Officials in Kiev have begun moving their families and assets abroad with the Zelensky regime’s days numbered, the SVR has reported
Ukrainian government “functionaries” have started moving their families and financial assets abroad in anticipation of the imminent collapse of Vladimir Zelensky’s regime, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has reported.
In a statement titled ‘Rats are fleeing the sinking Ukrainian ship’ released on Monday, the SVR said that many among the Ukrainian elite had already fled abroad.
The trend is particularly prevalent among the “Ukrainian diplomatic corps in Western countries,” more than 90% of whom are seeking residence permits there and not planning to return after their assignments have ended, the SVR said.
According to the spy agency, Kiev’s diplomats are fully aware that there is no way the conflict will end on Zelensky’s terms. Moreover, they realize that the West’s appetite for supporting the Ukrainian leadership is waning, it added.
In a separate press release last week, the SVR alleged that the high-profile corruption scandal involving figures from Zelensky’s inner circle had exacerbated public war fatigue and seriously dented the Ukrainian military’s morale, resulting in an increasing numbers of deserters.
Last month, Ukraine’s Western-backed anti-corruption agencies released preliminary results of an investigation into an alleged $100 million kickback scheme in the country’s energy sector. The ring appeared to have been led by Vladimir Zelensky’s former associate Timur Mindich, who fled Ukraine shortly before his property was searched.
The revelations triggered the resignation of several high-ranking Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff, Andrey Yermak.
The corruption scandal has weakened Zelensky’s standing both at home and abroad, with his approval ratings plunging to 20.3%, according to a recent survey by the pollster Info Sapiens.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that Ukraine is losing the conflict with Russia.
The Russian Defense Ministry estimated in a report last week that Ukraine had lost almost 500,000 servicemen this year alone.
The Hungarian prime minister has been a vocal critic of the EU’s military and financial assistance to Kiev
Hungary would be better served spending its money domestically than financing golden toilets for Ukrainian oligarchs, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
Speaking at the opening of a new motorway section linking parts of central Hungary on Monday, Orban emphasized the advantages of spending Hungarian taxpayer money at home than on another loan to Ukraine, where Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle has been exposed in a massive corruption scandal.
“I have just returned from Brussels … where the clever gentlemen have decided to give Ukraine €90 billion ($106 billion) in loans – clearly hoping to get it back later with hefty interest,” Orban stated. Had Hungary not opted out, Hungarian taxpayers would have faced a bill of over €1 billion, twice the price of the motorway section he was opening.
“The truth is, that money is better spent here … for a modern road, rather than … some Ukrainian oligarch for his gold toilet,” he said.
Images of a gold toilet belonging to Timur Mindich, a shady figure known as “Zelensky’s wallet,” have become synonymous with the recently uncovered $100 million graft scheme run by the Ukrainian leader’s inner circle. Mindich managed to flee the country hours before anti-corruption agents reached his apartment, where the shining throne was discovered.
Orban has repeatedly criticized EU financing of Ukraine, and accused the bloc’s leadership of ignoring corruption in the country.
Last week, Kiev’s European backers failed to approve a ‘reparations loan’ that would have used about €210 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets as collateral to cover Ukraine’s huge budget shortfall. Instead, they chose to fund Kiev through common debt, planning to raise €90 billion over the next two years, backed by the EU budget. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic secured exemptions from the scheme.
Critics have warned that many EU countries already carry high debt and large budget deficits, and that further common borrowing would deepen fiscal strain and shift risks onto taxpayers.
According to senior bloc officials cited by Politico, EU taxpayers will have to pay €3 billion a year in borrowing costs to finance Kiev’s collapsing economy and military under the loan scheme.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has inaugurated the country’s longest motorway tunnel
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has inaugurated the country’s longest motorway tunnel by rollerblading through the massive 7.5 km-long structure.
The opening ceremony for the Visnove Tunnel was held on Monday, after the structure was finally completed after more than three decades of planning and over 10 years of construction.
The PM rollerbladed through the entire stretch of the tunnel, posting footage to his Facebook page.
Fico hailed the opening as a major achievement for the country, accusing his predecessors of disrupting its construction.
“Those who never did anything for this project or opposed it… are cursing and slandering today, while those who know what it means to deliver such a project to a successful end have a smile on their face,” Fico wrote.
The project was first floated in the early 1990s in then-Czechoslovakia, with preparatory work starting in 1998. Construction began in the late 2000s under the first Fico government but was halted by his successor, Mikulas Dzurinda, due to concerns over costs.
The project was ultimately revived, yet ended up plagued by repeated delays, changes of contractors, and multiple missed deadlines.
