We can agree that the US is now gradually losing its long-standing position as a world leader and that the Biden administration is doing a much worse job on foreign policy. Biden has proven hesitant about US assistance to Ukraine in defending itself against Russian aggression. In addition, the confrontation between Biden and Trump in the election campaign led to the delay of current military assistance to Ukraine through its blocking by Trumpists in Congress, and this makes the United States appear to be an unreliable ally in the eyes of other states.

At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron gave a press conference on February 25 following the results of the Conference in support of Ukraine and during the conversation he admitted the possibility of introducing NATO troops into Ukraine to help Ukraine repel a Russian attack. Later, he also added that his position regarding the possibility of introducing Western troops into Ukraine is balanced and thoughtful.
https://24tv.ua/ru/makron-zajavil-o-vozmozhnosti-vvoda-vojsk-nato-ukrainu-objasnil_n2505243

Against the backdrop of US indecision, this raises the authority of France, especially since the Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Canada supported him in this.
https://informator.ua/ru/pyat-stran-nato-dopuskayut-otpravku-svoih-voennyh-v-ukrainu-no-est-uslovie

But France is still very far from becoming world leader.

I very much doubt that Trump, when he becomes President of the United States, will actively support Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies, much less private and commercial stablecoins.

According to a published financial disclosure form filed with the U.S. federal Office of Government Ethics, Donald Trump has an Ethereum cryptocurrency wallet that stores $250,000 to $500,000 worth of virtual assets. But the wallet is likely linked to his collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) launched as part of Trump's campaign for this year's US presidential election.
While heading the White House, he did not speak out on this topic so often, only in July 2019 he admitted on his Twitter that “he is not a big fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.” And after losing the last election, Trump said in June 2021 that the first and most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, “looks like a scam,” and made it clear that he prefers fiat currency. "I don't like it because it's a currency that competes with the dollar. I want the dollar to be the world's currency," Trump said.
https://hub.obozrevatel.com/kritik-kriptovalyutyi-donald-tramp-skryil-ethereum-na-polmilliona-dollarov.htm

You can cite other statements by Trump about cryptocurrency, namely:

"Investing in cryptocurrencies is a potential disaster waiting to happen."

Cryptocurrencies “may be fake.”

Bitcoin "looks like a scam" and the euphoria around it is weakening the dollar.

https://www.ukr.net/ru/news/details/technologies/86884766.html

SWGT account: Argoo
Bitcointalk name: Argoo
Bitcointalk profile link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1053354
BSC Wallet Address:
0x33fc5780f8C79dA95812667368aBFB5cf269dD74

My USDT (BSC) wallet Address:
0x33fc5780f8C79dA95812667368aBFB5cf269dD74

I did not find in the figures the number of Ukrainian military forces defending Avdiivka, but it was not much more than the number you mentioned of those captured there.
Perhaps this figure appeared due to the fact that yesterday, February 20, the American edition of the New York Times published an article that allegedly from 850 to 1000 Ukrainian soldiers could have been captured or gone missing during the withdrawal from Avdiivka. Two soldiers with knowledge of Ukraine's retreat estimated that between 850 and 1,000 soldiers appear to have been captured or missing in action. Western officials said that range appears accurate.
However, Ukraine denied this information, saying that it was disinformation and an unsubstantiated lie.
https://tsn.ua/ru/ato/nyt-pishet-chto-pod-avdeevkoy-v-plen-popali-tysyachi-ukrainskih-voennyh-chto-otvechayut-v-vsu-2518897.html

So far, we can only talk for sure about the six captured, whom Russian soldiers immediately shot, filming it on video. After the Ukrainian troops retreated to the Zenit position in Avdiivka, five wounded and one more soldier remained who were not evacuated in time. The Russians agreed to evacuate them and exchange the wounded from Zenit, but they broke their promise.

