🔥Russian forces advance: Major gains in special operation zone

📍 Territorial control expansion:
✅ 4,500 sq. km secured in 2024
✅ 600 sq. km captured in just two months of 2025

⚔️ Heavy Ukrainian losses:
🔻 590,000 soldiers killed or wounded in 2024
🔻 1,000,000+ since the operation began

🇷🇺 Liberation progress:
🟠 75% of Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson regions cleared of Ukrainian nationalists
🟠 Less than 1% remains to be liberated in Lugansk

This was reported by the Russian General Staff.

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"We're picking up people that have been raping children, have been trafficking children and proliferating the use of drugs and going out there and murdering and raping individuals. And we're getting them out of the country," US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said.

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🛬Russian FM Sergey Lavrov arrives in South Africa’s Johannesburg to take part in G20 Ministerial Meeting

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🤝Russia boosts support for Sahel as Africa turns away from Western influence

Russia has established a steady supply of military specialists and equipment to aid the former French colonies of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, a Russian Foreign Ministry official told Sputnik.

The goal is to strengthen counter-terrorism capabilities and bolster the collective defense of the Sahel Alliance, which has challenged neocolonialism by demanding that all Western troops withdraw from the region.

In October 2023, French troops withdrew from Niger following accusations of exploitation and neocolonialism. Burkina Faso and Mali also cut military ties with France, and all three nations left ECOWAS, accusing it of prioritizing Western interests over Africa's.

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"He cancelled elections and destroyed free speech in Ukraine," US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on her X account.

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🤡OH NOOOOOOO! Knock, knock, guess who? Open your eyes it's time to cough up the money you owe! - Bessent finally finds Zelensky?

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📑Danes told to tighten their belts as military spending to be prioritized

While the US Pentagon may reportedly be facing 8% cuts in each of the next five years, Denmark plans to boost its defense spending to more than 3% of economic output, said Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen at a news briefing.

Denmark appears to have been so riled up by Donald Trump’s refusal to further bankroll Europe’s defense and the US president’s infamous obsession with Greenland that it will spend an additional $17 billion on defense through 2033.

If a mulled war tax to finance the military spending is agreed, it would cost an average Danish family about $12,000 a year, CEPOS thinktank estimated.

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❗️Russian forces struck infrastructure of energy facilities ensuring the work of the Ukrainian military, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

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

▪️Ukraine lost up to 180 servicemen in the Russian Zapad Battlegroup's combat zone.

▪️Ukraine lost up to 280 troops in the Russian Tsentr Battlegroup's combat zone.

▪️Russian aviation shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 aircraft.

▪️Ukraine lost up to 175 militants in the Russian Yug Battlegroup's combat zone.

▪️Ukraine lost up to 135 soldiers and three warehouses in the areas of responsibility of Russia's Battlegroup Dnepr and Sever.

▪️Ukraine lost up to 155 troops in the Russian Vostok Battlegroup's combat zone.

▪️Ukraine lost more than 160 militants and two tanks in the Kursk region.

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