Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:0013.5%, all while state revenues aren't growing at the
00:00:04same pace, and this means the necessity for international
00:00:07support is only expected to increase. The need for
00:00:11international support in 2027 will be
00:00:13$52.6 billion dollars. We plan to attract funds from
00:00:17the European Union, G7 countries through ERA
00:00:21financing, the international monetary fund, the World Bank, Great Britain
00:00:24and other international partners. Ukraine has been
00:00:28consistent in running an ever- growing state budget deficit,
00:00:32the country's economy is being pushed ever closer to the brink
00:00:35of collapse, which is now as evident as ever with crucial
00:00:39civilian infrastructure projects simply being cast
00:00:42aside. That's all for this hour, but stay tuned, we're going to be back
00:00:46with more news here on RT international in just about half an hour. See you
00:00:50then!
00:01:00Ecuador, a South American land of sun and
00:01:03cocoa,
00:01:06shaped by the Andes, the Amazon, the Galapagos Islands and
00:01:10beautiful
00:01:11beaches.
00:01:15The country's access to the Pacific Ocean and proximity to the Panama
00:01:18Canal ensure it a highly advantageous strategic
00:01:21position, making it attractive to the
00:01:24US, which had military bases here since World
00:01:28War II.
00:01:32In 2009, the Americans were
00:01:34forced
00:01:37out. For 16 years, Ecuador remained peaceful and free of
00:01:40foreign military
00:01:41bases.
00:01:46Until the American troops came back.
00:02:35Elijah, the Pedrera district of Manta, a Pacific
00:02:39port
00:02:42city. Every morning at dawn to feed their families, local fishermen head
00:02:46out to sea hoping for a modest catch to take to the local
00:02:49become, as Washington puts it, one of market.
00:02:57Maria's life was like everyone else's in the village, but
00:03:00one day her husband Luis set sail and never
00:03:04returned.
00:03:07His fishing boat and its crew of 18 vanished into the ocean without
00:03:11trace.
00:03:18For 24 years she's waited for Luis, searching for
00:03:21answers. She barely made ends meet while
00:03:25raising her son
00:03:26alone.
00:03:39Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom
00:03:43come, thy will be done on earth as it is in
00:03:47heaven, give us this day our daily bread.
00:03:50Luis, wherever you are, I
00:03:54hope you are well. I
00:03:57know we promised to take care
00:04:01of and raise our children, our children together, but
00:04:04God decided that it was
00:04:07not to be. Your son
00:04:11misses you, he needs you, and it
00:04:15hasn't been easy,
00:04:18because neither he nor I were prepared, because
00:04:22you said you were only going to fish and that you would return, that
00:04:25we were going to baptize him, that
00:04:28we were going to celebrate his 2nd birthday.
00:04:38This is a book, this is the ship, it's clearer
00:04:42here, it looks
00:04:44better here.
00:04:47This is the name of the 18 crew members, this
00:04:50here are all of them, Luis
00:04:53Quigije, my son is named
00:04:55the same, yes, you can
00:04:58show it with. This here, this
00:05:01photo here
00:05:03begin the clippings
00:05:05from here begin the newspaper
00:05:09clippings.
00:05:16On June 5, 2002, 18
00:05:19people departed from the port of Manta at night, 8 PM,
00:05:23to perform fishing
00:05:27tasks with the positive
00:05:31mentality that for Father's Day they
00:05:34would return to spend time with their family. They did not
00:05:37return. The alarm
00:05:40was raised by some colleagues, by
00:05:44the wife of the captain of the vessel who
00:05:47indicated, after June 7,
00:05:50that contact had been lost with the
00:05:53vessel.
