❗️The Russian military has hit a temporary deployment point for foreign mercenaries in the Kharkov region — Russian MoD

🇷🇺🪖 More statements from the Russian MoD's daily briefing on the progress of the special military op in Ukraine:     

🔺Russian air defence systems downed a Ukrainian Su-27 near Kramatorsk.

🔺Ukraine has lost up to 105 militants to the south of Donetsk.

🔺Ukraine has lost up to 305 militants near Avdeyevka.

🔺Russian air defence systems have shot down 196 Ukrainian drones and intercepted 18 HIMARS shells.

🔺Ukrainian losses in the Donetsk region amounted to 340 militants and one tank.

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⚡️Three new defendants have been added to the case of the terror attack at Moscow's Crocus City Hall. A Russian citizen and two foreign nationals were detained in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, and Omsk, according to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).

Two new suspects in the case of the terrorist attack at Crocus were found to have transferred money to purchase weapons and vehicles that were later used by the terrorists. The third one was directly involved in recruiting accomplices and financing perpetrators, the FSB said. All three detainees are from the Central Asian region.

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The FSB has released a video of the arrests in connection with the terrorist attack at Moscow's Crocus City Hall.

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Macron said that France has "useful information" about the organization of the terrorist attack at Moscow's Crocus City Hall.

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Polish President Andrzej Duda sent an official letter to NATO leaders proposing that they raise the target for defense spending to three percent of GDP.

Duda argued the rise was necessary due to Russia’s growing military strength. The current benchmark is two percent, but many alliance members do not even spend that much on defense.

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A booby-trapped cache with foreign-made weapons, in particular RPGs of Israeli, British, American, and Swedish production, has been found and destroyed in the Donetsk People's Republic of Russia.

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The main goal of those behind the bloody and terrible terrorist attack in Moscow was to damage our unity, President Vladimir Putin said, adding that there could be no other goal, as Russia could not be a target for terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists.

"We have a country that shows a unique example of interfaith harmony and ethnic unity," Putin said.

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The Ukrainian involvement in the terrorist attack at Moscow's Crocus City Hall is clear, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov said, mentioning Ukraine's involvement in many other terrorist attacks on Russian territory.

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Genuine jihadist group or Israeli proxy? What's known about Jaish al-Adl terrorists with suspected Mossad ties

The IRGC has announced the liquidation of 15 Jaish al-Adl fighters responsible for Thursday’s deadly attack on two police stations in Rask and Chabahar, Sistan and Baluchestan province, in which five police officers were killed.

Mostly hiding out in neighboring Pakistan to avoid a crackdown by Iran’s security forces, Jaish al-Adl (lit. “Army of Justice”) is a Sunni Salafist separatist group with links to al-Qaeda* that has waged a campaign of low-intensity guerrilla warfare and terrorism against the Iranian state since its founding in 2012.

🔺The group has targeted IRGC troops, border guards, police, and civilians in armed attacks, kidnappings, and suicide bombings – including a major run and gun attack in mid-December in Rask in which 11 police officers were killed.

🔺Jaish al-Adl has been accused of cooperating with Western intelligence services and the Israeli Mossad as a means of destabilizing the Islamic Republic. The US and Israel have denied such charges.

The group has been accused of drug smuggling, with the Baluchestan region – administratively divided between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, serving as a crossroads of the international drug trade from Afghanistan to Europe, particularly prior to the Taliban** crackdown on opium poppy cultivation after the collapse of the US puppet government in 2021.

🔺Iran’s security forces have waged an uncompromising war against Jaish al-Adl, even launching missile strikes into Pakistan in January 2024 targeting the group’s home base of operations. The incident caused a temporary downturn in relations between Tehran and Islamabad, but ties were quickly restored, and the countries have even announced an ambitious new gas pipeline project, which the US has decried.

* A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.
** A group under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.

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NATO is waiting for tsunami that may send it to the bottom

After the collapse of the USSR, the North Atlantic alliance appeared to be a thing of the past. But the US stepped in to save and repurpose NATO, according to Gilbert Doctorow, an international relations and Russian affairs analyst.

"During the 1990s, NATO turned from a conceptually defensive organization into an openly aggressive organization when it entered the Yugoslav Wars and waged a massive bombing campaign there," Doctorow told Sputnik.

The invasion of Yugoslavia was followed by the military bloc's campaigns in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa.

"These out-of-region NATO operations were one disaster after another, ending in the withdrawal from Afghanistan after participation in a 20-year-long war directed by Washington," the analyst stressed.

According to Doctorow, the bloc's involvement in the Ukraine conflict marked the return to first NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay's concept: To keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. However, today the bloc appears to be a colossus with feet of clay.

"NATO is treading water, waiting for the tsunami that will send it to the bottom. That tsunami will either take the shape of a Trump victory in November, or it will take the shape of an imminent collapse of the Ukrainian army, or both phenomena simultaneously," Doctorow concluded.

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NATO countries have decided to establish a mission in Ukraine, as the Polish Foreign Minister stated, emphasizing that the establishment of the mission does not imply direct involvement in the conflict.

"But this means that we will now be able to use NATO's coordination, training, planning capabilities to support Ukraine in a more coordinated way."

He explained, in particular, that the majority of Ukrainian militants will be trained in Poland.

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