Russia’s unveiling of its first AI-powered humanoid robot, named AIdol, at a Moscow technology event took an unexpected turn when the droid lost its balance and fell on stage, scattering parts as handlers rushed to conceal it from view and make repairs. The incident drew laughter from the audience, especially as the robot’s tumble coincided with the triumphant &#8220;Rocky&#8221; theme playing in the background.
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Russia presented its human-like AI robot. It fell down as it walked onto the stage. <a href="https://t.co/YAk7w2SsWV">pic.twitter.com/YAk7w2SsWV</a>
&mdash; Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) <a href="https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1988301955584897142?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
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different POV &#8211; broke apart when it fell 👇🥳 <a href="https://t.co/MtNn0PH3YN">pic.twitter.com/MtNn0PH3YN</a>
&mdash; Takeshi Kovacs (@PrzemekShura) <a href="https://twitter.com/PrzemekShura/status/1988331004814336278?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
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The Russians unveiled their “competitor” to <a href="https://twitter.com/Tesla_Optimus?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Tesla_Optimus</a>. 
It didn’t go too well. It was like a robotic version hybrid of a drunk Kamala and a certain autopen president. <a href="https://t.co/aUc7hduNml">pic.twitter.com/aUc7hduNml</a>
&mdash; Chaya’s Clan (@ChayasClan) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChayasClan/status/1988389208516592089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
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The incident, widely circulated by Russian and international media, highlighted both the ambition and current limitations of Russia’s robotics sector, which aspires to compete in the global AI humanoid race dominated by Western and Asian firms.​ AIdol, built by the Russian firm Idol under the leadership of CEO Vladimir Vitukhin, is designed to demonstrate the possibilities of embodied artificial intelligence: movement, object manipulation, and human-like interaction.
It features a silicone skin engineered to express more than a dozen basic emotions and hundreds of micro-expressions, powered by 19 servomotors. Developers emphasize its domestic content — 77% of its components are Russian-made, with a goal of reaching 93% — and robust hardware, including a 48-volt battery that offers up to six hours of continuous operation.
However, during its debut, a calibration error caused the fall, which Vitukhin described as a necessary learning experience in the robot’s ongoing test phase. The team addressed the mishap with optimism, expressing hope that such mistakes would drive future refinement of balance systems and control software.
Public response to AIdol’s tumble was swift and often satirical. The video went viral, with viewers — particularly Americans — mocking the incident with quips such as “Walks like Kamala Harris,” “Vodka powered,” and “Russia, where even the robots are drunk.”
While some commenters saw humor in the mishap, others saw it as an indicator of the challenges developers face as they transition humanoid robots from laboratory prototypes to robust real-world systems. Analysts point out that this blunder is reminiscent of previous embarrassing robot unveilings and serves as a reminder of ongoing hurdles — ensuring stability, safety, and reliability under public scrutiny remains an unresolved issue.​
In contrast, the event highlights Tesla’s Optimus project, which is advancing rapidly in 2025. Tesla has begun construction of a dedicated factory for Optimus at its global headquarters in Texas, with plans to produce up to 10 million units per year by 2027. The third-generation Optimus robots are slated to launch in early 2026, promising major technological leaps: advanced human-like manipulation, autonomous learning from direct observation of humans (“sim2real” training), and broad application across industries and homes.
Tesla co-founder Elon Musk’s vision for Optimus is transformative — he expects mass deployment to revolutionize labor markets, eliminate poverty, and add trillions in economic value. Each Optimus unit, projected to cost around $20,000, is seen as a future staple in factories, healthcare, and society at large, with the robot able to mimic skills by watching humans or tutorials.

robot stands on a fallen question mark

WATCH: Russian Robot Meant To Rival Tesla Faceplants At Debut. It Wasn’t The Vodka.

Artificial Intelligence

Elon Musk

Robots

Russia

Technology

Tesla

World

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States will ramp up nuclear weapons testing to be on an &#8220;equal basis&#8221; to other countries’ programs.
“The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country,” the president said in a Truth Social <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115499324245510580">post</a>. “This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term. Because of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”
In an accompanying video message, Trump added, “Because of the tremendous destructive power, I hated to do it, having to do with nuclear weapons, but I really had no choice. Russia is second in line, and China is a distant third, but will be even within five years.”
The president’s Wednesday announcement appears to escalate previous moves he has made to increase U.S. research and testing into nuclear weapons. It also follows earlier warnings the president has made about U.S. intelligence on Russia and China’s testing programs.
“Russia’s testing nuclear weapons,” Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-sounds-alarm-china-and-russia-conducting-secret-nuke-tests">said</a> during an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired over the weekend. “And China’s testing them too. You just don’t know about it.”
“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it. You know, we’re an open society. We’re different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise you people are going to report,” the president said. “We’re going to test, because they test and others test.”
Trump added in the interview that North Korea and Pakistan have also been testing nuclear weapons.
In response to Trump’s comments on “60 Minutes,” Russia said that it would resume nuclear weapons testing, as well. Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Russia’s Security Council on Wednesday and claimed that while Russia has abided by the international Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, he would explore testing.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia&#8217;s Security Council, said in a <a href="https://x.com/MedvedevRussiaE/status/1986108067571007832">post</a> on X, “No one knows what Trump meant about ‘nuclear testing’ (he probably doesn’t himself). But he&#8217;s the president of the United States. And the consequences of such words are inescapable: Russia will be forced to assess the expediency of conducting full-fledged nuclear tests itself.”

