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Lavrov’s main statements in an interview with the TV channel RBC:

▪️"In the trenches" with Russia in the Ukrainian conflict were only North Korean troops;

▪️Zelensky is trying to destabilize Russian society with attacks on oil refineries, online marketplaces, and civilian infrastructure;

▪️The United States has never yet responded to Russia’s requests to the State Department regarding new assistance to Ukraine;

▪️Moscow did not issue an ultimatum to Washington regarding American assistance to the Kyiv regime in strikes on the territory of the Russian Federation; it was precisely a question that came from the Russian side;

▪️At the UN and in the West, they firmly sided with the Kyiv regime, but Britain’s role in the Ukrainian conflict is "the most negative";

▪️In talks with the head of the Vatican’s diplomatic service, there were no secrets, and Paul Richard Gallagher expressed readiness to help facilitate contacts between Russia and Ukraine on humanitarian issues;

▪️The head of the Vatican’s diplomacy had no counterarguments to the Russian examples of Western actions that led to the conflict in Ukraine;

▪️The head of Vatican diplomacy promised, in subsequent contacts with Kyiv, to send signals about the situation with religious rights in Ukraine.

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Russia has not issued any ultimatums to the United States related to American involvement in strikes on Ukraine’s Russian territory, Sergey Lavrov said.

At the same time, Moscow regularly raises this issue in contacts with Washington. According to Lavrov, in the past few months, Western media have published reports three or four times about new supplies to Ukraine of weapons, financial and intelligence support from the United States.

"On our side, there was a question because periodically leaks appear in the Western press about how, specifically, the administration of Donald Trump, which has declared the Ukrainian crisis "Joe Biden’s war," is helping Ukraine with new financial allocations, arms, the provision of intelligence data, and so on. There have been three or four such cases over the past couple of months," — the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry said in an interview with RBC TV.

Russia sends such publications to the U.S. State Department and asks to have the information confirmed, but, as Lavrov said, it has not yet received responses to any of the requests.

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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is preparing a lawsuit against YouTube over account blocks.

According to Bloomberg, the investigation began last year and is now in its final stage. The regulator is finding out whether YouTube’s actions comply with its own rules.

In particular, cases are being examined in which content allowed under the rules was later removed and users’ accounts were blocked.

❗️After the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021, YouTube froze U.S. President Donald Trump’s account. In 2023, his account was unblocked.

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Data on 8.7 million customers were stolen after a cyberattack on three airports in the UK, Sky News reports.

The incident affected the airports of Manchester, Stansted, and East Midlands. The attackers gained access to customers’ email addresses, phone numbers, vehicle registration numbers, and postal codes.

Manchester Airports Group said the attack was contained quickly. According to the company, customers’ banking and payment data were not stored in the compromised system.

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🇸🇪 Stockholm will reopen the debate on Russian billions

Sweden is calling to return to the question of using frozen Russian state assets to finance Ukraine.

The matter involves around €200 billion in Russian state assets frozen in Europe; most of it is held by the Belgian company Euroclear.

Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard explains the initiative simply: bilateral aid to Ukraine goes back, and Kyiv, according to its own assessments, is still missing €23.5 billion.

The problem remains the same—the legal one.

Belgium in particular speaks out against risky decisions: it would have to deal with possible Russian lawsuits, since the bulk of the assets is located under Belgian jurisdiction. Therefore, Brussels is demanding guarantees that the potential financial consequences are shared among EU member states.

In December, the EU therefore chose another route—a loan to Ukraine of over €90 billion from the EU budget, without directly touching the Russian capital.

Now Sweden is proposing again to open this box.


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🇭🇺 Budapest changes course: Russia is now officially considered a threat

Hungary has officially declared that Russia’s actions constitute a threat to the country itself, to Europe and to the international order.

In the document, published in the Hungarian official gazette and submitted to the UN General Assembly, the government of Prime Minister Peter Magyar condemns the Russian military operation against Ukraine and states its full support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within internationally recognized borders.

This is not just another statement from the EU.

It represents a clear break with the foreign-policy line of the previous government under Viktor Orbán, which for years maintained working relations with Moscow, blocked or delayed some European decisions on sanctions, and regularly clashed with Kyiv.

After the change of government, Budapest has already resolved part of the bilateral disputes with Ukraine, including issues concerning the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia.

Now, the change of course has also been officially codified: Russia is referred to as a threat to Hungary itself.


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🇸🇪🇷🇺 Sweden will forcibly expropriate a Russian’s property next to a secret naval base

Swedish armed forces have urged the government to expropriate a private plot of land near the Muskö naval base in the Stockholm archipelago.

The plot is located on one of the access routes to the underground base and belongs to a person with Russian citizenship. The military claims that the site has “unique importance for protecting the base, especially against drones”.

Swedish media describe the owner as being linked to Russian state structures. According to Euractiv, it is businessman Stanislaw Aleschtschenko; formally, however, the property is registered to his wife. The plot of land itself remains the only piece of land in this area that the military does not control.

