Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. Embassy in Moscow early Friday warned of an “imminent” extremist attack in Russia and alerted American citizens that they may be in danger.
- The warning comes a day after Russian authorities said they killed Islamic State militants who were plotting a terrorist attack on a Moscow synagogue.
- “The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours,” the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said in a brief statement on its website.
- On Thursday, Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, said it foiled a planned attack against a Moscow synagogue. FSB officials said that an Islamic State cell had plans to kill worshippers at the synagogue, according to media reports.
- “During their arrest, the terrorists put up armed resistance against FSB officers, and as a result, they were neutralized by return fire,” the FSB said in a statement, according to English-language media accounts.
- “Firearms, ammunition, as well as components for creating improvised explosive devices were found and seized,” the security service said.
- Russian officials said the attack was being planned by the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K.
- That group is believed to have been responsible for the August 2021 suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. Marines at the Kabul airport during America’s frantic military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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Important Takeaways:
- ‘Catastrophic scenario’ if NATO troops deploy to Ukraine – top Russian senator
- The possibility mulled by the French president could be taken as a declaration of war on Moscow, Konstantin Kosachev has said
- The potential deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine will lead to a “catastrophic scenario,” and could be interpreted as a “declaration of war” on Moscow, top Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev has said.
- The Vice Speaker of Russia’s upper chamber, the Federation Council, offered his take on remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron on the possibility of sending troops in a Telegram post on Tuesday. The approach exhibited by the French leader carries a risk of the situation devolving into a “catastrophic scenario,” Kosachev warned, stating that the move would not be tolerated by the Kremlin.
- “This is the line beyond which it’s no longer just NATO’s involvement in the war – this has been happening for a long time, but can be interpreted as the alliance entering direct hostilities, or even as a declaration of war,” Kosachev wrote.
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Important Takeaways:
- France Says Russia Threatened to Shoot Down Its Military Aircraft
- Russian forces threatened to shoot down French flights patrolling last month in international airspace over the Black Sea, signals of increasingly aggressive behavior from Moscow as its invasion of Ukraine struggles to make headway, France’s defense minister said Thursday.
- French flights include long-range patrols by its AWACS surveillance aircraft. Flying high above the Black Sea coast, they use their powerful radar and other surveillance gear to peer across to the Crimean Peninsula that was seized from Ukraine by Russia and annexed in 2014. The surveillance flights can spot missile launches, airborne bombing runs and other military activity in the Ukraine conflict.
- Russian pilots have at times made clear that they don´t like being watched.
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Important Takeaways:
- It is time for all member nations of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) to drop the United States dollar in favor of local currencies for financial relations and settlements, according to Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov this week, at the Russia-China Financial Dialogue forum in Beijing.
- “We need to further develop financial cooperation within the BRICS countries,” Siluanov added. “Here we see opportunities … to develop a payments system that would be independent of the infrastructure, which does not always fully fulfill the goals of individual countries.”
- “Therefore, the sustainable development of financial relations and settlements on the BRICS platform is important for us, and we believe that it is necessary to work out such issues, and today we will consider a number of them.”
- Many BRICS partners are already making trades with local or alternative currencies after sanctions stemming from the war in Ukraine effectively cut Moscow off from the Western financial system.
- Rather than kowtow to Western demands, Russia and its partners have instead been laying the groundwork for a new world order that will eventually cut off the West from global trade after the U.S. has been unseated as the global economic superpower.
- Communist China is quickly rising to the top of the trade heap with all of its cheaply made junk, and Russia is helping it and the other BRICS member nations further dethrone the U.S. by encouraging financial transactions in other currencies.
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Important Takeaways:
- A move by Japan to provide Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine will have “grave consequences” for Russia-Japan ties, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.
- Relations between Moscow and Tokyo, already difficult, have deteriorated sharply since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022. Japan has joined its Western allies in imposing sweeping economic sanctions on Russia.
- Last week, Japan said it would prepare to ship Patriot air defense missiles to the United States after revising its arms export guidelines, in Tokyo’s first major overhaul of such export curbs in nine years.
- Although Japan’s new export controls still prevent it from shipping weapons to countries that are at war, it may indirectly benefit Ukraine in its war with Russia as it gives the United States extra capacity to provide military aid to Kyiv.
- “The Japanese side loses control over the weapons with which Washington can now do whatever it wants,” Zakharova told a weekly briefing. “It cannot be ruled out that under an already tested scheme Patriot missiles will end up in Ukraine.”
- Such a scenario would be “interpreted as unambiguously hostile actions against Russia and will lead to grave consequences for Japan in the context of bilateral relations”, she said.
