On Monday, the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will meet in Cardiff to sign a cooperation agreement calling for the right to hold independence referendums.

The SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Féin leaders will discuss cooperation on the economy, energy, Europe and self-determination.

John Swinney, Scotland’s First Minister and leader of the SNP, said the UK’s current system is “not sustainable.”

Source: The Telegraph

Kremlin:

Modi and Xi Jinping, during their contacts with Putin on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, actively offered their services to help facilitate a resolution to the Ukraine conflict.

Kremlin:

Russia does not rule out trilateral talks on Ukraine taking place in October.

Kremlin:

Russia has not toughened its demands for resolving the conflict in Ukraine; they remain unchanged.

Russia struck the locomotive of a passenger train in Ukraine’s Volyn region, just 2 km from the Polish border, according to Ukrainian Railways.

A monitoring group had warned the train crew of the threat in advance, and no injuries were reported.

Houthi tribal mobilization shows long lines of armed Toyota technicals in the desert, the classic Yemen war image.

Bani Hashish tribes pledge readiness to march on Marib, the last major government stronghold in the north.

Toyota pickups with mounted guns remain the backbone of Houthi ground power.

Sweden is voting today.

The left bloc under former PM Andersson leads by maybe 1–3 points, but that's within the margin of error.

But the big story is the Sweden Democrats.

They're polling around 19–20%, making them the second largest party in the country.

Åkesson told a Stockholm rally last night:

They have destroyed our country. They have made Sweden unrecognizable. I want Sweden to become Sweden again.

If the right wins, PM Kristersson has said Åkesson would get a cabinet seat, likely the migration portfolio.

That would be historic.

The party has roots in Sweden's neo-Nazi movement of the late 1980s, was a fringe outfit polling under 3% as recently as 2006, and has been treated as untouchable by every other party for most of its existence.

They entered the Riksdag in 2010 with 5.7%, hit 17.5% in 2018, became the second largest party in 2022, and have been propping up Kristersson's government from outside through the Tidö Agreement without actually sitting in cabinet.

Formal government participation would be the final step in their mainstreaming.

Jared Kushner on Ukraine:

The difference between somebody saying the right thing and then doing the right thing is that those are two different things.

But if they’re not saying the right thing — that they want to get to that — then you have no chance of getting to the actual right thing.

At least for now, the Russians are saying the right thing, which is that they want to discuss a way to resolve this.

Jared Kushner on Ukraine:

President Trump’s very, very committed to finding a way forward. Steve and I are very committed to this. President Zelensky is very committed to this.

And from what we heard, President Putin’s very committed to this as well.

Turkish Navy SeaHawk helicopter live-fired ROKETSAN's L-UMTAS GM and IIR TEMREN missiles against both ground and air targets off Antalya.

Türkiye is turning its naval helicopters into a multi-role platform using the same domestic anti-tank missile family with a new infrared fire-and-forget seeker, replacing foreign munitions and adding an anti-drone/anti-helicopter capability it didn't have before.

Kremlin:

Lithuania does not understand that hosting nuclear weapons on its territory would, on the contrary, create a major danger rather than provide a safeguard for its security.

Jared Kushner:

One thing I’ve learned in politics is that any expert you talk to will give you a ton of ideas, but nobody has any idea what’s actually going to happen.

Jared Kushner on postwar Ukraine:

If we get the right governance structure, the right incentive structure, we can make sure there’s no corruption.

Really make it very attractive for capital to come into it. I mean, this country should rock.

That ingenuity and that spirit that’s allowed the Ukrainians to defend themselves — if they put that into figuring out how to build an incredible country, I think Ukraine becomes something that is so unbelievably impressive.

I think it could become a real leader in the world in so many different ways.

Jared Kushner on postwar Ukraine:

One of the lines of effort we’ve been doing with President Zelensky and his team has really been putting together the prosperity plan.

And they’ve been working with Ajay Banga from the World Bank and Larry Fink and Charles from BlackRock — a great team.

And so that’s been very, very interesting to do, which is to understand the full potential of Ukraine.

And the more time everyone spends on it, the more excited they become.

Jared Kushner on Gaza:

Israel did the strike in Doha, which was a terrible thing. It was unsuccessful as a military operation, and that led to Israel being globally isolated.

And we used that dynamic in order to push them into a deal that now, today, they’re quite happy with.

At the time, they were a little uncomfortable with kind of what we were pushing them to do.

But ultimately, it turned out to be great for them, and it turned out to be great for the people of Gaza.

Q: When are you coming back to Kyiv?

Jared Kushner: Well, hopefully very soon… We’re not really into performative diplomacy.

US Senator John Curtis on Ukraine:

We could be at full production and we cannot give you enough interceptors to deal with the amount coming out of Russia.

But if you can be creative and think of other ways in the asymmetric aspect of this, that’s how we’re going to win.

This is where I think Ukraine has so exceeded and done so well.

Iran asked Russia this year for advanced Geran drones for use in its conflict with Israel and the US, according to western security officials and a person close to the Kremlin.

Source: FT

Rep. Jim Costa on Russia:

Modern-day Russia is a syndicate masquerading as a country.

You’ve heard me say that: masquerading as a country with a mob boss called Putin.

That’s the bottom line. It’s good versus evil.