ah, if i'm not crazy enough, i'm not gonna make it ah, you used to quench any attempts of ukrainian forces to cross the forest. r k follows russian troops in their battles for strategic positions against ukrainian forces on the don baths front lines. u. s. president biden voice is support for africa for their participation in solving international problems. china's foreign ministry plan to move as a us power grab for africa. contact on africa is not in the arena for big public games, let alone the target of all the tree prussia from any country. old person. washington should respect the will of the african people. belgrade accuses

a self per claim for public of kosovo, of thieving. a majority service center in the regions north, just hours after pristina officially applied for you membership. we report from the ground. ah, good morning for martine or national studios in moscow, and welcome to the hours most pressing new stories from around the world. i'm fiorella, isabel, happy to have you join us. at least 3 explosions have reportedly roth, the ukrainian city of car car. local media says several parts of the city are cut off from electricity, an air raid sirens are sounding across the area. meanwhile, in the don bass, ukrainian forces targeted the don, yes, republic, at least 7 times on wednesday. according to local authorities, russian troops managed to destroy several ukrainian multiple launch rockets,

systems, and weapons warehouses, helping reduce the intensity of the shelling r t. * corresponded eager start off reports from the front line. in these woods, just outside crim and ny danger flex around every tree. what used to be one of ukraine's national parks is now one of the most heavily contested swathes of land and the dawn bass. need me to put on there for the ukrainian forces, crossed the river and their mobile units shell, our checkpoints, our intelligence identified some of their strongholds here. their main tactic is to attack, so they mostly work in mobile groups. artillery is useless here. walking single file, we follow the only path deemed safe towards russia's positions. with our guide leads us to what looks like a long abandoned hut,

but the 1st impression of desolation is deceiving. inside we meet russian soldiers from the mortar, battery hidden in the thicket. not far from here. this is our battalions command and observation point that we gather all the information about the targets in our battalions frontline. we decide what targets to attack with our mortars. i mm. hm, with globally, this move is to quench any attempts of the ukrainian forces to cross the forest that is surrounding all of us. oh,

what you see here is the equivalence of close quarter combat in the world of artillery. this mortar team is only about 2, maybe 4 kilometers away from their targets. bigger guns and tanks provide extra fire power from further away to. right now, the woodland here is in the grey zone. and whichever side concedes the ambition to take it will have to give up neighboring villages and towns to suffering a painful tactical defeat i make is done of reporting from the bus c. loud explosions were also heard in the russian city of curse. on wednesday evening, the city is located close to the ukrainian border. local authorities say the sounds were that of the air defense system. an option no casualties have been reported.

ah, tensions are spiraling in northern kosovo as a serbian representative to the region has accused pristine as government of seizing power in the majority serv area of meet the world with saw with help from local police. this comes just hours after the officials of the self proclaimed kosovo, applied for e u membership. with belgrade, condemning the move and urging brussels to block it. r t contributor nickel a job. it's reports from the ground. time flows door to dogs, any la visits or with respect for their own laws. and so it was in the new city council, the new members and there. so this was an open day for me to follow without any

democratic procedure. so basically, a month ago and all this left is the service costs, those positions the election, new elections were held and proceed unilaterally to share a new city or forces. and they did so by bringing in from the side their own and who are now the city council and amongst, amongst them there is one in. so just a multi cultural perspective. and as i said, any, any law or respect for, for this standard, which can be implemented. and that scheme as a shock local service because they feel check again. they feel that they are again being played out because they said new elections being occur in the are now being governed by people. nobody shows and they were elected basically before since the

launch from synonymy securing this whole event in the center of nuclear and chevron mostly by serves earlier around 300 coasts of insecurity personnel were reportedly station and may throw it says city. according to the serbian government, serbia criticize them move, asserting that kosovo had not carried out any of the agreements. key points. tensions have flared between belgrade and co civil authorities. in the northern part of the break way region were serbian protesters put up barricades over the weekend, demonstrating against the arrest of a former possible sir police officer, amid rising tension. serbia's prime minister said last week that the country's leadership was close to destroying security personnel to kosovo. same that lives of minority serves. there were being threatened. the russian ambassador to serbia told

