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Milorad Dodik, holocaust denier and bosom buddy of war criminals Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić, and Russian sock puppet, has been making unexplained payments to members of the Trump family and their entourage, and now shows up as a guest of honor at Mar-a-Lago. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The article outlines the various social welfare payment increases in Ireland that will take effect from January 1, 2027, including a €10 boost to most weekly payments, a new €500 cost of disability payment, and changes to the Child Support Payment and other allowances. #SocialWelfare #Ireland #Budget2027

A study by Handelsblatt reveals a consistent pattern: bribe payments are funneled to Trump's family and entourage in crypto in order to secure lucrative non-bid US government contracts, appointments, pardons and changes to regulations. It's the most brazen corruption seen in a modern democracy.

stoked to be shortlisted for political journalism prize at British Journalism Awards for our coverage of Epstein’s payments to Peter Mandelson and his partner - and the minister’s leaking state secrets to the convicted paedophile (With @pmdfoster.bsky.social) pressgazette.co.uk/press-gazett...

The author publicly invited Aleksandar Vučić to a debate and asked where the billions of euros they alleged had been stolen from the people of Serbia had gone. They also asked who had received the money, authorized the payments and benefited from public funds. https://t.co/ZCbzyFpdk5 #Srbija #javnaRasprava #korupcija #RS (translated)

Three major groups, including recipients of the Bereaved Parent Grant, Child Benefit, and the Back To School Clothing and Footwear Allowance, will not receive an increase in social welfare payments in January 2027 despite other payments being adjusted. #SocialWelfare #Budget2027 #Ireland