Donald Trump

Trump Announces Major Decision On Nuclear Weapons

Trump: U.S. Will ‘Start Testing Our Nuclear Weapons’ Equal To Other Countries

China

United States

After Nick Fuentes told Tucker Carlson that he was a “fan” and “admirer” of Joseph Stalin, Carlson told the young antisemite that they’d have to “circle back” on that point. But like Jen Psaki before him, Carlson failed to do so.
So, I reached out to Aaron MacLean, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the host of the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/school-of-war/id1589160645" target="_blank" rel="noopener">School of War podcast</a>. He’s also a Marine who deployed to Afghanistan, a former professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, and, perhaps most importantly, was once my editor at the Washington Free Beacon, where I learned his encyclopedic knowledge of European history first-hand.
Is there anything to admire about Stalin? It’s a question that I think Daily Wire readers know the answer to, but one worth circling back on nonetheless. —Brent Scher
***
When Adolf Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker in 1945, he was directly responsible for the deaths of more than ten million men, women, and children.
That includes the millions he had murdered in the network of camps he had constructed across Europe. Toward the end of the war the typical method was to order large, terrified groups to strip naked at gunpoint, inform them they were to be disinfected from lice, and then asphyxiate them with cyanide gas in a sealed room mocked up to look like a shower.
The gassing itself took about 15 minutes. Early in the war many were shot, until questions of troop morale compelled the Nazis to invent techniques that would be less traumatizing for the executioner.
Europe’s Jews hold the unhappy distinction of having been the largest population of Hitler’s victims, with about 6 million killed in a campaign of deliberate destruction. Millions more deaths than these can be directly attributed to Hitler’s orders, without even broaching the question of his responsibility for the overall death toll of World War II in Europe, which he started and prosecuted almost until the end.
It&#8217;s remarkable that even with so steep a butcher’s bill, Hitler does not hold first place among the 20th century&#8217;s murderers. That position is occupied by Chairman Mao Zedong, whose efforts to bring socialism to China killed more than 40 million Chinese, the vast majority of whom starved. Hitler must compete among historians for second place.
His rival is the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin.
Like Mao, Stalin led a revolutionary leftwing regime that sought to bring equality and justice to one of the most economically and socially backwards nations on earth. Like Hitler, who was born in Austria, Stalin also came from the outer reaches of the empire he would come to terrorize.
Taking power upon the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin inherited an incomplete communist revolution. The elimination of private property and Sovietization of major cities was well underway. But the Russian countryside was vast and it had been virtually impossible to impose the rule of enlightened science with any kind of scale or efficiency. In practice, independent farmers and landowners still lived their lives much as they had before the revolution.
Stalin ordered that this capitalist inertia be halted, and “collectivized” (that is, stole) these farms and gave them to “the people” (that is, the Soviet government he dominated). Hundreds of thousands of the farmers were murdered summarily; many more of them and their families died of starvation, disease, and other conditions of deportation from their land. As violent as this consequence was, it was not the worst outcome of collectivization. That was the death by starvation of millions as the food supply, predictably, faltered when those who had grown and sold the food were replaced by entirely new and untested systems of production and distribution.
As food shortages grew, rather than acknowledge his mistake, Stalin blamed those producing the food, and accused selfish locals of hoarding rather than participating in the new communist system in good faith. Brutal punishments and the confiscation of local food supplies abounded.
In Ukraine, this campaign of deliberate retaliation, remembered today as the “Holodomor,” caused the deaths of about 3 million, as Ukrainian-grown grain was taken and transported to feed the people of Moscow and other Russian cities. Whole villages died, but not before eating their pets, boiling shoe leather for soup, and grinding bones to make flour. Many went mad, their bellies distended, their limbs withered and strengthless. Cannibalism was far from unheard of, to include within families, to include mothers and their children. All in accordance with Stalin’s orders, all in the name of science and progress.
(For those who wish to know more about the Holodomor, Vasily Grossman’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Flows-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590173287" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Everything Flows</a> is a brilliant examination of this episode by an eyewitness.)
Meanwhile, back at the regime’s center, among Soviet elites, Stalin feared dissent and plots to displace him from power — some real, most imagined. Such fears are the fate of any absolute dictator. To allay them, Stalin unleashed waves of purges of various elites in the state, the military, and the professions, culminating in the late 1930s in a period now known as the Great Terror. Over half a million Russians were executed during this period, many of them taken from their families in the middle of the night and shot in the basement of Moscow’s Lubyanka prison.
The overwhelming majority of them were guilty of absolutely nothing. Sometimes spectacular show trials were held for the accused, in which the captives would be compelled to theatrically “confess” their participation in nonexistent and cinematically traitorous plots against the state, lest their families also be murdered. In this period, the “luckier” victims were the many millions arrested and deported to the gulags in the east — concentration and forced labor camps where over a million died over the lifetime of the system.
(The work of Robert Conquest in his “The Great Terror” and the eyewitness accounts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” and “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” are outstanding ways to learn more about Stalin’s actions in this period.)
As the Second World War loomed, many expected an apocalyptic clash between the great leftwing revolutionary power, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and the great rightwing revolutionary power, Nazi Germany. The world was then shocked when in August of 1939 Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with Hitler, giving the Nazi dictator a free hand to fight a war in the west while also dividing Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. When Hitler invaded Poland in September, Soviet troops marched in as well, dividing the country in two.
Setting aside the unique horror of the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust which was still to come, Soviet rule was hardly any less brutal than that of the Nazis, with widespread liquidation (that is, murder) of Polish elites who might resist Soviet imperialism — famously, the execution in the woods near Katyn of over 20,000 Polish military officers, police, intellectuals, and other elites. A small number in comparison to other bloodbaths of the day — an immaterial observation to the families of the dead.
Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, in one of the Soviet dictator’s most notable lapses of judgment: a man who never trusted another living soul in his own country bizarrely trusted Adolf Hitler. The cataclysm that ensued very nearly wiped Russia out as an independent country, not least because the Soviet military’s officer corps had been decimated by waves of purges, leaving mediocrities and yes-men overrepresented among the survivors.
Nevertheless, the blood of the common Russian soldier, the snow of the Russian winter, and the steel of the American industrial machine prevailed in defeating Hitler in the east. The United States saved Soviet Russia due to a common interest in defeating Nazi expansionism, only then to have to deal with Soviet expansionism, as Stalin postwar imposed iron rule on Eastern Europe and sought opportunities for global communism to expand wherever the free world showed weakness, from West Berlin to South Korea. The terror and expansionism only moderated upon his death in 1953 — and the regime he did so much to shape continued to destabilize the world and oppress its own people for another 40 years.
Why anyone, let alone anyone like Nick Fuentes, who claims to be on the Right, would “admire” Joseph Stalin seems at first a mystery — but the solution to the puzzle is in the fact that he seems to admire both Hitler and Stalin. The particulars of the revolutionary ideologies in question matter less than the sheer gleeful desire for destruction for its own sake. The terrain of the 20th century is made up of rivers of blood and mountains of murdered innocents, piled to the heavens. America’s heroic role in that period was to draw a line and defeat the terror of Hitler, and then contain that of Stalin.
Unfortunately the world is again a dangerous place; it is important to remember who the monsters were, and are.
Aaron MacLean is host of the podcast School of War and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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Honoring Joseph Stalin On His Birthday