- Earlier this month, Japan and South Korea both scrambled jets to monitor joint flights by Chinese and Russian bombers and fighters near their territories.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korea’s Kim orders military to accelerate war preparations – state media
- Speaking on the policy directions for the new year at a key meeting of the country’s ruling party on Wednesday, Kim also said Pyongyang would expand strategic cooperation with “anti-imperialist independent” countries, news agency KCNA reported.
- North Korea has been expanding ties with Russia, among others, as Washington accuses Pyongyang of supplying military equipment to Moscow for use in its war with Ukraine, while Russia provides technical support to help the North advance its military capabilities.
- “He (Kim) set forth the militant tasks for the People’s Army and the munitions industry, nuclear weapons and civil defense sectors to further accelerate the war preparations,” KCNA said.
- On Thursday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited a frontline military unit in the eastern county of Yeoncheon to inspect its defence posture and called for an immediate retaliation if there was any provocation from North Korea.
- “I urge you to immediately and firmly crush the enemy’s will for a provocation on the spot,” Yoon told troops
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Important Takeaways:
- Russians banned from travel to hand over passports within 5 days–decree
- According to the Russian law, authorities can impose a travel ban on conscripts, employees of the Federal Security Service (FSB), convicts, or people who have access to state secrets or “information of special importance,” among others.
- The returned passport will be stored by the authorities that issued it, such as the interior ministry or the foreign ministry authorities. After the travel ban is lifted, the passport could be returned upon completing an application, according to the government decree.
- Those whose right to travel was temporarily limited on the basis of conscription for military or alternative civilian service will have to additionally provide a military ID with a proof that they completed service, the resolution says.
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Important takeaways:
- Putin plans to fly world’s biggest nuclear missile – Satan 2 – over the South Pole in test launch’ says Russian state media – before report is censored
- The Russian dictator is determined to flex his nuclear muscle to the West and will put his first regiment to be armed with the apocalypse 208-ton intercontinental nuclear weapon – the RS-28 Sarmat, aka ‘Satan 2’ – on ‘combat duty’ next month.
- This is despite an astonishing admission that the ‘unstoppable’ 15,880mph doomsday missile – as tall as a 14-storey tower block – is not properly tested.
- Putin’s own state news agency TASS reported that ‘even a truncated LCI [flight development tests], and assuming all launches are successful, would require several more launches, including via the South Pole’.
- It is likely to trigger deep alarm in the West as Putin prepares to deploy a rocket designed to be his ultimate nuclear strike weapon against NATO countries…
- TASS reported: ‘The Sarmat flight tests are currently being carried out from the Plesetsk spaceport to the Kura training ground in Kamchatka.’
- But ultimately, Putin’s subordinates will need to test the nuclear missile by flying it over the South Pole, the story suggested before it was censored.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia Says Risk of Nuclear, Chemical, Biological War Increasing, Blames America
- The United States’ foreign policy is wrecking global security, bankrupting Europe, and risks the outbreak of nuclear war, Russia said in a series of finger-pointing statements while failing to address its own role in the same
- Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said the deterioration of global security is the “natural consequence [of]… irresponsible” U.S. foreign policy. Referring to Israel, the Russian politician accused America of exacerbating conflicts and more broadly accused the United States of “stimulating the growth of common threats and challenges, including terrorism, drug trafficking, and transnational organized crime”.
- Patrushev went on to say, per Russia’s state news service that: “The risk of using nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is increasing.” The U.S. bears special culpability in the risk of biological threats, he said, because America has been engaged in “dangerous biological experiments” in Ukraine.
- Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who confirmed the rant was an official statement of the Kremlin.
- Russia’s remarks on Wednesday amount to a degree of saber-rattling and finger pointing, but come just days after Russia withdrew from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and months after it suspended the ‘New START’ (reduction of strategic offensive arms) treaty. The United States decried the latest move as an irresponsible “significant step in the wrong direction” which sets back confidence in international arms control.
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Important Takeaways:
- The BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will add six nations to its ranks next year, as Beijing and Moscow push for the loose collection of emerging economies to evolve into a robust counterweight to Western global dominance.
- Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will join as members in January
- For Beijing and Moscow, adding members is part of a long-running — and often frustrated — effort to turn a largely symbolic grouping into a vehicle for remolding international trade and finance structures to protect their interests against future sanctions from the United States and its allies.
- Sanctions targeting Russia over the war in Ukraine have added urgency to China’s effort to create alternative global financial structures and supply chains resilient to Western disruption.
- China and Russia have found some developing nations more receptive to their concerns about American dominance, which is part of the motivation for more members
- The war and China-U.S. trade tensions mean that Washington has shifted its focus to the Group of Seven and is less interested in the Group of 20, creating an opportunity for BRICS to become a better platform for large developing countries to speak up
- The “China-U.S. contest may still be locked in a stalemate, but the end result is inevitable”
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