📹 LPR ambassador expresses his thoughts on how the accession of the republic to Russia will take place.

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📹 Captured Ukrainian officer describes how Ukrainian nationalists shot their colleagues "just for fun" and expresses his desire to go over to the side of Russia.

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⚡️North Korea fires another ballistic missile into Sea of Japan, South Korean news agency YONHAP claims.

🇫🇷 Paris’s Eiffel Tower will be closed all of Thursday amid a nationwide strike against a pension reform plan.

🗯 “Due to the strike, the Eiffel Tower will remain closed today,” a statement on the landmark’s website read.

▪️On Wednesday, the country’s major trade unions, including the CGT, FSU and Solidaires, urged the French to take to the streets of Paris and other cities to protest against the government’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, and demand an increase in wages and social benefits amid soaring inflation.

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📹 A volunteer who was on the front line says that it is safer there than in the center of Donetsk now.

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❗️Moscow and Washington discuss holding face-to-face meeting of START Advisory Commission, Russian Foreign Ministry says

📹 Have a look at a demonstration at the Lugansk Medical University in support of joining Russia.

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📹Russian Defense Ministry has published footage showing Ka-52 helicopters in combat.

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❗️Strike against French pension reform begins in Paris

⚡️West attempts to stir conflict among CIS countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin says

📹WATCH French police brutally detain participants of the Paris rally against pension reform

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🤔Covering tracks?

EU lawmaker from Poland deletes tweet thanking US for damaging Nord Stream pipeline

Radoslaw Sikorski, a member of the European Parliament and former Polish foreign minister, has deleted the "Thank you, USA" tweet he posted in response to the explosions at Russia's Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines earlier this week.

The original tweet generated controversy, with many wondering what the Polish lawmaker meant by publishing it.

However, he didn’t delete another tweet that read "As we say in Polish, a small thing, but so much joy", with a picture of a big bubbling circle on the surface of the Baltic Sea.

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💬“In July of this year, the United States Navy carried out major exercises off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm, the same place that the Nord Stream pipelines went boom-boom. And these exercises involved deep underwater operations using remotely piloted vehicles and navy divers to do anti-mining exercises. But they included the divers for training purposes, placing explosives in the area that could be detected. One doesn't have to have too much of a Tom Clancy type of imagination to see how that exercise could have had a classified annex attached to it that involved the pre-positioning of explosives on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that then could be remotely detonated at a time in choosing of the United States.” Scott Ritter, former UN weapon inspector in Iraq, said, commenting on the Nord Stream breakdowns.

🎧Listen to more of Ritter’s analysis in our podcast: Polish Politician Thanks US for Attacking German Pipeline; Month of Action Against Africom

❗️US senators have introduced legislation that would cut off US aid to any country that recognizes the results of the DPR, the LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions referendums on joining Russia.

⚡️Russia will respond to the expulsion of 6 diplomats from Montenegro, the Russian Foreign Ministry says.

Newly recognized species of sloth has "coconut-head"

Maned sloths were thought to be one species, but there appears to be one more species of maned sloth in the world. Recent analysis by the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil has suggested that sloths in the south are a distinct species from those in the north.

The sloths covered with coarse, brown hair - resembling a coconut husk - are now considered to be a newly recognized species.

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❗️Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the extension of the food deal would be in common interest and that Ankara is ready to become a mediator on this issue, the Turkish leader's office has informed.

The presidents of Russia and Turkey draw attention to the need to implement the 'food deal,' including the removal of barriers to deliveries from Russia to global markets, the Kremlin has said.

❗️Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Recep Tayyip Erdogan a fundamental assessment of the unprecedented act of sabotage and international terrorism against the Nord Stream pipelines, the Kremlin has said.

🛰Roskosmos has published a photo of the gas leak from the Nord Stream pipelines.