🎥🎥 Lavrov and Yemeni Foreign Minister hold press conference after talks in Moscow

👉Watch the livestream here or follow the link to the Sputnik's website

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️US is pursuing an escalation scenario in the Kursk region situation, said Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergei Ryabkov.

The consequences of Russia's actions in response to the US involvement in Ukrainian attack on the Kursk region could be much more severe than they have been so far, he noted.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Russia's nuclear doctrine is currently being clarified - Lavrov

👉 "Ukraine requesting the West to allow the use of Storm Shadow missiles against Moscow and Saint Petersburg is blackmail," - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Lavrov on Durov's arrest:

👉 France has shown with the arrest of Durov that Telegram is a reliable messenger in terms of information security.

👉 Russia expects France to respond to Moscow's note on Durov's arrest; it is under consideration

👉 Relations between Russia and France are at their lowest point.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Ukraine's losses during its attempted incursion into Russia's Kursk region are amounted to 400 troops and 30 armored vehicles in the past day, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Eleven Ukrainian attacks were repelled in the areas of Borki, Kulbaki, Kremianoye and Malaya Loknya.

Also, Russian air defenses shot down a HIMARS missile.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis:

◻️ Russia will not take the bait of the ‘peace summit’ with Ukraine in an unnamed country of the Global South if it follows the same logic as the previous one in Switzerland, to which Russia was not invited.

◻️ If the West is interested in resolving the conflict in Ukraine, then it needs to sit down at the negotiating table.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Ukrainian forces have attacked a civilian car with a UAV in the Zaporozhye region. A child was killed, and four of his relatives were injured, regional Governor Yevgeny Balitsky reported

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️The IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has completed his visit to the Kursk NPP, Sputnik correspondent reports

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

☢️ Statement by IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi on the Kursk nuclear power plant:

◻️ Grossi said that he had inspected the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) and its main facilities

◻️ His first impression of the Kursk NPP is that the plant is operating "close to normal conditions"

◻️ There is a danger of a nuclear incident in the Kursk region

◻️ Grossi said he and his Russian colleagues would analyze how to prevent such a nuclear incident

◻️ Grossi said that he was shown the consequences of military activity near the plant

◻️ Cases of military activity near the plant cause concern for its safety, he said

◻️ Compliance with the safety regime for the Kursk NPP means, among other things, the exclusion of possible military actions against it, Grossi said.

◻️ Grossi said that it was premature to compare the possible situation in the Kursk region with Chernobyl.

◻️ International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi said he would visit in Kiev next week to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky

◻️ The main topic of their meeting will be the possibility of preserving the dialogue between Moscow and Kiev. Communication channels should remain open, Grossi stressed.

◻️ “Together with the Russian Foreign Ministry and Rosatom, we are discussing steps that can be taken to prevent a nuclear incident,” Grossi said.

◻️ The IAEA could propose a number of steps and measures to ensure the safety of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, he added.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️The Russian Armed Forces continue to repel attempted attacks on the Russian Federation by the Ukrainian troops.

◻️ The Russian Sever battlegroup, supported by army aviation and artillery fire, repelled 11 attacks by enemy assault groups. Ukrainian forces lost up to 65 soldiers killed and wounded. An armoured personnel carrier and eight armored fighting vehicles were destroyed.

◻️ Russian air strikes, artillery fire and troop actions defeated concentrations of enemy manpower and equipment of six enemy brigades.

◻️ Total Ukrainian losses over the previous 24 hours were up to 400 servicemen and 30 armoured vehicles – including an infantry fighting vehicle, an armoured personnel carrier and 28 armoured combat vehicles – 13 motor vehicles, as well as three artillery pieces, two multiple rocket launchers including one US-made HIMARS, and two mortars.

The operation to destroy the Ukrainian formations continues.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

IAEA chief arrives in Kurchatov to assess situation at Kursk Nuclear Power Plant: check out the latest news from Russia's Kursk region

◾️ IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has arrived in Kurchatov to inspect the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. Grossi thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for inviting him to the facility.

