❗️Russia has destroyed 8 thousand Ukrainian artillery guns and mortars since the beginning of the special operation

🇷🇺🪖Statements from the Russian MoD briefing on the daily progress of special military op in Ukraine:

🔺The Russian Armed Forces destroyed two launchers and a radar of the S-300 air defense system

🔺Ukraine lost up to 300 servicemen near Donetsk

🔺Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) lost more than 190 servicemen in near Donetsk

🔺The Russian Armed Forces repelled two attacks by the UAF near Krasny Liman. Ukrainian losses amounted to 290 servicemen

🔺Near Donetsk, Russian troops hit two UAV control points, an electronic warfare station, and two warehouses with ammunition

🔺Russian air defense systems intercepted 15 MLRS shells and destroyed 97 drones;

🔺The UAF lost up to 185 servicemen near Kupyansk

🔺The Russian Armed Forces defeated units of the 37th Marine Brigade and the 121st Territorial Defense Brigade of the UAF in the Kherson region. Ukrainian losses amounted to up to 50 servicemen and a D-30 howitzer.

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🚀A rocket with a satellite was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the interests of the Russian Ministry of Defense, it was successfully launched into the target orbit, the military department reports.

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Fact Check: General Syrsky, heroic defender of Kiev?

Mainstream media have already begun fawning over newly appointed Ukrainian Armed Forces commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky, with Bloomberg pointing to his “key” role “in defending Kiev against all odds at the start of the Russian invasion,” and Business Insider hailing his operations as a “shocking upset that surprised many who assumed the capital would fall quickly.” AFP went so far as to suggest that it was Syrsky who scuppered “the Kremlin’s plans to bring the country to its knees within days.” President Zelensky awarded Syrsky the “Hero of Ukraine” award for his efforts.

The reality is otherwise. As many of the same outlets reported back in the spring of 2022, Russia’s withdrawal from Kiev region was a gesture of goodwill by Moscow meant to facilitate favorable conditions for peace talks aimed at putting the conflict to bed. Only later, after then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had traveled to Kiev to sink the talks, did Moscow realize that the Zelensky regime would not be allowed to pursue peace by its Western curators. In his bombshell interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, President Putin revealed that he had made the decision to pull Russian forces back from the Ukrainian capital in the hopes of facilitating peace.

“My counterparts in France, in Germany, said ‘how can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev.’ I said, alright. We withdrew the troops from Kiev. As soon as we did so, our Ukrainian negotiators almost immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and prepared for a long-running armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe,” Putin said.

So much for Syrsky’s “heroism.”

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‘Thank God they didn’t let you in’: Putin gently teases Tucker Carlson about his CIA job application.

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☦️🇷🇺 Putin commented during the interview on the attempts to divide the Russian and Ukrainian people through a religious rivalry.

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Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, was spotted partying and dancing during his visit to Israel.

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Ball in NATO’s court on ending Ukrainian crisis

“I think that the most important message in Putin's interview [to Tucker Carlson] is that Russia is ready for a political or diplomatic solution of the Ukraine conflict,” Russian international affairs observer Dmitry Suslov told Sputnik.

“But it requires a political will from the United States. Putin identified the concrete conditions on which Russia would be ready to end the conflict through diplomacy. And this is first, the recognition of the current territorial settlement. Putin bluntly said that it's up for NATO to look for and to find a form which could be, I mean, not humiliating for them, but accepts the current territorial settlement. Secondly, Istanbul communique [agreed in the spring of 2022, before the West forced Kiev to break off negotiations, ed.],” Suslov, the deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, said.

“Thirdly, he identified in a very detailed way the condition of denazification and explained what it means, and also, mentioned that it was partly included into the Istanbul communique. So, I think that this is a very important message, that if the United States is ready for serious negotiation on the basis of these conditions, Russia would not hesitate to resume and to start those negotiations,” the observer noted.

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Russian tankers of the Battlegroup Yug smash the enemy near Donetsk

The modernized T-90M Proryv tanks advance to the fire positions using the terrain, eliminate the Ukrainian servicemen in their shelters, suppress their firing positions, and allow Russian assault groups to advance further into the enemy's defense lines.

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Syrsky’s command will see more “meat grinder assaults" driven by fanatical loyalty to Zelensky

Newly picked Ukrainian Armed Forces commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky is “absolutely loyal to the current government. He is ready to continue the policy of ‘meat assaults’ and it is easier for him to do this, since his reputation allows for it,” Nikolai Kostikin, an expert from the Military-Political Analysis Bureau think tank, told Sputnik.

