Important Takeaways:
- Putin ‘is prepared to SHARE Crimea with Ukraine according to new peace plan that has been presented by Russia to the US’
- It would see the Kremlin dictator gain spoils from going to war.
- ‘The main purpose of his [Kolokoltsev’s] arrival was to hand over Russia’s peace plan to the US authorities,’ said Gordon, who said it was a Putin plan ‘to end the war’.
- The demands were that Ukraine must completely withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk regions, both of which are now partially annexed by Russia.
- But Russia would hand over Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station and the nearby town of Enerhodar to Ukraine.
- And he would discuss the possible transfer of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to the control of Ukraine.
- Crimea would become a ‘specially demilitarized administrative territory with dual subordination to Ukraine and the Russian Federation’.
- Ukraine must take on itself legally binding international guarantees, not to block the supply of water to Crimea,’ said Gordon, reading from a document.
- Putin seized the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and vowed he would never return it to Ukraine.
- Ukraine would also control a 62-mile ‘demilitarized zone’ along the Dnipro River.
- The Ukrainian army would have a legal maximum size, and the country would be barred from joining NATO, a key Zelinsky goal.
- But Putin would not seek to block Ukraine joining the EU.
- The West would drop sanctions on Russian oil and gas, as well as banking.
- Gordon gave the army size as 350,000, but the Gosdumskaya Telegram channel said 150,000.
- The UN meeting that the Russian minister attended was a ‘diversionary maneuver’, said Gordon.
- The Donetsk and Luhansk regions cannot be transferred under the control of Ukraine, because this will cause, they say, the imminent genocide of the population of the territory, a third of which took part in hostilities against Ukraine,’ said Gordon.
- There has been no official comment from the US, Russia or Ukraine over the alleged back channel contacts concerning Kolokoltsev’s visit.
- Intriguingly, Kolokoltsev’s plane was seen alongside former US president Donald Trump’s aircraft as it arrived in Washington.
- Trump has vowed that he could rapidly halt the debilitating war if re-elected and hinted that this would involve Ukraine ceding territory in exchange for security assurances short of being a NATO member
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Important Takeaways:
- The so-called Darlene 3 fire broke out in central Oregon on Tuesday and burned more than 2,415 acres by Wednesday morning, prompting officials in the rural city of La Pine – population 2,500 – to issue evacuation orders and warnings
- As of Thursday morning, the east side of town and surrounding areas were under a level three evacuation order, the highest level, while residents in the central and west sides were asked to prepare to flee their homes.
- Officials have contained the fire by 30% as “fire activity picked up” on Wednesday.
- To the north, firefighters made headway against the Long Bend fire, which erupted in central Oregon on Saturday and, as of Wednesday, burned more than 1,000 acres
- The blaze knocked out power to homes and temporarily closed a portion of the Wapinitia Creek
- In New Mexico, firefighters gained momentum in the battle against two blazes that have forced thousands from their homes and killed at least two people.
- The South Fork and Salt fires have scorched 17,569 and 7,939 acres of land, respectively. They broke out on June 17 and have damaged over 23,000 structures and displaced about 8,000 people.
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Important Takeaways:
- China is almost ready for its war with the West
- Admiral Paparo, Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, recently declared his intention to turn the Taiwan Strait “into an unmanned hellscape” in order to buy time in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The idea was to use “classified capabilities” – likely including surface vessel and long endurance UAVs – to make the lives of Chinese soldiers “utterly miserable for a month”.
- In the meantime, the concern is that while the US is developing combat capabilities in the region, China is building ships at a rapid clip. Paparo has previously noted that while the US is “not overmatched”, he does not “like the pace of the trajectory”.
- With Europe distracted by Russia’s war in Ukraine and American assets diverted by the turmoil in the Middle East, the Chinese Communist Party has perhaps its best ever chance for a successful war of conquest. Xi’s deadline of 2027 for the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan is likely to fall in a period of geopolitical chaos elsewhere.
- Washington knows that it has spread itself increasingly thin, and that this cannot be sustained indefinitely. If it is divided between propping up European countries unprepared to financially commit to the security of their own continent and the Indo-Pacific when China’s preparations for war flip over to the real thing, then it is at serious risk of losing a great power war for the first time.
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Important Takeaways:
- Biden administration officials have discussed potentially negotiating a unilateral deal with Hamas to secure the release of five Americans being held hostage in Gaza if current cease-fire talks involving Israel fail, according to two current senior U.S. officials and two former senior U.S. officials.
- Such negotiations would not include Israel and would be conducted through Qatari interlocutors, as current talks have been, said the officials, all of whom have been briefed on the discussions.
- White House officials declined to comment.
- The officials did not know what the United States might give Hamas in exchange for the release of American hostages. But, the officials said, Hamas could have an incentive to cut a unilateral deal with Washington because doing so would likely further strain relations between the U.S. and Israel and put additional domestic political pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- The five Americans believed to be held in Gaza are Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Omer Neutra and Keith Siegel. The three Americans believed to have been killed during the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack are Itay Chen, Judy Weinstein and Gad Haggai.