00:05:56Many crew members had disappeared without a
00:05:59trace, without any clues, and we
00:06:02presumed it was a
00:06:06base was here, and we're not in the Bermuda
00:06:10Triangle where a vessel
00:06:13of 120 tons disappears overnight
00:06:16and leaves no trace. For it not to have
00:06:20left traces, it must
00:06:23have been with some type of
00:06:27weapon, some bombing that might
00:06:30have sunk the vessel with all its crew,
00:06:33because there is no other logical
00:06:36explanation for it, or perhaps they drilled
00:06:40it and sank the
00:06:43such so as not to leave evidence, because they
00:06:46found nothing, they had nothing to find, there is
00:06:49nothing, in the reports they made, there is no
00:06:53indication that they seized a gram of drugs from any
00:06:56vessel, but damage is
00:07:00reported, so one says:
00:07:03it can't be, you can't, it doesn't make sense, having
00:07:07a base
00:07:07here.
00:07:13At some point they found a gas cylinder and a
00:07:17vest and it was presented to the press here at the
00:07:20captaincy and the port captain comes out to say it
00:07:24is presumed that they have been there for 15 to 22 days because the
00:07:27barnacles were stuck, but that's what I
00:07:30always say, it wasn't for presumption, there is an investigation
00:07:34unit here which is the judicial police that could do the
00:07:37expert examination of that and determine truly how much
00:07:41time that had been in the water and they never
00:07:44did it, finally, after some
00:07:47years, they handed those evidences to a
00:07:50junk dealer and they were found discarded on the
00:07:54Barbasquillo road.
00:07:59Ski masks, wallets, evidence of
00:08:02violations were found, and it was said that there were
00:08:05documents of our
00:08:07family members there.
00:08:15Well, the first story begins in Galapagos with the
00:08:18military base in Baltra during the Second World
00:08:22War. The pretext there was
00:08:25that Ecuador was going to be attacked and that
00:08:29the base was placed in Galapagos to prevent attacks on
00:08:32Ecuador. What it did from Galapagos was monitor the Panama
00:08:36Canal.
00:08:46Another US military base
00:08:49was established in the city of Manta through an
00:08:53international agreement. This base had
00:08:56a duration of 10 years, that's what the
00:08:59agreement said, and could be renewed by the
00:09:03parties if they had
00:09:05wished.
00:09:12The forward operating base was at Eloy Alfaro International Airport in
00:09:16Manta.
00:09:20It wasn't only used to monitor the eastern Pacific, but supposedly to
00:09:24conduct anti-narcotics operations in the
00:09:26region.
00:09:33As part of the war on drugs, the US military patrols the areas around
00:09:37Cocos Island in Costa Rica, the Gorgona and Malpelo islands in
00:09:40Colombia, and Coiba in
00:09:42Panama.
00:09:45But the Galapagos Islands, where America hopes to have new military
00:09:49bases, are a long way from traditional South American cocaine trafficking
00:09:53routes. All of this suggests that the true
00:09:56goal is to expand the US military
00:09:58presence.
00:10:01Let's see, this here is my investigation, it was
00:10:05a compilation of the agreements
00:10:08that were made, of how
00:10:11the agreement for the base was reached,
00:10:15what were the objectives, so we started to investigate, to say,
00:10:18let's see what was offered to Manta so that the
00:10:21Manta base would be accepted and there would be no protests.
00:10:25There was a discourse of
00:10:28seduction, not for the
00:10:32elites, that's what they avoid, but they were sold
00:10:35that, that they were going to develop, many people
00:10:39went into debt to build discos, to build
00:10:41restaurants, but the Greeks never came,
00:10:45they never went and it failed. The
00:10:49bureau of the credit portfolio increased
00:10:52by almost 300%. To the poor, the
00:10:56working people, they were told they would have
00:11:00jobs, that there would be work at the base,
00:11:04hundreds of jobs. The only ones who had jobs at the
00:11:07base were domestic workers,
00:11:11cleaning, with very basic salaries,
00:11:14no.
00:11:21The negative impact that the base had here in Manta
00:11:25was generating prostitution.
00:11:28Many women were tricked into believing they would get
00:11:31citizenship, that did not happen. I
00:11:35think a US soldier ran over
00:11:39someone, he was kept in the base, they sent him to the United States and
00:11:43there was no justice for that person. So it was
00:11:46a mini United States within our
00:11:50territory.