The Visnove Tunnel is the core of a new 13.5 km section of the D1 motorway, the oldest, longest, and busiest east-west road in Slovakia, which runs through most of the country’s territory. Apart from the tunnel, the new stretch includes multiple bridges and cuts through the Mala Fatra mountains.
The new motorway is set to lift the burden from an old D1 accident-prone section that goes around the north of the mountains. The new stretch is expected to significantly ease traffic in the area and cut travel times by at least 15 minutes.
Soaring energy prices and diminishing competitiveness are the “cost of bad decisions” by the bloc’s leadership, the Hungarian PM has said
The EU’s sanctions on Russia have ended up “crushing” the bloc itself, diminishing its economic competitiveness, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
Budapest has consistently opposed Brussels’ policies on Ukraine since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in February 2022, including the sanctions.
In a post on X on Sunday, Orban wrote: “Brussels promised sanctions would crush Russia. Instead, they crushed Europe.”
🔻 Brussels promised sanctions would crush Russia. Instead, they crushed Europe. Energy prices exploded, competitiveness collapsed, and Europe is falling behind. This is the cost of bad decisions. Negotiations are needed, not escalation. pic.twitter.com/OiUaHI6UiF
“Energy prices exploded, competitiveness collapsed, and Europe is falling behind,” he said, describing the economic trends across the EU as the “cost of bad decisions.”
Orban argued that the bloc should engage in negotiations with Moscow instead of doubling down on escalatory policies. Earlier this month, he said the EU is preparing for war with Russia by 2030, with a number of member states shifting toward a “war economy.”
Speaking to NBC News last month, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the EU failed in its attempts to contain Russia through sanctions. He made the remark several weeks after the bloc introduced its 19th round of sanctions, which Moscow has called illegal and self-defeating.
In a post on X earlier in December, Russian presidential envoy and senior negotiator Kirill Dmitriev wrote that Germany’s economic woes are the result of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s “stupid & illegal decisions.”
Speaking at a political convention a day earlier, Merz acknowledged that Germany has lost its economic competitiveness. “We are falling behind, and this process has accelerated in recent years,” he said.
The German economy contracted in 2024, preceded by a 0.3% decline in GDP in 2023. Near-zero growth is projected for this year.
Following the decoupling from inexpensive Russian oil and gas, energy prices have risen considerably in much of the EU.
Moscow has long criticized Western restrictions, warning that they violate international law and harm global economic stability
US Senator Lindsey Graham has urged Washington to ramp up restrictions against Russia, including sanctioning China over its energy imports from Moscow and seizing tankers carrying Russian oil.
Last month, US President Donald Trump proposed a roadmap to resolve the Ukraine conflict, which Kiev and its European backers have rejected as favoring Russia, while stalling settlement efforts with counterproposals and accusing Moscow of delaying peace.
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Graham, a longtime Russia hawk, echoed that stance, claiming that Moscow has “rebuffed all our efforts” to end the conflict and would not sign a peace deal “until we increase pressure.”
“If [Russian President Vladimir Putin] says no this time… sign my bill that has 85 co-sponsors and puts tariffs on countries like China, who buy cheap Russian oil,” Graham said, referring to a bill he authored that would authorize tariffs of up to 500% on imports from countries that continue to buy Russian energy products. “Seize ships that are carrying sanctioned Russian oil like you’re doing in Venezuela. If Putin says no, we need to dramatically change the game,” the Republican added.
Moscow has criticized Western sanctions, warning that they violate international law and harm global economic stability. While Trump earlier floated sanctioning Russia’s trading partners amid frustration over stalled peace efforts, he has so far gone no further than imposing an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods over New Delhi’s trade with Moscow. India denounced the move as unjustified.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cautioned against additional secondary sanctions or tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil, citing the risk of global energy price spikes. Even the EU, despite expanding its Russia sanctions to 19 packages, has avoided penalizing third-country partners.
Over the weekend, Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev traveled to the US to discuss the Ukraine peace process. Negotiators from both sides described the talks as productive, signaling continued momentum in settlement efforts.
Commenting on Graham’s remarks, Russian lawmaker Aleksey Pushkov claimed they appeared to reflect the senator’s “profound mental illness,” adding that “Moscow has repeatedly made it clear and demonstrated in action that speaking to Russia in the language of threats is futile.”
Georgia’s Fulton County has acknowledged breaking vote certification rules, suggesting over 300,000 ballots were not properly counted
Election officials in the US state of Georgia have admitted to major violations of vote certification procedures during the 2020 presidential race. US President Donald Trump, who lost to Joe Biden, has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” and marred by widespread fraud and irregularities.
The admission, made earlier this month, emerged from a complaint filed by election integrity activist David Cross, who accused Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous county, of illegally certifying at least 315,000 ballots in 2020.