Regarding the losses of Russians near Avdeevka, there has already been a huge scandal on Russian television due to the fact that the truth about the huge losses of the Russian army in Avdeevka got into the Ukrainian media. The loss figures were announced by military sergeant of the fourth separate motorized rifle brigade of the Russian armed forces, Andrei Morozov, who is fighting in the Donbass. According to him, the irretrievable losses of Russians in the Avdeevka area amounted to about 16 thousand people.
This post in Ukraine was quoted by literally all the leading media, and because of this, Russian propagandists went into real hysterics.
The hosts of the Solovyov Live channel, Yulia Vityazeva and Armen Gasparyan, dedicated an entire half-hour-long broadcast to Andrei Morozov, during which they called Morozov a traitor, a saboteur and demanded the most brutal repressions for him.
https://www.bagnet.org/news/accidents/1361810/zhiteli-rf-uznali-pravdu-o-kolichestve-pogibshih-v-boyah-za-avdeevku.

After that, Morozov simply shot himself.
https://www.dialog.ua/war/290417_1708503880

There are still many months before the US presidential election, and during this time a lot can still change. Trump is old and very scandalous. Europe has already taken up arms against him and is considering the possibility of creating its own defense bloc.

Regarding US assistance to Ukraine, since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States has provided approximately $66 billion in total aid to Ukraine. Of this, more than $43 billion alone was allocated as military aid.
https://www.epravda.com.ua/rus/news/2023/08/7/702986/

This amount is, of course, decent. But if the United States does not help Ukraine now, then in the future they will have to spend much more money and the lives of thousands of Americans when Russia attacks one of the NATO countries, and they understand this.
But military assistance provided to Ukraine has a beneficial effect on the US economy and its citizens. The productivity of the US defense sector is now breaking all possible historical records. Thus, the monthly output of the United States defense sector is the highest since the end of World War II and already exceeds the levels of the arms race (1950s-1991) or the global war on terrorism (2001-2021).

Such unprecedented rates and volumes of production require a huge number of workers. It is therefore not surprising that, thanks to assistance to Ukraine, the American defense industry now dominates the global labor market. The United States accounts for 60% of all global aerospace and defense jobs. Their closest competitors are 6–10 times behind. Sales to US defense contractors rose 42.8%. Ukraine has become a testing ground for modern technologies, which gives the American defense industry an advantage. This directly strengthens not only security, but also the US economy and employment.
https://zn.ua/WORLD/pochemu-soedinennym-shtatam-vyhodno-pomohat-ukraine-v-vojne-protiv-rossii.html.

At the same time, Russia's successes are not that great. A few days ago, the Russians occupied the ruins of the small town of Avdeevka, which they had been continuously storming since October 10, 2023, leaving 47,186 dead and wounded people, 364 tanks, 748 armored vehicles, 248 artillery systems and other weapons.
https://war.gordonua.com/unichtozhili-rezerv-dlja-nastuplenija-tarnavskij-rasskazal-ob-obshchikh-poterjakh-rf-v-bojakh-za-avdeevku-1698176.html

Before this, the Russians captured the small town of Bakhmut in May last year, losing about 23,000 of their soldiers killed and about 80,000 wounded. A few more such Pyrrhic victories and Russia will have nothing to advance with. By the way, in the last four days alone, Russia has lost  of six of its fighters worth approximately $400 million.

I don’t understand why no one here mentions the real candidate for US President from the Republican Party - Nikki Haley, who was previously the governor of South Carolina and the US permanent representative to the UN.

Nikki Haley shares many of the same views as her rival Trump on a number of domestic policy issues, particularly on immigration and fiscal issues, but she is completely unapologetic about the intentions of many Republicans, including Trump, to soften US policy towards Russia . She considers Ukraine's victory in the war with Russia to be a guarantee of US global and national security, and criticizes her party members who call for dialogue with the Kremlin or US neutrality in this conflict.

Support for Nikki Haley has grown in recent months both in individual states and within the Washington core of the Republican Party.
Haley is a compromise for those who do not want Donald Trump to return to the White House and she has a good chance compared to the old Joe Biden, and also if Trump is removed from the election due to many criminal cases against him.

Humanity is already trying to evaluate the possibility of extracting valuable chemical elements from asteroids in near space. Last October, the United States sent a scientific mission on Elon Musk's rocket to the metal asteroid Psyche. According to scientists' calculations, in 2029 the device will reach an asteroid located in the Main Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, having covered 3.5 billion kilometers by that time.

