The forces shaping the world you live in. Geopolitics, science, health. Gandalv is a Substack bestseller. 🏆gandalv.substack.com
Europe
Based in Europe
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Gandalv retweeted
It has begun… ✊👀🗣️
Crackdown and Detentions Begin at a Permitted Communist Rally in Moscow
Security forces began pulling people from the crowd, who were chanting slogans such as: "We want freedom," "Down with Roskomnadzor," "No to political repression," "Freedom for political prisoners," and "Down with the party of swindlers and thieves."
They were taken away in police vans to be ‘questioned’ and ‘re-educated.’ 🚔🚔🚔
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Unrest and mass arrests in Moscow and several other Russian cities today
Unrest and mass arrests in Moscow and several other Russian cities today, as the country's second largest political party staged protests against the Putin regime, after obtaining permission under false pretense.
As over 2000 led a march in central Moscow with chants of "Down with the Czar", Putin's goons cracked skulls, arresting around 100.
The second protest in the past few days, today's march began at Krasnopresnenskaya Zastava Square before marching toward the Russian White House.
The government-authorized the demonstration only because they were told its intent was to commemorate those killed in the 1993 constitutional crisis, but things quickly became clear. Chants of..
“Down with the Tsar!”
“We want freedom!”
“Free political prisoners!”
“Honest elections!”
“No political repression!”
The location and anniversary carry particular symbolism, as protesters were marching toward the site of Russia’s violent 1993 confrontation between Boris Yeltsin and parliament while openly denouncing Russia’s current political system.
No mention of the genocidal war being waged at their behest and with their tax dollars.
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America's spy agencies can see Russia and a few like-minded friends preparing to meddle in the midterms, according to the Washington Post, with the usual toolkit of distrust, fakery and industrial-grade nonsense.
The trouble is that the Trump administration has spent two years dismantling the machinery built for precisely this moment.
The FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force has been disbanded, the election security teams at CISA have been gutted, and state officials say the regular briefings that once told them what was heading their way have simply stopped arriving.
So the states are left to defend a national election with their own IT departments and a certain amount of hope. It is a peculiar arrangement in which Washington knows exactly who is coming through the window.
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🇩🇪A Welcome Written in Smoke
Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv this weekend to sirens, explosions and a Russian drone slamming into the Northern Bridge while cars were still crossing it. Moscow had warned on Saturday that foreign dignitaries in the capital were not safe, and it evidently wished to underline the point with a fireball over the Dnipro.
This was no stray shot. According to CNN, it was the second strike on the Northern Bridge in two days, and the Southern Bridge, which also carries the metro, was hit five times in under 24 hours earlier in the week. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported a damaged roadway and a ruptured heating main, which left a whole district without hot water as autumn sets in.
Merz came anyway, bringing his economy minister and executives from Siemens Energy, Hensoldt, Diehl Defence and Quantum Systems. His message was that Ukraine can rely on Germany. Russia is trying to cut a city in half, and Berlin answered by turning up with its arms industry.
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Brussels has finally said aloud what most of Europe suspected. Andrius Kubilius, the EU's defence commissioner, told Lithuanian broadcaster LRT that Moscow's warnings over Kaliningrad have one purpose, which is to frighten Europeans into abandoning Ukraine.
Neither NATO nor the EU, he noted, has any plan to attack the exclave.
The choreography was rather good. Russian embassies across Europe announced they had "information" about a planned air and naval blockade, and then Putin took the stage at Valdai on Thursday to promise that an attack on Kaliningrad would put every weapon Russia owns on the agenda, nuclear ones included.
He even quoted Chekhov on guns that must eventually go off, while insisting he intends to attack nobody.
It is a neat trick, inventing a threat and then threatening the world over it. Mark Rutte replied that NATO is a defensive alliance and nuclear talk helps no one. The real target is not Kaliningrad's border but Europe's nerve.
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Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until seven conditions are met, according to parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, quoted by the state-run Nour News.
The era of stalling and one-sided demands is over, he said, as reported by Reuters, and the strait stays shut until the terms rooted in the Islamabad agreement are fulfilled.
That sounds like a slammed door, yet it reads more like a price list. Qalibaf himself confirmed that Washington has recently passed fresh proposals through a mediator, and his statement comes only days after Tehran received the latest American reply.
Nobody itemises seven conditions for a negotiation they intend to abandon.
So the encouraging part is hiding in plain sight. Both sides are still exchanging paper, a framework already exists, and the argument has narrowed from whether to open the strait to what it will cost. In diplomacy, that counts as progress.
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World's Seven Most Powerful Nations Hold Meeting Exactly Like The One You Had On Tuesday
PARIS. The leaders of the G7 held an emergency video conference Friday to address the global energy crisis.
The call opened with four minutes of France saying "we'll just give people another minute to join," during which Canada asked how everyone's weekend had been and received no answer from anybody. Germany, which had dialled in thirteen minutes early and sat alone in the waiting room looking at its own face, mentioned that it had a hard stop at ten.
France then asked whether someone would mind taking the minutes, producing the longest silence of the summit. The job went, as it has every year since 1976, to Canada.
The United States attended with its camera off. Nobody brought it up, in the way nobody brings up that Keith from Sales has attended every meeting since March as a pair of initials. It remains unclear whether the camera was off for the whole call or only part of it, a question colleagues agreed was not worth a conversation with HR.
