Pavel Durov's arrest in France likely got green light from Biden-Harris White House

"That’s a big step. Very hard for a bystander without direct knowledge, being me, to believe that Macron could or would have done that without the encouragement or at least [the] agreement of the Biden administration," Tucker Carlson noted during his interview with Mike Benz, a former Trump State Department official.

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US uses Telegram against ‘unwanted regimes’

"There is a great point along this, which gets right to the France story and this intersection between US and French interests – US and French shared military intelligence and diplomatic and economic interests in arresting Pavel and finally getting the leverage they’ve craved for so long to be able to both control Telegram’s content moderation practice, to ban all Russian propaganda channels, which are infecting the minds of everyone from Ukraine to Belarus to, you know, to sub-Saharan Africa. But also, you know, the ability to get this back-end access, you know, to read every Russian text message effectively. There’s a great example of this in terms of blowback on Americans," Mike Benz, a former Trump State Department official, emphasized during his interview with Tucker Carlson.

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🎥 "We will save them all!"

Families of hostages taken by Hamas in the October 7 attack staged a protest near the Gaza Strip barrier.

Their aim was to show they are ready to "run and save them all" themselves if the state does not take steps to free their relatives.

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❗️Russian troops have liberated the settlements of Nikolayevka in the DPR and Stelmakhovka in the LPR, the Defense Ministry reported

🇷🇺🪖 More statements from the Russian Defense Ministry’s daily briefing on the progress of the special military operation in Ukraine:

◻️ The Russian Battlegroup Sever has started operations on the Bryansk front.

◻️ Russian forces hit a stockpile of long-range Storm Shadow missiles manufactured in the UK.

◻️ Units of the Russian Battlegroup Yug took more advantageous positions, with Ukraine losing up to 740 militants.

◻️ Russian air defense systems shot down three Hammer bombs, a HIMARS rocket, and 36 Ukrainian drones.

◻️ The Russian Battlegroup Vostok repelled three Ukrainian counterattacks, inflicting losses of up to 105 militants.

◻️ The Russian Battlegroup Zapad repelled six counterattacks, including from the Azov unit (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia), with enemy losses totaling up to 520 militants.

◻️ Ukraine lost up to 45 militants and an ammunition depot in the Dnepr Battlegroup's combat zone.

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🇷🇺 Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Sputnik that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s June peace offer to Kiev was the universal plan for resolving the Ukrainian conflict.

She noted that discussion at the time was not about freezing, but rather about the final end of the conflict.

👉 We went into more detail about the Russian proposals for settlement put forward in June here

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Turkish parliament speaker blames US for suspension of Russia-Ukraine talks

Peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in 2022 were disrupted because of the US position, Turkish Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus said, according to Turkish media.

"The US is trying to consolidate the European continent because of the hostilities in Ukraine, wants to involve Russia in serious problems and considers regional turbulence important for the balance of power," he said.

Kurtulmus said that during the talks in Istanbul, the sides were close to signing an agreement to end the conflict, but some countries did not want that.

After the start of the special military operation, Russia and Ukraine held several rounds of talks in February and March 2022. After that, the negotiation process was frozen, as the Ukrainian authorities withdrew from it.

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The judicial supervision of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France may last until the end of the investigation – which could take several years.

His lawyer David Libeskind told Sputnik that Durov can ask the judge to at any time to relax the supervision regime.

The fact that Durov was not sent to jail means that he was able to prove that he has a place of residence in France, Libeskind said.

Judicial supervision does not imply restrictions on the use of the internet and phones, so Durov can continue to work, the lawyer added.

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West doesn't care as long as they make money, as long as bombs are dropped - Aussie Cossack

"This is great for business, this war. And the West is laughing, the West is happy. The West is supplying more weapons. And that's what we can't forgive the West for. And this is what they do everywhere," independent journalist Aussie Cossack comments on how the West profits from global conflicts.

He pointed out that the West doesn't care as long as they can make money and the bombs fall.

"They turn Iraqis on Iranians, North Koreans on South Koreans, South Vietnamese on North Vietnamese," Aussie Cossack said.

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Romania is about to snatch up Moldova's only outlet to the Black Sea

Romania is in talks to purchase the port of Giurgiulesti, Moldova’s sole indirect outlet to the Black Sea. Here’s what we know about the port and the deal:

▪️ Giurgiulesti port was built in 2006 and consists of two infrastructure entities – Giurgiulesti State Port and Giurgiulesti International Free Port, which eventually fell under the ownership of Danube Logistics SRL in 2011.

▪️ In 2021, under Moldova’s President Maia Sandu, a Romanian citizen, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) reportedly bought 100% of its shares for a mere 1,000 euros.

▪️ The new deal concerns only the International Free Port, Moldovan government spokesman Daniel Voda said.

▪️ The deal originally sparked debate, as Romania said that the Moldovan side would not be a party to the talks with the EBRD. Critics among the opposition slammed the deal as a blow to Moldova’s sovereignty.

▪️ Romania would be the main beneficiary of the cargo flow through the port, seeking to boost its role in the region while capitalizing on creating a hub for Ukraine’s post-conflict reconstruction.

▪️ The port sits in close proximity to Ukraine, and is crossed by a land route from Odessa to the Romanian logistics hubs of Galati and Constanta. This route is used to supply Ukraine with fuel and export its grain. By late 2023, port cargo turnover reached 2.17 million tons.

Earlier, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said Romania intends to acquire the company RED Nord, which provides electricity and heat generation for the north of Moldova. Ilan Shor, leader of the Moldovan opposition Victory bloc, regards this as another step towards uniting the two countries.