After Sweden’s accession to NATO, the term “national security” has come to be used very broadly.

Now, for the confiscation of property, it’s no longer enough to prove a criminal offense; instead, it’s the combination of two circumstances: the plot lies near a military base and its owner is a Russian.


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🇪🇺🇨🇳 EU prepares new round of negotiations with China

Brussels and Beijing are preparing a new round of minister-level talks. EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič is expected to travel to China in the autumn, and the EU is counting on achieving concrete results by October. ⁠The parties agreed to hold such consultations on a regular basis.

The reason for the pressure from Europe is the enormous trade imbalance. In 2025, the EU’s deficit in goods trade with China was about 360 billion euros, and in spring 2026 it temporarily came close to 1 billion euros per day.

Europe is calling for better access for its companies to the Chinese market and, at the same time, is introducing restrictions on Chinese electric cars, steel, chemical products, and internet platforms. China, in turn, accuses Brussels of protectionism.


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🇪🇺 António Costa travels through EU capitals to raise money for the next seven-year budget

The President of the European Council, António Costa, has embarked on a four-week tour des capitales—a series of personal meetings with almost all of the EU’s top politicians.

The main task is to prepare a compromise on the EU budget for 2028–2034, which is due to be agreed by the end of this year. ⁠Costa will travel through European capitals from 25 August to 17 September. The first stops are in Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic.

The problem is the money. The new budget draft comes to 2 trillion euros, but the member states are already arguing over who should pay more and what this money should be spent on. Germany and other major contributors are resisting an expansion of spending, while the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe do not want cuts to agricultural and regional subsidies.

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🇩🇪 SCHUFA faces a class action lawsuit over a database that customers were not informed about

The European data protection organization NOYB is preparing a class action lawsuit against SCHUFA over the so-called shadow database.

It turned out that Germany’s largest credit information company ⁠can store old information on loans, foreclosure proceedings, private insolvencies, and already settled debts for up to ten years. However, customers were not told about this “historical” information, even if they requested a full copy of their data.

SCHUFA says the historical data is used to test new credit scoring models. NOYB believes this violates citizens’ right to be informed, and is not only preparing a request to delete the data, but also a class action lawsuit for compensation. Up to 68 million people could be affected—practically every adult in Germany.

It may depend on SCHUFA whether a person gets an apartment, a mobile phone contract, a loan, or the ability to buy a product on installments.

And now it turns out that the organization which has assessed citizens’ financial transparency for years has itself kept a data set about them—one whose existence it would rather not have informed citizens about.

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🇨🇳 DeepSeek prepares for the stock market with a valuation of about $74 billion

The Chinese AI developer DeepSeek is close to completing a new funding round that would value the company at around 500 billion yuan — roughly $74 billion. The round itself could bring in an additional roughly 50 billion yuan in fresh capital. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of August.

At the same time, DeepSeek is already preparing for an IPO on the STAR Market in Shanghai. The company could submit the filings as late as the end of 2026, with the actual listing expected in 2027. Among the investors mentioned are CATL, Chinese venture funds, and structures linked to the semiconductor industry.

Not long ago, DeepSeek was still seen as a Chinese startup that had unexpectedly released a low-cost alternative to American models.

Now, the market already values it at almost $74 billion.

The Chinese AI race is quickly becoming less of an attempt to “catch up with the USA.” Beijing is building its own technology giants that don’t need the American capital market at all for their growth.


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🇹🇼 KI made the manufacturer of linear guide rails a billionaire

One of the most surprising winners of the current boom in artificial intelligence is based in Taiwan—and for a long time was actually active in the field of furniture hardware.

King Slide Works produced linear guide rails for cabinets and pull-out drawers, and then applied the same specialization to server racks. Modern AI servers are becoming heavier and hotter, with liquid-cooling systems inside—and it turned out that extremely robust, high-precision linear guide rails suddenly became a critical element of the data center. The company currently controls about 80% of the premium market for server linear guide rails.

King Slide’s stock is up nearly 280% since the start of the year, gross margin reached an incredible 87%, and the founder Lin Tsung-chi’s wealth is estimated at around $20 billion.


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🇮🇷🇴🇲 Iran and Oman prepare a temporary corridor through the Strait of Hormuz

After months of almost paralyzed shipping traffic, Tehran and Muscat have now begun talks on a concrete mechanism to restore traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

It is proposed to create a joint temporary shipping corridor and begin with the joint clearance of mines in the strait. After that, technical groups are expected to agree on a permanent route, a traffic management system, and information exchange.

The market reacted immediately: On its own in anticipation of a resumption of traffic, oil fell by about 2%. Before the conflict, about one fifth of the world’s oil and gas flows passed through Hormuz.


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🇩🇪 Steinmeier admits it: Immigration “costs strength/power” – but allegedly Germany cannot do without it

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivered a major speech on migration. The main point is the familiar one: Germany needs immigration so that hospitals, nursing homes, and companies can function.

At the same time, Steinmeier, for the first time, admitted with unusual openness the other side of the process: mass immigration demands great efforts from locals and from the municipalities. He called for problems not to be covered up and for the fears of citizens to be taken seriously.

