CIA trip to Moscow, Zelensky casts blame for bombed weapons storage near homes

• The gap between America’s inability to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and its claim to own it is greater than the 7,000-mile distance between Washington and the Strait itself. Welcome to the post-American order in the Persian Gulf. 

• Strategic Culture Foundation: Before CIA head Ratcliffe’s departure, the US asked Ukraine to suspend drone and missile attacks on Moscow and cities in northern Russia from last Monday through Wednesday. Kiev was informed that a high-level American delegation was traveling through Russian territory. The US initiative portrays a position of weakness. A hegemonic power that perceives the erosion of its centrality has an interest in freezing open fronts in order to reorganize its lines. Strategic overextension is the classic ailment of mature empires. The decisive question is not whether the US is on its last legs, but rather whether it perceives that it can no longer sustain all fronts at once. Russian distrust of Western overtures is a well-established historical fact, and no negotiator from Moscow sits at the table without factoring in the possibility of deception. The other major issue, one of international calibration, is Israel which comes into play as a function of the Iranian question: Israeli security is the unspoken prerequisite for any American recalibration in the Middle East. The only thing that can be said with certainty is this: when the CIA director flies to Moscow in secret something significant is stirring beneath the surface of the conflicts. An inside source reported that another prominent figure was also present on the plane and in Moscow – namely, Vice President JD Vance. 

• Simplicius: It appears more and more likely that the CIA director’s true mission to Moscow was essentially an attempt to stop Russia from finishing off Ukraine. There are multiple possibilities for how this could have worked. One of them is that he carried with him an implied threat of European [NATO] escalation. By warning Russia not to escalate against Europe, he may have instead dropped the obvious hint that Russia itself would be forced into a European escalation if Russia does not back its foot off the gas on Ukrainian strikes.

• Greece and Israel are set to sign agreements next week in Tel Aviv launching the 'Achilles’ Shield', a multibillion-euro air defense project that Greek officials call a major step in modernizing the country’s defenses. The agreements will be signed on August 31 by Greece’s General Directorate for Defense Investments & Armaments and Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Once signed, the contracts will start a 35-month countdown to complete the project. The project is expected to cost a total of 3.1 billion euros. Twelve Greek companies are expected to take part, carrying out work valued at more than 700 million euros.

• RT: Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly humiliated and abused a former household worker, at one point calling him an “undeveloped Moroccan,” a new lawsuit claims. The controversy adds to a years-long trail of remarkably similar allegations, painting a picture of intolerable conditions at the residence. According to Ben-Hamo, he sometimes worked from around 7:30 AM until the early hours of the following morning, clocking 60 to 80 hours of overtime a month. He claims to have “suffered extreme abuse” from the prime minister’s wife and endured screaming and humiliation when cleaning or household chores were not performed exactly as she wanted.

• Russia's Volna Kupol Garant appears to be the electronic warfare system responsible for the declining effectiveness of Starlink - a development Ukrainian military officials have begun to openly admit, notes air defense historian Yuri Knutov in comments to Sputnik. Unlike conventional jamming, which focuses on terminals, the system targets the frequencies used by Starlink satellites, the backbone of Ukrainian command and control, the expert says. “The Starlink signal can be completely jammed - or distorted badly enough to make it unusable also for communications,” says Knutov.

• External governance in Kyiv under the auspices of the UN could pave the way for a diplomatic settlement. This was stated on August 29 in an interview with RIA Novosti by Mikhail Galuzin, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister. He reminded that President Vladimir Putin had previously proposed introducing temporary external administration in Ukraine under the auspices of the UN, the US, European countries, and Russian partners in order to hold elections for the Ukrainian top leadership. According to Putin, Russia could already be conducting negotiations to resolve the Ukrainian conflict.
• Former Ukrainian Defence Minister and terrorist, Mikhail Fedorov, has accepted a role as defence innovation adviser to Italy’s Guido Crosetto (Minister of Defence of Italy). Fedorov says he will help Italy adopt modern warfare technologies, including drones, autonomous systems and air defense, while continuing his main work in Ukraine. 