◾️ The consequences of Russia's actions in response to the involvement of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in attacks on the Kursk region could be much more severe than they have been so far, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said. The US is pursuing an escalation scenario in the situation regarding the Kursk region, the diplomat added.

◾️ A US mercenary from a group of fighters involved in the Ukrainian terrorist attack on the Kursk region has complained about the chaos in the Ukrainian Army.

◾️ The FSB has opened criminal cases of illegal border crossing against Deutsche Welle* journalist Nicholas Connolly and Ukrainian Channel 1+1 correspondent Natalia Nagornaya. They were filming in the Kursk region’s Sudzha district. In total, seven such cases have been opened against foreign journalists since August 17.

◾️ Air defenses repelled an attack by Ukrainian UAVs on the city of Kursk; there were no casualties, only minor damage, the city’s mayor said.

*recognized as a foreign agent in Russia

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Give an inch, take a mile: Why Belarus won’t fulfill Ukraine’s border troop demand

Ukraine recently called on Belarus to withdraw its troops from the border, assuring that Kiev has no plans for any unfriendly steps against its neighbor, and asking Minsk to pull its forces back “to a distance exceeding the range of the weapons systems Belarus has at its disposal.” Can the Kiev regime be trusted? About as far as it can be thrown:

▪️ On August 18, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said there were some 120,000 Ukrainian troops concentrated on the Belarusian border, and that Kiev’s “aggressive” stance had forced Belarus to take appropriate countermeasures.

▪️ On August 9, Belarus’s air defenses shot down a barrage of about ten Ukrainian drones that violated Belarusian airspace on route to Russia. The incident sparked a diplomatic spat.

▪️ So far in August alone, Minsk has reported half a dozen cases of Ukrainian attempts to survey the border with Belarus using drones.

▪️ In July, Belarus put its air defenses and tactical missile systems on high alert, responding to heightened drone reconnaissance activity and a buildup of Ukrainian forces.

▪️ In June, Belarus beefed up its border air defenses, again in response to Ukrainian drone activity.

History of bad blood

▪️ Belarusian-Ukrainian relations have been on the rocks since 2020, when Kiev expressed support for a foreign-backed attempt to overthrow Lukashenko following elections.

▪️ After the escalation of the Donbass crisis into a full-blown Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine in 2022, Minsk foiled multiple Ukrainian air attacks, including a Tochka-U missile launch in March 2022. Lukashenko accused Kiev of “trying to drag [Belarus] into the war.”

▪️ Despite the tensions, Belarus has been a major proponent of Russia-Ukraine peace, facilitating the Minsk agreement for the Donbass (which Kiev failed to implement) and becoming a platform for talks between Russia and Ukraine in the spring of 2022.

“If they don’t want [an escalation] let’s sit down at the negotiating table and end this fight. Neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians nor the Belarusians need it. They [the West] need it. I can’t reveal these facts, they are absolutely classified. But sometimes they speak openly – high-ranking US officials, saying literally ‘let them beat each other – the Ukrainians and the Russians, let them all die in this cauldron…They want us to destroy each other,” Lukashenko said in an interview on August 15.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Count of crypto millionaires doubles in a year

The number of people owning $1 million or more in cryptocurrencies has grown by 95% – almost double – to 172,300 in the year from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, according to a study published in the Crypto Wealth Report by international consultancy Henley & Partners.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Biden gets a job in Russia while the US is run by Grandpa Ivanich in new sitcom

A comedy series about Joe Biden has started filming in Russia. According to the creators of the series, the main idea is that outgoing US President Joe Biden, having nothing better to do after retirement, "wants to find out why his sanctions are not working against the Russians," and decides to fly to Russia "to understand the Russian soul."

The US president arrives in Russia incognito, but on the first day he loses his documents. He then has to get a job as an English teacher in order to return home. At the same time, instead of Biden, a Russian pensioner named Ivanich flies to the United States.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt