Russian Foreign Ministry calls US accusations against Russian media 'attack on freedom of speech'

Russian journalists were subjected to aggression by the US authorities, while monstrous unfounded statements were heard from Washington, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at the BRICS Media Summit.

Zakharova calls for support, "not only because these are journalists from a BRICS member-states but also those journalists who upheld BRICS values and who covered BRICS". She calls for support because "the US sanctions are an attack on honour and freedom of speech".

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❗️The Russian Armed Forces hit airfield infrastructure and Ukrainian special forces boat bases.

🇷🇺🪖More statements from the Russian Defense Ministry's daily briefing on the special military operation's progress:

◻️ Ukrainian losses reached a total of 520 servicemen in Battlegroup Zapad’s area of responsibility.

◻️ Ukrainian forces lost up to 110 soldiers in the Liptsovsky and Volchansky directions.

◻️ Enemy losses in Russia’s Battlegroup Tsentr combat zone came to 560 troops.

◻️ Russia’s Battlegroup Yug repelled two counterattacks, with Ukrainian forces losing as many as 715 militants.

◻️ Russia’s Battlegroup Vostok formations have strengthened their positions along the front line. The enemy lost as many as 105 soldiers and ammunition depot

◻️ Russian air defenses shot down three ATACMS missiles, three guided Hammer missiles and 53 Ukrainian drones.

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What problems are Britain’s armed forces grappling with?

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has not ruled out allowing Ukraine to use long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia. Yet the UK’s warmongering bravado comes as its own armed forces are mired in crisis.

Lack of manpower

◻️ Britain’s armed forces are stretched thin, figures show. The intake of recruits in the 12 months to March 2023 dropped by 22.1% in the Royal Navy, almost 17% in the RAF, and nearly 15% in the army, according to official statistics.

◻️ The professional ranks of the British Army currently number 75,166 regular forces personnel, compared with around 100,000 in 2010.

◻️ A manpower crisis in the Royal Navy reportedly prompted the decommissioning of a number of ships.

Technical issues

◻️ The Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carriers the HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales have faced some technical issues, as the former was forced to pull out from NATO’s Exercise Steadfast Defender drills in February 2024 after a malfunction.

◻️ Commissioning new Type 26 frigates has been postponed, with initial operational capability anticipated from 2028.

◻️ January’s failed HMS Vanguard sea-launch test of the UK’s nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) system, the Trident II D-5, was the second successive failure, following one in 2016 involving the HMS Vengeance.

Lack of money and surplus of bureaucracy

◻️ The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) is facing a £16.9 billion ($22.17 billion) deficit, the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed in 2023. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warned that the actual deficit could be closer to £29 billion ($38.05 billion) in a March 2024 report.

◻️ The MoD's procurement and delivery processes are mired in delays. Just two of its 46 equipment programs are "highly likely" to be delivered to time, budget, and quality, British MPs said in March.

◻️ Successful delivery of five Government Major Projects Portfolio schemes, including nuclear submarine reactors, was determined “unachievable” by a House of Commons Committee report in March.

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❗️103 Russian servicemen captured in the Kursk region were returned from Kiev-controlled territory on September 14, while 103 Ukrainian militants were handed over

All the returned Russian military personnel are in Belarus, where they are being provided with necessary assistance and given the opportunity to contact their relatives.

The United Arab Emirates provided humanitarian mediation during the return of the Russian servicemen from captivity.

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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's full statement on sanctions against Russian media

New sanctions imposed by the US against Russian media constitute an extraordinary situation, Zakharova said.

Zakharova also characterized the US sanctions as "an attack on freedom of speech."

"In addition to the monstrous, completely unjustified political statements made yesterday by Washington regarding the media, parallel to this, there is also physical aggression against journalists," the spokeswoman said.

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❗️🪖 Main statements from the Russian MoD's daily briefing on the situation in the Kursk region:

◻️ Since the start of hostilities in the Kursk region, Ukrainian losses amounted up to 13,100 militants, more than 300 troops over the past 24 hours.

◻️ Eight Ukrainian brigades were defeated by Russian forces in the Kursk region during the day.

◻️ Russian forces thwarted five attempts by Ukraine to breach the state border near Novy Put, Medvezhye and Vesely.

◻️ Russian forces repelled five Ukrainian counterattacks in the Kursk region, thwarted two attempted attacks in the Kursk region, enemy lost up to 30 servicemen.

◻️ Russian aviation struck the reserves of seven Ukrainian brigades in the Kursk region and attacked eleven enemy brigades in the Sumy region.

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NATO strategy of arming Ukraine has failed – Sahra Wagenknecht

Replying to a journalist's aggressive question in an interview with Spiegel about compromise with Russia, Sahra Wagenknecht, leader the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, asked the interviewer "What is your solution to stop the deaths? That we continue to uphold noble morals? That NATO intervenes directly in the war and ends up with all of Europe in ruins?"

💬 "The strategy of supplying Ukraine with weapons so that it can win the war has failed," she stated in response to the journalist’s argument that NATO should not negotiate with President Vladimir Putin just because the Russian army is advancing.

