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[00:00:00] 13.5%, all while state revenues aren't growing at the
[00:00:04] same pace, and this means the necessity for international
[00:00:07] support is only expected to increase. The need for
[00:00:11] international support in 2027 will be
[00:00:13] $52.6 billion dollars. We plan to attract funds from
[00:00:17] the European Union, G7 countries through ERA
[00:00:21] financing, the international monetary fund, the World Bank, Great Britain
[00:00:24] and other international partners. Ukraine has been
[00:00:28] consistent in running an ever- growing state budget deficit,
[00:00:32] the country's economy is being pushed ever closer to the brink
[00:00:35] of collapse, which is now as evident as ever with crucial
[00:00:39] civilian infrastructure projects simply being cast
[00:00:42] aside. That's all for this hour, but stay tuned, we're going to be back
[00:00:46] with more news here on RT international in just about half an hour. See you
[00:00:50] then!
[00:01:00] Ecuador, a South American land of sun and
[00:01:03] cocoa,
[00:01:06] shaped by the Andes, the Amazon, the Galapagos Islands and
[00:01:10] beautiful
[00:01:11] beaches.
[00:01:15] The country's access to the Pacific Ocean and proximity to the Panama
[00:01:18] Canal ensure it a highly advantageous strategic
[00:01:21] position, making it attractive to the
[00:01:24] US, which had military bases here since World
[00:01:28] War II.
[00:01:32] In 2009, the Americans were
[00:01:34] forced
[00:01:37] out. For 16 years, Ecuador remained peaceful and free of
[00:01:40] foreign military
[00:01:41] bases.
[00:01:46] Until the American troops came back.
[00:02:35] Elijah, the Pedrera district of Manta, a Pacific
[00:02:39] port
[00:02:42] city. Every morning at dawn to feed their families, local fishermen head
[00:02:46] out to sea hoping for a modest catch to take to the local
[00:02:49] become, as Washington puts it, one of market.
[00:02:57] Maria's life was like everyone else's in the village, but
[00:03:00] one day her husband Luis set sail and never
[00:03:04] returned.
[00:03:07] His fishing boat and its crew of 18 vanished into the ocean without
[00:03:11] trace.
[00:03:18] For 24 years she's waited for Luis, searching for
[00:03:21] answers. She barely made ends meet while
[00:03:25] raising her son
[00:03:26] alone.
[00:03:39] Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom
[00:03:43] come, thy will be done on earth as it is in
[00:03:47] heaven, give us this day our daily bread.
[00:03:50] Luis, wherever you are, I
[00:03:54] hope you are well. I
[00:03:57] know we promised to take care
[00:04:01] of and raise our children, our children together, but
[00:04:04] God decided that it was
[00:04:07] not to be. Your son
[00:04:11] misses you, he needs you, and it
[00:04:15] hasn't been easy,
[00:04:18] because neither he nor I were prepared, because
[00:04:22] you said you were only going to fish and that you would return, that
[00:04:25] we were going to baptize him, that
[00:04:28] we were going to celebrate his 2nd birthday.
[00:04:38] This is a book, this is the ship, it's clearer
[00:04:42] here, it looks
[00:04:44] better here.
[00:04:47] This is the name of the 18 crew members, this
[00:04:50] here are all of them, Luis
[00:04:53] Quigije, my son is named
[00:04:55] the same, yes, you can
[00:04:58] show it with. This here, this
[00:05:01] photo here
[00:05:03] begin the clippings
[00:05:05] from here begin the newspaper
[00:05:09] clippings.
[00:05:16] On June 5, 2002, 18
[00:05:19] people departed from the port of Manta at night, 8 PM,
[00:05:23] to perform fishing
[00:05:27] tasks with the positive
[00:05:31] mentality that for Father's Day they
[00:05:34] would return to spend time with their family. They did not
[00:05:37] return. The alarm
[00:05:40] was raised by some colleagues, by
[00:05:44] the wife of the captain of the vessel who
[00:05:47] indicated, after June 7,
[00:05:50] that contact had been lost with the
[00:05:53] vessel.