us that kosovo z e u membership bid was apparently sanctioned by brussels in advance. you see chilean stern trim you would i p sco sales is not all members of the european union recognized, kosovo as an independent state. that means the e, you does not have a unified position and cannot achieve overall consensus when it comes to this issue . however, if we take any country in the balkans as an example, even the process of submitting the application for you membership and a public declaration of such intentions is always agreed at the very political top of the you in brussels. this is not something that is done by the balkan states themselves, like other candidates for you membership. in this case, the european union does not allow any kind of independence. that is why we should not exclude the possibility, but rather we should actually assume that some kind of agreement was already in place beforehand. brussels has not objected to this, and pristine air received permission to publicly formulate such a request. an organization founded to protect the rights of

journalists worldwide, has refused to support russian media outlets and individuals, amid reports of looming ease sanctions asked by r t if it would support russian reporters the committee to protect journalists, that it does not view them as unbiased and would therefore do nothing to help. c p j protects journalists facing reprisal for the journalistic activity as long as they adhere to the principles of unbiased objective reporting. when we looked at the names of people associated with the media outlets you mentioned in your e mail and who can be included in the new list of sanctioned individuals. we found out that they did not follow this rule of unbiased journalism. therefore, we cannot protect them. a draft you blacklist reportedly include the r t, as well as state television and radio company v g t r k, which could potentially have their assets frozen in countries. while rossi, a one run tv and other channels,

could lose their broadcast licenses over $100.00 russian media personalities, including popular tv prisoners, could also be sanctioned. meanwhile, the committee to protect journalists continues actively supporting global pro western media outlets. earlier this month it demanded a band be lifted on us funded broadcast or radio, free europe, radio, liberty, and afghan. and then while last month, the group demanded access be restored to the western broadcasters website for ker gets, stand the committees failure to live up to its international promise comes as a member of germany's main opposition party attempts to start her own campaign against russian media. christians, social unit union representatives. andrew lind holds, has proposed the creation of a committee to control the spread of russia. media influence the danger of russian

propaganda and as information in germany should not be underestimated, especially now when everything is getting more expensive, there is a risk that people will become more receptive to pro russian fakes. according to some media reports are teas, german language channel uses, 3rd party outlets and youtube channels to spread information. journalists who publish so called pro russian information are said to be connected to moscow affiliated media, international security research, or just the mohammed says berlin is trying to punish moscow admitted crap down on russian media. we could say is so punishment to russia. so i believe it's a matter of quality, got it. and i could say that it's mitchie that we are here in germany and europe. we saw that there is a sense of sure germany need to maybe to review attitude

european abroad. and also they need to review the or attitude. it's a matter of freedom. and i believe in this case, i believe we lost, we lost 11 channel that we could get information from it. visiting us from 12 countries have taken part in the 13th asian conference of the val di, international discussion club. we spoke to gregory simmons, an independent expert, who says that the main point for the u. s. is to try to maintain it's, you know, polar and germany. the u. s. is his loss. it's uncontested, global hegemony. and now what it's trying to do is have a relative regional advantage over competitors, ukraine in this particular instance. it, it's not the main point of this conflict. i mean, the conflict itself is alva, a g o, economic and geopolitical nature. the,

the u. s. of see the toy from the human wind condo, lisa rice was the secretary of state, and she said us openly. she said, it is the aim of the united states to my europe. less dependent on russian energy and more dependent on usa energy. because in this case, energy is the mains to influence. if we look at the sanctions, i mean, they never have been effective. otherwise, cuba would not be the country. it has now. now you're talking about russia, which is much bigger. and if we look at bank, when the sanctions were imposed as part of the global economy. so there i going to be costs for imposing. even evangeline, i'll be cheese even come to the conclusion. that is not good for europe because europe is acting as a vessel in this particular case. and doing what the us is dictating. the main point of this is for the u. s. to try and maintain its uni paula kid giovanni.