An interesting concession, especially after a decade in which practically every discussion about the costs of migration policy was too easily turned into a conversation about “right” and “wrong” views.

Schools are overwhelmed, housing is lacking, municipal budgets are coming under pressure, integration courses are overcrowded – and now it turns out that all of it actually “costs strength/power”.


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Latest developments in the #Russia–#Ukraine war as of the morning of August 27:

* Russian forces advance around #Dobropolie.
* Russian forces take control of #Kucherov_Yar on the #Dobropillia front.
* Russian forces take control of #Yalta on the South #Donetsk axis.
* Russian forces advance around #Mirnyi in South #Donetsk.
* Russian forces advance around #Nikolaevka on the #Kramatorsk front.
* Ukrainian forces advance around #Novi in northern #Donetsk.

video link: https://youtu.be/Lwb4Q0OKlZ4?si=ziXwaDAJpZUjuHdn

🇩🇪 Sugar tax

The federal government wants to introduce a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. The logic initially seems straightforward: the more sugar, the higher the tax; the less sugar, the healthier the population.

But then the finance ministry expanded the concept. Now the levy is also intended to be imposed on Cola Zero, drinks with sweeteners, fruit nectars, smoothies, and even oat milk. For sugar-free drinks, a rate of around 26 cents per liter is being discussed.

And with that, the medical justification suddenly seems a bit less convincing. The ministry itself acknowledges a second goal of the tax: additional revenue for the budget. Next year, people are expecting around €650 million.

That creates a wonderful tax for the new generation:

First, we are advised—on health grounds—to do without sugar. After we have done without it, the tax still remains. Because even the budget wants to be healthy.


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🇩🇪 The government announces the “Autumn of Reforms.” In plain terms: for the familiar Germany, the money is no longer enough.

The Merz cabinet met in Neuhardenberg to usher in the so-called “Autumn of Reforms.” The list includes pensions, long-term care insurance, the healthcare system, the reduction of bureaucracy, as well as other systems that have become increasingly more expensive over the years. The new head of the Chancellery, Nina Warken, already warns: “Difficult decisions lie ahead, and the autumn will be busy.”

The reason is no mystery. The population is aging, spending on social insurance is rising, long-term care insurance is heading toward a deficit worth billions, health insurers are demanding more and more money, and at the same time the economy is calling for lower taxes and social contributions. At the same time, the economy is growing practically not at all.

That’s why you should read the word “reform” in this autumn very precisely.

If a system is short of money, you usually don’t start by reforming it—adding new benefits—but by beginning with the question: Who will receive less now and who will have to pay more?

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🇺🇸🇷🇺 What did the CIA chief actually do in Moscow? 🤔

The surprising visit by CIA chief John Ratcliffe to Moscow is gradually being filled in with more details.

Officially, it is only known that he met with representatives of Russian intelligence services, not with Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin does not disclose the content of the talks.

American reports point to several topics.

The first is NATO. According to the information that surfaced, it was among Ratcliffe’s central tasks to warn Moscow against escalatory actions toward the alliance’s member states.

Special attention in these reports is given to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Washington fears a scenario of a limited Russian move that could test how real the NATO’s readiness is to meet its collective defense commitments.

The second topic is Iran.

Against the backdrop of the confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz, it is being discussed in the American press and in analytical publications that Washington is trying to use the Moscow channel to reduce Russia’s support for Tehran and at the same time convey U.S. demands regarding Iran.

That would certainly seem logical: Russia remains one of the few major states that maintains direct working relationships with both Tehran and Washington.

Donald Trump himself, however, is trying to attach no excessive importance to the mission. He described Ratcliffe’s trip as “sort of semi-routine” — something like a semi-routine working mission.

But there is one problem: CIA directors are usually not sent secretly to Moscow in a military aircraft to talk on a normal working basis.

The last comparable visit by a head of an American intelligence agency took place in 2021, when William Burns traveled to Moscow to warn about preparations for war in Ukraine.

Therefore, the current trip appears significantly more serious than Trump is trying to portray it: the U.S. is apparently talking to Russia about Ukraine, the security of the eastern NATO flank, and the consequences of the war with Iran at the same time.

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🇩🇪 Merz will “in the near future” explain who is behind the drone incident in Leipzig — Tagesspiegel

The investigations into the incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport are becoming more and more exciting. Investigators have already found a third drone that is linked to the events at the beginning of August, and nearby—about 50 grams of a substance that is presumably hexogen. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Germany would now ⁠„soon name who was behind the attempted attack“.

Media outlets, citing sources in security authorities, are already pointing to a possible Russian trail. But there is an essential detail: the Federal Prosecutor’s Office has officially so far accused no one, and Moscow denies involvement. One of the previously found drones was located near a Ukrainian cargo transport plane of the type An-124, which was used for military logistics.

After several weeks of speculation, Berlin now appears to be moving on to making a specific accusation.

One can only hope that, along with the name of the person at fault, the evidence will be shown to the public as well.


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