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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❗️ EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell's proposal to use Russian assets to finance Kiev leads to the destruction of the legal foundations of European and international law, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said

🇷🇺 Latest statements by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov:

▪️ The Europeans are well aware of the possible damage to their economy and image caused by the use of Russian assets to help Kiev.

▪️ The transparency of the Russian presidential election cannot be challenged.

▪️ Macron is very consistent in his thesis about the possibility of French troops being deployed to Ukraine; there is hardly any question of ambiguity in the translation.

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❗️ Russia could respond in the same way to the enemy that strikes civilian infrastructure, but it has its own plans, Vladimir Putin said

❗️ Vladimir Putin thanked the residents of the Russia's Belgorod region for their courage and promised to do everything to support people

The US has not provided any specific details about new tests of its hypersonic missile, which shows that it has nothing to boast about, military expert Alexey Leonkov told Sputnik.

"The vague wording of the US may indicate that it has nothing to brag about, but at the same time, when even the Yemeni Houthis report on tests of hypersonic weapons, they need to report some successes as well," he said.

He recalled that last year, work on the AGM-183 ARRW was suspended on the recommendation of a congressional committee.

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