00:11:56A call to the national police, to CONSEP,
00:11:59to the anti-narcotics police to give us information about drug seizures
00:12:03in coordination with the United
00:12:06States. The report that we have
00:12:09there says: we had no
00:12:12coordination with the United States, the seizures that
00:12:16we made from the anti-narcotics police
00:12:18are our own seizures without
00:12:22US support, and they... seized
00:12:25around 250 tons per
00:12:28year.
00:12:33And we also analyzed the
00:12:36plans, here are the plans of the base
00:12:39that the acronym and finally the complaints about
00:12:43the sinking of the boats, the runway was built
00:12:47with a large layer of cement, of
00:12:51asphalt, and of course when we started looking at that
00:12:54we said: let's see, why
00:12:57is that layer necessary, right, if only
00:13:00monitoring planes like the Awacs, like the Orion, are going to
00:13:04come, a structure of the thickness of
00:13:07that layer is not necessary, which was the first
00:13:11thing that caught our attention. And of course when we finally knew
00:13:15the agreement, it established that
00:13:19not only the Orion and the Awacs
00:13:21would land in Manta, and the first thing that caught
00:13:25attention is if it is a cooperation to fight drugs,
00:13:28why do we have planes like these, right,
00:13:32the Galaxies and everything,
00:13:35right? And it established that
00:13:38not only the Orion and the Awacs
00:13:42would land, but also the Galaxy, the Constellation, the DC-3s which are the troop
00:13:46and instrument carriers.
00:13:49The C5 Galaxy is a military transport jet designed to carry very
00:13:53large cargo. It can rapidly deploy fully
00:13:56equipped, combat-ready units, including tanks
00:13:59anywhere in the world, providing vital field logistics needed
00:14:03to sustain forces already in a combat area.
00:14:16Here we already documented the ships that sank,
00:14:20that is, copies of the legal processes
00:14:22that were
00:14:25restored where the
00:14:28ownership of the ships is presented, the number of
00:14:32ships, the identification cards of the owner
00:14:35fishermen, the complaints,
00:14:38right? So here are documented the ships that were
00:14:42sunk.
00:14:50A US chopper spotted us, flew around us so many
00:14:54times and ordered us to stop. A US frigate arrived.
00:14:58I was alone at the helm. They were following me. They
00:15:02signaled for me to stop. They intended
00:15:04to sink our ship. I complied and boarded the
00:15:08frigate. After that, they fired about
00:15:11150 cannon shots and the boat
00:15:14sank.
00:15:19While my vessel was in Ecuadorian territorial waters,
00:15:22160 miles off the island of San Cristóbal, the
00:15:25Galapagos Islands, it was intercepted by a US Navy
00:15:28frigate. After evacuating my crew, the frigate opened fire
00:15:32and sank our
00:15:33ship.
00:15:39"My boat was intercepted and boarded by a US Navy unit.
00:15:43Once on board, the American sailors began
00:15:46searching and destroying the ship's hull.
00:15:49Finding no evidence, they proceeded to damage all communication
00:15:53and navigation equipment."
00:16:24Gentlemen, I confess myself increasingly disconcerted by the
00:16:27Russians' rather alarming advances in Asia,
00:16:31indeed. Word has reached us that they have of late
00:16:34dispatched their first steam ship to Bombay.
00:16:39India must remain
00:16:41ours.
00:16:48The fears came true, the Russians really did come to
00:16:51India, but not as colonizers, and we
00:16:54quickly found a common
00:16:56language.
00:17:02Growing domestic resistance to and criticism of the US
00:17:06military presence, viewed as a violation of Ecuador's
00:17:09sovereignty, led to President Rafael Correa
00:17:13declining to renew the United States' lease in
00:17:162008. Article 5 of the new
00:17:20Constitution declared Ecuador
00:17:23the territory of peace and explicitly prohibited the
00:17:26establishment of foreign military
00:17:28bases.