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Important Takeaways:
- Underwater volcano off northwestern US could BLOW in weeks – as 300m-long stretch is hit with ‘great swarm’ of earthquakes
- Scientists have detected a ‘great swarm’ of earthquakes off the coast of Washington clocking as many as 200 in a single hour during one day.
- Geologists at the University of Washington said the quakes could lead to the Juan de Fuca Ridge erupting within a few weeks or years – but the effects are believed to be mild and not likely impact anyone on land.
- The underwater volcano sits more than 16,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean and about 150 miles off the coast of Washington.
- On March 6, the group’s real-time monitoring network detected the earthquakes, which registered a 4.1 magnitude
- The ‘great swarm’ of earthquakes followed multiple days of increasingly frequent quakes, according to Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), which is collecting the data for researchers to study.
- The spike indicated a possible ‘impending magmatic rupture,’ the research group reported.
- Officials at ONC have stressed that the effects will be mild and local, and that residents on land are extremely unlikely to feel the quake.
- Nor is it likely to trigger tsunami activity, as a tsunami is set off by a different type of tectonic plate boundary movement: pushing together and slipping, rather than pulling apart.
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Important Takeaways:
- Nuclear Threat: Russia Will Drop ‘Entire Arsenal’ on London, Washington if it Doesn’t Win Ukraine War
- Deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who was also formerly the Prime Minister and President of Russia in service to Vladimir Putin, has threatened Western capitals with the “entire strategic arsenal” of Russian nuclear weapons. Medvedev, for whom absolutely no slight is too small to necessitate a nuclear response, was speaking of Ukraine’s hope to retake its U.N.-recognized national territory which in some cases have been occupied by Russia for very close to ten years.
- Russia has amended its constitution and now considers those areas — Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia — to be full parts of the Russian Republic. Attempting to push the borders back to where they were before will invite a massive retaliation, Medvedev said in his latest threat on Sunday, making clear he sees the Western states aiding Ukraine with arms as legitimate targets.
- He said: “Attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. To a global war with Western countries using the entire strategic arsenal of our state. In Kiev, Berlin, London, Washington.”
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Important Takeaways:
- GOP hawks press Biden to target Iran directly over soldiers’ deaths
- “Last night, three U.S. service members were killed —and many wounded — during an unmanned aerial drone attack on our forces stationed in northeast Jordan near the Syria border,” Biden said in a statement on Sunday morning.
- Biden said the U.S. is “still gathering the facts of this attack,” but “we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.”
- According to U.S. central command, 25 service members were wounded in the attack.
- What they’re saying: Senate Minority Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called for “serious, crippling costs” to Iran, “not only on front-line terrorist proxies, but on their Iranian sponsors who wear American blood as a badge of honor.”
- Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said in a statement the attacks the U.S. has carried out on Iranian proxies outside Iran “will not deter Iranian aggression,” calling to “strike targets of significance inside Iran.”
- “The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). “Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward unworthy of being commander-in-chief.”
- John Cornyn, in a post on the social media site X, said: “Target Tehran,” later specifying that he wants the U.S. to strike Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. and its Quds Force branch.
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Important Takeaways:
- On Thin Ice With God: The Growing Betrayal of Israel And Obsession With Dividing Jerusalem
- This is just the beginning of the world’s obsession with Jerusalem and the Land of Israel (see Zechariah 12:1-4). In Joel 3:1-3, the Lord refers to the efforts of the nations to divide up His Land as a reason for His judgment of them in the final climatic battle, which is likely His destruction of the world’s armies at His Second Coming. God will severely judge those who seek to divide His Land.
- One website lists over a dozen occurrences of God displaying His displeasure at the attempts of the American government to facilitate deals that would divide up the Land of Israel. In each of the instances, calamities struck somewhere in the U.S. Some claim that these are merely “coincidences,” but it has happened far too many times for it not to be a warning from the Lord.
- That’s why I say the Biden administration is skating on remarkably thin ice with its devious support of solutions that would endanger the welfare of the people of Israel.
- I don’t know when the ice will break for the Biden administration or for other nations seeking to enforce the two-state solution upon Israel, but the Bible warns that it most certainly will not end well for them.
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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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Important Takeaways:
- Nuclear war is inevitable – North Korea
- The world is just a step away from nuclear conflict, North Korean Defense Minister General Kang Sun-nam warned in a statement made public on Tuesday and presented at the Moscow International Security Conference.
- The official blamed Washington’s desire for regime change in Pyongyang for ratcheting up tensions. He also accused the US of increasing its military presence in the region by deploying nuclear-capable aircraft and a submarine to the area.
- “Now, the question is not if a nuclear war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, but who starts it when,” Kang warned. In this year alone, the US sent “massive strategic arms” to the region, including a nuclear-capable submarine, an aircraft carrier group, and a nuclear-capable bomber, he added.
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