Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled on Monday that in the near future, Moscow and Ankara will complete negotiations on the creation of a gas hub in Turkiye to make the energy situation in the region more balanced. How are the gas hub talks going?
Russo-Turkish energy cooperation is proceeding, as Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined on September 4. Turkiye buys around 45% of its natural gas from Russia per annum via the Blue Stream and TurkStream pipelines across the Black Sea, and is continuing to implement the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant project together with Moscow. Meanwhile, one project that has caught the world's attention is the Russo-Turkish gas hub, which, theoretically, may revive the fuel's flow to the EU.
What is the Russo-Turkish Gas Hub?
In the wake of the sabotage attack that destroyed Russia's Nord Stream infrastructure delivering the nation's natural gas to the EU, President Putin came up with an initiative on October 12, 2022 to redirect the supplies intended for the damaged pipelines to Turkiye and provide the fuel to Europe via a new route, "if our partners are interested in this." The Russian president talked about potentially building additional Black Sea links toward Turkiye.
Ankara welcomed the proposal, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordering on October 14, 2022 his government to promptly start work on the gas hub plan. Turkiye has the capacity to become a major international energy hub, the Turkish leadership told the media later in the month.....More Below
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......