Circling Back On Joseph Stalin

antisemitism

Josef Stalin

Tucker Carlson

World War II

President Donald Trump said that the reason he directed the United States to conduct new nuclear weapons tests was that countries like China and Russia were secretly doing the same thing. 
Trump made the comments during a wide-ranging interview with CBS News correspondent Nora O’Donnell on “60 Minutes” that was broadcast on Sunday. Just before he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week, Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115460423936412555">posted</a> on Truth Social that he had directed the Department of War to start testing America’s nuclear weapons. 
“You have to see how they work,” Trump said of his directive. “The reason I&#8217;m saying testing is because Russia announced that they were going to be doing a test. If you notice, North Korea&#8217;s testing constantly. Other countries are testing. We&#8217;re the only country that doesn&#8217;t test, and I don&#8217;t want to be the only country that doesn&#8217;t test.”
When O’Donnell said that countries like China and Russia hadn’t done nuclear weapons testing, Trump countered that they were doing so secretly.
“Russia&#8217;s testing nuclear weapons,” Trump said. “And China&#8217;s testing them too. You just don&#8217;t know about it.”
“Russia&#8217;s testing, and China&#8217;s testing, but they don&#8217;t talk about it. You know, we&#8217;re an open society. We&#8217;re different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise you people are going to report,” Trump said. “We&#8217;re going to test, because they test and others test.”
Trump then suggested that Russia and China may be testing their nuclear weapons underground. 
On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-trump-nuclear-weapons-tests-60-minutes-beijing-response/">denied</a> that China was conducting nuclear weapons tests. She claimed that China has “upheld a self-defense nuclear strategy and abided by its commitment to suspend nuclear testing.”
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Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that upcoming U.S. testing would involve systems checks, not nuclear detonations.
“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests,” he <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-nuclear-weapons-testing-explosions-wright-energy-a920fc10aff85243cb6895fad55b2839">said</a> during an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Briefing.” “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions.”
Wright added that the tests would include looking at “all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry and they set up the nuclear explosion.”
The last time the United States detonated a nuclear weapon was in 1992. In 1996, the United States, under President Bill Clinton, signed an international agreement not to test nuclear weapons, but the Senate voted against ratifying the treaty. The last publicly reported test of a nuclear weapon was by North Korea in 2017.

U.S. President Donald Trump returns to the White House

Trump Sounds Alarm: China and Russia Conducting Secret Nuke Tests

Energy

Executive

North Korea

nuclear missiles

Nuclear Weapons

Politics

Ukraine&#8217;s President Volodymyr Zelensky called for new strong sanctions against Russia and its allies after Russian drones killed three and injured 31, including six children, in an overnight air attack on Kyiv.
The attack destroyed two high-rise apartment buildings and Kyiv&#8217;s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app that seven of the injured, including two children, were taken to city hospitals.
Debris from destroyed Russian air weapons fell onto a nine-storey apartment building in Kyiv&#8217;s leafy Desnianskyi district, sparking a fire that engulfed several storeys, the mayor said.
&#8220;Every Russian strike is an attempt to inflict as much damage as possible on ordinary life,&#8221; Zelensky said on Telegram.
&#8220;Of course, additional tariff and sanctions restrictions are needed against Russia and all those helping it stay afloat,&#8221; he said.
Ukraine&#8217;s state emergency service said 13 people were rescued from the building&#8217;s upper floors.
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Kyiv and its surrounding region were under air-raid alerts for about 1-1/2 hours before the air force called them off at around 0030 GMT.
Ukrainian military officials said on Telegram that Russia had launched 101 drones on Ukraine overnight, 90 of which were downed.
Zelensky said Russia has used nearly 1,200 attack drones, more than 1,360 guided aerial bombs, and over 50 missiles of different types against Ukraine over the past seven days.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in their strikes on each other&#8217;s territory. But thousands, mostly Ukrainians, have been killed in the war that Russia started with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv; Editing by Tom Hogue)

