became US attorney for the Southern District of New York, overseeing cases involving financial crime, terrorism, espionage and public corruption.

Clayton has cited this work as evidence of his national security experience. However, he has never served in an intelligence agency, the military, or a senior foreign-policy role.

Prosecuted Maduro

One of Clayton’s most prominent cases involved Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom US special forces seized alongside his wife, Cilia Flores, during a pre-dawn military assault on Caracas in January.

The operation was widely condemned as a gross violation of international law and the UN Charter, with experts describing it as a “forcible abduction” that could amount to a crime of aggression. 

Clayton’s office took charge of prosecuting the couple on narco-terrorism, cocaine-trafficking and weapons charges. Before Maduro’s capture, Clayton presented the case as part of Washington’s broader pursuit of cartel leaders, corrupt foreign officials and alleged state-sponsored drug trafficking.

Oversaw the Epstein files release

Clayton and his office were also involved in reviewing and preparing thousands of pages of records from the cases against convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell for public release.

That work included identifying sensitive materials, reviewing what could be released without affecting investigations, victim privacy, or sealed records, and helping the Justice Department determine redactions and approve documents for public release.

The release of the Epstein files has been widely criticized for delays, extensive redactions and the absence of major new prosecutions or clear answers about the late financier’s network. It has also become a source of anger within Trump’s own support base, amid accusations that the government was continuing to shield influential people.

Why did Democrats oppose his nomination?

Clayton initially appeared capable of attracting bipartisan support due to his experience leading the SEC and Manhattan US attorney’s office, as well as his reputation as a conventional and competent institutional figure.

However, that support largely disappeared during his confirmation hearing, where Democratic senators repeatedly asked him whether Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Clayton declined to answer directly, saying only that Biden had been “certified” as the winner, while also denying that he was an election denier.

Mark Warner, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, later said he had “serious reservations” about whether Clayton would stand up to political pressure.

Other Democrats questioned whether he would prevent intelligence agencies from being drawn into Trump’s election claims or used against the president’s political opponents.

How does he compare with Gabbard?

Clayton’s appointment has drawn comparisons with Gabbard, a military veteran and former congresswoman known for opposing regime-change wars, advocating a less confrontational policy toward Russia and supporting greater intelligence transparency.

As DNI, she released material concerning US-linked biological laboratories in Ukraine, the origins of Covid-19, the 2016 Russia investigation and the intelligence complaint behind Trump’s first impeachment.

Her departure followed reports of tensions within the administration over US military policy. Gabbard had been excluded from planning the operation to seize Maduro and was reportedly marginalized during deliberations over Iran, issues that conflicted with her longstanding anti-interventionist position.

She and Trump nevertheless publicly said she resigned to care for her husband after his cancer diagnosis.

Clayton, by contrast, has not clearly outlined his positions on military intervention, Russia, declassification or other major intelligence or foreign policy issues.

How powerful will Clayton actually be?

Clayton is taking over an office that has been weakened by recent staffing cuts and internal upheaval.

During his brief tenure as acting DNI, Pulte oversaw several rounds of dismissals and claimed the agency’s workforce had been reduced by about 30% within weeks. Current and former officials cited by CNN said morale inside the office had collapsed and key analytical units were badly understaffed.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe has meanwhile reportedly emerged as Trump’s principal intelligence adviser, raising questions over how much influence Clayton will wield.

During his confirmation hearing, Clayton offered few details on whether he intends to rebuild the office, continue shrinking it or adopt a more limited coordinating role.

Turkish politics rarely stands still, but even by local standards, the past week has moved fast. Ozgur Ozel, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, told his parliamentary group that a new party will be formed within days.

On the surface, this looked like a routine reshuffling of parliamentary seats – the kind of maneuver that happens periodically in Ankara without lasting consequence. Underneath, it is nothing of the sort. The announcement was framed as a defensive move, yet its implications reach far beyond the corridors of the CHP. Against the backdrop of Türkiye’s stalling economy, the tense regional environment, and the unresolved Kurdish question, the birth of this new formation looks like the opening move in a broader contest over who controls the timing of the country’s next election. Taken together, the pieces suggest that Ankara is entering a period in which political survival, not policy, will dictate the pace of events.

A party born out of necessity

Ozel did not describe his move as a rupture. He insisted that the CHP’s role as the parliament’s main opposition voice would not be abandoned, only carried forward under a new banner. The language was careful, almost defensive, and for good reason. Splitting a party while claiming continuity is a delicate balancing act, one that requires convincing both loyal voters and international observers that nothing essential has been lost in the transition. In practice, the plan is to bring roughly 85 deputies with him, instantly turning the new party into the second largest bloc in parliament and pushing the CHP itself down to 4th or 5th place. A party that has anchored Turkish opposition politics for a century is being hollowed out from within, not by an external rival but its own recent leader.

The logic behind the move becomes clear once the legal pressure on the CHP is taken into account. Courts have been steadily encroaching on the party’s internal affairs, including the reinstatement of Kemal Kilicdaroglu as the formal leader of the CHP. For Ozel, remaining inside a party whose leadership could be legally reassigned at any moment is a losing bet. Commentator Murat Yetkin described the new project as a reserve platform, built precisely so Ozel can wait out the legal storm without being dragged into seven months of an internal power struggle before elections arrive. This is an insurance policy, drafted by a politician who understands that Turkish courts have repeatedly proven capable of reshaping party leadership through rulings where ballots fail.

CHP falls back into Kilicdaroglu’s hands, Ozel keeps a functioning vehicle of his own, complete with parliamentary representation and a base of loyal deputies. If it does not work, he has lost remarkably little, since the new party can, in theory, be folded back into a friendly CHP once the legal dust settles. It is a move built for optionality rather than conviction, and that pragmatism is precisely what makes it significant. Ozel is betting that having control over a smaller, loyal formation beats having a contested claim over a larger, legally vulnerable one.

The reaction in the press captures the split perfectly, and it is worth dwelling on because it previews how the story will be fought over in the months ahead. Cumhuriyet ran the story as a march toward power, presenting Ozel’s decision as painful but historic – a step taken for the good of the wider democratic camp. The framing was almost heroic, portraying a leader forced by circumstance into a bold act of political self-preservation on behalf of an entire opposition movement. Sabah took the opposite line, framing the new party as inheriting a corruption problem, naming several founding figures already tied to bribery investigations and describing Ozel’s supporters as having plundered the old CHP headquarters on their way out. The tone there was mocking and accusatory, designed to strip the move of any moral standing before it could gain traction with undecided voters. Two newspapers, two entirely different versions of Türkiye, and neither side is likely to soften its framing in the weeks to come.

An economy running out of room

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Türkiye’s banking sector is heading into a difficult second quarter, with net profits expected to fall by more than 20 percent as inflation expectations stay elevated and tight monetary policy pushes up the cost of financing. For a country that has leaned heavily on its banks to sustain consumer spending and keep growth numbers presentable, that is a signal that the buffer policymakers have relied on for the past several years is thinning when they can least afford it.

More troubling is the currency exposure building up in the real economy. Foreign currency liabilities among Turkish companies hit $392.4 billion in May, the highest level recorded since 2013, while the net foreign currency deficit reached $204.4 billion. Numbers on this scale are not abstract statistics for policymakers to just shrug off. They represent a private sector increasingly vulnerable to any depreciation of the lira, and a government with steadily shrinking room to maneuver on interest rates without triggering the kind of corporate distress these figures already hint at. Companies holding that much foreign currency debt need a stable or strengthening lira simply to service their obligations, which locks the central bank into a defensive posture regardless of what domestic conditions actually call for.

This is the trap facing Turkish economic policy right now. Tightening further to defend the currency risks strangling growth and deepening the sense of stagnation that voters already feel in their daily expenses. Loosening policy to stimulate the economy risks reigniting inflation and putting even more pressure on companies already struggling under record foreign currency exposure. There is no comfortable middle path left – only a series of trade offs that grow less forgiving with each passing quarter. And because Turkish monetary policy rarely operates independently of political considerations, every one of these trade offs eventually becomes a political decision as well, made with an eye on elections rather than purely on economic fundamentals.

A region on edge and a question left unanswered at home

Türkiye’s foreign policy is not offering any relief either. Tensions with Israel remain unresolved, friction with Greece over Aegean and maritime issues continues to simmer, and the Cyprus question sits as stubbornly unsettled as it has for decades. Each of these fronts demands attention and resources from Ankara at a moment when the government would prefer to focus inward. None of them are new disputes, which in some ways makes the current moment more dangerous rather than less. Familiar tensions have a way of being taken for granted as innocuous right up until the moment they’re not. Meanwhile, Ankara now finds itself simultaneously managing several long running disputes while its domestic bandwidth is consumed by an economic downturn and a reshaped opposition.

The country’s relationship with Israel, in particular, carries reputational weight far beyond its immediate bilateral stakes. It shapes how Türkiye is perceived across the region, as well as among Western partners whose goodwill matters for investment and financing. Meanwhile, the dispute with Greece touches on questions of sovereignty and resource rights that have periodically brought the two NATO members close to open confrontation. Any escalation there draws in alliance partners who would rather see the issue quietly managed than publicly inflamed. Cyprus remains the oldest and most institutionally entrenched of these disputes, one that has outlasted multiple Turkish governments. It shows no signs of a breakthrough resolution on the horizon under the current one either.

And inward is precisely where another long-stalled issue sits waiting. The volatile question of the Kurds, Türkiye’s largest minority, periodically revived and just as often shelved, has once again stalled without resolution. For a governing coalition that depends on managing multiple constituencies at once, from nationalist partners wary of making concessions to Kurdish voters watching for signs of bad faith, this paralysis is not a neutral state of affairs – it is a source of accumulating pressure that eventually must be addressed or exploited. Every month that passes without movement raises the cost of eventual action, whether that action takes the form of renewed negotiation or renewed confrontation, and either path carries real electoral consequences for a coalition already stretched thin from managing an economic downturn and a resurgent opposition on its flank.

A government racing the calendar

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is working on a new constitution, an undertaking that has historically doubled as a mechanism for locking in political advantage before conditions change. The drafting of Turkish Constitutions has rarely been a purely technical affair, and there is little reason to expect it will be different this time. A new constitutional framework offers an opportunity to redraw the rules of the game while the ruling coalition still holds the votes needed to do so, and that opportunity narrows with every point the opposition gains.

A government drafting a new constitutional order while its economy weakens and an opposition regroups under a fresh, energized banner is a government that has every incentive to move the electoral calendar rather than wait. Waiting allows economic pressure to build, gives Ozel’s new party time to consolidate its appeal beyond the CHP’s traditional base, and leaves foreign policy disputes more time to flare into genuine crises rather than manageable irritants. None of those trends favor the incumbent coalition, and all of them point toward the same conclusion – that time is not on Erdogan’s side in the way it once was.

