Ukrainian forces unleash murder, mayhem and atrocities on Kursk Region residents

Moral and human decency are alien to Russia’s enemies, Russian President Vladimir Putin said while commenting on Ukraine’s incursion into Russia's Kursk region where Ukrainian terrorists have been slaughtering innocent civilians.

Sputnik has looked into atrocities committed by these Ukrainian militants on Russian soil over the past two weeks:

🔺Artem Kuznetsov lost his pregnant wife Nina while fleeing from the village of Kurilovka on August 6. The two cars Artem, his wife, son and mother-in-law were traveling in came under fire from a Ukrainian soldier who simply stood at the roadside and fired his assault rifle point blank at the vehicles as they passed him by.

🔺One man was killed during an evacuation from the Gornalsky St. Nikolayevsky Belogorsky monastery on August 6. The monastery has also been repeatedly shelled by Ukrainian forces, with several buildings – including the dormitories and the church – sustaining damage.

🔺A paramedic and a driver were killed when a Ukrainian FPV drone hit an ambulance in Sudzha on August 6. The drone strike also injured a doctor who survived the attack and was rushed to a nearby hospital.

🔺Russian journalist and military correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny barely survived when his car was hit by a Ukrainian drone in the Kursk Region on August 7. Poddubny sustained serious injuries and had to be airlifted to Moscow for treatment.

🔺Akhmat special forces commander Apti Alaudinov said he had received photos of Kursk Region residents shot by the Ukrainian Army.

“I received a huge number of photos where I saw civilians who were simply shot at point-blank range, in the head, and in the back of the head,” Alaudinov said in a video message on his Telegram channel.

None of these attacks can be described as collateral damage, but direct attacks on non-combatants.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared that any surviving Ukrainian terrorists involved in the incursion into the Kursk Region will be pursued relentlessly, and the crimes they committed will not be subject to the statute of limitations.

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⚡️ The Kiev regime has launched an attack on a railway ferry carrying fuel tanks at the Russian port of Kavkaz, as reported by the Kuban operational headquarters.

Emergency and special services are currently responding at the site of the incident, and efforts are underway to assess the extent of the fire and gather information about any potential casualties.

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Rift takes root between Argentine President Javier Milei and his VP

The relationship between President Javier Milei and his Vice President, Victoria Villaruel, has become increasingly strained. Villaruel has been notably absent from the regular cabinet meetings led by Milei, and she has been accused of colluding with former right-wing President Mauricio Macri against him.

“The relationship between Milei and Villarruel is clearly injured. The president doesn’t seem to be comfortable with the public profile that the vice president has built, permanently dissociating herself from the government's agenda,” political analyst Julio Burdman told Sputnik.

Former presidential candidate Juan Grabois and the local media outlet, Página 12, claim that the vice president had meetings with former president Mauricio Macri, “[Victoria Villaruel] wants to turn around [Javier Milei], and it is clear, Victoria Villarruel is together with Mauricio Macri. They are preparing the coup. I'm telling it to Milei's voters. They are going to see it,” said the politician. 

However, Villarruel denied meetings with Macri in Bariloche, Argentina, where the former president spent his vacation.

The vice president reportedly began to distance herself from Milei, when he appointed Patricia Bullrich as security minister and Luis Petri as defense chief, with whom Villaruel had a public disagreement. 

Karina Milei, Secretary General of the Presidency and Javiel Milei's sister, highlighted the strained relationship between her brother and the Vice President. Villarruel noted that Karina Milei did not extend an invitation to her for the official dinner attended by the Armed Forces.

“Villaruel has her own political project, without a doubt she is a very astute figure, she is simply waiting for the right moment to position herself as a leader,” political scientist Pablo Cano noted.

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❗️Five individuals were on a ferry carrying tanks at the port of Kavkaz during the Ukrainian attack, according to preliminary reports from emergency service.

Their current status is still being assessed, Sputnik reported.

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The ferry that was damaged in the waters of the port of Kavkaz has sunk, the Kuban operational headquarters reported. There are currently no signs of fire in the port area.

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The US regularly updates its nuclear weapons policy, but the related documents are classified, the White House confirmed to Sputnik.

"The new strategy emphasizes “the need to deter Russia, the People's Republic of China and North Korea simultaneously”, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, referred to the document.

