Mexico and Nicaragua have refused to take part in a "political farce," their diplomatic missions told the outlet.

Mexico and Nicaragua are the latest nations to refuse to take part in the so-called 'Ukraine peace summit' organized by Switzerland, Izvestia newspaper reported on Friday. Earlier, Brazil and Argentina announced that they would not attend the gathering, highlighting Kiev's failed attempts to rally Latin American countries to Vladimir Zelensky's 'peace plan'.

The gathering, scheduled for June 15-16 at the Burgenstock Resort, has been touted by Kiev and its Western backers as the most realistic way of resolving the conflict with Russia. Moscow, however, has been deliberately excluded from the event, and has described it as a "scam" intended to trick neutral nations into supporting Zelensky and the Ukrainian government.

Mexico has maintained a neutral stance on the Ukraine conflict since it began in 2022 and has refused to impose economic sanctions on Russia. The country's embassy in Russia confirmed to Izvestia it had been invited to the summit but stated that Mexico will skip the event. An embassy spokesperson told the outlet:

"Our country stands for peace, so we expect that it will soon be possible to hold negotiations in which both sides to the conflict will participate."

In the opening days of this year's St Petersburg International Economic Forum, there were a number of signs that the Kremlin is taking a much tougher line in its relations with the West than hitherto in response to the war mongering rhetoric that has come out of Western Europe in the past week. France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States had publicly stated that the weapons they have supplied to Ukraine can be used as the Kievan authorities see fit, meaning that attacks on the Russian heartland with long range missiles coming from their factories and programmed by their specialists are permitted.

Meanwhile, in the run-up to the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landing commemorative activities in France yesterday, Emanuel Macron had done his very best to enrage the Kremlin by excluding Russians from the ceremonies and instead by warmly embracing the defender of the Bandera Nazi collaborators, President of Ukraine Zelensky. Macron compounded the insult to Russia by announcing that he will send Mirage 2005 all-purpose fighter jets to Ukraine before year's end and that Ukrainian pilots are now in training in France.

The new hard line from Russia was evident already at the start of the week when deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was allowed to speak his piece to the press, condemning the entry of West European powers into what is essentially co-belligerent status in the conflict. Ryabkov, you will remember, was the hard liner from the Ministry back in December 2021 demanding a voluntary roll back of NATO to its 1994 borders through negotiations over a draft document to that effect, lest Russia be compelled to push them back by force.

Then the tough condemnation by Ryabkov was repeated to the press by his boss, Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov.

At his meeting with representatives of the leading news agencies from 16 countries on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin sounded a tough note when he said that Russia's response to a possible attack on critical Russian infrastructure in its heartland using the long-distance missiles supplied by the West would be met by an asymmetrical response, namely by Russia's supplying similarly advanced weapons to armed forces that are in confrontation with the United States and are in a position to inflict significant damage on them if properly equipped. This sounded very much like a plan to arm the Houthis of Yemen, who could take good advantage of Russia's hypersonic ship killing missiles to take revenge on the U.S. aircraft carrier force in their region. Or to give an assistance to Iraqi and Syrian militias who have been attacking U.S. military bases that are being maintained in their territories illegally.

Freedom of speech and other key liberties have disappeared in Europe and will not return any time soon, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl has said during a panel organized by RT as part of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

Europe was previously "a dreamland" for people in other parts of the world due to its "constitutionalism, freedom, equality of women and men, security and welfare state," Kneissl said during the discussion on Friday.

"Well, sorry to say, but all that is gone... what Europe was is gone, and I deplore it," she stated.

According to the former diplomat, who was in charge of Austria's Foreign Ministry between 2017 and 2019, the continent "has lost its soul... it has sold its soul."

The underlying reason for Russophobia in the US is completely monetary and intended to benefit the elite political class, RT contributor and former aide to President Joe Biden Tara Reade suggested during a panel discussion at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday.

Speaking during a panel hosted by RT, titled 'The Empire of Evil: Has the West Successfully Demonized Russia?' Reade suggested that Russophobia is "completely manufactured" by the Obama and Biden administrations, as well as the Republican Party and the military industrial complex.

The whistleblower, who currently lives in Russia, argued that the entire US system has been "overtaken by the intelligence community, by the military, and companies such BlackRock, Raytheon, and LockHeed."

"There is no esoteric reason for Russophobia in the US, its monetary, its economic, it's done purposefully," Reade claimed, noting that the average American doesn't know much about Russia.

As one example, she recalled her former boss Leon Panetta, who previously served as the head of the CIA. "Now he sits on the board of Raytheon. Yet you'll see him on MSNBC trying to talk about why we should have more weapons going to Ukraine. Well, of course he wants more weapons, because he's personally profiting.

Ordinary Germans don't trust the political elite and mainstream news outlets when forming an opinion, Alexander von Bismarck says.

