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Russia says Ukraine’s Zelensky has no legitimacy

President Of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky

“Our president has repeatedly said that President Zelensky definitely lost his legitimacy,” Peskov told journalists.

Another issue that “could seriously hinder the peace process” is Zelensky’s 2022 decree that “banned any Ukrainian head of state from engaging in talks with President Putin,” Peskov added.

Zelensky’s presidential term formally expired on May 20. He refused to hold an election in March, citing martial law which was imposed due to the conflict with Russia. He argued that his term was de facto extended in accordance with Ukrainian law.

Putin has stated several times in recent months that an analysis of the Ukrainian constitution and other legislation leaves no room for an interpretation that would allow Zelensky to remain in power.

Citing Article 111 of the Ukrainian constitution, Putin argued in May that Zelensky’s powers should have been transferred to the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament.

Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, however, has insisted that Zelensky is the legitimate head of state and that anyone who questions his legitimacy is “an enemy.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told journalists that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba made it clear during a trip to Beijing that he is “ready and willing” to hold peace talks with Moscow.

Russia responded by saying it would wait for details on the Ukrainian position.

“We have not heard these statements from Kuleba himself,” Peskov said on Wednesday, adding that negotiations are preferable to continued hostilities.

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine broke down in spring 2022, with each side accusing the other of making unrealistic demands.

Israel claims bodies of 5 hostages retrieved from Gaza

Israeli Army

The military launched a surprise attack in the city on Monday after issuing immediate evacuation orders for residents in its eastern neighborhoods.

At least 129 people have since been killed and over 400 others injured in the area, which was previously designated as a “safe zone” for displaced people by the Israeli army.

A joint statement by the army and the Shin Bet domestic security service claimed the bodies of the hostages were located in Khan Younis on Wednesday.

According to the statement, the five were killed during a Hamas attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and their bodies were taken to Gaza.

There are still around 115 Israelis held captive by Hamas in Gaza, according to Israeli media.

There has been no comment from Hamas on the Israeli statement. The Palestinian group earlier announced that some 70 hostages had been killed in Israeli attacks on the enclave.

Israel, flouting a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive against Gaza since an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

At least 39,100 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 90,000 injured, according to local health authorities.

Over nine months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Hamas says Israel’s PM marketing ‘delusions’ at US Congress

Benjamin Netanyahu

The Gaza-based group made the remarks in a statement on Wednesday, reacting to an earlier speech by Netanyahu at the US Congress, in which he recounted the self-proclaimed vision.

“We in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) affirm that the war criminal Netanyahu’s visions for the future of the Gaza Strip are mere delusions and fantasies he is trying to market,” the statement read.

The Israeli premier has alleged that the regime sought to “eliminate” Hamas from Gaza through a genocidal war that Tel Aviv has been waging against the territory since October 7.

The brutal military onslaught has so far claimed the lives of more than 39,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, but has stopped far short of realizing the regime’s goal of defeating the resistance.

Hamas asserted that it was the Palestinian people alone, who had the right to determine their fate and decide who governs them.

“They have decided to rally around the option of resistance and confront the occupation wherever it exists until it is swept away from our pure land and our independent Palestinian state is established with [the holy occupied city of] al-Quds as its capital,” it added.

Elsewhere in the statement, the movement denounced the United States for offering Netanyahu the chance to deliver the address, despite mounting international protests calling for his apprehension and prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians.

“Netanyahu should have been arrested as a war criminal and handed over to the International Criminal Court instead of being given the opportunity to polish his image before the world and cover up the mass killings and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas asserted.

By offering Netanyahu a podium besides providing his regime with all means of political and military support, the group said, “Washington affirms its full partnership in the heinous violations committed in the Gaza Strip.”

The movement, meanwhile, stressed that the regime was persisting with its atrocities with outright American support, while various human rights reports had confirmed Tel Aviv’s perpetration of acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

The atrocities, it added, included using starvation as a weapon of war and preventing aid from reaching Gaza through enforcement an all-out siege against the coastal sliver.

The Palestinian movement Islamic Jihad has also denounced Netanyahu’s speech at the US Congress as “full of lies and slander”, calling on the international community to make utmost effort to “quarantine” him following the regime’s months-long onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip.

The Gaza-based group made the remarks in a statement on Thursday while reacting to an earlier speech by the Israeli premiere at the US Congress, with American lawmakers applauding in multiple intervals Netanyahu’s recount of the Tel Aviv regime’s genocidal war in the Palestinian territory over the past ten months.

“Netanyahu’s speech is full of lies and slander,” the statement said.

“Netanyahu’s lies that his army did not kill a single civilian in the attack on Rafah, and is not waging a war of starvation and genocide against the Gaza Strip, indicate his mockery of the world and his shameless indulgence in lies.”

