🌎 The 21-member APEC forum starts on November 18 in the group's first in-person meeting in four years.

Who is attending, and what is on the agenda?

👉 Here’s what to expect

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Latest statements by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov:

▪️Kiev clearly does not want any negotiations, the goals of the special military operation in Ukraine must be achieved;

▪️Moscow is open to negotiations with Ukraine, this position is well known to Kiev;

▪️The Kremlin on the change in Washington's rhetoric: The US can do a lot, including make Kiev more compliant in negotiations;

▪️On the extension of the grain deal: Moscow has received assurances from the UN that the work on export of Russian goods, including fertilizers, will be finalized;

▪️No discussions about prolonging the deal indefinitely.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Russian MoD briefing on the progress of the special military operation in Ukraine:

▪️Russian forces destroyed Ukrainian fuel and rocket engines workshops in the Dnepropetrovsk region;

▪️The Russian Army eliminated up to 20 Ukrainian servicemen and two armored vehicles in the Kupyansk direction;

▪️Russian forces eliminated and wounded up to 100 Ukrainian servicemen in the Krasny Liman direction.

▪️Russian troops took under control the road between Pavlovka and Nikolsk in the DPR.

▪️In order to intimidate and better “motivate” the personnel of the 81st Airmobile Brigade of the Ukrainian Army, neo-Nazi battalion militants shot five Ukrainian servicemen in front of the formation.

▪️The Russian Army destroyed two Ukrainian Uragan MLRS in the Kharkov region.

▪️Russian forces destroyed two US-made AN/TPQ-50 radars in the DPR.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️ Unknown assailants made two attempts to attack Russia’s Embassy in Poland on November 12, the Russian Foreign Ministry says

⚡️ Hague court rules that MH17 plane shot down by Buk air defense system from Pervomaysky. The MH17 case deals with non-international armed conflict in Ukraine, judge said.

The Hague court calls the Almaz-Antey group competent in the MH17 case, but stated that its connection with Russian authorities questions its credibility.

⚡️Russia will study Dutch court's verdict on MH17 case - Foreign Ministry

⚡️The Hague court believes that all intercepted negotiations involving the defendants in the MH17 case were conducted, they are reliable - judge

🗯 "Planned to nuke 1 of his own cities & blame Russia for it": Zelensky's denial of being responsible for the missile strike in Poland did not go over well with the Indian part of Twitter.

👉 CHECK OUT

😧 Charlize Theron makes netizens angry over claiming that Afrikaans is a “dying” and “not very helpful” language

🗣 "There's about 44 people still speaking it. It's definitely a dying language; it's not a very helpful language,” Theron, a South African-American actress said in a recent SmartLess podcast.

The claim provoked a storm of reactions on social media, with users pointing out in comments, hundreds of which were written in…surprise, surprise…Afrikaans, how the actress couldn’t have been more wrong in saying this.

While some netizens were shocked that Theron was “spreading false information,” others were quick to stand up for the language.

“Afrikaans is nowhere near dying. It's such a vibrant an beautiful language...” one user wrote.

Another netizen appeared to have a bit of advice for the actress: “Ai Charlize, I'm a fan but best you stick to a noscript when you go public. You lose credibility when you make up facts about Afrikaans, meisie.”

Subscribe to @sputnik_africa

❗️The Hague court said it’s unclear as to who gave the command to launch the Buk missile, but claimed that it was delivered from Russia to Ukraine, and then taken back to Russia. The judge said in that the defendants in the MH17 case were not a single group, as prosecutors claimed, but were related to the use of the Buk air defense system.

▪️In 2016, the Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT) claimed that a Russian-made Buk 9M83 surface-to-air missile was used to shoot down the airliner, alleging that the missile system was actually brought to Donetsk from a Russian military base on the same day the aircraft was destroyed.

▪️The accusations prompted the Russian military and Buk missile system maker Almaz-Antey to carry out their own comprehensive probes, with the Russian weapons manufacturer examining forensic evidence, declassifying top secret information about its military hardware, and carrying out a complex recreation of the events leading to the plane’s destruction involving ballistics, flight trajectory and other pertinent information. In September 2016, Almaz-Antey released its findings, concluding that the Buk missile used to destroy the Malaysian airliner was an older variant built in the 1980s, and which had been phased out of Russia’s arsenals in a modernization campaign - while the same variant was pretty much widespread in the Ukrainian military.

▪️Moscow attempted to provide these findings to the JIT, which ignored them and continued to rely on its own "extensive comparative research," including the "expert opinion" of Bellingcat, a western intelligence front posing as an "open source intelligence research" service.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️ The Hague court recognized Russian Pulatov, accused in the MH17 case, innocent and rejected prosecution's demand to place him in prison, judge says

⚡️Dutch court issues guilty verdict to three accused, acquits fourth in MH17 trial

While Russian Oleg Pulatov was acquitted, with the court rejecting the prosecutor office's appeal to put him in jail, two others, Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinsky, as well as Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko were found guilty by the Hague District Court in the downing of the MH17.

The verdict comes after years of controversial trials held in the Netherlands. Dutch judicial authorities willfully excluded the Russian side from investigations into the plane crash and consistently ignored evidence presented by Moscow.

👉LEARN MORE

⚡️ Zelensky requested a phone conversation with Biden after the incident of a missile hit in Poland, but the conversation did not take place, US media says.

