💥 Russian Grad MLRS artillerymen fired a series of 122-mm high explosive projectiles and destroyed the enemy's stronghold near Avdeyevka, more than 10 kilometres away.

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Saudi Arabia to allocate $40Mln to UNRWA for humanitarian aid to Gaza Strip

Saudi Arabia will allocate $40 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) for its humanitarian efforts in the Gaza Strip amid the humanitarian crisis in the enclave, the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief) said.

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, through KSrelief, enhances its funding to UNRWA with USD 40 million to support lifesaving operations in Gaza," the center said on X.

The additional funding will help provide food for more than 250,000 people and shelter for about 200,000 people, the organization added.

UNRWA is the primary humanitarian agency in the Gaza Strip, with over 2 million people depending on it for their survival. In January, Israel shared data with UNRWA's leadership on the alleged involvement of some of the agency's staff in Palestinian movement Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023.

Several countries, including the US, Finland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Canada, Japan and the UK, suspended funding for UNRWA. Canada, Sweden and Australia have lifted their suspensions of UNRWA funding after a pause of more than two months.

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French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to put around 2,000 troops in Odessa would only serve as a “human tripwire force” and would be “the equivalent of NATO, like a dog, urinating on Odessa, marking it as NATO’s territory,” Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security expert, told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour. He added that in this analogy, France is like “a poodle.”

On Tuesday, French ground army chief of staff General Pierre Schill said in an op-ed that his forces are ready to respond to “the toughest engagements” and said the country could engage a division of 20,000 troops within 30 days.

“He’s wrong. The French army is most certainly not ready for this,” Sleboda said, commenting on the General’s assertion. “If they were engaged in a high-intensity conflict such as the Kiev regime is engaged in, firing many less artillery shells than Russia, then France would have enough artillery shells for four days of conflict with Russia. Four days,” Sleboda explained.

“Of course, with NATO troops officially in uniform dying in Ukraine, that would take us to a whole other level,” he warned.

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Foreign mercs from UK, Japan, Israel, as well as Armenians and Azerbaijanis are fighting on the side of the Ukrainian regime in the "Georgian National Legion", Mamuka Gatsareli, who himself is a captive merc from this legion and is now sentenced to life imprisonment in Russia, told Sputnik.

He said that until 2022 he served as a gunner of the Alpha Company of the 2nd Mechanized Brigade's 22nd Battalion in the Georgian Army. According to his confession, under the influence of propaganda he decided to participate in the conflict on the side of Ukraine.

For this purpose, on March 15, 2022, Gatsareli flew to Warsaw and at the airport approached a man who had a sign "Foreign Legion" in his hands, but because of his age - born in 2001 - he was not taken there, the prisoner said. Then he found a contact of a mercenary handler named Lana, who gave him the contacts of Mamuka Mamulashvili, the commander of the Georgian Legion.

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Election and polls show Russia is united while West fractures

Vladimir Putin’s resounding victory over the weekend shows that Russia is more united than ever while the West has a “huge problem” unifying a “divided support base,” Nicolai Petro, a professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour.

“I think [the election results] pretty accurately reflect the desires of the Russian people and it’s hard to come up with any evidence to the contrary,” Petro said, adding that in Western media you will find “contrary opinions, but you cannot find any evidence.”

“We have a divided support base in the West, perhaps a more ostensibly unified leadership, but that’s only until an opposition comes into power. Then, we’ve got huge problems for the West, no matter which way you slice it,” Petro explained. “Whereas in Russia, again no matter how you slice it, you have a unified population and political elite. One of the most popular Ukrainian journalists– now in exile– Diana Panchenko, put it very well when she said ‘A united collective West gave us a united collective Russia.’”

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Ukraine's attempt to launch a terrorist attack on facilities on Russian territory using an RM-70 Vampire multiple rocket launcher system was foiled at around 08.00 local time, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Air defense destroyed 10 missiles over the Russia's Belgorod region.

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▪️ Why France’s plan to send troops to Ukraine doomed to fail?

▪️ Election and polls show Russia is united while West fractures

▪️ Georgian Legion’s PoW told Sputnik about mercs from UK, Japan, Israel fighting in Ukraine

▪️ “Entire European continent within our military alliance.” How does US politics endanger all Europe?

