🇺🇦 Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, is plotting to get rid of his defense minister because it hampered the kickback schemes Zelensky and his associates used to enrich themselves

Ukrainska Pravda reports that a "systemic conflict" between Minister Mikhail Fedorov and factions who influence the defense budget is one of the reasons for the government reshuffle which resulted in the sudden resignation of prime-minister, Yulia Sviridenko. They report that the main reason is his resistance to corruption, even though the criticism leveled is about mobilization. They also report that President Zelensky asked Igor Klymenko, the current minister of internal affairs, to be ready to become Minister of Defense.

Mikhail Fedorov is a popular minister especially with Ukraine's Western allies as he's seen as a competent administrator who ramped up Ukraine's wartime production of drones and missiles and is responsible for the push to replace as many Ukrainian soldiers with autonomous systems as possible.

Fedorov's successor, Igor Klymenko, is considered to be a loyalist of Zelensky's former aide, Andrey Yermak and Zelensky's former business partner-turned wanted fugitive, Timur Mindich.

Sviridenko is expected to be replaced by Sergey Koretsky, the current CEO of Ukraine's national oil & gas company.

🔗 https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2026/07/13/8043869/

🇱🇾⚡️ — Libya’s rival military leaderships met in Sirte on Sunday in one of the most senior efforts yet to reunify the country’s divided armed forces.

The talks brought together eastern army chief Khaled Haftar and Salah Al Din Al Namroush, who commands forces aligned with the UN-recognized government in Tripoli. Both sides said a unified national army was essential for lasting stability.

The meeting forms part of a U.S.-backed initiative offering potential American oil investment in exchange for political and military unity.

The sides also agreed to hold a joint military exercise in southern Libya, with broader proposals including AFRICOM-supervised drills and a shared operations room.

🔥 🇨🇦 👨‍🚒 Views of just one of the wildfires ripping across Ontario, Canada yesterday. Similar fire behavior is expected today.

Fires in Minnesota and Canada have made air quality across the east coast of the United States “unsuitable for everyone.”

Hundreds of thousands of acres have burned in the last 48 hours.

📎 The Hotshot Wake Up

🌆 🇺🇸 🔥 Live camera overlooking Rochester, New York. This image is untouched, not edited or oversaturated in any way. The wildfire smoke situation right now is very reminiscent of 2023 when it got so bad.

📎 Eric Snitil

🔥 🇨🇦 🚂 Views from train engineers near Armstrong, Ontario, Canada, as wildfires continue to push across the province.

Multiple fires have ran 20+ miles in the last 24 hours, and others have crossed the international border from Minnesota into Canada.

📎 The Hotshot Wake Up

🔥 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 Fires from Ontario, Canada about to cross into Minnesota.

Two large wildfire in Minnesota crossed the international border into Ontario yesterday.

https://thehotshotwakeup.substack.com/p/minnesota-wildfires-burn-33000-acres

📎 The Hotshot Wake Up

🌬 🔥 🇨🇦 Startling satellite loop showing numerous intense, fast moving wildfires tonight from far northern Minnesota and into Ontario.

Extreme heat signatures and thick smoke plumes are visible, with one fire even producing a pyrocumulonimbus cloud, a fire-induced thunderstorm.

📎 Collin Gross

🌆 🇨🇦 🔥 The sky over Toronto, Canada, has turned an eerie shade of orange due to smoke from wildfires across the country. A similar scene happened in NYC in June 2023.

https://abc7ny.com/post/nyc-air-quality-advisory-effect-new-york-city-due-canadian-wildfire-smoke/19513490/

📎 ABC7NY

🌬 🔥 🇨🇦 24 hour fire spread in Ontario, Canada.

Fires making 20+ mile runs

📎 Hotshot Wake up

🌬 🔥 🇨🇦 Toronto currently via earthcam

Dense wildfire smoke is headed towards NYC for the next two days. Let's hope it doesn't get this bad.

📎 Pat Cavlin

🌬 🔥 🇺🇸 The air quality over the upper Midwest is just atrocious.

Unfortunately some of this makes its way to SNE over the next few days.

📎 Boston Weather Consulting

🇮🇷🕊🇺🇸 Iran Sent Message to JD Vance Warning that Kushner and Witkoff Were “Abusing” Their Inside Access to Negotiations

During the U.S.-Iran talks in Lake Lucerne, Switzerland in late June, Iranian negotiators sent a private message to Vice President JD Vance through an intermediary. The Iranians warned Vance that the continued presence of President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner would undermine the chance of turning the June 17 framework into an enduring deal, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site.

The Iranian official spoke to Drop Site on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. In the message, according to the official, Iran conveyed to Vance that the pair were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than they were in reaching a deal. Iranian negotiators also expressed concern about repeated leaks from Kushner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (A U.S. official told Axios that since the negotiations began, Witkoff and Kushner “talk almost every day to Netanyahu” and the head of Mossad.)

In the weeks leading up to the signing of the memorandum of understanding, the official said, Iran presented written documentation to mediators of what it characterized as evidence that “individuals close to President Trump” were abusing the Iran war and diplomatic developments to manipulate financial markets. “Even before the Islamabad talks kicked off [in April], we had already sent multiple messages to Trump through the Pakistanis, warning them about [Witkoff’s] overall destructive role in the previous negotiation,” the Iranian official said.

The outreach to Vance came after these previous efforts to raise Tehran’s concerns about Witkoff and Kushner with the White House, the official said—given that messages passed to mediators are delivered broadly to the full U.S. team including Kushner, who is a private citizen with no official government role.

“We transmitted data and assessments through an exclusive channel to Mr. Vance,” said the senior Iranian official, who has direct knowledge of the effort. Iranian negotiators, he said, communicated to Vance that they believed Witkoff and Kushner were “abusing” the diplomatic process, “effectively disrupting the overall negotiating atmosphere.”

Drop Site was not able to independently confirm the intermediary actually delivered the message, though the Iranian official said Tehran was confident Vance had received it. The official declined to offer specifics. In response to a request for comment sent to the vice president’s office, a U.S. official denied Iran’s claims. “A message of this nature was never conveyed to the Vice President or his team,” the official told Drop Site. “Additionally, any insinuation that the other members of the president’s trusted negotiating team are operating under motives other than serving the president and delivering on his mission is false.”

Since the Iran war began, many financial analysts have described a pattern where speculative bets are placed or unusually large positions are taken in key markets related to the conflict and diplomatic events, including consistent announcements from Trump made just prior to the Monday openings of U.S. trading. This has led to widespread public speculation that people with access to inside information are manipulating markets in oil futures, energy stocks, and prediction markets.

In June, Iran calculated profits from such alleged manipulation had reached $9 billion and formally requested, in writing, that Iran should share in the proceeds. “We have conveyed through intermediaries that $4.5 billion of this sum should also be allocated to the Iranian side,” the Iranian official said. “The exchanged texts will ultimately become part of the historical record.”

Iran met for indirect diplomatic talks on February 6 in Oman and February 26 in Switzerland before the war began on February 28. “During our negotiation rounds in Oman, it had become completely clear to us that this person [Witkoff] had zero connection to diplomacy or actually advancing the talks,” the official added, saying that Witkoff had entirely misrepresented Iran’s positions on a range of issues, including what terms it was willing to offer the U.S. on the fate of its highly enriched uranium. Witkoff’s “mistaken impressions from the negotiations got passed on to Trump,” he charged.

🔗 https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-jd-vance-kushner-witkoff-exploiting-negotiations