⚡️Girkin, Dubinsky and Kharchenko have been sentenced to life in Dutch MH17 trial

A Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT) formed in August 2014 to investigate the crash immediately accused Moscow of being behind the downing. Russia was not allowed to take part in the criminal probe, and any evidence provided by the country was ignored by the JIT.

⚡️ House Republicans announce Hunter Biden probe

🗣“The verdict of the Dutch tribunal [in the MH17 case] is what was expected - the conclusion of a farce masquerading as a trial,” Christopher C. Black, international criminal lawyer with 20 years of experience in war crimes and international relations, and a commentator on international affairs, tells Sputnik

“The investigating body never followed up the data provided by the Russian government as
well as other technical information establishing that neither Donbass nor Russian forces were involved either deliberately or accidentally. Since the plane was downed in the Donbass territory of Donetsk, it would seem logical that the Donetsk Republic would have charge of the investigation… But the Donetsk Republic was denied that role by the Kiev regime which claimed it took place in Ukraine territory and so assumed the role of investigator and then, under NATO, and especially American pressure, delegated the investigation to NATO, in the guise of the Dutch Safety Board, on the justification that the majority of the passengers were Dutch,” Black says. “Since then, what should have been an open, international and objective investigation has descended into a burlesque of deception, fraud, and cover up of mass murder by the NATO powers.”

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️House Republicans have announced a formal probe into the activities of Hunter Biden, citing possible criminal activities.

💬 "Today we're going to provide you with something that you all aren't used to with respect to congressional investigations, and that's evidence," James Comer said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday alongside Representative Jim Jordan and other Republicans.

👉 FULL STORY HERE

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💬 “…what Iran is going to end up doing is they are going to have to coordinate now their efforts with Russia to build some nuclear power plant inside Iran. And there is a conversation going on right now between Iran and China regarding some nuclear technology as well. I'm not talking about the transfer of the nuclear weapons technology. That is not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the beginning of the establishment of a nuclear power plants that are being supported by Russia and China. What led me to this is the recent development that's taking place. Basically, when it comes down to this trio - Russia, China and Iran, because they are now coordinating their efforts on both sides on this strategic side of the geopolitical areas and also on the energy aspect of it. That's what led me to believe for the Iranians now JCPOA doesn't matter,” says Dr. David Oualaalou, a geopolitical consultant and former international security analyst.

🎧 Listen to more of Dr. Oualaalou's analysis in our podcast: Trump Announces 2024 Run, Missile in Poland, G20 Joint Statement

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️The course and results of the MH17 trial in the Netherlands show that the proceedings were based on a political order to reinforce the version about Russia’s alleged involvement, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said.

Moscow regrets that the court in The Hague neglected the principles of impartial justice for the sake of political expediency and ignored the fact that all the conclusions of the prosecution are built upon anonymous testimonies, the ministry added.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️What is the evidence that was ignored by the Dutch court?

▪️Buk missile maker Almaz-Antey was unable to verify the Dutch and Belgian experts' opinion that the missile was launched from Snezhnoye and Pervomaysky, which were controlled by Donbass militia;

▪️Almaz-Antey carried out a complex recreation of the events leading to the plane’s destruction involving ballistics, flight trajectory, and other pertinent information. This confirmed that the plane could've been downed only by a 9M38 missile from Zaroschenskoye, which was under Ukrainian forces' control. The Buk missile used to destroy the Malaysian airliner was an older variant built in the 1980s, and which had been phased out of Russia’s arsenals in a modernization campaign, but was still employed by the Ukrainian military. Dutch experts refused to attend the reconstruction of the scene;

▪️Russia handed over data from its radars in the area where the launch took place, while the Ukrainian side refused to do the same, nor did it provide recordings of communication between air traffic controllers and the plane crew;

▪️Investigators ignored the testimony of two witnesses, who said that they'd seen that the missile was launched from the Amvrosievka, near Donetsk, where Ukrainian forces were deployed at the time. They also ignored the testimony of other witnesses whose accounts differed from the prosecution's version;

▪️The US claimed that they had satellite images of the missile launch, but rejected the Dutch prosecution's request to provide the imagery to the investigation team;

▪️The defense said that a group of American experts who had examined Almaz-Antey's reports concluded that the company's calculations in the MH17 case had the best correspondence to the nature of the damage of all available plane debris;

▪️In 2018, the Russian MoD declassified documents which showed the missile had been made in 1986 and transported to the Ukrainian SSR. The missile never made it back to Russia.

▪️The conclusion that the Buk was brought from Russia and then taken back is based on Ukrainian photos and videos. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has said numerous times that the Dutch-led investigation ignored the irrefutable evidence from the Russian side and is based on unverified sources;

▪️According to a judge, the investigation looked at “over 500 images found on the Internet”;

▪️As stated by the Russian Ministry of Defense in 2018, the investigation was drawing conclusions based on images from social media that were skillfully manipulated with “graphic editing tools.” So, a video about the movement of the alleged Russian Buk that shot down MH17 was an animation based on one photo;

▪️At the same time, neither photo nor video materials of the alleged investigation have a scene of the missile launch.

▪️The Dutch court did not allow further investigation of the version that that the airliner was shot down by a military aircraft. On June 2020, lawyer Sabine Ten Dusshate stated that the Ukrainian military could have shot down the Boeing by mistake. As with the Russian Tu-154 aircraft in 2001, the defense requested to continue the investigation based on radar data, but the prosecution disagreed, stating that the evidence found was inconsistent with other evidence, thus disallowing the further investigation.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she won't run for leadership in next Congress