Watch Russian Troops Defend Border and Decimate Ukrainian Militants

Russia's Ministry of Defense released footage showing the decimation of a Ukrainian sabotage group that tried to enter the village of Kozinka in the Belgorod region. The militants were intercepted and decimated by heavy fire from the Russian Armed Forces.

Earlier, the Defense Ministry reported that between March 12 and 14, Ukraine attempted to infiltrate Russia's Belgorod and Kursk regions. All attempts were thwarted by Russian forces and over 1500 militants were killed.

The Russian command was well aware that Ukraine might try to infiltrate Russia's borders, so Vladimir Putin ordered battle-hardened military professionals, including Spetsnaz (Special Forces) troops, to be stationed there to properly greet saboteurs and give them what they were asking for.

Watch Russian Aviation Pound Ukrainian Fortifications

A special strike group from the Russian Aerospace Forces hit Ukraine’s stronghold and troop clusters in the Kupyansk area of the special op.

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) has released footage showing off the military carrying out barrage precision strikes with S-8 aerial drones.

After accomplishing the mission, Russian crews executed an anti-missile maneuver using the on-board defense complex and successfully returned to their departure airfield.

In the course of the ongoing special military operation, Russian Army Aviation escorts military convoys, hammers Ukrainian armored vehicles, delivers troops and military cargos to designated locations, and provides air support for army units performing various combat missions on the ground.

Long-range strikes, drone warfare and border escalation: Key events of the week in Russia-Ukraine conflict

The past week in the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been marked by a major escalation at border areas between the two countries, as Kiev’s forces staged multiple attempts to breach into the Kursk and Belgorod regions. The attacks came ahead of the 2024 Russian presidential election, which kicked off on Friday.

Active combat also continued to rage to the northwest of Donetsk near the villages Orlovka, Tonenkoye and Berdychi, where the Russian military continues its push following the liberation of the town of Avdeevka last month. The Ukrainian military has been actively pouring reserves into the area in an apparent effort to stabilize the frontline, staging multiple counterattacks daily.

According to Russian military estimates, Kiev’s forces have been losing some 400 soldiers on average in the Orlovka-Tonenkoye-Berdychi area daily, as well as multiple pieces of military hardware. On Monday, Moscow claimed the destruction of a fourth US-supplied M1 Abrams tank in the area, though no footage to corroborate the kill has emerged.

On Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the liberation of Nevelskoe, a small settlement located some 20 kilometers west of Donetsk. It sits around 3.5 kilometers south of the village of Pervomayskoye, an important stronghold for Ukrainian forces, which provides cover for the southern flank of the Orlovka-Tonenkoye-Berdychi line. Pervomayskoye, stretching along a system of ponds, canals and dams, has seen active combat for weeks already, with Russian forces reported to partially control its eastern outskirts.

Starting from Tuesday, Ukrainian forces staged attempts to breach the Russian border, attacking multiple locations along its frontier with Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions.

These attacks have been attributed by Kiev to the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and to the Russian Freedom Legion, paramilitary units created early in the conflict and attached to the country’s military intelligence agency, the GUR. The units, which portray themselves as collaborator forces composed of Russian defectors, as well as fugitive neo-Nazis, are designated by Moscow as terrorist organizations.

The Russian military has released multiple videos showing unsuccessful Ukrainian attempts to breach through the border. A drone video captured on Tuesday at a Russian border checkpoint near the village of Nehkoteevka, Belgorod Region, shows a Ukrainian T-64 tank hitting a landmine, with its crew abandoning the vehicle. The tank was subsequently destroyed by a drone, which dropped a hand grenade into its hatch.

Another video shows multiple damaged and destroyed Ukrainian armored engineering vehicles, tanks and infantry fighting vehicles near the border village of Sporadyushino, also in Belgorod Region. One of the abandoned tanks appears to be a modernized T-80, which had apparently been previously captured by Ukraine from Russian forces.