[00:05:56] Many crew members had disappeared without a
[00:05:59] trace, without any clues, and we
[00:06:02] presumed it was a
[00:06:06] base was here, and we're not in the Bermuda
[00:06:10] Triangle where a vessel
[00:06:13] of 120 tons disappears overnight
[00:06:16] and leaves no trace. For it not to have
[00:06:20] left traces, it must
[00:06:23] have been with some type of
[00:06:27] weapon, some bombing that might
[00:06:30] have sunk the vessel with all its crew,
[00:06:33] because there is no other logical
[00:06:36] explanation for it, or perhaps they drilled
[00:06:40] it and sank the
[00:06:43] such so as not to leave evidence, because they
[00:06:46] found nothing, they had nothing to find, there is
[00:06:49] nothing, in the reports they made, there is no
[00:06:53] indication that they seized a gram of drugs from any
[00:06:56] vessel, but damage is
[00:07:00] reported, so one says:
[00:07:03] it can't be, you can't, it doesn't make sense, having
[00:07:07] a base
[00:07:07] here.
[00:07:13] At some point they found a gas cylinder and a
[00:07:17] vest and it was presented to the press here at the
[00:07:20] captaincy and the port captain comes out to say it
[00:07:24] is presumed that they have been there for 15 to 22 days because the
[00:07:27] barnacles were stuck, but that's what I
[00:07:30] always say, it wasn't for presumption, there is an investigation
[00:07:34] unit here which is the judicial police that could do the
[00:07:37] expert examination of that and determine truly how much
[00:07:41] time that had been in the water and they never
[00:07:44] did it, finally, after some
[00:07:47] years, they handed those evidences to a
[00:07:50] junk dealer and they were found discarded on the
[00:07:54] Barbasquillo road.
[00:07:59] Ski masks, wallets, evidence of
[00:08:02] violations were found, and it was said that there were
[00:08:05] documents of our
[00:08:07] family members there.
[00:08:15] Well, the first story begins in Galapagos with the
[00:08:18] military base in Baltra during the Second World
[00:08:22] War. The pretext there was
[00:08:25] that Ecuador was going to be attacked and that
[00:08:29] the base was placed in Galapagos to prevent attacks on
[00:08:32] Ecuador. What it did from Galapagos was monitor the Panama
[00:08:36] Canal.
[00:08:46] Another US military base
[00:08:49] was established in the city of Manta through an
[00:08:53] international agreement. This base had
[00:08:56] a duration of 10 years, that's what the
[00:08:59] agreement said, and could be renewed by the
[00:09:03] parties if they had
[00:09:05] wished.
[00:09:12] The forward operating base was at Eloy Alfaro International Airport in
[00:09:16] Manta.
[00:09:20] It wasn't only used to monitor the eastern Pacific, but supposedly to
[00:09:24] conduct anti-narcotics operations in the
[00:09:26] region.
[00:09:33] As part of the war on drugs, the US military patrols the areas around
[00:09:37] Cocos Island in Costa Rica, the Gorgona and Malpelo islands in
[00:09:40] Colombia, and Coiba in
[00:09:42] Panama.
[00:09:45] But the Galapagos Islands, where America hopes to have new military
[00:09:49] bases, are a long way from traditional South American cocaine trafficking
[00:09:53] routes. All of this suggests that the true
[00:09:56] goal is to expand the US military
[00:09:58] presence.
[00:10:01] Let's see, this here is my investigation, it was
[00:10:05] a compilation of the agreements
[00:10:08] that were made, of how
[00:10:11] the agreement for the base was reached,
[00:10:15] what were the objectives, so we started to investigate, to say,
[00:10:18] let's see what was offered to Manta so that the
[00:10:21] Manta base would be accepted and there would be no protests.
[00:10:25] There was a discourse of
[00:10:28] seduction, not for the
[00:10:32] elites, that's what they avoid, but they were sold
[00:10:35] that, that they were going to develop, many people
[00:10:39] went into debt to build discos, to build
[00:10:41] restaurants, but the Greeks never came,
[00:10:45] they never went and it failed. The
[00:10:49] bureau of the credit portfolio increased
[00:10:52] by almost 300%. To the poor, the
[00:10:56] working people, they were told they would have
[00:11:00] jobs, that there would be work at the base,
[00:11:04] hundreds of jobs. The only ones who had jobs at the
[00:11:07] base were domestic workers,
[00:11:11] cleaning, with very basic salaries,
[00:11:14] no.
[00:11:21] The negative impact that the base had here in Manta
[00:11:25] was generating prostitution.
[00:11:28] Many women were tricked into believing they would get
[00:11:31] citizenship, that did not happen. I
[00:11:35] think a US soldier ran over
[00:11:39] someone, he was kept in the base, they sent him to the United States and
[00:11:43] there was no justice for that person. So it was
[00:11:46] a mini United States within our
[00:11:50] territory.