The Biden Administration stated that the revised nuclear posture guidelines do not target any specific country, while acknowledging that the development of nuclear arsenals in Russia, China, and North Korea has been considered in this updated approach.

Russia has previously said that the US is using the pretext of a supposed “Russian threat” to strengthen its arsenals, while China has pointed to the risks such US actions pose to other countries.

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Yaroslav Hunka, a wartime Ukrainian Nazi collaborator, has been placed on an international wanted list, according to a report from the Russian Prosecutor General's Office.

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Faith under fire: Eastern Europe’s Orthodox churches persecuted under guise of 'ties to Moscow'

Earlier this month, the parliament of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada, approved the final version of a law requiring the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) “to cut all ties” with the Moscow Patriarchate within three months, or get slapped with a ban. Unfortunately, the UOC is not the only church to go through martyrdom for its real or imagined “ties to Moscow.”

Sputnik has looked into other cases of pressure on believers for “ties” to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).

▪️In Ukraine, criminal cases have been initiated against five out of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's (UOC) 43 bishops, one of whom, Jonathan, the Bishop of Tulchin, has been arrested. They are accused of alleged high treason for maintaining "ties to the occupier." Additionally, the state has confiscated dozens of churches belonging to the UOC's 10,900 registered parishes.

▪️In Estonia, the head of the canonical Estonian Orthodox Church, metropolitan Yevgeny, was expelled from the country on a police order, issued by Estonia’s interior ministry this year. The church itself, which used to be the Tallinn diocese of the ROC for almost 200 years, was legally obliged to drop the words “Moscow Patriarchate” from its name.

▪️In Latvia, where the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) once operated two dioceses, a separate Latvian Orthodox Church was established in 1992 with the blessing of Moscow. Recently, the church underwent a significant reform through a new law passed by the Latvian parliament, the Saeima, in 2022.

This law declared the church "autocephalous" and severed its ties with the ROC; however, these actions were taken without the consent of the Latvian church.

▪️In the Czech Republic, senators have called upon the special services to investigate the activities of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia due to its purported connections to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).

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Aussie Cossack: Anyone who supports arming Ukraine must be ׳crazy’

Ceasing arms supplies to Ukraine will end the Ukraine conflict within 60 days, Australian independent journalist Aussie Cossack commented on the sentiment among US senators to keep pumping weapons to the Kiev regime.

“Unfortunately, the West is crazy. The White House is saying that Ukraine must defeat Russia. I don’t know what these people in the White House are thinking and what world they live in,” he stated.

Such an approach to the Ukrainian crisis can be exemplified by the recent statement of US Senator Mark Warner, in which he called on the Biden administration to “take off some of the shackles” of Ukraine in terms of using US-supplied arms to strike deep into Russia.

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Western globalist vultures set to prey on Ukraine's Orthodox treasures Part 1/Part 2

As the Kiev regime has de facto banned the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), Western globalist elites are seeking to get their hands on Ukraine's cultural treasures, including those belonging to the UOC-MP.

▪️Last year, an agreement was reached between the Kiev regime and UNESCO regarding the removal of Christian valuables from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, one of the most sacred sites of the UOC-MP, amid ongoing acts of repression against Orthodox priests in Ukraine.

According to SVR, the Orthodox valuables, including holy relics, from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra would be transferred to museums in Italy, France, Germany and the Vatican under the pretext of "saving them from Russian missile strikes."

▪️In January 2024, the Wall Street Journal revealed that 16 of the rarest Orthodox Christian icons from the Khanenko National Museum of Arts in Kiev had been secretly transferred to France via Poland and Germany in May 2023. Some of them were put on display at the Louvre Museum.

▪️According to the SVR, the secret transferral of priceless icons was arranged by the International Alliance for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Conflict Zones (ALIPH), chaired at the time by Thomas S. Kaplan, an American business leader and art collector. Kaplan is ALIPH's private donor, who presently sits on the foundation's board.

▪️Kaplan is not only a prominent Rembrandt collector and businessman, but appears to be heavily into politics. He is also known for launching the Recanati-Kaplan Intelligence Fellows program at Harvard's Belfer Center together with David Petraeus, a retired US Army general and ex-CIA director, and Professor Graham Allison, former assistant secretary of defense under the Clinton administration.

"Fellows enjoy special discussions with the high-level intelligence officials who visit Belfer Center throughout the year," the program's webpage reads.