because if anything else doesn't really matter. i mean, it's a means to an end that he and as maintaining law, he, germany and to brussels. now were several suspects have appeared in court for a close pre trial hearing over an unprecedented corruption scandal in the european parliament, which has already seen several high profile resignations and arrests. a number of e, emmy peas from the socialist block, have also asked been asked to step down amid be investigation r t contributor rachel mars then has more details. the bless radius of the scandals seems to be growing by the day. the belgian prosecutor's office treated the hollow grounds of the european parliament like a giant crime scene this week. seizing tech equipment ostensibly to prevent data from potentially vanishing. meanwhile, rightly politicians who have accused the e. u. in the past of using corruption allegations as

a potential sledge hammer in an effort to marginalize them, are now having a pretty good laugh of all this and pointing out how it's directly touching darlings of the e establishment and not a bunch of fries. the european union loves to give lessons to the entire world. it would do much better to start cleaning its own house, the european parliament as not a transparent institution and support for socialists like eva, kylie exposes the values of the european parliament and ridicules the c u. institution bellville authorities are now talking about 20 separate searches and 750000 euros. seized including several 100000, just sitting around in a suitcase in a hotel room in brussels. who, how intrigue, and dramatic. it sounds like somebody involved in this fiasco watched a few too many hollywood dramas and decided to become the main character in one of their own european commission. president ursula vander line has now proposed an independent ethics body for you institutions where there are quote,

very clear rules. yeah. like how vote use a bank and not your luggage to sore massive wides of cash. if you're an elected official, she said that it would be quote, a big step forward. yeah, it would hold european union officials to the same high standards as teenagers who might be tempted to dip into the tail during their shift at the local fast food restaurant and take on the proceeds. since authorities also said that a $150000.00 euros were found in a euro deputies apartment. there are now 6 people arrested in this whole affair, including 4 members of european parliament. most notably former you parliament, vice president, eva kylie who was just stripped of her title in a vote. all this loose cache has been tied to pat tori lobbying efforts, but doha denies having anything to do with it. the state of guitar categorically rejects any attempt to associated with accusations of misconduct. any association

of the katara government with the reported claims is baseless and gravely misinformed. it's probably worth pointing out that state officials don't usually carry around and handouts to cases full of cash or wives of cash or anything like that. if that's going to happen, it's generally what middle man and had outs are for here in france. for example, there have been countless bribery and corruption scandals and they almost never ever bring down the highest level officials. several us lawmakers have announced bipartisan legislation to ban chinese own social media platform, picked up the american politicians claim the app can be used to spy on us citizens . this isn't about creative videos. this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of american children and adults every day. we know it's use to manipulate feeds and influence elections. we know it answers to the people's

republic of china. tick tock is digital fentanyl. that's addicting. americans collecting troves of their data and censoring their news, the bipartisan anti social c c p act as a strong step in protecting our nation from the nefarious digital surveillance and influence operations of totalitarian regimes. well, it's very hilarious to listen to those words because what they're describing, how they're arguing about how tick tock seems to be operating, fits pretty closely with the details that are now emerging regarding how twitter and meta facebook and other outlets have interfered in us politics. take, for example, the hunter, biding laptop story, and this was a scandal regarding the son of the president of united states and his business deals and his relationships with his father. and will recall on how it's been admitted that us social media giants worked to suppress it. in coordination with

the f, b i, the distribution on facebook was decreased, but people were still a to share it so you could still share it. you could still consume it, but we weren't sort of as black and white about it as, as twitter. we just kind of thought, i look if, if the f b i, which i still view is a legitimate institution in this country. it's so very professional lawn for spent, they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something that i want to take that seriously. now a new poll shows that 71 percent of americans say that a truthful interpretation of the 100 biden laptop story may have changed their vote and go change the outcome of the elections in the united states. so the effort by facebook and twitter to suppress that story certainly had an impact. now, it's also interesting to hear the owners of tape talk accused of news suppression. let's not forget that social media outlets have dand r t. all throughout western europe, rti is being widely suppressed. it's been shut down from youtube, et cetera. and,