Disturbing drone footage from the same location, released by the Russian military on Thursday, shows the battlefield littered with dead and wounded Ukrainian troops. The unit was reportedly hit by a Russian TOS system. While officially designated as a “heavy flamethrower” in Russia, the system is effectively a multiple rocket launcher, which uses devastating thermobaric munitions.

On Thursday, the Ukrainian forces attempted a helicopter assault near the village of Kozinki in Belgorod Region. A group of some 30 soldiers disembarked from two Mi8 helicopters, which flew across the border at a low altitude, the Russian military has said. The unit, however, ended up blocked by Russian troops and forced back into Ukrainian territory, ending up trapped in a minefield. An evacuation group which attempted to help it ended up sustaining heavy casualties as well, with the tally of the botched operation reaching up to 50 service personnel.

Thus far, the attacks failed to yield any tangible result, with the Ukrainian forces sustaining heavy casualties in the effort. According to the latest estimates by the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev lost some 1,500 troops, including up to 500 killed, as well as 18 tanks and 23 other armored vehicles during the border-region attacks.

The effort to breach through the Russian border have been preceded and coupled with a sharp uptick in suicide-drone attacks launched by Ukrainian troops. Multiple attacks were reported by the Russian military on a daily basis, with a majority of drones ending up shot down and failing to reach their designated targets.

A major drone swarm of at least 47 fixed-wing UAVs was intercepted on Saturday night, with the majority of them –41 aircraft– shot down over Rostov Region. The drones’ primary target was reportedly the city of Taganrog, with a local aircraft plant, known to be servicing Russian flying radar planes, presumed to have been the prime target. A handful of drones – or debris of the shot-down ones – seemingly made it through, inflicting minor damage to the plant’s structures, satellite imagery circulating online suggests.

Two other major drone attacks were repelled on Tuesday and Wednesday, with more than 25 and 58 UAVs shot down over the two days respectively. Some of the drones made it deep into Russia, with several downed near Moscow and St Petersburg. The two waves of UAVs appeared to be targeting primarily oil refineries and fuel depots, with the local authorities of Orel and Nizhny Novgorod regions each reporting fires at a single such facility.

The Russian military has apparently ramped up long-range attacks on the Ukrainian deep rear, striking multiple staging points far away from the frontline. On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed destruction of an S-300 air defense system deployed near the Ukrainian-controlled town of Pokrovsk, in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

The town is located some 67 kilometers north-west of the Russian region’s capital, Donetsk. The system was hit by at least one Iskander ballistic missile, which triggered secondary detonation of anti-aircraft missiles, with multiple launchers and support vehicles neutralized.

While the Russian military identified the system as a Soviet-made S-300, multiple Ukrainian sources and independent military observers suggested the destroyed vehicles actually belonged to a US-made Patriot system. Footage released by the Russian Defense Ministry appears to corroborate this theory, with two of the destroyed vehicles resembling German-made MAN KAT1 8x8 trucks, commonly used as a platform for Patriot launchers. The Russian military claimed to have struck another Patriot launcher, in Ukraine’s Kharkov region on Wednesday.

The Russian military reported another long-range attack on that day, releasing drone footage of a strike on a temporary airfield located near the DPR village of Novopavlovka, some 46 kilometers from the front line. Three Ukrainian Mi-8/17 military-transport helicopters were detected during a re-supply stop, with the location getting hit by an unspecified cluster munition.

The attack left two of the helicopters damaged and unable to fly, with the aircraft subsequently destroyed by direct hits of unknown high-precision projectiles. While the surviving helicopter appeared to be an older Soviet-made Mi-8MT aircraft, at least one of the destroyed ones was apparently a Russian-made Mi-17V-5, supplied by Moscow to the now-defunct US-propped Afghan army in the early 2010s. A number of the surviving aircraft of the type ended up transferred to Ukraine by the Pentagon mid-2022.

Massacre - Israel Kills at Least 20 Palestinians Waiting for Aid

©AP Photo / Hatem Ali

The incident occurred just hours after eight people were killed in an airstrike on an aid distribution center at the al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, Palestinian health officials said. Israel’s military has denied responsibility for the attack.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 20 people were killed by Israeli forces while waiting to receive aid on Thursday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have called the reports “erroneous” and claimed that the Palestinians opened fire on their own people, adding that some civilians were run over by aid trucks. The attack left more than 150 people injured and came just hours after eight people were killed in an airstrike at the al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.