The Islamic Jihad added the Israeli prime minister’s speech clearly stated that he has no intention of ending his aggression against Gaza, nor stopping the war and that he endeavors to obtain an American mandate to expand the scope of the war to include the entire region, which proves his bloodthirsty mentality on which his entity and Netanyahu’s political future feeds.

“Netanyahu’s talk about the future of Gaza confirms that he seeks to perpetuate his occupation, and that he is continuing his crimes and the war of genocide against our people, without deterrence or control,” the statement read.

The Islamic Jihad said Netanyahu proved in his speech that his fragile entity derives its existence from wars and that the occupying regime only lives on bloodshed, which confirms that the existence of this entity is a danger to all of humanity.

“We call on the free people of the world to expose Netanyahu’s plans and to make every effort to pursue and quarantine him, and we warn Western governments against falling into the trap of the criminal Nazi government in the entity,” the statement added.

“What Netanyahu and his gang are seeking is a war that spares nothing and no one, deluding themselves that it comes from the myths of the Talmud that feed their imaginations.”

Iran’s trade with neighbors hits $20bn mark

Iran Trade

The Iranian deputy economic minister and the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA) Mohammad Rezvanifar said the weight of Iran’s trade with 15 neighboring countries was 34,196,000 tons, which marks a 5-percent hike compared to the same period last year.

He added nearly 27 million tons worth $10.6 billion dollars were allocated to exports and over 7.2 million tons worth $9.1 billion to imports.

Rezvanifar noted that during the mentioned period the exports to neighboring countries increased by 16 percent in terms of value and 6 percent considering the weight.

As for imports, he said the trade had a 1-percent increase in weight and 4-percent decrease in value.

The deputy minister said Iran’s trade balance with 15 neighboring countries has been positive by 1.5 billion dollars, excluding oil.

Rezvanifar also put the country’s total non-oil trade in the past four months at $36 billion, $17.5 billion of which were exports, registering an 8-percent growth compared to the same time span last year.

Tehran summons British ambassador over extradition of Iranian citizen to US

Simon Shercliff

Britain’s Ambassador to Tehran Simon Shercliff was called to the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after London extradited an Iranian citizen to the US on suspicion of circumventing sanctions on Iran.

Following the British government’s move to extradite the Iranian national to the US on charges of skirting sanctions, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the UK ambassador on Wednesday.

The director general of the Consular Affairs of the Foreign Ministry filed Iran’s strong protest at the illegal detention and extradition of the Iranian national to the US, the ministry’s website reported.

Upon gaining information about the Iranian citizen’s detention, the Foreign Ministry pushed for his release through diplomatic channels in Tehran and London, as efforts to secure his release are in progress.

A Tuesday statement by the US Department of Justice announced that Saeid Haji Agha Mousaei, 53, had made his initial appearance in a Chicago federal court after being extradited from Britain on US export control charges, Press TV reported.

Haji Agha Mousaei is accused of participating in a “years-long conspiracy to evade US export restrictions and transship advanced US electronic testing technology to Iran using third-party countries.”

The US government has arrested several Iranians on similar allegations in recent years.

In 2021, US prosecutors charged 10 Iranian nationals in connection with a scheme to disguise $300 million in transactions to evade US sanctions.

Israel killed nearly 600 Palestinians in West Bank since start of Gaza war: Health ministry

Palestine Israel

In its statement, the ministry noted that some 142 children were among the slain.

The military carried out a number of incursions into cities and towns in the West Bank early Wednesday, during which Palestinians were arrested.

Tensions have been running high across the occupied West Bank amid a deadly Israeli offensive that killed over 39,000 people in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, 2023.

The International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion on July 19, declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land “unlawful” and should be brought to an end “as rapidly as possible”.

Hezbollah releases aerial footage of Israeli airbase

Hezbollah

The footage included labels pointing out apparent military infrastructure, including the short-range Iron Dome air defence system which is designed to destroy rockets.

The video, more than eight minutes long, was mostly filmed on Tuesday, the group said.

The video also included nighttime shots that Hezbollah said were captured “earlier” and other images the group said were taken earlier in July. The caption said it was only “some” of what the drone had captured.

It was the third in a series of videos released by Hezbollah which the group has said are meant to demonstrate how far its surveillance of Israel has reached. The first video showed the Israeli port city of Haifa and the second the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said in a statement on X that the video was filmed by a surveillance drone and the base’s operations were not affected.

The videos have been released as tensions mount over Israel’s war on Gaza and over frequent exchanges of fire across Lebanon’s border with Israel.

At least 39,145 people have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza since October, according to Palestinian authorities, and most of the territory’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced.