and, and then you want to get into the other accusation that they make about data that let's look into the details that have been revealed by edward snowed about how data collected by u. s. social media outlets and tech companies gets handed over to the f b i. and how there is a coordination with the fbi. i in this information regarding users activities is provided to the american authorities without any warrant, no warranty or are needed. they simply go to the tech outlet and get the information. there's actually been a 260 percent increase in the providing of this data to us officials and they've been getting it without warrants the amount of data that they've been acquiring on us individuals as increasingly gone up. this is the information it's been reveal and we also know what they tend to use this information for david's description of what you can do with metadata. and quoting a mutual friend to we're baker is absolutely correct. we kill people based on

metadata, throw the hypocrisy in us, condemnation of tick tock, allegedly suppressing news, allegedly interfering in us politics or allegedly collecting people's data for nefarious purposes. the world can hear the hypocrisy and what these us lawmakers are saying. as they pound the podium against tick tock, the upcoming by share of house democrats has lashed out any house republicans over the hunter biden laptop, scandal stating the suppression of the story by twitter is a relevant. he put out a statement on social media saying what he's going to focus on is 100 biden's laptop. actually is even more irrelevant that, that he's actually concerned about what twitter was saying about 100100 biden's laptop. this refers to the 2020 revelations,

alleging questionable business dealings by hunter bite, and son of the us president, the new york posts article containing the story was suppressed from spreading on twitter ahead of that years presidential election. the story came back to light amid the publications of the so called twitter files, the social media giants, internal documents released by you must, after his takeover of the company. they alleged that twitters, intentional suppression of conservative voices including limiting the visibility of tweets as well. 2 as the deletion of donald trump's account, that's the spite concerns of staff members on whether he actually violated any rules. back in 2018 congressman had lou cited the popularity of donald trump's account, while mocking the possibility of censorship against conservatives. this is a stupid, ridiculous hearing. the only reason i'm so here is i want to enter some facts. enter the record, the top 3 you like to officials. number one, donald trump,

over to vice president parents. number 3. speaker ryan, the notion that social media somehow sensory concert folks is ridiculous. tad lewis said government regulation of social media content would be unconstitutional. that goes against the materials in the twitter file allegations, which said both political parties had influence over the platforms, content, moderation, with the democrats. having more avenues to exercise control. the question of twitter, censorship was raised with the white house spokesperson, however, she also dismissed the story. we see this as a, an interesting or a coincidence if i may that, that he would so have hazard lee. twitter also have passively push this distraction . that is a, that is a full of old news if you think about it. and at the same time, twitter is facing very real and very serious questions about the rising volume of

anger. hate an anti semitism on their platform and how they're letting it happen. so we have study know hughes, host of the $360.00 view program. welcome, scotty. oh, thank you for having me on such an incredible subject that this time last year. i don't think we would have even been really talking much about twitter, but here we are at the end of 2022. and it is at the top of every single, not only american, but globally. this is a subject that people are talking about, so it's got a, what's your take on how the democrats are calling the hunter bite and laptop story irrelevant? well, i think of course, what else would you expect from them? i mean, this was something that was brought up not only by conservative media outlets for just those that were considered to be impartial, media outlets. i know we hear on our tea tried to cover the laptop as much as possible and the result was, well, you were either threatened. you were either put lawsuits on you if you were a media outlet wanting to cover the 100 bite and laptop during election time. you

became under intense scrutiny. a lot of backlash public backlash not only from the public but also media colleagues. and so now to come to fruition that everything that the majority of those outlets were saying was true and even more extensive, the reality of it is we would not know this unless there would not have been someone was able to purchase twitter and make it open as to exactly the relationship between the u. s. government and the social media platform. let's go back a few years back in 2018, tad lew called the government's involvement in social media content, moderation, unconstitutional. how does this sound in light of the recent revelations? well, as we found out, politicians are a lot of words, but usually their actions don't meet their words. the rhetoric that comes out of politicians and this is on both sides of the aisle, they say that they want to make sure that it is fair, that there is not sort of hate that is stirred up on social media. but the reality

