🤝Ceasefire and humanitarian efforts in Gaza: Key points

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation reports that:

📍Military operations on both sides will pause starting at 8:30 AM tomorrow (Sunday, local time) under the agreement.

📍Prisoner releases are expected after 4 PM tomorrow.

📍Israel will suspend air operations for 12 hours to facilitate prisoner transfers.

📍Humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza will ramp up to 600 trucks daily starting tomorrow.

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❗️Russian troops liberated the settlements of Petropavlovka and Vremevka in the Donetsk People's Republic, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

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❗️In response to ATACMS strikes on civilian infrastructure in the Belgorod region, Russian forces carried out a coordinated attack this morning on Ukrainian defense industry facilities, including the Luch Design Bureau, which manufactures long-range Neptune missiles and Olkha rocket munitions, Russia's Ministry of Defense reported.

The intended targets were successfully hit, with all objectives achieved.

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🇷🇺🪖More statements from the Russian MoD daily briefing on the special military operation's progress:    

▪️Ukraine lost up to 470 servicemen in the Russian Zapad Battlegroup's combat zone.

▪️Ukraine lost up to 95 soldiers in the areas of responsibility of Russia's Battlegroup Dnepr and Sever.

▪️Russian air defence systems shot down 83 Ukrainian drones.

▪️Ukraine lost up to 245 servicemen in the Russian Yug Battlegroup's combat zone.

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😅Biden’s team scrambled to make adjustments amid growing age concerns – reports

The steps used for boarding Air Force One were replaced with shorter ones for 82-year-old President Joe Biden, following multiple stumbles on the ramp, The New York Times reported.

Biden’s previous incidents include stumbling three times while boarding in March 2021, with the White House attributing the mishaps to strong winds and assuring the public that he was fine.

Another trip-up occurred in June 2022, further fueling concerns about his physical fitness.

❓What other adjustments did his team reportedly make?

👉Meetings were often rescheduled to align with his mood.

👉Aides occasionally delayed sharing negative polling data to carefully manage its presentation.

👉Even small fundraisers required the use of teleprompters.

👉Staff hand-delivered memos highlighting social media posts crafted by allies to counteract negative articles and polls.

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🪖Assault units from Russia’s Battlegroup Vostok have cleared up to 600 buildings in the liberated village of Vremevka, dismantling fortified Ukrainian positions.

Footage released by Russia's Defense Ministry shows the Russian flag being raised over one of the buildings.

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💬 Hezbollah leader congratulates Palestinians on Gaza ceasefire deal

"We congratulate the Palestinian people and the Resistance on this agreement, which shows the resilience of the Resistance, which achieved what it wanted, while the enemy was unable to take what it wanted," Naim Qassem, secretary general of the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, said in a speech aired by Lebanon's Al-Manar TV channel.

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📹Footage from the Iranian Supreme Court, where the judges were assassinated.

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‘We have a gift’: CIA tapped into vast troves of Soviet, Russian military secrets, intel after 2014 Ukraine coup

In 2015, Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate head Valeriy Kondratyuk visited Washington to meet with senior officials with his luggage “stuffed with top-secret Russian military documents.”

“I was like, ‘holy sh*t!’, and he’s like, ‘yes, we have a gift’,” a former US official told ABC News.

The docs were said to include top secret info on Russian weaponry. Further “gifts,” from Russian EW tech to its military OOB, came later.

One ex-official said the info was worth “billions.”

‘Something to exploit’

Ukraine’s Security Service was also quickly compromised, with its new chief inviting the US and British to “help” immediately after the 2014 coup.

“There were those of us on the agency side who were like, ‘hey, this is something to exploit,’” one ex-US official recalled.

The CIA rebuilt Ukrainian intelligence as an anti-Russian shadow army, providing training and equipment, facilities, “including around a dozen secret forward-operating bases on the border with Russia,” and staging “joint operations together around the world.”

Terror ops inside Russia

In 2016, the CIA launched ‘Operation Goldfish’, which provided Ukraine with comms tech, combat and espionage training with the CIA and MI6, for ops inside Russia and abroad posing as Russians.

Kondratyuk lobbied Kiev’s newfound friends to do “sabotage operations” in Crimea and elsewhere in Russia, including by “pre-positioning explosives,” long-before the 2022 escalation. This led to a disastrous 2016 attack on a Crimean base that triggered a battle with Russian special forces.