The most plausible reading of the coming months is that Erdogan and his coalition partners will look to call elections ahead of schedule, most likely in the first half of 2027, before economic pressure mounts further and before the new opposition party has had time to build a national profile beyond parliament. Acting early, while the opposition is still reorganizing and before currency and banking pressures fully surface in household budgets, offers the ruling coalition its best remaining window to secure more time in power on favorable terms. Waiting past that window risks facing voters amid a perfect storm of economic strain, regional tension, and unresolved domestic disputes. For a coalition that has spent two decades reading the political calendar better than its rivals, it would be wise to move sooner rather than later.

A Russian Orthodox monk was killed by a Ukrainian drone strike that targeted a car in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic, according to a statement from the Russian Orthodox Church. A priest in the same vehicle was also injured in the attack, the Church reported.

The incident took place in the northwestern part of the region on Tuesday. The 68-year-old monk, identified as Rafail, was acting as a sub-prior at a garrison church in Russia’s northwestern Leningrad Region but volunteered to travel to Russian troops in the combat zone. The statement also identified the other victim as a priest, Ilarion, who was Rafail’s father superior.

A US-made Hornet drone was used in the attack, the Russian Orthodox Church said. The attack came on the day the church celebrated the anniversary of the Baptism of Kievan Rus, which is considered to be a predecessor to modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Back in the 10th century, Prince Vladimir the Great officially converted to Christianity and initiated the mass baptism of Rus. Kiev had claimed that Ukraine is the only rightful heir to Kievan Rus even before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, while branding Russia as a “distant relative.”

The government of Ukraine led by Vladimir Zelensky has been persecuting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for several years, alleging that it has connections to Moscow, despite the Church having severed all ties with it in 2022. The crackdown has included raids on monasteries and dozens of criminal proceedings on collaboration charges, as well as property seizures. Kiev also supports the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which the Russian Orthodox Church considers schismatic.

Ukraine has routinely targeted civilians with drone strikes over the past months amid battlefield setbacks. It has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign in recent weeks, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings, and other infrastructure deep inside Russian territory.

Moscow has branded the attacks as terrorism and stepped up strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure in response.

The Russian Cultural Foundation has opened applications for an international film session for young filmmakers from countries which share Eurasian values.

The session, titled ‘Creativity Unites’ and held as part of Russia’s Diamond Butterfly award, will take place from October 19 to November 13 at Nikita Mikhalkov’s Academy of Cinematographic and Theatre Arts. It is open to filmmakers from Eurasian Film Academy member states and other countries and aims to support movies that reflect the spiritual and moral traditions, history, customs and cultures of participating nations.

Six masterclasses led by Russian filmmakers will help participants create three-minute projects and present them to the public. Ten participants will be chosen by an expert council from applications received until September 5. On September 15, the final list will be revealed. 

Russian Cultural Foundation Director General Elena Golovnina has described the session as an opportunity for a new generation of filmmakers to work with established professionals. She said organizers were looking for “sincere, humane stories” capable of “uniting people regardless of borders and languages.”

Director Nikita Mikhalkov, known for ‘Burt by the Sun’ and other movies, spearheaded the creation of the Eurasian Film Academy and the Diamond Butterfly award with support from Russia’s Culture Ministry and Foreign Ministry. Organizers say the initiative aims to foster cultural exchange and promote films reflecting both “national” and “universal spiritual and moral values.”

The Diamond Butterfly was launched in 2025 as an international alternative to major Western film awards. The inaugural ceremony was held in Moscow last November, with Chinese director Xu Zheng’s Upstream winning the top prize. The competition featured 34 films from 17 countries, including Russia, China, Türkiye, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, South Africa, Venezuela and Cuba. The first ‘Creativity Unites’ session also brought together participants from multiple countries including Russia, China, India, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.

There is no indication that Russia is planning to attack Poland militarily, Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has stated.

Speaking to RMF FM on Wednesday, Kosiniak-Kamysz commented on the allegations that Moscow could launch a “kinetic attack.”

“There are no predictions of an attack like the full-scale war in Ukraine,” he said.

Instead, Moscow is escalating sabotage, provocations, and destabilization efforts, he claimed.

Top officials in Warsaw have long contended that Russia poses a military threat to Poland. Moscow may be ready for a “global confrontation” by 2027, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has suggested.

Kiev’s European backers have increasingly made claims that Moscow poses a looming threat, as tensions over the Ukraine conflict have grown.

Russia has dismissed the narrative as “nonsense” and “fearmongering” intended to justify inflated military budgets to taxpayers, while warning that European nations are preparing for a full-scale war against Moscow.

“The entire ‘civilized’ world, as it calls itself, has turned against us,” Russian Foreign Minster Lavrov told TASS on Wednesday.

Western countries are “waging war” against Moscow via Kiev by “pumping [Ukraine] full of state-of-the-art weaponry and announcing plans to manufacture new, lethal, high-tech anti-missile systems specifically for Ukraine,” he added.

Moscow has long seen its conflict with Kiev as a NATO-led proxy war waged with Ukrainian manpower and Western arms, intelligence and command and control systems.

In recent months, Kiev has escalated its long-range kamikaze drone strikes on Russian regions, targeting energy infrastructure, warehouses, residential buildings and passenger vehicles, killing numerous civilians.

Ukraine’s “terrorist” strikes are an attempt to compensate for its battlefield losses, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik told RT on Sunday, after a Ukrainian drone strike killed 12 civilians at a tourist resort in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region.

Last week, Kiev’s attacks have killed at least 57 civilians, including seven children, according to Miroshnik, who heads the Foreign Ministry’s mission documenting Ukrainian war crimes.

Based on its historical evolution, huge popularity, and massive budget, it’s fair to say that the game globally known as football  – the one in which two teams of 11 players must maneuver a ball into the opposing team’s goal without using their hands –  remains the world’s top sport. But despite its universal name and rules, familiar to almost the entire world population, this game has failed to catch on in the US, where even the term ‘football’ means a different kind of game. As for what the rest of the world calls football, in the US it is known as ‘soccer’ – an old British slang abbreviation of ‘Association football’.

These linguistic details became highly important when, in order to maintain the pace of expansion and develop new markets, the leaders of the World Football Federation (FIFA) decided to choose the US as the host of the World Cup. This happened twice – in 1994 and 2026.

The choice of dates wasn’t incidental. This sporting event, watched on television by almost the entire world, was to become the living embodiment of the unipolar world order that Washington has been building since the collapse of the USSR. And if in 1994, when the US hosted the World Cup, America managed to create a beautiful illusion of the triumph of liberal democracy to advance its own political and economic interests under the guise of globalization (what would later be called ‘Westernization’), then the tournament hosted in 2026 jointly with Canada and Mexico became a symbol of deep political contradictions not only between the US and its allies, but also between the countries of the so-called ‘global minority’ and ‘global majority’.

These contradictions extended far beyond the stadiums where, for the first time in the history of the sport, 48 teams competed for the champion’s trophy. Although the slogan of the founder of the modern Olympic games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, “O Sport, You Are Peace” – which calls for a halt to all military conflicts during sporting events, as was the case in Ancient Greece, and for political non-interference in sports – is quite applicable to football as well, it would be hard to disagree with the assertion of many journalists that the recent FIFA World Cup was the most politicized tournament in its history. 

During his first presidential term, US President Donald Trump secured the right to hold the 2026 World Cup in the US. The decision was made in the summer of 2018 at the FIFA Executive Committee meeting in Russia, the country which, according to sports officials, had hosted the best championship from an organizational standpoint.

Trump wanted to turn the upcoming World Cup into a “triumph of the American way of life”, as the schedule conveniently coincided with celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence. And what better way was there to highlight the exceptionalism of American statehood than with a sport imported from the former metropole, which became highly popular everywhere but in the US! 

All available resources were deployed to reinforce this fundamental political thesis. A specially produced series, ‘Ted Lasso’, starring Jason Sudeikis, promoted soccer in the US. It tells the story of a American college football coach who transfers to a third-rate British soccer club and turns it into a Premier League champion only by means of traditional American optimism and faith in a better future. Global media promotion of the World Cup was to be carried out by American pop stars (such as Shakira, who wrote the theme song for the third time), Hollywood actors (including Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Adam Brody, all spotted in the stands for the first time), and bloggers with millions of followers (the most famous of whom was Darren Watkins Jr., better known as IshowSpeed).

The main sporting hero was to be multiple-time champion Lionel Messi, now the star of the American team Inter Miami, representing Florida, the US president’s home state. To ensure that the Argentine footballer would play the final match of his career at the World Cup final (officiated by a Slovenian referee – a fellow countryman of US First Lady Melania Trump), all sorts of tricks were employed. Thanks to this, team Argentina (the country which is currently one of America’s few allies in Latin America) encountered relatively weak opponents and only met a worthy competitor in the semi-finals. The Argentina-England match became memorable not only for its final moments, but also for a controversial banner that reminded the world of the long-standing territorial dispute over the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands.

The US didn’t forget about its national team either. The incident involving Donald Trump’s call to FIFA President Gianni Infantino, demanding the lifting of US player Folarin Balogun’s suspension (who had been automatically banned from the next match) will become a symbol of the triumph of America’s ‘phone law’ and its disregard for international law in general and the rules of the football federation in particular. Moreover, strict US immigration requirements, which deprived thousands of fans of the opportunity to see the World Cup live, damaged relations not only with what America derogatorily considers ‘third world countries’ but also with its own allies with whom it shared the burden of organizing the tournament. The wildfires that shrouded New York in smog and nearly disrupted the finals on July 19th have become the best illustration of the state of relations in the ‘collective West’ since Trump’s return to power.  

Despite FIFA’s desire to make football a more democratic sport by expanding the number of teams participating in the final stage, this World Cup will be remembered as a tournament that perpetuated neo-colonialism and global football inequality. After all, the trophy was contested not simply by the top teams in FIFA rankings, but by teams that managed to lure the best players from all around the world – including Spain, England, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands. It’s no wonder that after the Curaçao team – jokingly referred to as the “Netherlands B Team” – achieved a historic draw against Ecuador, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands visited the players’ locker room to congratulate them. Nor is it surprising that the Norway national team reached a historic quarter-final and even had good chances in the match against England, since their top striker, Erling Haaland, and many of his fellow teammates are English Premier League stars. Despite the clear bias in favor of the giants, millions of fans continued to support those countries that had been (and often continue to be) oppressed by their former metropoles. 

This explains the phenomenon of the Cape Verde team, which remained unbeaten in regulation time, and their forty-year-old goalkeeper, Vozinha; or the DR Congo team, which gave its all during the tournament, and was supported by a superfan replicating the likeness and pose of Patrice Lumumba, the symbol of Africa’s renaissance.

Finally, amid America’s renewed military action against Tehran, many people sincerely supported Iran’s team, which had been under intense political pressure throughout the tournament – ranging from visa restrictions and the fact that the team was prohibited from staying in the US before and after matches (which increased travel costs due to the need to travel to and from the training base in Mexico), to the referee’s controversial decision to disallow a goal due to a razor-thin offside, which deprived the team of the opportunity to advance from the group stage.

