Ukrainian drones deliberately target Russian fire truck

The Ukrainian Armed Forces released a video showing a kamikaze drone operator deliberately targeting a Russian fire truck, reported the regional office of the Russian Emergency Ministry in the DPR.

On July 17, Ukrainian drones attacked an emergency services vehicle responding to a fire in the Yasynuvata district of the DPR twice. Fortunately, the firefighters were not injured.

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☢️ US declassifies nuke numbers

The United States had 3,748 nuclear warheads in stock as of September 2023, according a new ‘fact sheet’ put out by the Department of Energy.

The tally includes both active (maintained in operational, ready-to-use configuration) and inactive (stocked at a depot with their tritium trigger components removed) warheads.

◻️ The US began to stockpile nukes in 1945 – when it became the first country to create a nuclear bomb, and the first and only nation to ever use it against another country, dropping nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan at the end of WWII. US nuke numbers rose exponentially between 1950 and 1967 – when they hit their historic maximum of 31,255 warheads.

◻️ The numbers began a gradual decline over the next two decades as the US developed increasingly advanced delivery systems and talked arms control with Moscow. By the end of the Cold War in 1989, the US had 22,217 warheads.

◻️ Arms control treaties with the USSR and Russia saw numbers drop dramatically through the first half of the 1990s to 10,904 in 1995, and again in the second half of the 2000s, falling falling below 4,000 in 2017 and remaining in the 3,700+ ballpark ever since.

◻️ Now, the DoE says about 2,000 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement. 69 retired nukes were dismantled in 2023 – the smallest number recorded since 1994.

The US stopped publishing data on the size of the its arsenal in 2019, and stopped sharing this information with Russia in 2023, despite the requirement of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).

The US has the second-largest nuclear arsenal in the world after Russia (1,710 warheads deployed, 2,670 in storage). China has 500 (24 deployed, 476 in storage), France 290 (280 deployed, 10 stored), and Britain 225 (120 deployed, 105 stored).

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The Israeli Defense Forces officially claimed responsibility for the strikes on Hodeidah in their statement:

A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime in the area of the Al Hudaydah Port in Yemen in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the State of Israel in recent months. There are no changes in the Home Front Command defensive guidelines. In the case of a change to the guidelines, we will update the public accordingly. 

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Cameroon prepares for upcoming visit from Russia's Lavrov

Cameroon is expecting a visit from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with efforts underway to determine the date, Cameroon's Foreign Minister Lejeune Mbella Mbella told Sputnik.

"Currently, we are coordinating for my colleague Lavrov's visit to Cameroon. We are working on the agenda to set a date," Mbella Mbella said on the sidelines of the African Union meeting in Ghana.

Previously, in early June, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited the African continent for the sixth time in two years (including the BRICS summit), traveling to Guinea, the Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, and Chad. The discussions covered various economic projects as well as military-technical cooperation. Additionally, during the three-day visit, the Russian Foreign Minister secured political support from African states once again.

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