Scott Ritter: people of new Russian territories are ‘Russians in their hearts and souls’

“What I can say is, after having gone through these territories, met with the political leadership of these territories, the economic drivers in these territories and the people who live there, these are Russian territories,” former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik after returning from his visit to Russia, which included stops in the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye.

“The people that live in these territories are Russians in their hearts, in their souls. And it doesn't matter what the collective West thinks. There's nothing that's going to happen, that's going to change this reality. The sooner the collective West can come to the realization that Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk in their totality are Russian territories part of the Russian Federation, the sooner this nightmare conflict that the West is brought upon itself can be resolved,” Ritter emphasized.

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What are the capabilities of the Texas National Guard?

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration are staring one another down in a possible constitutional crisis over a Supreme Court ruling allowing US Border Patrol agents to take down border barriers erected by Texas National Guard troops to try to stem the inflow of millions of illegal aliens.

▪️ The Guard consists of between 19,000-23,000 troops, including battle-hardened veterans of US wars overseas. Its capabilities include elements of the 19th Special Forces Group, trained for unconventional warfare, direct action, counterterrorism and reconnaissance.

▪️ The Guard has access to some 117 armories across the state containing everything from M-16 assault rifles and M1911 pistols to mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles, Humvees, M113 armored personnel carriers and even tanks.

▪️ The Texas Air National Guard consists of 4,400 personnel and operates C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, Blackhawk helicopters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, F-16 fighter jets, and smaller Beechcraft C-12 Huron and RC-26B turboprop transport planes.

▪️ The Guard and the Air National Guard report directly to Governor Abbott, and can be deployed in response to natural disasters and other emergencies, or activated in wartime.

Abbott tapped the Guard to man the troubled US southern border with Mexico, which has seen the arrival of millions of illegal immigrants under President Biden’s tenure, amid concerns that the federal government is not only allowing but actively facilitating the migrant inflow. The Guard has been tasked with working to secure the border, stopping human, weapons and drug smuggling.

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❗️Ukrainians have been expressing their concerns on social media regarding the reassignment of fighters with specialized military skills to infantry and storm trooper divisions. This issue has been observed across several army units over the past few weeks, as reported by Sputnik.

A key point to mention is that the relatives of missing soldiers who are seeking information about the fate of their loved ones write about this on the Internet.

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‘The Empire is Over’: America's Long Economic Decline

In this week's episode of the New Rules podcast, Professor Richard Wolff explains why you should not believe the mainstream media hype about the US economy’s supposedly “strong performance." Despite recent upbeat statistics coming out of Washington, an economic and geopolitical storm is brewing - one that Biden isn't prepared to handle.

"I think when it's all over that the American people do already understand. Even if they can't explain it yet. That the Empire is over, like every empire before. And nothing is more typical of the decline than leadership which undertakes military adventures that they no longer can afford, but the leaders don't want to face what it means that they can't afford it anymore," he told the New Rules podcast.

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❗️Ukrainian losses amounted to 1,960 soldiers killed and injured and 19 tanks destroyed in the Donetsk region for the past week.

🪖🇷🇺 Other statements from the Russian MoD’s briefing on the weekly progress of the Special Military Op:

▪️Russia repelled 12 Ukrainian attacks in the Donetsk region.

▪️Russian forces repelled 17 attacks near Liman; Ukrainian losses amounted to 1,570 servicemen.

▪️Russia repelled 43 attacks, and Kiev lost over 740 servicemen near Kupyansk.

▪️Ukraine lost up to 745 soldiers in the south of the Donetsk region.

▪️35 Ukrainian servicemen surrendered.

▪️The Ukrainian losses amounted to 450 soldiers in the Zaporozhye region.

▪️The Ukrainian losses amounted to 335 servicemen in the Kherson region.

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⚖️ To implement the decision of the UN International Court on Gaza, a ceasefire is necessary, without which it will not be effective, said the Foreign Minister of South Africa.

It was based on South Africa's lawsuit that the decision was made to compel Israel to cease the genocide in Gaza.