The operation was executed by Unit 2245, a group of commandos trained by the United States. Among its officers was Kyrylo Budanov, the notorious current chief of Ukrainian military intel who has bragged about the murder of Russian public figures.

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Sweden has deployed a battalion of 550 troops to Latvia to strengthen NATO forces in the Baltic region

The mission is the kingdom's first since joining the alliance.

The unit was shipped across the Baltic Sea under conditions of secrecy. The battalion will be stationed at Camp Valdemar, Swedish media report.

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🇮🇷 One of the judges killed during the armed attack on the Iranian Supreme Court, Ali Razini, had previously been the target of an assassination attempt in 1998, when he held the position of chief prosecutor in Tehran. At that time, he was injured in an explosion caused by a magnetic limpet mine planted in his car.

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Hungary received a record 7.6 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia via the TurkStream pipeline in 2024, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.

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🇷🇺 Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova weighed in on the recently-signed '100-year partnership' agreement between Ukraine and the UK, sharply criticizing the deal.

Here’s what she had to say:

🔸 Zakharova dismissed the agreement as "null and void," calling it insignificant and lacking substance.

🔸 She argued that Britain’s involvement reflects its long-standing ambition to secure a foothold in the Azov-Black Sea region.

🔸 She stated that there is no legitimate basis for Ukraine and Britain to collaborate in the Azov Sea.

🔸 Zakharova described the agreement as a publicity stunt by the Ukrainian government, aimed at creating an illusion of strong alliances.

The agreement was signed during a visit by British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to Ukraine on Thursday. The published document outlines plans for the establishment of military bases in Ukraine and cooperation on long-range weapon systems.

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NATO’s spending reality check: 5% is a long shot

NATO members won’t be able to meet US president-elect Donald Trump’s demand to raise military spending to 5% of GDP in the near future, Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said.

Montenegro told the Lusa news agency that Portugal is focused on reaching a target of 2% of GDP for defense spending before even considering a higher percentage.

“The government anticipated hitting 2% by 2029, and we’re firmly committed to that goal,” he said. “We may need to reassess it when necessary.”

He also criticized European leaders’ comments on statements by the incoming US president. “I think it’s pointless for European leaders to constantly respond to every remark by the president-elect of the United States,” Montenegro said.

Trump previously announced his intention to push NATO members to increase military budgets to 5% of GDP. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already rejected this demand, and Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz suggested that it might take a decade for NATO-member states to achieve it.

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America’s new nuclear toys land in Europe

The US has begun deploying modified nuclear bombs in Europe, Jill Hruby, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said at a Hudson Institute conference.

“Our strategic partnership with the UK is very strong as is their commitment to their nuclear deterrent. NATO is strong,” Hruby said.

“The new B61-12 gravity bombs are fully forward deployed, and we have increased NATO’s visibility to our nuclear capabilities through visits to our enterprise and other regular engagements.”

The B61-12 bombs, which have glide fins and guidance systems allowing precision strikes from high altitudes, are replacing older B61 versions stored at NATO bases.

Those facilities currently hold about 100 tactical bombs, carried fighter jets like the F-35A and F-16, although most US nuclear weapons remain on its own territory.

In January, the Telegraph newspaper reported that the US may station nuclear weapons in the UK for the first time in 15 years, claiming a “growing threat from Russia”. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called the placement of US nuclear arms in Europe a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In response, Russia announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.

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🗣Houthis claim attack on Israel’s Defense Ministry

Ansar Allah has announced it launched a strike targeting the Israeli Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv. This comes right after a ceasefire agreement was reached in Gaza.

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⚔️Another round of bickering between Fico and Zelensky

The Ukraine-Slovakia gas transit drama is heating up, with Slovak PM Robert Fico suggesting a meeting in Slovakia to discuss the issue. But Volodymyr Zelensky isn’t having it:

🗣 Zelensky on X: “Ok. Come to Kiev on Friday.”

🗣 Fico on Facebook*: "During the conversation, I informed the German Chancellor that we have been proposing for several days now to hold a meeting with Zelensky on Tuesday evening in Davos, at the World Economic Forum, where we will both be present."

🗣 "Apart from a childish invitation to Kiev, Zelensky has not yet responded to this offer."

The gas transit drama between Zelensky and Fico escalated from a fair online battle to Zelensky roasting the Slovak PM in an interview with Bloomberg.

🗣 Zelensky: “He may go to Davos but end up somewhere in Sochi [a Russian city].”

🗣“We don’t know who buys his tickets, as he constantly misses his destinations.”

*banned in Russia for extremism

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