of it is that what they want is control, or they want to make sure that none of their dissenters are able to actually come after them and point out when hold them accountable. that is one thing that social media is good for it. it's holding the politicians accountable for what they do. and so for 10, lou to say that, of course, that was a popular talking point of both party. but what did he really believe that was the truth? what did he do about it? absolutely nothing. and now we know that taboo amongst. 1 as his democrat colleagues were those that were having conversations with the executives at twitter, and i'm sure it's going on facebook if we were ever find out the truth. which also makes you wonder about the other media platforms, both traditional like newspapers, the washington post new york times, as well as broadcast media platforms. how involved and how close relationships have these media outlets had, with campaigns through the last 4 election cycles. and earlier the white house press secretary, also called the twitter file story, a distraction. now that's the fight previous budget to look into the situation

surrounding twitter following its take over by month. what are the priorities of the white house, and do you think this relationship with twitter? how do you see that developing? i think you're going to see a very quick calling by the democrats. are they still have at least a little bit of power left in the house? more importantly, by this, it is obviously the white house. we have learned that the buy and ministration has no problem using their d o. j to go after their dissenters and people that work with that they believe are, do not agree with their policies and work against them. so i do believe that you will be seeing some sort of whether be investigation or really intensive audit by the iris going into twin or trying to find some way to intimidate, to shut them down. unfortunately, the past they've been very successful by this, but i think you will see because unfortunately, the idea of freedom of speech for the price is just words in the constitution. these days, as we have seen time and time again, the government use their power to try to influence those that might not be able to just go along with the rhetoric and the narrative that seem to be pre predisposed.

pre agreed upon by most of the media outlets as long as they want to get invited to the white house christmas party. we've seen so much censorship and narrative management. how concerning are the revelations that we have seen revealed thus far? and what else do you think we could find out in the future? that is extremely a wonderful question. in fact, i think every journalist needs to be asking that question because i remind you there were journalists like those here at r t, as well as others that were asking questions about the 100 byte and laptop. and they were not only peer pressured by other media colleagues, but also by the government themselves. if they continued asset questions they were demonized. and so when journalists are told to asking question is wrong, that that is bad when they are tried to persuade not to ask questions, that should be the number one reason why the journalist should keep asking questions. and so this should be very concerning the extent and this was the us presidential election, and we're finding out that the 100 by the laptop had a lot of information regarding joe by himself, the top of a give

a credit ticket. and the fact that they wanted to influence and get involved in these platforms that's extremely concerning. how can you have trust and a system like the elections when you know that there are political parties that are influencing one of the major ways that people get their information about the candidates from. so this is extremely concerning the real truth or will we ever be able to get congress to act that we can restore some trusting credibility into the way we get information that seem to be seen? it hasn't happened yet in history, but maybe this is a wake up call that was needed to the majority of americans that they really need to look beyond just the headlines and the narrative that they're being continuously told. don't be spoon fed by the media. you have to actually question more. thank you, scottie, now hughes, host of the 360 view program. pleasure. thank. thank you. at an ongoing summit between 49 african nations and the united states. washington is speaking a way to limit russian and chinese influence in the region. this is as president

biden has expressed his support of africa for their role in solving global problems . please now for a long time, good after success and prosperity is essential to assure and a better future for all of us. not just for africa, we're still grappling with the deadly pandemic facing down war and instability address in economic challenges with global impact fighting, fighting rising food prices, tackling impacts of climate change. we can't solve any of these challenges without africa leadership at the table, and i'm not trying to be nice. that's a fact. in a bed to compete with africa's other partners, china and russia, the u. s. has already made deal worth $15000000000.00 at this summit. it is also expected that biden will endorse the african union for permanent d, 20 membership. china called out washington's efforts to sway africa.