#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.

#JERUSALEM -A pair of strikes on militant leaders in #Beirut and #Tehran has escalated tensions in a region already on edge and adds to a long list of targeted killings attributed to #Israel.

#Hamas said #Israel was behind the assassination of its supreme leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran's capital, although there was no acknowledgement from Israel. And Israel claimed responsibility for a strike on Fouad Shukur, a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, that the military said killed him.

Both strikes threaten to drag the region into a broader conflagration after nearly 10 months of war in Gaza.
July 2024

Israel targets Hamas’ shadowy military commander Mohammed Deif in a massive strike in the crowded southern Gaza Strip. The strike killed at least 90 people including children, according to local health officials. Deif's fate remains unknown.

April 2024

Two Iranian generals are killed in what Iran said was an Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria. The deaths prompt Iran to launch an unprecedented attack against Israeli territory, launching 300 missiles and drones, most of which are intercepted.
January 2024

An Israeli drone strike in Beirut kills Saleh Arouri, a top Hamas official in exile as Israeli troops fight the militant group in Gaza.
December 2023

Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, is killed in a drone attack outside of Damascus. Iran blames Israel.
2019

An Israeli airstrike hits the home of Bahaa Abu el-Atta, a senior Islamic Jihad commander in the Gaza Strip, killing him and his wife.
2012

Ahmad Jabari, head of Hamas’ armed wing, is killed when an airstrike targets his car. His death sparks an eight-day war between Hamas and Israel.
2010

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas operative, is killed in a Dubai hotel room in an operation attributed to the Mossad spy agency but never acknowledged by Israel. Many of the 26 supposed assassins were caught on camera disguised as tourists.
2008

Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s military chief, is killed when a bomb planted in his car exploded in Damascus. Mughniyeh was accused of engineering suicide bombings during Lebanon’s civil war and of planning the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. Hezbollah blamed his killing on Israel. His son Jihad Mughniyeh was killed in an Israeli strike in 2015.
2004

Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin is killed in an Israeli helicopter strike while being pushed in his wheelchair. Yassin, paralyzed in a childhood accident, was among the founders of Hamas in 1987. His successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, is killed in an Israeli airstrike less than a month later.
2002

Hamas’s second-in-command military leader Salah Shehadeh is killed by a one-ton bomb dropped on an apartment building in Gaza City.
1997

Mossad agents try to kill then-Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal in Amman, Jordan. Two agents entered Jordan using fake Canadian passports and poisoned Mashaal by placing a device near his ear. They were captured shortly afterward. Jordan’s then-King Hussein threatened to void a still-fresh peace accord if Mashaal died. Israel ultimately dispatched an antidote, and the Israeli agents were returned home. Mashaal remains a senior figure in Hamas.
1996

Yahya Ayyash, nicknamed the “engineer” for his mastery in building bombs for Hamas, is killed by answering a rigged phone in Gaza. His assassination triggered a series of deadly bus bombings in Israel.

Complete coverage of the Israel-Hamas war(opens in a new tab)

1995

Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shikaki is shot in the head in Malta in an assassination widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.
1988

Palestine Liberation Organization military chief Khalil al-Wazir is killed in Tunisia. Better known as Abu Jihad, he had been PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s deputy. Military censors cleared an Israeli paper to reveal details of the Israeli raid for the first time in 2012.
1973

Israeli commandos shoot a number of PLO leaders in their apartments in Beirut, in a nighttime raid led by Ehud Barak, who later became Israel’s top army commander and prime minister. His team killed Kamal Adwan, who was in charge of PLO operations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; Mohammed Youssef Najjar, a member of the PLO’s executive committee; and Kamal Nasser, a PLO spokesman and charismatic writer and poet. The operation was part of a string of Israeli assassinations of Palestinian leaders in retaliation for the killings of 11 Israeli coaches and athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

#Taliban has recruited 230,000 police officers in order to increase security in the country.