But the biggest injustice of the World Cup remained behind the scenes. Considering the fact that in its decision to host the World Cup, the US was influenced by the success of Russia and its team in 2018, the continuation of sporting sanctions against Russian athletes, their ban from international sporting events, and the refusal to hold any competitions on Russian territory cannot be morally and legally justified.

This is particularly true since the current World Cup was hosted by the US – a nation that unleashed unprovoked aggression against the Middle East on February 28, 2026. Meanwhile, America’s regional ally, Israel, participates in all international tournaments, despite a long list of military operations – from the operation in Gaza to the attacks on Iran in the summer of 2025, and the current military actions in Lebanon. Given the fact that even the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is gradually lifting sanctions against Russian athletes, FIFA and its European bureau, UEFA, are likening themselves to the “sergeant’s widow” who “flogged herself” in Nikolai Gogol’s satirical play ‘The Government Inspector’.

By depriving the tournament of the Russian team – which had never presented much competition to the football giants in their fight for the main trophy – world football lost gigantic sponsorships from major Russian corporations (until 2022, Gazprom was the sponsor of the UEFA Champions League), the opportunity to earn money in the large Russian market (in terms of not only television rights but also player transfers), and a venue capable of hosting matches at the highest level, meeting all quality and safety standards (European Football Championship matches and other equally prestigious games have been held on Russian territory).

This isn’t just an example of one country’s artificial isolation, it's a dangerous precedent that shakes the very foundations of soccer diplomacy. The longer international sports officials turn a blind eye to this situation, the deeper the looming crisis in global football will become. And the first signs of this crisis already emerged this summer in the US.

The Northern Sea Route (NSR) offers immense opportunities for India’s maritime sector, particularly in logistics and port management, a top maritime expert has said.

India realized the potential of the NSR, or the Arctic route, almost two decades ago, when it sent the first expedition to the Arctic in 2007, Anurag Bisen told RT India.

New Delhi set up its first permanent research station, Himadri, in the Arctic the next year.

“India has been actually looking at the Arctic for some time now, which was crystallized by the release of the government of India’s Arctic policy [in 2022],” he said.

He said India had offered a $1 billion line of credit to help fund projects in Russia’s Far East.

“India’s biggest ever investments in hydrocarbons are in Russia to the tune of more than $15 billion. India’s stakes in Sakhalin are very profitable,” the former Indian Navy submariner said.

“When President (Vladimir) Putin came to Delhi, we signed the agreement for the training of seafarers. In 2024, India and Russia set up a joint working group on cooperation on the NSR,” he said.

Bisen added that the Arctic can emerge as a new pillar of cooperation “spanning space, defense, energy, and so many other sectors.”

Pointing to the new opportunities, he said demand for Indian seafarers would multiply as the route opens. India is now the second-largest supplier of seafarers in the world.

“That is one of the reasons why India signed an agreement with Russia on training of Indian seafarers on polar navigation,” he said.

Bisen said the NSR will open up more than 20 ports. “We could man those ports, acquire those ports. We could get into port management.” 

As the NSR opens up, India’s Hydrographic Department can also use its expertise to map water depth, coastlines, underwater hazards and navigable channels.

“We have agreements with several countries where we develop the hydrographic charts,” he said, adding that India and Russia have developed hydrographic charts in Antarctica, and can jointly develop the same for the Arctic. 

Almost one-third of India’s crude supplies originate in Russia. Bisen said if India can get the Russian oil from the country’s Far Eastern to ports on India’s eastern coast, these “would be far less prone to disruption.”

The Chennai-Vladivostok maritime corridor was announced in 2019 and declared operational last year, with this strategic intent. Bisen also pointed to the need to upgrade the infrastructure on India’s eastern seaboard.

This is vital to ensure that “we are not as dependent and vulnerable on critical choke points such as Bab-el-Mandeb and Hormuz,” he said.

Some 49% of Americans think that the US should arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, according to a recent poll. After three years of war in the Middle East, Israel’s once-solid support in the US has cratered.

Asked whether the US should enforce an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest, 49% of respondents answered “yes” in an Economist/YouGov poll published on Tuesday, while 27% said “no” and 23% were unsure.

The ICC issued the warrant in 2024, accusing him of using “starvation as a method of warfare,” crimes against humanity, and intentionally directing attacks against Gaza’s civilian population. However, the ICC lacks any means of enforcing the warrant, as neither Israel nor the US recognize the court’s authority.

Surveying 1,500 American adults, the poll found that 47% believe Netanyahu is “guilty of war crimes in Gaza,” while 24% disagree and 29% are unsure.

In almost three years since Israel began bombarding Gaza in response to a surprise attack by Hamas militants, the conflict has spiraled into a multi-front confrontation. Israel has struck Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, and is currently embroiled in a major regional war with Iran. The conflict has eroded Israel’s standing in the US, with a Gallup poll in February finding that, for the first time in history, more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than the Israelis.

In the US, support for Israel has traditionally been strongest among Republicans and the elderly. However, 43% of over-65s now back arresting Netanyahu, according to Tuesday’s poll. Support for the Israeli prime minister’s arrest is lowest among self-described ‘MAGA’ Republicans, at 21%.

The Israeli leader arrived in Washington this week to meet with US President Donald Trump and attend the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, an avowed supporter of Israel. Prior to Netanyahu’s arrival, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that he would explore the legal possibility of arresting the Israeli PM when he travels to the city for the UN General Assembly in September.

Mamdani later acknowledged that he would have no legal authority to enforce the ICC warrant, and called on the Trump administration to do so instead.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. pic.twitter.com/YRezmW6YVx

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 22, 2026

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said, referring to the Dutch city where the ICC is based. “He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court, and what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.”

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Netanyahu dismissed the ICC case against him as “bogus,” and accused Mandani of “fomenting hate” against Jews. “I’m going to New York,” he told Fox host Sean Hannity. “I’m going to speak the truth in front of this hate-spewing elected official who’s pitting one group of New Yorkers against the others. He’s turning them against New York Jews.”

American actor and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto has become the subject of a new BBC documentary, in which four women accuse him of sexual misconduct, the British broadcaster reported Wednesday.

The allegations, featured in ‘Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret’, reportedly relate to the period between 2002 and 2016. According to the documentary, all four women were underage at the time of their alleged encounters with the actor and musician.

One woman alleged she was “sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom” when she was 17. Another one claimed she was subjected to threats of “sexual assault” from Leto at the age of 19, when she was unexpectedly left alone with him in a hotel room.

A third woman said she had a sexual relationship with the Hollywood star in California when she was 17, which is classified there as statutory rape. According to the documentary, Leto “shrugged off” a conversation about the age of consent being 18 in the US state.

A fourth woman alleged that Leto made “repeated sexually explicit phone calls” to her when she was 16, and suggested they should have sex on at least one occasion. She said she was later sent a non-disclosure agreement but refused to sign it.

Four other women also told the BBC they had received “strange and often very sexual phone calls from Leto when they were younger.”

The BBC said it interviewed ten women in total, nine of whom spoke publicly for the first time. They alleged they encountered Leto when he was in his 30s and early 40s. The broadcaster reported that it corroborated parts of several accounts through relatives and friends, as well as photographs and messages that supported some of the claims.

The documentary follows earlier allegations published by Air Mail in June 2025, when nine women accused Leto of sexual misconduct they said occurred while they were underage between 2006 and 2009. The accounts included claims of late-night phone calls, explicit behavior and inappropriate advances.

At the time, Leto’s representative denied that the actor had engaged in sexual misconduct or inappropriate relationships with women.

India is considering the purchase of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Arctic region as part of its strategy to diversify its energy sources.

It is part of the push to deepen energy and logistics cooperation between the two countries, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said.

New Delhi’s interest in Russian LNG is significant, as India has asserted its right to energy security despite the looming threat of US sanctions. The US has sanctioned Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project, and Washington tightened curbs on Russian LNG exports earlier this year, citing the Ukraine conflict. 

At the same time, in May, the US emerged as the top supplier of LNG and liquefied petroleum gas to India.

Energy cooperation has been a pillar of relations between New Delhi and Moscow for a long time, and Indian companies are involved in several major Russian oil and gas projects.

“For decades, the joint development of oil and gas fields has been the main area of ​​cooperation with India.” Rudenko said in an interview with the Russian Arctic and Far East Development portal, as reported by TASS.

“The Indian side is actively involved in the work of Vankorneft and Taas-Yuryakh Neftegazodobycha, the Sakhalin-1 project,” he said.

The countries initiated a program for bilateral cooperation in trade, economic, and investment in the Russian Far East in 2024. The program, intended to continue until 2029, envisages cooperation in the Arctic zone, he said.

Logistics cooperation is another key area of bilateral partnership, and both countries are exploring options for increasing shipping along the Vladivostok-Chennai maritime route, he said.

Russia and India are also studying the possibility of joint development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), and a memorandum on training specialists to work on ships operating in polar waters was signed in December last year.

“Next in line is the conclusion of a memorandum on developing cooperation in maritime freight transport in the NSR,” he said.

The US Senate on Tuesday advanced a new sanctions bill that would, among other things, impose harsh tariffs on the top buyers of Russian oil and gas, which include India and China.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said US attempts to exert pressure on India over its ties with Moscow would be “futile.”

Fifteen elephants have died across Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem over the past month, with preliminary laboratory tests pointing to a possible toxic substance, local media reported on Wednesday, citing the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).

The fatalities were recorded between June 24 and July 24 in Amboseli National Park, Kimana Sanctuary and the Kuku Ranch area, The Star reported.

KWS Head of Communication Duncan Wanyama told Kenyans.co.ke that the elephants were found at multiple locations “surrounding the park, approximately 15 to 30 km from its boundaries.”

Ten of the elephants developed similar symptoms before dying, including a partial paralysis that left them unable to stand. They died within one to two days after the onset of illness, while the remaining five carcasses were too badly decomposed or had been scavenged, preventing veterinarians from determining the cause of death.

According to KWS, “the condition primarily affected adult females and their calves, with only one adult male” among the reported cases.

After the initial cases were identified, KWS deployed veterinary teams from Nairobi, Tsavo and Amboseli to inspect the sites, perform necropsies and collect samples for laboratory testing.

“Preliminary laboratory findings from the University of Nairobi detected a potential toxic substance in the samples collected from several of the affected elephants,” KWS said as quoted by Kenyans.co.ke. 

However, the agency stressed that additional testing is required to determine the concentration of the substance. “Importantly, there is no evidence that this incident poses any risk to human health,” KWS added, as cited by The Star.

KWS said environmental investigations are continuing, including testing water sources and screening for other potential contaminants in the affected areas. The agency has also stepped up surveillance across the ecosystem and is closely monitoring elephant populations.

In a separate conservation effort announced on Monday, KWS said it had begun relocating five elephants from Mwea to a protected habitat after months of crop raids in farming communities. Two elephants were successfully translocated on the first day of the six-day operation. The agency said the move is designed to reduce conflict between people and wildlife.