“Ukraine’s Armed Forces now have prospects for the continued mass slaughter of their personnel. And it is not Ukrainians who command Ukrainian troops. The policy of meat assaults will continue until the front collapses like dominos,” Kostikin said, adding that “so far, Syrsky has proven himself only as a ‘cauldron general’, responsible, in the minds of Ukrainian officers, for the defeat at Debaltsevo in 2015.”

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Russian troops, using a reconnaissance drone, spotted two camouflaged guns of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, US-made M777 howitzers and a D-30 gun, after which they disabled the enemy equipment with direct hits from Lancet loitering munitions.

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🇮🇱 Israel has informed Egypt and Qatar that it has rejected demands put forward by Hamas when it responded to the proposals regarding the prisoner exchange deal, Axios reported, citing two Israeli officials.

According to Axios, Israel also informed mediators that it is still ready to continue negotiations if it is based on the original proposals made two weeks ago.

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As the long-awaited interview of Vladimir Putin with Tucker Carlson was finally aired, here are the major topics the Russian president touched upon during the talk:

🔺Why Russia was forced to fight in Ukraine

🔺What happened to Minsk agreements?

🔺A brief summary of Russian and Ukrainian history

🔺US support for anti-Russian terrorist groups

🔺Key points about Russia’s relations with the West

🔺Sending US troops to Ukraine would be a really bad idea

🔺NATO and CIA traces behind Nord Stream Explosion


How did the world react to the interview?

🔺Netizens believe it was the final nail in MSM's coffin

🔺The interview as the most important step to saving humanity

🔺Hearing directly from Putin will help Americans to understand what's really going on in Ukraine

🔺CIA veteran explains why Americans should pay attention to Putin's history lesson

An unknown unidentified aircraft (presumably American) struck targets near the Syrian-Iraqi border, Sputnik's correspondent in Syria reports.

The airstrikes targeted positions of Syrian state army allied forces in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria. The strike coincided in time with another missile attack on a US military base near the Koniko oil&gas field in the same province.

"You are war criminal!"

Activists heckled Hillary Clinton's speech at Columbia University

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❗️ A patrol boat of the Russian Black Sea Fleet detected and destroyed an uncrewed Ukrainian Navy boat, which was heading towards Crimea.

🎙 Join AfroVerdict for an engaging podcast with political experts to dive right into Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin and get Africa's insight into the statements made.

Germany can’t reveal Nord Stream attack perpetrators because gov’t is infested with American agents

“Even the fact that the investigation has been classified as ‘secret’, i.e. the public is isolated as much as possible from it, despite the colossal harm done to both the German economy and the country’s prestige in general,” is concerning, Eugen Schmidt, a Bundestag lawmaker from the opposition Alternative for Germany, told Sputnik, commenting on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson, in which the September 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream pipeline network was brought up.

“It’s quite obvious that the beneficiary of such an act is first and foremost the United States. And technically, they could do it. That is, they are one of the few countries that could pull off something like this,” Schmidt stressed.

Unfortunately, Germany’s current government and ruling elites are “absolutely dependent” on Washington and “are not able to pursue any sovereign policy. They’ve shown their status as a vassal. That’s why they’re hiding the results of the investigation,” the lawmaker believes.

The consequences of losing access to Russian energy, and walking lockstep with Washington’s anti-Russia policies include an economy “bursting at the seams, with businesses closing and moving abroad,” and Germany being treated like “some kind of foreign policy dwarf” on the world stage, the lawmaker said. “Energy prices are breaking records. We’re paying crazy amounts of money for American liquefied natural gas at the same time that we’re imposing sanctions on [Russian] pipeline gas.”

The Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) was shelled by Ukrainian troops 17 times over the past day, the DPR representative office in the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) of issues related to Ukraine's war crimes said in a statement.

"Over the past 24 hours, the office reported 17 cases of armed attacks by Ukrainian armed units," the office said on Telegram.

According to the statement, no civilians were reported wounded with 61 rounds of various ammunition had been fired by Ukraine.

Ukrainian air defence forces will only have enough shells until March 2024, The New York Times reported, citing US officials.

"Ukrainian troops are exhausted, they lack weapons and ammunition. Air defence systems, crucial for protecting civilians from Russian missiles, are steadily being depleted by repeated bombardments," the article read.

Previously, Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, said Ukraine is "running out of equipment, especially missiles and interceptors,” which were needed "yesterday".

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