❗️ The European Parliament extended suspension of duties on exports of Ukrainian agricultural products to the EU until June 2025, the statement said.

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😶‍🌫️ Russian soldiers successfully advance under the cover of a smoke screen

The aerosol countermeasures unit of the Southern group of Russian Armed Forces uses the TDM-2k thermal smoke generator to make Russian infantry and armored vehicles invisible to the enemy.

The TDM-2k can generate a concealing aerosol continuously for about four hours. The smoke screen, which is harmless to people and animals, spreads in a thick layer for several kilometers, disrupting enemy visual reconnaissance activities.

If a sudden assault has to be conducted at the front line, smoke bombs are deployed at the chosen area beforehand and then activated remotely at a distance of up to 7 km with the RPZ-8 command-transmitting device.

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The European Parliament and the European Council reached an agreement to extend the temporary suspension of duties on exports of Ukrainian agricultural products to the European Union until June 5, 2025, and the European Commission can take any necessary measures if Ukrainian imports will lead to significant disruption to the EU market or the markets of one or more EU countries.

"The temporary suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian agricultural exports to the EU will be renewed for another year, until 5 June 2025," the European Parliament said in a statement on the website.

The European Commission "can take swift action and impose any measures it deems necessary should there be significant disruption to the EU market or the markets of one or more EU countries due to Ukrainian imports," the statement said.

"The regulation also provides for an emergency brake for particularly sensitive agricultural products, namely poultry, eggs, and sugar," the parliament said, adding that European lawmakers "secured the expansion of this list to include oats, maize, groats and honey" and also "attained firm commitments from the Commission to take action if there is a surge of Ukrainian imports of wheat."

The lawmakers of the European Parliament also "ensured that the Commission would act faster - within 14 days instead of 21 days - if trigger levels for the automatic safeguards were reached."

The current suspension expires on June 5, 2024, and the new regulations will go into effect immediately after the said expiration date, the statement read.

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Russian air defenses shot down two Ukrainian drones over the city of Engels in Russia’s Saratov region, Governor Roman Busargin said.

No injuries or damage were reported per preliminary information, according to the governor.

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Russia has warned Japan via diplomatic channels of consequences in the event of transferring missiles for the Patriot missile defense systems to the United States, which could end up in Ukraine, the acting director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Third Asia Department, Sergey Zhestkii, has told Sputnik.

"When in December 2023 the administration of [Japanese Prime Minister] Fumio Kishida achieved a legislative relaxation of national rules for the export of military products - for the sake of supplying Patriot missiles assembled in the country under license to Washington - we directly warned the Japanese side through Ambassador to Moscow Muto that we have no doubt about the ultimate beneficiary of such a decision - the Kiev regime," Zhestkii said.

He added that "such an assistance in further pumping up the Ukrainian armed forces with weapons will be unequivocally regarded as Tokyo's complicity in Kiev's criminal actions, which only lead to an increase in the number of victims."

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British public has spent £19m in missile costs for UK’s Yemen war, a report suggests

The UK has reportedly poured millions into protecting Israeli ships in the Red Sea since the Palestine-Israel conflict first began in October, with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak becoming Britain’s ninth prime minister to use the Royal Air Force (RAF) to bomb Yemen.

A report published to Declassified UK claims that the British public has spent up to £19m in missile costs alone for airstrikes over Yemen. As many as 53 missiles—some of which costs over a million British pounds each—have been fired by the Royal Navy and Air Force, the report said.

The report also found that UK Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps is being forced to borrow money from other departments in order to pay for the war including from the Treasury’s Contingencies Fund after having “requested funding from the Special Reserve for [the] Red Sea”.

“There’s always money to wage war abroad and never funds to fight poverty at home,” Kenny MacAskill, an Alba MP for East Lothian told the report.

Schnapps said in parliament that so far the Royal Air Force (RAF) has struck 40 targets across Yemen in four waves of air strikes since January. The RAF used Paveway IV missiles which cost about £70,000 each in 2014. If 40 of those missiles were fired, the approximate cost would be £2.8m, the report writes.

“The economic cost to us of launching air strikes against some of the poorest people on the planet compounds the environmental damage to our planet of flying thousands of miles to do so,” MacAskill added. “Meanwhile, folk here go hungry and our planet burns. The elite are enriched but the rest pay the price.”

