💬 The use of cluster munitions in civilian areas is incompatible with international law, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights told Sputnik after the attack on Sevastopol.

Earlier, Ukraine struck the Russian city of Sevastopol using US-supplied ATACMS armed with cluster munitions.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

‘Worst five years in the history of the EU’: Orban says von der Leyen must go

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called for Ursula von der Leyen to be replaced as president of the European Commission (EC), describing the past five years as the worst in the EU's history.

When asked why he was preventing von der Leyen from being appointed to a second term, Orban replied: "Due to her lack of efficiency. The green transformation has been a complete failure of management, and the migration package does not solve the problem."

"Europe needs more effective leadership. There are plenty of talented politicians who can provide it," the prime minister said in an interview with German media group Funke.

"The last five years have probably been the worst five years in the history of the EU. The achievements of the European Commission and the Brussels elite are weak," Orban maintained.

The Hungarian Prime Minister also noted that the results of the European Parliament elections demonstrated a clear desire for change in Brussels.

On March 7, von der Leyen was nominated as a candidate to head the European Commission at the European People's Party congress in Bucharest.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️ The death toll from the terrorist attacks in Russia's Dagestan has risen to 20, the head of the region's Health Ministry said

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💬 The EU decision to send the proceeds from frozen Russian assets to Ukraine bypassing Hungary's opinion is a shameless violation of red lines, the country's foreign minister Peter Szijjarto has said.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said earlier that EU legislation allegedly allows the bloc to make such a decision even if some members of the association do not agree with it.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹 A Palestinian has recorded a video message asking for an end to the airborne dumping of humanitarian aid on the Gaza Strip.

"You are killing us," he said.

The day before, an air-dropped crate of aid fell on a tent where refugees were sheltering.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

The Pentagon is looking for new partners in Africa to deploy troops that were based in Niger and Chad but have been withdrawn from there.

Charles Brown, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is now in Botswana, saying Monday that a number of countries on the continent are open to working with the US.

According to a Pentagon source quoted by the Associated Press, the U.S. will have to adapt to the stance adopted by African countries "and not impose external Western ideals."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚖️ Too little, too late? Cases when US justice system failed

Kerry Max Cook, a man wrongfully accused of murder who spent 20 years on death row, has been officially exonerated by a Texas court. It reversed the verdict stating misconduct by police and prosecutors.
Cook’s case is a drop in the ocean when it comes to stories of US justice gone wrong.

As of February 2024, the National Registry of Exonerations recorded 3,478 exonerations in the US from 1989 through the end of 2023.

People were exonerated thanks to DNA testing, scrutiny of actions by police, prosecutors, and public defenders.

Wrongful convictions and/or death penalty resulted from:

◻️ Police misconduct such as false accusations, fabricating or concealing evidence, forensic fraud, witness tampering, mistaken identifications, false confessions, perjury.

◻️ Defendants' representation by poorly trained and underfunded court-appointed counsel.

◻️ Lack of meaningful judicial process and review.

◻️ General arbitrariness, racial disparities, high costs, etc.

Here are just some cases when the US justice system failed.

◾️ Convicted of murder, Glynn Simmons survived the longest known wrongful sentence in the US - 48 years behind bars. After it was found that prosecutors had failed to turn over crucial evidence to his defense lawyers, he was exonerated in Oklahoma in 2023.

◾️ Carey Dean Moore is believed to have served the longest time - 38 years on death row – before his execution in 2018.

Some received capital punishment despite being ‘possibly innocent.’

➖ Larry Swearingen was sentenced to death in 2000 over a murder charge and was executed in Texas in 2019 despite ‘flawed’ forensic evidence.

➖ Nathaniel Woods, convicted in Alabama in 2005 for the killings of police officers, was executed in 2020. It was claimed his case was steeped in official misconduct, coerced informant testimony, and racial discrimination.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️The involvement of the US in the terrorist attack in Sevastopol is beyond doubt, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated.

The Minister emphasized that the weapons supplied to Kiev from the US cannot be used without direct involvement of American military personnel and their satellite capabilities.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🎥🎥 Russian FM Sergey Lavrov Holds Presser With His Belarusian Counterpart

📹 Watch the livestream here or follow the link to the Sputnik's website for more details

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️"All that the West has been doing since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis is in line with an ultimatum directed towards Russia on all fronts," stated Lavrov, adding that Putin's peaceful proposals regarding Ukraine result from a sober and constructive analysis of the current realities.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

US escalated Ukraine conflict to new level by facilitating terror strike on Sevastopol

💬 "The US is very complicit in this," Earl Rasmussen, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel and international consultant, told Sputnik, commenting on Ukraine's recent terror attack on Sevastopol, noting that it was "Highly likely the Global Hawk [US surveillance drone] was providing reconnaissance, targeting information and potentially guidance information for the ATACMS itself."

Washington's involvement in the Ukrainian missile strike on Sevastopol is undeniable, given that it was conducted with the US-made ATACMS missiles programmed by American specialists, while a US RQ-4 Global Hawk reconnaissance drone was operating near Crimea that day, Russia's Foreign Ministry stated on June 24.

The military expert emphasized that Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia cannot affect the balance of power in the zone of special military operation.

He believes that the strike on Sevastopol was aimed at "the civilian population to garner some type of concern there, to provoke some type of uprising or dissatisfaction with the government."

The expert expects Washington will play down the recent slaughter of civilians in Sevastopol as ‘collateral damage’.