Ukraine

Russian Attack On Kyiv Kills 3, Injures 31, Including 3 Children

Global Politics

Kyiv

Ukraine-Russia War

Volodymyr Zelensky

U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration has prepared additional sanctions it could use to target key areas of Russia&#8217;s economy if President Vladimir Putin continues to delay ending Moscow&#8217;s war in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter.
U.S. officials have also told European counterparts that they support the EU using frozen Russian assets to buy U.S. weapons for Kyiv, and Washington has held nascent internal conversations about leveraging Russian assets held in the U.S. to support Ukraine&#8217;s war effort, two U.S. officials said.
While it is not clear whether Washington will actually carry out any of those moves in the immediate term, it shows there is a well-developed toolkit within the administration to up the ante further after Trump imposed sanctions on Russia on Wednesday for the first time since returning to office in January.
Trump has positioned himself as a global peacemaker, but has admitted that trying to end Russia&#8217;s more-than-three-year war in neighboring Ukraine has proven harder than he had anticipated.
European allies &#8211; buffeted by Trump&#8217;s swings between accommodation and anger toward Putin &#8211; hope he keeps upping the pressure on Moscow, and are also mulling major actions of their own.
One senior U.S. official told Reuters that he would like to see European allies make the next big Russia move, which could be additional sanctions or tariffs. A separate source with knowledge of internal administration dynamics said Trump was likely to hit pause for a few weeks and gauge Russia&#8217;s reaction to Wednesday&#8217;s sanctions announcement.
Those sanctions took aim at oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft. The moves spiked oil prices by more than $2 and sent major Chinese and Indian buyers of Russian crude looking for alternatives.
Some of the additional sanctions the U.S. has prepared are geared toward Russia&#8217;s banking sector and the infrastructure used to get oil to market, said a U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter.
Last week, Ukrainian officials pitched the U.S. with new sanctions activity, said one source with knowledge of those conversations. Among the specific ideas put forward were measures to cut off all Russian banks from the dollar-based system with U.S. counterparts, two sources said. It is not clear, however, how seriously Ukraine&#8217;s specific requests are under consideration.
The U.S. Senate is also making moves, with some lawmakers renewing a push to get a long-stalled bipartisan sanctions bill over the line.
The person with knowledge of internal administration dynamics said Trump is open to endorsing the package. The source warned, though, that such an endorsement is unlikely this month.
The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, said on Friday he believes his country, the United States and Ukraine are close to a diplomatic solution to end Russia&#8217;s war in Ukraine.
Halyna Yusypiuk, Ukrainian Embassy spokesperson in Washington, said the recent sanctions decision was appreciated, but did not otherwise comment.
&#8220;Dismantling Russia&#8217;s war machine is the most humane way to bring this war to an end,&#8221; Yusypiuk wrote in an email.
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Trump&#8217;s decision to hit Russia with sanctions capped a tumultuous week with respect to the administration&#8217;s Ukraine policy.
Trump spoke with Putin last week and then announced the pair planned to meet in Budapest, catching Ukraine off guard.
A day later Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Washington, where U.S. officials pressed Zelenskiy to give up territory in the Donbas region as part of a lopsided land swap to end the war. Zelenskiy pushed back, and Trump left the meeting with the position that the conflict should be frozen at its frontlines.
Then last weekend Russia sent a diplomatic note to Washington reiterating previous peace terms. A few days later Trump told reporters the planned meeting with Putin was off because &#8220;it just didn&#8217;t feel right to me.&#8221;
Speaking to CNN on Friday after arriving in Washington for talks with U.S. officials, Dmitriev said a meeting between Trump and Putin had not been cancelled, as the U.S. president described it, and that the two leaders will likely meet at a later date.
Trump ultimately decided to slap Russia with sanctions during a Wednesday meeting with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a senior White House official said.
Behind the scenes, Ukraine got an apparent U.S. boost after the U.S. approval process for providing targeting data for long-range Ukrainian strikes in Russia was moved to U.S. European Command in Germany &#8211; viewed by U.S. and European officials as more hawkish on Russia &#8211; from the Pentagon in Washington, according to a U.S. and a European official.
However, Trump has said he was still not ready to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles, which Kyiv has requested.
The U.S. is also putting pressure on Europe to further tighten the financial screws on Moscow. In announcing the U.S. sanctions, Bessent pushed the EU to follow. Broadly speaking, U.S. officials have criticized EU and NATO countries for not taking more decisive steps to stand up to Russia.
It will be more difficult, though, for the EU to unleash full-blocking sanctions on Lukoil than it is for the U.S., one senior EU official argued, given how heavily entangled Lukoil is with Europe&#8217;s economy. The oil company owns refineries in Bulgaria and Romania and has a robust retail gas station network throughout the continent.
&#8220;I think we need to find a way to disengage&#8230;before we can fully sanction,&#8221; the EU official said.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Steve Holland in Washington and Max Hunder in Kyiv; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Jonathan Landay and Daphne Psaledakis in Washington and Julia Payne in Brussels; Editing by Michelle Nichols and Diane Craft)

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U.S. Eyeing Further Sanctions On Russia, But First Wants Europe To Amp Up Pressure