“An intensive preliminary review conducted overnight by the IDF found that the IDF did not open fire at the aid convoy,” the IDF said in a statement.

But the Ministry of Health wrote on social media that what happened at the “Kuwaiti roundabout points to hidden intentions of the occupation to commit a new, horrible massacre.”

Gaza officials said the attack occurred at the Kuwait roundabout where a crowd had gathered to receive aid. Three people who spoke to a Washington, DC journal said they saw an Israeli helicopter and drones randomly firing on Palestinians who had gathered to receive aid. The witnesses also said they saw armed Palestinian officers as well, but added that they were some distance away. They said the officers had fired their weapons into the air to control the crowds.

A journalist from Agence France-Presse also said they had been on the ground during the incident on Thursday and had seen several bodies and people who had been shot, according to a report.

Some aid agencies have tried to create less predictable paths for their routes to reduce the number of people who might gather for aid. But the quality of those roads creates a problem, says one individual who works for a nonprofit.

“The problem is there are very few routes to take and all are very difficult to travel on – there have been tanks driving up and down them for months and they are basically just strips of rubble now – so people can predict where the trucks are going to be,” said an NGO official in Gaza.

Land access to Gaza—which is now facing a famine—via Jordan, Israel, and Egypt remains limited. Countries sending emergency aid to Palestine have had to diversify their routes as a result. While Israel has denied limiting aid to Gaza, the United Nations (UN) and other relief officials have said that without a cease-fire, their ability to deliver humanitarian aid remains limited.

On Friday, Israel’s war cabinet met to evaluate a new cease-fire proposal by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Hamas’ demands were “unreasonable” but added that Israel would send a delegation to Qatar to discuss their position.

Qatar, Egypt, and the US are hoping to reach a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas before Ramadan, a Muslim holy month, which began on Monday. Netanyahu recently said that his war cabinet had approved a ground invasion plan for Gaza’s southern Rafah city.

Thus far, at least 31,490 Palestinians have been killed and 73,439 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since the war first began. The US has made nearly $600 million worth of arms sales to Israel with an additional amount of sales that went undisclosed. For weeks, humanitarian officials have been warning of an oncoming famine in Gaza as a result of the conflict, according to a report from the UN.

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Patriot Missile Systems Too Complex and Expensive to Be Sent to Ukraine Without US Chaperones

©AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk

While more and more US-supplied weapon systems are taken out by Russian forces in the Ukrainian conflict, the Pentagon vehemently denies the presence of US military personnel in Ukraine who may be operating and maintaining this hardware.

Though a spokesperson for the Pentagon told Russian media that there are no US personnel in Ukraine servicing Patriot missile launchers or some other US hardware, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, did not seem convinced by these claims.

“I think the US government is lying, by omission and also directly, on this question of US servicemen operating or maintaining equipment, specifically the Patriot system, in Ukraine,” Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.

“Given the vulnerability and the expense and the limited number of these systems, I find it difficult to believe that the US contractors and US operators are not involved and monitoring day-to-day activities in each of these areas of operation,” she said. “Maintenance of these systems requires over a year of training, and I expect major maintenance is being monitored and done by US contractors and servicemen.”

Noting that the Patriot missile systems supplied to Kiev were provided by Germany and the US, along with “some missiles and parts from the Netherlands,” the former analyst speculated that “contracted US support connected directly to those countries may also be in the country,” thus “providing deniability for the Pentagon.”

Kwiatkowski also brought up the recent affair involving a leaked call between German military officers discussing attacks against Russian territory, who mentioned “somewhat humorously the large number of people aiding the fight in Ukraine who have ‘an American accent’.”

She pointed out that the CIA that has been “heavily involved in Ukraine” since long before 2022, “often serves as a vehicle with which to take on experts from the US military via direct hiring, temporary assignment, or via the contracted use of skilled retirees from the US active duty military and reserve forces.”

