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Russia, Ukraine Reach Energy Cease-Fire ‘Effective Immediately,’ Trump Reveals — Catching Kyiv Off-Guard

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President Trump announced Sunday that Russia and Ukraine have reached an energy cease-fire — which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed despite calling it “news” to him.

“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine,” Trump posted on Truth Social, days after he roiled Kyiv by unveiling a diesel purchasing deal with Moscow.

“Both parties have agreed. Do not break it! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Trump’s announcement appeared to catch Kyiv off-guard.

“The cease-fire announcement was news for me,” Zelensky told Axios’ Barak Ravid after Trump’s Truth Social post.

“But if Russians agree to an energy cease-fire Ukraine will agree. If President Trump negotiated it with Putin — please tell us when the cease-fire begins — we are ready and we will accept it,” he said. (Read more from “Russia, Ukraine Reach Energy Cease-Fire ‘Effective Immediately,’ Trump Reveals — Catching Kyiv Off-Guard” HERE)

World Health Organization Says No Sign of Plague Spreading in Russia

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World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday that his agency has seen no evidence of plague spreading after a suspected lab leak incident in Siberia, although he said this assessment was highly dependent on information from Russian authorities, and he hinted they have been less forthcoming than W.H.O. would prefer.

In fact, Tedros’ statement primarily repeated what Russian officials have told him:

In response to W.H.O.’s verification request under the International Health Regulations, the Russian health authorities reported that no case of plague had recently been registered in Irkutsk oblast. They informed W.H.O. that an epidemiological investigation had been conducted, preventive and control measures implemented, and identified contacts placed under medical observation and tested. They reported that no high-threat pathogens had been detected among the contacts and that medical observation of all identified contacts had been completed.

W.H.O. has remained in contact with the Russian health authorities and has offered technical support. W.H.O. has requested further information to clarify the cause of the severe pneumonia, the pathogen that prompted the public health measures, and media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause.

Tedros concluded by emphasizing that “timely, complete, and transparent information sharing under the International Health Regulations” is essential to providing “an accurate assessment of potential public health risks.” (Read more from “World Health Organization Says No Sign of Plague Spreading in Russia” HERE)

Russia Paying US Recruits $26,000 to Become Cannon Fodder in Ukraine War

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Russia is recruiting frontline troops for its war against Ukraine any way it can, and has duped at least 18 US men into fighting.

Moscow has suffered 1.5 million casualties including 500,000 deaths since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, per estimates from the UK, and aggressively enlists foreigners to prop up its war effort.

Most are sent into the “meatgrinder” — the frontlines where they are mostly cannon fodder, quickly mowed down by Ukrainian drones, soldiers or artillery.

“It has become an entire industry and is very profitable. Russia suffers 30,000–40,000 casualties every month and they are no longer able to cover their losses,” Vitaliy Matvienko, who heads a Ukrainian state project on Russian surrenders, told The Post.

“They recruit foreigners, send them to war, and when they are killed, their deaths do not create any negative reaction in Russian society. In most cases, the families of killed foreign recruits do not receive the compensation they are supposed to receive.”

Agents all around the world have been mobilized and use targeted ads on Facebook, TikTok and Telegram to prey on the poor, vulnerable and ideologically obsessed — earning $24,000 per recruit, plus a cut of their salary. (Read more from “Russia Paying US Recruits $26,000 to Become Cannon Fodder in Ukraine War” HERE)

Finland and Sweden Scramble Fighter Jets Together Against Russia in Historic First

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Finnish and Swedish fighter jets scrambled for the first time on Sept. 24 to intercept supersonic Russian military aircraft flying over the Gulf of Finland, marking a major milestone in Nordic defense cooperation amid heightened tensions with Moscow.

The mission also came one day before Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed European warnings about the threat from Moscow in the region and mocked Estonia’s new defense minister over the Baltic state’s preparations for a potential Russian attack.