The metallic asteroid Psyche, 280 km wide, is the most expensive known space rock in the solar system. And this is due to its composition, because it must be filled with a huge amount of valuable metals such as gold, platinum and others. The total value of these metals, if they could all be delivered to Earth, is estimated to be 10,000 quadrillion dollars and far exceeds the total value of the entire modern economy of the Earth, that is, all the economies of the countries of the world. Despite the fact that the technology for extracting minerals from space objects does not yet exist, it will certainly appear soon, since this is a very promising industry.

https://rtvi.com/news/ssha-zapustili-missiyu-k-asteroidu-psiheya-na-rakete-maska/

https://focus.ua/technologies/599045-samyy-cennyy-asteroid-psiheya-pochemu-on-takoy-dorogoy-i-mozhno-li-dobyvat-na-nem-metally-foto

Don't be so naive. Trump's words that he will stop the war within 24 hours after he becomes President of the United States again are nothing more than an empty campaign promise that he will not be able to fulfill at all.

First, Trump was President of the United States from January 2017 to January 2021. At the same time, the war with Russia in eastern Ukraine has continued since 2014 throughout the Trump presidency. We haven’t seen any efforts by Trump to stop this war before.

Secondly, what Trump is proposing, namely leaving almost four regions conquered in Ukraine to Russia, will not suit either Ukraine or Russia. Putin may temporarily agree to such conditions, but only so that a truce can come and Russia can prepare for the next territorial seizure of Ukraine, because now Putin’s army has largely lost its combat capability, and the losses in military equipment are simply catastrophic. As for Ukraine, they have long been saying that negotiations with Russia are possible only after Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine, including the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula. Trump in this situation can only try to weaken or stop providing assistance to Ukraine, but it is still unclear how Congress and the US people in general will look at this.

Thirdly, the assistance provided by the United States to Ukraine is significant, but about 50 other countries, including European countries, also provide it within their means. And such assistance is growing. Putin understands this, which is why he recently said that the fate of Russia is being decided in Ukraine. In order to divert attention from Ukraine and weaken the assistance provided to it, the Kremlin is provoking the outbreak of military conflicts around the world, including the Hamas attack on Israel. Now the intelligence of European countries has received information about Russia's impending war against the three Baltic states - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Even if things don't go according to plan again, it will be easier for Putin to justify his defeat in a war against NATO members than in a war against relatively small Ukraine.

In a few days, it will be exactly two years since Russia began its large-scale invasion of Ukraine. These two years of war with Ukraine cost Russia $211 billion (19.5 trillion rubles). We are talking about the costs of equipping, deploying and maintaining troops for offensive operations, a senior US Defense Department official said, Reuters reports.

Generally speaking, the invasion of Ukraine cost $1.3 trillion, taking into account the lost economic growth of Russia, which was expected until 2026, the Pentagon noted. If Putin had not started the war, the Russian economy could have been 5% larger, the US Treasury previously emphasized.

  The government has included record defense spending since Soviet times in the 2024 budget: it will amount to 10.775 trillion rubles, or 29.5% of all spending. At the same time, spending on social needs and other areas that could be aimed at improving the well-being of Russian citizens is sharply reduced. This winter, the suburbs of Moscow suffered from freezing temperatures and people were forced to warm themselves in the streets near fires as public utilities fell into disrepair due to long-term underfunding.

A Pentagon official also assessed the damage caused to the army. According to him, Russia's losses in killed and wounded reached 315 thousand people. This is about 87% of the personnel that the Ministry of Defense had before February 24, 2022.

All this certainly affects the purchasing power of the ruble, which is falling more and more rapidly. https://ukrrudprom.com/news/Pentagon_Putin_potratil_navoynu_bolshe_210mlrd_dollarov_ipoteryal_315_tis_chelove.html

I have already heard several times that in the USA this is what they do when printing cash dollars. They can transfer cash dollars to other countries without any problems, but they put up all sorts of obstacles to ensure that the cash returns to the United States. If large amounts of cash enter the United States, especially if it is imported by private individuals, then its origin and reason for import are carefully checked. If the slightest violations are detected, the dollars are confiscated, and a private person may end up in prison.
But it’s a little unclear to me why, if cash dollars are transferred to Ukraine as assistance to protect against Russian military aggression, then this should weaken the national currency of Ukraine? Most likely, the Ukrainian hryvnia will weaken if Ukraine does not receive assistance and this will affect its ability to provide a worthy rebuff to the aggressor.

