💸🔄 Hunter Biden got cash back in tax returns for prostitute, sex club he filed under...'business expenses'

An unnamed IRS criminal investigator alleged this in his testimony. According to the investigator, Hunder went great length to avoid paying $106,000 in taxes, which included writing off his fleshly desires as “business expenses”.

💬 “He deducted payments that were made to who he called his West Coast assistant, but she was essentially a prostitute,” the whistleblower said.

Earlier this week, the US Department of Justice announced that Joe Biden’s son Hunter had entered a plea deal on charges that could have put him in jail for up to 15 years, including tax evasion and unlawful possession of a firearm.

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💬 “The idea of strategic independence is not a choice for India. It is not an option. It is deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche. There is nothing that can happen in the world that can change that,” Talmiz Ahmed, a former Indian diplomat and a strategic affairs expert told Sputnik

The US 🇺🇸 has been taking advantage of India's concerns with China to increase its influence in the Indian Ocean Region, according to former Indian Ambassador Talmiz Ahmed.

Ahmed thinks India and China 🇨🇳 have comparable regional interests and the US has no significant role in safeguarding India's borders. He believes the US seeks to escalate tensions between India and China for its own motives as it is in a geopolitical conflict with Beijing.

👉 Go to Sputnik India for details!

The Ukrainian counteroffensive is a 'suicide mission' and NATO knows it, former US Marine Intel officer and UN weapons instructor Scott Ritter told the New Rules Podcast.

NATO "in many ways needs a Ukrainian defeat, because a Ukrainian defeat allows them to say that the Russian military that's capable of defeating this Ukrainian force is a Russian military that can only be confronted by an emboldened, empowered, united NATO," he said.

👉 You can find the full interview on Rumble

🇬🇧🇪🇺 Brexit or Brentry? YouGov survey shows rising support for UK to rejoin EU

Support for rejoining the European Union among people in the United Kingdom has surged to 58%, with 42% saying they would opt to stay out if there was a new referendum on EU membership, a YouGov poll showed on Friday.

The figures come from the pollster’s latest Brexit tracker survey of 2,037 British adults.

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🇷🇺 Poseidon – the nuclear-capable, nuclear powered, unmanned underwater vehicle designed in Russia

The autonomous torpedo is 20 meters long, 1.8 meters in diameter, and weighs 100 tons.

Equipped with a nuclear reactor and operating autonomously with the help of satellite communications and artificial intelligence, Poseidons have what is essentially an unlimited range – allowing them to travel to any underwater location on Earth, and to remain operational so long as their technical resource allows.

The system has an estimated operating speed of between 60-70 knots (about 100-130 km/hour) respectively, and the ability to carry conventional explosives, or a nuclear warhead with an explosive power of up to two megatons.

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🗣️”I think even before this offensive was launched, the conflict is basically over. It's just a matter of how and when. It's a war of attrition that the collective West simply cannot win”: Brian Berletic, an ex-US Marine Corps, Bangkok-based independent geopolitical researcher and writer on Ukraine’s counteroffensive, told Sputnik

🎧Listen to more of Berletic’s analysis in our podcast The Critical Hour

🇷🇺 Everything we know about ‘tsunami-causing’ Russian Poseidon drone subs

An informed source has given Sputnik exclusive new details on the Poseidon – the nuclear-capable, nuclear powered, unmanned underwater vehicle.

What do we know about the Poseidon’s carriers? what does the US say about Poseidon's?

Find the answers in the explainer on Sputnik's website

🇳🇱 Netherlands to stop main gas production for northwest Europe due danger of earthquakes

Although the gas tap in Groningen will be turned off on October 1, 2023, the gas plant will not be immediately dismantled, the Netherlands Broadcasting Corporation (NOS) reported on Friday, citing a government decision.

Moreover, gas wells will remain open until October 1, 2024, in the event of a very cold winter, the broadcaster reported.

Dutch State Secretary for the Extractive Industries Hans Vijlbrief called the government's decision to stop gas production in Groningen an "important moment" for the people of the province, who have been suffering from the effects of gas production for decades.

The Groningen gas field in the Netherlands was discovered in 1959. It was once the main gas source for northwest Europe, but production has been limited since the 1990s due to earthquakes. The initial recoverable gas reserves of the field were 2.9 trillion cubic meters.