Europe

Sanctions

Vladimir Putin

The FBI unveils a massive, mafia-tied gambling scheme involving big names in the NBA, the United States strikes another drug boat bringing “poison to our shores,” and sparks fly at the final debate for New York City mayor — but will it sway the race?
It’s Friday, October 24, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today’s episode here:
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If you would rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">NBA Gambling Ring</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-990669" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: A sprawling NBA gambling scandal was announced on Thursday, resulting in dozens of arrests, including former and current NBA players, coaches, and members of the Italian mafia.
The alleged scheme involved more than 30 people arrested, including Miami Heat point guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, a former player in the Hall of Fame. 
Charges from the investigation included wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, robbery, and illegal gambling. 
“The FBI led a coordinative take down across 11 states to arrest over 30 individuals today responsible for this case, which is very much ongoing,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a press conference. “We also entered and executed a system of justice against Laca Nora to include the Bonanno Gambino Genevese and Luccese crime families.”
First indictment: The case involves two separate indictments. The first relates to an insider betting scheme. Defendants charged in this scheme allegedly received non-public information, such as when players would be sitting out for injuries or planned absences, and used that to profit from gambling bets. 
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“One example occurred on March 23, 2023, in Charlotte, Terry Rozier, an NBA player now with the Miami Heat, but at the time playing for the Hornets, allegedly let others close to him know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury,” said NYC Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers on his under statistics.&#8221;
Rozier exited the game after just nine minutes. The bets paid out tens of thousands of dollars in profit.
Second indictment: The second indictment relates to mafia-backed fixed poker games, where more than $7 million was cheated. This included new technology, such as an X-ray table that could read cards face down. Current or former NBA players like Billups were used to draw people into rigged games.
“The defendants in this case orchestrated a scheme to use wireless cheating technology to run rigged poker games across the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella. “What the victims, the fish, didn&#8217;t know is that everybody else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam. Once the game was underway, the defendants fleece the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game.”
The poker games played in the New York area were backed by at least four of the five mafia families there.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Drug Boat Strikes And Russia Sanctions</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-990667" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: The U.S. military carried out its ninth strike against what it said was a drug boat from a known terrorist entity heading toward the United States. Meanwhile, President Trump has imposed new sanctions on Russia for the first time since he returned to the Oval Office.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the military carried out its eighth and ninth strikes against drug boats. These strikes took place in the Pacific Ocean, a first. Up until now, the strikes have been targeted in the Caribbean, which is a known smuggling corridor for narcotraffickers in Venezuela and Colombia.
Latin American resistance: The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, called to potentially “get rid” of Trump over his campaign of pressure. Trump has accused Petro of playing a role in the drug trade and has pulled U.S. funding to Colombia.
On Thursday, Trump responded to the Colombian president’s threats, saying that the Latin American leader is a “thug and bad guy” who should “watch it.”
For now, the strikes will continue, Hegseth says.
Sanctions on Russia: The Treasury Department has now announced new sanctions on Russia for the first time in Trump’s second term. The sanctions target Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as dozens of their subsidiaries.
The sanctions came alongside additional penalties from the European Union, as well as more from the U.K., announced last week. President Trump’s new pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin was a welcome move in Washington and in Europe.
“You have to compel Russia to engage in the peace process,” <a href="https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1981329802754769164">said</a> House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). “They&#8217;ve shown they cannot be trusted. There&#8217;s a big appetite in Congress to have sanctions like this, and I think it&#8217;s a very important step.”
More important than the sanctions themselves is the message they convey. In its announcement of the sanctions package, the Treasury also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-sanctioning-russian-energy-heres-what-to-know" target="_blank" rel="noopener">threatened</a> secondary sanctions against any entity that does business with Rosneft and Lukoil.
Trump on San Francisco: Trump has reversed course on sending National Guard troops to San Francisco. He said in a Truth Social <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115424560133045127">post</a> on Thursday that “friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress.” He said he spoke to Lurie, a moderate Democrat who took office in January, and decided to give him a chance to turn the city around – which means Trump could change his mind in the future if he doesn’t like what he sees in San Francisco.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Mamdani Cracks In Second NYC Debate</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-990665" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: The frontrunner in New York’s mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani, faced a barrage of criticism in the final televised debate on Wednesday, raising questions about whether his performance managed to shake his lead or reinforce doubts about his readiness for the job.
The atmosphere of the race was definitely charged—not just because of the policies on the table, but also because of the direct, unrelenting pressure former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo put on Mamdani.
Polls show that while Mamdani is far and away the favorite to win, some also show he would be in a dead heat with Cuomo if Republican Curtis Sliwa were to drop out of the race.
Many media outlets and analysts said Mamdani looked uncomfortable and hesitant. He also appeared severely rushed. Some of his responses felt like watching a video at double speed.
However, some left-leaning outlets, such as Politico, said Mamdani won. The New York Times said Cuomo hurt him, but probably not enough. But the viral clips from the debate have received brutal responses, painting Mamdani as an unprepared left-wing extremist.
The debate: One of the most damaging moments circulating on social media came when Cuomo directly confronted Mamdani on his inexperience. 
“You have never had a job. You&#8217;ve never accomplished anything. There&#8217;s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives. You don&#8217;t know how to run a government, you don&#8217;t know how to handle an emergency, and you&#8217;ve literally never proposed a bill on anything that you&#8217;re not talking about,” Cuomo <a href="https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1981146015714726293">ripped</a> into Mamdani.
“In your campaign, you had the worst attendance record in the assembly, and you gave yourselves the highest raise in the United States of America. You went from $110,000 to $140,000, and then you never showed up for work, and you missed 80% of the votes. Shame on you,” he continued.
Cuomo also pinned Mamdani down on the rent freeze policy, labeling it as political blather.
“Zohran is a great actor. He missed his calling. Freeze rent sounds great, yeah, it affects about 25% of the number of housing units in the city of New York. It&#8217;s not a new idea. Bill de Blasio did it. It turned out to be a debacle,” Cuomo <a href="https://x.com/nypost/status/1981152739963945271">said</a>.
Often, Mamdani didn’t help himself. For example, when he suggested that when 911 receives a call, dispatchers should decide whether it’s appropriate to send police, or maybe send mental healthcare providers instead.
“Yet what we have in our city is asking those same police officers who are being asked to respond to shootings, respond to murders, to also respond to these calls. I trust the dispatchers who would be receiving these calls to make the determination as to whether there was any indication of violence. If there is no indication of a threat of violence, then we would set the mental health experts and providers to respond to those same incidents,” <a href="https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1981149365818585538">said</a> Mamdani.
How bad was it?: Polling data is still being analyzed, so it’s really too early to tell. But it’s interesting to note that there are reports that Chinese-owned TikTok appears to be pulling out all the stops for Mamdani now, maybe trying to head off any leaks of support.
The New York Post reported that TikTok’s algorithm has been boosting pro-Mamdani content while suppressing pro-Cuomo clips.

MRN_251024_V1

Morning Brief: FBI Uncovers An NBA-Tied Gambling Ring & Trump Takes Out Another Drug Boat

