The United States will be the first country to pull the nuclear trigger, an American academic and political commentator has warned.
Daniel Kovalik, an academic at the University of Pittsburgh, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday, while commenting on the incendiary statements by former US national security adviser H.R. McMaster and other American officials.
McMaster said on Sunday that the United States must take Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine “seriously.”
McMaster, a retired US Army lieutenant general who served as a national security adviser under former President Donald Trump, claimed that Putin’s nuclear threat is the “only quiver he has left” as the Russian leader struggles in the war.
“We ought to take it seriously,” McMaster said of the nuclear threat. “We have to, but we ought to not allow this to cow us in terms of the support for the Ukrainians.”
Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that there is no one to stop Putin from following through on his recent threats of using nuclear weapons.
The United States is considering how to respond to a range of potential scenarios, including fears that Russians could use tactical nuclear weapons, CNN reported on Sunday quoting three sources briefed on the latest intelligence.
“Officials caution the US has not detected preparations for a nuclear strike. However, experts view them as potential options the US must prepare for as Russia’s invasion falters and as Moscow annexes more Ukrainian territory,” the report said......more here---->
China has suspended several 2025 export controls on strategic materials — including rare earths, superhard materials, and lithium batteries – for a year. Is this a concession to the US, or a move in a far more complex game?
"The first aim of China’s export controls was to consolidate its leverage in negotiations. The second was to establish a long-term framework for managing such controls," says Yana Leksyutina, deputy director at the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).
Сhina could activate this mechanism at any moment, and now everyone knows it’s a lever it holds, she explains to Sputnik.
Balancing the Mineral Market
"The moratorium on export bans to the US essentially resets the rare earth market to where it was previously," Jeff J. Brown, author of 'The China Trilogy' and founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation, tells Sputnik.
In the meantime, there will be a global rush by the US and its NATO allies to acquire as many rare earth ...
The Israeli regime has reportedly signed contracts worth millions of dollars in recent months to sway American public opinion as part of attempts to launder the occupying entity’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Friday that the multimillion-dollar campaign aimed to reshape US public opinion, both online and offline, through coordinated influence operations combining digital marketing, AI, geotagging, and religious messaging.
The contracts, signed between the Israeli regime and firms linked to US President Donald Trump, reveal a “hasbara [propaganda] campaign” and schemes to target millions of US churchgoers, deploy bots, hire influencers, and try to make ChatGPT more pro-Israel.
The largest contract, worth $6 million, was signed with Clock Tower X, owned by Trump’s former digital campaign chief Brad Parscale, to produce and distribute roughly 100 core pieces of pro-Israel content per month and thousands......