Kwiatkowski added that, considering the cost of the Patriot systems and their missiles, along with the “extensive training required for all aspects of this expensive system,” it would seem that the predictions made last year about the transfer of these weapons being “largely a political statement of support rather than a significant system of air defense for Ukrainian cities” were correct.

Watch Annihilation of Ukrainian Saboteurs Who Dared Approach Russian Border

On Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that another attempt by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to invade the Russian border territory near Spodaryushino in the Belgorod region had been thwarted.

The Russian Defense Ministry has released footage showing the ill fate of Ukrainian saboteurs near the village of Spodaryushino in the Belgorod region. Fire from Russian artillery combined with airstrikes decimated militants and destroyed their vehicles, including five tanks.

"Preemptive actions by Russian units have thwarted another attempt by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to break through into the border area of the Russian Federation near the settlement of Spodaryushino in the Belgorod region," the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"As a result of air strikes and artillery fire, up to 195 servicemen, five tanks, four armored combat vehicles, three UR-77 mine clearing vehicles and three military engineering vehicles were destroyed," the Defense Ministry added.

Watch Russian TOS-1A Solntsepyok Heavy Flamethrowers Demolish Ukrainian Positions

Russia’s TOS-1A Solntsepyk (Scorching Sunlight) is a powerful and devastating multiple rocket launcher system, designed to deliver a high volume of high-explosive incendiary (HEI) rockets capable of causing massive damage to enemy forces and infrastructure.

The Russian Defense Ministry has released footage of crews of TOS-1A Solntsepyok heavy flamethrowers destroying Ukrainian positions near Artemovsk.

The heavy flamethrower system crews eliminate enemy fortifications, hardware, and personnel on a daily basis, with servicemen having to carry out tasks more often at night, as it is safer and creates an additional surprise effect for the enemy, the ministry added.

‘Neo-Nazi Kiev regime’ tried to disrupt Russian elections – Putin

President Vladimir Putin holds a meeting with permanent members of the Russian Security Council via videolink on February 15, 2024.
©Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel

The continuing Ukrainian incursions into and strikes on Russia's border regions are primarily aimed at disrupting the ongoing election in the country, President Vladimir Putin has said.

The president made the remarks on Friday during a meeting with permanent members of the Russian National Security Council. Putin condemned the efforts made by Kiev to disrupt the ongoing election, vowing retaliation for the attacks.

In order to disrupt the voting process and intimidate people, at least in the regions bordering Ukraine, the Kiev neo-Nazi regime has conceived and is trying to carry out a series of “demonstrative criminal armed actions,” Putin stated.

The effort includes continuous indiscriminate drone and artillery strikes, as well as a concentrated effort to breach the country’s border, launched by Ukrainian forces earlier this week, the president explained, describing Kiev’s actions as “senseless from the military, and criminal from a humanitarian standpoint.”

The escalation may also be used as a PR stunt for Kiev to show the Ukrainian public and its Western backers some military gains, Putin suggested. As for trying to intimidate the Russian people, the Ukrainian leadership will never achieve such a goal, with the country’s people responding to such actions only with “further consolidation,” he added.

“Another possible goal of such actions is to divert the attention of their own people and the public in other countries, whom the Kiev regime is trying to beg for money and all sorts of handouts, to divert attention from the real situation on the front line,” the president said.

According to Moscow’s estimates, the Ukrainian military has deployed over 2,500 servicemen, some 35 tanks and around 40 other armored vehicles to attack multiple locations along the border, Putin noted. All the attacks have been repelled, with the Ukrainians sustaining heavy personnel and material casualties.

Unfriendly Countries Tried to Disrupt Voting of Russians Abroad - Foreign Ministry

Unfriendly countries have tried to do everything to disrupt the process of voting of Russians abroad in the presidential election but they have failed, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

©Sputnik/Ramil Sitdikov/Go to the mediabank

The spokeswoman was asked about the decrease in the number of polling stations abroad.

