The center of Donetsk is being shelled by 155-mm artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Shells hit close to the city administration building and at the entrance to the Indoor Market, local authorities said. One of the shells hit a bus with people in it.

Sergey Lavrov spoke at the UN Security Council:

- Particularly cynical is the position of those states that are pumping Ukraine with weapons and military equipment, training the personnel of that country's armed forces. The goal is obvious, they do not hide it and declare it: to prolong hostilities as long as possible, despite the casualties and destruction, in order to pull Russia apart and weaken it;

- Residents of Donbass have been killed and continue to be killed only because they have not recognised the results of the coup d'état in Ukraine;

- Allied forces in Ukraine are confronted not only by the neo-Nazi formations of the Kiev regime, but also by the military machine of the West;

- Ukraine's armed forces employ terrorist tactics, using civilians as human shields;

- International organisations have not found the courage to urge the Ukrainian authorities to fulfil their human rights commitments;

- Russia has evidence of the participation of British, Canadian, US and Dutch citizens in military actions on Ukraine's side;

- Ukraine has been mobilizing its population into nationalist battalions for many years;

- The UN Secretary General should get Kiev to publish the list of people killed in Bucha.

Journalist Yuliya Vityazeva published a photo of Russian servicemen released from captivity as a result of an exchange with the Ukrainian side:

"Thank you, men, for enduring all this! Thank you! You are all heroes! And we have been waiting for you. Welcome home."

Earlier, President Erdogan said that Russia and Ukraine had exchanged 200 prisoners of war at Turkey's initiative.

🇭🇺🇪🇺 The European Union's energy sanctions against Russia should be lifted by the end of the year, as they cause more harm to European countries themselves. This is the view expressed by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, quoted by Magyar Nemzet newspaper.

Kiev has offered US defence companies to test new US weapons on Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainian MoD has officially offered the country as a testing ground.

[...] "If you have any ideas or some pilot projects that need to be tested before mass production, you can send them to us and we will explain what you need to do," Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Volodymyr Havrylov said.

Havrylov is confident that once the weapons are used in Ukraine, they will be very easy to sell, as they return as a competitive, "battlefield-tested" product.

Chris Murphy’s warning: A GOP House would defund the Ukraine struggle

In an interview to Washington Post, the Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy warned that increased GOP control over Congress might halt military aid to Ukraine.

“If Republicans win control of the House or the Senate, I think there’s a likelihood that they will hold up any additional aid," Murphy told us.

As of now, Senate Republicans appear supportive of the Biden administration’s most recent request, for $12 billion to be added to a continuing resolution funding the government through September. But if Republicans were to win the House (let alone the Senate), that could change everything.

“I think there’s a real risk that the continuing resolution will be the last time we supply funding to Ukraine,” Murphy said, noting that this is more of a threat in the House, because its members are more beholden to Trump.

Stolen elections and corruption have consequences. Infowars tells it like it is.

💢 Looks like Putin at the SCO conference built support for the escalation/partial mobilization.

On yesterday's livestream we got into how the Atlantic Council (NATO-CIA) had made all these media talking points for the New York Times, AP and Reuters, that Modi and XJP had criticised Putin for the course of the war.

Perhaps there is some grain of truth in there, but such a grain will never become a pearl inside the putrid crevice which is the CIA.

That bit of truth is this: no doubt Modi would like the SMO to end sooner than later. Lukashenko however, has also said the same.

So what's the code here?

Well, what happened right with the SCO conference? Putin authorises the mobilization.

Perhaps in order to finish this sooner than later, there needs to be a mobilization.

XF

❗ The G7 countries issued a joint statement saying they would never recognise the results of the referendums.

Washington has never recognised Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as part of the Soviet Union. The Americans have a similar position on Russia's Crimea and will do the same on Donbass. However, the USSR has never cared about Western opinion on this issue, nor will Russia care about it now.