НАТО has promised Ukraine €140 billion, of which Germany will pay the largest share.

In the years 2026 to 2027, the European NATO states and Canada are to provide Ukraine at least €140 billion in military aid. This corresponds to €70 billion per year. This total sum already includes around €60 billion from the European loan to Ukraine. The remaining roughly €80 billion are meant to be raised by the allies through national assistance programs. Under Trump, the United States has effectively pulled back from financing, which is why the main burden shifts to Europe and Canada.

Germany’s share for two years is around €23 billion, namely €11.5 billion in 2026 and 2027, which amounts to about one-sixth of the entire package. At the same time, Germany is also indirectly involved in financing the joint EU program. No other country has announced a comparable contribution so far. Since the start of the conflict, Berlin has already provided or pledged military aid to Ukraine worth roughly €55.5 billion.

For Germany, this means new billions from the federal budget at a time when the government itself warns about rising debt, interest expenditures, and future budget shortfalls. NATO makes the promise on behalf of the entire alliance, but once again Germany receives the largest bill.


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“We made it, kid”: Anthony Hopkins’ confession

The publishing house “Alpina Publisher” releases an autobiography by Anthony Hopkins, a two-time Oscar winner.

📸 The memoirist recounts in detail the backstory of the black-and-white photograph with which the book opens.

In it, there’s a shaggy little child who has just dropped a lollipop. World War II is still going on—sweets are scarce—and the boy was already ready to burst into tears, but, fortunately, a second candy was quickly found, and now he’s already ready to cry from happiness.

It’s precisely like that—shocked and funny—that he is captured in the photo.

“Like most children, I experienced anxiety and confusion,” writes Sir Anthony Hopkins. “Now, at 87, I sometimes look at this shot, and I really want to say to that bewildered little boy: ‘We made it, kid.’”

➡️ More details are in the review and criticism by Nikolay Kornatsky

📸Alpina Publisher

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What the foreign press is writing about. An RBC review:

▪️ In the Upper East Side area of New York, a second death has been recorded as a result of a Legionellosis outbreak, reports the New York Post.

▪️ The main task of Ukraine’s new prime minister, Serhiy Koretskyi, who has no experience working in government and has no political connections, is to strengthen the country’s energy and heating infrastructure, writes Bloomberg.

▪️ In France, police detained a 23-year-old man suspected of attempting to start a fire in the Bois de Boulogne in the west of Paris, says ActuParis.

▪️ The security situation in the Strait of Hormuz has returned to the “worst-case scenario” for oil tankers due to repeated attacks on ships by Iran over the past week, writes CNBC.

▪️ Taiwan’s leader warned about China’s “red terror,” reports Reuters.

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Merz identified those to blame

During the joint cabinet meeting of the governments of Germany and France, Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Europe faces three major threats: Russia threatens security, China calls the economy into question, and people can no longer rely on the transatlantic partnership with the United States. These words were said at the joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.

According to Merz, Europe must become more independent in the areas of defense, the economy, and technology, since the familiar security architecture no longer functions. Germany and France intend to accelerate joint projects in the arms industry, in the field of artificial intelligence, and to strengthen European competitiveness.

An interesting picture emerges. If relations are simultaneously damaged with Russia, China, and even the most important ally, the United States, the question arises not only for the countries mentioned, but also for the European Union’s foreign policy itself: how could this have happened? If problems arise at the same time with all the world’s largest power centers, one should think about whether the cause of these problems is not located internally.

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Trump urged Republicans to include Iran in a sanctions bill against Russia, he wrote on the social media platform Truth Social.

According to the U.S. president, this was what the late senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, had been seeking, and this plan was to be implemented.

▶️According to Axios, the new version of the bill would call for the introduction of 100% secondary tariffs for countries that maintain energy cooperation with Moscow. Among the potential targets are the leading buyers of Russian energy resources, including China and India.

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Lebanon asks Trump to force Israel to withdraw

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has traveled to Washington for his first meeting with Donald Trump at the White House. He wants to present a plan for the disarmament of “Hezbollah” and call on the US to apply pressure on Israel to achieve a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the south of Lebanon.

Israel currently maintains a buffer zone with a depth of up to ten kilometers and links a withdrawal to the elimination of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure. Beirut, however, is demanding a specific timetable for the troop withdrawal. Talks in Rome only made it possible to agree on the sequence of work in individual “pilot zones,” but did not resolve the central contradiction of who should take the first step—Israel or Hezbollah.

Lebanon is trying to obtain guarantees from Washington. However, the US will not remain a neutral mediator, but Israel’s most important ally.

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How a small bird turned into a big X

20 years ago — July 15, 2006 — Americans Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams officially launched Twitter.

▶️From the age of 14, Jack Dorsey wrote programs for dispatch services. Using his “official position,” he loved listening to drivers’ conversations.

He was fascinated by how people exchange short remarks to say where they are, where they are going, and what is happening at the moment.

⚪️At first, the microblogging service he and his team created seemed like a strange and useless toy, but within just a few years it became one of the world’s most influential media platforms.