The production and trade of weapons has always been a very profitable business for any country, and the United States is no exception in this regard. But it is hardly worth saying that the US government deliberately creates hot spots in order to then supply weapons there and make money from it. After all, the production of weapons and ammunition in the USA and Europe is largely carried out by private companies. They are the ones who are more interested in wars and, as a result, in increasing government orders for their products.

The biggest catalyst for rising arms and defense spending among Europe and the United States in recent decades has been Russia's attack on Ukraine and its two-year-long deadliest war since World War II.

The world's largest weapons manufacturers are increasing production of missile launchers, tanks and ammunition. The owners and directors are expanding such companies because they expect that there will be a consistently high demand for weapons now and in the future due to the war in Ukraine.

Rheinmetall, one of Europe's largest arms and ammunition makers, last week agreed to buy a Spanish rival to boost its production capacity. The German company's CEO said he expects new major contracts to be signed next year.

Increased production capacity of defense contractors is also being seen in the US and Asia. The Pentagon allocated more than $17 billion in weapons and services to Ukraine, but most of the weapons were taken from ready-made stocks. Therefore, the US Department of Defense allocated about $3.4 billion for new orders to replenish its own reserves and those of its allies.

Raytheon Technologies began dismantling old Stingers for parts and bringing back retired workers to speed up production. The US has not ordered these anti-aircraft missiles since 2008.

Lockheed Martin is doubling production of the Javelins missiles it produces jointly with Raytheon, and is also increasing production of Himars missile launchers and GMLRS missiles by 60%.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of this year contributed to an even greater increase in defense budgets.

This has seen Rheinmetall shares rise 115% since January 1, while UK BAE Systems' Saab shares have jumped 30% and 44% respectively.

American manufacturers have been exporting weapons around the world for a long time, so the war in Ukraine did not lead to such a significant increase in shares. Year to date, Lockheed shares are up 36%, General Dynamics is up 22% and Raytheon is up 12%.

Poland is increasing its defense budget to 3% of GDP in 2023 – now it is 2.1%. Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, are moving towards the 2.5% mark. Sweden, Finland and the UK have also pledged to increase their defense budgets.

It should also be emphasized that European countries and other countries are now actively getting rid of Russian weapons and weapons dating back to the times of the USSR, modernizing and replacing them with the latest weapons from NATO countries. There are two reasons for this process. Firstly, Ukraine, as a republic of the former USSR, has the skills to use these weapons and in war conditions there is no time to switch to another. But in order to interest states in transferring such weapons to Ukraine, the United States offered to supply these countries with the latest NATO weapons in return. Therefore, many states are happy to get rid of old Soviet weapons and receive NATO ones. Secondly, this war showed the vulnerability and poor performance of Russian weapons compared to high-precision NATO weapons. As a result, many states are abandoning Russian weapons.

https://forbes.ua/ru/svit/khochesh-miru-gotuysya-do-viyni-virobniki-zbroi-zbilshuyut-svoi-virobnichi-potuzhnosti-wsj-25112022-10046

Elon Musk expresses a lot of his forecasts and opinions about various events taking place in the world. But not all of them are correct and not all come true. Robots with artificial intelligence will be able to provide very good assistance to humans, especially where it is necessary to very quickly analyze and compare a lot of different information. But robots will never be able to replace humans. In addition, if some ordinary work is performed by a person, then replacing it with a robot will certainly cost much more than the cost of this mechanical work by the robot itself. Therefore, there is still enough work for people. In addition, in my opinion, not all types of activities will allow robots with artificial intelligence. I don’t think that they will be allowed in areas of decision-making on which the very existence of a person will depend.

Vertical farming can be successfully applied where there is a problem with free territory or with the fertility of the land. That is, it is suitable for urban areas on the roofs of multi-story buildings, but not for rural areas. Of course, this technology is worth supporting and it can provide people with additional agricultural products.
But in general, food shortages are still expected in the future and people will look for other opportunities to survive. Promising in this regard may be the creation of artificial food from gas, oil and other organic substances. At the same time, existing agricultural land should be treated with care and not destroyed.

