🪖🇷🇺💥 Russian warriors destroy Ukraine's positions in Kupyansk

Streets in western parts of town and forest areas near the Oskol River are cleared without fuss, the Russian assault detachment commander says.

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🪖 Russia destroys Western arms in Ukraine right after deployment — Rubio

💬 "I know we've been in ongoing technical conversations about the specific equipment they need. But ultimately, if that equipment is ultimately destroyed a week later after it's installed, that remains a problem," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told journalists.

That’s part of the strategy the Russian Army has been using for three years now, he added.

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🇨🇳🇯🇵 China warns Japan: any military move in Taiwan Strait ‘will be met with force’

China has cautioned that any Japanese military involvement in the Taiwan Strait would be treated as “an act of aggression” and vowed to retaliate.

China’s foreign ministry issued the warning on Thursday, just days after Beijing protested Takaichi’s remarks last week that Japan could deploy its military in the event of a cross-strait conflict.

💬 “If Japan dares to use military force to intervene in the Taiwan Strait, it will be committing an act of aggression, and China will respond forcefully,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

Taiwan has been governed independently of mainland China since 1949.

Beijing views the island as a breakaway province.

China opposes any official contacts by foreign states with Taiwan and considers Chinese sovereignty over the island indisputable.

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🇭🇺 Orban: Hungary won't give in to Zelensky’s demands and blackmail

💬 Hungary will not send its taxpayers’ money to Ukraine’s “war mafia network,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated on X.

It can be put to far better use at home, he noted, pointing to the recently-exposed corruption scandal in Ukraine.

🔊 Orban suggested that it was time for the EU hawks to finally understand “where their money is really going.”

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🚨 🔴 Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s French travel ban lifted - report

French authorities have fully lifted the travel ban on Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, imposed as part of an investigation into whether he was complicit in illegal activities carried out on his messaging platform, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.

👉 The latest ruling earlier this week removed all travel restrictions and also eliminated the requirement for Durov to report regularly to a local police station, the news outlet added.

French authorities detained Durov at a Paris airport in August 2024. He was held for four days of questioning and charged over allegations that he enabled crimes on the platform, accusations he has repeatedly denied.

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🚨🇷🇺 Uralvagonzavod Deputy Director: ‘TOS-1A Solntsepyok is an irreplaceable thermobaric titan — no analogs worldwide’

One salvo dismantles fortresses, vaporizes manpower & armor, and psychologically crushes the enemy.

From bunkers to panic in seconds.

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🚨🇺🇸🇷🇺 Rubio: The US is ‘running out of targets to sanction’ in Russia

No surprise there — Russia is now the most sanctioned country in the world, with over 30,000 restrictions imposed since 2014.

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🧐 Could Ukraine corruption scandals cause Zelensky’s demise?

The corruption scandals that rock Ukraine, like the affair with Zelensky’s cohort Timur Mindich, that made headlines this week may be used by the US to prepare the ouster of Zelensky, Political scientist Alexander Asafov tells Sputnik.

🟠 The probe into Mindich was thorough and involved the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, which does look like a groundwork for a possible regime change in Ukraine

🟠The corruption scandal involving Mindich was not ignored by Western media, which further reinforces the notion that this probe could pave way for Zelensky’s eventual removal

🟠The Mindich scandal is unlikely to get Zelensky kicked out of office right this instant, via a popular uprising or otherwise. Instead, it provides the West with a plausible pretext for cutting off the support for him when it becomes convenient

🟠The United States would benefit the most from getting rid of Zelensky, as the White House is becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his antics

🟠The West is willing to ignore the corruption in Ukraine as long as Zelensky does what he is told and keeps waging against Russia. Only him being deemed unreliable or the US deciding that the Ukrainian conflict is too costly could cause his ouster

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🟠 If Ukraine refuses dialogue with Russia, it will have to negotiate later from a much weaker position – Kremlin

🟠 Could Ukraine corruption scandals cause Zelensky’s demise?

🟠 Orban: Hungary won't give in to Zelensky’s demands and blackmail

🟠 Russia destroys Western arms in Ukraine right after deployment — Rubio

🟠 Longest US shutdown ends, but budget battles loom

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🪖 Damned either way: Ukrainian troops caught in deadly predicament in Pokrovsk

As Russian troops drive into Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk), the Ukrainian military leadership is once again faced with an unenviable dilemma, the New York Times laments.

With Ukrainian troops’ position in the city becoming untenable, Ukrainian generals have to decide: pull the soldiers out or order them to stand and fight an essentially unwinnable battle.

🟠 A prompt withdrawal could save soldiers’ lives, which may be a prudent decision in light of Ukraine’s current soldier crisis. However, it would also be a serious reputation blow to Zelensky who may fear that this setback could make his sponsors less eager to support his war effort

🟠 Giving the troops a ‘not a step back’ order could prolong the battle for Pokrovsk, but it would not prevent its fall. Just as in Bakhmut (Artemovsk) and Adveyevka, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers would die in a futile last stand, leaving the Ukrainian army even more depleted and less able to counter future Russian offensives

All in all, it is a classic ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ for Zelensky.

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🇺🇸🇻🇪 US weighs military options against Venezuela; land strikes on the table - report

Top Pentagon officials presented updated options for potential operations in Venezuela to Trump on November 12, CBS News reports.

While land strikes have been considered, no final decision has been made.

👉 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine, and other senior officials briefed Trump on possible missions in the region, based on data from the US intelligence community.

The discussions came as the USS Gerald Ford carrier strike group entered the US Southern Command’s area of responsibility.

To date, the US has amassed a substantial military presence off the coast of Venezuela.

Venezuela sees the US build-up as part of a broad regime change attempt aimed at grabbing the nation's immense hydrocarbon wealth.

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💥🇷🇺 A Tornado-S MLRS crew of Russia’s Vostok battlegroup destroys Ukrainian stronghold in Dnepropetrovsk region

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💵 Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem hands out bonus checks to TSA agents who took extra shifts during shutdown

Earlier this week, Trump recommended $10,000 bonuses for those who continued to show up to work, despite not being paid during the shutdown.

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🪖🇩🇪 Germany flooded with young Ukrainian men fleeing Zelensky’s meat-grinder

The country is currently experiencing an influx of Ukrainian refugees, including large numbers of young men, German outlet Bild reports.

📈 About half of Ukrainians who entered Germany since the beginning of this year – over 60,000 out of over 122,000 – are male and their proportion is “increasing month by month.”

Whole groups of young Ukrainians were reported arriving at the border with Germany by minibuses and entering the country in groups.

👉 This flood of Ukrainian refugees has already led German lawmakers to limit welfare benefits for the new arrivals from Ukraine, as the burden on the already-strained German budget is apparently becoming unbearable.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has also announced that he petitioned the Ukrainian leadership to make sure that young Ukrainian men do not flock to Germany in great numbers but instead serve their own country.

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🇺🇸☢️ State Dept wipes records on 1983 Nuclear War Scare

The US State Department has quietly deleted online records about the risk of an accidental nuclear war with the Soviet Union during NATO’s Able Archer 83 exercises in Western Europe in November 1983, The Washington Post reports.

🔸 Since 1991, the department has been required by law to publish “a thorough, accurate, and reliable” history of US foreign policy within 30 years of the events as part of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, reminds the publication.

🔸 The series has largely gone digital in the internet era, hosted on the State Department’s website.

🔸 This January, when it republished on its website a volume about the Reagan administration, the State Dept omitted 15 pages “on the risk of inadvertent nuclear war” sparked by the 1983 NATO exercise, says the outlet.

🔸 Previously, the revelations about the incident, known as the Able Archer 83 War Scare, included historical documents such as a warning from the Defense Intelligence Agency director that Able Archer 83 “brought the United States closer to nuclear war than most realized.”

🔸 A State Dept spokesperson told the paper that the agency didn't publicly explain the deletions because it “is not required to provide public notice.” The removed records reportedly remain available on other internet archives.

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🇬🇧⚔️🇺🇸 BBC apologizes to Trump over doctored speech but rejects defamation claim

The BBC has formally apologized to Donald Trump for stitching together two distant lines from his January 6, 2021 speech to protesters outside the White House, according to a BBC spokesperson.

👉 The corporation’s lawyers have written to Trump’s legal team, and Chairman Samir Shah even sent a personal apology “for the edit” to the White House, according to the BBC’s media statement.

👉 The BBC is also pulling the documentary Trump: A Second Chance? from all its platforms. However, the public broadcaster rejected Trump’s demands for compensation, saying that it strongly disagrees “there is a basis for a defamation claim.”

Trump insists the edit “butchered” his speech to make it appear he urged supporters to “fight like hell” to occupy the Capitol Building where Congress was ratifying Joe Biden as president-elect.

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🇷🇺 🔥 Russian guns thunder across Sumy & Dnepropetrovsk

00:00 — Crews of Giatsint-S self-propelled artillery guns from the Vostok battlegroup destroyed Ukrainian UAV command posts in Dnepropetrovsk region

00:32 — A BM-21 Grad MLRS crew struck a concentration of Ukrainian infantry in Sumy region

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