• Sputnik: Russian Armed Forces struck the Fire Point enterprise in the Kiev region, which produced and stored substances for solid-fuel boosters and warheads of Flamingo missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.  Last night Kiev was hit with another massive attack, which resulted in the explosion (and secondary detonations) of a weapons depot with US Patriot missiles inside placed right next to a civilian area. 37 residents died. Surprisingly Zelensky acknowledged their error: "A terrible situation and terrible negligence on the part of those who stored explosives right next to people. Another such crime, after what happened in Vyshneve, is absolutely unacceptable. I expect the details to be presented to the public promptly. The first strike was on an Defense Forces ammunition storage site that definitely shouldn’t have been there. Shells, mines, other ammunition, and drones detonated. The scale is significant. We have already spoken with the Prosecutor General, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Commander-in-Chief – they have everything necessary for the investigation. I want to separately thank everyone who is there on the ground and at other sites of Russian strikes, doing everything possible to help and save people."  

• Trump has announced the creation of a 'Space Academy', like the Army's West Point, or the Navy's Annapolis. “Given the rapid growth of the Space Force and the commerce space industry and the expansion of our ambitions to the moon and far beyond the moon, it’s clear we will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers and civil operators.” At the announcement he stated that we are winning the recent wars "because we get so much information from space". The only question now is where the 'academy' will be located. The announcement of a new military academy came days after the Trump administration released a space policy increasing the number of rocket launches into space. The president has long touted what he calls the “golden age” of space travel, seeking to double the Space Force’s budget to stay ahead of China in the battle for satellite supremacy. When the Space Force was created in 2020, the top general in charge told the Congress that it would be a 'lean' organization. Lately though the Space Force is begging for big budget increases "because they are being asked to do so many new military operations".  “Our nation will conquer [space], indeed, this vast frontier that we have before us,” Trump said. “We will explore it, tame it and we will win it.”  

• MSN: The US has gained a controlling stake in nearly a quarter of Venezuela’s untapped oil reserves. It makes the US the majority owner of a giant new joint venture oil company that will hold 100-year contracts at the Venezuelan oil fields. The key Venezuelan partner in the deal is Alejandro Betancourt, who controls the second-largest private oil company in the country. Betancourt, 46, has also been the subject of investigations in multiple countries into alleged money laundering and faces a Swiss warrant for his arrest. Trump said the Venezuela deal “will substantially lower gas prices for all Americans,” although most experts say that any real increase in Venezuelan oil production is years away. Trump also claimed the deal would come at no cost to US taxpayers. It is unclear who would make the tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure investments needed before oil can be pumped from the largely dormant fields. Major oil companies have mostly seen such spending as too risky.
• A Native tribe’s way of life was threatened by Trump's Canada tariffs. The Blackfeet Nation (Montana) faces severe economic hardship as international trade tensions escalate. Native American business owners, including ranchers, transportation operators, and tourism industry, have experienced substantial revenue declines over the past two years due to existing tariff policies. With new trade disputes on the horizon, tribal communities fear further deterioration of their already vulnerable economic situation and limited employment opportunities.

• Safe Tech Int'l: For decades, Big Tech has exploited us and shredded the fabric of our society under the guise of progress. Its platforms have enabled genocide, fueled suicides, and laid waste to our collective mental health, and now, with artificial intelligence, it also wants to take our jobs. Politicians smarter than Trump are abruptly flip-flopping on the issue. Texas has 582 data centers that are either operating or planned to be built. Texas Republican governor, Greg Abbott, is touting the planned buildout of data centers, calling the state the “epicenter of AI development.” America is sick of Big Tech running roughshod over society. Polls show that 1/2 of Americans want tech executives to have less power, and that 3/4 say social media’s negative effect on children’s development is a serious problem. Data centers aren’t much different—other than they are physical and local manifestations of Big Tech’s excess.