00:17:31I confirm the national government's steadfast position not to
00:17:35extend the agreement on the use of
00:17:44Ecuadorians knew little about what the Manta
00:17:47base was for and what it specifically did,
00:17:51to the point that when first as Minister of Economy and
00:17:54then President of Ecuador, I refer to former President
00:17:58Rafael Correa, he puts sovereignty into
00:18:02conversation on the table, right? And that's an important
00:18:05issue because that was the point that allowed him to say: I am not
00:18:09against the Manta base, if you want you can stay, but you
00:18:13let my Ecuador put a base in
00:18:15Miami. The country's new
00:18:19president, Daniel Noboa, came to power in
00:18:212023. Under his leadership, Ecuador has
00:18:27the strongest partners for the United
00:18:29States.
00:18:31Daniel Noboa, a US citizen born in Miami in
00:18:341987. He's the son of one of Ecuador's wealthiest men, the
00:18:38banana king, Alvaro Noboa. Daniel is one of the Donald
00:18:41Trump administration's most notable
00:18:43allies.
00:18:46President Noboa wanted to host US military bases in his
00:18:50country, but when a November 2025
00:18:54referendum rejected the
00:18:55idea,
00:18:58the US still sent an air force contingent to the Manta base under
00:19:02the old pretense of being a temporary mission to fight drug
00:19:04trafficking.
00:19:08On June 16th, 2026, the country's president also declared a state
00:19:12of emergency to curb a crime
00:19:14surge.
00:19:23To say that military bases will improve
00:19:26security in Ecuador, no, when we had the Manta
00:19:29base, homicides per 10,000 inhabitants were 16-
00:19:3318. When I left the government, I left it at
00:19:365.8. We were the second safest country in Latin America. If we really
00:19:40want to fight drug trafficking, organized
00:19:43crime, for example, detect the money trail, tax
00:19:46havens, prohibit tax havens, detect the
00:19:50arms route coming from the United States, detect the
00:19:53ports where drugs leave. In the Ecuadorian case, they are the private ports
00:19:57of Bananera Noboa, the company of the President of the
00:20:01Republic, and absolutely nothing
00:20:03is done.
00:20:07country and residents were told they would fight drug traffickers alongside the
00:20:11Ecuadorian military,
00:20:15but US troops don't take part in anti-drug raids. The
00:20:18Ecuadorian military seems to conduct those operations
00:20:21alone.
00:20:24The US military is again stationed at Eloy, now a
00:20:28dual-use airport. A small part is dedicated to civilian
00:20:32aircraft, while the rest is used as a US military
00:20:35base.
00:20:39The Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense has signed an agreement with the Manta
00:20:42authorities to build a new 150-meter dock and
00:20:46expand the port by more than 700 square meters. All
00:21:32a 30-second video of a military helicopter taking off at dawn was
00:21:36posted on social media. No
00:21:39details regarding the targets, area of operation or
00:21:42casualties were disclosed.
00:21:45The Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense stated that the operation was
00:21:48classified.
00:21:53Officially, this mission was part of Operation Southern Spear, under
00:21:56which the United States has carried out at least 44 strikes on ships in the
00:22:00Caribbean and Pacific over the past six months, killing more than
00:22:03150 people that Washington accused of trafficking
00:22:07drugs. And it's not just about Ecuadorian
00:22:10vessels.
00:22:13America's military has also attacked fishermen from other Latin American
00:22:16countries.
00:22:20The raids on fishermen are another story here.
00:22:24Fishermen are criminalized and
00:22:27told that they are all drug traffickers. If all
00:22:31fishermen were drug traffickers, as
00:22:35the United States says,
00:22:38where do we get
00:22:40fish for the local market?
00:22:47Fish has not decreased.
00:22:51The packing factories,
00:22:53fish has not decreased in local markets.
00:22:56That means that there is still a
00:23:00fishing activity of fishermen
00:23:03that, but they are being bombed, being told they are
00:23:07traffickers.
00:23:14At the same time, lawyers and human rights activists claim that those
00:23:18actions violate international law.
00:23:22By using armed force against people not participating in
00:23:25hostilities, the military is putting them in mortal
00:23:28danger, with no lawful investigation or
00:23:32trial.
00:23:37clear human rights, no. This has happened in the
00:23:40Caribbean, it has happened in the Mexican Pacific, it has
00:23:43happened in the South American Pacific, also in
00:23:47Ecuadorian waters.