▪️ Texas Constitutional Crisis: Round Two?

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"European countries are waking up to Russia’s danger, but the cost of building robust defenses able to withstand a potential U.S. pullback is so great that it threatens Europe’s post-Cold War social model," The Wall Street Journal reports in an article noscriptd “Russian Threat Forces Europe to Choose: Bolster Defense or Protect Social Spending.”

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Biden's point man makes surprise Ukraine visit with pitch to get stalled aid 'out the door'

Vague promises is what Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser brought with him on his recent surprise trip to the Ukrainian capital.

Jake Sullivan placated the Kiev regime with a rehash of Washington’s promises of commitment to supporting Ukraine. But there was a conspicuous absence of specific timeframes in his remarks. Sullivan exuded confidence that gridlock in Congress over supplementary aid to Ukraine would end, at some point. He ruled out any ‘Plan B’, saying:

“I’m confident that we will achieve Plan A... We will get a strong bipartisan vote in the House for an assistance package for Ukraine… It’s already taken too long." At the same time, he noted "I’m not going to make predictions about exactly when this will get done.”

Sullivan also put a damper on the Kiev regime’s hopes of getting their hands on American longer range ATACMs (Army Tactical Missile Systems).

“ATACMS, I am going to disappoint you, I have nothing to announce here publicly today on that issue,” Sullivan said.

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US military recruiting crisis: Military families are discouraging their children from enlisting

"The proportion of active-duty family respondents who were likely to recommend military service has dropped by nearly half from 2016, when it was 55% to just 32% in 2023. Furthermore, the proportion who were unlikely to recommend service has more than doubled from 15% in 2016 to 31% in 2023," a new report from Blue Star Families, a US veteran’s group, concluded.

"The military is in the midst of a well-publicized recruiting crisis, with a diminishing military end-strength as a result of missed recruiting targets, all while maintaining a consistently high operations tempo," it added.

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❗️ Turnout in the Russian presidential election amounted to 77.49%, the Central Election Commission has summed up the results

⚡️ Head of Russia’s Central Election Commission Ella Pamfilova has announced the official voting results of the presidential election: Vladimir Putin won 87.28%, Nikolai Kharitonov - 4.31%, Vladislav Davankov - 3.85%, and Leonid Slutsky - 3.20%

🗳🇷🇺 Official voting results of the presidential election

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🇷🇺🇷🇸 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meets with his Serbian counterpart in Moscow

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‘Don’t presume I’m not corrupt’: Joe Biden issues prescient warning from 1974

"You shouldn't presume I'm not corrupt.... in order to get elected, you have to go to those people that have money and they always want something," he said in an interview shortly after being elected to the US Senate for the first time.

Fifty years later, Biden’s family members are under investigation for using his political office to enrich themselves.

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❗️ Putin has addressed the Russian people following the Central Election Commission’s release of the official presidential election results, where Vladimir Putin was re-elected president of Russia

❗️ A strike with high-precision weapons, including Kinzhal missiles, was carried out at night against decision-making centers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Russian Defense Ministry has said. The objectives of the strike were achieved and the facilities were struck.

The EU and US continue to put pressure on China, but this cannot become an obstacle to the development of trade and economic relations with Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. 

Commenting on the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine, Peskov said that "sending any foreign military contingents to Ukraine is fraught with very negative, even irreparable, consequences.”

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❗️Russian troops captured the Alebastrovaya railway station in the DPR, the Defense Ministry said.

🇷🇺🪖 Other statements from the Russian Defense Ministry’s briefing on the progress of the special military operation in Ukraine:

▪️ Russian troops struck places of concentration of foreign mercenary formations in the Sumy region;

▪️ Ukrainian forces lost three tanks during the day, and two Vampire MLRS vehicles were hit near Kupyansk;

▪️ Russian air defenses shot down 163 Ukrainian UAVs as well as 20 HIMARS and Vampire rockets overnight;

▪️ Russian forces hit a drone storage depot and a production and repair workshop for Ukrainian UAVs;

▪️ Ukrainian forces lost up to 120 military personnel, a tank, and a US-made radar station in the southern DPR;

▪️ Ukrainian forces lost up to 250 military personnel in the DPR;

▪️ Ukrainian forces lost more than 320 servicemen near Avdeyevka overnight.

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