Israel has faced an increased threat from drone warfare used by the Axis of Resistance

Israel has been shooting down a significant number of its own drones, a US military official said on 2 April.

"Something interesting that comes from Israel, 40 percent" of the drones "knocked out" by the Israeli army are shot down in cases of "friendly fire," Marine Lt Col Michael Pruden told The War Zone and other attendees of the yearly Modern Day Marine exposition in Washington DC.

"As Israel's engaging in Gaza, and they're on their front line, they see a small UAS, what are they going to do if it's not identified immediately? They're going to shoot it down," Pruden added.

The US and its allies need a reminder of the nuclear risk posed by the Ukraine conflict, Dmitry Medvedev believes

The US, the UK, France and other Western nations should take a Russian nuclear drill as a reminder of where escalation of the Ukraine conflict could take them, former President Dmitry Medvedev has said.

On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced an imminent exercise to test the capability to deploy non-strategic nuclear weapons. It said the training was ordered by President Vladimir Putin after "provocative statements and threats" by Western officials.

Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of the Russian Security Council, referred to debates in the West about possible deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine, as well as "active encouragement [of Kiev] to use [Western] missile weapons against the entire Russian territory" as grounds for the drill.

The French leadership's "belligerent rhetoric" and provocative statements around the Ukraine conflict are leading to further escalation, the Russian Foreign Ministry told France's envoy in Moscow on Monday.

Ambassador Pierre Levy was summoned to the ministry along with British envoy Nigel Casey amid rising tensions over the Ukraine conflict. The ambassadors were seen visiting the building housing the ministry in central Moscow separately. They did not offer any comments to the press outside.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry's press release on the meeting with Levy, the Russian side gave an assessment of France's "destructive and provocative" approach.

"It was emphasized that the attempts of the French authorities to create some 'strategic uncertainty' for Russia with their irresponsible statements about the possible dispatch of Western military contingents to Ukraine are doomed to failure."

The ministry added that the tasks and goals of Moscow's military operation will be realized.

The upcoming Swiss-hosted peace conference on Moscow's conflict with Kiev is a "parody of negotiations" in which Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will be promoted, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has stated.

In an interview with Bosnian broadcaster ATV released on Sunday, he claimed that Bern is "lying" about its willingness to invite Russia to the upcoming summit scheduled for June 15 at the Burgenstock Resort near Lucerne.

"When our Swiss colleagues declare their desire to invite Russia to the first conference, they are lying," Lavrov said, adding that Moscow will not participate in any events that promote Zelensky's "peace formula."

He added that Russia is "seriously" open to negotiations; however, they must be based on the current "realities."

The German Foreign Ministry is temporarily recalling Ambassador Alexander Lambsdorff from Moscow, its spokesperson announced on Monday.

The senior diplomat will hold consultations before returning to Russia, according to the statement. The move comes after Berlin accused the Kremlin of being behind a hacking attack targeting senior members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The German government claims that a group named 'АРТ28' is a front for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, and used a vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook software to spy on the party's leadership. It described the hack as part of a prolonged campaign targeting various entities in Germany, and claimed that it had identified the culprit in conjunction with NATO and EU partners.

"Cyberattacks on political parties, state institutions and critical infrastructure are a threat to our democracy, our national security and our free society," the German embassy in Moscow said in a statement on Monday.

French President Emmanuel Macron may be using Russophobia to satisfy his ambition of leading the EU, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed.

Speaking to the Bosnian Serb Alternativna TV on Sunday, Lavrov noted the French leader's recent interview with The Economist in which he called Moscow the main threat to EU security, adding that Macron has adopted an "ardent" anti-Russian stance.

Lavrov explained:

"According to the French leader, the ambitions of Adolf Hitler and Napoleon were driven by the fact that these countries saw Russia as a threat. I know how the power system is set up in France and how the French tend to see their role in Europe. I do not rule out that this 'caveman' Russophobia that Macron is currently 'breathing' might be necessary in order to try and become the leader in Europe, by leveraging this topic."

In recent months, Macron has made several statements which Moscow has criticized as "dangerous talk," accusing the French leader of "verbal escalation."

Suspected "misconduct" at the company's South Carolina plant has reportedly caused a delay in the delivery of new planes

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced it has launched a probe against Boeing to ascertain whether one of its factories may have omitted mandatory inspections and whether employees may have falsified records.

