The European Bank has agreed to transfer the payment for the transit of Russian oil through Ukraine.

Reuters writes about this with reference to sources in the energy industry.

Earlier, oil transit to Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic via the Druzhba pipeline stopped due to sanctions restrictions.

The Russian "Transneft" could not transfer to Kiev the payment for its pumping.

In order not to be left without "black gold", the Europeans themselves had to pay for transportation costs. Prague did it today.

Translated from Rybar:
Where does the grain exported from Ukraine go? Anywhere but not to the "starving Africa"

After the conclusion of an agreement to open a “grain corridor” from Odessa, we assumed that the true purpose of the deal was not at all to prevent a food collapse in Africa, which was actively speculated by the Western media.

And these thoughts were confirmed in practice: judging by the documents that surfaced on the net, not a single ship with Ukrainian grain went to the starving Somalia, Yemen or Ethiopia. Most of the exported agricultural products expectedly went to European buyers.

Only two out of 11 dry cargo ships that left Ukrainian ports from August 1 to 11 went to Lebanon and Egypt. But there the situation was almost comical.

For example, in Beirut, where earlier there was a “great need” for grain from Ukraine, the buyer simply refused the goods due to a delay. And the share of Ukrainian grain in the Egyptian food sector is completely negligible.

All this clearly demonstrates that no one in the West cares about the food problems of Africa and other poorest countries. Each side has its own interests:

▪️The EU is to provide itself with food against the backdrop of a possible shortage of agricultural crops.

▪️USA - to take a share in the grain market by squeezing out other producers.

▪️Turkey - to process Ukrainian grain and sell it at high prices on the market.

And before the famine in Africa, which Russia is accused of creating, none of the above really cares. They are in no hurry to prevent it.
@rybar

Germany's Olaf Scholz announces new large-scale financial & military aid to Ukraine

We think, he will be waiting for a turbine installation for a while...

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on August 11 announced additional large-scale financial and military assistance to Ukraine in its efforts to repel Russian troops.

"Russian soldiers spared the bloodied Ukrainian soldier who survived during the assault on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, took him out of the dugout and even provided first aid. This is the difference between us and them - embittered and devoid of humanity".

Video: "Voenkor Kotionok Z".

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder may become a possible mediator in the current dispute between Berlin and Moscow over the reduction of gas supplies, acting Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday.

According to Scholz, it would be “commendable” if Schroeder talked to Moscow about the turbine, which is currently located in Germany. According to Scholz, the return of equipment vital for the operation of the Nord Stream-1 gas pipeline would encourage Russia to resume gas supplies as soon as possible.

🇺🇸In the United States, they announced mental problems in mercenaries who returned from Ukraine.

A researcher at the Defense Ministry's analytical center in the District of Columbia, Jeanne Mantua, said that the consequences of its can affect the American military community in a completely unexpected way and lead to an increase in suicides.

She called cruelty the main reason. The war in Ukraine is not like the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Mercenaries have much fewer advantages and are involved in more fierce battles.

One of the servicemen who returned from Ukraine said that he had never seen anything like this before. The Taliban (who are under UN sanctions) were amateurs.

"Here we are constantly bombed by planes and drones. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, everything you can imagine, they moved here... And they have cool equipment, air cover and fire support. Oddly enough, I was imbued with a new sense of respect for our old enemies," the mercenary said.

In addition, according to Mantua, the Americans are unable to "dehumanize" the enemy. In the Middle East, they could distance themselves from the enemy. In Ukraine, they are at war with Europeans who do not fit into the "friend-foe" paradigm.

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Translated from IZ.RU
Statements by the authorities of the Zaporozhye region about the shelling of the ZNPP:

— On the territory of the Zaporozhye NPP, from the point of view of nuclear safety, everything is in order, the level of radiation does not exceed the norm;

- Zaporozhye NPP received non-critical damage during the shelling of the Armed Forces of Ukraine;

- Only thanks to the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the reactor at the Zaporozhye NPP has not yet been destroyed by the shelling of the Armed Forces of Ukraine;

- Ukrainian militants are deliberately trying to provoke a catastrophe;

- One of the shells of the Armed Forces of Ukraine fell only 10 meters from the radioactive waste storage site after the last shelling;

- The authorities of the Zaporozhye region have identified those involved in the shelling of the nuclear power plant.