“But in terms of the number of [polling] stations, there are indeed significantly less this time. For one simple reason: these are precisely the actions of those very unfriendly regimes that are doing everything in order to prevent, disrupt, intimidate our citizens, and exert political pressure but they see no success,” Zakharova said.

Italian Election Observer Tours a Moscow Polling Station

One of the ways the ongoing 2024 Russian presidential election ensures transparency is by engaging international electoral observers who monitor the voting process.

©Photo

Delegations of international observers from 36 countries and independent election experts have arrived in Russia. Dr. Marco Marsili, a researcher at Cà Foscari University of Venice and associate fellow at the Centre for Strategic Research (Cesran International) is among them. He holds research positions in major civil and military institutions in Portugal, the UK and Italy and was a public official and election observer for the OSCE. These days, he is an independent observer at the presidential elections taking place across the country on March 15-17.

In an exclusive video, he showed Sputnik how a typical polling station operates, including some of Russian unique technical features aimed at facilitating the casting of votes.

"We are here with a delegation of representatives, former parliamentaries and journalists and other experts from different countries like Georgia, France, Portugal and Italy, like me," he pointed out.

"This is the equipment for the electronic voting. So people scan their passport (through which they are identified) and they are allowed to vote," he pointed out.

Marsili also underlined the effectiveness of local election commissions and their commitment to assisting the voters.

"The voters are assisted promptly by personnel of the polling station and they receive all the information promptly in a way that they can vote in the proper way," he added.

LIVE UPDATES - Russians Head to the Polls to Elect Next President

Russia is holding its 2024 presidential election from March 15 to 17. The list of candidates running for the nation's highest office include Vladimir Putin (independent), Leonid Slutsky (LDPR), Nikolai Kharitonov (CPRF), and Vladislav Davankov (New People party).

Out of Russia's 145+ million citizens, over 110 million voters are eligible to vote at more than 100,000 polling stations, in addition, remote voting is also available.

Around 1 million election organizers are there to ensure that every single vote is secured and accounted for. Besides, the 2024 voting process also involves election observers and CCTV monitoring systems present at polling stations across the country.

This year’s election will also usher in such technical innovations as remote electronic voting (REV) and ballots with QR codes. According to the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC), these features will make the voting process more convenient and transparent.

On the first day of the presidential elections, over a million people took part in remote voting on Russia's federal online platform, according to the data of the monitoring portal.

Houthis Attack 3 US, Israeli Ships in Indian Ocean - Statement

Houthi supporters attend a rally in Sanaa, Yemen [File: Osamah Abdulrahman/AP Photo]

Yemen’s Houthis said on Friday that they have attacked three US and Israeli vessels in the Indian Ocean.

"The Yemeni Armed Forces, within the framework of implementing these directives, carried out three operations against three Israeli and American ships in the Indian Ocean, using a number of suitable naval missiles and drones, and all three operations successfully achieved their objectives," the statement said.

The Houthi movement, which controls large parts of northern and western Yemen, vowed in November 2023 to attack any ships associated with Israel until it halts military actions in the Gaza Strip.

This led the United States to announce a multinational operation to secure freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. US and UK forces later launched multiple strikes against Houthi positions in a bid to degrade their ability to target commercial vessels.

"Our main battle is to prevent ships linked to the Israeli enemy from passing through not only the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but also the Indian Ocean towards the Cape of Good Hope. This is a major step and we have begun to implement our operations related to it," al-Houthi said in a televised speech.

Around 34 Houthi members have been killed since the group began the attacks, al-Houthi added.

Months of Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have disrupted global shipping, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa, and stoked fears that the Israel-Hamas war could spread to destabilise the wider Middle East.

"Naval forces targeted the Israeli ship Pacific 01 in the Red Sea, with appropriate naval missiles," the group's military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a statement.

The group also targeted "a US destroyer in the Red Sea with drones, and the operation successfully achieved its objectives," he added.

The spokesperson emphasized "the expansion of operations against Israeli ships or those affiliated with Israel or heading to the ports of occupied Palestine to include the Indian Ocean via the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait."