Ukraine Submits New Proposals to End War
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Kyiv had submitted new proposals to Washington aimed at ending the war with Russia, though he gave no details on their contents, according to Al Jazeera. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said the US could help by strengthening Ukraine's air defenses while increasing pressure on Moscow to prepare "for an end to the war rather than prolonging it." Russia disputed that any proposal exists. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters Moscow is "unaware" of such a document and that the US never passed one along through diplomatic channels, according to TASS. Ryabkov added that Russia could promptly arrange a meeting with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner once their travel plans are known. Separately, Federation Council foreign affairs chief Grigory Karasin said Russia is prepared to discuss only whatever version the US itself puts forward, "regardless of what Zelenskyy has…
Cuba Is No Longer a Cold War Relic
Fidel Castro would have turned 100 on Thursday, and Cuba marked the anniversary with ceremonies in Havana attended by his 95-year-old brother Raúl, who made a rare public appearance. The commemoration unfolded amid one of the most severe economic and political crises in Cuba's modern history, with prolonged blackouts, shortages of food and medicine, and continued mass emigration. Reuters reported that some power cuts now exceed 20 hours a day. The contrast captures a deeper change. Cuba's government remains intact, but the revolutionary model Fidel built is steadily losing both its economic foundations and its hold over younger generations. At the same time, U.S. pressure and renewed Russian and Chinese engagement are making the island strategically relevant again. The Mechanism Behind the Collapse Cuba's problems cannot be reduced to U.S. sanctions. The military-controlled conglomerate Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA) dominates important hard-currency sectors including tourism, retail and logistics, while…
Trump Puts New Tariffs on Drone Imports
President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation imposing tariffs of up to 100 percent on imported drones and their components, a move the White House frames as reducing US reliance on foreign, largely Chinese-made unmanned aircraft. The order landed one day after Washington's costliest known drone losses of the Iran war became public. That timing overlap between trade policy and battlefield attrition has drawn added attention, even though the two actions are not officially linked. Under the White House proclamation, drones and components judged to pose the greatest security risk face a 100 percent tariff, a category covering drones with a maximum takeoff weight above 25 kilograms and any drone with thermal-imaging capability, along with their docking stations. Smaller drones outside those specs, and other components, face a 25 percent tariff. Close allies get preferential rates: drones and components from EU member states, Japan, Liechtenstein, South Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan…
NATO Fighters Shoot Down Drone After Latvian Airspace Incursion
Latvia declared an airspace threat before dawn on Friday after a foreign drone entered its territory over the Balvi region in the country's northeast, prompting NATO fighters to scramble and shoot the aircraft down within roughly an hour. The incident is the latest in a series of drone incursions that has tested the alliance's Baltic air defenses since a Ukrainian drone struck an oil facility near Rēzekne in May, prompting a major review of Latvia's air-defense posture, and it comes days after monitoring groups reported a sharp rise in Russian jamming activity across the Baltic Sea. According to Latvia's National Armed Forces (NBS), the drone entered Latvian airspace in the Balvi region in the early hours of Friday, triggering an orange alert shortly before 04:00 across Augšdaugava, Preiļi, Rēzekne, Balvi and Alūksne municipalities, with cell-broadcast warnings sent to residents in the affected areas. NBS confirmed roughly an hour later that…
Iran and Russia Exploit Same Air Defense Gap
Two wars, fought thousands of kilometers apart, are converging on the same insight: the United States only has so many Patriot interceptors, and its adversaries have started counting them. From the deserts of Jordan to the skies over Kyiv, Iran and Russia are running versions of the same campaign – pairing cheap, disposable drones with expensive, hard-to-stop ballistic missiles, forcing American and Ukrainian defenders to burn through their most valuable interceptors just to stay even. Neither country is hiding the logic. Both have studied the other's battlefield, and both now know that a stockpile built for a Cold War threat has a bottom, and that bottom is closer than Washington would like to admit. Iran's Layered Assault in the Gulf Iranian forces have spent recent months refining a strike formula built to drain American air defenses rather than simply overwhelm them outright, according to reporting carried by Yahoo News, citing…
Suspected Sabotage Wave Hits Europe
Europe is entering a more dangerous phase of hybrid-security confrontation as governments investigate incidents affecting critical infrastructure, military logistics, defence production and, most recently, the safety of individuals linked to Ukraine's war effort. The incidents remain under separate investigation and should not automatically be treated as a single confirmed campaign, but their concentration in recent days has intensified concern across the continent. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on August 13 that Poland's Internal Security Agency and police, working with U.S. services, arrested a Russian national on August 7 over an alleged plot to kill a dual Ukrainian-American citizen in Warsaw. Tusk called it the first known case of Russia targeting a U.S. citizen on NATO territory and said the man was "inconvenient to the Putin regime," according to AP. Officials have not disclosed the target's identity or occupation. AP noted the case follows a broader pattern of disrupted plots…