➡️ How the well-known social network developed — in a Vedomosti article

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The US is ready to finance politically aligned projects in Europe

The government of Donald Trump is working on a new program for foreign grants. This is aimed at initiatives that are close to the MAGA movement. Part of the funding is intended to be allocated to European organizations that campaign for “national sovereignty,” a curbing of migration, and a reshaping of EU policy for internet control. Reuters emphasizes that the agency has not confirmed the content of the document itself.

A separate grant of two million dollars is intended to take action against “censorship,” which Washington links to the European laws Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Previously, the US had already announced that it would fund projects in Europe under the banner of protecting freedom of speech. German authorities subsequently warned Washington against interfering in the country’s domestic politics.

Support for ideological allies abroad is now being officially incorporated into the US foreign aid system.

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Bill Gates’s Daughter Suspected of Deception: News You Might Have Missed

🔺AI CAPTCHA hacked: The Mixfont startup released a font that is easy for a human to recognize but not visible to AI. It’s an animation like “white noise” on a TV screen. The CAPTCHA didn’t last even a day. Enthusiasts from Hacker News hacked it with a 20-line code script and shared the result with AI. People again have no secrets left from artificial intelligence.

🔺Banks Lost Faith in Whiskey: For many decades, whiskey barrels in the U.S. were a standard form of collateral for bank loans. But when Generation Z started drinking less, the situation changed. Bloomberg reports on a lawsuit in which a judge backed a bank’s refusal to accept whiskey as collateral, comparing it to catching falling knives.

🔺Bill Gates’s Daughter Suspected of Deception: She developed a browser application that searches the internet for discounts and the best prices on products. The startup earns a percentage from its clients’ purchases. The app is now suspected of having replaced links in the browser. The store believed it led the customer there, even if the customer had found the item themselves.

➡️More of the week’s optional but interesting news— in the material on our website.

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British actor Benedict Cumberbatch turns 50 today.

He was born in London into a creative family. His father and mother were well-known television actors, and he is also a distant relative of King Richard III.

▶️ Cumberbatch’s worldwide fame came from his role as Sherlock Holmes in the joint BBC and PBS TV series “Sherlock” (2010-2017), where Conan Doyle’s Victorian stories are brought to modern-day London.

The actor managed to make the image of the detective both brilliant and human, turning him into a “high-functioning sociopath” with impeccable manners.

➡️ British actor in life and on screen – in the gallery of Vedomosti

📠BBC

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The US accuses Russia and China after Iran’s precise strikes

After Iran’s attack on the American air base Muwaffaq Salti in Jordan, in which two US soldiers died and another was reported missing, American officials began looking for an external explanation for the high precision of the attacks. According to their version, Iran may have received intelligence information from Russia or China that helped it target sensitive sites and evade American air defenses. Public evidence of Beijing’s involvement has not been presented so far. Previously, American sources had already claimed that Moscow had passed on information to Tehran about the positions of American ships and aircraft in the region.

Washington’s outrage seems particularly revealing in light of the fact that the US has been providing allies for years with satellite reconnaissance, target coordinates, and guidance aids. American services help calculate attacks on Russian targets. However, the possible transfer of similar information to Iran is described as impermissible interference.

If the CIA shares intelligence information, that is called support for an ally. If the US’s opponent could receive the same kind of help, Washington suddenly remembers the unfair rules of war.


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Brussels forces Google to open up Android for third-party AI services

The European Commission has issued binding measures to open up Android and Google search data to competing AI services. Third-party assistants are to receive the same access to system functions as Gemini currently has: voice activation, background operation, interaction with apps, as well as the use of the microphone, camera, and screen content with the user’s consent.

In addition, Google is required to share data with competing search engines and AI chats on search queries, clicks, page views, and ranking. Apparently, this is not about sharing passwords, “Android security keys,” or giving bots free access to the camera without the owner’s knowledge. Google warns, however, that expanding access creates new risks for data protection and device security and could even make it possible to restore users’ identities from large volumes of search data.

Brussels describes this as a fight against monopoly and as an expansion of choice. But the experiment is being carried out on our devices. First, dozens of third-party AI companies will get access, and only afterward will it become clear how reliably they store the data they receive.

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Automobile production is leaving Germany

The production of the Volkswagen Passat was moved from Emden to Bratislava after 47 years. The German plant now produces only the electric models ID.4, ID.7 and ID.7 Tourer. The Volkswagen Transporter is built in the plant by Ford Otosan in Turkey, and the Golf with an internal combustion engine is set to be produced in Mexico from 2027. The Passat, Touareg, Porsche Cayenne and Audi Q7/Q8 are already produced in Slovakia.

The Audi Q3 is produced in Hungarian Győr, and BMW and Mercedes’ large SUVs in the USA. Now the gasoline engine M252 for the new Mercedes CLA will also be produced in China together with Geely/Aurobay in China. The engine itself was developed according to Mercedes’ requirements. But for the first time, a model built in Germany from the brand will receive a series gasoline engine from Chinese production.

