Press Secretary of the Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Yuriy Ignat said that Ukraine will not be able to receive American F-16 fighter jets from its allies this coming fall or winter. “It is already obvious that we will not be able to protect Ukraine with F-16 aircraft this fall and winter,” he said on a national telethon. According to him, there were high hopes for these fighters, since they could become part of the country's air defense and help defend against Russian missiles.

The Moscow City Court acquitted three Lithuanian citizens and two Russians in a criminal case of smuggling 472 kilograms of cocaine from Ecuador through the port of St. Petersburg, writes . Vedomosti Defendants Ernestas Kazlauskas, Mindaugas Koretsas, Igoris Grigas, Georgiy and Ivan Radomirov were accused of creating an organized criminal group for the purpose of drug supply. According to the charged articles, they faced life imprisonment. The smuggling case was tried by a jury.

The Novocherkassk Garrison Military Court of the Rostov Region sentenced Russian serviceman Ivan Alekseyev to eight years in a maximum security penal colony in a criminal case on the murder of a fellow serviceman, Kommersant reports . The verdict was published on the court's website. As the publication writes, the defendant was mobilized for war in October 2022 and served as a sniper in the annexed LPR.

Your Browser Does Not Support the Audio Element. Navalny says that Russia missed the chance of democratization in the 1990s because of Yeltsin and his entourage. And what does political science think about this? On August 11, on social networks and on the website of Alexei Navalny, the first statement of the politician’s statement was published after the sentence in the case of “extremism”.

On August 18, Lithuania will temporarily close two crossing points on its border with Belarus, Deputy Transportation and Communications Minister Agnė Vaiciukevičiūtė said Wednesday. The closures will leave four open crossing points between the two countries. According to the Lithuanian authorities, the measure is a response to the growing threat posed by Wagner Group, which relocated to Belarus after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion in Russia.

General of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation Gennady Lopyrev, who was serving a sentence for accepting bribes, died in the Ryazan region, reports . TASS As Viktor Boborykin, chairman of the Public Monitoring Commission of the Ryazan Region, said, on August 16, Lopyrev felt unwell in the colony, he was taken by ambulance to a civilian hospital, where he died.

Valery Fadeyev, the chairman of Russia's Human Rights Council, said Wednesday that children who don’t know Russian should not be enrolled in ordinary schools and should instead study the language at “specialized centers.” Because current Russian legislation does not allow schools to reject students based on their language ability, Fadeyev called for the law to be changed.

The United States has offered Iran to refuse to supply drones and spare parts for them to Russia in exchange for easing sanctions, the Financial Times reports, citing its sources. According to the publication’s interlocutors, the issue of drone supplies was raised during indirect negotiations in Qatar and Oman.

Nikita Zhuravel, a Volgograd resident who was arrested for “offending the feelings of religious believers” in May after he burned a Quran, said he was assaulted by Adam Kadyrov, the son of Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov, in his pre-trial detention center. The allegation was reported by Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova on Wednesday. According to Moskalkova, after receiving Zhuravel’s complaint, she asked Chechnya’s human rights commissioner, Mansur Soltaev, to investigate.

In Primorye, due to the Hanun typhoon, there were rainfalls, which led to the strongest flood over the past 10 years, and, according to forecasts, in the coming days everything can be repeated. According to preliminary data, two children of 10 and 12 years old were the victims, dozens of settlements were also injured. On August 15, an emergency regime was introduced in the region.

The Czech Republic has imposed sanctions on the family of Boris Obnosov, the head of Russia's largest defense holding company , Tactical Missile Weapons . This was reported by Alexei Navalny's team, which had previously found Obnosov's family property in the Czech Republic. Obnosov himself, his daughter Olga Zorikova and son-in-law Rostislav Zorikov were subject to sanctions ( .pdf ).

American soldier Travis King, who served in South Korea and illegally defected to the DPRK, explained his actions by his "antipathy toward humiliation and racial discrimination" in the US Army, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. "During the investigation, Travis King admitted that he felt disgust for the inhuman humiliation, racial discrimination in the American troops and decided to defect to the DPRK.

An new LLC with the name “Wagner Group” has been registered as an “educational” organization in the Belarusian Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the Telegram channel Rotonda reported on Wednesday. The independent Belarusian outlet Zerkalo noted that the organization was registered on August 4 in the country’s Asipovichy District and that its address is in the village of Tsel, where Wagner mercenaries set up a training camp in the days after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted rebellion.

In Moscow, after a long illness, Hero of Russia Colonel General Gennady Zhidko died, said the Governor of the Khabarovsk Territory Mikhail Degtyarev. Before the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine, Zhidko served as chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces group in Syria. In 2018, he was appointed to command the troops of the Eastern Military District.

The “educational” organization “Wagner Group” has been registered in Belarus, Rotunda reported, citing data from the register of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs of the Ministry of Justice of Belarus. The Belarusian publication “Zerkalo” noted that the “Wagner Group” with a charter capital of 200 Belarusian rubles (about seven and a half thousand Russian rubles) was registered on August 4 in the Osipovichi district executive committee.