🇧🇬❌🇷🇴 Bulgaria's PM blames Romania for provoking Russia into attacking commercial ships in the Black Sea

Radev stopped short of identifying Russia as the party responsible for the attacks, while implying that Bucharest’s accusations against Moscow had contributed to the escalation.

“I just want to mention the case of Romania. Romania came forward and said, ‘We have no evidence, but we know very well that Russia is responsible for these attacks and we condemn them categorically.’ What happened? Two ships, one of them just a few days ago, were hit and sunk in the most defiant way possible in Romanian territorial waters,” Radev said, according to Euronews Romania.

The Bulgarian prime minister also referred to his own position towards Moscow, claiming that he was the only head of government among Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey to have summoned the Russian ambassador to express his views, according to trud.bg, as quoted by Profit.ro.

“When I make accusations, I must have clear evidence before doing so. I cannot act on the basis of slogans,” Radev said.

The Romanian MFA handed over a protest note to the Russian ambassador in Bucharest over the many drone incursions into the country the past year. A few months ago, Romanian president, Nicușor Dan, expelled some of the Russian embassy's staff over a drone explosion that injured two people in the border city of Galați but did not even issue a protest note to Kiev when the latter detonated a unmanned surface vehicle (USV) self-detonated inside the port of Constanța while chasing an oil tanker carrying Kazakh oil because the oil tanker departed from the port of Novorossiysk the main export route for Kazakh and Central Asian oil to Romania and Europe.

Romania has long enforced a double standard for violations of its sovereignty, expelling Russian diplomats and issuing strongly worded letters to Moscow but ignoring every similar action committed by Kiev.

Politicians in Bucharest unlike those in Bulgaria still firmly believe in the "ironclad" security guarantees given to them by Western officials, a belief which has been put to the test by recent attacks on commercial shipping in the Black Sea which is directly harming Romania's trade. Russia won't forgive Romania for the support and aid it sent to Kiev.

🔗 https://www.romania-insider.com/society/bulgarias-pm-blames-romania-provoking-russia

🇮🇷🤝🇨🇳 Iran-China train exports have increased 10x times after the U.S. imposed the naval blockade

The first container train carrying exports from Iran’s Qom departed for China.

Simultaneously, 460 tons of sodium hypochlorite from Iran’s Semnan were transported to Turkey by train, further expanding Iran's railway export routes.

With increased maritime restrictions, rail freight transport from China to Iran has increased tenfold, and the arrival of Chinese trains, which used to be every 3 to 4 days, has now reached one train per day.

🔗 https://t.me/farsna/471374

👊 🇦🇲 🏛 A brawl broke out in Armenia’s parliament earlier today between lawmakers from the ruling Civil Contract party and the opposition resulting in the suspension of the session. The incident was broadcast live and shows lawmakers wrestling and throwing punches. Local media report an ambulance arrived at the building and an opposition lawmaker from the Strong Armenia faction was seen bleeding from the nose. Security staff separated the sides, and the clashes continued in the corridors. No official injury report has been released.

The confrontation began during a speech by Civil Contract MP Taron Chakhoyan, who accused opposition members and associates of former president Robert Kocharyan of corruption and clashed verbally with Narek Karapetyan, head of the Strong Armenia faction.

Azernews reports a similar clash took place in early October.

📎 OSINTdefender

🚢💥🇮🇷 The IRGC-linked Fars News Agency published a short clip of what they claim is an oil tanker in flames after hitting a naval mine in the Strait of Hormuz.

Coupled with a previous report also posted by Fars, this would be the 4th commercial ship to hit a mine in the Hormuz in the last 30+ hours although Fars provided video evidence for two of these incidents.

@CIG_telegram

🇺🇸 U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the Pentagon’s top military planner, over allegations of leaking classified information about the Iran and Ukraine wars to the media.

Sylvia is the second official removed from the position in a year, with no replacement announced.

A Pentagon official said Sylvia failed three polygraph tests and the case was referred to the Justice Department, though two other sources disputed the allegations.

Sylvia had been coordinating U.S. military planning for Iran. This means the Joint Staff that serves the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine is without its chief planner on the eve of possible resumption of strikes against Iran.