[00:11:56] A call to the national police, to CONSEP,
[00:11:59] to the anti-narcotics police to give us information about drug seizures
[00:12:03] in coordination with the United
[00:12:06] States. The report that we have
[00:12:09] there says: we had no
[00:12:12] coordination with the United States, the seizures that
[00:12:16] we made from the anti-narcotics police
[00:12:18] are our own seizures without
[00:12:22] US support, and they... seized
[00:12:25] around 250 tons per
[00:12:28] year.
[00:12:33] And we also analyzed the
[00:12:36] plans, here are the plans of the base
[00:12:39] that the acronym and finally the complaints about
[00:12:43] the sinking of the boats, the runway was built
[00:12:47] with a large layer of cement, of
[00:12:51] asphalt, and of course when we started looking at that
[00:12:54] we said: let's see, why
[00:12:57] is that layer necessary, right, if only
[00:13:00] monitoring planes like the Awacs, like the Orion, are going to
[00:13:04] come, a structure of the thickness of
[00:13:07] that layer is not necessary, which was the first
[00:13:11] thing that caught our attention. And of course when we finally knew
[00:13:15] the agreement, it established that
[00:13:19] not only the Orion and the Awacs
[00:13:21] would land in Manta, and the first thing that caught
[00:13:25] attention is if it is a cooperation to fight drugs,
[00:13:28] why do we have planes like these, right,
[00:13:32] the Galaxies and everything,
[00:13:35] right? And it established that
[00:13:38] not only the Orion and the Awacs
[00:13:42] would land, but also the Galaxy, the Constellation, the DC-3s which are the troop
[00:13:46] and instrument carriers.
[00:13:49] The C5 Galaxy is a military transport jet designed to carry very
[00:13:53] large cargo. It can rapidly deploy fully
[00:13:56] equipped, combat-ready units, including tanks
[00:13:59] anywhere in the world, providing vital field logistics needed
[00:14:03] to sustain forces already in a combat area.
[00:14:16] Here we already documented the ships that sank,
[00:14:20] that is, copies of the legal processes
[00:14:22] that were
[00:14:25] restored where the
[00:14:28] ownership of the ships is presented, the number of
[00:14:32] ships, the identification cards of the owner
[00:14:35] fishermen, the complaints,
[00:14:38] right? So here are documented the ships that were
[00:14:42] sunk.
[00:14:50] A US chopper spotted us, flew around us so many
[00:14:54] times and ordered us to stop. A US frigate arrived.
[00:14:58] I was alone at the helm. They were following me. They
[00:15:02] signaled for me to stop. They intended
[00:15:04] to sink our ship. I complied and boarded the
[00:15:08] frigate. After that, they fired about
[00:15:11] 150 cannon shots and the boat
[00:15:14] sank.
[00:15:19] While my vessel was in Ecuadorian territorial waters,
[00:15:22] 160 miles off the island of San Cristóbal, the
[00:15:25] Galapagos Islands, it was intercepted by a US Navy
[00:15:28] frigate. After evacuating my crew, the frigate opened fire
[00:15:32] and sank our
[00:15:33] ship.
[00:15:39] "My boat was intercepted and boarded by a US Navy unit.
[00:15:43] Once on board, the American sailors began
[00:15:46] searching and destroying the ship's hull.
[00:15:49] Finding no evidence, they proceeded to damage all communication
[00:15:53] and navigation equipment."
[00:16:24] Gentlemen, I confess myself increasingly disconcerted by the
[00:16:27] Russians' rather alarming advances in Asia,
[00:16:31] indeed. Word has reached us that they have of late
[00:16:34] dispatched their first steam ship to Bombay.
[00:16:39] India must remain
[00:16:41] ours.
[00:16:48] The fears came true, the Russians really did come to
[00:16:51] India, but not as colonizers, and we
[00:16:54] quickly found a common
[00:16:56] language.
[00:17:02] Growing domestic resistance to and criticism of the US
[00:17:06] military presence, viewed as a violation of Ecuador's
[00:17:09] sovereignty, led to President Rafael Correa
[00:17:13] declining to renew the United States' lease in
[00:17:16] 2008. Article 5 of the new
[00:17:20] Constitution declared Ecuador
[00:17:23] the territory of peace and explicitly prohibited the
[00:17:26] establishment of foreign military
[00:17:28] bases.
