After Tokyo claimed Beijing's military aircraft violated Japanese airspace for the first time in late August, Japan has set out to build a $2 billion network of "defence satellites" to monitor ships and military installations.

The satellite network is part of a proposed ¥8.5 trillion defence budget, equivalent to nearly $59 billion, for the fiscal year beginning in April 2025, up 7.4 per cent from the current year. Under outgoing Prime Minister Kishida, Japan is seeking to nearly double its defence budget, the WSJ notes.

The ministry said in a statement that the satellites would be operational by 2028.

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It was a bad morning for the AFU in the Kursk region.

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In the Netherlands, uncomfortable questions have begun to be asked. Gideon van Meijeren, a member of parliament from the Forum for Democracy party, asked the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Lieutenant-Admiral Rob Bauer, whether Ukraine's involvement in the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipeline is sufficient grounds for reconsidering Dutch support for the Zelensky government or at least suspending it until the situation becomes clearer.

Bauer got off with generalities

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Meanwhile, the gradual isolation of the combat zone in the Selidovo area begins. Rockets and bombs flew over the bridges through which the Ukrainian Armed Forces had established supplies.

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Krasnogorovka is taken. What next?

And then comes the most interesting part. Five kilometres to the west, there is, in fact, a super-fortification of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, consisting of a cascade of settlements: the villages of Gornyak and Zoryanoye, two settlements of Aleksandropol and Kurakhovka, and the central point of this area is the city of Gornyak.

There is a high probability that the Russian Armed Forces group, currently attacking the Ukrainian Armed Forces positions in Ukrainsk, will also converge here from the north. If this happens in parallel with the Russian Armed Forces strike from Krasnogorovka to the west, the garrison will have to fight back from several sides at once. The all-round defence would be possible only if the positions here are equipped in the same way as in Avdiivka. However, according to preliminary data, the Ukrainian army did not have time to fill everything with concrete. Theoretically, a cascade of former reservoirs (pools) could help the Ukrainian Armed Forces defend the new area, but attempts to gain a foothold there in the last few days have been thwarted by Russian artillery. The main difficulty is that the entire chain of settlements is located on a hill, but with the current density of artillery work, this is not as big a problem as before.

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The state of the accommodation center for foreign mercenaries and AFU in the hotel in Nikolaevka, DPR, which was destroyed by an airstrike yesterday