Israel’s assault on Gaza started after a Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed, and 250 others taken captive.

Hezbollah started launching rockets at Israel on October 8, saying it will continue until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

The military tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have killed nearly 350 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and more than 100 civilians, including medics, children and journalists, while in Israel, 10 Israeli civilians, a foreign agricultural worker and 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaer, the UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon, warned that a miscalculation along the Israel-Lebanon border could “engulf the entire region” in war.

Her statement echoes growing fears that hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which have traded near-daily cross-border attacks during the Gaza war, are reaching a boiling point.

Hennis-Plasschaer added that solutions to such hostilities “do not only lie in Lebanon” and expressed hope that a Gaza ceasefire deal could resolve them.

New report finds Gaza health ministry death toll ‘broadly reliable’

Gaza War

According to an Airwars investigation that independently identified nearly 3,000 full names of civilian victims killed in the first 17 days of the war, the ministry’s figures are “broadly reliable” in spite of the difficulties involved in assessing the casualties.

Since October, the health ministry has regularly released updates of the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s assault.

On Wednesday, it said that so far, 39,145 Palestinians have been killed and 90,257 wounded in Gaza.

The figures have been disputed by Israel and its allies, with US President Joe Biden saying last year that he had “no confidence” in them, while media outlets regularly highlight the ministry’s control by Hamas with the implication they should be taken with a grain of salt.

The report – which Airwars described as the “largest and most in-depth public analysis of the [Ministry of Health] data yet” produced – said the investigation found a high correlation between the ministry figures and what Palestinian civilians reported online, with 75 percent of publicly reported names also appearing on the MoH list.

Airwars is a London-based non-profit affiliated with the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, that investigates civilian deaths in conflicts.

“This painstaking research provides strong validation for both the first Ministry of Health list of the dead and the reliability of social media posts from Palestinians collected by Airwars covering the same period,” said Professor Mike Spagat, chair of monitoring group Every Casualty Counts.

“Neither list is complete but the 75 percent matching rate demonstrates convincingly that both capture a large fraction of the underlying reality.”

Despite official scepticism, both the US and Israel have reportedly cited the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s figures in their assessments.

According to Israeli media reports, military and intelligence are relying almost exclusively on the ministry for figures and death tolls.

One Israeli source said a comprehensive investigation was conducted during the war, and revealed that the numbers published by the ministry are “on the whole reliable” when it came to death tolls and previous operations.

Thousands more Palestinians are missing and presumed dead under the rubble following Israeli attacks.

China says Ukraine signaled willingness for peace negotiations with Russia

Russia Ukraine War

“The Ukrainian side is willing and ready to conduct dialogue and negotiations with the Russian side,” Kuleba was quoted as saying by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.

According to Mao, the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev were high on the agenda, with Kuleba making it clear that “Ukraine is ready and willing to engage in dialogue and negotiations with Russia.”

“Of course, the negotiations should be rational and substantive, aimed at achieving a just and lasting peace,” he added, as quoted by Mao.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commenting on the development said that the message voiced by Kuleba is in line with Moscow’s position.

“You and I really know from reports from Beijing that such a statement was made at a meeting with Wang Yi. The message itself is in unison with our position,” Peskov told reporters.

Moscow needs clarification on this issue, because there are no details yet, the official added.

“You know that the Russian side has never refused negotiations and has always maintained its openness to the negotiation process.”

Wang during the talks with Kuleba added that Beijing believes that the resolution of all conflicts should be carried out at the negotiating table.

“The Chinese side believes that the resolution of all conflicts must ultimately return to the negotiating table, and the settlement of all disputes must be achieved through political means,” Wang was quoted as saying by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.

This statement is one of several recent expressions from Kiev indicating a willingness to engage in talks. Last week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned the possibility of peace negotiations with Moscow, including with President Vladimir Putin, and acknowledged the necessity of resolving the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova suggested that Zelensky’s rhetoric is influenced by the electoral cycles in the United States. Moscow has reiterated its readiness for dialogue but notes that the Kiev regime has legally banned such negotiations. Peskov has also indicated that there are currently no conditions for a peaceful resolution in Ukraine, stating that achieving the objectives of the special operation remains Russia’s priority, which, for now, can only be attained through military means.

Iran’s U20 freestyle wrestlers become Asian champions

Iran’s U20 freestyle wrestlers become Asian champions

In total, the Iranian wrestlers bagged 9 medals. The medals include 5 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze.

The Iranian team became the champion with 201 points. Kazakhstan became runner-up with 150 points followed by Uzbekistan with 136 points.

The U20 Asian Freestyle Championships were held on July 23-24, 2024 in Sriracha, Thailand.