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❗️Russia's Ministry of Defense has stated that all messages and videos circulating on social media under the name of Yevgeny Prigozhin about alleged Russian Armed Forces strikes on the "rear camps of the Wagner PMC" are not true and are an information provocation.

The Russian Armed Forces continue to carry out combat missions on the contact line with the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the area of the special military operation.

❗️Russian President Vladimir Putin is aware of the situation unfolding around the founder of the Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin has confirmed.

"President Putin has been informed of all the events regarding Prigozhin, all the necessary steps are being taken," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

🗣️”Either Mr. Biden is invoking that 'crazy man strategy,' or perhaps let's buckle our seatbelts, he might have lost all touch with reality. And in fact, he has lost his marbles. Whatever the case, I'm not sure if that's going to deter the rise of the People's Republic of China”: Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history at the University of Houston, Texas, author, historian, and researcher, told Sputnik

🎧Listen to more of Horne’s analysis in our podcast The Critical Hour

West supplying cluster munitions to Ukraine would be irresponsible

Michael Maloof, a former Pentagon analyst, has warned of the long-lasting and potentially lethal repercussions of supplying Ukraine with cluster bombs, a weapon that is subject to an international ban, due to the devastating effects it can have on both troops and civilians.

💬 "Their little pellets can explode above a concentration of troops and kill so many. It is very, very lethal in a very limited area," Maloof said. "Sometimes the clusters themselves can be spread out over a battlefield, and on contact later on they can blow up and injure innocents, like we've seen so many times in Vietnam," the expert told Sputnik.

Although the US and other NATO members have supplied Ukraine with a range of weapons since the start of the conflict with Russia, thereby violating previous agreements, Maloof hopes that supplying cluster bombs can be avoided considering their controversial nature.

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❗️The Federal Security Service of Russia called on PMC Wagner troops to disobey Prigozhin's "criminal and treacherous orders", detain him instead.

⚡️ Russian Defense Ministry: Taking advantage of Prigozhin's provocation to disrupt the situation, the Kiev regime is concentrating units of the 35th Marine Brigade and the 36th Mechanised Brigade of the AFU in Bakhmut tactical direction at the initial line for offensive actions.

The servicemen of the Yug Group of Forces are defeating the enemy with air and artillery strikes.

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⚡️A video posted by Prigozhin purporting to show "the aftermath of the rocket strike on the Wagner rear camps" by the forces of Russian Defense Ministry was staged, Russia's Channel One said.

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The Deputy Commander of the Joint Group of Forces General of the Army Sergei Surovikin to the leadership, commanders and fighters of the Wagner PMC:

▫️"I have just come from the frontline, where our troops, our commanders, our soldiers, our fighters, volunteers are carrying out the task, fighting the enemy to the death, with the superior forces of the enemy, suffering losses, but standing on their positions.

▫️I appeal to the leadership, to the commanders and fighters of the Wagner PMC. Together with you we have passed a difficult, hard way, we have fought together, taken the risks, suffered losses, we have won together. We are the same blood, we are warriors.

▫️I call you to stop. The enemy is only waiting for our domestic political situation to deteriorate. We must not play into the hands of the enemy at this difficult time for the country.

▫️Before it is too late, we must do something - we must obey the will and order of the President of the Russian Federation, who was elected by the people, we must stop the columns, return them to their permanent bases and areas of concentration, and solve all the problems only peacefully, under the leadership of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation’.

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⚡️Putin Briefed on Criminal Case Against Prigozhin - Kremlin

Perfect ingredient for dirty bomb: What is caesium-137?

Russia’s Federal Security Service has foiled a plot to smuggle a kilogram of caesium-137 out of the country.

Sputnik contacted a former UN weapons expert to learn more about the radioactive isotope, why it’s an ideal ingredient for a radiation-spewing dirty bomb, and why Russian-sourced caesium-137 is so sought after by Moscow’s adversaries.

"[One kilogram] is more than enough to create a dirty bomb that can contaminate tens or even hundreds of square kilometers” if detonated from a height of about 1,000 meters, the expert noted. “If the bomb were blown up on the ground, the contaminated area would be relatively small: two-three kilometers," former UN Commission on Chemical, Bacteriological and Biological Weapons inspector Igor Nikulin told Sputnik.

Why might Kiev need Russian caesium-137? Why risk a false-flag attack?

Read the full interview of former the UN commission inspector on Sputnik's website