The left-wing party leader instead proposed "a halt to arms deliveries if they agreed to an immediate ceasefire on the current front line" in possible peace talks with Russia.

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📹 Russian troops defeat the Polish-made self-propelled gun Krab of the Ukrainian forces with Lancets in the border area of the Kursk region.

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Drills are in full swing!

A group of Russian Northern Fleet ships struck a mock enemy submarine in the Barents Sea during the Ocean 2024 exercises

Check out all the info on Russia’s biggest naval exercise in 30 years

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US claims against RT are start of information war – Russian Foreign Ministry

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova described new US accusations against RT of "covert operations" to interfere in other countries' affairs and "military procurement" a declaration of information war.

"This is not about sanctions, it's not about restrictive measures. This is a direct declaration of an information war, with no alternative,” Zakharova said. “At the core of this declaration lies a clear Russophobic nationalist ideology, the same kind we've seen repeatedly throughout human history, but most prominently in the 1930s."

She warned that the US would continue to apply pressure, hiding behind legalities and using every possible opportunity to "shut down, harass, and punish" journalists.

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Ukraine conflict is tool of Washington's 'dollar or die' policy aimed at retaining hegemony – US psy-op veteran

US long-range strike speculation and sanctions against Russian media are not solely related to the Ukraine conflict but a much broader geopolitical shift, according to ex-US Army psychological warfare officer and State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett.

"The US has adopted a national policy that is 'dollar or die,' which means either the US dollar remains the hegemonic currency in the world or the US will die fighting to maintain it," Bennett told Sputnik. "This translates into the United States managing its colony regimes of Europe and members of NATO (France, Germany, Poland, the Baltic States, Britain) into a similar policy position."

According to Bennett, the enthusiasm demonstrated by developing countries in joining multi-national platforms championed by Russia, including BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), is seen by Washington as an "existential threat" to its dominance.

In this respect, the Ukraine conflict is a Western tool to prevent Russia from further engaging the Global South in forming a fair multipolar world and axing the dollar dominance, according to the pundit.

US claims that Russia is "unserious about possible peace talks" are also aimed at disrupting the Russia-led unifying processes in the Global South, the psy-op veteran believes.

He referred to the West's promotion of a "new, bigger peace summit" on Ukraine, with Volodymyr Zelensky calling the Ukraine-occupied areas near Russia's Kursk a potential "bargaining chip." Moscow made it clear that it won't hold any talks until the Ukrainian aggressors are thrown out of the Kursk region.

"Any new peace summit planned by Volodymyr Zelensky and his backers in the US and NATO is a ruse or a trap designed to… shift the narrative towards how Russia is obstinate and refusing to negotiate," Bennett concluded.

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White House takes DOJ allegations about RT 'seriously'

RT has been operating out of “KGB headquarters all this time,” the Russian news channel’s press service jokingly responded to a CNN report about US government accusations of "espionage" and “influence operations” by Russian media.

💬 “No, but seriously, we’re running out of popcorn to sit and watch what the US government will come up with next about us,” RT added.

But White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre didn’t seem to have a sense of humor.

"The Department of Justice... took some actions to disrupt Russia’s covert information operations to undermine our democratic institution in the homeland,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “We do not laugh at that. That is very serious and we take that very seriously."

On September 4, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against RT and its top management. On Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused RT of conducting "covert information and influence operations." Russia called that move "informational terrorism."

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The head of the NATO military committee considers it 'justified' from a military point of view to allow Ukraine to hit Russia with long-range western weapons.

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Democrat 'October surprise' targeting Russia and Trump may be in the making – US psy-op veteran

US appears to have played down speculation about allowing Ukraine to expand the use of long-range NATO missiles inside Russia following Russia’s warning. Still, the Democratic Party's "October surprise" may still be in the works, warns ex-US Army psychological warfare officer and State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett.

The US establishment's attempt to raise the stakes prior to the November election came amid Russia's continuous advance, which has not been slowed down by Ukraine's doomed Kursk incursion. "The military mathematics shows very clearly the overwhelming victory that will inevitably come to Russia," Bennett told Sputnik.

Russian victories don't play into the hands of the Kamala Harris campaign, backed by the US deep state, according to the psy-op veteran. He referred to the Biden administration switching to full damage control mode by slapping sanctions on the Russian media, "arresting, or shutting down independent bloggers, or news channels by any means necessary."

Given that, Bennett doesn't rule out that the Kiev regime could be encouraged by the US to carry out possible false flags and expand strikes against Russia in October to either force Moscow into overreacting or try to smear it in the eyes of the American public.

Such measures could be also aimed at "guaranteeing" that Donald Trump wouldn't be able to immediately shift to negotiations on settling the conflict, if he wins in November, according to Bennett.

"The Harris Democrat establishment and national security/military-industrialist deep state in America is trying to tie [the Ukraine] conflict against Russia around Donald Trump’s neck as they did in 2016 when Obama waged war against Russia diplomatically by expelling its consulates and its news organizations from Washington DC," the psy-op veteran said.

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz "will firmly stand" by his refusal to allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons supplied by Germany to attack targets deep within Russia, Die Welt reports.

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