There are indications that two companies from the Ukrainian 56th brigade deserted near Peski after sustaining losses up to 70%.

Attention. Translated from an Ukrainian channel:

A powerful energy crisis is brewing in Ukraine, due to the fact that the Russians are preparing to switch the ZaNPP (Zaporozhye) to their Crimean and Donbass networks and power lines.

Because of this, Ukraine will face a power supply crisis in the winter. Added to this is a high percentage of depreciation of generating capacities and, of course, the “empty treasury” in Ukraine.

To divert attention, the Kyiv officials decided to arrange a man-made disaster with a permanent swing around ZaNPP.
For example, the head of the Ukrainian Energoatom, Petr Kotin, threatened to destroy Russian power lines, to which ZaNPP should switch the energy flow.

Our source reports that the Office of the President can play out and provoke not only a catastrophe, but also an infrastructure war. The consequences of this war for the Ukrainian people will be sad.
We will try to simulate:
- all transformer substations in Ukraine will be bombed. There will be no electricity.
- all water utilities and pumping stations will be bombed. There will be no water or heating.
- all important infrastructure enterprises, food and other industries, will be destroyed. Food shortage - hunger.

The country will be waiting for hunger, cold, darkness, epidemics, chaos, poverty and a complete mess.

The source indicates that the Kremlin partially understands that Ukrainian officials are deliberately provoking Russians to take this step in order to further their narrative that the Russian Federation is a terrorist country. Although it is Ukrainian officials who are talking about strikes on the Civil Strategic Infrastructure.

Only from this, will it be easier for the Ukrainian people, who are already forced to survive, with rising inflation, unemployment and the depreciation of the hryvnia.

Attention. Translated from an Ukrainian channel:

Operation "Prevention of the Referendum"

Zelensky faced a difficult task - to disrupt the planned vote for the entry of the Zaporozhye region into the Russian Federation. And it is hard not to allow, and not just not to recognize. The effectiveness of these non-recognitions was shown by the case with the Crimea - no one recognizes it, but the Russian Federation does not care.

The most effective way is a nuclear incident at the ZNPP.

You can’t act directly - the international community will not understand. But, an informational "spin doctor" like Arestovich can deal with it.

Right now, the concept of Overton windows is applied:
Stage 1 - High-precision shelling of the Russian forces near the station (message: the land is ours, we have the right to protect it).
Stage 2 - Blame the Russians for these shellings (the message is that they are terrorists, they will not stop before a nuclear apocalypse).
Stage 3 - Hysteria on international platforms, the statement of the head of Energoatom about the right to "destroy the ZNPP power lines" (the message - we warned the whole world! If the Russians do not leave Energodar, there will be a disaster).
Stage 4 - recent strike on the ammonia pipeline in Donetsk. (the goal is a man-made disaster in the territories controlled by the Russian Federation, which the world media will not write about. The situation of man-made disasters in Ukraine should become commonplace for the layman).

All this time, the US and the EU have been playing along the same guidelines as Ukraine, demanding that the Russian Federation should leave the station.

After such a preparation of public opinion, a few days before the vote, it is possible to arrange a release of radiation. Moreover, there is no need to hit the reactor itself, nobody needs it. Not far from the station there is a storage facility for spent nuclear waste. A careful blow to it will cause a release of radiation, but it will not bring serious pollution except for Energodar.

As a result, nuclear terrorism will be added to the image of Putin in the West as a chemical terrorist and the initiator of hunger around the world.

It will not be possible to hold a referendum under such conditions, Ukraine will receive additional weapons, and the Russian Federation will receive new problems in the form of a city polluted with radiation.

In the Russian Federation, they know about the threat, but have not yet figured out how to stop it. We estimate the probability of this scenario to be 70%.

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE: Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Zelensky has the "WRONG ADDRESS" and it’s up to people themselves to decide, after Ukrainian leader ASSERTS that if referendums to join Russia take place in Russian-held territories, there could be NO talks with Ukraine or its allies.

