❗️Russian air defense systems successfully intercepted and brought down a Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter.

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

◻️ Ukraine suffered heavy casualties, with over 400 militants lost and two Ukrainian field ammunition depots destroyed in the area under the responsibility of the Russian Battlegroup Yug,

◻️ The Russian Battlegroup Vostok's actions led to the loss of up to 135 Ukrainian militants.

◻️ The tactical position of the Russian Battlegroup Tsentr was strengthened, successfully repelling five Ukrainian counterattacks and resulting in the elimination of 340 enemy militants.

◻️ The Russian Battlegroup Zapad secured more strategic positions, effectively repelling three Ukrainian counterattacks.

◻️ The Russian Black Sea Fleet successfully neutralized five Ukrainian unmanned boats.

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❗️"Israeli military forces have freed four hostages in the Gaza Strip, including a Russian citizen. They are in good health and have been transported to the hospital," stated the IDF.

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21,300 attendees from 139 countries participated in the 2024 St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), as reported by the organizing committee. It added that the forum aided in the signing of over 980 agreements, exceeding a total value of $72 billion.

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✈️ Mirage 2000 jets for Ukraine: Long-term threat or chimera that will vanish once deployed?

President Macron has promised to transfer an unknown number of Mirage 2000-5 warplanes to Ukraine and train Ukrainian pilots to use them before the year is out.

◻️ Introduced with the French Air Force in the 1980s, the Dassault-built Mirage 2000 was France’s answer to the fourth generation of jet fighter aircraft design.

◻️ Just over 600 Mirage 2000s of a dozen-and-a-half variants have been built, with France procuring about half, and dozens sold to the UAE, Taiwan, India, Greece, Egypt, Brazil, Qatar and Peru.

◻️ The jets have a 1,550 km range and a top speed up to Mach 2.2 at high altitudes.

◻️ Armament includes 30 mm DEFA 554 cannons, and nine hard points for 6,300 kg of munitions. Compatible missiles include Exocet anti-ship missiles, SCALP EG cruise missiles, and the Popeye series of Israeli missiles. Air-to-air weapons include MICA-IR rockets with a range of about 80 km.

◻️ The Mirage 2000-5 is a modification of the base jet with more advanced RDY-type radar with a detection range of 70-80 km, and the ATLIS II targeting pod.

◻️ The jets require airfields with landing strips of at least 700 meters, and compared to their Russian counterparts, are more picky when it comes to rough landing conditions. This will limit deployability, and make airfields hosting them in regions like Kirovograd, Vinnitsa and Khmelnitsky a regular target for Russian strikes.

◻️ Russian early warning and jamming equipment has long been designed specifically to target airborne threats from NATO aircraft. The Mirage 2000 is no exception.

◻️ The same goes for air defenses, with an array of long-range Russian systems including the S-200, S-300, S-400 and S-500 series of missile systems, which have a range of between 200 and 600 km, meant to make short work of NATO jets beyond the range of almost any air-launched weapon in the bloc’s arsenal.

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The US has begun withdrawing its military contingent from Niger, according to media reports.

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📹Check out highlights from the St Petersburg International Economic Forum 2024, covered by Sputnik: key moments and topics discussed by participants at the prominent economic forum.

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Gantz cancels planned announcement of resignation following news of hostages' rescue

A member of the war cabinet was poised to exit the government after the Prime Minister failed to present a 'day after' plan for Gaza by the deadline he had set; it remains uncertain whether the press conference will be rescheduled.

War cabinet member Benny Gantz scrapped a scheduled news conference on Saturday evening, where he was expected to declare the departure of his National Unity party from the government.

The decision was made in response to the unexpected announcement by the military on Saturday afternoon that special forces had successfully rescued four hostages abducted by insurgents. The hostages, taken from a cultural event months ago, were found in good health and are currently undergoing further evaluation and reunification with their families.

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🇮🇱 Israeli authorities have released footage of the special forces' evacuation of the liberated hostages, one of whom was a Russian citizen. Netanyahu visited them to express his solidarity.

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Turkiye’s first foray into tank-building: fast facts about Ankara’s new Altay MBT

Turkiye’s Defense Industry Agency recently announced the start of mass production of the new Altay main battle tank.

◻️ Designed between 2008 and 2016 by Turkish defense and automotive giant BMC Otomotiv with help from other Turkish companies, and with major assistance from South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem, Hyundai WIA, Samyang Comtech and Poongsan Corporation, the Altay is Turkiye’s K2 Black Panther-derived vision of a fourth-generation MBT.

◻️ The Altay is a behemoth of a tank, weighing in at 65 tons, comparable to the US M1 Abrams. The MBT is 7.3 meters long, 3.9 m wide and stands 2.6 m tall.

◻️ It’s equipped with South Korean-designed composite armor and Aselsan AKKOR active protection.

◻️ The MKE 120 mm laser-guided smoothbore gun is the tank’s main armament. The gun does not have an autoloader. Secondary weapons include a 7.62 mm coaxial machinegun and a machinegun-armed remote controlled weapons station with automatic target tracking.

◻️ The Altay is powered by a Hyundai 12-cylinder water-cooled 1,500 horsepower diesel engine. A homegrown engine by BMC is in the works. Turkiye flirted with the purchase of Ukrainian tank engines produced by the Kharkov Malyshev Plant, but scrapped the idea in late 2021.

◻️ The Turkish tank has a stated on road/off road performance of 70 and 45 km/h, respectively, and an operational range of 450 km before refueling.

◻️ Turkiye expects to build the first batch of 250 Altays in 2025. The tanks have an estimated unit cost of $13.75 million. The total long-term cost of the program is expected to reach up to $40 billion.