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Governor Abbott’s illegal migration feud with White House sparks calls for Texas independence

As the current drama in Texas over the migrant crisis plays out, emboldened pro-independence movements have revived calls for the Lone Star state to secede. Amid outrage over the massive influx of undocumented immigrants triggered by the Biden administration's border policies, “TEXIT” is becoming the new buzzword.

▪️ Calls for Texas (once part of Mexico, with a stint as an independent nation from 1836 until 1845) to quit the US with its ‘broken’ federal system and its failed policies are hardly new.

▪️ In the 1990s, a group called the Republic of Texas argued that the 28th US state was never legally admitted into the United States after the Civil War.

▪️ The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), set up in 2005 by Daniel Miller, said the Lone Star state must shed the shackles of the federal government and the “globalists we detest.”

Some experts, however, claim that secession is illegal and unconstitutional, citing a US Supreme Court ruling. Handed down four years after the Civil War, it stated that Texas, like all states, had "entered into an indissoluble relation" in 1845.

▪️ In 2023, TNM said it got the 100,000 signatures required for a non-binding secession referendum on the Texas Republican primary ballot. But in December, Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi rejected the petition to place the question of Texas secession on the 2024 primary ballot, claiming the “vast majority” of the signatures were invalid. (Texas law does not allow for electronic signatures, and only 8,300 of the submitted signatures were handwritten.)

▪️ After Texas Governor Greg Abbott took matters into his own hands over the migrant issue, Daniel Miller was quick to respond, saying the quiet part out loud.

“There’s an easy way for Texas to not only ignore the Supreme Court, but never have to listen to them again. Our legislators just need the courage to use it,” he posted on social media.

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❗️LIVE NOW: Putin is holding a meeting with students participating in the conflict in Ukraine.

Watch the livestream here or follow the link to the Sputnik's website

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❗️"It is in the character of our people to stand by our homeland, not sparing ourselves," Putin said during the meeting with students participating in the conflict in Ukraine.

"Over 600,000 people are in the combat zone," Putin stated.

🇷🇺 A Russian paratrooper with the call sign “Korol” (“King”) has destroyed more than 20 units of enemy equipment and over 100 Ukrainian military personnel since the beginning of the special military operation.

“Yesterday, in one day, I destroyed artillery, an armored vehicle, and a car. At night, we burned self-propelled guns and several other enemy vehicles,” the FPV drone operator listed casually.

Footage of the serviceman's carrying out combat missions has been published by the Russian Defense Ministry.

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⚡️ US House Speaker Mike Johnson said that the border security deal that is being negotiated between the Biden administration and Congress will be "dead on arrival" in its current form.

"I wanted to provide a brief update regarding the supplemental and the border, since the Senate appears unable to reach any agreement. If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway," Johnson said in a letter to lawmakers.

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💬 "The start of the Special Military Operation was not the beginning of the war. They started the war in 2014 in the Donbass. What we're doing is trying to stop that war that they have started," Putin stated.

❗️Putin: The Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine knew that there were Ukrainian prisoners of war on board the Il-76.

"It is obvious that the missiles in the Il-76 were launched from territories controlled by Kiev," Putin said, adding that "the entire Kiev regime is based on crimes."

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❗️Putin: the weapons seized from the crash site of the Il-76 are said to be an air defense system of France or the USA, it will be clear in a couple of days

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❗️Putin said that the results of the investigation into the Il-76 case will be published so that the Ukrainian people know too.

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❗️Key points from the Putin's statement during the meeting with students participating in the conflict in Ukraine:

▪️About Special mil op: there were no other considerations except for the defense of Russia.

▪️After the collapse of the USSR, nationalists became the de facto rulers of Ukraine.

▪️Our geopolitical adversary orchestrated a coup and began physically eliminating those willing to build normal relations with Russia.

▪️Everything that happened in Donbas is genocide; on our historical territories, Russians were declared a non-titular nation.

▪️An anti-Russian enclave began to be created on Ukraine's territory, and they left us no chances.

▪️The special military operation is an attempt to end the war.

▪️We will achieve the implementation of the tasks and goals of the special military operation.

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