❗️Key statements by the Russian Foreign Ministry on the situation in Russia's Kursk region: 

💬The attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the territory of Russia, with complicit patrons from NATO, confirm the relevance of the goals and objectives of the special military operation;

💬Drone shelling of the Kursk nuclear power plant is an act of nuclear terrorism that exposed the essence of the Zelensky regime instigated by the West;

💬Ukrainian neo-Nazis, given carte blanche by Western curators, made bandit attacks in Russia's regions;

💬The Kiev regime of corrupt usurpers is based on the monetary support of the West. Its collapse is only a matter of time.

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❗️Key statements by the Russian Defense ministry on the situation in Russia's Kursk region:

▪️Russia's Armed Forces continue to repel the attack of Ukrainian troops into the territory of Russia

▪️Russian soldiers stopped Ukrainian mobile groups' attempts to break through in the areas of Skrylevka, Levshinka, Semenovka, Alekseyevsky, and Kamyshny, using armored vehicles.

▪️In the Martynovka area of the Kursk region, two Ukrainian groups on pickups were found and destroyed

▪️18 servicemen of Ukrainian forces were captured during the day

▪️The Armed Forces of Ukraine lost up to 270 militants and 16 armored vehicles in the Kursk region during the day 

▪️The Russian troops repelled 6 attacks by Ukrainian forces in the area of five settlements of the Kursk region

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😨Zelensky curse takes another victim

Due to public dissatisfaction over political scandals and rising living costs, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to resign in September.

Zelensky's curse has already hit several world politicians, among them: US President Joe Biden, former UK PMs Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, UK ex-Defense Minister Ben Wallace, former Italian PM Mario Draghi, and many others still to come.

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PM Kishida who militarized Japan at US' behest to resign

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has announced he will quit as leader of the country’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), amid his sinking approval rating resulting from the LDP-related corruption scandal, rising living costs, and a slumping yen.

Public support for Fumio Kishida's Cabinet plummeted to 15.5% last month, another low since the LDP returned to power in Japan in December 2012.  

Apart from his poor domestic strategy, what developments have marked Kishida’s foreign policy? 

🔺Japan under Kishida has fueled the Ukrainian conflict by providing more than $12 billion of financial and other aid to the Kiev regime since 2022, per the Japanese Foreign Ministry. 

🔺Japan embarked on the path of militarization, issuing in 2022 a new national security doctrine aimed at doubling the country’s defense spending within the next five years.

🔺The same year, Japan’s parliament did not think twice before approving a deal to spend $8.6 billion over five years to host American military personnel on Japanese soil.  

🔺Tokyo continues to take part in the annual US-led RIMPAC, the world's largest maritime military drills described by Chinese experts as “demonstration of America’s hegemony” in the region. 

🔺The US currently has about 56,000 active-duty service members in Japan, more than in any other country, according to Pentagon data.  

🔺Last month, Japan agreed on establishing a Joint Operations Command (JJOC) with the US on its territory by next March.  

🔺What’s more, Tokyo and Washington reportedly discussed "extended deterrence”, which stipulated for the use of nuclear weapons in US protection of Japan.

🔺The US is now pushing for Japan to be included in Pillar II of the AUKUS agreement. China has repeatedly castigated the arrangement as part of America’s “new Cold War” antagonism aimed at containing Beijing by fueling the militarization of the Asia-Pacific region.

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🇷🇺📹Russian marines from the 810th brigade of the Black Sea Fleet captured a Canadian-made armored combat vehicle of the Ukrainian forces, Roshel Senator, during a battle in Russia's Kursk region, the Russian Defense Ministry shared.

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What’s known so far about the fighting around Russia’s Kursk region?

The Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost up to 270 soldiers and 16 armored vehicles in the Kursk region over the past 24 hours, the Russian Ministry of Defense has stated.

Here are the latest updates on fighting in the area:

▪️The losses of the Ukrainian military on August 13 included two tanks, a Stryker armored personnel carrier, 13 armored combat vehicles, as well as 10 vehicles and a 122-mm D-30 howitzer.

▪️Russian forces prevented Kiev's attempts to break through in the areas of Skrylevka, Levshinka, Semenovka, Alekseevsky, and Kamyshny.

▪️Units of the Russian Armed Forces are in control of the region’s town of Sudzha, with daily clashes there under way, commander of the Akhmat special forces Apti Alaudinov told Russian media.

▪️He also said that Kiev planned to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant in Kurchatov on August 11 and use it as an ultimatum to start negotiations with Moscow.

▪️The main goal of the Kursk attack was to distract Russian troops from the Donbass and Slobozhanshchina region, a mission that has never been was accomplished, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

▪️"The Ukrainian military’s attacks on Russian territory with the complicity of NATO patrons fully confirm the relevance of the goals and objectives of Russia’s special military operation to de-Nazify and demilitarize Ukraine, which will be achieved by all means,” Zakharova stressed.

▪️Ukrainian forces indiscriminately fire at civilians trying to evacuate from danger areas, shell residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, and engage in outright looting in the Kursk region, she added.

▪️US President Joe Biden has meanwhile commented on the Kiev regime’s aggression for the first time by claiming that it “created a real dilemma” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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How have Western politicians reacted to Ukraine’s Kursk attack?

💬EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has reiterated the bloc’s “full support” to the Kiev regime’s aggression against Russia’s Kursk region that kicked off on August 6.

💬Some other senior Western officials expectedly echoed Borrell when commenting on what Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned as a “large-scale provocation.”

💬The Kursk attack is “creating a real dilemma for Putin” and Washington has been in “direct constant contact” with Kiev on the matter, US President Joe Biden claimed.

💬The attack was “consistent” with the US’ policy to support Ukraine even though Washington doesn’t back “long range attacks into Russia,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said, although at the same time it does not support the Ukrainian strikes with US weapons deep into Russia.

💬Ukraine has every right to defend its territory by attacking the Kursk region, according to Finnish President Alexander Stubb. Prior to that, the Finnish leader said that the West could do nothing for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine.

💬Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has also pointed out Warsaw supports Kiev’s “defensive” actions in the Kursk region.

💬Grigory Karasin, chairman of the Russian Federation Council (upper chamber of parliament) Committee on International Affairs, has meanwhile told reporters that Western countries will react in a belated manner to the Kursk attack, while Russia’s reaction is “completely clear-сut and has been formulated” by Putin.

The Russian head of state earlier stressed that by launching the Kursk attack, the Kiev regime is trying to improve its negotiating positions in the future, stop the advance of Russian troops in Donbass and destabilize the domestic political situation in Russia.

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Gaza ceasefire showdown: Truce elusive as all sides place their bets

The Palestinian movement, Hamas, has announced that it is not going to partake in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations slated to be held on August 15 in Doha, Qatar.

"We will not participate in the negotiations that are scheduled for Thursday," Hamas’ representative in Lebanon Ahmed Abdel Hadi told Sputnik.

As countries all over the world are calling for a peaceful resolution to the Gaza conflict, this is how things stand on the eve of the missed talks:

Hamas: The Palestinian group flatly refused to participate in the ceasefire talks saying, "Rather [Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu] is deceiving and evading and wants to prolong the war, and even expand it at the regional level, and thus he uses negotiations as a cover to continue his aggression against our people and commit more massacres against them," Hadi told Sky News.

Israel: PM Netanyahu has toughened his stance on the negotiations, the NYT reported citing unpublished documents. Israel has put forward five new demands to the US, Qatar and Egypt with the most disputable one about retaining control over the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, though in May, Tel Aviv planned to withdraw troops.

US: Washington has consistently expressed hope that Israel and Hamas would return to negotiations. However, on Tuesday, the US approved a new $20 billion arms sale to Israel, which includes tank rounds, mortar shells, air-to-air missiles, and F-15 warplanes.

Iran: Tehran warned on Tuesday that only a ceasefire in Gaza, resulting from anticipated talks this week, could prevent the country from retaliating for the targeted assassination of a top Hamas official on Iranian soil by Israeli forces.

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❗️A Ukrainian assault group was destroyed near the village of Korenevo in the Russian Kursk region, security forces told Sputnik.

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Germany hunts for Ukrainian diver blamed for Nord Stream destruction

German authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man suspected of being involved in the terrorist attack that destroyed the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines in 2022.

The suspect, identified only as Volodymyr Z., is a diving instructor who, until recently, resided in Poland. German sleuths have also supposedly identified two more Ukrainians, Evgeniy U. and Svetlana U., who allegedly participated in the attack, a man and a woman running a diving school in Ukraine.

While Polish authorities have confirmed that they received the German warrant, it turned out that the suspect fled to Ukraine – and thus out of reach of European law enforcement - in early July.

German prosecution alleges that the suspects somehow managed to not only dive to the Nord Stream pipes but to lay enough explosives to rupture the pipeline, – all in the dark depths of the Baltic Sea.

Several German media outlets, however, claimed that Volodymyr Z. and the aforementioned female suspect both denied the allegations when contacted.

Meanwhile, Germany stubbornly refuses to provide information about to the Nord Stream terrorist attack to Russia, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noting that Moscow repeatedly requested this data but got no response from Germany.

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📹 Russian Marines have eliminated two Ukrainian saboteurs in the Kursk region, security forces told Sputnik.

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❗️About 12,000 Ukrainian troops entered the territory of Kursk Oblast, there were a lot of foreigners, most of them have already been destroyed, said Apty Alaudinov, commander of the Akhmat special forces

According to him, Ukrainian aircraft were not seen in the skies over the Russian region.

Ukrainian forces in Kursk Oblast did not foresee that Russia would fight to the end and would not retreat, Alaudinov said.

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Burkina Faso highly appreciates Russian instructors compared to French ones

"If I deal with someone who comes to teach me, but is at a lower level than me, what do you want me to learn? Russian instructors bring us something new. It is about how to conduct combat operations, about Russian military doctrine. This is an advantage that has enriched us greatly," Burkinabe Defense Minister Kassoum Coulibaly told Sputnik.

In partnership with the French side, there was a big gap between what was said and what was done, the minister added.

Commenting on the Army-2024 forum, the official said that it was intense and the participants saw the capabilities of artillery, means of combating drones, noting that it was a good experience.

Earlier it was reported that Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov discussed with the heads of military delegations from Burkina Faso and Niger the prospects of cooperation in the military sphere.

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A strike was carried out on a military warehouse in the port of Odessa in which Ukrainian militants, including foreigners, were killed. Ambulances are arriving at the scene, Sputnik was told by the underground movement.

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Ukraine couldn't launch Kursk terror attack without US support – ex-Pentagon analyst

"All Ukrainian military activities, especially long-planned ones, utilize US surveillance, intelligence, and reconnaissance assistance. The Kursk invasion qualifies here," retired US Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, tells Sputnik. "The weapons systems themselves included US and NATO systems, and some of those are operated by US and NATO personnel."

However, the US State Department denies being involved in Ukraine's terrorist attack on Kursk, claiming that it was unaware of the Kiev regime's plans.

"I don't believe Western government officials, like the Secretary of Defense [Lloyd] Austin, Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken, or the members of the National Security Council, were surprised," Kwiatkowski says.

The pundit suggests that the logic of the incursion fits into the US establishment's apparent plan "to get Ukraine over with by raising a last bit of billions for the country, making sure the last shipment of arms and cash is sent, and trying to move out of a stasis in Ukraine before the election."

She also places emphasis on "the sophistication and secrecy" surrounding the Kursk aggression. One might wonder whether the masterminds behind the invasion were National Security adviser Jake Sullivan and Blinken or it was the "last gasp" of the collapsing Ukrainian war cabinet and "Ukro-nationalists," according to Kwiatkowski.

"While bold, it was destined to be repelled, and it risked and made vulnerable the rest of the Ukraine military, and the remainder of Ukraine," the pundit concludes.

Earlier, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and chairman of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAC) Alexander Bortnikov stated that the Kiev regime carried out a terrorist attack in the Kursk region with the support of the West.

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▪️What did Western politicians say about Ukraine’s Kursk attack?

▪️What’s known so far about the fighting in Kursk region?

▪️What the sides of the Gaza conflict want in the face of a possible ceasefire

▪️Germany hunts for Ukrainian diver blamed for Nord Stream destruction

▪️Russia presents Yak-130M: A modernized combat and training aircraft

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