Lloyd Austin arrives in India in bid to woo it to join NATO+, sell more weapons

🇮🇳🇺🇸 India's Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will hold talks with his American counterpart Lloyd Austin in New Delhi on Monday.

They two are expected to discuss General Electric's proposal to share its jet fighter technologies with India and the purchase of 30 MQ-9B Reaper drones worth over $3 billion from the US military contractor General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.

Stay tuned for updates!

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'CIA' 250 GB folder revealed during UC Global case, reports media

New evidence has emerged in the case of David Morales, owner of UC Global, a Spanish security company that spied on Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Morales' MacBook contains files related to his work for the CIA, giving greater credibility to allegations that he had spied on Assange's meetings with lawyers and shared information with the US intelligence agency.

The files, bigger than 250 gigabytes in size, were discovered separately after Assange's lawyers had difficulties while downloading the records from cloud storage.

Assange's legal team obtained permission to access a second copy of the material, revealing previously undisclosed folders marked as "CIA", "Embassy", and "Videos". This evidence, not present in the initial seizure from Morales in 2019, further implicates him in espionage activities.

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📹 Russian TOS-1A Solntsepyok heavy flamethrower system destroys enemy near Krasny Liman

In the course of combat, the units carried out strikes with thermobaric unguided projectiles.

The targets were monitored and corrected by unmanned aerial vehicles, which transmitted the information to the command post in real time.

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Turkiye to increase fees for passage through its straits by over 8% from July 1 - reports

Turkiye will increase the fee for the passage of ships through the Turkish straits of Bosphorus and Dardanelles by more than 8% starting July 1, Turkish newspaper Aydinlik reported on Monday, citing the Directorate General of Maritime Affairs.

The cost of the passage of ships through the straits will reach $4.42 per net tonnage of a merchant vessel, an increase of 8.3%, the report said, adding that the country's revenues after this decision can reach $900 million in 2023.

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Armenian Security Council says Yerevan, Baku may sign peace treaty by end of 2023

Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan said on Sunday that Yerevan and Baku could sign a peace treaty before the end of the year.

"Negotiations are going very intensively, if we maintain this intensity and there is strong support from the international community to achieve progress, then there is a chance to have a peace agreement by the end of the year," Grigoryan told Armenia’s First Channel.

The Armenian side intends to achieve the conclusion of a peace treaty as soon as possible, Grigoryan added.

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Ukraine’s Minister for Strategic Industries, Oleksandr Kamyshin, has said that the situation concerning bomb shelters in Kiev is critical.

“At the moment, a third of the city’s shelters have already been assessed [by the commission for auditing shelters in Kiev]. The situation remains critical: half of the shelters that have been assessed are not ready,” he said.

A total of 1,849 bomb shelters have allegedly been assessed: 242 of them were closed and 596 were not ready for use.

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📹 The Russian crew of a Giatsint artillery gun destroyed a Ukrainian self-propelled gun in the Zaporozhye region, which was repeatedly firing at civilians

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⚡️ Kiev did not achieve its goals during an offensive attempt, losing 300 people in a day, the Russian Defense Ministry says

Seoul says concerned by Pyongyang's threat to abandon advance notice of satellite launches

South Korea is concerned by Pyongyang's threat that it would stop notifying the International Maritime Organization (IMO) about its future satellite launches due to criticism voiced with regard to the issue, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Koo Byoung-sam said on Monday.

On May 31, the Maritime Safety Committee of the IMO adopted a resolution condemning North Korea's missile launches as a serious threat to the safety of international shipping. On Sunday, North Korea responded with a statement, in which it threatened to stop informing the organization about the country's future launches.

"North Korea's attitude, which is drifting further and further away from international norms and common sense, is very disappointing," Koo was quoted as saying by a South Korean news agency.

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

▪️On June 4, Ukrainian forces made an unsuccessful attempt at a large-scale offensive in the South Donetsk direction, but didn't achieve their goals. Six mechanized and two tank battalions were involved. In this direction, Russian forces destroyed over 300 Ukrainian troops, 26 armored combat vehicles, and 16 tanks;

▪️The actions of two Ukrainian terrorist groups that tried to infiltrate the Belgorod region were thwarted; As a result, more than 10 terrorists who tried to force the Seversky Donets River, two boats, one armored car, one Grad MLRS combat vehicle, and a Polish Krab self-propelled howitzer were eliminated;

