🇷🇺🪖Key statements from the Russian MoD’s daily briefing on the special military operation's progress:

🔸The Russian Yug Battlegroup defeated a Ukrainian brigade in the area of Dobrovolye settlement in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), and repelled one counterattack. Ukrainian losses amounted to 645 militants during the day.

🔸Ukrainian forces lost up to 90 soldiers in the area of responsibility of the Russian Sever combat group;

🔸The Russian Tsentr Battlegroup defeated five Ukrainian brigades in the DPR and repelled nine counterattacks. Ukrainian losses amounted to 460 soldiers;

🔸Ukrainian losses in the area of responsibility of the Russian Zapad combat group amounted to more than 450 militants;

🔸The Russian Dnepr Battlegroup destroyed two Ukrainian ammunition depots. Ukrainian losses amounted to 50 servicemen;

🔸The Russian air defense systems shot down five HIMARS shells and 142 Ukrainian drones.

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🤪Gargle, Rinse, Repeat

US Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris, was caught red-handed in giving the same speeches at her rallies again… and again.

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❗️Over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian losses amounted to more than 310 militants in Russia's Kursk region, and nine armored vehicles have also been destroyed, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. In total, during the fighting in the region, Kiev has lost more than 25,050 militants and 167 tanks.

Russia's Sever Battlegroup continued its offensive operations, and Ukrainian forces were defeated in the ten populated areas.

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The march of the Immortal Regiment in the capital of Serbia in honor of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Belgrade.

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❗️❗️❗️Assange’s father extends gratitude to Putin for defending his son in 2012

John Shipton, Julian Assange's father, has thanked President Vladimir Putin, noting that in 2012, Putin was the first head of state to defend Assange’s rights as a publisher and journalist. At a time when Assange faced relentless smears from the US, UK, and Australia, Shipton acknowledged Putin's support.

"For that, I extend my affection to your president," he told Sputnik.

Shipton, founder of Australia's now-defunct Wikileaks Party, arrived in Moscow on Saturday night at the invitation of the BRICS Journalists Association and its co-chair Mira Terada, a human rights advocate and publicist.

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❗️❗️❗️Assange’s father: Color revolutions and information control threaten global stability

John Shipton, the father of Julian Assange, warned about the dangers of information control and the role of "color revolutions" in destabilizing nations during a discussion on the implications of his son’s case for independent journalism.

Shipton highlighted that the information Wikileaks exposed over the years has shown "how the United States' empire instituted itself into the states that it wishes to have as vessels or goes about destroying those states."

He emphasized that color revolutions are often fueled by the manipulation of information, with NGOs and journalists being used to undermine a country’s stability.

According to Shipton, these revolutions are clear examples of how controlling information can shape regime changes without regard for people’s interests, as seen in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

He noted, "We can clearly see without any doubt what happens when people control or institutions... determined to regime change a state without the interests of the people in mind."

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🔥 A US-made Stryker armored personnel carrier used by Ukrainian forces was destroyed by a Russian drone strike in the Kharkov region, according to the Russian Defense Ministry

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❗️Hezbollah says it fired rockets at a military base in northern Israel

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❗️❗️❗️Assange’s father: BRICS surpassing US and Europe in global economic power

"BRICS is the rest of the world, manifestly abandoning the United States," John Shipton, Julian Assange's father, told Sputnik as he highlighted the bloc's growing global influence. He pointed out that BRICS represents 45% of the world's population and 34% of global GDP, while the G7 lags behind.

Shipton emphasized the importance of industrial growth within BRICS nations, which he views as the foundation of a strong economy. In contrast, he criticized the West for neglecting industrial development, leading Europe into an "unnatural, unavoidable decline," though he noted a glimmer of hope for the US due to emerging re-industrialization efforts.

Shipton, founder of Australia's now-defunct Wikileaks Party, arrived in Moscow on Saturday night at the invitation of the BRICS Journalists Association and its co-chair Mira Terada, a human rights advocate and publicist.

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🇷🇺🇷🇸 Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone conversation with his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic, according to the Kremlin:

▪️ The leaders exchanged congratulations on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Belgrade from Nazi invaders;

▪️ They expressed satisfaction with the level of bilateral relations, confirmed the intention to further strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation;

▪️ Vucic thanked Putin for the principled position that the Russian Federation takes on the territorial integrity of Serbia;

▪️ The situation around Ukraine was discussed, Putin assessed the progress of the special military operation;

▪️ The leaders agreed to maintain personal contact.

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❗️❗️❗️Assange's father: US government subjects American people to unimaginable ‘density of propaganda’

Very few people realize the “density of propaganda” in the United States, says John Shipton, WikiLeaks Party founder and father of Julian Assange.

“The density of propaganda and the willingness of the government and its institutions to delude the people and mislead the people is completely ruthless,” he tells Sputnik.

The US government, Shipton explains, actively resists efforts by American people to express their own opinions via social media, with Washington insisting on a “unity of policy.” As the option of ensuring the populace’s obedience by siccing the military on them is unavailable to a democratic government, Washington employs media to convince people to follow its policies, Shipton says.

“This is a really important understanding to understand how a government or in a contemporary state institutes its policies,” he suggests. Shipton also remarks that “the US government as an empire” understands that “the state is the highest form of human organization” and thus “makes every effort to demoralize institutions of state in those countries that it wants to vassalize.”

“So you can see in the EU is now a contention between the declarations of the EU and those states within the EU,” he remarks. While people such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban or Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico strive to maintain the “quality” of their respective states, Brussels attempts to keep them in line by threatening to withhold their own money.

“The centralized distribution of money for the European Bank, the European Community Bank, ECB, it is all of the state's money goes into the ECB and then it's redistributed to those states,” Shipton points out. “This gives the ECB and the EU enormous power and removes a fundamental power from those states so involved the ability to raise your own money. If you can't raise your own money, you cannot improve the quality of your people by directing funds to those areas that will improve those qualities.”

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❗️❗️❗️Assange’s father: Scott Ritter is the man who knows how to ‘manage relations between nuclear superpowers’

Scott Ritter is a man whose understanding “of the power flows between states” and of “what is necessary to reduce tensions between nuclear armed states is second to none,” John Shipton, WikiLeaks Party founder and father of Julian Assange, tells Sputnik.

“He brings that before the people who attend his broadcasts, of which there are many and continuous. This is really important. This supersedes in many ways the discomfort of Scott being banned from, or warned off, Sputnik,” Shipton remarks.

“It is really important to have a voice as an experienced, knowledgeable and fair as Scott speaking about how to reduce the tensions and how to manage the relationships between nuclear superpowers,” he adds. “It’s profound.”

Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and an ex-UN weapons inspector and political commentator critical of the current US foreign policy.

Though he previously often cooperated with Russian media outlets such as Sputnik, Ritter was forced to end this cooperation last month due to the anti-Russian sanctions enforced by the United States government.

FBI agents searched Ritter’s house in August as Washington cracked down on people who dare to cooperate with foreign news organizations and who are reluctant to toe the line set by the Biden administration.

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🇷🇸A date to remember: 80th anniversary of Belgrade’s liberation by the Soviet Red Army

Eighty years ago today, the Soviet Red Army - aided by Yugoslav troops - liberated Belgrade, then-capital of Yugoslavia and the current capital of Serbia from Nazi occupation.

The Soviet-led forces engaged in the Belgrade offensive that included 660,000 soldiers, 4,477 artillery pieces and mortars, 421 tanks and self-propelled guns and 1,250 warplanes.

Advance units of the Soviet battlegroup, along with a detachment of Yugoslav guerrillas, reached the outskirts of Belgrade by October 14, 1944.

Seeking to minimize the damage to the city, the Soviet forces refrained from carrying out large-scale aerial bombardments and airstrikes.

Instead, assault teams stormed the German Nazis’ positions using machine guns and grenades, with artillery units firing directly at the designated targets.

The city residents assisted the liberation effort however they could, providing the Soviet and Yugoslav forces with coordinates of Nazi strongpoints.

By October 20, the liberation of Belgrade was complete.

In his speech on October 28, 1944, Yugoslav guerrillas’ supreme leader Josip Broz Tito paid homage to the sacrifice of the Soviet troops who liberated Belgrade, noting that blood of “sons of all the peoples of Yugoslavia and of the Red Army heroes, sons of the great Soviet Union” was shed on the city streets.

In the USSR, the Soviet liberators of Belgrade were honored by a gun salute involving 24 salvos from 324 artillery pieces.This year, Moscow once again marks the liberation of the former Yugoslav and the current Serbian capital with a fireworks display.

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❗️❗️❗️‘Alternative media and journalists being persecuted by US’ – human rights advocate

“There are alternative media, journalists and opinion leaders whose opinion differ from the Western narrative. But unfortunately, what we see these days is the persecution of these people, by the United States, for example. And it's a terrible trend that does affect journalism,” Mira Terada, BRICS Journalists Association co-chair, human rights advocate and publicist, said in an exclusive interview with Sputnik.

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