📹 Mortar crews of Russian paratroopers suppressed Ukrainian firing positions and eliminated enemy infantry near the settlement of Verbovoye

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US-led Red Sea coalition: who is in and who is out?

The US has initiated Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational naval coalition to protect Red Sea commercial traffic from Houthi attacks. As of now, over 20 countries are on board, with notable participants including the UK, Canada, Greece, and Australia.

Who's in?

▪️ The US-led coalition comprises 20+ countries, including the UK, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles, Spain, Greece, and Australia

▪️ Notably, Britain's HMS Diamond is on board, operating as part of the US-led Combined Maritime Forces

▪️ Some participating countries, including at least eight, prefer not to be publicly named.

Who's out or uncertain?

▪️ France supports navigation security, but will keep its ships under French command.

▪️ Italy is sending the frigate Virginio Fasan, but insists it is part of existing operations, not Prosperity Guardian.

▪️ Spain is opting for NATO-led or EU-coordinated missions, declining unilateral participation in Red Sea operations.

In the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict that erupted on October 7, the Houthis, an armed group representing Yemen's Shia Muslim minority, the Zaidis, have initiated a series of attacks in the Red Sea targeting ships heading towards Israel. Controlling a significant portion of Yemen, the Houthis declared solidarity with Hamas and announced their intention to target any ship heading towards Israel.

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🇷🇺 Russian Su-25 attack aircraft bombed strongholds of Ukrainian troops in the Krasny Liman direction

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🇬🇧 The Mayor of London has pledged his support to send 4x4s and other vehicles to Ukraine that would otherwise be scrapped under the Ulez scheme.

In an apparent U-turn, Sadiq Khan has asked the Transport Secretary, Mark Harper, to enable Londoners, and others across the country, to donate suitable vehicles to Ukraine through scrappage schemes.

The mayor had previously made it clear he did not believe altering the Ulez scheme for exporting vehicles would be possible under current laws.

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💸 'Nobody's money safe in the West' if Russia's assets used to fund Ukraine

If the Biden administration gets away with using illegally-seized Russian assets to fund Ukraine, that would "basically nuke the entire Western financial system," journalist Nebojsa Malic told Sputnik.

💬 "And any country outside of the G7 or NATO would be certifiably insane to hold any of its foreign currency, or reserves, or any assets in the West where it's accessible to the US and its allies. They could make up any pretext to confiscate it," said the Serbian-American journalist.

What the rest of the world could do in response is "withdraw their consent from the US financial market," he said.

"I don't think enough people in Washington and out of Washington truly appreciate how dire this is," Malic warned. "It will hurt Russia a little bit, but it would be absolutely disastrous for the US."

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🗣 War in Gaza is Far from Over

"It's going to be a long war. I think, maybe even a year. And this is going to be a war of attrition, and people need to be prepared for that. Because even the United States said that they won the war in Afghanistan within a few months, they got rid of the Taliban. And now look at where the Taliban is: 20 years later the Taliban won the war. In Iraq, [they claimed] "Mission accomplished". Was it accomplished? You know how many thousands of US soldiers were killed after "Mission accomplished"? So this war could result in the end of Palestine, but it could equally result in the end of Israel," - Maram Susli (AKA Syrian Girl), Journalist and Think tank Analyst based in Australia, told Sputnik.

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🇮🇱🇵🇸 The latest updates on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

▪️The death toll from Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip since October 7, when the Israel-Hamas conflict escalated, has increased to 20,258, the enclave's health ministry said, adding that 53,688 others had been injured.

▪️ Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned of the possible blockade of the Mediterranean Sea by "new resistance forces," if the United States and its allies kept committing "crimes" in the Gaza Strip.

▪️Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing, said that the movement had lost contact with a group responsible for five Israeli prisoners, adding that they had probably been killed as a result of Israeli shelling of the Gaza Strip.

▪️Dozens of people were killed in Israeli strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip overnight, the Al Jazeera broadcaster reported.

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There is a growing possibility that the US will be forced to give up the idea of deploying ground-based intercontinental range ballistic missiles entirely, Military Watch Magazine (MWM) reported.

While Russia’s ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force is deemed the most capable in the world, the outlet wrote, by contrast, the US has to rely on “the oldest ICBM class in the world.” US' legacy Minuteman III – the land-based leg of the US' nuclear triad – is half a century old, and the US has struggled to develop a successor. The result is that the Minuteman III arsenal faces the prospect of decommissioning without replacement.

One of the reasons for the discrepancy in this case between Russia and the US is that Washington has over-relied on submarine-launched ballistic missiles and nuclear bombers, the authors of the report underscored. Russia, on the other hand, opted to stake on ICBMs when building up its strategic nuclear strike capability.

