#Telegram founder Pavel Durov detained in France — TV channel
According to LCI, Durov was detained at Le Bourget Airport. He was accompanied by his girlfriend and a bodyguard.

The #Paris police prefecture has not yet confirmed the information about Durov’s detention.

The US-led coalition’s #aircraft violated Syria’s airspace in the al-Tanf area 14 times during the past day, Oleg Ignasyuk, deputy chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties in Syria (a division of the Russian defense ministry), said on Tuesday.

"Aircraft of the so-called international anti-terrorist coalition led by the United States continues to create dangerous situation that may cause air accident or incidents and escalate the situation in Syria’s airspace," he said. "A pair of the coalition’s F-15 and a pair of F-16 fighter jets, as well as a of A-10 Thunderbolt attack bombers violated Syria’s airspace in the al-Tanf area, across which international air routes run, 14 times during the day.".

#CHICAGO, August 21. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump could discuss arms control with Russia if he wins the election and makes the US stronger through such measures as building a new missile defense system, his senior campaign adviser Brian Hughes said.

"President Trump believes in peace through strength," the adviser told TASS, when asked if the presidential contender is interested in new arms-control deals with Russia. "He has talked frequently about one of the most important things to make a stronger nation is to do the missile defense system that has been talked about for decades. Do it in a way that protects the American people and is built at home and makes us stronger."

"When you get to a stronger position in the world, you can then start to evaluate arms levels, the armament levels that you're talking about, but you can't start that discussion today with America in such a weak position," he continued. "So, the first thing that has to happen in the geopolitical realm is for American strength to be recognized again. And it's just not happening under Biden - Harris."

#Kremlin accuses the West of helping Ukraine attack Russia.

An influential aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the West and the U.S.-led #NATO alliance had helped to plan Ukraine's surprise attack on Russia's Kursk region, something Washington has denied.

The lightning incursion, the biggest into Russia by a foreign power since World War Two, began on Aug. 6 when thousands of Ukrainian troops crossed Russia's western border in a major embarrassment for Putin's military.

#Ukraine said the incursion was needed to force Russia, which sent its forces into Ukraine in February 2022, to start "fair" peace talks.

But the United States and Western powers, eager to avoid direct military confrontation with Russia, said Ukraine had not given advance notice and that Washington was not involved, though weaponry provided by Britain and the U.S. is reported to have been used on Russian soil.

Influential veteran Kremlin hawk Nikolai Patrushev dismissed the Western assertions in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper.

"The operation in the Kursk region was also planned with the participation of NATO and Western special services," he was quoted as saying, without offering evidence.

"Without their participation and direct support, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory."

The remarks implied that Ukraine's first acknowledged foray into sovereign Russian territory carried a high risk of escalation.

Putin chaired a meeting of Russia's Security Council, including Patrushev, and said the discussion would focus on "new technical solutions" being employed in what Russia calls its special military operation.
Ukraine will pay for U.S. involvement: Kremlin

"Washington's efforts have created all the prerequisites for Ukraine to lose its sovereignty and lose part of its territories," Patrushev said.

Ukraine said on Thursday that it had installed a military commandant in the area it controlled, even as Russia intensified its offensives in Ukraine's east.

Russia's defense ministry for its part said it had repelled a series of Ukrainian attacks along the Kursk frontline.

Kursk regional governor Alexei Smirnov said Ukraine had destroyed a road bridge over the Seym river in the region's Glushkovsky district. State news agency TASS, citing Russian security officials, said that could hinder an ongoing evacuation of the frontier district's roughly 20,000 inhabitants.

While the Ukrainian attack has revealed weaknesses in Russian defenses and changed the public narrative of the conflict, Russian officials said Ukraine's "terrorist invasion" would not change the course of the war.

Russia has been advancing for most of the year in the key eastern sector of the 1,000-km (620-mile) front and has vast numerical superiority. It controls 18 per cent of Ukraine.

After more than 10 days of fighting, Ukraine holds at least 450 sq km (175 sq miles) of territory, or less than 0.003 per cent of Russia. But for Putin, the incursion crosses another red line.

One Russian source told Reuters the incursion could embolden hardliners in Moscow who advocate a bigger war, but Putin's choice may not be easy.

