🇺🇸 CIA personnel have visited Ukraine with multiple secret missions to provide assistance to Kiev with the operations of new weapons and systems, an American weekly magazine reported, citing senior defense intelligence officials.

Information about some of those trips was kept private. At the same time, all the missions were conducted to avoid direct confrontation with Russian troops, the report added.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💰 A week of rioting across France has already caused more than $1.1 billion in damage to the country's businesses, The Movement of the Enterprises of France said.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said rioters had attacked 400 bank branches and 500 small shops. On Tuesday he estimated that a total of 1,000 stores had been looted.

But Le Maire insisted that the unrest “will not have a deep impact on French growth,” and that the government was supporting affected businesses.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🌱 Scientists at the Russian State Agrarian University have focused on creating ways to grow just about any plant in regions that are usually too risky for agriculture, such as territories beyond the Arctic Circle.

The concept of photo culture in closed-circuit systems that they use is not new: all sorts of plants can be grown using this technology in a dark and hostile environment with the help of computer-controlled LED lighting and climate adjustments. But what’s really unique for the Timiryazev Academy is the Russian-made software and domestically-produced nanny robots that take care of the plants.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹 Ka-52 reconnaissance and attack helicopter destroyed Ukrainian hardware with a precise guided anti-tank missile launch

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Ukraine's counteroffensive has slowed down due to difficulties on the battlefield and a shortage in artillery units, Ukrainian President Zelensky said

The Ukrainian official emphasized that Ukraine wants the United States to provide the ATACMS long-range missile weapon system, and urged NATO to make some kind of announcement about Ukraine becoming a member of the alliance.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

A bus crashed off of a road into a ravine in southern Mexico, killing 29 people

The prosecutor's office specified that the crash could have been caused by a malfunction.

The list of passengers, published by local media, showed that the bus was used by a group of Mexican tourists.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

A US decision to greenlight the delivery of contentious cluster munitions to Ukraine may be reached within this week, according to CBS News

Cluster munitions consist of numerous smaller explosive devices that scatter upon detonation. Due to the potential danger they pose to civilians even long after conflicts have ceased, over 100 countries have prohibited their use.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

The Russian Federal Security Service says detained nationalists in Tyumen region who planned terrorist attack on energy facility

🇫🇷 France censors social media

France's digital minister Jean-Noël Barrot tweeted that from August 25, France will introduce mandatory measures censoring the work of social networks in the country.

Such measures will be introduced in the light of mass protests sweeping across France after police shot and killed 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, a delivery driver of Algerian heritage, after pulling over his car.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚠️ DISTURBING IMAGES

📹 The Russian Federal Security Service has eliminated a terrorist (0:17) who had planned to attack an energy facility in Russia's Tyumen Region, on instructions from Ukraine

Security forces safely detonated an improvised explosive device (1:14) found on the terrorists.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

The Swedish authorities have charged climate activist Greta Thunberg with disobeying police orders to leave a climate protest

Thunberg, 20, was apprehended on June 19 for refusing to leave the blockade of an oil terminal in the southern Swedish port of Malmo during a sit-in protest that lasted several days. She was part of the disruption of shipping activities in the harbor organized by the environmentalist group Take Back the Future.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Western weapons supplied to Kiev used by protesters in France, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says

💬 “The very weapons that the West, NATO and France supply, the very money that they pour in to support nationalists, Nazis and fascists on the territory of Ukraine, like a boomerang, turn out not just on their territory, but hit their own people,” she added.

🇦🇺 An Australian cabinet minister deleted a tweet in which she criticized the son of former US President Donald Trump, calling him a "big baby" and a "sore loser" after his Australia tour was postponed due to visa delays

Donald Trump Jr.'s speaking appearance in Sydney on Sunday was indefinitely postponed earlier this week, with an announcement on the Turning Point Australia Facebook page citing "unforeseen circumstances."

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹 The Russian military put Armed Forces of Ukraine equipment and personnel out of the action with a preemptive strike, which disrupted an attack on the positions of the Russian Armed Forces in the Kherson region

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

In this fresh episode of our New Rules podcast, we are joined by former US Marine and geopolitical analyst Brian Berletic. He discusses the Ukrainian counter-offensive, NATO, and US ambitions in the Asia Pacific region.

But wait, there's more!

🔊 Tune in to Radio Sputnik at 6am EST|3am PST|12pm CET|10am GMT via the website or app!

📻 Also in the United States at 105.5FM, 104.7FM, 102.9FM, 1390AM, 1140AM