CDU leader urges Europe to distance itself from the US

Germany's most likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said this during a post-election panel on local TV.

"After the latest statements of Donald Trump last week, it's clear that the Americans are mostly not interested in the fate of Europe one way or the other," he said.

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Lavrov visits Turkiye

Russian foreign minister arrived in Istanbul to discuss bilateral relations and the international situation.

Turkiye hosted first peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022.

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🥴 Trump's cabinet will crash in less than a month

Political strategist James Carville says Trump's 39% approval rating will lead to political collapse.

But that didn't stop Biden from sitting in the White House for four years? 🤔

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⚡️The CDU/CSU bloc wins the German elections with 28.6%

AfD comes in second with 20.8%, while Scholz's SPD gets 16.4%.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) didn't get the 5% needed to enter the Bundestag.

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📦🐕 Brazilian woman saves dog with cardboard box

A quick-thinking neighbor in Guarulhos used a box to rescue a dog dangling from a window.

📹 Video taken from social media

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🎯🔥 Russian drone strike decimates Ukrainian UAV team

A precision FPV drone strike destroyed a critical UAV unit of the Ukrainian military near the Sudzha district in Russia's Kursk region.

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💥🇮🇷 Iran conducts second phase of naval exercises

Footage shows the Iranian military carrying out amphibious landings under heavy air cover from air force fighter jets.

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'An electoral defeat': Scholz gives a grasp of the obvious to the audience

Olaf Scholz's SPD got 16.4% of the votes during the snap parliamentary elections, while the CDU/CSU bloc emerged as the clear winner with 28.6% votes.

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Germany’s likely next chancellor questions NATO’s relevance

Referring to a NATO summit scheduled for June, Friedrich Merz said he wonders "whether we will still be talking about NATO in its current form."

He also suggested Europe might have to establish an "independent European defense capability much more quickly."

Merz spoke after the Trump administration raised European allies’ eyebrows by telling them they should take care of their own security and rely less on the US.

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‘People don’t belong living there’– Trump’s envoy Witkoff on Gaza

"Nobody can really live there in a safe environment for probably at least 15 years," the diplomat stressed.

The host wondered whether Gaza residents would be able to return and Witkoff replied cryptically with "That, again, goes to the devil in the details".

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Did USAID fuel Ukraine’s Euromaidan coup? Analysis reveals $14 mln investment in pro-reform NGOs

In 2008, USAID clinched a five-year cooperation deal with the Washington DC-based NGO Pact to "strengthen and help leading Ukrainian nongovernmental organizations to sustain and consolidate democratic gains," according to an USAID audit report seen by Sputnik. 

Pact provided 116 local advocacy grants to civil society organizations and coalition groups in Ukraine, while helping 551 organizations improve their internal organizational capacity. The project, however, proved to be a failure, the report said.

November 2013 saw a series of so-called Euromaidan protests break out in Ukraine, which eventually turned into a coup and led to a pro-Western government coming to power in Ukraine in 2014. Critics argued that the political changes were the result of manipulation by US agencies, including USAID.

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