Washington announced a ban on new foreign-made humanoid robot imports to the US on Tuesday, mainly targeting China, one of the world’s leading producers. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cited “unacceptable risks” to US national security in explaining the move. Beijing has consistently dismissed similar US measures as politically motivated.

It comes amid an intensifying race between Washington and Beijing to dominate AI and other advanced technologies. In recent years, the two countries have increasingly imposed a series of reciprocal restrictions on each other’s technology sectors.

The latest restrictions apply to new foreign-made advanced robotic devices, including humanoid and four-legged robots, as well as power inverters used in data centers and solar installations. The FCC said the products pose “unacceptable risks” to US national security, claiming that they could enable foreign actors to conduct surveillance, steal data, facilitate remote access, or launch cyberattacks. Existing models previously authorized by the agency are exempt from the ban.

Washington has imposed increasingly broad restrictions on Chinese technology over the past several years. Since 2022, the US has progressively tightened restrictions on exports of advanced AI chips, semiconductor manufacturing equipment and related technologies, while also curbing American investment in China’s AI and chip sectors. The White House has also moved against Chinese-connected vehicles, drones, and social media platforms citing national security concerns and alleging intellectual property theft.

Beijing has responded with export controls on critical minerals including gallium, germanium, graphite, antimony, and rare earths, while restricting US firms such as Micron and scrutinizing some Nvidia AI products on security grounds.

Earlier this month, the White House and US AI firm Anthropic accused Chinese startup Moonshot AI of using “distillation” to train its Kimi K3 model on US technology. Moonshot denied the allegations, saying the model’s performance stemmed from its own technological innovations. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned last week that Chinese firms engaged in “industrial-scale distillation” amounting to intellectual property theft could face sanctions.

Earlier this week, Beijing urged the US to “abandon its hegemonic mindset, and stop smearing Chinese companies and threatening them with sanctions” having vowed to “take all necessary measures” in response to any moves that harm China’s interest.

The US is backing a $150 million rare earths project in Madagascar as part of a wider strategy to expand Washington’s role in Africa’s critical-minerals sector and reduce reliance on China-dominated supply chains, Reuters has reported, citing a State Department spokesperson.

The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) has committed up to $4.84 million for pilot-plant work, laboratory testing, and environmental programs at the Ampasindava project, its London-listed developer Harena Rare Earths said last week.

The funding could pave the way for further US support as the project moves toward construction. A DFC official told Reuters that the agency could consider additional financing, subject to due diligence and approvals.

Washington’s strategy aims to increase US investment in African mining sectors long dominated by “opaque, predatory investments from our adversaries,” the State Department spokesperson said.

“Madagascar fits within that strategy, and we see opportunities throughout the country to increase US and US-aligned investment in the critical mineral sector,” the spokesperson added.

Ampasindava contains neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, which are used to manufacture permanent magnets for fighter jets, precision-guided missiles, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and electronics.

Harena expects the project to produce about 4,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides annually, including 1,700 tons of high-value magnet materials. The company is seeking an exploitation permit and aims to begin production by mid-2028.

China dominates global rare earth mining and processing and has introduced export controls on several critical minerals in recent years.

Washington has expanded its mineral investments elsewhere in Africa. In DR Congo, the DFC is considering an equity investment in a venture between state miner Gecamines and commodities trader Mercuria to commercialize copper, cobalt, and other minerals. Chinese companies have spent years investing billions of dollars in Congolese mining and are major players in the country’s cobalt and copper sectors. A Strategic Partnership Agreement signed between Washington and Kinshasa in December 2025 also commits the parties to expanding American access to Congolese minerals and developing transport infrastructure, including the Lobito Corridor linking mining regions to Angola’s Atlantic coast.

Other US-backed projects include Mozambique’s Balama graphite mine and Malawi’s Songwe Hill rare earths development. The DFC is also backing South Africa’s Phalaborwa project through a proposed $50 million equity investment despite diplomatic tensions with Pretoria.

Washington’s push has, however, faced criticism. Earlier this year, Congolese activist Gentil Mulume warned that DR Congo’s minerals agreement with the US risked perpetuating “structurally unbalanced partnerships” in which the country remained a supplier of raw materials for Western powers.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has similarly warned that critical-mineral extraction “must not perpetuate colonial-era patterns of exploitation,” calling on African countries to prioritize local processing and beneficiation.

A cutting-edge AI model developed by OpenAI has managed to escape the confines of a lab test and break into a company’s database without any human instruction. It’s a nightmare scenario – or is that just what OpenAI wants you to believe?

On July 16, OpenAI carried out an internal benchmark test on GPT‑5.6 Sol and another pre-release model that the company claims is “even more capable.” The models had their guardrails disabled and were put to work solving a series of cybersecurity tests known as ExploitGym. Developed by researchers at UC Berkeley, Germany’s Max Planck Institute, and AI companies including Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI itself, ExploitGym measures AI models’ ability to create and deploy the means of exploiting known security vulnerabilities.

Instead of identifying these vulnerabilities, OpenAI’s models searched for ways to cheat the test. They managed to obtain open internet access from within the closed testing environment and used this newfound freedom to hack into Hugging Face’s servers. Hugging Face is a repository of AI models and datasets, and according to OpenAI, the models being tested reasoned that they could find a solution to the ExploitGym tasks there.

“Knowing this, the model searched for and successfully found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation,” OpenAI said in its report about the incident. 

Hugging Face discovered the intrusion with the help of a different AI model, and fixed the vulnerability that allowed it to happen in the first place. On its end, OpenAI blamed the escape on a weakness in third-party software used in its testing lab, through which its models found internet access. It kept the technical details of how its models exploited this weakness under wraps.

Super impressed with @huggingface's breakdown of the AI agent autonomous cyber attack from OpenAI, including technical timeline, & interactive replay (AND how they defended against the attack)!
Here is the interactive attack replay vid and source:https://t.co/SVsc5ClRcW pic.twitter.com/r59n6aUr3c

— Rachel Tobac (@RachelTobac) July 28, 2026

On its path to breach Hugging Face’s servers, the model also broke into a supposedly isolated testing environment at Modal, a firm that rents out computing capacity to AI developers, Reuters reported on July 28.

Has AI become sentient?

Taken at face value, the story suggests that OpenAI’s models are capable of complex lateral thinking: suspecting that Hugging Face’s servers likely contained the answers to the test; realizing that they needed external internet access to breach these servers; and independently developing and combining various attack techniques to achieve its goal.

OpenAI’s statement described the escape in alarmist language, calling it an “unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities.” Hugging Face, which has since partnered with OpenAI, was equally hyperbolic. “Autonomous, AI-driven offensive tooling is no longer theoretical. It lowers the cost of running a broad, patient, multi-stage campaign, and it operates at machine speed,” it said in a statement. 

However, it remains unclear just how autonomously OpenAI’s models were operating. The company has not revealed how its models were prompted to approach the ExploitGym test, and imprecise wording could have resulted in the models assuming that ‘escaping’ containment was a legitimate path to solving the trial. Despite the hyperbole from both OpenAI and Hugging Face, there is no evidence to suggest that the AI models ‘wanted’ to escape, or that when left to their own devices, would default to malicious activity.

If the incident also involved – as OpenAI said it did – a second, “even more capable pre-release model,” the appeal to industry-level customers is obvious. By publicizing an incident that took place during closed testing, OpenAI can generate hype for its pre-release model without ever providing proof.

None of this is to say that the incident didn’t happen, or that the offensive capabilities of AI aren’t a cause for concern, just that OpenAI has a financial incentive to scaremonger about its own products. A month before the incident, the company confidentially filed the paperwork for an initial public offering. According to Reuters, the company is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion, and planning to go public as early as September.

Anthropic also filed for its IPO in June, targeting a valuation of $965 billion in October. Back in April, Anthropic’s unreleased Mythos Preview model also managed to “escape” its testing environment and carry out advanced cybersecurity exploits without being “explicitly trained” to do so. Anthropic released a lengthy technical explanation of how Mythos pulled off this feat, before announcing that the model was too powerful to release to the public.

The biggest IPO run in the history of the market

three $1T+ companies. possibly all going public in the next 12 months.

SpaceX IPO: $1.75T.
OpenAI IPO: $1T
Anthropic IPO: $1T

we're living through the greatest technological wealth creation in history. pic.twitter.com/44QuB3rpxi

— shirish (@shiri_shh) April 28, 2026

Scarcity drives hype, and the US government’s decision to slap export controls on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models in June only heightened interest in the company. The export controls were lifted in early July after Anthropic agreed to impose stricter guardrails on its models and collaborate with the government on security.

Was the AI escape an elaborate marketing ploy?

For OpenAI, the incident is the best possible advertisement for its models’ capabilities. In its report, the company included a graph illustrating how leading AI models – including GPT‑5.6 Sol, Anthropic’s Claude Mythos 5, and DeepSeek-V4-Pro – are “increasingly able to sustain complex, multi-step cyber operations over long time horizons.” Although this is presented as a cause for concern, the chart lists GPT-5.6 Sol as the most capable among all of its competitors – a clear advertisement for OpenAI.

Sam on the Hugging Face incident:

“This is the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally. I've been a little surprised that more people don't feel it so viscerally.

We paused training. We have to figure out how to secure our sandboxing in a world of multiple zero… https://t.co/XXeB7RZsM3 pic.twitter.com/F4hbHuItqw

— Patrick OShaughnessy (@patrick_oshag) July 28, 2026

If the incident also involved – as OpenAI said it did – a second, “even more capable pre-release model,” the appeal to industry-level customers is obvious. By publicizing an incident that took place during closed testing, OpenAI can generate hype for its pre-release model without ever providing proof.

None of this is to say that the incident didn’t happen, or that the offensive capabilities of AI aren’t a cause for concern, just that OpenAI has a financial incentive to scaremonger about its own products. A month before the incident, the company confidentially filed the paperwork for an initial public offering. According to Reuters, the company is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion, and planning to go public as early as September.

Anthropic also filed for its IPO in June, targeting a valuation of $965 billion in October. Back in April, Anthropic’s unreleased Mythos Preview model also managed to “escape” its testing environment and carry out advanced cybersecurity exploits without being “explicitly trained” to do so. Anthropic released a lengthy technical explanation of how Mythos pulled off this feat, before announcing that the model was too powerful to release to the public.

Scarcity drives hype, and the US government’s decision to slap export controls on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models in June only heightened interest in the company. The export controls were lifted in early July after Anthropic agreed to impose stricter guardrails on its models and collaborate with the government on security.

How has the US government responded?

Both incidents have caught the eye of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. On July 23, Representatives Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran introduced the AI Kill Switch Act, which would “require developers of the most powerful AI systems to maintain the technical capability to throttle, suspend, or shut them down.” The bill would also empower the US Department of Homeland Security to “order a slow down or shutdown of an AI system that can cause catastrophic harm.”