The Western mainstream media is distorting reality regarding Russia and doesn't reflect what people really think of the country and its actions, German politician Alexander von Bismarck, great nephew of his nation's first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, has claimed.

Speaking during an RT panel discussion titled 'The Empire of Evil: Has the West Successfully Demonized Russia?' at the 2024 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday, the politician argued that the media toeing the line drawn by Western governments regarding Russia and the Ukraine conflict.

Berlin and its Western partners sided with Kiev when the conflict began in 2022, and has been instrumental in supporting Ukraine's military effort with financial aid and sanctions against Moscow. Bismarck, however, said ordinary Germans are not fooled by the anti-Russian narrative.

Once the Ukrainian leader has served his purpose, he will go, Moscow has said

The US and its allies will tolerate Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky until he has served his purpose, at which point he will be replaced, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman gave an interview to Izvestia on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), where he addressed recent remarks by the president about the likely fate of Zelensky.

"Obviously, he will be removed," Peskov said. "Obviously, reducing the mobilization age will cause an increasing wave of negativity in Ukrainian society."

Much is being written today about the disruptive impact of drones in modern warfare. Rightly so, because these small, inexpensive, and highly capable devices are transforming military operations. They are accurate and effective; hard to identify or intercept; and can be operated with minimal infrastructure or training. A single soldier today can operate an eye in the sky or conduct his own bombing mission. As we are seeing in Russia and Ukraine, new drone uses, applications, and capabilities are rapidly advancing while the defense struggles to catch up.

It is therefore not surprising to see footage of fallen soldiers and destroyed armored vehicles that succumbed to drone attacks. Even the mighty Russian Black Sea Fleet, a massive investment of resources and manpower, has suffered humiliating defeats and been neutralized by a relatively tiny investment in guided missiles and small drone watercraft packed with explosives.

Although the effects on the battlefield are profound, they are also being felt far from the front lines. St. Petersburg and Moscow, hundreds of miles from the Ukrainian border, have both suffered drone attacks. Iranian drones are also helping to throttle shipping through the Red Sea and were responsible for the recent deaths of 3 U.S. soldiers in Jordan. They are even being used as tools of assassination by drug cartels in Latin America.

FBI agent Erika Jensen said on the stand during Hunter Biden's trial Wednesday that she had not seen any evidence of tampering with the data on his infamous laptop.

Hunter Biden's legal team has sought to cast doubt on the authenticity of data on the laptop, which their client abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019, while prosecutors have introduced the laptop's contents as evidence in their case against Hunter Biden. In prior court filings, Special Counsel David Weiss called their criticism of the laptop's authenticity a "conspiracy theory with no supporting evidence."

When asked by prosecutor Derek Hines if she had seen evidence that Hunter Biden's laptop had been tampered with, Jensen responded "no," according to multiple reports.

Hunter Biden was indicted in September on felony gun charges for allegedly making false statements on a gun purchase form and knowingly possessing a gun while addicted to drugs. Prosecutors are using data from the laptop as evidence in the trial to demonstrate Hunter Biden was addicted to drugs at the time of purchase.

Western media can never truly report the extent of Israel's criminality because to do so would be to expose their long-running complicity in those crimes.

Leaks from within CNN reveal that for months its executives have been actively imposing an editorial line designed to reinforce Israel's framing of events in Gaza, to the point of obscuring atrocities by the Israeli military.

The dictates, say insiders, have resulted in senior staff refusing to accept assignments to the region "because they do not believe they will be free to tell the whole story". Others suspect they are being kept away by editors who fear they will fight the restrictions.

Internal memos insist that stories be approved by the station's Jerusalem bureau, where staff are widely seen as partisans who slant reports in Israel's favour. Palestinian perspectives are tightly restricted.

"Ultimately, CNN's coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice," one staffer told an investigation by the Guardian newspaper.

On Tuesday, Paris lifted a state of emergency it had declared two weeks ago in its overseas territory of New Caledonia. France, however, is maintaining a night curfew and is also reportedly sending another 480 paramilitary gendarmes, in a development that is not getting that much press coverage internationally. Restrictions are being eased on the main pro-independence FLNKS party. This was a response to about two weeks of unrest and riots, with food shortages and millions of dollars' worth of damage. Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron flew to the archipelago in an attempt to diminish the turmoil, much to no avail.

The Melanesia archipelago of Nouvelle-Calédonie or New Caledonia (native pro-independence groups prefer to call it Kanaky), located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, about 1,200 east of Australia, is part of the so-called Overseas France or France ultramarine (France d'outre-mer), which is a generic term for about 13 French territories outside of Metropolitan France (and outside of Europe). Those are basically the remains of the French colonial empire, which remained part of France after decolonization, in different ways and under various statuses.