Source: CBS News

📝 Carolina Lion: Scapegoating for failed operations or clearing out opposition to restarting the war with Iran. Take your pick.

🔗 Clash Report

🇷🇺 Russia's Duma budget committee backs 2027 budget with 2.2% of GDP deficit

The State Duma's budget and taxes committee recommended adopting Russia's 2027-2029 federal budget in the first reading on October 29. It called the plan balanced and realistic while warning of revenue risks, Vedomosti reported, citing the committee's report.

The draft puts 2027 federal revenue at RUB43.3 trillion ($535bn) and spending at RUB48.7 trillion ($602bn), a deficit of 2.2% of GDP that is planned to narrow to 1.9% in 2029. Non-oil and gas revenues make up more than 83% of the total, and the plan does not draw on the National Wealth Fund to cover the deficit.

The committee, chaired by Andrei Makarov, sees external uncertainty as the main risk, with a chance that oil and gas revenues fall short. At home it flags tighter monetary conditions, which could hit investment and consumer spending and so revenue, as well as higher-than-forecast inflation, weak productivity growth and a rising debt burden.

Lawmakers and the Accounts Chamber consider the government's inflation forecast too optimistic. It does not fully match the path of the key rate and the above-forecast indexation of utility and transport tariffs, which could stop inflation returning to target in 2027 as the government plans. The ministry forecasts Urals crude at $53 a barrel in 2027, falling to $51/b in 2029, while the Bank of Russia expects a drop to $50/b.

The 2026 oil price assumption of $61.2/b may be too low, the committee noted. The Accounts Chamber has said that hitting it would require prices to fall to $36.3/b in the fourth quarter, which is unlikely even if the Middle East conflict is settled.

🔗 https://www.intellinews.com/russia-s-duma-budget-committee-backs-2027-budget-with-2-2-of-gdp-deficit-480025/

🇺🇦 Ukraine faces 1mn fewer workers by 2030 assuming refugees return, KSE says

Ukraine's civilian workforce will shrink by about 1mn to 11.9mn by end-2030 even if refugees come home, the KSE Institute said in a report published on October 26.

The workforce falls in all of the think tank's scenarios, from 12.9mn at the start of 2026 to between 11.5mn and 12.2mn at the end of 2030, depending on how many refugees return and how quickly demobilised soldiers find civilian jobs. The working-age population, aged 15 to 64, falls from 19.6mn in 2026 to 16.4mn in 2040 in the moderate scenario, a drop of 16%, and by 26% in the pessimistic one.

"The main conclusion is that the workforce will shrink under all scenarios - even with substantial returns and the rapid integration of veterans," the authors wrote in the study, titled "Demography as a limit to Ukraine's post-war growth".

The numbers put a size on the problem Ukrainian companies already report every month. Staff shortages were the biggest obstacle for 69% of businesses surveyed in August, and Economy Minister Oleksiy Sobolev said in May that Ukraine would need 4.5mn more workers over the next decade to sustain 7% annual growth. KSE's projections underscore the scale of the challenge: post-war growth would depend on each worker producing far more.

KSE set its workforce projection against the GDP path in its own Ukraine Macroeconomic Handbook Q4 2026, which has real GDP contracting by 0.6% in 2027 before growing by 4.4% in 2028 and 5% in 2029. With civilian employment falling by an average of 2.1% a year over the same period, output per civilian worker would have to rise by 5.1% a year, leaving it about 16% higher in 2029 than in 2026.

That is more than two and a half times the 1.9% a year Ukraine managed in 2011-2021, a pace the country last achieved during the boom years before 2008. Almost all of the effort falls in 2028 and 2029, when output per worker would need to grow by 7.2% and 6.4%. The 5.1% is a floor: GDP now includes a much larger defence sector, valued mainly through soldiers' pay, and that output will shrink as the army is demobilised.

Ukraine starts from a low base. Real GDP was 79% of its 2021 level in 2025 and KSE expects it to slip by a further 0.3% this year, while civilian employment averages about 11.5mn, or 75% of the 15.4mn in 2021. In 2021 a Ukrainian worker produced about $44,000 a year at purchasing power parity, the same as in Moldova, 79% of the Bulgarian level and about 54% of the level in Poland, Romania and Lithuania. Output per hour worked was roughly half of Poland's and a quarter of Germany's.