Andrew Cuomo

Colombia

Drug Cartels

kash patel

Media

Morning Wire

New York City

San Francisco

Zohran Mamdani

Persecution reaches a fever pitch in the “Christian Murder Capital” of the world, Russia ratchets up its saber-rattling with a nuclear drill, and an illegal immigrant honored by the City of Los Angeles allegedly rams an ICE vehicle.
It’s Thursday, October 23, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today’s episode here:
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">The Christian Genocide You Probably Haven’t Heard Of</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-990063" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Christian-Murder-Capital-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Christian-Murder-Capital-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Christian-Murder-Capital-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Christian-Murder-Capital-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Christian-Murder-Capital-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Christian-Murder-Capital.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: The Christian genocide ongoing in Nigeria has claimed thousands of lives this year alone, but human rights advocates say the Nigerian government has turned a blind eye.
In the first nine months of this year, advocacy groups estimate that more than 7,000 Christians have been killed across Nigeria, many in attacks that leave entire communities burned to the ground.
For more than a decade, this pattern of violence has gone largely unnoticed. But American lawmakers — including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) — are calling for Nigeria to be reclassified as a “country of particular concern” for religious persecution.
“Many in the media share the same woke mindset that they will not call out radical Islamic terrorism for what it is, especially when it&#8217;s Christians who are the victims. And so it takes the rest of us to highlight this needs to end,” Cruz told Morning Wire.
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Judd Saul is the founder of Equipping the Persecuted, a group that has been on the ground trying to minister to Nigerian Christians. He said the crisis has been building for decades as radical Muslim groups have been taking control of the area.
“What they have done is they move in, they populate, and once they gain population, they start taking political control. And once they gain political control, the killing starts,” Saul told Morning Wire.
These deaths often occur among women, children, and the elderly who can’t easily flee their small villages.
Why the silence: One of Saul’s biggest frustrations is how little the world knows about the ongoing genocide. The Nigerian government effectively controls what gets reported. Western outlets too often repeat official denials without sending reporters to see the devastation themselves.
“The mainstream media never shows up. They just take the government’s word for it, and every time Christians are killed, it’s always ‘unknown gunmen.’ But we know who’s doing it,” Saul said.
Now footage is emerging of burned churches, mass graves, and displaced families living under tarps in camps with no food or medicine.
Response from Washington: Cruz introduced legislation this month: the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025. It will impose sanctions on Nigerian officials accused of facilitating violence against Christians and other religious minorities.
Response from Nigeria: Nigerian officials continue to deny that Christians are being targeted for their faith. They’re framing the violence as clashes between herders and farmers. But many international watchdogs like Open Doors and International Christian Concern say that’s false.
Saul says the Nigerian military has repeatedly failed to respond to warnings of attacks. It’s because of this inaction that many Nigerian Christians are calling on the United States government to use its international influence to shine a spotlight on these atrocities.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">The Push For Peace In Ukraine</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-990061" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Peace-Summit-Axed-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Peace-Summit-Axed-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Peace-Summit-Axed-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Peace-Summit-Axed-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Peace-Summit-Axed-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Peace-Summit-Axed.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: President Trump canceled a second summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and hours later, a fresh barrage of Russian missiles rained down on Ukraine.
Moscow doesn’t appear to want to end the war. It recently launched another major missile and drone attack on Ukraine that killed seven people – part of Russia&#8217;s campaign to knock out Ukraine’s energy supplies ahead of winter.
According to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-lifts-key-restriction-on-ukraines-use-of-western-long-range-missiles-5a15c12d?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqdQ8iMn0Xl6WlTrEflM-qAdv5sTUs7vuBvNZqNHOO44yer9ClOXnPh5RoBrwOw%3D&amp;gaa_ts=68f9bcbf&amp;gaa_sig=bR0aCbBe-iAb62JlmwUtP7EmQ0bOUlbyBoNFYlO5isMUbFBJT0FTYJFJG1PtWOXrVgGcUK2uNDoFNFO31R14WQ%3D%3D">The Wall Street Journal</a>, the United States has given Ukraine the green light to launch its own attacks inside Russian territory. Trump has <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115419686256202789">denied</a> that report, but on Tuesday, Ukraine used a British Storm Shadow cruise missile to hit a plant in Bryansk, Russia.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also announced on Wednesday a “substantial pickup” in sanctions against Russia.
The exchange in missile attacks came as Trump backed out of a second peace summit with Putin. It was supposed to be held in Budapest, Hungary. The White House canceled the summit after a phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Trump said Tuesday he <a href="https://x.com/Osint613/status/1980741977000821245">canceled</a> the summit because he did not “want to have a wasted meeting.”
Foreign policy experts <a href="https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/10/22/russia-does-not-feel-enough-pressure-ukraine-bombarded-over-2-deadly-nights-as-trump-sours-on-meeting-with-putin/">say</a> this was a necessary move by Trump, recognizing that Putin does not feel enough pressure for peace talks to be productive.
Ceasefire deal?: Trump said this week that the battle lines should be frozen where they are as a precondition to peace talks. Europe has backed that position, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I think that was [a] good compromise, but I’m not sure that Putin will support it,” Zelensky told reporters after landing in Oslo.
The Ukrainian president has continued to press his case for Tomahawk missiles after his meeting at the White House last week. Zelensky said in a <a href="https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1980683702448386417">post</a> on X that “Russia continues to do everything to weasel out” of a ceasefire, and “as soon as the issue of long-range capabilities for Ukraine became less immediate, [Moscow’s] interest in diplomacy faded. This signals that deep strike capabilities may hold the key to peace.”
Israel: Vice President JD Vance paid a visit to Israel this week, primarily signaling the Trump administration’s commitment to holding together the ceasefire and moving forward with Trump’s 20-point peace plan. While there, Vance recognized some of the limits of the current situation.
“You basically have two regions in Gaza, one of which is relatively safe – I wouldn&#8217;t say very safe – and one of which is incredibly dangerous, and part of ensuring that we get to a durable peace is to broaden the scope of the area that&#8217;s safe,” <a href="https://x.com/AdamMilstein/status/1980692659422576716">said</a> Vance. “The international security force is a big part of that. We don&#8217;t yet have the international security force set up. That&#8217;s something we&#8217;re working towards.”
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Illegal Alien TikToker Nabbed In Los Angeles</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-990059" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Anti-ICE-Activist-Shot-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Anti-ICE-Activist-Shot-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Anti-ICE-Activist-Shot-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Anti-ICE-Activist-Shot-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Anti-ICE-Activist-Shot-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Anti-ICE-Activist-Shot.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: An illegal immigrant and well-known TikToker was shot by federal authorities in Los Angeles after he tried to evade arrest for a second time and allegedly rammed a federal vehicle.
The illegal immigrant allegedly behind the attack is Carlitos Ricardo Parías, 44, who is known on TikTok as Richard LA and who regularly exposes ICE operations online to his more than 132,000 followers.
The suspect allegedly tried to impede an ICE operation months ago, but got away. He was seen in handcuffs being hauled into a vehicle by bystanders while federal authorities were trying to arrest him for allegedly interfering with immigration operations, federal law enforcement sources told The Daily Wire.
U.S. Marshals encountered him again this week, arresting him while he attempted to flee a second time. During the attack on ICE agents in which Parías allegedly rammed a federal vehicle, agents responded with gunfire, hitting Parías in the elbow. A U.S. Marshal was wounded by a ricochet bullet that hit him in the hand.
Parías has been charged with assaulting a federal officer, which carries a sentence of up to eight years in prison.
Parías has been considered somewhat of a local hero, being honored by the Los Angeles City Council for his “tireless efforts to safeguard our neighborhoods from illegal raids” in exposing ICE operations on TikTok.
He is being prosecuted aggressively by U.S. attorneys in part because federal officials get so little support in deep blue, sanctuary areas that protect illegal aliens.
New York City riot over deportations: Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday raided New York City’s Canal Street, notorious for illegal immigrant crime, as a mob of rioters attempted to stop them.
Law enforcement arrested illegal aliens of African origin, each with a lengthy rap sheet. Five of the aliens entered the United States illegally and were let go under former President Joe Biden.
The raid on Canal Street came after Turning Point USA reporter Savanah Hernandez exposed African immigrants selling counterfeit designer handbags along the sidewalk. The aliens would take off running wherever the police showed up.
Sanctuary policies have protected the illegal immigrants, as well as facilitated their illicit activities on Canal Street, according to federal officials.

