▪️Day of national mourning in Russia for the victims of the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall began

▪️Textbook US stupidity: No one will believe that ISIS was behind Moscow terror attack - ex-Pentagon analyst

▪️Watch a 15-year-old boy helping people to get out of the building during the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall

▪️Zelensky disclosed himself with his accusations against Russia over the terrorist attack, Russian Foreign Ministry

▪️Take a look how the world's tallest tower and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company headquarters in UAE are painted in colors of the Russian flag

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❗️Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian airfield of Martynovka in the Nikolayev region and hit two Ukrainian Su-24s that attacked Sevastopol that night, Sergei Lebedev, coordinator of the Nikolayev underground, told Sputnik.

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"Killers go home": Greeks stop train hauling American tanks

Members of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and its youth organization KNE stopped a train transporting American tanks from the port of Alexandroupolis to Bulgaria and forced it to turn back, the Communist Party's website reported.

The protesters' slogans "Alexandroupolis is a port of nations, not an imperialist base" and "Killers, go home" forced the train to retreat.

"The train's retreat was met with chants of "When the people do not bow, even the trains turn back." The banners read: "No military mission outside the borders. Stop the country's participation in the wars of the US, NATO and the EU. Hope is in the struggle of the people," the article stated.

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‘We know what grief and pain feel like’: Donetsk residents offer solidarity with Moscow after Crocus City Hall terrorist attack

“In our city, we know what this grief and pain is, but Moscow is a peaceful city. People are not prepared for this at all,” a family with children told Sputnik correspondent Russell Bentley(@TXDPR).

“We [in Donetsk] are used to this kind of news, but it is still terrible. When we think about a normal life, a quiet, peaceful life that we have unfortunately already forgotten, we want it to be better for everyone,” they said.

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On March 24 1999, 25 years ago, NATO began bombing Yugoslavia and its capital Belgrade under the pretext of "protecting" Kosovars.

Ahead of the bombing in February 1999, Paris hosted talks between Yugoslavian government and Kosovo Albanians, mediated by the US, Russia and the European Union. The talks failed because of unacceptable conditions for Belgrade like deployment of a NATO corps in Kosovo. Pressured by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Kosovo delegation signed the draft agreement.

On March 23, 1999, US envoy Richard Holbrooke came to Belgrade in order to talk to Yugoslavia's leader Slobodan Milosevic into accepting the February conditions. In the evening, a state of military threat was declared. The next day NATO secretary general green-lit the start of bombing.

The so-called “humanitarian intervention” resulted in large-scale catastrophe with thousands of people killed and the eventual collapse of Yugoslavia as a sovereign state.

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Flags are lowered to half-staff at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Secretariat in Beijing as a sign of mourning for the victims of the terrorist attack on Moscow's Crocus City Hall.

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French President Emmanuel Macron seeks to “please” the US leadership, as well as to provoke NATO allies, by announcing the possible sending of troops to Ukraine. His actions are not related to plans to create “strategic autonomy” for Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in Andrei Kondrashov’s documentary “Belgrade" dedicated to the 25th anniversary of NATO aggression against Yugoslavia.

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Ukraine was likely ‘at least an accomplice’ in the Moscow terrorist attack - analyst

The Ukrainian leadership in Kiev apparently had prior knowledge of the March 22 terrorist attack in Moscow, political and military analyst Sergei Poletaev tells Sputnik.

He pointed out that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officially announced that the terrorists “had contacts on the Ukrainian side,” and suggested that the attack could have been masterminded either by some sort of Islamist terrorist groups with ties to Ukraine or by Ukraine directly.

“In any case, it seems that those in Kiev knew about the terrorist attack, so that makes them accomplices at the very least,” Poletaev says.

Commenting on the attempts by both Washington and Kiev to hastily deny Ukraine’s trace in this terrorist attack, Poletaev suggests that the West is going to insist that ISIS* alone was responsible.

Thus, he postulates, there will be two narratives – the Russian and the Western – and it all comes down to whose side the “global majority” is going to take.

“It is in our best interests to collate a convincing body of evidence for our case. It would greatly help us with diplomacy,” Poletaev remarks. “We’re talking about the ‘third countries,’ of course, as the West will most likely dismiss any talk of Ukraine’s involvement.”

*ISIS (ISIL/Islamic State/IS) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries

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Serbs will not forgive NATO for bombing Yugoslavia because they killed Serbian children and feel no remorse, former head of the Serbian Security and Information Agency Alexander Vulin told Sputnik.