[00:17:31] I confirm the national government's steadfast position not to
[00:17:35] extend the agreement on the use of
[00:17:44] Ecuadorians knew little about what the Manta
[00:17:47] base was for and what it specifically did,
[00:17:51] to the point that when first as Minister of Economy and
[00:17:54] then President of Ecuador, I refer to former President
[00:17:58] Rafael Correa, he puts sovereignty into
[00:18:02] conversation on the table, right? And that's an important
[00:18:05] issue because that was the point that allowed him to say: I am not
[00:18:09] against the Manta base, if you want you can stay, but you
[00:18:13] let my Ecuador put a base in
[00:18:15] Miami. The country's new
[00:18:19] president, Daniel Noboa, came to power in
[00:18:21] 2023. Under his leadership, Ecuador has
[00:18:27] the strongest partners for the United
[00:18:29] States.
[00:18:31] Daniel Noboa, a US citizen born in Miami in
[00:18:34] 1987. He's the son of one of Ecuador's wealthiest men, the
[00:18:38] banana king, Alvaro Noboa. Daniel is one of the Donald
[00:18:41] Trump administration's most notable
[00:18:43] allies.
[00:18:46] President Noboa wanted to host US military bases in his
[00:18:50] country, but when a November 2025
[00:18:54] referendum rejected the
[00:18:55] idea,
[00:18:58] the US still sent an air force contingent to the Manta base under
[00:19:02] the old pretense of being a temporary mission to fight drug
[00:19:04] trafficking.
[00:19:08] On June 16th, 2026, the country's president also declared a state
[00:19:12] of emergency to curb a crime
[00:19:14] surge.
[00:19:23] To say that military bases will improve
[00:19:26] security in Ecuador, no, when we had the Manta
[00:19:29] base, homicides per 10,000 inhabitants were 16-
[00:19:33] 18. When I left the government, I left it at
[00:19:36] 5.8. We were the second safest country in Latin America. If we really
[00:19:40] want to fight drug trafficking, organized
[00:19:43] crime, for example, detect the money trail, tax
[00:19:46] havens, prohibit tax havens, detect the
[00:19:50] arms route coming from the United States, detect the
[00:19:53] ports where drugs leave. In the Ecuadorian case, they are the private ports
[00:19:57] of Bananera Noboa, the company of the President of the
[00:20:01] Republic, and absolutely nothing
[00:20:03] is done.
[00:20:07] country and residents were told they would fight drug traffickers alongside the
[00:20:11] Ecuadorian military,
[00:20:15] but US troops don't take part in anti-drug raids. The
[00:20:18] Ecuadorian military seems to conduct those operations
[00:20:21] alone.
[00:20:24] The US military is again stationed at Eloy, now a
[00:20:28] dual-use airport. A small part is dedicated to civilian
[00:20:32] aircraft, while the rest is used as a US military
[00:20:35] base.
[00:20:39] The Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense has signed an agreement with the Manta
[00:20:42] authorities to build a new 150-meter dock and
[00:20:46] expand the port by more than 700 square meters. All
[00:21:32] a 30-second video of a military helicopter taking off at dawn was
[00:21:36] posted on social media. No
[00:21:39] details regarding the targets, area of operation or
[00:21:42] casualties were disclosed.
[00:21:45] The Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense stated that the operation was
[00:21:48] classified.
[00:21:53] Officially, this mission was part of Operation Southern Spear, under
[00:21:56] which the United States has carried out at least 44 strikes on ships in the
[00:22:00] Caribbean and Pacific over the past six months, killing more than
[00:22:03] 150 people that Washington accused of trafficking
[00:22:07] drugs. And it's not just about Ecuadorian
[00:22:10] vessels.
[00:22:13] America's military has also attacked fishermen from other Latin American
[00:22:16] countries.
[00:22:20] The raids on fishermen are another story here.
[00:22:24] Fishermen are criminalized and
[00:22:27] told that they are all drug traffickers. If all
[00:22:31] fishermen were drug traffickers, as
[00:22:35] the United States says,
[00:22:38] where do we get
[00:22:40] fish for the local market?
[00:22:47] Fish has not decreased.
[00:22:51] The packing factories,
[00:22:53] fish has not decreased in local markets.
[00:22:56] That means that there is still a
[00:23:00] fishing activity of fishermen
[00:23:03] that, but they are being bombed, being told they are
[00:23:07] traffickers.
[00:23:14] At the same time, lawyers and human rights activists claim that those
[00:23:18] actions violate international law.
[00:23:22] By using armed force against people not participating in
[00:23:25] hostilities, the military is putting them in mortal
[00:23:28] danger, with no lawful investigation or
[00:23:32] trial.
[00:23:37] clear human rights, no. This has happened in the
[00:23:40] Caribbean, it has happened in the Mexican Pacific, it has
[00:23:43] happened in the South American Pacific, also in
[00:23:47] Ecuadorian waters.
