🇷🇺 Sergey Lavrov is holding talks in Moscow with the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The council includes Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.

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Russian MoD's latest statements on Ukraine’s recruitment of mercenaries:

▪️The largest number of mercenaries arrived in Ukraine in March-April 2022. After the first losses were incurred, the dynamic significantly decreased;

▪️The largest groups of mercenaries arrived in Ukraine from Poland, the United States, Georgia, the United Kingdom, Romania, France, and Turkish-controlled areas of Syria;

▪️The destruction of 4,845 foreign mercenaries during the military operation has been confirmed, with the majority coming from the US, Canada, and European countries, while 4,801 fled Ukraine;

▪️There are currently 2,029 mercenaries operating within the ranks of the Ukrainian forces;

▪️According to Ukrainian prisoners, commanders of Ukrainian units are not held accountable for losses among foreign mercenaries;

▪️The Ukrainian command is sending units consisting of foreign mercenaries to attack Russian positions;

▪️Due to high losses, Kiev has started recruiting mercenaries in Argentina, Brazil, Afghanistan, Iraq, and in areas controlled by the US in Syria;

▪️Kiev has intensified the recruitment of mercenaries in the US and Canada, facilitated by the CIA and private military companies controlled by the US;

▪️Russian forces continue to destroy foreign mercenaries regardless of their location on Ukrainian territory.

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🇷🇺🇨🇳 Russia and China should strengthen cooperation on multilateral mechanisms and protect the interests of developing countries, Xi Jinping said in a meeting with Russian upper house of parliament speaker Valentina Matviyenko.

He added that Beijing is ready to work for the development of its partnership with Moscow and contribute to the construction of a stable and just world.

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📹 Russian Su-25 Grach aircraft crews hit Ukrainian troops in Krasny Liman direction

Russian Defense Ministry specified that fighter aircraft in combat pairs carried out missile strikes on the enemy's concentration forces, using 122-millimeter fragmentation-fugitive unguided missiles S-13OF.

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

▪️In the Donetsk direction, Russian forces destroyed over 275 Ukrainian servicemen and foreign mercenaries, one tank, as well as an ammunition depot;

▪️In the South Donetsk and Zaporozhye directions, the actions of a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group were thwarted. Russian troops neutralized up to 150 Ukrainian servicemen, five armored fighting vehicles, and two D-20 howitzers;

▪️In the Kupyansk direction, Russian forces destroyed up to 65 Ukrainian servicemen, and one infantry fighting vehicle;

▪️In the Krasny Liman direction, Ukrainian losses amount up to 85 servicemen, four armored fighting vehicles, and one Akatsiya self-propelled artillery system;

▪️In the Kherson direction, Russian troops neutralized up to 30 Ukrainian soldiers;

▪️A command post was hit in the Zaporozhye region;

▪️Several ammunition depots were destroyed close to Nikolayev and Kramatorsk;

▪️Russian air defenses shot down five guided missiles launched by the AFU from S-200 anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as eight unmanned aerial vehicles in the DPR, LPR, and Zaporozhye region.

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📹 Russian POW speaks about horrors in Ukrainian captivity

The soldier explained that his ransom was $20,000 and that it did not guarantee that he would make it out alive. He also revealed that Ukrainian soldiers threatened him with death and beat him, but only on his torso, so as to be able to cover up the injuries before the arrival of a Ukrainian "reporter" to record his "confession" that the Russian military had been conducting strikes against Ukrainian civilians.

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🗣️ On the possibilities of a US-China war:

“It feels inevitable. And this is because the people making foreign policy decisions in the United States have a sense of impunity from the consequences of these decisions… If conflict is averted, it'll be because of decisions China makes,” Brian Berletic, ex-US Marine and geopolitical analyst, told Sputnik.

🎧 Listen to more of Berletic’s analysis in our podcast New Rules

👉 Watch the full episode of our show on Rumble or YouTube

Russia's IT brain gain: professionals return home, reversing long-time trend

According to Alexander Khachiyan, the head of AWG IT integrator, approximately 85 percent of IT specialists who left Russia in 2022 have returned to the country. Khachiyan mentioned that the most significant wave of returnees occurred between February and March, around six months after September 2022.

Khachiyan concluded that many Russian IT expats started bearing the brunt of forfeiting their tax residency status because their personal income tax rose from about 13-15 percent to 30 percent upon returning to Russia. Employers were unwilling to make up for such a change, a significant motivator for IT specialists to return.

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Seven times Biden lied on Ukraine

The US announced last week that it would expedite the delivery of 155mm howitzer-launched cluster munitions to Ukraine, despite earlier characterizing the use of such weapons as a “war crime,” and promising to remove them from US inventories.

What other Ukraine-related promises has the Biden administration broken?

Here’s a partial list

🇪🇺🇦🇺 EU, New Zealand sign free trade agreement

The European Union and New Zealand have signed a free trade agreement that is expected to increase bilateral trade by up to 30% within 10 years, the European Commission said.

The European Union is already New Zealand's third biggest trade partner, and with the new agreement, EU investment in New Zealand will probably increase by 80%, even, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

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❗️Attempts to shell the Kerch Strait, Rostov and Bryansk regions of Russia on July 9 by Kiev would have been impossible without the assistance of the United States and its "coalition," Russian Foreign Ministry says

🇷🇺 🌍First Russia-Africa Summit: What Nations Agreed on at Historic Meeting in Sochi

The First Russia-Africa Summit, which took place in Sochi on October 23-24, 2019, was the largest event ever held in the history of modern Russia and was unprecedented in Russian-African relations.

Titled "For Peace, Security and Development," it outlined the goals and objectives adopted for the future development of Russian-African cooperation in various fields, including the political, security, economic, science and technology, cultural, and humanitarian spheres.

👉 Check out the full text of the declaration of the First Russia-Africa Summit

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🇺🇸 DeSantis threatens to cut off trade with China if elected president

Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis told a TV news interviewer on Sunday that he would revoke the normal trade status between Washington and Beijing if elected president in 2024, although he was unclear on how to achieve that.

DeSantis is currently running a distant second in an increasingly long field behind Trump in polling for the 2024 Republican primary race.

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🇺🇸 Matthew Miller, the head of the US State Department's press service, twice referred to the military conflict in Ukraine as a strategic failure on the part of Kiev, but eventually said that he had simply misspoken.

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