The Guardian on Wednesday has published some of the contents of a secretive document sent from the Ukrainian government to its Western allies in the G7, which compiles findings from the Iranian-manufactured drones Russia has used in hundreds of attacks on Ukrainian targets.

The conclusion of the document entitled "Barrage deaths: report on Shahed-136/131 UAVs" is that Western components have made their way into construction of Iranian Shahed Kamikaze drones, which Kiev sees as a scandal which must be dealt with.

A US official spoke with a Druze spiritual leader to express support for protests against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that have been taking place in Syria’s southern Suwayda governate.

The US Embassy in Syria wrote on X that Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ethan Goldrich “spoke with Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hekmat al-Hajari reiterating our support for Syrians’ freedom of expression, including peaceful protest in Suwayda.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, announced on Friday that they would upgrade relations to a "strategic partnership".

The announcement was made following Assad's first official visit to China in almost two decades, in what was a rare trip abroad for the Syrian president, who until recently was an international pariah. 

Syria is clearly on the verge of collapse in terms of the economy and humanitarian situation.

The country's southern province of al-Suwayda', whose population primarily comes from the Druze minority, is currently witnessing protests on an unprecedented scale. While the province has previously seen protests motivated primarily by the country's deteriorating economic and livelihood situation, these protests are now far more widespread in the province and larger in scale.

A hidden disadvantage of our ruling class within the US/NATO imperialist sphere is that frequently, these elites need to scramble in response to developments they haven’t foreseen, and whose consequential outcomes they have limited control over. When the Democratic Party and its partnered intelligence agencies used the DNC leaks to construct a narrative about “Russian hacking,” they hadn’t planned the inciting incident; they were reacting to it.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will travel to China on September 21 to participate in a Syrian-Chinese summit at the official invitation of his counterpart Xi Jinping. According to Syrian state media, Assad will lead a high-level political and economic delegation for official meetings in the cities of Beijing and Guangzhou.

Syrians living under the de-facto rule of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) in Hasakah governorate have launched mass demonstrations and a general strike to oppose a fuel price hike of over 300 percent for public transport and industrial vehicles.