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🇮🇳🇷🇺 India-Russia Trade Turnover Exceeds USD 50 Bln for First Time

Trade between India and Russia doubled in the first 10 months of 2023 and exceeded a record $54.7 billion, as per Sputnik's calculations, based on Indian customs data.

📈 India’s import of goods from Russia during the period of January-October rose to $51.4 billion, while exports also increased by 1.4 times, to $3.3 billion. The trade figures between the two countries are double the amount for the same period last year.

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🇩🇪📈An increasing income tax across Germany to ensure greater military support for Ukraine due to the paucity of new commitments by the US was proposed by the chairwoman of the German Council of Economic Experts advising the country's government, Monika Schnitzer.

"Special events require special measures. A possible response to this challenge could be a Ukraine solidarity surcharge to the income tax for military aid," Schnitzer said in an interview with the Rheinische Post newspaper.

German Economy Minister and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said earlier this week that Berlin should be prepared to take on more responsibility and increase spending in light of weakening Western support for Ukraine.

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🎈US Air Force General has admitted holes in the superpowers air defences were exposed by this year's Chinese balloon incident

USAF jet fighters shot down a balloon over the Atlantic Ocean in February, only after it had drifted across Canada and much of the western US.

Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, later admitted that the US was not aware of balloon's intelligence-gather capabilities of the balloon.

He emphasized that the US assessment indicated the balloon did not engage in intelligence gathering while transiting or flying over the territory of the US.

The head of the US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, General Glen D. VanHerck, said the incident with the Chinese balloon revealed gaps in US forces' ability to detect threats over long distances and in the operational exchange of information.

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The Supreme Court will likely decide if former US President Donald Trump is allowed on all or none of the ballots in the 2024 Presidential election, said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon.

Simon’s comments come after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump should be removed from that state’s ballot in the Republican primary and the general election under the 14th Amendment, despite Trump never being charged or convicted of insurrection or rebellion.

🗣 “We’re never going to have a situation in this country where one or some cluster of states decides that Donald Trump is not on the ballot and everyone else decides he is,” Simon explained. “He will either be on the ballot everywhere or nowhere, and the US Supreme Court is going to make sure of that.”

Trump has denied that he engaged in or helped an insurrection on January 6, 2021, pointing to the fact that he told the crowd to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol building.

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A shooting at a mall in Ocala, Florida resulted in at least one death, local police say.

The shooting occurred around 3:40 p.m. Police originally reported that they were responding to an active shooting but found that the shooter had fled before they arrived.

They believe it may have been an active shooting and note that the shooter is still at-large. No description of the shooter has been released and authorities are asking anyone with more information to call the local Crime Stoppers.

While sweeping the mall, police say they found one deceased male in the common area and a woman with non-life-threatening injuries. It is unclear if those are the only victims, the police previously reported that there were multiple injuries.

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🇮🇷 Amid ongoing tensions over US backing for Israel's latest assault on Gaza, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi has accused the United States of being the "largest factor of instability" in the entire world.

During the Tehran International Conference on Palestine, Raisi condemned the US, which claims to defend freedom and democracy, as the perpetrator of major crimes and global instability.

"Those who claim to protect freedom and democracy have shown themselves to be the perpetrators of the greatest crimes, racial discrimination, and human rights violations," Raisi said. "It has become clear to everyone that the US is not only not a factor of stability in any region of the world but has been and remains the largest factor of instability and lack of security worldwide, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and other parts of the world."

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⚓️ The US and its allies are “trapped” in the Red Sea and should prepare for the closure of waterways stretching all the way to the western gates of the Mediterranean Sea, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Chief of Staff Mohammad Reza Naqdi has warned.

“The Zionist regime and the United States have gone mad due to the severity of the crimes and brutality they have committed, and they cannot even recognize their own interests,” Naqdi suggested, saying the two powers seem incapable of “learning from past events.”

Naqdi did not elaborate on what kinds of operations specifically may be taken to close regional waterways to US forces and their allies. However, US media and news agencies immediately interpreted the commander’s words as an explicitly Iranian “threat” to “close the Mediterranean.”

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🇪🇹 🇷🇺 Exclusive | Ethiopian Minister talks about Russia's role in the country's nuclear energy path

The two Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) signed between Russia and Ethiopia in 2021 have laid the groundwork for further cooperation in the field of nuclear energy development in the East African country, Dr. Belete Molla, Ethiopia's Minister of Innovation and Technology, told Sputnik Africa in an exclusive interview.

"The MoUs laid the groundwork for further cooperation. In July 2023, Russia and Ethiopia signed a roadmap for developing cooperation in peaceful nuclear energy. This roadmap outlines specific steps for exploring the feasibility of building a nuclear power plant in Ethiopia, as well as establishing a nuclear science and technology center," Minister Molla said.

Molla added that specialized working groups have already been established, and technical visits and seminars have been held to share expertise in nuclear technology.

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