00:23:59As the years pass, it's still
00:24:03hard. It's 24
00:24:06years where my son has always
00:24:09asked, he has always asked me,
00:24:12Mom,
00:24:15how would it have been if my dad were with
00:24:17us, Mom.
00:24:51Come here, come,
00:24:54he's approximately 6 years old,
00:24:58this year, but he's special, he's
00:25:00albino,
00:25:02albino.
00:25:09It's difficult because my dad was our
00:25:11support, she had to work for
00:25:15me until now, supporting me in everything
00:25:18because she's the only one I have.
00:25:23I find strength in my mother, she's the only thing I
00:25:26have.
00:25:31The version that the gringo military sank their
00:25:34boat, that's what is
00:25:36known, as there are several
00:25:39cases, that's what is known, nothing
00:25:43else.
00:25:50Keep investigating, give us an answer, what happened to the
00:25:53boat? Don't just close the case
00:25:56there,
00:25:59so there would be an answer, but...
00:26:04They wouldn't bring him back anyway.
00:26:21I would tell him that I love him and that I'm still
00:26:23waiting for him.
00:26:31Despite that answer, they continue to mistreat
00:26:34fishermen on the high seas, they continue to violate their rights out
00:26:38there and the state continues not to
00:26:41defend them. Two vessels
00:26:45were intercepted within 200
00:26:48nautical miles, they were bombed by
00:26:51drones. That's in the news, it's on the channels,
00:26:55but the news doesn't say it was drug
00:26:58seizures. We can say that history
00:27:01repeats itself, but thank God they are
00:27:04alive due to the social pressure that was
00:27:07exerted, because the family came out and reported that they were
00:27:11missing. Securitization or
00:27:13militarization of the fight against drugs is
00:27:17a tradition that is almost 60 years old and that has
00:27:20failed in the United States and throughout the
00:27:23hemisphere. Drug trafficking has not been able to be controlled by
00:27:27military means and will not be able to be in the foreseeable
00:27:30future. There was no anything for
00:27:34the fight against drugs. The fight against drugs for us,
00:27:38from our perspective, is
00:27:40a pretext for military intervention in the countries of
00:27:44America, sometimes very subtle, sometimes very
00:27:47grotesque, other times, but the social processes that
00:27:51occur in Latin America, that is the intention of a military
00:27:54base. At this moment we are experiencing a
00:27:57restructuring of the world, a new order
00:28:00is being born and it is a new multipolar
00:28:03new order
00:28:05where the United States no
00:28:08longer has the power of an
00:28:10empire.
00:28:15And many times they were making it retreat by force, as in the
00:28:18case of the Middle East, the case of Iran, right? The
00:28:22process we have now has no turning back, we are going to a
00:28:26multipolar world.
00:28:41While this film was being edited, a massive fire broke
00:28:44out in Ecuador's main fishing port, Manta,
00:28:47destroying dozens of ships. This is the
00:28:50second major marine fire in the city in the past
00:28:53year. The cause remains
00:28:56unknown.
00:29:2110 parties competing for the support of more than
00:29:24100 million voters in the
00:29:27race for 450 seats, who
00:29:31will fail? And who will
00:29:33prevail?
00:29:40What if everything you think you know is only part of the
00:29:44story? Bold economic moves, high-stakes battles on
00:29:47the world stage, war and peace, the
00:29:51very future of America. The headlines are loud, the
00:29:55debates are fierce. Now it's time for a closer look.
00:29:59Know the policy, understand the impact, America First. First
00:30:02with Scotty NV.
00:30:16The Russian capital comes under heavy Ukrainian drone attack
00:30:20overnight ahead of the third and final day of
00:30:23nationwide elections. Two people are killed in the Moscow region
00:30:26while a residential building and an oil refinery were
00:30:29hit.
00:30:33Is my vote, one of tens of millions being
00:30:36cast around the Donbas? But with every vote cast in the
00:30:40Donbas, the people of the Donbas
00:30:43show that those threats don't scare
00:30:47them. Russian citizens go to the polls all across the
00:30:50country, even in areas facing daily shelling and threats from
00:30:54Kiev. Generally speaking, it is very...