80 years ago today, during the Great Patriotic War, one of the largest battles in military history occurred near the Prokhorovka railway station

▪️ Over 1,000 tanks and self-propelled artillery units were involved in combat from both sides.

▪️ In this battle, the German command sought to encircle and destroy Soviet forces that had breached their defensive line in the Kursk, Orel, and Belgorod regions. Conversely, the Soviet command aimed to encircle the enemy grouping.

▪️ Despite the two-day battle for the bridgehead, neither side managed to achieve their objectives. The German forces were forced to retreat. Nevertheless, this battle significantly influenced the Soviet forces' victory in the overall Battle of Kursk.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to preserve the Black Sea Grain Initiative for few more months until the European Union manages to connect a subsidiary of the Russian Agriculture Bank to SWIFT, media reported on Wednesday.

📸 NATO summit in one photo

👇 Best caption wins

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇩🇪🇵🇱 Germany will withdraw from the project for the construction of a maintenance hub for Leopard 2 tanks in Poland due to Warsaw's inflated expectations regarding maintenance payment, German newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Berlin wants the tanks to be repaired as close to the Ukrainian border as possible, but Poland has set what Germany described as unreasonable prices for maintenance of the military equipment, the newspaper reported.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

A lawsuit accusing tech giant Google of scraping people’s data without consent and violating copyright laws has been filed with a US federal court in California. The plaintiffs call upon Google to temporarily “freeze” commercial development and use of its AI products.

The complaint alleges that Google “has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans,” taking people’s “personal and professional information” in order to build its commercial AI products such as chatbot Bard.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔺Why is the US supplying cluster bombs to Ukraine? Biden found an explanation
🔺“Sanctions have lethal effects”: people call for end to US blockade on Cuba and Venezuela
🔺 Ukraine tops agenda at the NATO Summit in Vilnius

The Critical Hour will cover these and more stories! Tune in to Radio Sputnik at 6pm EST|3pm PST|12am CET via the website or app

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

🛢 The market price of Russian crude oil is on the verge of breaking through the $60-per-barrel artificial price cap imposed by Western powers.

The spot price of Urals crude has been rising since May, and on Tuesday hit $59.98 per barrel at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

The barrel-head price at Primorsk on the Baltic Sea also rose to $59.38 the same day.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

NATO allies and Sweden signed a declaration that formalized a coalition for teaching Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets, the Romanian Defense Ministry Said on Wednesday.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇨🇳 Scientists in China have successfully verified algorithms using a real universal quantum computer, highlighting the potential of quantum computing in mobile telecom networks, particularly for 6G applications.

China Mobile, currently focused on 5G operations and 6G research, recognizes the computational challenges faced by 6G, including large-scale optimization and signal processing.

Quantum computers offer significantly enhanced computing power and are being piloted in industries requiring high computational capabilities.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

A Swedish activist, wants to set NATO's charter ablaze to protest against Sweden's entry bid to the US-led military bloc. Previously, this activist had considered a similar action involving the Quran, according to the Nordic nation's media.

"Lucas, 29, who had applied for permission to burn the Quran, changed his mind after NATO's statement... He now intends to express his discontent by burning the NATO Charter instead," the statement revealed.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇫🇷 France has already trained 5,200 Ukrainian soldiers, and it plans to train a total of 7,000 military by the end of 2023, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Wednesday.

He also noted that training is conducted taking into account the needs of Ukrainian armed forces. In particular, the troops learn how to operate French military equipment transferred to them and practice modern combat tactics, the minister added.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇨🇳 NATO states should reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the policy of ensuring national and collective security if the member states are interested in lowering strategic risks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday.

"If NATO member countries are really interested in reducing strategic risks and maintaining strategic stability, they should take practical actions to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in national and collective security policy," Wang told a briefing.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

The United States and its NATO allies are creating risks of direct confrontation with Russia, and this could lead to catastrophic consequences, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, adding that Moscow will consider delivery of nuclear-capable F-16s to Kiev as a threat from the West

The minister said that there would be no reason to talk about the use of nuclear weapons by Russia if the West does not make decisions that create strategic risks. Lavrov also recalled that the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons are clearly defined in Russia’s military doctrine.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹 Russian FM Lavrov caused a stir among Indonesian journalists at the ASEAN meeting

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹 Russia’s paratroopers mop up populated areas near Artemovsk in the zone of the special military op

Subscribe to @SputnikInt