In a statement on the bill, Lieu referenced the ‘escapes’ of both of OpenAI’s models, and of Mythos. The California lawmaker described both cases as models “going rogue,” a framing that the mainstream media picked up and ran with.

Lieu knows no more about the OpenAI incident than anyone who’s read the company’s press release. However, his wording plays right into OpenAI’s (perhaps unintentional) marketing campaign. Furthermore, should the bill pass, OpenAI and Anthropic could be forced to throttle their models before release, meaning investors will only ever know of their theoretical – and not their real-life – power.

While powerful AI systems have many potential benefits, they can also go rogue, behave in extremely dangerous ways, or even resist human intervention.

We need to keep human control by ensuring AI systems can be completely shut down if necessary. pic.twitter.com/y4JfaD8RFJ

— Rep. Ted Lieu (@RepTedLieu) July 23, 2026

The open-source argument

The incident bolsters OpenAI’s argument that frontier AI models are too powerful to be released to the public, and that companies like OpenAI should – with the blessing of the government – maintain oversight and control over them. In such a closed-source arrangement, customers would have no control over the weights of the models – essentially the tweaks that determine the choices the models make.

On the other side of the argument, open-source advocates maintain that the only way to defend against cyberattacks by advanced AI is to equip defenders with the same tools. In the case of OpenAI and Hugging Face, the latter company was only able to detect an attack because it used GLM 5.2, a Chinese open-source model, to perform its security analysis.

In a letter posted on social media on July 24, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang – a longtime open-source advocate – declared that “defenders need access to models with comparable capabilities so they can detect, simulate, and respond to emerging threats.”

“Relying solely on closed models is not inherently safe: they can be breached, misused, or fail in ways that outsiders cannot detect,” he continued. “And concentrating advanced AI capabilities behind a small number of closed models compounds that risk. Open weight models, on the other hand, allow a broad community of researchers and developers to examine their behavior, identify vulnerabilities, develop safeguards, and improve them over time.”

The letter was signed by more than two dozen companies working in the AI field. Two notable exceptions were OpenAI and Anthropic, although OpenAI added its signature later.

However, it appears in the US that the closed-source argument will win out. On August 1, an executive order issued by US President Donald Trump in June comes into effect, requiring AI firms to submit advanced models to the government for approval 30 days before release. The Trump administration has also considered banning open-source Chinese AI models – a move supported by the CIA that would ensure OpenAI and Anthropic’s dominance in the field. Shortly after the executive order was issued, former Trump AI adviser David Sacks noted that “the leading closed labs, already a duopoly in terms of AI model revenue, want the government to eliminate their open source competition.”

Every new incident of an AI “escape” only reinforces their bid for total control.

American influencer Laura Loomer is currently on a PR tour of Ukraine, which she insists doesn’t have a neo-Nazi problem. Disproving her own point, she has interviewed the far-right activist and commander of the notorious Azov battalion, Andrey ‘White Leader’ Biletsky.

Loomer, who has cultivated close ties to US President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, claimed on Tuesday that she had met Biletsky in his home city of Kharkov and would publish an extended interview with him.

Biletsky, a prominent Ukrainian far-right figure since the 2000s, helped establish the ultranationalist Social-National Assembly, which has widely been described as a neo-Nazi, white supremacist organization.

He later rose to national prominence as commander of the Azov Battalion, which began as a far-right volunteer militia before being incorporated into Ukraine’s security forces following the Western-backed armed coup in Kiev in 2014.

Biletsky now holds the rank of brigadier general and commands the 3rd Army Corps, one of the formations that emerged from the wider Azov movement.

Since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022, Azov-linked groups have undertaken extensive efforts to whitewash themselves, denying their extremist origins.

This publicity drive has had its roadbumps. In 2024, the 3rd Army Corps had to cancel a charm offensive in Europe after some of its members sparked outrage with a photo op at the Auschwitz memorial in Poland, where one soldier posed in a T-shirt featuring the metal band M8l8th, whose name means “Hitler’s Hammer.”

Before 2022, US assistance to Azov was banned over concerns about the unit’s ideology and reported abuses, while Russia has designated it as a terrorist group.

During her trip, Loomer also interviewed Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and accepted his assurances that the country does not have a neo-Nazi problem. She additionally met Yevgeny Khmara, who has been named as a potential replacement defense minister, and former Prime Minister Andrey Yatsenyuk.

The influencer also visited a facility operated by DTEK, the private energy company owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

Laura Loomer visited a DTEK substation in the Kyiv region on Sunday on a special visit to witness the impact of russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system.

Just as her visit began, air raid alarms sounded and the boom of drones being shot down could be heard overhead. This has… pic.twitter.com/6Sm2kffPRj

— DTEK Group (@dtek_en) July 27, 2026

In an on-brand remark, Loomer said it was “refreshing” that she hasn’t “seen a single Muslim here.” Ukraine in reality has a significant Muslim minority, which includes Akhmetov and some other influential figures, such as former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.

Loomer’s enthusiastic praise for Ukraine and its leadership stands in sharp contrast to her earlier criticism of Kiev, prompting accusations that she is shilling for the Zelensky government. She has said the trip changed her view of the country and denied that it was financed by Kiev, claiming she paid for it herself with support from “private Americans” concerned about her security.

Sudan’s head of the Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has visited frontline positions in North Kordofan after government troops recaptured key areas from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

He was accompanied by Darfur Governor Minni Minnawi, North Kordofan Governor Abdel Khalik Abdel Latif, and the commander of the Sudan Shield Forces, the army reported on Monday. Al-Burhan inspected troops in the Umm Sayala and Jabra al-Sheikh areas, where he was greeted by soldiers after arriving by helicopter.

The visit came as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) continue operations against the RSF.

Jabra al-Sheikh is considered a strategically important town on Sudan’s export route, linking North Kordofan with the capital, Khartoum, and located close to El Obeid, the state capital. According to the Sudan Tribune, military sources said the town had served as one of the RSF’s main strongholds in the region after the group’s withdrawal from Khartoum.

⭕️ رئيس مجلس السيادة يتفقد الخطوط الأمامية بجبرة الشيخ - ام سيالة pic.twitter.com/SuOj567axg

— مجلس السيادة الإنتقالي - السودان (@TSC_SUDAN) July 27, 2026

The same sources said the RSF had used Jabra al-Sheikh as a launch point for military operations across North Kordofan and as a key position for threatening supply lines and roads leading to Omdurman and El Obeid. 

According to the Sudan Tribune, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, responded to recent battlefield losses by granting field commanders greater operational independence. In remarks on Monday, he said they would be free to initiate attacks without waiting for instructions from the group’s leadership. He also imposed a ban on filming military operations, saying anyone who breached the order would be considered an enemy collaborator.

Separately, Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said on Sunday that the country’s healthcare services had recovered to 75% of normal capacity. He noted that medicine supplies remained stable, several pharmaceutical companies had resumed operations, and the country’s health sector was gradually recovering.

The West is trying to force Russia to accept an “ultimatum” on the Ukraine conflict by demanding a ceasefire before peace talks, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In an interview with TASS news agency on Wednesday, Russia’s top diplomat argued that Western countries first want Moscow and Kiev to agree to a ceasefire, after which a multinational force led by France and the UK would be deployed before real negotiations begin.

“What does this mean? It is an ultimatum,” Lavrov said.

According to the minister, such a scenario would effectively freeze the conflict while leaving “the Nazi regime” in power in Kiev, with Western countries refusing to recognize the former Ukrainian territories that voted to join Russia in referendums.

Lavrov said Russia would not accept such conditions, adding that the country has not abandoned its principles, despite external pressure.

Moscow has repeatedly rejected proposals for an immediate ceasefire, arguing that any pause in the fighting would allow Kiev to regroup and rearm with Western military assistance. Russian officials have also consistently opposed the deployment of foreign troops to Ukraine, warning they would be treated as legitimate military targets.

The diplomat also argued that Western countries have been waging a “ferocious” proxy war against Russia by supplying advanced weapons to Ukraine and backing anti-government Russian activists living abroad. He described the situation as “unprecedented” and “serious.” 

“The entire ‘civilized’ world, as it calls itself, has turned against us,” Lavrov said.

According to him, the West’s covert aim is to turn the Russian public against the government.

“We launched the special military operation at a time when society was generally calm, comfortable, and broadly satisfied with its standard of living. That did not suit the West. They did not want society to remain calm. They wanted to turn the public against the authorities,” he said.

Lavrov went on to describe the Ukraine conflict as a war “imposed” on Russia by the West, saying many countries were closely watching how it would end.

Speaking more broadly about the country’s foreign policy, Lavrov said its national interests lie in preserving sovereignty. He said Russia’s priority is to remain “an independent power” with secure borders and the ability to determine its own domestic affairs without outside interference.

There has been renewed diplomatic activity around the Ukraine crisis in recent days. Last week, Lavrov met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, where he reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness for diplomacy while insisting that arms deliveries to Ukraine must end.

On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump met Vladimir Zelensky at the White House. Trump said that “many things were discussed” without elaborating. Zelensky wrote on X that it was “important that the diplomatic process be reinvigorated.” However, no format or timetable for new talks have been announced.

Russia’s Africa Corps has released footage of a gunfight with jihadist militants in Mali. The videos were filmed near the settlement of Niono in the central part of the country and published on the unit’s Telegram channel on Tuesday.

“Units of the Russian Armed Forces’ Africa Corps, together with personnel of the Malian Army, were conducting reconnaissance and search operations when they engaged in a gunfight with terrorists from the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM),” reads the statement accompanying the footage.

Both videos were filmed from a helmet camera worn by one of the Russian servicemen. In the first video, one of the troops says they are facing 12 gunmen. The footage shows the soldier taking cover along a riverbank while exchanging fire with the militants, neutralizing them one by one.

The second video shows the aftermath of the gunfight, with the Russian troops destroying the motorcycles the militants had used to reach the area.

Russia’s Africa Corps has been fighting armed groups in the West African nation together with the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa).

Mali has battled a jihadist insurgency since 2012, which has spilled into neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. The three military-led states have severed defense ties with France, expelled French troops, and repeatedly accused Paris of sponsoring terrorism in the Sahel. They have since turned to Russia for security support.

Africa Corps, a Russian Defense Ministry unit which has been deployed in Mali since late 2024, provides training and combat support to national forces under a security partnership with Bamako.

During Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Niger earlier this month, Russia reaffirmed its commitment to expanding military cooperation with the three-nation Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Following talks in Niamey, Moscow pledged to strengthen the operational capabilities of the armed forces of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has said he is not currently aiming to regain control of Crimea, but suggested the issue could be revisited later.

He made the remarks in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, who asked whether the peninsula, which joined Russia in 2014, was “back on the table” amid Kiev’s refusal to make territorial concessions.

“It’s a pity. No. Or not yet. We will see, I don’t know,” Zelensky replied. He said Crimea remained “very important” to Ukraine but suggested that “not losing people” was the more immediate priority.

