🇷🇺❌🇺🇦 — Video shared on social media shows the moment when a Russian loitering ammunition "Lancet" conducts an strike on a moving French 155-mm self-propelled gun "Caesar" of the Ukrainian Armed Forces

According to the sources, the clash took place in the Kupyansk direction.

🇺🇸🪖🇪🇺 Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked a defense boom. It’s likely to outlast the war

Since February 23, 2022, the day before Moscow began bombing several Ukrainian cities, the stocks of five of the top US and European defense contractors have all risen. The companies — Europe’s BAE Systems, Thales and Rheinmetall, and Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Northrop Grumman (NOC) in the United States — have all either provided weapons for the battlefield in Ukraine or signed agreements to do so.

Governments have donated ammunition, tanks, and fighter jets to Ukraine, are replenishing their own depleted stockpiles, and have committed billions more to their defense budgets.

Canada and the European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which make up the bulk of NATO’s membership, spent 11% more on defense in 2023 than the previous year.

Record earnings, more jobs

For major defense contractor Saab, it has been “a dramatic two years,” according to chief executive Micael Johansson.

In that time, the Swedish company has invested billions to build up production capacity. It has expanded its workforce by 3,600 people since the start of 2022, and expects it to grow by another 2,000 this year, Johansson told CNN.

Saab’s profit soared 30% last year to hit an all-time high.

The company’s biggest customer is the Swedish government, which announced another package of military support for Ukraine last week, including donations of artillery ammunition and anti-tank weapons. Meanwhile, Poland, Ukraine’s neighbor, has become a “big customer” since the war broke out, Johansson said.

BAE Systems has also enjoyed healthy earnings. On Thursday, the UK defense contractor reported profit of £2.6 billion ($3.3 billion) in 2023, up 8% from 2022.

But the pressure on Western governments to beef up their military coffers will outlast the Ukraine war, analysts say, and it started to rise even before Moscow sent its troops marching toward Kyiv two years ago.

📝 Defense *industry* is booming but it’s still fundamentally broken. It’s not producing what we need rapidly at huge scale despite tons of additional money.

The heavily financialized, consolidated industry needs fundamental root and branch reform.

🔗 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/24/business/us-europe-defense-industry-spending/index.html

📎 Elbridge Colby

🇬🇧🕎⚰️❗️ — Lord Jacob Rothschild, leader of the Jewish European banking dynasty - the Rothschild dynasty - has died aged 87, his family has said.

The Rothschild’s family said “our father Jacob was a towering presence in many people’s lives” and that he would “be buried in accordance with Jewish custom in a small family ceremony”

No cause of death was given.

🇭🇺🤝🇸🇪 — The Government of Hungary approves Sweden's NATO membership after months of negotiations

🇨🇱🇻🇪 Boric's government, through the Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, denies a publication by the newspaper La Razón that states that Chile gave the "green light" for the kidnapping of Lieutenant (R) Ronald Ojeda

💰📈🔼❗️ Bitcoin over $54000 on all mayor exchanges

Also is very nice to see a $3500+ on daily candle

#BREAKING

🇾🇪❌🌐💻❗️ — Sky News Arabia reports that Yemen's Houthis destroyed parts of the Submarine Internet fiber Cable lines linking the Arabian Peninsula and Africa!

https://fxtwitter.com/SkyNewsArabia_B/status/1762214016380789148

#BREAKING

🇲🇩❌🇺🇦❗️ — Observers report that several Regions of Western Ukraine (Galicia) are reportedly under Attack from Russian Loitering Munition/“Suicide” Drones were launched by the Armed Forces of Transnistria!

🇲🇩🇷🇺❌🇺🇦 There’s an announcement that a group of Russian drones are flying in the direction of Moldova.

One Russian drone already entered Moldova & more drones could follow.

More than likely, it was an accident - not the Russian invasion of Moldova - that sent the drone astray.

🔗 Jason Jay Smart

💰📈🚀 Bitcoin over $57000 on all mayor exchanges!
FOMO kicked in

🇦🇷🇸🇻 Bullrich tells Bukele she wants to replicate his security plan in Argentina

Argentina's Security Minister Patricia Bullrich told El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele Friday in Washington DC at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) summit that “we want to follow the model you are carrying out” to tackle crime.

Bullrich praised Bukele for lowering “crime as you have done and still endure criticism when you have saved millions and millions of lives.”

🗣“We really want to work and see what you have done. We put a lot of effort into it and we need to get to that place too. And we are going to get there. We are making an important change in Argentina,” Bullrich told Bukele.

🔎 Source
#Argentina #ElSalvador #US

☠️ Blood Meridian