Turkmenistan's only mobile operator, Altyn Asyr, has stopped selling new SIM cards for phones, a correspondent for Azatlyk, the Turkmen service of Radio Liberty, reported. "The company's employees are turning away 16-year-old citizens who have received passports and applied for a SIM card, saying that they do not have any available phone numbers," an Ashgabat resident told the publication.

Residents of Russia’s Kursk region on fleeing Ukraine’s offensive, searching for missing relatives, and whether their views on the war have changed Ilya Pitalyev / RIA Novosti / Sputnik / Profimedia An evacuee from Russia’s Kursk region stands at a pet vaccination station in a temporary shelter in Kursk city. August 13, 2024.

The World Health Organization has declared the spread of monkeypox (mpox) a "public health emergency of international concern" (PHEIC), WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing. The decision comes amid a new wave of the disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other African countries, caused by the Clade 1b strain that emerged in 2023.

Update. Mandatory evacuation of residents has been announced in Glushkovsky District, said Acting Governor of Kursk Region Alexey Smirnov. The Kursk Region operational headquarters has decided to evacuate residents of the village of Glushkovo, said the acting governor of the region, Alexey Smirnov. "The process of leaving local residents will be coordinated by law enforcement agencies, the military, the local administration and the volunteers of the Kursk Patriot center.

62-year-old Aleksandr Golovnin and his 30-year-old son Mikhail, who beat up 87-year-old pensioner Dmitry Grinchiy on a bus, have been released from a temporary detention facility, a source familiar with the progress of the criminal case told Important Stories. The journalists' interlocutor assumes that the attackers may be given a preventive measure that does not involve detention. "I think they will be given a written undertaking [not to leave] since they are Muscovites," he said.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces suppressed Russian communications and surveillance equipment in advance and prepared a corridor for a breakthrough into the Kursk region, a Ukrainian soldier with the call sign “Tomash” told a BBC journalist. Another Ukrainian military man said that the Ukrainian offensive had been in preparation for several months.

Three residents of the village of Goncharovka told how the Ukrainian army came to the Kursk region Anatoly Zhdanov / Kommersant / Sipa USA / Vida Press consequences of shelling the surroundings of Sudzhi by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. August 8, 2024 A week ago, the Armed Forces began an operation in the Kursk region - since then, the Ukrainian military managed to take control of several hundred square kilometers of Russian territory.

The Anti-War Committee of Russia, founded by opposition and public figures in exile, published a statement about the offensive of the Ukrainian army in the Kursk region. “We view this step as Ukraine’s exercise of its right to self-defense and retaliatory actions in the context of the ongoing large-scale invasion of a sovereign state by Putin’s troops,” the statement says.

This is what Western military analysts say about this Roman Pilipey / AFP / Scanpix / Leta Ukrainian troops on a combat armored vehicle in the Sumy region near the border with Russia, August 12, 2024 The sudden, prepared in the strictest secrecy, the invasion of the Ukrainian army in the Kursk region of Russia found the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation by surprise and, in the words of Joe Biden, became a “real dilemma” for Vladimir Putin.

19-year-old Vladislav Appel is one of the conscripts who met the attack of the Armed Forces in the Kursk region. Now he is listed as missing. Here is the story of his grandmother Roman Pilipey / AFP / Scanpix / Leta Russian prisoners in Ukraine According to independent media, at the beginning of the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region there could be several hundreds of conscripts. Many of them are missing, some were captured.

As the journalists found out, in Moscow she lived near the GRU headquarters and worked for a company associated with the FSB In Australia, on suspicion of espionage, they detained the Russian citizen Kira Korolev, who served in the army of the country. According to the police, during a vacation in Russia, she was going to transfer secret materials to the Russian authorities, to which she had access to work.

Parents of conscripts from different regions of Russia reported that their relatives are being forced to sign a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry, and in case of refusal, they are being threatened with being sent to the Kursk Region, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces are advancing. This was reported to the Agency by the mother of a conscript from the Samara Region and a representative of the project "Go to the Forest" Ivan Chuvilyaev.

Gavriil Grigorov / Planet Pix / ZUMA Press Wire / Scanpix / LETA Alexey Dyumin and Vladimir Putin in a meeting at Russia’s official presidential residence in Novo-Ogaryovo. May 2, 2024. In a televised meeting with his security team on Monday, Vladimir Putin called for Ukraine’s forces to be “driven out” of Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv’s cross-border offensive is now in its second week.

Russian billionaire and founder of Alfa Group Mikhail Fridman has filed a lawsuit against Luxembourg with the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC), Vedomosti reports . The businessman's claims are related to the freezing of his assets in various countries, which he owns through Luxembourg holding companies. In his lawsuit, Fridman calls Luxembourg's freezing of his assets as part of the implementation of EU sanctions an illegal expropriation.

Update: The Meshchansky District Court of Moscow sentenced US citizen Joseph Tater to 15 days of administrative arrest in a case of petty hooliganism (Part 1 of Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). A criminal case has been opened in Moscow against a US citizen for using violence against a police officer (Part 1 of Article 318 of the Criminal Code), Interfax reported, citing the Investigative Committee's Moscow Office. The agency does not name the detainee.