He has sought to portray Europe's biggest war in seven decades both as a limited "special military operation" that need not upset daily Russian life and as a historic fight with a West that scorns Moscow's interests and seeks to dismember Russia.

#Ukrainian attack on #ZNPP can be characterized as act of nuclear terrorism — Rosatom. Strike was delivered targeting the NPP’s equipment, which must be cooling water of the power plant in the standard operation mode, statement reads.

#Russia tightens security in Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an incursion as fighting persists

#Israeli, #US defense ministers discuss Iran’s destabilizing role in region. The situation in the Middle East has escalated dramatically after the killing of #Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in #Tehran and Hezbollah armed wing commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut

TEL AVIV, August 6. #Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has called his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, again to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, Israel’s defense ministry said.

This was the forth phone call between them after the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31. Their previous calls took place on July 31, August 2 and 5.

"Minister Gallant informed the Secretary of Defense [Austin] about the current security situation in the region and the Israeli Defense Forces’ readiness to defend Israel in cooperation with the US-led international coalition. Minister Gallant was briefed by the Secretary of Defense [Austin] about the attack by the Iranian satellites on the US troops deployed in the region. Minister Gallant strongly condemned this attack and agreed with the Secretary of Defense that this attack reflects Iran’s destabilizing role in the region," it said.

The situation in the Middle East has escalated dramatically after the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah armed wing commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Hamas and Hezbollah placed responsibility on Israel and warned about their response.

As for the elimination of Shukr, it said that this was a retaliation to the shelling attack on the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights that killed 12 people. Hezbollah, however, denies its involvement in the incident.

The Shafaq News portal reported on Monday evening that the Al-Assad airbase in western Iraq, which is used by the international coalition forces, had come under an attack. The attack was confirmed by a Pentagon spokesman, who told TASS that according to preliminary data, several US soldiers had been hurt. Later, The Times of Israel said, citing its American and Iraqi sources, that at least five US soldiers has been wounded.

#Ukraine intensifies its long-range strikes, sinking a Russian submarine and striking an airfield.

#Ukraine has sunk a Russian submarine and hit a Russian airfield in the past 24 hours, in line with a surge of long-range attacks against Russian targets, officials said. Russia said Ukrainian drones also hit an apartment building, killing one person.

The uptick in attacks since July comes as Ukraine mounts pressure on allies to allow it to use long-range missiles to strike targets in Russia. Western allies, in particular the U.S., have so far resisted, fearing escalation from Moscow.

Ukraine struck a Russian Kilo-class submarine and an S-400 anti aircraft missile complex in the Moscow-occupied Crimean peninsula, according to a statement from the General Staff on Saturday. The air defence system was established to protect the Kerch Strait Bridge, an important logistics and transport hub supplying Russian forces.

#Russia to block #Google, #IOS and #Android. Aleksei Didenko, a member of the Russian State Duma, has announced that Google, along with its Android operating system and Apple's iOS, will soon be blocked in Russia.

Dissidents freed in prisoner swap vow to keep up fight against Putin, recount details of release.

When #Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was suddenly moved to a detention centre in #Moscow from a Siberian prison, he thought he was being taken there to be shot. Opposition activist Ilya Yashin said he was warned by a security operative that he would die in prison if he returned to Russia.

Neither was told they were being freed in a massive prisoner exchange with the West -- the largest since the Cold War -- when they were put on a bus to the airport Thursday, some still in prison garb.

"It is very difficult to shake (the feeling) of absolute surrealism of what is happening," Kara-Murza, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who had been serving 25 years in prison, told a news conference Friday in the German city of Bonn.

In their first public appearance since their release a day earlier, President Vladimir Putin's foes vowed to keep fighting for a free and democratic Russia they could one day return to.

They also talked about how their newly found freedom left a bittersweet aftertaste as they were effectively expelled from their own country, where hundreds of other political prisoners continued to languish behind bars.

"I'm not viewing what happened to me ... as an exchange. I'm viewing it as an expulsion from Russia, an illegal expulsion from Russia against my will. And I'll say frankly, as it is: The thing I want the most right now is to go home," said Yashin, who had been sentenced to eight and a half years for criticism of the #Ukraine war.