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Thomas Kaplan unmasked: Controversial Soros-linked investor, art-collector in cahoots with globalist cabal Part 2/Part 1

Kaplan rose to prominence as a natural resources investor being backed at the time by none other than US globalist George Soros, who provided Kaplan with $10 million of "seed money" to found Apex Silver Mines in the 1990s.

▪️In 2010, Soros and another American billionaire, John Paulson, invested a combined $175 million in NovaGold Resources, a mining company with almost zero revenues, "following the lead of Thomas Kaplan," as per Forbes.

▪️In 2018, Kaplan, alongside fellow globalist and French "philosopher" Bernard-Henri Lévy—known for his support of the notorious Euromaidan, and his role as an ideologue of the "color revolutions," in addition to his backing of the bombings of Yugoslavia and Libya—co-founded the nonprofit organization Justice for Kurds (JFK).

▪️Kaplan is also a top donor to United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a US-based neoconservative entity founded in 2008 that pushes for tough sanctions against Iran. Kaplan contributed $843,000 to UANI in 2013 alone, according to the investigative site, LobeLog.

In what observers called an unprecedented move, the US Justice Department quashed a civil lawsuit against Kaplan and UANI in 2013, claiming it could jeopardize US national security. Tehran announced in 2019 it would designate UANI as a terrorist group.

▪️Kaplan is linked to the dark-money Turkish Democracy Project, aimed at "shedding light on Turkiye’s move toward authoritarianism" and pressing it to adopt "more democratic policies," as per an investigative report by The Intercept.

The project brags of having close ties with prominent former US public officials and diplomats, including Jeb Bush, John Bolton, and Robert Richer.

▪️According to Responsible Statecraft, a DC-based think tank, "efforts to examine the finances behind the web of Kaplan-linked foreign policy pressure groups have found an unusual obstacle: the US government."

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▪️EXPOSED: Ukrainians resort to hawking priceless Orthodox Icons on eBay

▪️Ukrainian forces unleash murder, mayhem and atrocities on Kursk Region residents

▪️How does the new Russian residency law helps Westerners?

▪️How Russia celebrates National Flag Day

▪️Is there a rift between Argentine President Javier Milei and his VP?

▪️How Orthodox churches are persecuted in Eastern Europe under guise of 'ties to Moscow'

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A manhunt is underway in the US state of Arizona for a man who purportedly threatened to assassinate former US President Donald Trump, Fox News reported.

66-year-old Ronald Lee Syvrud is wanted for outstanding warrants in Wisconsin for driving under the influence of alcohol and failure to appear in court, as well as warrants in Arizona for a hit-and-run accident and failure to register as a sex offender, the Cochise Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

"Public Safety consideration: Syvrud is being sought as an investigative lead for threats to kill a presidential candidate," the statement said.

Trump is in Cochise County Thursday to deliver remarks at the US southern border regarding the record influx of illegal immigrants to the United States during the Biden presidency.

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Family of Colombian mercenary killed in Ukraine receives no compensation from Kiev, widow says

The family of mercenary William Gamboa from Colombia, who died in Ukraine in February, has still not received compensation from Kiev, his widow Olga Tovar told Sputnik.

Gamboa left for Ukraine on July 12, 2023, where he fought as a mercenary in the Donetsk area as part of the armed forces of Ukraine. His wife learned about her husband's death from his colleagues on February 19.

The widow noted that since her husband left, she has not received any money. In addition, she does not know whether Ukraine will fulfill its obligations to pay compensation for her husband's death.

"The compensation they talk about so much, we do not know if it is real at all, because it's like some kind of promise they make when they go there, but we do not know if they will fulfill it," the widow said.

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Pentagon approves of Ukraine using US weapons for Kiev's terrorism in Russia's Kursk region

“Our policy does allow for Ukraine to conduct counterfires to defend itself from Russian attacks coming over that border region, and that border region does include Kursk, it does include Sumy, and so they are defending themselves from Russian attacks within that region,” Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told a press briefing.

Singh failed to mention the atrocities the Kiev regime commits daily in occupied areas of Russia’s territory by slaughtering innocent civilians.

The official’s remarks came in response to a question about whether the United States assessed that its policy on the use of US-supplied weapons to Ukraine had been violated amid the ongoing attack on the Kursk region.

Volodymyr Zelensky would not have dared to attack the Kursk region if the US had not instructed him to do so, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday.

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