Repair workers of Russia's Tsentr (lit. "Centre") group of forces have restored the first trophy German Marder IFV captured in Avdeyevka.

According to them, such vehicle was not designed for fighting in Donbas due to its poor passability.

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📹✈️ Su-34 crews strike Ukrainian command post and personnel in the south of the DPR.

The attack was carried out by unguided FAB-500 air-to-air bombs with a universal planning and correction module. After receiving intelligence confirmation of target destruction, the crews returned safely to the launch site.

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The wife of Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, who is accused of committing a terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall, was hospitalized when she learned about the terrorist attack, a neighbor of his parents told Sputnik.

"When she heard the news about the terrorist attack, she immediately lost consciousness and is still in the hospital in intensive care," the neighbor shared.

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Russian experts analyze captured Ukrainian drone

Specialists of the Russian Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions studied the captured Ukrainian drone Baba Yaga, as a result of which they managed to find out the coordinates of its assembly site, the supply chain of its components and the coordinates of its test flights, Dmitry Kuzyakin, Director General of the Central Research Bureau, told Sputnik.

"We managed to 'talk' to the drone, and we found out that Baba Yaga did not come to the front immediately. It 'traveled' for a long time in Eastern Europe and Ukraine. All the points it showed us were compared with other information, and as a result, invaluable data on logistics chains, warehouses, production facilities and landfills were obtained," Kuzyakin said.

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Ukraine morphed into a gangsters' paradise under the West's watch

In June 2002, the US Justice Department mentioned Ukraine's growing importance as a transit point for heroin trafficking from Afghanistan through the Balkan and Northern routes. The US-backed 2014 coup in Ukraine exacerbated the problem that was followed by the spike in crime with drug smuggling.

▪️In March 2014, the Russian authorities registered an uptick in drug smuggling from Ukraine. Ukraine's drug dealers' activity in Russia reached their peak in 2016-2018. In April 2023, the Russian Interior Ministry accused Ukraine's security services of taking part in setting up covert drug labs in Russia and recruiting drug dealers.

▪️ISIS* started using Afghan opiates for enrichment since at least 2014, as per the Russian Federal Service for Drug Control. ISIS saw conflicts in Syria and post-coup Ukraine as an opportunity to connect to underground criminal networks, as per RAND. ISIS fighters used Ukraine as a transit point and safe haven. Ukraine's role as transit points for Afghan drugs, including heroin and, later, methamphetamine, continued to steadily rise since 2014.

▪️The number of dismantled amphetamine laboratories in Ukraine leaped from 17 in 2019 to 79 in 2020 – the highest number of seized laboratories in the world at the time, as per the UNODC.

▪️After the beginning of Russia's special military operation, Ukraine drug mafia exploited the Black Sea Grain corridor for drug smuggling until its closure.

Odessa port remains a key hub in a criminal drug network. The domestic consumption of methamphetamine by the Ukrainian military has dramatically soared. The Kiev regime has yet to take any measures to crack down on drug crime in Ukraine.

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*ISIS (also known as ISIL/IS/ISIS-K/Islamic State) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.

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🇹🇷 Turkiye's Presidential Administration rejected calls for early Presidential elections, Erdogan's term will last until 2028, his aide stated.

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▪️Ukraine morphed into a gangsters' paradise under the West's watch

▪️Turkiye's opposition party wins in local elections for the first time in 20 years

▪️Russian military restored the first trophy German Marder IFV and captured the third US Bradley

▪️Russian experts study captured Ukrainian ‘Baba Yaga’ drone

▪️A journalist working with Ruptly in Gaza was injured in an Israeli airstrike

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Israel's proposal to disband Palestinian aid agency sparks alarm as death toll rises

Tel Aviv has demanded that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) be disbanded and its responsibilities and staff transferred to a new body in exchange for allowing more aid into the Gaza Strip, according to The Guardian.

The newspaper cited unnamed sources as saying that the proposal was discussed by Israeli Chief of Staff General Herzi Halevi and UN officials in the Jewish state, and then passed on to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

UNRWA was excluded from the talks due to Israel's reluctance to collaborate with the agency. This reluctance stemmed from Tel Aviv's unconfirmed allegations that 12 out of the agency's 13,000 Gaza personnel were involved in the October 7 Hamas assault on the Jewish state.

Tamara Alrifai, the agency's director of external relations, warned that Israel's plan would undermine effective aid distribution in Gaza, while a number of UN insiders, as well as other aid agencies and human rights organizations, insisted that the proposal was actually aimed at eliminating UNRWA.

Earlier, Russia's UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia, for his part, called for a review of the decision to dismiss UNRWA staff and also stressed the need to restore the agency's funding.

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❗️Dozens of bodies were found on the grounds of Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital after Israeli forces withdrew from the area, AFP reported, citing the Hamas-run health ministry.

Earlier, the Israeli army withdrew its tanks and vehicles from the hospital compound.

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Ukraine and its Western backers overlook Kiev's drug & extremism problem

Over the past decade, Ukraine has become a crucial part of the Balkan route for the delivery of Afghan drugs to Europe, according to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The spike in drug trafficking followed the 2014 coup in Ukraine and ISIS* switch to using Afghan drugs as a source of income.

"From the first months of its existence, the Afghan branch of ISIS [established in 2015] began to fight for jihad resources. The large Afghan 'jihad industry', then, and even now, relies heavily on the drug business,” Andrey Serenko, director of the Analytical Center of Afghanistan policy, told Sputnik.

Neither Western nor Ukrainian authorities seem interested in addressing the worsening drug smuggling problem in Ukraine, according to Alexander Mikhailov, a retired Russian lieutenant general of drug police. "There is no war on drugs [in Ukraine] at all," Mikhailov told Sputnik.

"Moreover, today it should be noted that a large number of those Ukrainian citizens who have concentrated in Europe, were previously involved in drug trafficking."

"Ukraine has [long] been used as a hub for absolutely all drugs, because of its access to the [Black] sea through Turkiye, [the port city of Odessa] and beyond, as the Balkan route was very actively used," retired Colonel of Justice Sergey Pelikh told Sputnik. "The Odessa port is one of the hubs not only for industrial goods, agricultural or trans-shipment, but also (…) the basis for the trans-shipment of drugs."

Under the West's watch Ukraine morphed into a transit point for all sorts of illicit drugs with domestic production and consumption of synthetic drugs also booming.

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❗️In the note passed by Russia to Ukraine regarding the fight against terrorism, there are no demands regarding the terrorist act at the Crocus City Hall, Maria Zakharova said.

"Regarding the Crocus City Hall, the work of law enforcement agencies should be completed; a separate note regarding this terrorist act will be sent to Ukraine," Zakharova stated.

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Ukraine follows in the footsteps of the United States

Ukrainian authorities will consider the possibility of blocking TikTok if the same ban is introduced in the United States, said the head of the Ukrainian Committee for Freedom of Speech.

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The Telegram channel that collected money through a crypto wallet, presumably to transfer money to the perpetrators of the terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall, has been deleted, Sputnik's correspondent reports.

When trying to log in to this channel, a message appears saying "user not found".

The channel was hosted by a man with the nickname Mavlavi_56, who was also the administrator of the channel "The Voice of Khorasan".

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💥 Unstoppable Tandem

T-80 tank crews and attack drone operators persistently advance strike groups in the DPR.

The drones remain airborne 24/7, relaying target coordinates to tank crews instantly. Through seamless coordination, this dynamic duo effectively paves the path for assault landing groups.

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