From IntelRepublic

"German quality" lost in translation

(We always believed that German-made machinery is "over engineered")

Two-thirds of the Panzerhaubitze 2000 (PzH 2000) artillery mounts, which Germany and the Netherlands handed over to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, are out of order. This is reported by the German TV channel N-tv.

According to Markus Faber, deputy of the Bundestag from the Free Democratic Party of Germany, most of the 15 self-propelled howitzers provided to Kyiv do not work. He clarified that it was not “Russian fire” that was to blame, but the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces “actively use” these weapons.

Once again, the “professionalism” of the Ukrainian army cannot cope with Western weapons. Improper operation of German installations leads to their frequent breakdowns, and the lack of suitable spare parts makes expensive weapons useless rubbish.

Not surprisingly, after such news, the West began to strongly doubt the advisability of supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine (as evidenced by statistics indicating a sharp decline in the number of weapons supplied by the West).

With current prices for energy resources, even the richest countries of the European Union cannot afford to scatter their own expensive military equipment.

🇺🇦 Armed Forces of Ukraine and Ukrainian intelligence accuse each other of killing former "brothers"

The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine purposefully takes revenge on the soldiers who surrendered. This conclusion was reached by an international group of hackers who gained access to correspondence between high-ranking officers of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine (GUR) and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As an example, computer hackers cite a rocket attack on a pre-trial detention center in the village of Yelenovka (DPR) on the night of July 29, where 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed and more than 70 were injured.

From the correspondence, it becomes clear that since June the GUR began developing the Mumu operation to intimidate the prisoners. The goal was quite specific - to force the servicemen to stop "confessing" with investigators about the crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis and thereby complicate the holding of a war criminals tribunal scheduled for late August. Hence, by the way, the name of the operation - by analogy with the silent hero of the classic story by Turgenev.

For the time being, everything went according to plan: the Kiev regime insisted that the soldiers captured in Mariupol not be taken to Russia and kept close to the front line (allegedly to facilitate visits with relatives), while artillerymen from the AFU quietly shot at the settlement, claiming to be hitting some "military depots".

In July, the second phase of preparations for the act of intimidation began. International "human rights activists" (it is now clear that they were acting on instructions from Ukrainian intelligence officers), pointing their fingers at the provisions of the Geneva Convention, forced the prison authorities to move the prisoners from the camp barracks to another location. The fact is that the convention prohibits holding POWs in prisons and penal colonies. The law-abiding prison administration accepted the recommendation and equipped a special barrack for the prisoners in an industrial zone, in a metalwork shop. As proof of the meticulous work of the Ukrainian secret service, the hackers cite the exact GPS location of both premises; this data also appeared in the correspondence between the GUR and the AFU. According to the designers of the cunning plan, the strike was supposed to hit the barracks that had just been vacated.

The failure, as it turns out, occurred during the final part of the implementation of Operation Mumu. While aiming the Haimars at Yelenovka (previously only artillery had hit the village), the MLRS operators for some reason entered into the programme the coordinates of the new barracks and not the deserted camp barracks. Two high-precision American missiles struck the roof of the building, where around 200 Ukrainian prisoners were sleeping, around midnight.

According to the hacker intercepts, for some time top GUR and AFU officials blamed each other for killing their own service members, or blamed it on some "interference" and "program failures". But the leadership in Kyiv did not make waves. In the end, the participants in the operation got their way: the intelligence service eliminated and intimidated the potential figures in the tribunal, and the army generals took revenge on those who emerged from the ruins of the Azovstal steelworks with their hands raised and graphically demonstrated what fate awaited the "traitors".

Teletype

💬 AFU conscript officer Vitaliy Derevyankin: "...I don't want to go back to Ukraine...".

POWs of AFU's Marines, National Guard, Airborne Assault and Land Forces units decided to stay in Russian Federation-controlled territory due to reluctance to fight and fear of being on the front line again.

How quickly they are getting the right understanding of things after becoming POWs.

💬 Senior sailor of AFU Aleksandr Zhizhin: "...I don't want to return by exchange and I don't want to return to Ukraine...".

🏳️🇺🇦 POWs of AFU's Marines, National Guard, Airborne Assault and Land Forces units decided to stay in Russian Federation-controlled territory due to reluctance to fight and fear of being on the front line again.

#Russia #Ukraine @mod_russia_en