MRN_251023_V1

Morning Brief: Nigerian Christians Slaughtered, Russia Standoff, & Illegal Alien TikToker Nabbed

Christianity

genocide

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Los Angeles

Nigeria

Ted Cruz

TikTok

The United States placed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies on Wednesday after plans for an expected meeting between presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin fell through.
The sanctions, the first the Trump administration has leveled against Russia since taking over the White House in January, are a signal that the president has run short on patience with Moscow. Trump has called for the battle lines to be frozen in Ukraine and for the two sides to meet for peace talks.
The sanctions target Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil and dozens of their subsidiaries, but will likely have little direct impact on the money that flows into Russia’s treasury from its substantial energy industry. While the United States did billions of dollars worth of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/14/europe/us-europe-trade-business-with-russia-intl">trade</a> with Russia last year, the majority of that was for fertilizer, precious metals, uranium, and plutonium.
The sanctions package is a signal to other countries purchasing Russian oil and natural gas that the Trump administration may soon crack down on buyers, as well.
“[E]ngaging in certain transactions involving the persons designated today may risk the imposition of secondary sanctions on participating foreign financial institutions,” the <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0290">announcement</a> from the Treasury Department states. “[The Treasury] can prohibit or impose strict conditions on opening or maintaining, in the United States, a correspondent account or a payable-through account of a foreign financial institution that knowingly conducts or facilitates any significant transaction on behalf of a person who is designated pursuant to the relevant authority.”
China remains one of Moscow&#8217;s largest buyers for energy, though India, another major purchaser of Russian oil, has already promised to cut back its reliance on Russian energy.
The European Union <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-approves-19th-package-russian-sanctions-including-lng-ban-2025-10-22/">joined</a> the United States with a sanctions package targeting Russian energy, as well, including Rosneft. The E.U. sanctions package may bring more direct pain to Moscow’s coffers because of the increased reliance of Europe on Russian oil and natural gas exports.
“Appreciated this evening’s call with [Bessent] and the Treasury decision to sanction major Russian oil companies in the face of Russia’s lack of commitment to the peace process,” said E.U. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a <a href="https://x.com/vonderleyen/status/1981109768581243195">post</a> on X. “With the imminent adoption of the EU’s 19th package, this is a clear signal from both sides of the Atlantic that we will keep up collective pressure on the aggressor.”
The United Kingdom approved a similar sanctions package on Russian energy last week in what has become a wave of financial penalties targeting Russia’s most important export industry.

Trump’s Sanctioning Russian Energy. Here’s What To Know.

What To Know About Trump’s Sanctions Package On Russian Energy

Department of the Treasury

The Treasury Department announced a new round of sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, targeting the country&#8217;s two largest oil companies that &#8220;fund the Kremlin’s war machine.&#8221;
The sanctions target Open Joint Stock Company Rosneft Oil Company, Lukoil OAO, and dozens of their subsidiaries. In a <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0290">press release</a>, the Trump administration said the sanctions were necessary because of &#8220;Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.&#8221;
“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
Just before the sanctions were announced, Bessent discussed the move in an interview on Fox Business on Wednesday afternoon,  saying it will be &#8220;one of the largest sanctions that we have done against the Russian Federation.&#8221;
&#8220;President Putin has not come to the table in an honest and forthright manner, as we&#8217;d hoped,&#8221; he added. &#8220;There were talks in Alaska. President Trump walked away when he realized that things were not moving forward. There have been behind-the-scenes talks, but I believe that the president is disappointed at where we are in these talks.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/SecScottBessent?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SecScottBessent</a>: &#8220;President Putin has not come to the table in an honest and forthright manner, as we&#8217;d hoped&#8230; we are going to be announcing a substantial increase in Russia sanctions&#8230; one of the largest sanctions that we have done against the Russian Federation.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/V4I8lg1WJi">pic.twitter.com/V4I8lg1WJi</a>
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1981091320513835262?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
U.S. sanctions on Russia come as the European Union approved the 19th batch of sanctions against Moscow on Wednesday, Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-approves-19th-package-russian-sanctions-including-lng-ban-2025-10-22/">reported</a>. The latest E.U. sanctions package includes a ban on liquefied natural gas imports from Russia. The sanctions will end short-term liquefied natural gas contracts with Russian companies after six months, while long-term contracts will end beginning on January 1, 2027.
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In July, Trump threatened to punish Russia with sanctions if it did not agree to end the war within 50 days. After meeting with Putin in Alaska in August, Trump said he was still considering &#8220;very serious&#8221; sanctions on Russia.
The Trump administration finally moved forward with sanctions after a planned second summit with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/second-trump-putin-summit-in-doubt-after-rubio-talks-with-russian-foreign-minister">placed on hold</a> on Tuesday. Trump had a &#8220;lengthy&#8221; <a href="about:blank">call</a> with Putin last Thursday, after which he announced that he would meet with the Russian dictator for another round of peace talks in Budapest in the near future. On Tuesday, the White House said that following a call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future.”
Trump commented on the summit in the Oval Office later on Tuesday, leaving the door open for a meeting with Putin, but adding, “I don’t want to have a wasted meeting. I don’t want to have a waste of time.”
Trump also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, one day after his call with Putin, to discuss next steps in the peace negotiations. Zelensky has long been asking the United States for Tomahawk missiles, which would allow Kyiv to fire at targets deep inside Russia, but Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/in-zelensky-meeting-trump-indicates-he-is-not-ready-to-give-ukraine-tomahawk-missiles">suggested</a> during the meeting with Zelensky that he wasn’t ready to provide Ukraine with the long-range cruise missiles.