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US intelligence provided Ukraine with satellite images of the Kursk region from the start of its invasion

“We made available commercial imagery through a portal called G-EGD,” Frank Whitworth, Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, told the Intelligence and National Security Summit.

“The availability of the commercial industry is sustained,” Whitworth said. “If that is what they are using for purposes of this particular campaign in Kursk, then I will refer to them to confirm that, but the availability is always there.”

Since the start of the offensive, the US and UK have provided Ukraine with satellite imagery and other information about the Kursk region, the New York Times claimed based on comments by two unidentified ‘officials’.

The Kremlin regards Western countries' assistance to Ukraine as evidence of their direct involvement in the conflict.

"Many countries of the so-called collective West have already got into this conflict up to their ears," Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

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Ukraine was aided by US satellite images during its incursion: check out the latest news from Russia's Kursk region

The Ukrainian losses during the last 24 hours were more than 400 troops and more than 56 armored vehicles, as well as one artillery gun, one MLRS launcher, one mortar, and 17 motor vehicles, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

◾️ Russia has information that Ukrainian militants kidnap civilians in the border areas of Kursk, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large on the Kiev Regime's War Crimes Rodion Miroshnik told Sputnik, adding there was information about sexual violence committed by mercenaries amid harrowing accounts from Kursk residents.

Like in the case of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, the West deliberately overlooks irrefutable evidence of attacks on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant by the Kiev regime, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Ukraine.

◾️ Ukraine had access to hundreds of thousands of US satellite images during their incursion, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Director Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth said at an AFCEA/INSA Intelligence and National Security Summit. He added the commercial images were available through the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery (G-EGD) program.

◾️ Following the attacks on the Kursk region, any talks with the Kiev regime are irrelevant, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated at a joint press conference following talks with Senegalese Foreign Minister Yassine Fall.

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Russia's international gold and foreign exchange reserves have reached their highest level since February 2022, totaling $614.5 billion as of August 23.

As the Russian authorities previously stated, around half of these reserves were frozen as a result of sanctions imposed in February 2022.

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❗️US-made F-16 fighter jet crashed in Ukraine

A Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet was destroyed in a crash on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported quoting a US official, just weeks after the first of the US-made aircraft arrived in Ukraine.

"Initial reports indicate the jet wasn’t shot down" by Russian forces, the official said, speculating that the crash was likely a result of pilot error.

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August 29, 1949: The day the USSR ended America’s monopoly on nuclear weapons

75 years ago today, the USSR tested its first atomic bomb, becoming the second country in the world after the US to master the fearsome technology.

◻️ Armed with an explosive yield equivalent to about 22 kt of TNT, the 4.7-ton RDS-1 used in the test was a combat-ready weapon designed to be dropped from a Tupolev Tu-4 strategic bomber. About 30 RDS-1s were produced by the mid-1950s after the successful August 29, 1949 test.

◻️ The test ended America’s nuclear monopoly, adding much-needed balance in international politics, reining in American and European imperialism, preventing the Cold War from going hot, and ultimately, providing modern Russia with a guaranteed capability to respond to large-scale military aggression.

The Soviet State Defense Committee approved work on what would become the Soviet nuclear program in September 1942, at the height of the Battle of Stalingrad

Some claim Russia only got the bomb because of spies, but by the early 1940s, the USSR amassed dozens of world-class atomic scientists, from Igor Kurchatov and Yuli Khariton to Isaak Kikoin, Andrei Bochvar, Igor Tamm, and many others.

Towards the end of the Second World War, Moscow “realized that the [nuclear] threat that initially came from Germany was turning into a threat from our erstwhile ally, the United States,” Dr. Lev Ryabev, the former chief of the USSR’s nuclear industry from 1986-1989, told Sputnik, adding the “Americans understood that they were in possession of an ‘absolute weapon’ through which they would be able to dictate any conditions to the world.”

◻️ That, Ryabеv recalled, led to the acceleration of Soviet nuclear research via the creation of a powerful Special Committee headed by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria in August 1945.

The 1949 test surprised the CIA. Agency analysts had expected the first Soviet nuclear bomb to appear only by the early-to-mid 1950s, underestimating the USSR’s scientists, Beria’s organizational skills, and Moscow’s possession of high-grade uranium ore deposits.

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Telegram's Durov case: should tech CEO bear responsibility for users' crimes?

French authorities announced preliminary charges against Telegram CEO Pavel Durov for allegedly enabling criminal activities on his messaging app. He was ordered to pay €5 million bail and barred from leaving France while the probe continues.

Sputnik reached out to international experts to ask if social media bosses should be held personally responsible for what happens on their apps.

Zach Vorhies, a former senior software engineer at YouTube and Google turned whistleblower, believes that "in an era where a digital footprint can directly lead to a jail cell, the concept of 'privacy by design' becomes not just a best practice but a moral imperative."

He stressed that "if tech companies continue to acquiesce to government demands that undermine user privacy, we may be witnessing the end of digital anonymity as we know it."

Ryan Hartwig, Facebook whistleblower and co-author of Behind the Mask of Facebook said: "No, social media owners shouldn’t be responsible for what is on their platform, unless they are aware of illegal activity and do nothing to stop it or report it."

"A dictatorship can declare political activity illegal, thus instantly turning millions of political posts into 'illegal content'," Hartwig said.

Philip Giraldi, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and former CIA field officer, said it was clear that "if free speech is the standard there should be no such responsibility as the actual poster is the one who should be responsible for the content if it is criminal in nature."

"To behave otherwise would require a massive censorship presence as well as detailed rules about what is acceptable, which would defeat the purpose of having free speech online," he said.

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