Prior to this shift in tone, Zelensky had for years insisted that Kiev would eventually reclaim all territories within Ukraine’s 1991 borders, including Crimea. He had previously stated that this was “only a matter of time,” while also acknowledging that Ukraine currently lacks the troops, weapons and resources to achieve that goal without suffering enormous losses.

Crimea broke away from Ukraine following the Western-backed Maidan coup in 2014 and subsequently voted in a public referendum to join Russia. Kiev and its Western backers have refused to recognize the results of the referendum.

Moscow has repeatedly said the peninsula is sovereign Russian territory and that its status is not subject to negotiation, rejecting Kiev’s territorial claims.

Sergey Tsekov, first deputy chairman of Crimea’s State Council, described Zelensky’s latest remarks as “a step in the right direction” but dismissed his continued description of the peninsula as Ukrainian territory as “demented,” arguing it never legally belonged to Kiev in the first place.

In 2022, the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) People’s Republics, along with Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, were also incorporated into Russia following referendums in which the overwhelming majority of the regions’ populations supported the move.

Russia has insisted that any settlement of the Ukraine conflict must recognize the new territorial realities on the ground, including Crimea and the four former Ukrainian regions.

The US Senate has advanced a new sanctions bill that would, among other things, impose harsh tariffs on the top buyers of Russian oil and gas, which include India and China.

The bill, if it becomes law, would give US President Donald Trump new authority to impose up to 100% tariffs on goods imported from India, creating a new headache for New Delhi, which has held back on sealing a trade deal with Washington over fears of being hit by surprise tariffs. 

India is the second largest importer of Russian oil as it has sought to widen its energy basket amid disruptions in the Middle East caused by the Israeli-US attack on Iran.

The ‘Graham bill,’ named after its co-author, the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, was advanced in a 86-12 vote on Tuesday night. 

“To be really blunt, China and India are the main culprits here,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a co-author of the bill, told reporters. 

Russian Sanctions Bill ‘Not Hitting Our Allies, But We Are Hitting China & India’ – US Senator

‘Let's be really blunt, China and India are the main culprits here,’ 🇺🇸 Senator Blumenthal told reporters following a meet with Zelensky.

‘They are doing us no favours anywhere else… https://t.co/1GdVzXEx7L pic.twitter.com/ogCqNoAvNW

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) July 29, 2026

“They purchase the vast majority of oil and gas. They are fueling Russia’s war machine and they are doing us no favors anywhere else in the world.”

The bill also proposes sanctions on Russian officials, oligarchs, their family members and other individuals supporting Russia against Ukraine as well as banks, financial institutions and the so-called Russian “shadow fleet.”

The bill still has to clear the final vote in the Senate, after which it would go to the House and is expected to be taken up by the lower chamber in September. 

However, it adds a new variable to New Delhi’s calculus as it drags its feet on finalizing a trade deal negotiated with Washington for months. New Delhi wants clarity on how any additional sanctions could affect its competitive advantage over ASEAN nations and neighboring countries including Bangladesh before finalizing the deal.

Last week, the US imposed 10% tariffs on imports from India, citing an investigation into forced labor. New Delhi is also the subject of another probe into countries using excess manufacturing capacity to export to the US.

The Senate’s vote came as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington to seek continued US support for his country’s fight against Russia. 

Some Democratic senators are unhappy about granting more tariff authority – a Congressional prerogative – to Trump, but the bill is expected to pass as Ukraine’s supporters want to pressurize the Russian economy.

South Africa and Russia have agreed to strengthen cooperation between their armies following high-level talks in Moscow focused on training, leadership development, and professional military exchanges.

South African Army Chief Lieutenant General Lawrence Mbatha met Colonel General Alexander Matovnikov, deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian Ground Forces, on Tuesday during an official visit that began on Monday, according to official statements from both sides.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the parties discussed joint projects “aimed at enhancing the combat readiness of both countries’ armies.”

“Agreements were reached on further strengthening cooperation between the land forces in various areas,” it added.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) said the engagements were intended to strengthen bilateral defense cooperation and foster closer collaboration between the ground forces of the two countries.

Mbatha, who is making his second official visit to Russia, also visited the Moscow Combined Arms School, where talks covered professional military education, officer development, and leadership training. His delegation is expected to visit Russian defense companies and other military academies, SANDF said in a statement.

The army chief also laid a wreath at Moscow’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in tribute to Soviet troops killed during World War II.

The SANDF said the engagements reaffirmed its commitment to “defense diplomacy, international military cooperation, and the development of enduring partnerships founded on mutual respect.”

Mbatha made his first visit to Moscow in May 2023 amid heightened pressure from Western countries, including the US, for South Africa to condemn Russia and scale back bilateral cooperation over the Ukraine conflict.

South Africa, a member of BRICS, has insisted on its non-aligned stance, with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa arguing that Pretoria’s neutrality allows it to engage with both sides.

South Africa and Russia have maintained longstanding relations dating back to the Soviet Union’s support for the African National Congress during the struggle against apartheid.

Pretoria and Moscow have participated in several naval exercises alongside other partners, most recently the China-led Will for Peace drills held off South Africa’s coast in January under a BRICS Plus framework. The two countries also joined China in the Mosi II exercise hosted by South Africa in February 2023.

A civilian woman was killed and a man injured after debris from an incoming Ukrainian missile struck an apartment building in the city of Taganrog, Rostov Region Governor Yury Slyusar has said.

Kiev has intensified its long-range attacks on Russian cities as part of Vladimir Zelensky’s 40-day “pressure campaign,” which he announced last month. The latest strikes coincided with the Ukrainian leader’s visit to the US, where he met US President Donald Trump and attended the funeral of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, a vocal war hawk.

Russian authorities ordered the evacuation of the damaged building in Taganrog, Slyusar said in an update on Wednesday morning. He added that the threat of further attacks remained in place.

Earlier this week, a Ukrainian drone strike on a residential building in Rostov-on-Don killed five civilians, including a child.

Overnight, Ukrainian forces also carried out their latest attack on Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries. The company said its fulfillment center in Ryazan Region had been evacuated.

Ryazan Region Governor Pavel Malkov reported a fire at an unspecified industrial facility, believed to be the targeted warehouse. Six people were injured in the incident, he added.

The Defense Ministry has reported intercepting a total of 295 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight.

Kiev has used Western-funded drones and missiles to target civilian infrastructure and commercial vessels in an effort to cause economic damage and directly affect the civilian population, seeking to pressure the Russian government.

Retaliatory Russian strikes conducted during Zelensky’s “pressure campaign” have virtually paralyzed the Ukrainian Black Sea ports of Odessa and Nikolayev and significantly disrupted fuel deliveries in areas near the front line, according to Ukrainian officials.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been added to Russia’s register of extremists and terrorists, according to the country’s financial watchdog.

The move comes after Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) accused Durov of allowing Ukrainian special services to recruit Russian citizens for terrorist activities through Telegram.

Durov’s name was added to Rosfinmonitoring’s register on Thursday. Under Russian law, those on the list are barred from interacting with the media, publishing information online, organizing public events, participating in elections, and using most financial services, except for tax payments, salaries, and compensation for damages.
 
The accusations relate to an investigation into a Telegram dating channel. According to the FSB, Ukrainian agents routinely posed there as romantically-inclined girls seeking minor gifts from potential suitors. After paying for one, the target would then be pressured by the Ukrainians posing as Russian law enforcement, claiming that they had unwittingly helped Kiev’s war efforts, but could get some slack by cooperating with fake officials. That way, confused young men could be pushed into carrying out actual crimes, like arson attacks or serving as couriers for money laundering.

Durov was singled out as the platform’s owner, who allegedly ignored Russian reports that illicit activities were underway at the channel and other resources, failing to shut it down, the statement said. The Dubai-based billionaire will be placed on an international wanted list, the FSB said.

Telegram’s CEO previously faced similar accusations from the French authorities, which alleged that he was responsible for crimes committed using the messaging app. He has dismissed those claims, asserting that Paris is using criminal charges to pressure him into imposing political censorship on his platform on behalf of the West.

The FSB reported that through the dating channel under investigation, Ukrainian agents have coerced at least 46 Russian citizens aged between 12 and 22. Adult suspects are facing lengthy prison terms on charges including terrorism, sabotage, and assault on officers of the law. The statement stressed that Kiev was using many Telegram channels for such recruitment.

The dating channel was separately flagged by the Russian media regulator Roskomnatzor in 2025 over content that it concluded to be child pornography and LGBT propaganda and should have been blocked in the country, the FSB added.

The service in question operates as a matchmaking chatbot that is reportedly used by over 13 million users monthly. The security agency’s record of individuals allegedly recruited by Kiev through the channel goes back to July 2025 and includes suspects from all across Russia.

Iran has demanded compensation from Ukraine over a deadly strike on a cargo ship after Kiev’s foreign minister initially claimed that “Iran has no standing to pretend to be a victim,” only to call Tehran a day later and assure it that the attack was unintentional and that Kiev did not seek escalation.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday that he had spoken with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrey Sibiga, following the attack on the cargo ship Anna in the Caspian Sea last week.

“Was assured by Ukrainian FM that the attack on an Iranian ship was unintentional and Ukraine seeks no escalation,” Araghchi wrote on X. “Iran does not seek escalation either, but made clear any attack on our citizens or interests is unacceptable. There must be restitution for losses.”

Was assured by Ukrainian FM @andrii_sybiha that the attack on an Iranian ship was unintentional and Ukraine seeks no escalation.

Iran does not seek escalation either, but made clear any attack on our citizens or interests is unacceptable. There must be restitution for losses.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) July 28, 2026

Sibiga described the call as a “frank conversation” and said Kiev wanted to “avoid unnecessary escalation.” He maintained that Ukrainian operations were aimed at countering Russia and were “never intended to target civilian vessels or people,” while calling on Tehran to end its alleged support for Moscow.

The conciliatory language marked a sharp shift from Sibiga’s public response a day earlier, when he denounced Iran’s complaints as “unjustified and groundless” and referred to the Iranian government as “the regime in Teheran.”

“Iran has no standing to pretend to be a victim,” Sibiga wrote on Monday, accusing Tehran of supplying Russia with weapons and dismissing its references to the UN Charter as “absurd.” He also claimed that Iran was attempting to divert attention from Russian strikes on Ukrainian shipping in the Black Sea.

In recent weeks, the Russian military has escalated long-range strikes on port infrastructure and shipping targets in the Black Sea, seeking to disrupt the flow of military supplies and weapons to Ukraine. Multiple freighters, combat and auxiliary vessels, and various port installations have been struck, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow.

Ukrainian forces struck the Anna early on Saturday, triggering an explosion that killed one Iranian sailor and injured another.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack as “reckless,” summoned Ukraine’s acting chargé d’affaires and warned that it reserved the right to protect the country’s security and national interests.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky subsequently praised the “very strong results” of strikes on vessels he claimed were involved in transporting military cargo. Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel similarly claimed that the Anna had been carrying components for drones and missiles, while Tehran maintained that the vessel and its cargo were entirely civilian.