Vladimir Putin/Donald Trump

Trump Ramps Up Pressure On Putin, Hits Russian Oil Companies With Sanctions

Scott Bessent

Trump Administration

U.S.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia said on Wednesday it had carried out a major training exercise involving nuclear weapons, a day after the United States announced a delay in plans for a second summit between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
The Kremlin released video showing General Valery Gerasimov, head of the General Staff, reporting to Putin on the drills. They included practice launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are capable of striking the United States.
At key moments in the war in Ukraine, Putin has frequently issued reminders of Russia&#8217;s nuclear might as a warning signal to Kyiv and its allies in the West. NATO has also been conducting nuclear deterrence exercises this month.
Russia also launched 405 drones and 28 missiles at Ukraine in an overnight attack targeting energy infrastructure, Ukraine&#8217;s air force said on Wednesday.
Ukraine downed 16 missiles and 333 drones, and other missiles directly hit targets, it added.
TRUMP DOESN&#8217;T WANT WASTED MEETING
Putin and Trump spoke last week and agreed to hold a summit in Hungary that the Kremlin said could take place within a couple of weeks.
But following a phone call on Monday between the two countries&#8217; top diplomats, the White House said the next day that Trump had no plans to meet Putin &#8220;in the immediate future&#8221;. Trump said he did not want to have a wasted meeting &#8211; something Moscow also says it wants to avoid.
Russian officials said, however, that preparations continued for a summit.
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&#8220;The dates haven&#8217;t been set yet, but thorough preparation is needed before then, and that takes time,&#8221; Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The delay came after Russia reiterated to the U.S. its previous terms for reaching a peace deal, including that Ukraine cede control of the whole of the southeastern Donbas region, three sources told Reuters.
That amounted to a rejection of Trump&#8217;s statement last week that both sides should stop at the current front lines.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by state news agency RIA as saying he could not confirm that Moscow had conveyed its position as reported by Reuters.
&#8220;Preparations for the summit are continuing,&#8221; Ryabkov was quoted as saying. &#8220;I don&#8217;t see any major obstacles.&#8221;
He added: &#8220;It&#8217;s a difficult process, I admit – but that’s precisely what diplomats are for.&#8221;
Russia and Ukraine pounded each other with heavy overnight missile attacks as renewed uncertainty surrounded the U.S.-led peace effort.
Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that Russian attacks had killed six people, including two children, in Kyiv and the nearby region, and forced power outages nationwide.
Ukraine&#8217;s military said late on Tuesday that it used Franco-British Storm Shadow air-launched missiles to strike a chemical plant in southern Russia&#8217;s Bryansk region.
SHARES IN EUROPEAN DEFENSE COMPANIES RISE
Through the first nine months of his second term, Trump has pressed for an end to the conflict, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.
Sharply critical at times of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he has also expressed frustration and disappointment with Putin &#8211; but has not followed through on his repeated threats of new sanctions against Moscow.
Shares in European defense companies rose on news of the delay to the Putin-Trump summit. Most European governments strongly back Kyiv and have pledged to raise their military spending to help Ukraine meet its defense needs.
Zelenskiy was due to meet Sweden&#8217;s prime minister on Wednesday at the development and manufacturing center of Saab, which makes fighter jets, surveillance aircraft, missile systems and anti-tank weapons.
&#8220;Russian words about diplomacy mean nothing as long as the Russian leadership does not feel critical problems. And this can be ensured only through sanctions, long-range capabilities, and coordinated diplomacy among all our partners,&#8221; Zelenskiy said.
Ukraine said there were emergency power outages in most regions of the country as a result of the latest Russian attacks.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha appealed to Kyiv&#8217;s international partners to mobilize &#8220;additional energy support&#8221; to prevent a humanitarian crisis as winter approaches.
(Additional reporting by Kyiv and Moscow bureau. Writing by Mark Trevelyan. Editing by Peter Graff)

Aftermath of a Russian drone attack in Kharkiv

Russia Flexes With Nuclear Drills After Trump-Putin Summit Delay

President Donald Trump&#8217;s planned second meeting with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin appears canceled after a phone call between top U.S. and Russian officials.
The White House said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a &#8220;productive call&#8221; with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, adding that &#8220;there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future,&#8221; the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/10/21/us-news/trump-putin-meeting-canceled-after-russia-insists-goal-to-conquer-ukraine-has-not-changed/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=nypost">reported</a> on Tuesday.
“Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov had a productive call,” a White House official told the Post. “Therefore, an additional-in-person meeting between the Secretary and Foreign Minister is not necessary, and there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future.”
President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to have a wasted meeting. I don&#8217;t want to have a waste of time.&#8221; Trump, however, left the door open for a second meeting with Putin.
&#8220;We&#8217;ll see what happens. We haven&#8217;t made a determination,&#8221; he added.
Trump held a &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-holds-lengthy-call-with-putin-one-day-before-zelensky-set-to-visit-white-house">lengthy</a>&#8221; phone conversation with Putin last week one day before he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. After the call, Trump announced that he and Putin agreed to meet in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.
Trump had previously met with Putin in Alaska on August 15 to negotiate a deal between Russia and Ukraine. Following the Alaska summit, Putin has continued his attacks on Ukraine.
Trump has considered sending American-made Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which would allow Kyiv to fire at targets deep inside of Russia. During his meeting with Zelensky on Friday, however, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/in-zelensky-meeting-trump-indicates-he-is-not-ready-to-give-ukraine-tomahawk-missiles">suggested</a> that he wasn&#8217;t ready to provide Ukraine with the long-range cruise missiles. In an X <a href="https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1980683702448386417">post</a> on Tuesday, Zelensky argued that &#8220;as soon as the issue of long-range capabilities for Ukraine became less immediate, [Russia&#8217;s] interest in diplomacy faded.&#8221;
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&#8220;The greater Ukraine’s long-range reach, the greater Russia’s willingness to end the war. These weeks reaffirmed it,&#8221; Zelensky added. &#8220;Discussion on Tomahawks turned out to be a major investment in diplomacy – we forced Russia to reveal that Tomahawks are the card they take seriously. We will continue engaging with Europeans and Americans on long-range capabilities.&#8221;
With the second round of Trump-Putin talks now appearing unlikely, there remain no signs that Moscow is interested in ending the war. Russia has continued its attacks on Ukraine, killing four people with <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russian-attack-cuts-power-hundreds-thousands-northern-ukraine-2025-10-21/">strikes</a> on Tuesday targeting Ukraine&#8217;s Chernihiv region that also left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without power.
Trump is scheduled to meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday, the Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-putin-trump-1f22a02dda9adff079383370ee69f95c">reported</a>. Trump&#8217;s reported meeting with Rutte will come as European leaders are expected to discuss more economic sanctions on Russia during a meeting in Brussels. A statement put out by leaders from Ukraine, the U.K., Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Denmark, and the E.U. called for world leaders to &#8220;ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defense industry, until Putin is ready to make peace.&#8221;

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Second Trump-Putin Summit In Doubt After Rubio Talks With Russian Foreign Minister

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