▪️In the Kupyansk direction, Russian forces destroyed up to 90 Ukrainian troops, three armored combat vehicles, two Grad MLRS combat vehicles, one D-20 howitzer, as well as one ammunition depot. The actions of five Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups were thwarted;

▪️In the Krasny Liman direction, Russian forces neutralized up to 65 Ukrainian personnel, two armored combat vehicles, one Akatsiya self-propelled howitzer, one Msta-B and one D-20 howitzer, and a Nona-S self-propelled mortar;

▪️In the Donetsk direction, Ukrainian losses amounted to more than 425 troops, one German-made Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled howitzer, one infantry fighting vehicle, one Msta-B and one D-30 howitzer, as well as two ammunition depots;

▪️In the Kherson direction, Russian troops neutralized up to 20 Ukrainian soldiers, one Grad MLRS combat vehicle, one D-30 howitzer, as well as one ammunition depot;

▪️Russian air defenses shot down one Su-27 aircraft, eight HIMARS and Uragan missiles, and 13 unmanned aerial vehicles in the LPR, DPR, Kharkov, and Zaporozhye regions.

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📹 A statement by the head of Center, the Russian Army’s press office:

In the course of a counter-attack, the position of an enemy M-777 howitzer was discovered in the Krasny Liman direction which was destroyed by a Russian UAV Lancet.

Russian aviation used missile and bomb strikes to destroy Ukrainian strongholds, including areas of concentrated manpower and firepower near eight settlements.

Russian forces also discovered the movement of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ 63 and 67 mechanized brigades and five brigades of the National Guard of Ukraine. As a result of artillery and aviation fire, the enemy suffered significant losses and the forces were dispersed in the forest.

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📹 Russian motorized riflemen keep Kupyansk-Novoselovskoye highway in Kharkov region under fire

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📹 Russia's Ministry of Defense has published a video showing the Russian Army repelling an attempt by Ukrainian forces to launch a large-scale attack in the South Donetsk direction, using airstrikes and artillery fire in the Donetsk People's Republic and the Zaporozhye region, inflicting significant losses on Ukrainian troops

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Russia sees no prospects for extending grain deal - Foreign Ministry

"We have agreed on the next round of consultations in an interdepartmental format to take place in Geneva on the June 9," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin told a briefing.

At the same time, the diplomat noted that Russia sees no prospects for extending the grain deal.

Vershinin also noted that vessel inspections as part of the grain deal have been resumed.

"As far as we know, the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul is working to overcome all the problems that arise, based on the procedural rules that were approved last year and assume that there will be a consensus solution to the problems that arise. Now, these inspections have been resumed," Vershinin told reporters.

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❗️The Russian Ministry of Defense reports that attempts by the Ukrainian Army to break through the defenses in the South Donetsk direction on June 4 were unsuccessful, and by the morning of June 5, they had been pushed back to their original positions.

Only one brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which attacked in the area of the settlement of Neskuchnoye, lost more than 250 soldiers, 16 tanks, 24 armored combat vehicles, including three Bradleys armored vehicles.

Ukrainian forces made new attempts to attack in the areas of the Oktyabr collective farm and the settlement of Novodonetskoye. The offensive is successfully being held back by the the Russian Army.

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Poland to receive first South Korean missile systems Chunmoo in August - Defense Minister

Since July 2022, Warsaw has signed a number of contracts with Seoul to acquire 1,000 tanks, 672 self-propelled howitzers and three squadrons of FA-50 fighter jets. In October, Poland also signed a deal to purchase 288 K239 Chunmoo systems from South Korea.

"My role is to strengthen the Polish Military, and thanks to cooperation with [flag of South Korea], the first Chunmoo rocket artillery sets, with a range of up to 300 km, will go to [flag of Poland] Army this August. They will be mounted on [flag of Poland] Jelcz trucks - yet another example of our cooperation," the Polish Defense Ministry quoted Blaszczak as saying after his talks with South Korean Deputy National Security Advisor Lim Jong-deuk.

The Polish defense chief added that FA-50 fighters would also arrive in Poland this summer, while some South Korean tanks and howitzers were already at the disposal of the country's military.

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Ukrainian defense chief says Kiev won't use F-16 Jets in summer counteroffensive

"F-16 will not [be a] game-changer this summer … it will take time to train our pilots and not only pilots. Training courses, we will arrange [them] with our partners for pilots and engineers, technicians," Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told a Japanese broadcaster on Sunday.

Kiev will possibly be ready to deploy the aircraft this autumn or winter, the Ukrainian defense chief added.

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