Washington has again dismissed visual proof of US-supplied equipment used in this week's attack by Ukrainian militants in Russia's Belgorod Region as unconfirmed "reports" but admitted the images require further investigation. President Joe Biden's administration, however, has apparently acknowledged concern that Kiev might have broken its alleged pledge not to use American weaponry outside its own territory.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby spoke of "frustration" over the attack during a press briefing on Wednesday, US media outlet Politico reported. He noted that the administration is "looking into" the footage indicating that US-supplied equipment "could have been involved" in a deadly raid in the Belgorod district of Grayvoron.

"We've been pretty darn clear that we don't support the use of US-made equipment for attacks inside Russia," Kirby told reporters. "We've been clear about that with the Ukrainians. I won't get into private discussions that we're having with them, but I think we've been nothing but consistent about our concerns in that regard."

Russia remains "firmly" committed to developing strategic partnerships with countries in Africa, Moscow's ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, has said.

"Through our joint efforts, the continent will become one of the leaders of the emerging multipolar world order. We will counter the neocolonialist ideology that is being imposed from outside," he said on Tuesday at a Russia-Africa gala in Washington ahead of the second Russia-Africa Summit.

Western governments have been vocal in their opposition to Russia's growing influence in Africa, with top US officials touring the continent in what Bloomberg described as a "campaign" to build America's influence in the region "where it has lost ground to its main rivals" - Moscow and Beijing.

Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron accused Russia of pursuing a "predatory project" to spread influence in African nations, where France, a former colonial power on the continent, has suffered recent setbacks.

Washington has co-opted both winners and losers of World War II into defending Western domination around the globe.

The summit of G7 nations took place in Hiroshima, Japan over the last weekend.

Hiroshima is significant for a few reasons. First of all, it is known to the world as the location that the United States nuked, along with Nagasaki, at the end of World War II, which led to the surrender of the Empire of Japan and that country's transformation into a US client state.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has issued a warning to the American people about the tyrannical measures that are being ushered in by the World Economic Forum, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and other "mega billionaires."

Speaking during a new interview with Kim Iverson, RFK Jr. warned that the global power elite is using "climate change" to usher in totalitarian population control.

Kennedy made the comments shortly after launching his campaign to challenge President Joe Biden in the Democrat 2024 presidential primary.

Nearly three-quarters of transactions between Moscow and Beijing are currently made in rubles or yuan, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin revealed during talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing on Wednesday.

Moscow has repeatedly stated that it considers both the dollar and euro unreliable, as their use in the country's cross-border transactions has been jeopardized by Western sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.

"70% of cross-border settlements between Russia and China are already conducted in national currencies - rubles and yuan," Mishustin stated.

While attending a business forum in Shanghai on Tuesday, the Russian prime minister also noted that the countries' mutual decision to conduct the majority of transactions in national currencies had significantly bolstered bilateral trade, which is on course to reach a $200 billion target this year ahead of schedule.

Western countries are forcing Kiev to present tactical successes on the battlefield regardless of the cost to human lives and "pumping" the country full of weapons and fighters, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has claimed.

Speaking at a meeting of the council of defense ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Minsk on Thursday, the Russian minister said the value of the West's military-technical assistance to Kiev has already exceeded $65 billion and that more than 2,500 foreign mercenaries are currently taking part in military operations in the country.

He also claimed that Kiev's tactics have evolved to include terrorist methods of confrontation, including sabotage and high-profile killings.

The severing of diplomatic ties with the UK would be an "extreme measure," but Moscow could end up taking the step considering London's significant involvement in the Ukraine conflict, the Russian Foreign Ministry has warned.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that "UK special forces from the British Army's SAS and SRR regiments and the Navy's SBS units are operating very close to the front lines" in Ukraine. British personnel are not directly involved in the fighting with Russian troops, "but their guiding influence on Ukrainian special-forces activity is evident in the sabotage operations Ukraine has conducted against Russian railway, airfield, fuel and other logistical nodes," the US outlet claimed.

RT addressed the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment on the article, asking if Moscow could verify the WSJ's claims and, if confirmed, whether this could lead to the severing of relations with Britain.

We are living in turbulent times indeed. Vital volumes of history are being written right before our very eyes.

You may have noticed that "Dr Doom" is sending out doom-and-gloom messages yet again. Fortune reported back in April that Nouriel Roubini (aka Dr Doom) is warning of painful stagflation caused by a new Cold War with China and the balkanization of the global economy.

Al Jazeera also reported on Roubini's downcast views, saying, "the world is headed for dark times in the next 20 years."

No wonder Dr Doom, who leapt to financial stardom by predicting an economic catastrophe in 2008, is now warning the world that the conflict between the United States and China is simmering - and surely not only in the area of economics.

However, the global situation is so frighteningly serious that it will most surely crescendo into a double-dip recession for a plethora of other factors as well as from the prevailing sentiments in the Pentagon predicting a forthcoming war with China.

We are living through truly turbulent times. There are countless politically crucial things happening globally that boggle the mind. If one remembers the events only this January when Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general, visited Japan and Korea, one can sense, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "something rotten in the state of NATOstan".

During the course of both fleeting visits, Stoltenberg pledged to foster bilateral relations due to the historic challenges that NATO is dealing with, such as the war in Ukraine. He went on to brag that NATO already has established liaison offices globally, the main ones in New York and Vienna, and particularly indicative is the one in Ukraine. At its foundation at the inception of the Cold War in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization comprised 12 nations set up at the behest of the U.S. The military bloc now comprises 31 members and is increasingly appointing itself with a global role.

As a reminder, NATO already has permanent liaison offices in the following countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. A proposed Japan office caused considerable commotion.

'This sector needs innovation now more than ever,' Kerry remarked

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry warned Wednesday that the world can't tackle climate change without first addressing the agriculture sector's emissions.

Kerry lamented that agriculture production alone creates 33% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that reducing those emissions must be "front and center" in the quest to defeat global warming, during remarks Wednesday morning at the Department of Agriculture's AIM for Climate Summit. The former secretary of state also touted so-called climate smart agriculture as a potential solution.

"A lot of people have no clue that agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world," he said during his keynote address. "We can't get to net-zero, we don't get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission."

US President Joe Biden is running out of time to score a "victory" in Ukraine, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik's New Rules podcast.

Biden's announcement of a new weapons package for Ukraine at the G7 summit in Hiroshima last week coincided with Russia's liberation of Artemovsk (Bakhmut). Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embarked on a diplomatic charm offensive in Europe, drumming up support for the much-discussed Kiev's "counteroffensive".

However, the former Pentagon analyst and US Air Force veteran told Sputnik that the Ukrainian armed forces were unlikely to achieve meaningful success, despite an influx of new Western weaponry.

"They have been put on the offense and yet they have been cleaned out militarily," Kwiatkowski said. "And the aid that they're getting from NATO isn't interoperable. It isn't compatible with what the Ukrainians are used to using. In many cases, it doesn't work together. So they can't put together a combined arms operation. They don't really have an air force. They are really at a disadvantage."