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International observer compliments transparency, smoothness of Russian elections

“It's a very transparent process,” said attorney and CEO Steve Gill after returning from a trip to Russia where he served as an international observer for the country’s presidential election. The former director of intergovernmental affairs for the US Trade Representative joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program to share his thoughts after watching voting take place in the southwest Russian city of Samara.

“I've probably visited in this trip 20 different polling stations, watching as people cast their vote,” said Gill. “First of all, they've got livestream video cameras in every precinct around the country, thousands of them… It is all livestreamed when the voting is taking place and then livestreamed when the counting is taking place.” Gill noted that election observers were allowed to be present at each polling location.

“It's a very visible process. Nobody was being forced at gunpoint,” he added, calling the election results a “super mandate” for Putin. “My advice to the West, to the US and Western Europe and Britain: pay attention to what the Russian people have said, not to what you wish they would say.”

Gill noted Russia’s substantial economic growth under Putin and said both the US and Russia would be better served if they were able to trade and cooperate economically as major world powers.

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“Losing a war is no fun’: West ignores their “biggest political disaster”

Russia’s economy has survived Western sanctions “far better” than predicted, recent reports show. Meanwhile, the European Union’s (EU) economy has been suffering drastically, causing working class voters to turn against aid for Ukraine.

“This is not a faraway war for [the EU],” noted independent journalist Daniel Lazare on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program. “It's a faraway war for America. But it's a war on the doorstep of the EU. And the prospect of a Ukrainian collapse would cause panic in Poland, but also in Berlin and Paris, and Macron has been making crazy noises about sending troops to Ukraine, which is completely nuts.

“The US thought it would win that war easily,” he continued. “But now the war is going very poorly. And it turns out that the US really had a very poor idea of what it was getting into. Now, the problem is that the US will not suffer the consequences anywhere near to the degree the Europeans will.”

The loss of cheap Russian gas due to Western sanctions has battered European countries’ economies, with Germany hit particularly hard. The economic growth forecast for Germany was cut to 0.2% in 2024 from a previous projection of 1.3%, according to a recent report. Germany’s Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeckhas said the country is performing “dramatically bad.”

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❗️ Russian special forces reached the US-made Abrams tank that was knocked out in the village of Berdychi and filmed a video from the inside.

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▪️ WATCH: Russian forces reach the US-made Abrams tank and film it from the inside

▪️ EU extends Ukraine’s duty-free agricultural imports until June 2025

▪️ Why would French forces in Ukraine collapse European security?

▪️ ‘Losing a war is no fun’: West ignores their ‘biggest political disaster’

▪️ NATO Chief's visit part of effort to pull Armenia out of Russia's orbit

More stories:

▪️ International observer compliments transparency, smoothness of Russian presidential election

▪️ British public spends £19m in missile costs for UK’s Yemen war – report

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Trump's son-in-law suggests bulldozing Negev Desert for Gaza civilians – 'I would try to move people in there'

Jared Kushner, a relative of former President Donald Trump, was recently heavily criticized for his remarks during a March 8 event at Harvard University, where he suggested that "Gaza's waterfront property could be very valuable ... if people would focus on building up livelihoods."

"If Jared Kushner sees what's happening in Gaza as an opportunity for real estate development, why doesn't he look at the widespread destruction of Minneapolis the same way?" conservative journalist Arthur Bloom wrote on his X page.

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Ukraine will not launch its own production of 155 mm caliber shells until the second half of 2024, The Washington Post has quoted sources as saying.

According to a source, there is a catastrophic shortage of these shells at the front, but production will not begin until "the second half of this year." Meanwhile, according to US intelligence, Ukraine will run out of several types of ammunition by the end of the month.

According to the newspaper, a laundry list of constraints – from lacking adequate financing to finding enough gunpowder – is preventing Ukrainian industry from ramping up production.

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🇷🇺 A volunteer who saved his commander and later performed a feat as part of the tank Alyosha’s crew has been awarded the Order of Courage, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"Being on the front line while performing a combat task, Sergey Solenov found a hovering UAV of the Ukrainian Armed Forces over Platoon Commander Lieutenant Alexander Levakov. Seeing the grenade dropped in close proximity, he did not hesitate to cover the commander with his body, thereby saving his life," the statement said.

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📹 A Russian scout who destroyed an Abrams tank with an Upyr (lit. "Ghoul") FPV drone has described the tactics of "hunting" Ukrainian armored vehicles.

It was his unit that struck the second US-made tank near the village of Berdychi in early March.

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