By liberating Artemovsk (Bakhmut) from the Kiev regime's forces, Russia is gathering momentum, but only future developments will show how control over this city "fits into the overall pace of conflict," military analyst and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.
Taking control of Artemovsk (Bakhmut) was a military victory that shows Russia is winning, Scott Ritter told Sputnik.
Some have likened the grueling hostilities to secure Artemovsk to the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII in terms of its importance, the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer added, emphasizing that the big question is what comes next.
Future developments will demonstrate how successfully Russia is able to exploit this victory, and continue to inflict heavy casualties on the Kiev regime's forces. It also remains to be seen whether the Ukrainian military will manage to launch its much-touted “counterattack.”
“It doesn’t seem that Ukraine will be able to achieve major battlefield success, even though some 60,000 trained and equipped with NATO weaponry reserves have been accumulated. Many of these reserves were used in the battle for [Artemovsk], others have been neutralized during an attempt to gather near the front. Russia has developed tactical operational and strategic advantages over Kiev that make it almost impossible for Ukraine’s forces to be able to amass military power of sufficient quantity to carry out a sustained offensive operation,” Scott Ritter said.
Artemovsk was a 'military victory', he underscored, stressing that it was up to Russia to define what the political victory would be......more below
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a leading civil rights organization, has accused Israel of carrying out “an organized and systematic practice of sexual torture” against Palestinian detainees from the besieged Gaza Strip.
PCHR said in a new report that its investigators have documented extensive sexual violence against both Palestinian women and men detained by Israeli forces across Gaza over the past two years.
According to PCHR, researchers and lawyers interviewed several Palestinians recently released from Israeli custody, who described repeated incidents of rape, forced stripping, filming of abuse, and sexual assault using objects and dogs, along with other forms of psychological humiliation.
One 42-year-old mother, detained while crossing an Israeli checkpoint in northern Gaza in November 2024, told investigators she endured repeated rape and physical abuse over several days.
“They put me on a metal table, pressed my chest and head against it, cuffed my ...
Accepting the Washington-based lender’s plan would be a “disgrace” for Dakar, the African state’s prime minister has said
Senegal has rejected a debt-restructuring proposal put forward by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The West African country’s prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, said following the plan would amount to a national “disgrace.”
Sonko made the remarks at a rally in the capital, Dakar, on Sunday, days after the Washington-based lender concluded a two-week mission to Senegal without a new financing deal.
Senegal’s public debt has risen to over $11 billion amid the discovery of $7 billion in undeclared loans. The IMF has since frozen a $1.8 billion lending facility to the former French colony, citing misreporting and hidden debt.
Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who came to power in April 2024, has blamed his predecessor, Macky Sall, for the debt crisis.....more here
https://www.rt.com/africa/627581-senegal-rejects-imf-debt-restructuring-proposal/
While Washington dreams of a Golden Dome, Beijing is quietly building one that actually works
When Donald Trump unveiled the Golden Dome in May 2025, he promised nothing less than a revolution in American security – a $175-billion missile defense shield designed to intercept any threat to the United States.
Modeled on Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the new project envisions an integrated network of satellites, next-generation interceptors, radars, and laser weapons extending from the Earth’s surface to outer space. The ambition is clear: complete, preemptive, and absolute protection by 2029.
Yet behind the spectacle of technological grandeur lies a troubling pattern. No concrete system architecture has been presented, and early projections suggest the true cost could triple the official figure. More importantly, the concept of “absolute security” signals an enduring American desire for unipolar dominance – one that undermines, rather than reinforces, global ...
