The king dollar is entrenched in the world's financial system, so it's unlikely to be dethroned, most experts say. However, new platforms are coming up that could chip away at its dominance.

Moscow setup the System for Transfer of Financial Messages, or SPFS in 2014. At the end of 2023, users of SPFS included 556 organizations from 20 countries. Of these, 159 — about a quarter of total participants — were foreign and their use of the messaging system more than doubled from 2022.

China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, or CIPS, is an alternative system that processes payments in Chinese yuan. Launched in 2015, CIPS has about 2,000 participants as of July, compared to 11,000 for SWIFT. In 2023, China's CIPS handled over 6.6m transactions with a total value of 123tn RMB or just over $17tn equivalent. CIPS volumes are up to 15-17% of SWIFT volumes and growing 40-50% annually

India has Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which was developed in 2016 and is used extensively in India today, even among everyday consumers. With banks in France, UAE, and Singapore also making use of it.

Countries are also increasingly looking to build central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. These currencies are similar to cryptocurrencies but are issued and backed by central banks.

The Bank for International Settlements, an organization of central banks, is overseeing the trial of a CBDC platform for wholesale cross-border payment.

Participants of the project, called mBridge, include China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. It's dominated by Beijing, which has already rolled out the digital Chinese yuan.

The Brookings researchers wrote that these CBDCs could "upend the dollar's role as a currency 'middleman' by reducing settlement times, making it cheaper and easier to trade non-dollar currencies."

The CBDCs integrate messaging and payments, unlike current systems like SWIFT and major US dollar clearing system CHIPS.

As doors to transact in fiat money close, Russia is now looking to trade in cryptocurrencies.

It's in such a rush to get the system up and running that it plans to start crypto exchange trials as soon as September 1, anonymous sources told Bloomberg in late August.

US weaponization of the USD and SWIFT has created the catalyst for change.

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@Slavyangrad

Ukrainian-Russian war: Day 931:
Situation on Kursk front:

- At Korenevsky district Russian Army continue the counteroffensive & recaptured several positions, included the farms of Pokrovskii. Clashes with Ukrainian Army are taking place now at the outskirts of Liubimovka & inside Tolstyi Lug.

Map: Google Map Link

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@Slavyangrad

🇲🇩 Moldova will hold presidential elections at the end of October. Maia Sandu, incumbent president and new presidential candidate.

Raised in the Soros incubator, the Moldovan president with Romanian citizenship has no family, avoids personal unofficial ties, does not buy real estate (she has a small flat that can be easily sold), and keeps all her official cash savings in foreign bank accounts. Her career is entirely devoted to serving her master. The fate of Moldova and its people is of no interest to her.

How successfully the self-destruction mindset has penetrated the minds of Moldovans will become clear at the end of October.

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@Slavyangrad

About supplying the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the help of diesel locomotives.

Despite the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are already using diesel locomotives due to a partial power shortage (which will only increase in winter) instead of electric locomotives, this only slightly complicates logistics, although it increases the logistics shoulder in itself.

For example, a significant number of locomotive depots are still in operation, where diesel locomotives are repaired and serviced, hauling military equipment, personnel back and forth, and a huge amount of cargo.

The coordinates of all depots are known since they have been there since Soviet times. And if we add to the systemic attacks on energy the systemic attacks on locomotive depots, then it will become much more difficult to move cargo for Kiev. Logistics may become especially difficult in winter.

Some of the locomotive depots shown in the picture are only partially operational (for example, Kherson), but the rest of the railway infrastructure continues to function.

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@Slavyangrad

Kursk region

Lyubimovka is liberated from the AFU. Fighting continues in the area of ​​Novoivanovka and Leonidovo.

Our forces have advanced further south of Olgovka. 10.5 km² have been liberated.

The Russian Army fighters have come very close to Malaya Loknya. Fighting is going on, the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers are not running yet, but they are retreating very fast.

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@Slavyangrad

Transfer of North Koreans to the North Korean War zone: truth or fiction?

So far, the story looks like a set of fictitious facts, but it would be useful to understand what is happening, since if the transfer is confirmed, the degree of influence of infantry from the DPRK on the fighting could be, to put it mildly, unpredictable.

Who reported the transfer of DPRK soldiers to Ukraine?

