🇷🇺 🤝 🇻🇳 Vladimir Putin and the President of Vietnam have just adopted a statement on deepening their strategic partnership and signed more than 10 documents expanding their co-operation

🔶️ "Russia is reaffirming it's old friendships and alliances, while the West alienates the global south"

📎 Chay Bowes

🇺🇸 🇮🇱 🇺🇦 "America makes only 500 PAC-3 interceptors per year, with a goal of getting this up to 650 by 2027. Israel is contemplating war in Lebanon, and there are allies with orders in - but the entire production run will be going to Ukraine."

📎 Big Serge

🇮🇶 🇱🇧 🇵🇸 The Iraqi Resistance Coordination Committee issued a statement suggesting a consensus among Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to resume attacks targeting US forces. | Critical Threats

🔶️ This is the Iraqi Resistance Coordination Committee's first coordinated statement since attacks on US forces paused in January 2024 that suggests such a consensus.

🔶️ Iran and Hamas are continuing to coordinate politically to maintain alignment across the Axis of Resistance during the Israel-Hamas War.

🔶️ Recent US and Israeli reports have emphasized the Hezbollah rocket, drone, and missile threat that Israel could face in the event of a major war between Israel and Hezbollah.

🔶️ Hezbollah is targeting Israeli air defense assets and surveillance equipment, probably to create temporary and local advantages vis-a-vis Israel and prepare for possible escalation.

🔶️ The tactically sophisticated nature of two Hamas attacks targeting IDF units in Rafah on June 20 underscores that two Hamas battalions in Rafah remain cohesive fighting units that have not been defeated or seriously degraded.

🔶️ This is consistent with the IDF’s report that it has “somewhat degraded” two of the four Hamas battalions in Rafah.

https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/iran-update-june-20-2024

🇺🇸 🇮🇱 🇱🇧 US officials have not explicitly told Israel they oppose any attack against Hezbollah, but warned that it could lead to a greater war, a US official said. Israel has made the case that it can pull off a “blitzkrieg,” the US isn't so sure - Kylie Atwood

📝 US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Israel is "very serious" about invading Lebanon.

📎 Kylie Atwood

🇺🇸 ⚡️"If we want the future of artificial intelligence to be built in the United States, then we're gonna need to produce a lot more electricity."

📎 Alec Stapp

🇰🇿 "In the afternoon of June 18, an assassination attempt was made on Aidos Sadikov, a Kazakhstani opposition BASE YouTube channel author, in the area of Viktor Yarmola Street in Kyiv. The attacker fired several shots while Sadikov was behind the wheel of a parked car."

▪️ "Sadikov’s wife and co-owner of the channel, Natalya Sadikova, was nearby and was not harmed. She described the shooter as a man of Caucasian appearance. Sadikov was taken to the hospital alive, underwent surgery, and is currently in a coma—according to his wife, who immediately blamed the authorities of Kazakhstan and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev personally for the attack."

▪️ "The Sadikovs have lived in Ukraine since 2014, running the BASE YouTube channel from there, which exposes compromising material on Kazakhstani politicians (often with the help of their rivals) and supports not only protest sentiments but also direct acts of violence—such as the riots in Almaty in January 2022."

▪️ "Aidos Sadikov holds refugee status; he was previously convicted in Kazakhstan under the hooliganism article for a fight with a passerby. It was during his imprisonment that Sadikov became an opposition figure and gained media recognition. He is not the only nationalist opposition figure who fled to Ukraine: Kuanysh Akhmetov, head of the "language patrols," and Zhasulan Duisembin, creator of the "Kazakh" national battalion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, also settled there."

▪️ "As for the assassination attempt, which was quickly attributed to Kazakhstan, it coincided with a visit to Kazakhstan by the EU sanctions adviser David O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan expressed concern over the "sharp increase in imports of goods banned in Russia" from Kazakhstan, essentially hinting at Kazakhstan's role in circumventing sanctions imposed on Russia."

▪️ "The "Kazakhstani trace" in the attempt on Sadikov, a marginal blogger with little influence on events in Kazakhstan, might be found. But it is unlikely to involve Kazakhstan's top officials. BASE was involved in very low-level political games, and Sadikov's criminal background must be considered."

▪️ "Moreover, the presence abroad of a cohort of nationalist opposition figures even played into the hands of Kazakhstan’s leadership, who did not have to deal with them directly, avoiding the creation of "martyrs of the bloody regime." Kazakh President Tokayev commented on the Kyiv attack, offering Ukrainian authorities assistance in the investigation if needed."

▪️ "The polite offer was acknowledged: on the night of June 20, just before the CSTO Foreign Ministers Council meeting on June 20-21, a video was released on the BASE channel stating that Ukrainian security forces had identified the perpetrators. The shooter of Caucasian appearance turned out to be two Kazakhstani citizens: Altay Zhakanbayev, born in 1988, and Meyram Karataev, born in 1991, who was dismissed from Kazakhstan's Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2019."

❗️ "The priority was clearly to confirm the weak version of the "long arm of Kazakhstan's security forces" and to increase Western pressure on Kazakhstan's authorities from a new, unexpected angle. Sacrificing opposition figures has been a tactic before. However, in this particular case, the possibility of a staged assassination attempt remains viable."

https://youtube.com/@base-kazakh

https://timesca.com/suspected-attacker-of-kazakhstan-blogger-aidos-sadykov-identifid/

🇰🇵 🇰🇷 In what is believed to be the Third Incident in the Month of June, a Large Group of North Korean Soldiers equipped with Tools crossed the Military Demarcation Line within the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) into South Korea on Friday, causing South Korean Forces to Broadcast Warning Messages as well as fire Warning Shots. The Soldiers quickly Withdrew back to the North Korean Side of the Border, with No Escalations by North Korean Forces being Observed. All of these Incidents are believed by U.S. and South Korean Officials to be Unintentional, resulting from Large-Scale Fortification and Clearing Operations which have been taking place on the North Korean Side of the DMZ since Late April, alongside Sections of the Border which do not have Clear Markings regarding the Demarkation Line.

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20240621004300315

📎 OSINTdefender

🛢 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 What the end of petrodollars means | Atlantic Council

🔶️ The age of the petrodollar is over. Saudi Arabia announced on June 13 2024 that it won’t renew a landmark agreement with the US — signed in June 1974 — to sell oil exclusively in US dollars in exchange for security guarantees. The deal has ensured that the dollar dominates the global oil trade, and its demise is the latest in a recent trend toward de-dollarization as countries from the BRICS and regions including the Middle East and Asia move to promote local currencies in cross-border payments—in the process gradually reducing the dollar’s importance in international finance. The end of the petrodollar reflects significant changes not just in the US-Saudi relationship, but in the global balance of power.

🔶️ Let’s take a look back to the Nixon administration. America was beset by high inflation and large current-account deficits amid an ongoing war in Vietnam, putting downward pressure on the dollar and threatening a run on US gold reserves. In 1971, the US ended the dollar’s convertibility to gold — which had been the lynchpin of the Bretton Woods international monetary system of fixed exchange rates. Major currencies began to float against each other in 1973. Then came the oil shock that fall, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut oil production and embargoed shipments to the US during the Yom Kippur war.

🔶️ Fast-forward fifty years, and the dominant global position once enjoyed by the US has weakened noticeably. Its share of world GDP has declined from 40% in 1960 to 25%. China’s economy has surpassed the US in Purchasing Power Parity terms. It now has to vie for influence with an increasingly assertive Beijing, while facing pushes even by allies such as Europe and elsewhere which want to become more autonomous from Washington in financial and foreign policy matters. Specifically, many countries have tried to develop alternative cross-border payment arrangements to the dollar to reduce their vulnerability to Washington’s increasing use of economic and financial sanctions.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/what-the-end-of-petrodollars-means/

🛰 🇺🇸 DARPA's Manta Ray spotted on Google maps

📍 34°09'12"N 119°12'31"W

📎 RAEFOS Network

🇵🇸 🇮🇱 🇱🇧 Endless War, Not 'Total Victory': IDF Wants to Leave Gaza, but Netanyahu Has Other Ideas | Haaretz

⬛️ As Israel's army prepares its forces, and the public, for an end to combat in Gaza to focus on the growing war in the north, Netanyahu is trapped in his ever-paranoid political web of pettiness, slogans and bad faith blame games, taking shots at the IDF, the protesters, Biden and everyone in his way

🔶️ The moment of truth – another moment of truth – in the war will likely arrive within a few weeks. The Israel Defense Forces will complete their offensive action in Rafah, under American restrictions and far from inflicting a total defeat on Hamas, and will want to declare a conclusion. The generals will come to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ask him to help them achieve strategic clarity.

🔶️ They will recommend a cessation to the campaign in the Gaza Strip, in the present format. The army will suggest reducing the already limited number of troops operating in the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egyptian border and in the other corridor in the center of the Strip, and to focus on raids against additional Hamas targets and again giving other moves an opportunity.

🔶️ Those moves are intended to include an attempt to restart the contacts for a hostage deal and a cease-fire in Gaza. If that works out, and the odds don't look great at the moment, it will be possible to exploit the time to give the soldiers a refresher period, during which the United States will make a final effort to forge a diplomatic agreement in Lebanon geared to distancing Hezbollah forces from the border with Israel.

🔶️ Otherwise, preparations will be made for a possible all-out war in the north. Concurrently, a process is supposed to begin of national force-building – a massive investment in upgrading the army's capabilities and readying the domestic front in the event that the grim predictions materialize and Israel finds itself in the future facing a broader, multi-arena confrontation led by Iran.

📎 Haaretz