Finnish F/A-18 Hornets and Swedish JAS 39 Gripens were scrambled after Russian aircraft were detected in the international airspace, according to the Swedish Armed Forces.

The Russian formation included a Tu-134 transport plane, a high-altitude, supersonic MiG-31 interceptor designed to detect and engage long-range threats; and Su-30 multirole fighter jets which are designed for air-to-air and air-to-ground combat.

“This is what close cooperation looks like in practice,” Maj. Gen. Jonas Wikman, commander of the Swedish Air Force, said in a statement following the joint operation. (Read more from “Finland and Sweden Scramble Fighter Jets Together Against Russia in Historic First” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

Russia’s Undersea War Games Expose Nightmare Scenario For Global Internet

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Russian submarines allegedly rehearsed deploying technology designed to disable critical undersea communications cables in the Arctic this spring, raising questions about how much of modern civilization would keep functioning if a global war turned the internet’s physical backbone into a battlefield.

British, Norwegian and American forces tracked and confronted the Russian vessels near Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and prevented them from completing the exercise, Reuters reported Thursday, citing two anonymous Western officials. The alleged operation involved Russia’s Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, known as GUGI, a secretive military organization specializing in deep-sea operations.

The alleged Russian operation adds to growing concern over how vulnerable critical infrastructure on the ocean floor could be during a wider conflict, following the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in 2022. The pipeline explosions demonstrated the potential for underwater infrastructure to be severely damaged by sabotage, though the incident has not been attributed to Russia and investigations have increasingly focused on individuals linked to Ukraine, Reuters reported, citing German prosecutors.

An internet infrastructure expert whose research focuses on internet routing told the DCNF that the Domain Name System, or DNS, the system that translates website names into the numerical IP addresses computers use to locate one another online, is the glue holding the global information infrastructure together.

“The DNS, the name system, is dependent on the network, and while caching features heavily in the DNS, as the caches age out a connectivity cut would mean that expired data would not be refreshed and the DNS would slowly dim out and turn dark,” Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, or APNIC, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. (Read more from “Russia’s Undersea War Games Expose Nightmare Scenario For Global Internet” HERE)

Putin Warns Europe: Send Troops to Ukraine, Get ‘War with Russia’

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President Vladimir Putin warned Europe on Friday that sending any troops to help Ukraine would mean an escalation of the conflict and “war with Russia.”

UPI reports Putin laid out his stark warning while speaking to reporters at the BRICS summit in New Delhi.

“Now, they say they are thinking of how to deploy troops to Ukraine,” he told reporters, as quoted by state-run news agency TASS as seen by UPI. “This would mean a war with Russia.”

The outlet notes Moscow’s caution to the rest of Europe follows French President Emmanuel Macron who one week ago said 26 countries including the UK had pledged to support sending troops to Ukraine in a peacekeeping mission to provide postwar guarantees.

“The day the conflict stops, the security guarantees will be deployed,” Macron told the media. (Read more from “Putin Warns Europe: Send Troops to Ukraine, Get ‘War with Russia’” HERE)

RFK Jr.’s Son, Conor Kennedy, put on Russian Wanted List for Fighting Alongside Kyiv in Ukraine War: ‘I was deeply moved’

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s son, Conor Kennedy, has been named on Russia’s international wanted list for fighting alongside the enemy in the Ukraine war, according to reports.

The Basmanny District Court of Moscow authorized the younger Kennedy’s “arrest in absentia,” accusing him of acting as a mercenary for the Ukrainian armed forces, Russian state outlet TASS reported last week.

He faces seven to 10 years in prison if captured, according to the outlet.

Kennedy, 32, revealed in an Instagram post in October 2022 that he’d secretly traveled to Kyiv to fight with an international legion on the front lines against Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine— confiding in just one person.