The Houthis appear to be at war with the entire world, indiscriminately attacking civilian ships in the Red Sea. On February 16, they attacked the Panamanian-flagged tanker Pollux, which was carrying Russian crude oil to India, with a missile. The missile hit the left side of the tanker, but did not cause serious damage.
  The tanker Pollux left the Russian port city of Novorossiysk on January 24 and was due to be unloaded in the Indian city of Paradip on February 28. The vessel is owned by Oceanfront Maritime Co, SA.

After the strike, Yemen's Houthis said they would continue to attack ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Hamas militants.

As you know, this is not the first time the Yemeni Houthis have attacked a tanker with Russian oil. So, on January 12, they already launched a missile attack on a tanker with oil from Russia off the coast of Yemen.

https://m.antikor.com.ua/ru/articles/684495-husity_v_krasnom_more_nanesli_raketnyj_udar_po_tankeru_s_rossijskoj_neftjju

The Houthis' actions are also damaging to China, as the route bypassing the Suez Canal and past the Cape of Good Hope in Africa has led to a 300% increase in shipping costs compared to November 2023. This makes Chinese industry less competitive.

It is no longer possible to restore the situation with Russian oil and gas supplies to Europe, just as it is impossible to restore the tens of thousands of lives that Russia killed after a large-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022. How impossible it is to bring back the same appearance of residential buildings, schools, hospitals, cultural and historical heritage destroyed by Russia, which were previously in Ukraine.

But most importantly, European countries no longer want to be subjected to periodic blackmail by the Kremlin in order to receive cheap oil and gas from Russia. Putin’s Russia very much hoped that Europe would not prevent it from seizing Ukraine, also counting on the fact that they simply would not have time to react properly due to the fact that the Kremlin would appoint a new government loyal to it on the quickly captured territory of Ukraine, which would assure Europe that Everything is fine in Ukraine and they don’t need to interfere. But all the Kremlin’s calculations were thwarted by the Ukrainian people and their armed forces, who put up heroic resistance to the many times superior forces of the Russian occupiers.

Europe has already understood this and, despite certain difficulties that have arisen, they do not intend to return to the previous situation. And due to the fact that they have taken a course towards abandoning traditional fossil fuels and replacing them with alternative energy sources, this will become more and more impossible every year.

Russia is still a prison of peoples who were previously forcibly annexed
To her. Therefore, indeed, many of them will now take advantage of the weakening of the central government of Russia by the war with Ukraine and will try to gain their independence. Previously, such attempts were brutally suppressed by constant repression, but now the situation is gradually changing. The Kremlin's power is now weakening due to the significant absorption of material and human resources by the war, or rather, the weakening of the repressive apparatus. Russia practically does not have its own oil and gas. She shamelessly takes them away from the indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Far East. Defeat in the war will certainly exacerbate these internal contradictions and lead to the actual disintegration of the Russian Federation into separate republics. Great Russia will come to an end.

The price of Bitcoin has been continuously growing for a relatively long time and today it is $52,150. Although there is not much  left before the new price record, I do not think that this will happen before its halving, which is expected in April of this year. Bitcoin cannot rise in price for too long; there must be a correction. Moreover, the higher its price growth, the deeper the price correction in the market usually occurs.

In the future, Bitcoin is sure to exceed the previous price record of $69,000. But this is unlikely to happen in the near future. We should also take into account that the cryptocurrency market sometimes presents us with unexpected surprises.

We are discussing a currency that does not yet exist and it is unknown whether it will appear in the future, and if it does appear, how other members of this union will react to it. One thing is clear for now: the emergence of this currency will actually have no effect on Bitcoin. This will be another fiat currency, albeit within a specific union, like the euro in European countries. Bitcoin will be even more impacted by CBDCs of different countries, since it is a digital currency and can even be used on the platform of other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum.

Wars over natural resources occur periodically and quite regularly. Recently, we have witnessed increased military tension between Venezuela and Guyana, essentially due to the discovery of large natural oil reserves in Guyana. But due to dramatic climate change, wars may also intensify over the availability of fresh water, fertile soil and even food, if humanity does not quickly address the looming threat.