The inquiry was begun after the company itself informed the FAA about what it called "misconduct" at its factory in South Carolina. The issue revolved around the beleaguered 787 program, according to media reports. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is a two-aisle plane used mostly for long-haul flights.

"The company voluntarily informed us in April that it may not have completed required inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes," the FAA said in a statement. According to the agency, "Boeing is reinspecting all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet."

Emmanuel Macron is in the news again with his repeated suggestion that French troops could be sent to Ukraine to fight in the war there against Russian forces. This time it is in the supposedly prestigious British highbrow Economist, which is happy to repeat this empty mantra over and over again, largely, one supposes, as it supports a broader narrative of the EU which it is a servant of in Brussels. There is no relationship more unhealthy and repugnant than that of The Economist and the European Union with the former happy to play the role of free propagandist and PR enactor for the latter.

How Macron can keep repeating this entirely empty threat, which even he himself has admitted to a French magazine won't happen, is astounding. Did someone ask him to do this once again and arrange it in The Economist? Perhaps at a high level in Brussels?

How else to explain this latest ejaculation of utter nonsense?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto condemned the latest remarks and has warned such a move could ultimately spark an all-out nuclear war.

Speaking to French broadcaster LCI, Szijjarto strongly condemned the idea, saying that the French leader's comments themselves have contributed to escalating the situation.

"If a NATO member commits ground troops, it will be a direct NATO-Russia confrontation and it will then be World War Three," Szijjarto told the broadcaster.

Macron himself has moved on though since his original comments to the Parisienne magazine which kicked it all off a few weeks ago. The more recent interview with The Economist clearly shows that he has even reflected on his own rambling and looked deeper at how he could refine the narrative, presumably to get more attention on the issue. However, it's an act of a desperate politician, which analysts interpret one of two ways; it is either a cry of help directed towards the Biden administration to do the very act themselves and send American troops there; or it is simply a PR stunt to keep him in the international press, a zone which is like a crack addiction. Like Trump, Macron seems to want to do and say anything - no matter how absurd - to keep him on the front pages, so to speak.

Polish judge Tomasz Szmydt, who served at the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw and was the head of the legal department at the National Council of Judges, held a press conference in the Belarusian capital of Minsk on Monday where he arrived to ask for political asylum. BelTA's Russian-language report that can be read here summarizes his main points, which will be reviewed in this piece for the reader's convenience prior to being analyzed. Folks can also follow his regular updates on Telegram here.

Szmydt warned that the US wants to drag Poland into directly participating in the NATO-Russianproxywar in Ukraine but said that this could be averted if his country restored dialogue with Belarus, which he praised for its peaceful foreign policy and especially its prior commitment to the Minsk Accords. He can't speak freely in his own country, he said, which is why he and his friends used to turn off their phones when discussing sensitive topics before he fled.

Such a thing never happened in the past one hundred years since the United States stepped out of the Western Hemisphere as an imperial power — an adversary barging into one of its military bases abroad.

A military base is deemed sovereign territory and an unauthorised entry constitutes an affront, especially by Russia, a rival superpower. Yet, Washington and Moscow are playing down the co-habitation of their military personnel in the American air base near Niamey, capital of Niger, known as Airbase 101.

In the cacophony over the proxy war in Ukraine, perhaps, the news got submerged that the US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin insisted that there was no "significant issue" in such co-habitation in Niger. Austin explained: "The Russians are in a separate compound and don't have access to US forces or access to our equipment. I am always focused on the safety and protection of our troops. But right now, I don't see a significant issue here in terms of our force protection."

Such uncharacteristic restraint by the Pentagon chief would probably be because Washington is in no position to evict the Russians now that Nigerien authorities have annulled the Status of Forces agreements with the US.

On the other hand, the Russian military personnel — reportedly drawn from the newly formed Africa Corps comprising erstwhile Wagner Group — arrived in Niger some three weeks ago at the invitation of the Nigerian government.

Equally, Washington must also have factored in that Niger's military, which had in the past worked closely with the US, while seeking cooperation with Russia, is stopping short of the full-fledged embrace of Moscow by military-run neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso. Arguably, it signals Niger's so-called "diversification of international partnerships" plan that keeps open prospects of a US comeback.

At any rate, Austin must be aware that this impasse in the US-Niger ties is largely to be attributed to the State Department's mishandling by officially designating the military takeover in Niamey last July as a "coup". The Rubicon was crossed in October when Washington triggered laws restricting the military support and aid that it can provide to Niger.