[00:23:59] As the years pass, it's still
[00:24:03] hard. It's 24
[00:24:06] years where my son has always
[00:24:09] asked, he has always asked me,
[00:24:12] Mom,
[00:24:15] how would it have been if my dad were with
[00:24:17] us, Mom.
[00:24:51] Come here, come,
[00:24:54] he's approximately 6 years old,
[00:24:58] this year, but he's special, he's
[00:25:00] albino,
[00:25:02] albino.
[00:25:09] It's difficult because my dad was our
[00:25:11] support, she had to work for
[00:25:15] me until now, supporting me in everything
[00:25:18] because she's the only one I have.
[00:25:23] I find strength in my mother, she's the only thing I
[00:25:26] have.
[00:25:31] The version that the gringo military sank their
[00:25:34] boat, that's what is
[00:25:36] known, as there are several
[00:25:39] cases, that's what is known, nothing
[00:25:43] else.
[00:25:50] Keep investigating, give us an answer, what happened to the
[00:25:53] boat? Don't just close the case
[00:25:56] there,
[00:25:59] so there would be an answer, but...
[00:26:04] They wouldn't bring him back anyway.
[00:26:21] I would tell him that I love him and that I'm still
[00:26:23] waiting for him.
[00:26:31] Despite that answer, they continue to mistreat
[00:26:34] fishermen on the high seas, they continue to violate their rights out
[00:26:38] there and the state continues not to
[00:26:41] defend them. Two vessels
[00:26:45] were intercepted within 200
[00:26:48] nautical miles, they were bombed by
[00:26:51] drones. That's in the news, it's on the channels,
[00:26:55] but the news doesn't say it was drug
[00:26:58] seizures. We can say that history
[00:27:01] repeats itself, but thank God they are
[00:27:04] alive due to the social pressure that was
[00:27:07] exerted, because the family came out and reported that they were
[00:27:11] missing. Securitization or
[00:27:13] militarization of the fight against drugs is
[00:27:17] a tradition that is almost 60 years old and that has
[00:27:20] failed in the United States and throughout the
[00:27:23] hemisphere. Drug trafficking has not been able to be controlled by
[00:27:27] military means and will not be able to be in the foreseeable
[00:27:30] future. There was no anything for
[00:27:34] the fight against drugs. The fight against drugs for us,
[00:27:38] from our perspective, is
[00:27:40] a pretext for military intervention in the countries of
[00:27:44] America, sometimes very subtle, sometimes very
[00:27:47] grotesque, other times, but the social processes that
[00:27:51] occur in Latin America, that is the intention of a military
[00:27:54] base. At this moment we are experiencing a
[00:27:57] restructuring of the world, a new order
[00:28:00] is being born and it is a new multipolar
[00:28:03] new order
[00:28:05] where the United States no
[00:28:08] longer has the power of an
[00:28:10] empire.
[00:28:15] And many times they were making it retreat by force, as in the
[00:28:18] case of the Middle East, the case of Iran, right? The
[00:28:22] process we have now has no turning back, we are going to a
[00:28:26] multipolar world.
[00:28:41] While this film was being edited, a massive fire broke
[00:28:44] out in Ecuador's main fishing port, Manta,
[00:28:47] destroying dozens of ships. This is the
[00:28:50] second major marine fire in the city in the past
[00:28:53] year. The cause remains
[00:28:56] unknown.
[00:29:21] 10 parties competing for the support of more than
[00:29:24] 100 million voters in the
[00:29:27] race for 450 seats, who
[00:29:31] will fail? And who will
[00:29:33] prevail?
[00:29:40] What if everything you think you know is only part of the
[00:29:44] story? Bold economic moves, high-stakes battles on
[00:29:47] the world stage, war and peace, the
[00:29:51] very future of America. The headlines are loud, the
[00:29:55] debates are fierce. Now it's time for a closer look.
[00:29:59] Know the policy, understand the impact, America First. First
[00:30:02] with Scotty NV.
[00:30:16] The Russian capital comes under heavy Ukrainian drone attack
[00:30:20] overnight ahead of the third and final day of
[00:30:23] nationwide elections. Two people are killed in the Moscow region
[00:30:26] while a residential building and an oil refinery were
[00:30:29] hit.
[00:30:33] Is my vote, one of tens of millions being
[00:30:36] cast around the Donbas? But with every vote cast in the
[00:30:40] Donbas, the people of the Donbas
[00:30:43] show that those threats don't scare
[00:30:47] them. Russian citizens go to the polls all across the
[00:30:50] country, even in areas facing daily shelling and threats from
[00:30:54] Kiev. Generally speaking, it is very...