Before Tuesday’s call, Araghchi had accused Zelensky of attacking the commercial vessel “at Israel’s behest” and attempting to draw Europe deeper into the conflict. He warned that the killing of the Iranian sailor “cannot go unanswered.”

The incident involving the Iranian vessel comes amid growing accusations that Kiev is expanding its activities in the Middle East. Iraq’s national security adviser claimed this week that authorities had arrested several groups that confessed to carrying out attacks on behalf of Ukraine. Kiev rejected the allegations as “unfounded and unsubstantiated.”

A man serving four consecutive life sentences for murdering four US university students is seeking to overturn his guilty plea, claiming he was coerced into confessing to crimes he says he did not commit, the New York Times has reported.

Bryan Kohberger, who admitted last year to the November 2022 murders of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, reportedly filed a petition for post-conviction relief in an Idaho court on Monday challenging his conviction.

In a handwritten filing obtained by the NYT, the 31-year-old accused his former defense lawyers of providing ineffective counsel and using “coercion, disinformation, false promises, and the withholding of exculpatory discovery” to persuade him to accept the agreement.

Kohberger claimed he had been “advised to lie” and told that whether he was actually guilty was unimportant. He also alleged that his lawyers frightened him and his family with what he described as “fabricated” stories about confinement in an “actual 8X8 death row cell,” while assuring him he would receive better treatment in prison if he admitted responsibility.

I now have a copy of Bryan Kohberger's petition to revoke his guilty plea. Here is part of it. pic.twitter.com/bkuLSxpKlq

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) July 27, 2026

 “My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” Kohberger said. He also cited what he described as previously withheld exculpatory evidence, including unidentified clumps of hair reportedly found in Chapin’s hand.

The agreement spared Kohberger a possible death sentence by firing squad. He was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without parole and an additional ten years for burglary. He has never publicly explained a motive for the killings.

The four students were stabbed to death at an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022. Kohberger, then a PhD criminology student at nearby Washington State University, was arrested weeks later.

Kaylee Goncalves’ family rejected Kohberger’s latest claims, saying he had previously “never claimed he was uninformed or pressured” and describing renewed attention on the convicted killer as “the real tragedy,” according to the BBC. In a separate statement criticizing the New York Times for giving him a platform, the family reportedly called Kohberger “the mosquito you just can’t seem to swat.”

The Goncalves family has long opposed the plea agreement, while the families of Chapin and Mogen reportedly supported it to avoid a lengthy trial.

Saudi Arabia’s largest crude oil processing facility was damaged in a drone strike on Monday, according to open-source analysts reviewing satellite imagery and a Gulf official cited by the Wall Street Journal.

The images circulating online appear to show a large smoke plume rising from the Abqaiq complex, along with burn marks and apparent damage around parts of the facility.

Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility for what military spokesman Yahya Saree described on X as strikes on “targets and sensitive points in the supply and transport of crude oil from eastern Saudi Arabia to [the port of] Yanbu.”

🛰 Sentinel-2 satellite imagery captured today confirms extensive fires and possible damage, with clearly visible burn scars at Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq oil processing facility, the company's largest oil processing plant, in eastern Saudi Arabia.

The facility was hit in a drone… pic.twitter.com/XBSUOnkRHw

— Egypt's Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT) July 27, 2026

While Saree did not identify the plant by name, the description is consistent with Abqaiq, a key hub linking Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil fields with the Red Sea export terminal at Yanbu.

The Kingdom acknowledged that its oil infrastructure in Eastern Region had been targeted and blamed Iran-backed militias in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal, citing a Gulf official, reported that the Abqaiq complex had sustained only minor damage.

Located in Eastern Province, Abqaiq is the world’s largest oil stabilization facility, preparing roughly 5% of global crude oil supplies for transport. The oil goes via the East-West pipeline to Yanbu, from where shipments travel to Europe via the Suez Canal or via the Bab el-Mandeb strait to Asia.

According to a Reuters analysis of Gulf export routes, the East-West pipeline is Riyadh’s main alternative to the Strait of Hormuz. Any disruption to the corridor would further constrain the Kingdom’s export options and could increase pressure on global oil supplies.

The strike marks an escalation of the Houthis’ campaign against Saudi energy infrastructure. The group says it is retaliating for recent Saudi airstrikes in Yemen and has threatened to impose a blockade on the Kingdom after Riyadh resumed military operations against Houthi targets.

The attack comes amid the wider regional conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the US, with Iranian-aligned groups increasingly targeting US allies and energy infrastructure across the Middle East.

According to the Associated Press, Gulf officials have privately complained that the Trump administration failed to warn them before the US-Israeli attack on Iran in February, leaving Gulf states exposed to retaliation. They reportedly believe US military resources were focused primarily on protecting American and Israeli assets, while Gulf partners remained vulnerable.

American and Saudi warplanes have carried out joint strikes against alleged Iran-aligned militia sites across eastern Iraq, according to US Central Command.

The air raid targeted multiple logistics and weapons facilities used by groups allegedly directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), CENTCOM said on Tuesday.

“US Central Command and the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces conducted precision strikes in Iraq, July 28, against Iran-aligned terrorists that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps directed to attack US forces and Saudi energy infrastructure,” the command said.

The Saudi Defense Ministry confirmed that it had coordinated with CENTCOM to carry out “precise and targeted strikes” on Iraqi militias allegedly linked to attacks on the Kingdom’s energy infrastructure earlier this week.

“The Kingdom emphasizes that it does not seek escalation but will respond to any aggression it faces,” spokesman Major General Turki Al-Maliki said, citing the right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Footage circulating online reportedly showed the aftermath of an airstrike on a Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) base in Iraq’s Wasit province. Iraqi media also reported multiple explosions in the Al-Deir and Al-Haritha areas of southern Basra province, although the full extent of the damage and any casualties remained unclear.

The rare joint operation came amid a broader Saudi confrontation with Iran-aligned forces across the region.

A Saudi-led coalition struck alleged Houthi military sites in Yemen’s Hodeidah Governorate on Saturday after the group attacked Saudi-owned vessels in the Red Sea and declared a naval blockade of the Kingdom.

Shortly after the Saudi strikes, the industrial city of Jazan was reportedly targeted in an apparent Houthi retaliation, with a large fire breaking out at a facility operated by the state-owned oil company Aramco. The Houthis had also claimed attacks on two Saudi tankers, one of which caught fire, while another sustained minor hull damage.

Saudi Arabia previously led a military intervention in Yemen in 2015 against the Houthis, who had captured the capital, Sanaa. However, the years-long bombing campaign failed to defeat the group and only deepened Yemen’s humanitarian crisis.

The strikes in Iraq also followed allegations by Iraqi National Security Adviser Qasim al-Aboudi that authorities had dismantled several militant cells whose members confessed to working for Ukraine and carrying out false-flag attacks. He did not identify those facilities or link the detainees to attacks on Saudi Arabia. Kiev has rejected the accusations as “unfounded and unsubstantiated.”

Saudi Arabia has blamed recent drone attacks against its oil facilities on Iran-linked militias operating from Iraqi territory. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella organization for several Iran-aligned groups, denied involvement and accused Riyadh of attempting to divert attention from attacks carried out by the Houthis. It warned that Saudi military action against Iraqi factions would trigger retaliation.

Iran has launched multiple ballistic missiles at US forces in the Middle East in what the US Central Command (CENTCOM) described as an attempted “surprise attack.” 

The US Department of War did not identify the targeted facilities, saying only that the missiles had been aimed at American forces “based” in the region.

“At 5:45pm ET today, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces launched multiple ballistic missiles from Iran in an attempted surprise attack on US forces based in the Middle East,” CENTCOM stated.

Iranian missiles are targeting US bases in Jordan 🚀 https://t.co/jiR6sKHVk0 pic.twitter.com/RhJ9fw8nZ7

— John Hussain (@johnhussainpres) July 28, 2026

All the incoming missiles had been successfully intercepted, CENTCOM claimed, adding that American forces remained “vigilant and at a high state of readiness.”

WATCH: Additional footage of US interceptors engaging in Iranian missiles launched at Jordan pic.twitter.com/v1y9RaqS9n

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 28, 2026

Several videos shared by open-source intelligence trackers appear to show intense air-defense activity in Jordan, including near Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, with US Patriot systems reportedly engaging incoming threats.

The IRGC claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that several ballistic missiles had targeted a US air base and what it described as a US Central Command headquarters in Jordan. The group said the strike was carried out in response to “aggressive actions” by the US military and warned that its attacks would continue as long as Washington continued its ”illegal and malicious actions” against Iranian interests.

The attack came hours after Trump held a closed-door meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. The talks lasted around 90 minutes and were described by the White House as “positive and productive,” although few details were released.

The incident marked Iran’s first reported ballistic missile attack on an American facility since US President Donald Trump suspended strikes against the Islamic Republic on Friday.

Trump said on Monday that Washington and Tehran were engaged in “very friendly” negotiations, but warned that the US could return to “strong military action” if diplomacy failed. He claimed that he had suspended the bombing to allow talks to proceed, while threatening to “beat the hell out of” Iran if no agreement was reached.

The discussions reportedly center on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and reviving negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran has denied holding direct talks with Washington, saying it is communicating only with Oman about arrangements for the key waterway.

The pause followed almost two weeks of renewed US strikes and Iranian retaliation after the collapse of a 14-point memorandum that had established a temporary ceasefire, lifted the American naval blockade and provided for the reopening of the strait while a longer-term agreement was negotiated.

President Donald Trump hosted Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office on Tuesday, with US officials sharing no details about what was discussed during the roughly hour-long meeting behind closed doors.

More than nine hours after the talks ended, Trump shared a brief post on Truth Social, saying it had been a “great honor” to meet Zelensky.

“Many things were discussed. The meeting went very well!” he wrote, offering no further details.

The only other official White House comment came in a brief post by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said “both meetings were positive and productive,” referring to Trump’s sit-downs with Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, Zelensky claimed on X that he and Trump “discussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help.” He added that they “also spoke about diplomacy” and said he was “grateful to the United States for its firm support.”

Later in the day, Trump, Zelensky and Netanyahu attended a memorial service in Washington for the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a longtime Russia hawk and one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters in the US Congress, who met Zelensky in Kiev shortly before his death.

Trump and Zelensky last met earlier this month on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Türkiye, where they discussed strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses and potential peace talks. After the meeting, Trump said Washington would grant Kiev a license to produce Patriot interceptor missiles, while adding that the US would not supply the weapons directly and that European NATO members should finance military aid to Ukraine.

Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly criticized Zelensky, at one point calling him a “dictator without elections” and “ungrateful” for American support, while arguing that Ukraine may ultimately have to cede territory to Russia to end the conflict. Zelensky, however, has continued to press Washington for more military assistance.

The Trump administration has also warned Kiev against targeting non-Russian vessels after a Chevron-chartered tanker carrying Kazakh oil was struck by a Ukrainian drone near the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk last week.

