Key statements by the Russian Defense Ministry on Ukraine's incursion into the Russian Kursk region:

▪️Ukraine's losses in the Kursk region during the day amounted to 300 militants, 31 armored vehicles, including three tanks; 

▪️The total losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the fighting in the Kursk border area amounted to 3,160 fighters, 44 tanks and 43 armored personnel carriers; 

▪️The Russian Sever Battlegroup is searching for, and destroying, Ukrainian mobile groups in the area of Alekseevsky and Kauchuk settlements in the Kursk region; 

▪️Russian troops destroyed the Iris-T air defense missile launcher and the TRML-4D radar station in the Sumy region.

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❗️The head of Rosatom, Alexey Likhachev, discussed the situation at the Kursk and Zaporozhye nuclear power plants with the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, by phone, Rosatom said.

Likhachev stressed that the situation around these nuclear power plants continues to deteriorate.

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More Ukrainian soldiers surrender: Check out the latest on fighting in the Kursk region

In the past 24 hours, Ukraine has lost more than 300 troops and a whole range of military equipment, the Russian Defense Ministry has stated.

In separate developments:

🔸 Russian troops successfully tackled Ukraine’s around-the-clock attempts to break through in the Kursk area, “burning the enemy’s military equipment and destroying their exhausting reserves,” commander of the Akhmat special forces Apti Alaudinov told reporters, adding that more Ukrainian soldiers started “to actively surrender.”

🔸 Twenty-four Ukrainian soldiers earlier surrendered in “an organized manner” to Russian forces near the village of Komarovka in the Kursk area,” a spokesperson for a Russian security agency told Sputnik.

🔸 Russian marines destroyed a Ukrainian motorized convoy consisting of armored vehicles used by NATO countries, an officer of the Marine Corps unit with the call sign Veter (Wind) said in an interview with Sputnik.

🔸 A British Challenger 2 main battle tank supplied to Ukraine has been destroyed in the Kursk region as a result of a Russian drone strike, Britain’s The Sun reported.

🔸 The Kiev regime’s plans to attack the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant with the support of Western patrons is “a direct and clear violation of the international convention adopted by the UN General Assembly on April 13, 2005, on combating acts of nuclear terrorism," the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

🔸 Volodymyr Zelensky decided on the Kursk attack so as to hush up the looming defeat of the Kiev regime in Donbass, Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky, who is in custody in a pretrial detention center on suspicion of treason, wrote on Telegram.

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❗️The Russian Foreign Ministry called on the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency to immediately condemn the provocative actions being prepared by the Kiev regime against Russian nuclear facilities and to prevent violations of nuclear safety.

Kiev's provocations at Russian nuclear facilities could result in a large-scale man-made disaster in Europe, the Russian Foreign Ministry added.

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Where will Kadyrov send the Tesla cybertruck he received from Musk?

Chechnya's head Ramzan Kadyrov said that Elon Musk sent him a Cybertruck to the capital of the Chechen Republic Grozny, which he will later send to the special military operation zone.

"We received a Tesla cybertruck from the respected Elon Musk. I was happy to test the new equipment and personally saw that it is not by chance that it is called the "Cyberbeast". Based on such excellent characteristics, the cybertruck will soon be sent to the special military operation zone, where it will be in demand in the appropriate conditions. I am sure that this "beast" will bring a lot of benefit to our soldiers.

I express my sincere gratitude to Elon Musk! He is, of course, the strongest genius of our time and a specialist. A great man!

Elon, thank you! Come to Grozny, I will receive you as my dearest guest!"

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Does Kamala Harris practice what she preaches?

In her first speech focused on economic policy, US Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris has vowed to ease inflation, fix the housing market and reduce taxes for middle-income families, among other things.

The big question is whether she would be able to deliver on her promises after entering the Oval Office after the November elections.

In this vein, it’s worth taking a look at Harris’ 2020 election campaign, during which she, in particular, touted a pay inequity proposal to scrap the gender pay gap by holding corporations accountable when men are paid more than women.

It seems, though, she failed to practice what she preached, at least in 2018, when men received a higher median salary than women both in Harris's Senate office and on her campaign, according to an analysis by the Washington Free Bacon news outlet.

In her Senate office, the median male and female salary disbursement stood at $34,999 and $32,999, respectively, between April 1, 2018 and September 31, 2018, “leaving women with just 94 cents of every dollar paid to men,” according to the analysis.

In February 2019 - the first full month of Harris' 2020 presidential campaign – the median female salary disbursement for the month, $5,763.97, was about 87% of the median male salary disbursement, $6,632.23, the survey showed.