“Like many people, I was deeply moved by what I saw happening in Ukraine over the past year. I wanted to help. When I heard about Ukraine’s International Legion, I knew I was going, and I went to the embassy to enlist the next day,” he wrote in an Instagram post. (Read more from “RFK Jr.’s Son, Conor Kennedy, put on Russian Wanted List for Fighting Alongside Kyiv in Ukraine War: ‘I was deeply moved’” HERE)

Seven Dead after Ukrainian Drone Strikes Popular Russian Beach

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At least seven people, including three children, have been killed after a Ukrainian drone crashed onto a popular beach on the Russian Black Sea coast, according to Russian authorities.

Another 40 people were injured after a drone crashed into the busy holiday resort near the town of Gelendzhik on Monday.

Footage on social media shows the moment the drone veered towards the beach before slamming into it and causing a large explosion, which sent people fleeing from the water.

Officials said 17 people were rushed to the hospital following the incident and a specialist medical disaster team had been dispatched to the scene of the explosion.

Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Russia’s ‌southern Krasnodar region, which includes the resort, described the incident as a tragedy. (Read more from “Seven Dead after Ukrainian Drone Strikes Popular Russian Beach” HERE)

Russian OnlyFans Model Avoids Prison in Vladimir Putin’s War on Porn — but gets 3-year Internet Ban

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A raunchy Russian OnlyFans star narrowly avoided the clink but was slapped with a $60,000 fine and banned from the internet for three years amid President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on porn.

Sofya Vershinina, 21, was convicted of producing and distributing sexually explicit online videos in court in Moscow, Russia, The US Sun reported.

Amid Putin’s crackdown on anti-traditional values and his war on porn, prosecutors demanded the OnlyFans star be sentenced to three-and-a-half years in a Russian penal colony.

However, after pleading guilty and expressing remorse, the 21-year-old model received a three-year suspended jail sentence.

But her lighter punishment could be reversed if she breaches the conditions of her sentence. (Read more from “Russian OnlyFans Model Avoids Prison in Vladimir Putin’s War on Porn — but gets 3-year Internet Ban” HERE)

Photo credit: YouTube

Russia Tells Rubio America Sending More Weapons to Europe, Attempts to ‘Inflict Strategic Defeat’ are ‘Unacceptable’

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Russia’s Foreign Minister had a brief meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Philippines on Thursday morning, where Moscow said continued American arms sales to its European allies, who use them to arm Ukraine, are “unacceptable”.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is at the East Asia Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Manila, the Philippines, on Thursday and overnight Eastern Time held a bilateral meeting on the side-lines with his Russian counterpart, the veteran diplomat Sergei Lavrov. One of the only senior Russian political figures whose long career pre-dates and has survived the Putin era, Lavrov has been Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2004 and a Russian ambassador since the Soviet era.

Rubio said in a statement after the meeting ended that he’d discussed “the U.S.-Russia relationship and the need to end the Russia-Ukraine war”, the typical boilerplate from the Department of State for such meetings. Russia had its own, namechecking the 2025 Trump-Alaska summit — as they always do — but added further detail, including claiming they had delivered a protest to Rubio on U.S. weapons exports.

While the United States has long ago ceased to donate weapons directly to Ukraine, citing the enormous cost to taxpayers, it sells large quantities to its European allies at full price, which are then free to donate them in turn to Ukraine themselves. Foreign Minister Lavrov “emphasized that pumping Ukraine with more weapons is unacceptable”, Russian state media expressed, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself further laboured the point in a statement in which it accused European states of trying to inflict a defeat on the Russian Federation:

When discussing Ukraine-related issues, Lavrov briefed his American counterpart on the real situation along the line of contact and stressed that further flooding the Kiev regime with weapons was unacceptable, along with the overall destructive policy pursued by European countries, which continue seeking to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia.

(Read more from “Russia Tells Rubio America Sending More Weapons to Europe, Attempts to ‘Inflict Strategic Defeat’ are ‘Unacceptable’” HERE)