"Could be driving, could be the wifi," said Italy afterwards, speaking by the kettle. "I'm not getting involved."
Britain began three separate sentences with "sorry, you go," colliding each time with the European Commission saying "no, please, after you," until France gave the floor to Japan, which had been sitting with its hand raised since 9:06. Japan thanked the chair and spoke for two minutes on mute.
France then shared its screen and asked whether everyone could see the PowerPoint. What everyone could see was France's desktop, consisting of sixty-one unsorted icons arranged over a holiday photo from the Riviera involving a sun lounger and a very small pair of swimming trunks. France asked again whether the slide was coming through all right, and six heads of government said yes, absolutely, because nobody wanted to be the one.
France presented from the invisible slide for nine minutes. It was during this period that a message notification from Britain slid into the corner of the shared screen reading "how long is this going to go on," and remained there, by common agreement, for a geological era.
The proposal itself, a release of 100 million barrels of oil over four months through the International Energy Agency.
France asked whether there were any objections. There were none, largely because everyone was answering other emails.
Members also pledged not to restrict energy exports to one another, an item recorded directly beneath a reminder that the dishwasher does not load itself.
The United States, having said nothing, was assigned three action items.
Under any other business, Britain raised parking. Germany left at ten precisely, in the middle of someone else's sentence. Japan's hand was still up.
At press time, the United States had clicked the wrong button on a calendar reminder and rejoined the meeting four minutes after it ended, this time with its camera on and pointed at a ceiling, where it waited alone for some time before asking whether it was early.
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A drone attack is reported at the Khanskaya military airfield in Adygea, Russia.
A drone attack is reported at the Khanskaya military airfield in Adygea, Russia.
The 272nd Training Aviation Base is stationed at this airfield. The facility is also used by the Russian Aerospace Forces for logistics, refueling, and launching airstrikes.
Satellite imagery has recorded the presence of Su-30, Su-24, Su-34, Su-35S, and L-39 aircraft, as well as Mi-8 helicopters and transport aircraft at that location.
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On 18 September Donald Trump signed the Graham Act, a sweeping Russia sanctions law, and two weeks later the New York Times reported that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are discussing a multibillion-dollar sale of Lukoil's foreign oil fields, refineries and petrol stations to buyers with business ties to their own families.
Trump picked them over career diplomats, so the deal on the table is the deal he wants.
Europe should warn now, before the American licence for the talks expires on 22 October, that this arrangement prolongs the war. It teaches Putin that sanctions are a price to be haggled over, and a man expecting a discount has no reason to stop fighting.
The warning needs teeth, and they should bite on the American side too. Europe should declare that anyone who buys these assets, whether from Moscow, the Gulf or Manhattan, will be treated as a sanctions evader, shut out of European banks and markets and barred from the Lukoil refineries on European soil.
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Look at the two lines. As the daylight goes, the heart deaths rise. As it comes back, they fall. It happens every year across the north, as regular as breathing.
You were told this is the cold, the flu and the snow shovel, and all three play their part. But when Scottish researchers allowed for temperature across 56,370 heart attacks, the months with more ultraviolet light still had fewer of them.
Nobody has proved that the sun is the reason. Nobody has ruled it out either, which is a strange gap in a question this size.
New piece on what the northern winter takes from the heart. This 👇
gandalv.substack.com/p/the-s…
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Gandalv retweeted
Unsurprisingly the Russians are paying off the Americans to take their side in the Russia’s criminal war of aggression.
nytimes.com/2026/10/03/us/po…
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Hitler could not defeat Great Britain, so they bombed the residential areas of its cities.
Stalin could not defeat Finland, so they bombed the residential areas of its cities.
Putin cannot defeat Ukraine, so they bomb the residential areas of its cities.
All fascists are alike…
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🇳🇴 Norway Tightens Its Watch on Svalbard.
Norway's Police Security Service, PST, has stepped up its presence on Svalbard in response to increased Russian activity, the agency has confirmed to VG. The move was first hinted at in PST's own podcast, and this is the first time the service has been willing to elaborate.
According to PST spokesman Eirik Veum, the Russian presence on the archipelago has taken on greater strategic weight as the security climate has hardened, which leaves Svalbard and Norway's northernmost counties particularly exposed to intelligence and influence operations.
The reinforcement includes more frequent short rotations of personnel, although PST declines to say what other capabilities are involved.
Moscow, for its part, makes no secret of wanting to expand its civilian footprint on the islands. Not everyone is alarmed, since researchers told NTB this week that they see no real Russian build-up and warn against the West frightening itself. PST has evidently decided it would rather be early than surprised.
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Robots fighting each other on Ukraine's frontline, and the West has no idea how far behind it has fallen. This is changing warfare forever, and yet we keep ordering tanks and artillery like drunks at closing time who insist on one more round of whatever they were drinking in 1985.
Incredible video shows a Russian drone attempting to destroy a Ukrainian ground robot but being disabled when the robot deploys an anti drone net and catches it.
We literally have robots fighting each other on Ukraine’s frontline.
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Here in the U.S. we’re back to building battleships and putting steam powered launchers on carriers. We are going to be so ready to fight WWII again.
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