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❗️IAEA head Rafael Grossi expressed his readiness to assess the situation and visit the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant due to the proximity of military actions, the atomic body told Sputnik.

In addition, the head of the agency expressed concern about the safety of NPPs, including Zaporozhye, where an IAEA mission is present.

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Hamas does not believe that the US sincerely wants to stop the Gaza War

As Israel continues to lay waste to the Gaza Strip after invading it more than ten months ago, bombing anything it labels a Hamas target to smithereens, the negotiations meant to achieve a ceasefire in this conflict are yet to bear fruit.

The United States’ efforts to help peacefully resolve the latest escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been called into question by Hamas.

“The American administration is attempting to create a false sense of positivity, without any genuine intent to stop the war, merely aiming to buy time,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told the Wall Street Journal.

The Hamas official made this remark as the White House boasted alleged progress in the ceasefire talks.

One senior US administration official even claimed on Friday that the talks reached an “endgame” and that the previous two days were “the most constructive 48 hours that we’ve had in this process in many months,” the newspaper noted.

Meanwhile, Hamas Political Bureau member Osama Hamdan told media that the movement no longer regards the United States as a reliable negotiator who can help achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas also snubbed the ceasefire negotiations that were slated to take place in Qatar this week, though a new round of talks is expected to take place in Egypt on August 21.

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Kamala Harris’ economic proposals aimed at stoking US class warfare - expert

The so-called “opportunity economy” Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris claims she will build if she becomes president does not really differ much from “Bidenomics,” says financial and geopolitical analyst Tom Luongo.

“Democrats are looking to rebrand the same agenda they had during both Obama’s two terms and Biden’s one term,” Luongo explains to Sputnik. “It’s all an extension of the original plan, which is to nationalize all the important sectors of the economy – housing, health care, energy, transportation – that the Federal Government didn’t already control, e.g. communication and defense.”

According to him, this strategy essentially amounts to breaking the “private economy,” which involves the displacement of millions of workers and the disruption of supply chains, only to “create new ‘opportunities’ for those most harmed by these policies, the lowest strata of wage earners young people, by giving them handouts.”

“This is classic ‘divide and rule’ politics engaged in by the oligarch class to set the lower class, in their terminology the ‘proletariat,’ against the middle class, the ‘bourgeoisie’,” Luongo notes. “Nothing new here. Typical ‘break your legs and hand you a crutch’ politics.”

Luongo argues that Harris and “her handlers” are perfectly aware of the fact that a law against price gouging will inevitably cause shortages, because “all price floors and price ceilings lead to shortages, never surpluses.”

“In fact, they are counting on creating shortages. It’s part of the strategy in the end to destroy the country they lead. This is not stupidity or incompetence. It is policy,” he says.

He also warns that Harris’ target audience is young voters who are “entering a broken workforce and economic landscape today and seeing nothing but a lack of real opportunities.”

“They are hoping for a new round of ‘Obama Youth’ to marshal into an effective fighting force for ‘Hope and Change',” Luongo claims. “What they are doing is purposefully increasing the possibility of full-blown civil war.”

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❗️Security situation at Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant worsens after drone attack on Saturday, IAEA says.

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▪️The Russian Defense Ministry is seriously considering reports from independent sources about Ukraine's plans to strike the Kursk nuclear power plant

▪️More Ukrainian soldiers surrender: Check out the latest on fighting in the Kursk region

▪️Kursk attack: NATO allies fear escalation could ‘sow division’ among Ukraine’s backers

▪️Kamala Harris’ economic proposals aimed at stoking US class warfare

▪️A unit of 24 Ukrainian soldiers surrender at once: video

▪️Where will Kadyrov send the Tesla cybertruck he received from Musk?

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Do Western powers on both sides of the Atlantic face pensions crises?

While some European powers keep clinging to the hope that Russia's economy might collapse, their own economies are not faring particularly well.

With spending on state pensions in the United Kingdom reaching 7% of the country’s GDP compared to 2% in the 1950s, London may be forced to raise the retirement age from the current 66 years to 70, The Telegraph warns.

Across the English Channel, France ended up raising its own retirement age from 62 to 64 as nearly 14% of French GDP is now being spent on pensions in the country where the number of pensioners has been steadily increasing over the past two decades.

Meanwhile, things are not looking good on the other side of the pond as well, with unfunded liabilities for pension plans (a.k.a. pension debt) in the United States reaching $1.34 trillion as of June 2024.

Nevertheless, the respective leaderships in all three countries seem fine with spending considerable sums of money, which could have been allocated towards solving domestic problems, on helping keep the bloodshed going in the Ukrainian conflict zone.

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