A source close to French President Emmanuel Macron has told Reuters that there is no evidence backing Russia’s claim that Ukraine targeted the state residence of President Vladimir Putin in the Novgorod Oblast of Northwestern Russia.

The U.S. Coast Guard is continuing to pursue the Guyana-flagged Iranian-linked sanctioned crude oil tanker, M/T Bella 1, which is currently sailing northwest through the Northern Atlantic possibly towards Iceland or Greenland, with the crew having recently painted the Russian Flag on the hull of the ship, appearing to claim protection status from the Russian Federation, according to the U.S. officials who spoke to The New York Times.

Multiple fires are currently burning at the Tuapse Oil Refinery in the Southwestern Russian city of Tuapse in Krasnodar Krai near the coast of the Black Sea, following several drone strikes in the past hour by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Some officials with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were upset by President Donald J. Trump's recent decision to claim responsibility for a covert drone strike earlier this month against a facility in Venezuela linked to drug trafficking, an operation normally intended to be secret or at least have no obvious links to the United States, current and former officials told the Wall Street Journal. “There was near-universal dismay among former intelligence officials that President Trump chose to disclose what almost certainly was intelligence community covert action,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior operations officer with the CIA.

Thailand this morning released 18 Soldiers with the Royal Cambodian Army that it had detained since initial cross-border clashes between the two countries in July, as part of a ceasefire mediated by China which was agreed to earlier this week by the Foreign Ministers of Cambodia and Thailand.

Finnish authorities have boarded and detained a vessel in the Gulf of Finland, off the coast of the Porkkala Peninsula, that is suspected of damaging submarines cables running between Finland and Estonia. According to the Helsinki Times, the Fitburg, a Saint Vincent-flagged Russian-owned cargo vessel that had departed Saint Petersburg, Russia, bound for Israel on Tuesday, is believed to have used its anchor to damage upwards of five underwater-submarine cables operated by the Finnish telecommunication company Elisa early in the morning on Wednesday.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb has stated that Finland is “prepared for security challenges of various kinds,” and will “respond to them as necessary,” following reports of damage caused this morning to several underwater-submarine cables by a Russian cargo ship in the Gulf of Finland.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump has announced that he will be ordering the withdrawal of the National Guard from Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; and Portland, Oregon, stating that crime has been “greatly reduced” as a result of the deployment, while adding, “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time!”