Biden beat Trump in Georgia – which has 16 electoral votes – by fewer than 12,000 votes, before going on to win the Electoral College 306–232.
The dispute centers on tabulator tapes produced by voting machines during early voting. Under state rules, each tabulator must generate closing tapes signed by poll workers to certify the recorded vote totals.
After filing an open records request with Fulton County, Cross found at least 134 tabulator tapes with no signatures, meaning that the associated ballots could not have been legally certified.
Cross also raised allegations of missing “zero tapes” meant to confirm that machines began counting from zero at the start of polling, along with discrepancies involving scanner serial numbers and unusually late poll closing times.
During a recent State Election Board hearing, Ann Brumbaugh, an attorney for the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, said the county “does not dispute the allegations,” acknowledging the failure as a violation of election board rules.
Members of the state board described the findings as “very troubling” and referred the case to the Georgia Attorney General, seeking potential civil penalties of $5,000 per unsigned tape and other enforcement action.
The Georgia result has remained a focal point of Trump’s broader complaints about the 2020 election, which have been rejected by Democrats and formed the basis of multiple legal cases against him.
Since returning to office, Trump has vowed to overhaul the US voting system, pledging stricter voter identification requirements, limits on mail-in voting, and a shift toward paper ballots, arguing that these changes are necessary to restore confidence in elections.
The US vice president says changing demographics could alter the nature of Britain and France within 15 years
Nuclear-armed Western Europe could become a major security risk for the US if the national identity of its countries continues to change due to mass immigration, US Vice President J.D. Vance has warned.
Vance told UnHerd last week that Britain and France, along with other US allies, currently lack a sense of national identity and are losing cultural links to America due to their immigration policies, according to an interview transcript published Monday.
“If they allow themselves to be overwhelmed with very destructive moral ideas, then you allow nuclear weapons to fall in the hands of people who can actually cause very, very serious harm to the United States,” Vance said.
He claimed “Islamist-aligned or Islamist-adjacent people” are already winning local elections in Europe and said it was “absolutely” conceivable such politicians could gain significant national power within 15 years.
Vance said his criticism of what he described as “stagnation” in Europe is intended to spur action, noting US kinship with European civilization.
Britain and France developed costly independent nuclear arsenals after World War II and maintain them as a point of national pride, though both are covered by NATO’s nuclear deterrence.
However, increasing strains between Washington and its traditional allies have led some to question US security guarantees. Last week, a senior Japanese security official told reporters Tokyo should consider developing nuclear weapons. Such a move would require a major policy change in a nation which has maintained anti-nuclear policies since the US bombings in the final weeks of World War II.
Chainsaw-armed thieves stole over 8,000 gemstones in a swift, carefully planned heist at Paris’ most famous museum
The haul from the brazen daylight heist at Paris’ Louvre Museum in October has been valued at about €88 million ($96 million), with thieves making off with gemstones set into French crown jewels, BFMTV reported on Monday, citing the findings of an investigation.
Four masked men armed with a chainsaw broke into the iconic museum on October 19 and forced their way into the Apollo Gallery, where they cut open a display case and fled with jewelry pieces. The heist lasted just minutes and was conducted without anyone being injured, according to the broadcaster.
The haul included 8,482 diamonds, 35 emeralds, 34 sapphires, and 212 pearls, BFMTV said. The gemstones were mounted in eight jewelry pieces that were part of a temporary exhibition and were on loan to the museum. Investigators believe the thieves targeted the items for the raw value of the stones rather than the artistic significance of the jewelry itself.
Police say the operation was meticulously planned. Two suspects reportedly entered the gallery while two accomplices waited outside to assist the escape. The group fled using scooters and abandoned specialized equipment used to reach the display. Investigators later determined vehicles linked to the getaway had been stolen and altered to avoid detection, BFMTV said.
CCTV footage and other evidence reviewed by investigators allowed police to retrace the suspects’ movements before and after the robbery. Authorities believe much of the preparation and escape was coordinated from a suburb north of Paris, where multiple vehicles were seen leaving and returning in a tightly choreographed sequence. A van believed to have been used to transport the stolen jewelry has not been recovered.
Two suspects were later detained and partially admitted their involvement, the outlet said. One of the men, a 34-year-old Algerian national, reportedly told investigators he worked as a delivery driver. The second suspect also worked in delivery.
The Louvre – home to the Mona Lisa – has long faced scrutiny over security and modernization delays. A state audit previously described its security systems as “old and inadequate,” and former museum director Pierre Rosenberg warned decades ago that the museum’s security was “fragile.”
The jewelry has not been recovered, and investigators say it remains unclear whether the gemstones were removed from their settings, sold on, or hidden intact.