◻️ Before building the Altay, Turkiye spent decades relying on American M48 and M60 tanks, and West German Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 MBTs. The latter proved highly vulnerable to portable anti-tank missiles used by militants in southern Turkiye. Turkish Defense Industry Agency chief Haluk Gorgun says the Altay’s design has taken into account conditions of modern combat environments.

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Navy veteran warns against being ‘inspired’ by manipulative US military rhetoric

Joe Biden slipped into his ever-ready mode of manipulating historical facts in his D-Day anniversary remarks on Friday. Russia was presented as ‘the enemy’, while America - on the right side of history by fueling the Ukraine proxy conflict. Biden brandished a cynical comparison: if we do not help Ukraine, we will betray the memory of our grandfathers who fought the Nazis.

Biden, who is sending weapons to Ukraine to “defend democracy,” may have taken a page from the pretentious language used by then-senator Barack Obama. Obama campaigned on a vow to “end the wars”, only to later send thousands more US soldiers to Afghanistan.

As Obama campaigned to become the president who would “end the wars,” one of those who thought it would be “a good time to join the military,” was Mike James, now a US Navy veteran and former Mass Communication Specialist Petty Officer.

“And I was inspired by all of Obama's rhetoric,” the veteran, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, told Sputnik. He added that he lived to regret that decision for the rest of his life.

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One of the victims of the Israeli army in Nuseirat - a Palestinian child with the last piece of food in his mouth.

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IMF calls on US to get its gargantuan debt under control

IMF deputy managing director Gita Gopinath has given Washington an unusually blunt warning about its debt and spending levels, demanding that the United States and other developed economies take steps to get their largesse lifestyles under control.

💬 “For the US, we see ample ground for them to reduce the size of their fiscal deficits, also given the strength of the US economy,” Gopinath said in an interview with the Financial Times that was published Saturday.

💬 “The temptation to finance all spending through borrowing really is something that countries should avoid,” the official urged, emphasizing that Western economies have “no way of getting around” “fundamental reforms,” including to their social sectors and in the realm of taxation.

Gopinath’s comments follow on the heels of an IMF forecast in April warning that America’s ballooning debt and deficit were “out of line with what is needed for long-term fiscal stability,” and that the projected US federal deficit of 7.1 percent for 2025 was more than three times the 2 percent average showing by other advanced economies. US public debt is expected to more than double by 2053.

💬 “It cannot go like this forever, because the…burden on the US is going to cripple spending that is necessary to make for servicing the debt. To pay 17-plus percent in debt service is just mind-boggling,” IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva, who the Biden administration tried to oust in 2021, said in an interview last month.

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The Minister of Defense of Austria considered it "crossing a red line" for Ukraine to be allowed by a number of Western countries to attack targets on Russian territory.

"The USA, France, and Germany have allowed Ukraine to attack certain areas in Russia with Western weapons. What do you think about this?" Klaudia Tanner, the Minister of Defense of Austria was asked in an interview.

"This has crossed a red line. Therefore, I am very pleased with the clarification from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that NATO will not send troops to Ukraine," Tanner said.

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◻️ Western media chews over ‘confident’ Putin’s speech at SPIEF

◻️ Mirage 2000 jets for Ukraine: Long-term threat or chimera that will vanish once deployed?

◻️ Gantz cancels planned announcement of resignation following news of hostages' rescue

◻️ ‘Complacent actor’ in US’ ‘imperial genocidal projects’ — US Navy Vet

◻️ IMF calls on US to get its gargantuan debt under control

◻️ Navy veteran warns against being ‘inspired’ by manipulative US military rhetoric

◻️ Turkiye’s first foray into tank-building: fast facts about Ankara’s new Altay MBT

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Here’s why Israel can’t win all-out war against Hezbollah

“Israel has threatened to start a military operation on the border with Lebanon because Hezbollah has been demonstrating growing sophistication and surprising capacities, driving Israel increasingly at unease and confusion about expectations on the northern front,” Lebanese international affairs observer Dr. Imad Salamey told Sputnik, commenting on Tel Aviv’s recent threats to expand the war in Gaza to the “northern front.”

Israel can attack many Hezbollah targets at once and cause significant damage, but can’t remove or dramatically reduce the militia’s capabilities, “which are widespread and mobile,” the observer said.

“If Israel aims to seriously undermine Hezbollah, it would involve many years of operations to destroy infrastructure and weapons, push fighters out of the south, and cut off supply routes from Syria. Israel will not be able to achieve this fully,” Salamey stressed.

On top of that, “the threat of spillover is quite high, potentially implicating much of the Quds Brigade in Syria and Iraq, resulting in Israel fighting on multiple and wide fronts,” the observer warned.

That’s not the outcome Tel Aviv would hope for, according to Salamey, with Israeli leaders typically looking “for a quick military achievement with ambitious goals,” which, if that fails, prompts the IDF to resort to “collective punishment targeting civilians, which is the most likely scenario in this case.”

“The potential conflict will result in major losses on both sides without a decisive victory,” Salamey said.

Hezbollah and Israel fought their last major war in July-August 2006, during which the IDF leveled much of Beirut’s infrastructure and caused up to $5 billion in damage.

Hezbollah emerged largely unscathed, however, with about 1,000 of its fighters facing off against between 10,000-30,000 Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, losing about 250 men while killing 121 Israeli servicemen and women and injuring over 1,200 others.

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Ukraine is directly controlled and fully maintained by the US and NATO countries today, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said on social media.

He also urged German Chancellor Olaf Scholz not to give advice to Russia on the situation in Ukraine.

"Rotten liverwurst Scholz suddenly started talking and said outright nonsense.... He should... just kneel down and repent to the Ukrainians... for condemning them to extermination, while sacrificing the well-being of the Germans entrusted to his care," stated Medvedev.

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