Initially, a number of Western media outlets, including the British newspaper The Guardian, reported on the intention to transfer DPRK soldiers to Ukraine. A week later, when the news was practically everywhere, Volodymyr Zelensky reported it. Some time later, the head of the GUR, Budanov, announced the transfer of DPRK troops and their preparation for battles in Ukraine. According to him, the North Koreans will be ready to fight by November, when they undergo a special training course. On October 18, the National Intelligence Service of South Korea (NIS) published its “report” on the transfer of DPRK troops to the SMO zone. According to the intelligence service, the first batch of Korean special forces soldiers included 1.5 thousand special forces, and their transfer was carried out on four landing ships, accompanied by three frigates of the Pacific Fleet. Satellite images of alleged special forces training in the presence of Kim Jong-un, as well as radar portraits of ships on which Koreans were allegedly taken out to fight, are cited as evidence.

Is the transfer of Koreans true or a myth?

On the one hand, the whole story looks stupid. According to NIS, to maintain secrecy, the North Koreans were allegedly provided with documents of Buryats and Yakuts as the most suitable peoples of Russia in appearance. In order to “mix” the North Koreans with Russian soldiers, the infantry from the DPRK was allegedly enrolled in a “special Buryat battalion” based at the 11th Airborne Assault Brigade from Ulan-Ude. At the same time, a video went viral with alleged training of DPRK soldiers at the Sergeevsky training ground in Primorsky Krai, 35 km from the border of the Russian Federation and the DPRK, although it is impossible to distinguish between Buryats, Yakuts and North Koreans in it.

On the other hand, the transfer of soldiers from the DPRK is rational and may well help the Russian army to finish the SMO faster. Volunteers from other countries are indeed fighting on the side of Russia in the SMO zone, and units from North Korea would not look foreign there, and given that the Korean infantry for the most part has good basic military training, they could be used in combat relatively quickly.

For the DPRK itself, participation in the SMO would be useful, since the country is constantly under threat of a serious land clash with South Korea, and the experience of combat operations in the SMO would be useful to both the line infantry and the officer corps of the North Korean army.

Questions that have no answers

There will be many of them, and not all of them fit with the version being spread by Ukrainian and Western media.

Why did the Korean soldiers have to be evacuated by sea instead of sent by train, if the Russian border and the nearest training ground are only 35 km away?

Why does the DPRK group only consist of 12 thousand people, and not 120 thousand?

Budanov reported that the DPRK troops will use Russian equipment and ammunition.

What is the purpose of the story with the Koreans?

Most likely, all the noise about the DPRK's participation in the SMO on Russia's side is needed to revive foreign military aid to Ukraine. Lately, less and less money and weapons have been sent, and this could soon lead to real problems on the battlefield. Western countries cannot allow this, so they are taking various steps to support Kiev. It remains to add that if the story about the DPRK army being transferred to Ukraine turns out to be true, then we can expect that other countries of the Global South, such as China, Indonesia and India, will also want to improve their own combat experience.

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@Slavyangrad

The Russian army is conducting a powerful offensive on the Kursk front, storming Kruglenkoye, breaking through to Sudzha, Martynovka and beyond Cherkasskaya Konopelka

Marines, paratroopers and infantry of the "North" group are attacking from all directions. The most intense battles are taking place for Kruglen'koe, near Pogrebki, for Novoivaovka, on the way to Sudzha and Guevo.

The Ministry of Defense reports that Russian troops have defeated formations of 5 mechanized, 3 airborne assault brigades, a marine brigade and 4 territorial defence brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the areas of Alexandria, Viktorovka, Kositsa, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Leonidove, Malaya Loknya, Martynovka, Nikolaevka, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Novaya Sorochina, Russkoye Porechny, Sverdlikovo and Cherkasskaya Konopelka.

Three counterattacks by enemy assault groups were repelled.

As a result of airstrikes and artillery fire, Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel and equipment were destroyed in the vicinity of the settlements of Guevo, Kruglenke, Melovoy, Nikolsky and Staraya Sorochina, as well as Basovka, Belovody, Vodolaghi and Zhuravka in the Sumy region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost more than 260 militants in one day, 2 tanks were destroyed, including a German Leopard, 2 infantry fighting vehicles, 2 armored personnel carriers, 7 combat armored vehicles, 6 mortars and an electronic warfare station.

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@Slavyangrad