🇺🇦 US military now doing onsite weapons inspections in Ukraine

A small number of US military forces inside Ukraine have recently begun doing onsite inspections to ensure that Ukrainian troops are properly accounting for the Western-provided weapons they receive, a senior U.S. defense official told Pentagon reporters Monday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide a military update, would not say where the inspections are taking place or how close to the battlefronts the US troops are getting. The official said U.S. personnel can’t do inspections “close to the front lines,” but said they are going where security conditions allow.

US officials have faced persistent questions from some members of Congress over how the administration is accounting for the billions of dollars in arms that have been sent to Ukraine over the past year. 

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🗳 Feds concerned about armed people at Arizona ballot boxes

Reports of people watching ballot boxes in Arizona, sometimes armed or wearing ballistic vests, raise serious concerns about voter intimidation, the Justice Department said Monday as it stepped into a lawsuit over the monitoring.

Threats, intimidation and coercion are illegal under the federal Voting Rights Act, even if they doesn’t succeed, the government’s attorneys wrote. While lawful poll watching can support transparency, “ballot security forces” present a significant risk of voter intimidation, the court documents state.

The law doesn’t specifically list which activities are prohibited near polling places, but video recording and photographing voters has been recognized as a concerns for decades and was named in a 1994 Justice Department letter on potential violations of the Voting Rights Act.

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🇺🇸 Biden paints oil firms as war profiteers, talks windfall tax

President Joe Biden on Monday accused oil companies of “war profiteering” as he raised the possibility of imposing a windfall tax on energy companies if they don’t boost domestic production. “Oil companies. record profits today are not because of doing something new or innovative,” Biden said. 

Biden in brief remarks criticized major oil companies for making record-setting profits while refusing to help lower prices at the pump for the American people. The president suggested he will look to Congress to levy tax penalties on oil tax companies if they don’t begin to invest some of their profits in lowering costs for American consumers.

Over the last two quarters, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and TotalEnergy earned over $100 billion in profits. High prices at the pump have exacerbated inflation and have taken a toll on Biden and Democrats’ standing among voters.

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Follow our LIVE UPDATES on the Ukrainian crisis

📄 Ukraine's grain supplies that never reached the poorest and most deprived countries they were destined for; the UN breaking its promises to lift western sanctions restricting Russian exports of food and fertilizers; the terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge - all this and more in Sputnik's coverage of why Russia suspended its participation in the grain deal and who is to blame

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📹 Footage of combat activities by Russia’s Tor anti-aircraft missile systems during a special military operation in Ukraine

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⚡️An air alert has been declared in all regions of Ukraine

🇵🇰🌾 Pakistan plans to import 300,000 tonnes of Russian wheat on a government-to-government basis, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reports.

The deal, reportedly worth worth $112 million, is the first state-level import deal in the past two years with Moscow.

A pensioner from Shakhtyorsk describes how she heard a loud explosion and then together with local residents jumped out of the apartment block as Ukrainian forces struck at fuel tanks

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⚡️After the terrorist attack in Sevastopol, Russia was forced to suspend participation in the grain deal, but will continue dialogue with the UN and Turkey on agreements, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin says

⚡️Mishustin suggests creating a system for exchange of financial information and bank payments among Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members

A US diesel suppler has warned of “extremely high prices in the north-east along with supply outages along the south-east". Some cities might run dry on diesel for a few days at the terminal level, Mansfield Energy fuel logistics company noted in a press release. It speculated that diesel shortages were because of “poor pipeline shipping economics and historically low diesel inventories”.

Mansfield warned that although diesel consumers might face pain at the pump, suppliers would “rally to fill any gaps in supply"

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⚡️Silence of European states about terrorist attack on Nord Streams is unacceptable, such actions cannot be left unanswered - the Kremlin