"It definitely looks like the US has kind of escalated this one more level," he said. "And the role that it's playing in not just authorizing the use for long range, but actually playing a role in facilitating the execution of these long range targeting efforts into Russia,” Rasmussen said, warning that the attack “drags the US very, very much right into the war."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Key points from Russian FM Lavrov's statements in Belarus after talks with his Belarusian counterpart Makei:

◻️ The overwhelming majority of Western actions since the start of the conflict in Ukraine are framed within an ultimatum directed at Russia across all fronts.

◻️ Moscow is not engaged in any "underground" negotiations regarding the situation in Ukraine; there have been no appeals to Russia regarding the second conference on settlement.

◻️ Putin's peaceful proposals are the result of a sober and constructive analysis of the current realities.

◻️ Moscow and Minsk will strengthen cooperation in the military-technical sphere.

◻️ The initiative for a Eurasian security system concerns all countries on the continent.

◻️ Russia is doing everything to prevent the involvement of an increasing number of countries in the Middle East conflict.

◻️ Moscow will assist Minsk in opening a Belarusian embassy branch in Russia's Voronezh and Belarusian consulates general in several Russian cities.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Zelensky announced that he is dismissing the commander of the Joint Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Yuriy Sodol.

"I decided to replace the commander of the United Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Lieutenant General Yuriy Sodol, with Brigadier General Andrii Gnatov," he said on his telegram channel.

Yuriy Sodol, who was awarded the noscript of "Hero of Ukraine" in 2022 and previously commanded the Ukrainian Marine Corps, was appointed as the commander of the Joint Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in February during the Ukrainian command change following the resignation of Valeriy Zaluzhny. He is responsible for the front line in the eastern theater of operations.

The command of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is a strategic-level military management body responsible for coordinating joint operations within Ukraine, as well as peacekeeping operations abroad. It operates under the command of the Chief Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Turkiye is eagerly awaiting a visit from Putin, Erdogan's proposal is openly on the table and will be discussed, Turkiye's Foreign Minister announced.

At the same time, Kremlin spokesman Peskov confirmed to Sputnik that the possibility of a meeting between Putin and Erdogan in Astana is being worked out.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

NATO’s enlargement provoked Russia: why grilling Farage for stating the obvious?

British mainstream media and politicians criticized Nigel Farage for claiming NATO provoked Russia by expanding towards its borders from 1994 to 2022. Farage, however, is not alone in this view.

◻️ Farage’s critics compare his view to ousted Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who in 2014 saw Russia’s reunification with Crimea as a move “protecting against NATO’s attempt to encircle Russia... one of the big threats of our time.” Corbyn was also labeled as pro-Russian.

◻️ Current CIA director William Burns, when he was the US ambassador in Moscow in 2008, wrote to then-national security advisor Condoleeza Rice that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Their correspondence was recently declassified and partially published by various think tanks and The Conversation.

◻️ Hungarian PM Viktor Orban told Tucker Carlson that NATO expansion should stop, preferably on Ukraine’s western border, “because we can’t afford it – to keep the long Ukraine-Russia border under NATO’s control.” Orban explained that “would mean an immediate danger for all of us – even for Washington.”

◻️ NATO’s outgoing Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg admitted that Russia’s protests against NATO expansion were willfully ignored.

“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement,” Stoltenberg said. “That was what he sent us. And it was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that. He [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇸 Serbian President Vucic addressed accusations of military transactions with Ukraine

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic dismissed claims made by the Financial Times that Serbia is allegedly selling weapons to Ukraine, stating that the weapons were sold to other countries with which Serbia has contracts.

"I want to point out the tricks used by foreign services and certain politicians. Every day I am accused of being Putin's spy, puppet... And then they say: Vucic didn't sell weapons to Ukraine, but to Spain for example, and yet that weapon ended up in Ukraine."

"We ensure the most normal business for our defense industry," Vucic said.

He noted that contracts for the sale of weapons and equipment exist only with Azerbaijan, Cyprus, and the UAE.

"We do not export weapons and equipment to protect ourselves from the fact that our brothers are not killed with Serbian weapons."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Trump claims he was tortured in jail

“I want you to remember what they did to me,” Trump said in the fundraising pitch. “They tortured me in the Fulton County Jail and took my mugshot.”

The politician spent just half an hour in a Georgia penitentiary last August; he was photographed and released on bail.

After a jury's guilty verdict in another case, Trump declared himself a political prisoner.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

CIA veteran: US and British intel agencies likely behind Dagestan and Sevastopol attacks

💬 "The likelihood that there was a CIA and/or MI6 involvement is very high," Larry Johnson, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, told Sputnik. "I don't think it's just a coincidence that you had the attack in Sevastopol coincide with this series of attacks in Dagestan. At a minimum, it would have been a CIA incitement. But you can't rule out that there was actual contact training."

On June 23 unknown gunmen opened fire on two churches, a synagogue and a traffic police post in the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala in Russia's Dagestan Republic. The attacks claimed the lives of 20 people, including 15 policemen, civilians and an Orthodox priest.

It coincided with the Ukrainian military strike using US-made ATACMS missiles with cluster warheads on Sevastopol earlier in the day, which killed four and injured 153 civilians.

"The West, in concert with Ukraine… [has] decided to shift its focus to trying to promote terrorist attacks in Russia and to do a variety of acts, everything from the missile strikes to these kinds of attacks on religious institutions and security forces, with the goal being to create domestic unrest," Johnson said.

According to the CIA veteran, the West's efforts to divide Russia and undermine its leadership will have an opposite effect — it will make the country more united and more willing to go after those who attacked it.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt