❄️ Scramble for the Arctic: What are the major regional powers’ strategies and military capabilities? Part 1 👉 Part 2

Canada has approved a 20-year, $1.86B spending spree on military support hubs in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. The money will be spent on airfields, logistics bases and new equipment.

How does Canada’s buildup compare to efforts by other regional powers?

🇷🇺 Russia

🗺 Strategy: coastal and air space defense and protection of maritime trade routes.

📍Bases: 40+ facilities at locations including Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya and Wrangel Island. MiG-31 jets, S-400 and Bastion air, missile and coastal defense systems and early warning sites deployed.

⚓️ Fleet: Borei and Delfin-class boomers and Yasen and Shchuka-B cruise missile and attack subs patrol the area. 40+ nuclear and diesel icebreakers aid power projection.

🪖 Troops: over 100K permanently stationed troops. Major Army units include the 12K+ troop 200th and 80th Arctic Motorized Rifle Brigades and the 10K+ troop Arctic Coastal Defense Forces.

🇺🇸 USA

🗺 Strategy: missile defense, surveillance, and more recently, an effort to back up shelf claims against neighbors.

📍Bases: Air and Space Force at Fairbanks and Anchorage, Alaska and Thule, Greenland. Army, Navy and Coast Guard sites at Delta Junction and Kodiak.

⚓️ Fleet: 2 aging Arctic-ready icebreakers, the Polar Star and the Healy. 3 new cutters under construction.

🪖 Troops: about 25,000 permanently stationed troops.

🇨🇦 Canada

🗺 Strategy: military patrols, investment and legal claims.

📍Bases: CFS Alert on Ellesmere Island, Joint Task Force North HQ in Yellowknife, Nanisivik Naval Facility, CFB Goose Bay, four RCAF airfields, and early warning radar operated under NORAD.

⚓️ Fleet: fields 7 heavy and medium icebreakers and 2 more on the way.

🪖 Troops: 200-500 regularly deployed, with numbers going up during annual “Operation Nanook” wargames.

👉 Part 2

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❄️Who else in NATO is looking for a piece of the Arctic? Part 2 👉 Part 1

🇩🇰 Denmark

🗺 Strategy: sovereignty assertion in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Arctic shelf via ground and naval patrols.

📍Bases: Joint Arctic Command in Nuuk, Greenland.

⚓️ Fleet: no Arctic icebreakers, but 3 Knud Rasmussen-class patrol vessels.

🪖 Troops: 200-300 regular troops plus 500 rotating personnel.

🇳🇴 Norway

🗺 Strategy: acting as a NATO forward base for ops against Russia, built on regular bloc ground, air and naval drills.

📍Bases: Air bases at Evenes, Andoya and Bardufoss. Naval facilities at Sortland and Bergen.

⚓️ Fleet: 2 icebreakers, plus 3 ice-capable patrol vessels.

🪖 Troops: About 3,500 permanent Arctic troops with Brigade Nord, Porsanger Battalion and Finnmark Land Defense.

🇫🇮🇸🇪 Finland & Sweden

🔸 No Arctic shelf claims of their own, but do possess land above the Arctic Circle. Strategies focused on sustaining military presence in the high north and abetting NATO

🔸 Sweden: has three Arctic bases, plus an Arctic patrol air base at Lulea, Saab GoldenEye AEW&C patrols and a contingent of snowmobile troops. 5,000 troop permanent presence

🔸 Finland: maintains the Jaeger Brigade of Arctic infantry in Lapland, a string of bases along the northern border with Russia, and the Rovaniemi Air Base for regional air ops. 3,000 active-duty Arctic troops, expandable to hundreds of thousands of draftees in an emergency

👉 Part 1

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Ukrainian crisis dragging Europe to the bottom: Bulgarian president

Bulgaria is in no rush to join the “fanfare” around the EU’s rearmament plan, and idea of spending $866.7B from the bloc’s Recovery and Resilience Plan is pointless because “such funds do not exist,” President Rumen Radev said.

During the last EU Council meeting, there was a lot of talk about rearmament, but almost nothing about ending the conflict in Ukraine, apart from unrealistic calls for imposing peace through force, Radev said.

If the EU proceeds with rearmament, nations will have to “give up water supply projects, infrastructure, environment and social projects and redirect these funds to the defense industry,” the president stressed.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚓️ Ukraine admits Russia's tactics effective in naval stand-off

Russian forces have successfully adapted their defenses against maritime drone operations, Oleksiy Neizhpapa, the commander of the Ukrainian naval forces, told The Guardian.

The future of the Black Sea is likely to be part of any peace deal, the British newspaper said, adding that a truce could begin on land and sea.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Gulf States’ water supplies would be poisoned if Iran’s nuclear sites were attacked: Qatari PM

Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Tucker Carlson the danger of nuclear contamination to water supplies applies to everyone in the region, including Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE.

Al-Thani’s comments come amid rising tensions between Iran and the Trump administration, which has tried to pressure the Islamic Republic into submission on a new nuclear agreement, and threatened military action if talks fail.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔸 The EU is morphing into a modern-day 'Reich' – Slovak MEP slams Brussels' hysteria

🔸 US stops providing Ukraine with satellite imagery

🔸 Macron’s bitter pill: he’s no Napoleon, and modern French Army is no Grande Armée

🔸 Scramble for the Arctic: What are the major regional powers’ strategies and military capabilities?

🔸 Crypto power play: Are Russia and China leaving the US in the dust?

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Ukrainian theaters forced to rely on all-female casts after running out of men

“Some of our colleagues have died,” Ruslana, an actress taking on a male role at the Chernigov Youth Theater after the loss of all but two of its male members, told DW.*

“To say that life goes on will probably satisfy nobody, including me. Because it doesn’t continue. It actually stopped in 2014 or maybe even earlier. Yet we have what we have,” one audience member said.

Ukraine’s massive battlefield losses has pushed the government to try to lure 18-24-year-old men, previously exempted from fighting, into the conflict.

Ukraine’s NATO backers have repeatedly vowed to fight Russia in the current proxy war “to the last Ukrainian,” with former British PM Boris Johnson and hawkish US Senator Lindsey Graham using the phrase repeatedly in public remarks.

* In Russia’s foreign agent registry.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

David Sacks: We don't know if 200,000 US bitcoins are real

Crypto czar has ordered a full government-wide audit of US government digital assets to determine what crypto reserves can actually be capitalized.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

US pushes G7 to drop sanctions on Russia from their final document — reports

For next week's G7 summit in Canada, the US delegation is pushing to soften language on Russia, Bloomberg reports, citing sources.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Hamas sets 3 conditions for Gaza talks 2nd phase

As the negotiations to take place in Doha, the Hamas leadership set 3 conditions for the negotiations: exchange of prisoners, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a promise by Israel not to return to aggression.

"It is up to the occupation to show seriousness to the mediators in order to continue the stages of the agreement," the statement said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

☢️🇶🇦 Qatar urges IAEA oversight of Israel's nuclear sites

Israel should join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state and submit its facilities to international scrutiny, the official statement said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Tesla faced at least 10 attacks as Musk joins Trump's team

The backlash against Elon Musk intensified as the businessman took on DOGE, NBC reports.

📹 Social media footage shows a recent attack on Tesla's Manhattan showroom by protesters.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt