Germany is outraged by Lithuania's decision to restrict the transit of goods to the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation and demands to cancel this measure, - Der Spiegel.

According to the sources of the publication, this measure may soon be cancelled at the request of Berlin, which fears that the conflict with the Russian Federation may continue to escalate due to a transit dispute.

Ukrainian troops, retreating from Lysychansk, struck the city administration with a Tochka-U missile.

No one was injured, no one was in the building at that time, Ramzan Kadyrov said.

According to him, the tactics of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is to inflict maximum destruction on the liberated cities in order to deprive them of infrastructure.

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Good evening. (From Russian Air Force)

Dozens of countries risk protests, riots and political violence this year as food prices surge around the world, the head of the food-aid branch of the United Nations has warned.

Speaking in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday, David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said the world faced “frightening” shortages that could destabilise countries that depend on wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia.

“Even before the Ukraine crisis, we were facing an unprecedented global food crisis because of Covid and fuel price increases,” said Beasley. “Then, we thought it couldn’t get any worse, but this war has been devastating.”

Ukraine grows enough food every year to feed 400 million people. It produces 42% of the world’s sunflower oil, 16% of its maize and 9% of its wheat. Somalia relies on Ukraine and Russia for all of its wheat imports, while Egypt gets 80% of its grain from the two countries.

Situation around Lisichansk now.

The actual military presence of NATO on the eastern flank of the alliance.

Beauty of natural laws 🌟

Attention. Translated from Ukrainian channel:

Now they talk and write a lot about information warfare, but there is very little high-quality analytics and analysis of technologies used by opponents. The Office of the President has created several structures that constantly analyse the information space and provide a good analysis. We often criticize the technologists at Bankovaya, but they are now reorganizing their work, and the CPD has begun to conduct effective monitoring in an attempt to understand manipulation technologies. In Russia, such a structure has never appeared, they consider the information war to be a secondary factor, which allows our specialists, together with the British intelligence services, to effectively use the developments of the West.
In modern warfare, the enemy's combat readiness can be influenced by destroying his infrastructure, manpower and equipment, or by disrupting his information exchange processes or introducing his information into the enemy's information systems. From this point of view, the task of information warfare is to influence the information of the enemy in order to undermine his combat capability and protect his information from enemy influence. Information can be both the target of influence and a weapon in the information war.

There are several directions in the information war:
• propaganda is the lowest level, focused on the internal consumer of information, with a minimum level of analysis.
•psychological operations - the use of information to influence the argumentation of enemy soldiers or public outcry.
• disinformation - provides the enemy with false information about our forces and intentions
• physical destruction - can be part of the information war if it aims to influence the elements of information systems.
• security measures - seek to prevent the enemy from learning about our capabilities and intentions.
•direct information attacks - direct distortion of information without any visible change in the entity in which it is located.
• semantic influence - gives rise to doubt in the recipient society in the actions of the authorities / military
• reprogramming - a multi-stage process of changing the paradigm of the enemy's thinking, with the task of pulling him over to his side or abandoning further struggle

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Biden admits, that it is a war-time.💤

More about Lisichansk...

Sky News spoke to local residents. They were surprised by their honest answers.

Ukraine shelled Belgorod, Kursk (both Russia) and Melitopol (liberated town in southern Ukraine). In Belgorod at least 5 civilians died 4 injured.

This is biggest shelling of Russia territory so far, and it's clearly done for information purposes - to divert attention from Ukraine failure in Lisichansk.

More footage of explosions in Belgorod tonight.

The governor previously reported on the work of the air defense.

According to him, 3 people were killed, four others were injured, including a child.

About 40 private houses and 11 apartment buildings received various damages.

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Tonight, on the approach to Kursk, Russian air defenses shot down two Ukrainian Strizh drones, the governor of the region said.

Thanks to the competent actions of the military, there are no casualties.

"Unfortunately, the situation in Belgorod is different. As a result of the enemy's attack, there are dead and wounded among the residents, the houses of civilians have been destroyed," Roman Starovoit added.

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Lithuania, with an army of just 8,850 active-duty personnel and 5,650 reservists, is now enforcing a blockade of sorts against Russia through Kaliningrad. The latter was seized from Germany at the end of World War II and ended up separated from the rest of Russia after the Baltic States seceded from the Soviet Union. Vilnius is forbidding transport of coal, metals, electronics, and other E.U.-sanctioned products to Kaliningrad, whose governor said that roughly half of the territory’s typical imports were on the ban list. Lithuanian officials claimed to be only “following orders,” as it were, from a higher authority: “We just implement the sanctions, which were imposed on European Union level, and this has nothing to do with the bilateral relations between Russia and Lithuania,” announced Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda.

Where does Europe stand on Lithuania’s incendiary ploy? The European Union’s foreign affairs “High Representative” Josep Borrell—someone with a great title but little useful to do—said he was “always worried about Russian retaliations,” but defended Lithuania, explaining that “it is not guilty, it is not implementing national sanctions, it is not implementing their will.”
...
However, behind the scenes, E.U. officials waffled nervously. Politico observed “a thinly veiled but pretty solid contradiction between Lithuania’s statement, which claims the E.U.’s sanctions include a ban on transit of metals and therefore Lithuania must block such transit to Kaliningrad, and the Commission spokesman, who said Lithuania merely has to perform ‘proportionate’ checks ‘while allowing free transit’.” Indeed, an unnamed “senior official” told Politico that “certain Balts profited to ramp up the pressure.”

No doubt they did. And in doing so, Vilnius knowingly and recklessly stoked the fire burning in Europe’s East.

First Deputy Minister of Information of the DPR Daniil Bezsonov

The defeat of the Ukrainian group in the Donbass continues. Lisichansk is taken. This means that the Lugansk People's Republic is almost completely liberated from Ukrainian occupation. The enemy retreated, having suffered huge losses, to Seversk.

However, the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are already on fire in the Seversk region, where reinforcements from Slavyansk and Artemovsk arrived last week. That is, as early as last week, the complete closure of the ring around Lysichansk, the impossibility of the retreat of forces from this city and the need to restrain our troops already in the Seversk region were already obvious to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. So our military experts note the reasonable decision of our troops to start working with artillery on the Nazi fortifications in the Seversk region right now. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the city will be able to be taken without a fight - since the Nazis brought reinforcements there, it means that they did not receive orders to retreat, which is logical, they did not receive and are ready to continue to spend their human resources. Now the fighting in the direction of Seversk is already in full swing - the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reports that in the area of Verkhnekamenka and Zolotarevka, three battalions of the 10th mountain assault and 72nd mechanized brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have lost more than half of their personnel. Of course, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will not be able to hold back our advance to Seversk. The Ukrainian Nazis also suffered losses in Artyomovsk - with the help of high-precision weapons of the Russian Aerospace Forces, they destroyed about 120 militants in the Artyomovsk region.

There are also successes in other areas, the enemy is suffering losses: in the Nikolaev region, a MiG-29 of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was shot down, 19 drones were also destroyed over the past day, in the Kharkiv region, the Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed the base for storing weapons and equipment on the territory of the Kharkov Tractor Plant. In addition, five control posts and three ammunition depots of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, four MLRS platoons were destroyed in all directions over the past day; our artillery, missilemen and airborne forces destroyed 340 targets in a day.

Now from the negative. It became known that Ukraine will receive another tranche of military aid from its Western masters. Assistance for $ 820 million. This package again includes ammunition for the HIMARS MLRS, two NASAMS anti-aircraft missile systems, about 150 thousand shells for NATO-style 155-mm artillery and four counter-battery radars. All these weapons should not be underestimated. This is not junk - a formidable weapon, but the volume of supplies is such that this will not turn the tide at the front. And in the blink of an eye, all these weapons are not in the right positions, but our forces are working in the military logistics of Ukraine, and they are working successfully.

Why, then, does NATO continue to supply weapons in metered quantities if this does not change the situation on the front in the direction of Ukraine? Firstly, the economies of the NATO countries still need to reorganize on a war footing, use their additional reserves, which are not unlimited - they do not lie when they say that "the stocks of such and such have been depleted" due to sending aid to Ukraine. But this does not mean that these reserves will not be replenished. Plus, the tactics of the West are, among other things, a war of attrition against Russia. But Russia has a sufficient margin of safety to withstand this. But Ukraine will not survive. And as a human being, I feel sorry for those Ukrainians who, against their will, are thrown meat under our shells. This is how you have to give up. Ukraine's human resource is running out much faster than the shells sent by the West.

Translated from source:

Today's shelling of the Belgorod and Kursk regions by the Armed Forces of Ukraine is nothing but agony. Watching the losses of Mariupol, Severodonetsk and Lysichansk, the large forces of the Ukrainian army falling into the cauldron, and the complete demoralization of the forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Ukrainian authorities in their impotent rage are only capable of shelling civilians. Moreover, their Western partners are actively supplying weapons capable of hitting the cities of the DPR, LPR and Russia. Those who give orders in Kyiv are well aware that drones and Tochka-U, directed by them, fly to kill children, women, old people. This is not a rivalry of armies - this is the agony of embittered, cornered Nazis, capable of fighting only with civilians. In fact, this is what they have been doing for the last eight years.

They are confident that Russia will respond in kind and start hitting civilian targets and civilians. But they are wrong. On our part, a purposeful operation is underway to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Russia has not fought and is not fighting against civilians. In Mariupol, the Nazis from Azov (recognized as an extremist organization and banned on the territory of the Russian Federation) used the inhabitants as human shields, but this did not help them. Now Zelensky and the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to provoke strikes against their own citizens. We will answer differently. We are already answering: Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu today reported to Vladimir Putin on the liberation of the Luhansk People's Republic. And this is not the end. As the president noted, “the ultimate goal of a special military operation is the liberation of Donbass and guarantees for the security of Russia itself,” and our army is on the way to achieving these goals!

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