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There are 92 patients in Moscow's hospitals after the terrorist attack, seven of whom are in an extremely serious condition, 29 in a serious condition, including two children, while 27 have been discharged, the deputy mayor of Moscow has said.

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❗️Last night, the Russian Aerospace Forces hit facilities in the electric power and gas production industries, as well as assembly and testing sites for unmanned boats in Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense has reported.

All goals of the strike were achieved, the work of Ukrainian enterprises for the manufacture and repair of weapons was disorganized, and foreign-made equipment was destroyed.

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‘Beyond understanding’: Donetsk woman gives a powerful speech about Crocus City Hall terrorist attack

“Why are they killing civilians who have nothing to do with this conflict? Because somebody needs this conflict, somebody is fueling it. It is beyond comprehension, it is below any form of human dignity,” a Donetsk woman told Sputnik’s correspondent Russell Bentley (@TXDPR).

The woman explained that the attack was especially shocking for her because her husband and son are combat veterans who fought to liberate the Donbass, including in Mariupol.

“If we won’t do it, then who will? That's the ideology of the Russian people: Not to sit somewhere, but to defend our territory, our families. That’s what real men do.”

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❗️Ukrainian troops lost up to 300 troops in the Donetsk area over the last day.

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

▪️In the Kharkov region, the Russian Army destroyed up to 40 soldiers, as well as MLRS Vampire and Mars systems;

▪️In the South Donetsk area, Ukrainian losses amounted to 140 soldiers;

▪️Near Avdeyevka, Ukrainian losses amounted to 360 military personnel, two tanks, and five armored vehicles;

▪️In the Kupyansk area, Ukrainian losses amounted to 140 soldiers and a M777 artillery system;

▪️Russian air defenses shot down 172 Ukrainian drones, 14 cruise missiles and 33 other missiles.

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NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia: A ‘culmination of negligence' that opened Pandora’s box - expert

Twenty-five years ago, NATO kicked off its 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. According to various sources, up to 2,500 people were killed and over 6,000 more injured during the bombing, which was not approved by the UN.

In an interview with Sputnik, Dr. Stevan Gajic, a Balkans expert and research associate at the Belgrade-based Institute of European Studies, says that the beginning of NATO’s “illegal attack” against Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999, was “a precedent that opened Pandora's box.”

“It was a culmination of negligence of the international law that started since the end of the Cold War. Absolutely, [the] 1999 [NATO campaign] was a precedent. We can even say that the international law was in a way abolished at that moment and, of course, after that chaos was introduced into the system of international relations,” Gacic points out.

The expert also didn’t rule out launching a “real investigation against NATO crimes” in Yugoslavia, which he says can only happen after the serious geopolitical changes following the collapse of NATO in one way or the other. He was echoed by Dr. Srdjan Sljukic, a professor of sociology at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, who tells Sputnik that “NATO aggression against Yugoslavia” reflected “two sorts of crimes,” such as “breaking the international law” and “bombing civilian objects and killing many civilians.”

Sljukic also warns that “as long as the key Western countries are ruled by the current liberal elites, NATO countries will not be put on fair trial because of their crimes in Yugoslavia and all over the world.”

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The recruitment of assassins for the terrorist attack in Moscow's Crocus City Hall was organized through the Embassy of Ukraine in Tajikistan, according to a military expert, ex-special services officer, retired Colonel Bakhtiyer Rakhmonov.

A few weeks before the terrorist attack, information appeared on the website of the Ukrainian diplomatic mission about inviting foreigners to join the so-called "International Legion," he noted. The message was later removed.

"The ambassador of the Ukrainian embassy in Dushanbe is the ex-head of the foreign intelligence service, and the consulate itself was looking for perpetrators a few weeks before the terrorist attack, publishing an order to hire assassins openly on the page of the Embassy of Ukraine in Tajikistan," he said, adding that it provided all the contacts - a potential terrorist could only write or call.

Rakhmonov constantly monitors such messages on the website of the Ukrainian embassy. Since 2014, Ukrainian diplomats have posted similar announcements several times, only to have them removed.

"The work on recruiting foreigners was led by Ambassador Extraordinary of Ukraine Valery Evdokimov, former head of the foreign intelligence service under Zelensky," the expert said.

Evdokimov was the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine from September 2019 to June 2020.

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