Russian President Vladimir Putin has revoked his country's ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a global pact banning nuclear weapons tests, saying the Cold War-era agreement meant to bring Russia in line with the United States.

On October 18, Russia's lower house, the State Duma, unanimously passed the second and third readings of a bill that revoked Russia's ratification of the 1966 CTBT, which outlaws all nuclear explosions, including live tests of nuclear weapons.

On Thursday, Putin officially signed into law the withdrawal of ratification of the treaty, which kept a lid on nuclear testing for decades.

With his signature, the legislation takes immediate effect, at a time of acute tension with the West, particularly over Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, which has put ties between Washington and Moscow at their lowest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Russia blames the US for attempting to stymie the emergence of a new multipolar world order.

Putin had earlier urged the Duma to de-ratify the CTBT in order to "mirror" the position of the US, which has signed but never ratified the global treaty, which established a global network of observation posts capable of detecting the sound, shockwaves or radioactive fallout from a nuclear explosion.

The Russian leader on October 5 said "I hear calls to start testing nuclear weapons. I am not ready to say whether we really need to conduct tests or not."

However, Russian diplomats, according to Reuters, insist that Moscow will not resume nuclear testing unless Washington does.

Now, the last remaining bilateral nuclear weapons treaty between Washington and Moscow is New START.

The New START agreement was extended in February 2021 until February 4, 2026, by US President Joe Biden and Putin.

On February 21, Russia suspended its participation in New START. However, it did not withdraw from the treaty, clarifying that it would continue to abide by the limits on the number of nuclear warheads that can be deployed under New START.

Medvedev warns 'enemy' Poland

Separately on Thursday, Russia's former President Dmitry Medvedev, who is currently serving as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, voiced the warning in an 8,000-word article on Russian-Polish relations.

He called Poland a "dangerous enemy", which risks losing its statehood.

"We will treat it (Poland) precisely as a historical enemy. If there is no hope for reconciliation with the enemy, Russia should have only one and a very tough attitude regarding its fate," Medvedev warned Warsaw.

"History has more than once delivered a merciless verdict to the presumptuous Poles: no matter how ambitious the revanchist plans may be, their collapse could lead to the death of Polish statehood in its entirety," he added.

Poland, which is a firm supporter of Ukraine, accuses Russia of trying to destabilize the country with disinformation campaigns and espionage. Moscow, in return, condemns Warsaw's hostile stance towards it and Russian interests in Poland.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky's chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, has backtracked after promoting a Time magazine article that portrayed the leader as being overly stubborn and unable to control corruption.

Yermak's Telegram account initially shared a link to the 3,700-word Time report on Monday, describing it as "a very important article," according to screenshots shared by Ukrainian and Russian journalists. As of Tuesday, the message was no longer available.

Some commentators have suggested that whoever posted the link had failed to read the article first, and had assumed it was complementary of Zelensky.

Having previously been praised by Western journalists amid the conflict with Russia, Zelensky was painted in a less complimentary light by Ukrainian insiders quoted by Time, who described an "angry" individual with a record of political missteps.

• UN agency: Gaza now a 'graveyard' for children
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• Israel rushes warships to Red Sea after attacks by Yemen's Houthis, raises possibility conflict will spill over into Syria
• Putin sends classified message through Syrian envoy to Iran's President Raisi

I'm posting this two-segment video to set the record straight; there is credible information that indicates Israel, with the backing of the United States, intends to assassinate Syria's President Bashar al-Assad if Hezbollah opens a wide front from southern Lebanon.

To put this in proper context; since 2011, the U.S. waged a secret covert operation in Syria to topple Assad and install a friendly government in Israel. To achieve this goal, the U.S. and its regional allies spent tens of billions in arming and training multinational takfiri terrorist groups.

According to the New York Times, the secret program (Timber Sycamore) was one of the most expensive CIA covert operations in the history of the agency. However, Syria emerged victorious and the terror groups were mostly destroyed with the help of Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah.

While President Trump ended the covert operation in 2017, the Pentagon sent troops to the Eastern shore of the Euphrates to occupy the oil and gas fields and hence, disallow the Syrian government from using the revenues of the oil to reconstruct the war-torn country.

The pro-Syria alliance believes the CIA's attempt to remove Assad was urged by Israel because a pro-Israeli government in Damascus means the isolation of Hezbollah and eventually the Palestinian militant groups fighting against Israel.

With the escalation of the conflict in Palestine and the carpet bombing of Gaza, it is believed that Hezbollah has mobilized its elite forces and kept 1/3 of the Israeli army busy on the northern front by firing ATGMs and rockets at the Israeli forces. But if Israel wages a full-scale invasion of Gaza, it is believed that Hezbollah will intervene and wage a ground offensive on the settlements in northern Israel.

If Hezbollah's offensive materializes, my information indicates that Israel will bomb Damascus and try to kill Assad. Will Israel dare to do that? I believe with the current mentality governing Tel Aviv, everything is possible.

NOTE: the above text is an analysis based on my personal knowledge and different sources. It is not wishful thinking or scaremongering. It is simply a political analysis based on the available information to me.