Less than 28 mn people lived in government-controlled Ukraine as of January 1, 2026, with a further 6.5mn Ukrainians abroad, of whom 5mn are war refugees and 1.5mn other migrants. The resident population within today's front lines has fallen by about 4.3mn, or 13%, since the start of 2022, mostly through emigration, and deaths have outnumbered births by about 1.2mn. More than a fifth of residents are aged 65 or over, and there are 114 women for every 100 men.

🔗 https://www.intellinews.com/ukraine-faces-1mn-fewer-workers-by-2030-even-if-refugees-return-kse-says-479577/

🌡 🇺🇸 👨‍💻 Pentagon treating military base freezer malfunctions as suspected cyberattack, officials say

At least six on-base commissaries suffered late August freezer malfunctions, according to web updates

US military says cyber investigators are looking into the disruptions and are working with French law enforcement

Recent French cyberattack on freezers hit more than 350 supermarkets and could cost tens of millions of euros

The Fort Huachuca, Arizona, Facebook account explained on August 26 that its ​freezer "went into defrost mode where it heated up all the food. Trust us when we say it was 'spoiled.'"

Hackers have previously sabotaged fridges and freezers both in the United States and elsewhere.

Danfoss has said that, opens new tab, in 2022, hackers either targeted or broke into supermarkets in Russia and Israel that were using obsolete versions of its cold storage controllers. In December of last year, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles accused a Ukrainian woman of being part ⁠of a hacker ​group that knocked out the refrigeration at a meatpacking facility in 2024, ruining more than 2,000 pounds of meat.

The root ​problem was that controllers that were initially conceived as isolated interfaces that would be serviced by an in-person technician were increasingly being connected to the internet, said Bill Moore, the chief executive of industrial cybersecurity firm Xona Systems. Concerns about online exposure ​were not unique to cooling systems, he said, but they could have particularly serious consequences there.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/pentagon-treating-military-base-freezer-malfunctions-suspected-cyberattack-2026-10-29/

🇸🇻⚔️🇭🇹 A new batch of Salvadoran troops landed in Port-au-Prince earlier today.

Haitian news sources report that despite the worsening weather, Salvadoran aircraft continue landing at and departing from Port-au-Prince.

The 1.000 troop deployment mentioned in news articles days before is likely an understatement with the number of Salvadoran troops deploying to Haiti set to increase to 2.000 by next Wednesday and up to 5.000 in the coming weeks.

Some Haitian officials are worried that Salvadoran troops would refuse to operate under the UN Security Council-backed Gang Suppression Force (GSF) and stay under Salvadorian command.

🔗 https://echojounal.net/malgre-move-tan-vol-kago-salvadoryen-yo-pa-sispann-ateri-nan-kapital-peyi-dayiti/

🇺🇸⚔️🇮🇷 Democratic senator, Chris Murphy, revealed he received a confidential briefing on the Trump Admin's plan to restart the war with Iran calling it "insane" and "destroying the U.S' commitment to rule of law"

While Murphy couldn't go into details about the plan without risking criminal penalties for disclosing classified information, the senator stated that the Pentagon was tasked by the White House to come up with a list of mostly civilian targets which the USAF is expected to target which Murphy said would lead to "the destruction of our [US'] commitment to rule of law" but coming short of calling it a "war crime".

Murphy also said that the White House plans for a "short and limited" series of strikes which the Democratic politician believes will be met by Iran with unprecedented escalation and prolong the war.

Recall that the IRGC through various Iranian medias made a number of threats that in response to a renewal of U.S. airstrikes, it will target subsea internet cables, AI infrastructure and data centers and even U.S. diplomats and politicians in response to previous US-Israeli attacks on Iranian diplomatic offices and Iranian public officials

🔗 Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT)

🇾🇪🇸🇦⚡️ — Several ballistic missiles were launched from Riyadh in the latest barrage. Several surface-to-air missiles were launched from installations in the city.

At this time, the only things that can be confirmed is multiple interceptions above As Suwaidi neighborhood, southwestern Riyadh. There may be additional interception and impact sites I'm unaware of due to strict Saudi OPSEC measures preventing information from going out.