Ukrainian reality: women protect their men from cannon fodder hunters recruiters.

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❗️ Vladimir Putin meets with commanders of military districts, new and outgoing defense ministers Andrey Belousov and Sergei Shoigu.

The president thanked the commanders of the military districts for their leadership in combat, saying: “the work is going according to plan.”

Russian troops are in the special operation zone in all areas and are improving their position every day, the president emphasized.

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📹 Rare footage of the Russian Terminator tank support vehicle's combat performance was made available to Sputnik

The Terminator is performing well in combat operations, a soldier of the Russian Armed Forces' Yug Battlegroup — a gunner-operator with the call sign “Stolin” — told Sputnik.

"We're safe, the vehicle is safe. It’s quite survivable," he noted.

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Whose toes has Slovakia’s wildcard PM Fico stepped on?

Robert Fico has been injured in a shooting. The veteran politician returned to the Slovak prime minister’s seat last October, marking his fourth non-consecutive term as the Central European country’s leader.

The veteran populist politician – leader of the Direction –Social Democracy party, has racked up a long list of powerful enemies over his time in politics. Here’s a partial list:

▪️ Fico earned NATO’s ire after vowing to block the delivery of weapons to Ukraine during his latest run for office. Fico has also expressed dissatisfaction with Bratislava’s defense pact with Washington, promising to review it.

▪️ Fico has expressed fervent opposition to Ukraine’s membership in NATO, and said he believes Russia began its military operation as a result of neo-Nazis running rampant in Ukraine.

▪️ Fico has warned that Western military assistance to Ukraine will only prolong the crisis and increase the number of victims, and has accused foreign forces of meddling in the conflict, which “could have been extinguished at the very beginning.”

▪️ Fico believes anti-Russian sanctions have “negatively affected” the lives of ordinary Slovaks.

▪️ Fico has been bashed by European legacy media as a left-wing populist analogue of Hungarian right-wing populist Viktor Orban, with outlets pulling out all the stops to accuse him of “democratic backsliding” and “flouting European norms,” including over his push to reform the criminal code.

▪️ The Slovak PM has also made enemies with powerful European political and business interests, promising to launch an independent inquiry into the EU’s authoritarian pandemic-era policies.

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