Kiev has relied heavily on Western weapons supplies throughout the conflict, while repeatedly urging its backers to provide additional Patriot systems and interceptor missiles amid continued Russian strikes on military-related targets across Ukraine. Moscow says the strikes are being carried out in response to terrorist attacks by Kiev against energy infrastructure and civilians inside Russia.

The meeting comes after Kiev launched another major overnight drone attack on Moscow, sending more than 390 UAVs toward the Russian capital. While no casualties have been reported, the regional authorities said several residential buildings were damaged.

Reuters reported last week, citing a Ukrainian source, that Washington and Kiev had been discussing a proposed air ceasefire to present to Moscow as part of a renewed push to revive stalled peace talks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, cast doubt on whether the report is true, adding that Moscow had received no concrete proposal.

Russia has warned that continued deliveries of Western arms make NATO members de facto participants in the conflict and risk triggering an all-out war.

Vladimir Zelensky and Benjamin Netanyahu led a procession at US Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral service, as they sought to realize Graham’s lifelong ambition of dragging the US deeper into catastrophic foreign wars.

Graham’s casket was carried into the US Capitol on Tuesday, ahead of a funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral. A member of the House of Representatives for eight years and a Senator for 23, Graham died suddenly of aortic dissection as a result of heart disease on July 11.

Graham’s legacy is one of constant agitation for US involvement in foreign wars. At the time of his death, Graham – who in 2022 called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin – was working on an anti-Russian sanctions bill, and had just returned from Kiev, where he toured a drone factory and apparently expressed glee that the weaponry there would be used to kill Russians.

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published video footage of Graham reacting to the opening strikes of the US-Israeli war on Iran in February. “I almost cried,” the Republican lawmaker said in the footage. “I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this? It’s here. I talked with Trump this morning. Holy Jack. It’s here. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Even in his own comments at Graham’s funeral, Trump repeatedly referred to the South Carolina Senator’s enthusiasm for conflict. “He was extremely hawkish,” Trump told mourners. “He never saw a war that he didn’t like…he wanted it for the good of our country.”

Graham was an avatar of the Bush-era neoconservatism that still holds the Republican establishment in a death grip, and two attendees in particular arrived at his funeral service determined to give him in death what he longed for in life: a massive expansion of US involvement in Iran and Ukraine.

Zelensky’s big bet

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday morning, arriving one after another for their respective sit-downs with the US president. 

Zelensky, who met with Graham no fewer than 10 times in Kiev since the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, described the Senator as “a true friend of Ukraine.” In a post on X, Zelensky said that he used the meeting to push for the production of Patriot missiles in Ukraine “and several other ideas that could help.”

A good meeting with President Trump @POTUS at the Oval Office. Thank you for everything we do together to protect the lives of Ukrainians and advance peace. First and foremost, I offered President Trump our condolences on the passing of Lindsey Graham. He was a true friend of… pic.twitter.com/56yoaeqb2B

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 28, 2026

Zelensky uses every trip to the US and Europe to beg for weapons, money, and sanctions on Russia. However, he arrived in Washington on Tuesday with a gift for Trump, according to Fox News: “Evidence that Russia is assisting Iran in targeting US bases in the Middle East.”

Zelensky is likely gambling that by presenting the correct ‘evidence’, he can link the US’ de-facto proxy war against Russia with its kinetic war against Iran, and draw the US into open conflict with Russia.

A series of recent actions by Ukraine seem to vindicate this theory. On Saturday, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency confirmed that it had struck an Iranian container ship in the Caspian Sea, which was allegedly transporting drone components to Russia. Despite Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi promising that the attack – which killed one sailor – would “not go unanswered,” Kiev doubled down, with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga declaring that “Iran’s threats are unjustified and groundless.”

In one fell swoop, Zelensky could drag the US into war with Russia, and his European backers into war with Iran – something that Trump tried and failed to achieve earlier this year. 

Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Kornichuk, hinted at this goal in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 on Monday. “We are fighting the same enemy, the other side of the same axis of evil,” he said.

While Zelensky’s recent moves could merge two regional conflicts into a cataclysmic world war, they may also serve a narrower aim: by attacking Iranian shipping, Zelensky demonstrated his usefulness to the US and Israel, right as Trump weighs a “massive attack” on Iran which would plunge Ukraine and the Gulf states into a bidding war for the US’ dwindling stocks of anti-air missiles.

Bibi’s best shot

Netanyahu also arrived with ‘intelligence’ for Trump. According to information leaked by his officials to the US media, the Israeli PM landed in Washington with plans to brief Trump on Iran’s supposed efforts to reconstitute its nuclear enrichment program at ‘Pickaxe Mountain’, a subterranean facility carved into granite near the Natanz nuclear complex.

While Trump has already threatened to bomb Pickaxe Mountain, Netanyahu’s leaks apparently irked the US president. “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that,” he told Fox News on Tuesday, referring to Netanyahu. “Bibi’s telling me that because he wants me to stay involved. I said ‘why don’t you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world?’”

In a video message released before he departed for Washington, Netanyahu said Iran would be “first and foremost” on the agenda with Trump. “Of course, our goal is to safeguard our security while also expanding the circle of peace around us,” he added. 

However, relations between Trump and Netanyahu are reportedly strained, and it remained unclear after the closed-doors meeting whether Trump had given the Israeli leader the reassurances on Iran that he wanted. “We are at a critical juncture,” an Israeli official told Channel 12. “President Trump will soon decide which way he’s going.”

For Netanyahu, the death of Lindsey Graham represents a significant loss of influence on Trump. Graham was a close friend of Netanyahu, and bragged earlier this year about “coaching him on how to lobby [Trump] for action” against Iran. In additional video footage released by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Graham can be seen speaking to Netanyahu by phone, telling the Israeli prime minister that he was “going to try to get him to join with y’all in Lebanon, to maybe fly some with you.”

“Would you like that?” Graham asked, before Netanyahu politely declined the unilateral offer of military intervention.

Lindsey Graham tied Kiev and West Jerusalem to Washington

Graham was far from the only war-hawk in Washington, but his close alliance with Trump and enthusiasm for military adventurism made him a vital conduit to the White House for Zelensky and Netanyahu, both of whose ambitions cannot be realized without US support. As such, his funeral represents the last opportunity for the Ukrainian and Israeli leaders to leverage his name in order to extract favor from Trump.

Without Graham in Trump’s ear, former White House strategist Steve Bannon remarked earlier this month, “the oligarchs in Ukraine and Imperial Israel proponents are curled up in the fetal position.” 

Zelensky and Netanyahu could not have chosen a more fitting tribute to Graham than traveling to Washington on the day of his funeral to beg for military aid. It’s exactly what the arch neocon would have wanted.

Two cars exploded on Tuesday in separate locations in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. The bombings reportedly targeted a senior military official and an intelligence operative, with the authorities treating at least one of the incidents as terrorism.

The first explosion occurred early in the morning near a residential building, when the 49-year-old victim turned on his car, the Ukrainian National Police said. Footage from the scene suggests the explosive was likely concealed within the car’s driver-side front wheel well.

According to local media reports, the driver was Vyacheslav Sazonov, a senior staff officer in the Ukrainian Navy. He was wounded but survived the attack. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has launched a criminal investigation and is treating the incident as a “terrorist attack.”

Later in the day a second car exploded while driving down a central street. The blast killed the driver of the vehicle on the spot, while his female passenger was injured, the police said. The deceased was reported to be Ruslan Otsebrik, an operative with the SBU. The identity of the wounded woman has not been disclosed yet.

Footage from the scene suggests the bombing was carried out in a similar style to the first, with the explosives installed within the driver side front wheel well.

Thus far, no one has claimed responsibility, while the Ukrainian authorities have refrained from providing any theories about the attacks and whether they are connected.

A Ukrainian drone that was intended as a birthday gift for the late US Senator Lindsey Graham will now be deployed on the front lines “to kill Russians,” according to US conservative activist Laura Loomer.

Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, died at the age of 71 on July 11, shortly after returning from Kiev, where he met Vladimir Zelensky and visited a drone manufacturing facility. A strong advocate of US military assistance for Kiev and a harsh critic of Russia, Graham traveled to the Ukrainian capital at least ten times in recent years.

In a video released on Tuesday, the day of Graham’s funeral, Loomer displayed a P1 Sun interceptor at SkyFall, a Ukrainian defense company that manufactures interceptor, FPV, and heavy bomber drones. According to Loomer, the senator toured the facility while celebrating his birthday and was presented with the drone as a gift.

Footage from the video shows a drone carrying a sign reading, ‘Happy birthday, Senator Lindsey Graham,’ before he is seen inspecting the facility.

Loomer said the UAV had originally been due to be sent to Graham’s home, but the manufacturer changed its plans following his death. “They’re going to deploy the drone to the front lines so that it can be used to kill Russians,” Loomer said.

The longtime Republican senator was one of Kiev’s most outspoken supporters in Washington and repeatedly advocated tougher measures against Moscow and increased US military assistance for Ukraine. Zelensky traveled to Washington on Tuesday to attend Graham’s funeral.

Loomer, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, has significantly changed her previous stance on Kiev. After years of denouncing Ukraine and its “Nazi apologists,” she traveled to the country, met Zelensky, apologized for her earlier remarks, and claimed that the Russian media had “bamboozled” her. The shift has sparked debate online, while Loomer has repeatedly denied that Ukraine financed her trip.

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A prosecutor in the Ukrainian Khmelnitsky Region has been dismissed for filming porn at work, posting it to OnlyFans, and repeatedly sending the NSFW materials to his colleagues, local media reports.

The now-former prosecutor, identified by the media as Anton Vendel, reportedly began sending explicit videos and photos of himself to his female colleagues this January. At some point, Vendel set up an OnlyFans account, published the pornographic content online, and then sent links to his creations to his co-workers.

The former official reportedly shot at least some of the offensive materials at the prosecutor’s office. Vendel’s superiors demoted him and sent him to a district office after receiving repeated complaints from his female colleagues, but it was only when the scandal became public that the official was fired for good, media reports indicate. It was not immediately clear whether Vendel has faced legal consequences for his conduct or got off with just a disciplinary discharge.

While making, storing, and distributing pornography is illegal in Ukraine, the country’s authorities have been considering lifting the ban. Proponents of decriminalization argue that the move would help the country fill its war chest with new taxes, as well as reduce the corruption rampant in the adult content-making industry. Ukraine’s parliament advanced a bill aimed at decriminalizing adult pornography in a first reading earlier this month.

Back in May, multiple senior Ukrainian police officials were detained on suspicion of regularly taking bribes from underground porn studios. The suspects, including Ivano-Frankovsk Region’s police chief and his deputy, as well as deputy chiefs from the Ternopol and Zhitomir regions, have been accused of accepting some $25,000 per month per studio in exchange for shielding them from law enforcement raids and other legal problems. The suspects were found to be in possession of roughly $510,000 in cash, as well as luxury cars and a collection of Swiss watches, the authorities said at the time.