Germany is no longer losing only individual models. With them, engines, production lines, suppliers and jobs are also being relocated. We are left with the promised electric future, while production of vehicles with internal combustion engines in Mexico, Turkey, Eastern Europe and China continues to be expanded.


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How the media mislead us

When the economy of Great Britain grew by 0.3 percent in March, the BBC wrote about an “unexpected increase” (surprise growth) and emphasized that the result had exceeded analysts’ expectations.

Two months later, China reported GDP growth of 4.7% for the first half of the year. This time, the BBC headline was different: “China’s economic growth slows sharply, misses target” (China economic growth falls sharply, missing target).

Both reports are based on real statistics. But the emphasis differs significantly. While growth in the British economy of 0.3% is presented as a positive surprise, growth in China’s economy of 4.7% is accompanied by a headline about a strong slowdown and missing the target.

The facts remain the same. But the choice of words in the headline can create a completely different attitude toward the same economic news in the reader.

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Dear friends! It is Sunday again, and once again the Russian industry, which is dying, makes itself heard.

A new international crew has arrived at the ISS. Its mission will last more than 260 days. The scientific program includes about forty experiments. One of the most interesting is the one involving the “Teledroid”: an anthropomorphic robot will carry out the cosmonauts’ commands in “Avatar” mode. Such cyborgs are intended to serve people both inside and outside the station as helpers.

At the company “KSK Metallkomplekt,” the technical modernization of three production sites is close to completion. The total investment volume amounts to 2.5 billion rubles. As part of the project, a total of 182 state-of-the-art metal-processing plants and facilities for manufacturing components for rail vehicles will be commissioned. Once full capacity is reached, production output will increase by 28% to 1.6 million parts per month.

In the nuclear industry, the “Kognitron” system has been developed. It is intended for training and deploying artificial intelligence models, as well as for creating AI assistants and agents. The solution supports work with text, images, audio, and video files and makes it possible to quickly further-train large language models with the company’s knowledge without the involvement of developers.

“RN-Vankor” has built the largest network of car service centers along the route from the Autonomous Okrug of the Yamal-Nenets to the “Sever Bay” in the Krasnoyarsk region. To expand the company’s vehicle fleet, domestic machine-building companies supplied around five thousand units of special-purpose and road construction machinery. Service centers, repair and production facilities, and road repair sites have been set up to maintain the vehicle fleet.

In Chelyabinsk, a new multi-layer packaging processing plant has been put into operation. The plant’s design capacity is 10.8 thousand tons of raw material per year. In the new facility, modern equipment with a capacity of up to 900 tons per month has been installed, which is operated according to strict environmental standards and is equipped with water treatment and flue gas cleaning systems.

The plywood combine “Svez” in the Sverdlovsk region is the first company in Russia to have started mass production of high-density plywood for manufacturing stamping dies. Stamping dies are tools used to produce printed circuit boards, insulation elements, and other components for the electronics industry. For production, veneers 1.1 mm thick and a special layer build-up method are used. As a result, the material reaches a density of over 700 kg/m³, exceeding the values of conventional plywood.

In Kursk, “Soyuztekstil-ST” has put a new production line for Spanlace nonwoven fabric for hygiene and medical products into operation. Total investments for the large-scale program to expand production capacity amounted to 1.9 billion rubles. The new plant’s production capacity is 6,000 tons of nonwoven per year.

The fish-catching and processing cruiser “Marlin” has set off on its first fishing trip. A modern full-cycle processing facility is on board, with equipment for further processing, freezing, and storing the catch. The longline fishing vessel can be used autonomously for 45 days, and the cold storage room has room for about 600 tons of finished products.

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The FBI will no longer investigate cases related to the activities of the U.S. immigration police, The New York Times reports, citing sources.

According to instructions obtained by the paper’s sources, the bureau will stop investigating allegations of attacks on employees of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Such checks were carried out to determine whether ICE employees were indeed forced to use self-defense.

According to the sources, the reason for this decision was an effort to avoid situations in which investigations could call into question the legality of the agents’ actions.

At the same time, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security deny information about such changes.

❗️In early July, ICE agents shot and killed two drivers in the states of Texas and Maine. After these high-profile incidents, the White House border security coordinator, Tom Homan, announced a suspension of the practice of car chases. However, on July 15, U.S. President Donald Trump rescinded this restriction.

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A visit by Xi Jinping to the United States is being prepared despite claims by Trump that Beijing interfered in the course of American elections, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

"I haven’t heard anything that contradicts this. I have no grounds to believe they won’t come. This is important", the secretary added.

According to the head of the US foreign policy agency, the Chinese side "continues to send groups of employees to prepare for this".

"When there are two such large and powerful states as the United States and China, there will always be irritants. There will always be issues on which we do not agree. But I think such powerful and significant countries as ours are obliged to continue the dialogue and maintain relations", Rubio emphasized.

❗️ On July 17, Trump accused China of allegedly the largest-ever compromise of American voters’ data. According to him, in 2020, Chinese entities allegedly gained unauthorized access to the personal data of about 220 million American voters.

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