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Okey, this is NEW to me. NEW that I'm trying a fresh European social network, which I hope will succeed and NEW to me that I'm trying to write english analysis. I'm a geopolitics writer from Lithuania who has a dedicated reader base on facebook and growing my base on youtube. So this is just me trying to reach a bigger European audience. Hope you like it. Now with my post: Have you noticed that we've gone right back to early 2025? And how quickly regimes change their propaganda narratives whenever the situation shifts or they see an opportunity? We've just had two weeks that really felt like a repeat of early 2025. Suddenly, there's pressure to end the war AGAIN. Suddenly, concessions to Russia and excuses for its actions AGAIN. Pressure on Ukraine AGAIN. The same fake negotiators travelling to meet the fake tsar and sucking up to him AGAIN. Military aid to Ukraine being blocked AGAIN. New/same proposals to end the war AGAIN. And suddenly, kremlin propaganda is treating the americans as friends AGAIN. AND NOTHING... Nothing will change, because it always hits the same wall. russia demands territories that never belonged to it, that it does not control and that it cannot conquer. The Americans want Ukraine to accept this condition because trump simply wants the war to end, no matter the terms. Well... Ukraine refuses to be blackmailed. Once again. Okay, there is one small difference. In early 2025, trump was trying to show that he was delivering on his promises AFTER the election. In late 2026, he's trying to convince the next wave of voters that he's still relevant BEFORE the election. The really interesting part is that Ukraine is in a much better position today than it was in early 2025. Back then, Trump told Zelensky that he had no cards. Now he's asking Zelensky not to play the entire hand of cards he actually holds. YES, there was a bit of panic among all of us. It's certainly not pleasant when the USA starts throwing obstacles in Ukraine's way. The good thing is that these episodes have always been temporary. Because the whole world quickly finds out what the americans have done, and eventually they run out of room to manoeuvre. First, because it becomes embarrassing. Second, because they often end up creating problems for themselves. Every restriction on intelligence sharing, every starlink restriction and every suspension of weapons deliveries is seen around the world for what it is: blackmail. And after every trump-style act of blackmail, America suddenly starts losing economic partners and arms customers, while Europe accelerates the development of its own systems and works to free itself from dependence on the United States. And this latest attempt by trump to portray putin as the saviour of the US economy and Zelensky as the man to blame for high diesel prices? I'd say it has backfired spectacularly. Trump's approval rating has fallen to 31%. Meanwhile, Zelensky's approval rating has surged AGAIN, reaching 57% in polls towards the end of October. Well... as I've said before. Every time trump attacks Zelensky, and especially every time he starts shouting that Zelensky should be removed from office, Zelensky refuses to back down and stands up for Ukraine. And the Ukrainian people rally behind him. So, after all this déjà vu nonsense, trump himself revealed two days ago that musk had restricted starlink operations in Ukraine and had supposedly been asked to restore the connection. (The fact is, both of them had a hand in this.) And the news media quickly started reporting that everything was back to normal. BUT... no. Nothing has actually been fixed. Yesterday, trump once again started saying that if the restrictions are still in place, he will most definitely sort everything out. In other words, we're seeing the same stalling tactics as with the restrictions on intelligence sharing. In short, musk got angry because Ukraine is striking russian data centres. And trump is probably just as angry for exactly the same reason. Because these attacks undermine his election propaganda campaign. Speaking of data centres, today the Ukrainians struck a particularly SIGNIFICANT one. The target was a data centre belonging to russia's federal xax service. Why does this matter? It stores and processes tax records and other government information. If the damage is extensive, this could cause the russian authorities far more trouble than a disruption to online payments. Unfortunately, all we know so far is that the building's exterior was damaged. Whether the interior was affected remains unclear. Now, back to those boomerangs coming back to hit America after its blackmail tactics. European telecommunications companies are ALREADY discussing how to join forces and strengthen a common European mobile communications network. To make this possible, the European Commission decided earlier this year that, once certain agreements with foreign partners expire, some frequencies used by European satellites would be allocated to European companies rather than foreign ones. Well... put simply, spaceX and its starlink service could lose access to certain frequency bands in Europe. And the Americans are furious about it. Meanwhile, following all this starlink nonsense, the Ukrainians are joining forces with Finland's NOKIA and ICEYE to develop their own domestic satellite communications system. And this brings us to the main point: trump's blackmail tactics are coming back to hurt him and his best friend, the fake tsar, in a big way. russia will NOT get territories that never belonged to it and should never belong to it. Instead, it will ultimately destroy itself in this senseless war. By trying to pressure Ukraine, trump has effectively thrown a spanner in the republicans' works just before the elections. Europe has started calling trump what he is: a traitor. And Ukraine, together with Europe, is moving even further away from America's hostile administration while gaining greater independence. It will be a very strange period if, as we hope, America really does experience a Blue Wave in the elections. The Democrats, with a majority in Congress, will try to rebuild relations with Europe and help Ukraine, while a politically isolated president will probably obstruct their efforts out of spite over his election defeat. Either way, we still have a long way to go before the elections. And as the rift between Europe and America continues to widen, we're also seeing growing US pressure on Europe and attempts to interfere in our internal affairs. Returning to starlink, trump and musk are already publicly ranting that Europe will face consequences if it tries to restrict the activities of American companies on our continent. And this interference in European affairs is also clearly visible in Trump's comments about the protests taking place across Europe. I'll be publishing several detailed articles about that over the weekend. Meanwhile, several significant decisions concerning Ukraine were made in Europe this week: 1) Ukraine has been allowed to purchase weapons through NATO's procurement agency. In other words, procurement should become faster and more cost-effective. 2) EU leaders have expressed support for Ukraine's steps towards EU membership. More and more negotiating clusters are being opened. 3) The EU has also unanimously rejected the idea of territorial concessions. 4) There is also increasingly serious discussion about a new, additional €70 billion aid package for Ukraine for 2027. Once again, there are cautious references to those frozen russian assets. It's probably an unlikely option, but it would certainly be nice to see it happen. I won't try to come up with some magical conclusion. The point is simply that we shouldn't worry too much that some Trump might suddenly force Ukraine into capitulation or somehow make it accept concessions. And we shouldn't expect the war to end just yet, either. Not because we don't desperately want this nightmare of terror to end, but because russia simply isn't ready to stop fighting. All those Kremlin statements about being willing to negotiate are nothing more than an attempt to extract concessions in advance. So, once again, this is a good time to support Ukrainian soldiers' fundraising campaigns. Still, I can at least wish you all a good weekend. --------- P.S. I use capital letters for those that I respect, and small letters to those that I have no respect. You get it. Follow me for more in-depth articles about Europe, Ukraine, USA, war with russia, war with Iran, Middle East, China and all kinds of interesting geopolitics topics. The following ones will be about the ongoing protests/riots in Europe.

Drones hit three Yandex facilities, a Sber centre and a VKontakte server farm across five Russian regions, causing persistent failures in payments, navigation and cloud services. Yandex’s most powerful supercomputer, ranked 19th globally, was housed in one of the targeted facilities. #Ukraine #Russia #CyberWarfare

The post called on Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to answer whether riot police were receiving special payments of €2,500 for beating students, and whether financial incentives were linked to the repression of student protests. https://t.co/RJaJyyw4j4 #Shqipëri #Protesta #EdiRama #AL (translated)