Russian President Vladimir Putin has no regrets about the war against Ukraine, insisting it is going according to plan and downplaying any nuclear confrontation with the West. Fighting on the frontline appears to have slowed in recent days, with Ukrainian officials saying difficult terrain and bad weather have hampered their main advance into the southern Kherson region.

The main thing for Friday, the 247th day of the war in Ukraine, TEXT OF THE LIVE MODE:

00:46The world has entered the “most dangerous” decade since the Second World War, Vladimir Putin believes

“We are in a historic moment. Undoubtedly, the most dangerous, most important, most unpredictable decade after 1945 awaits us,” the Kremlin leader assessed in his speech at the Valdai Discussion Forum in Moscow.

According to the Russian president, his military offensive against Ukraine is part of this “tectonic change in the world order.”

00:30The State Department is working to ensure that US weapons from Ukraine do not end up on the black market

State Department spokesman Ned Price said that, according to CNN, while Ukraine has “committed to storing and properly accounting for transferred defense equipment”, the US “remains vigilant” about the possibility of weapons falling into foreign hands.

A brief summary of recent events:

• In a speech outside Moscow, Putin again claimed that Russia knew “about the incident with the so-called ‘dirty bomb’ being prepared” and that Russia knew “where it was being prepared in the first place.” He again provided no evidence of the alleged plot, which included the possibility that the device would be loaded onto a U-Point or other tactical missile, detonated and then “blamed on Russia.”
• Vladimir Putin said he directly ordered his defense minister to make a series of calls to NATO high command this week about a possible detonation of a “dirty bomb” in Ukraine.
• Putin used the speech as a platform to criticize Western countries and their alleged “hegemony,” saying the world faced the “most dangerous” decade since World War II. “We are standing at a historical turning point: ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and at the same time important decade since the end of the Second World War.”
• In the coming days, a new calendar of planned power outages will be introduced in Kyiv and its surroundings after Iranian drones last night caused significant damage to the energy infrastructure of the Kyiv region, the city administration said.
• The new schedule is designed to prevent uncontrollable power outages and will be stricter and longer than those recently announced by Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state-owned energy company. Residents of Kyiv apartment buildings started leaving small snack bags in elevators to be used in case people got stuck during a power outage.
• The prospect of fierce urban fighting for Kherson, the largest city under Russian control, loomed as Ukrainian forces advanced further in their southern campaign, which saw Russian forces pushed back.
• In an interview with the Italian publication Corriere della Sera, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that Russian troops are “not ready” to retreat from Kherson. “Their best-trained soldiers are at their positions, no one left,” Zelenskyy said. “We see it and we don’t believe it,” he added.
• VIDEO Ukraine on Thursday presented a new domestically produced SHARK drone, designed by it to work in conjunction with the HIMARS salvo fire systems received from the United States.
• Now Putin declares that a nuclear attack on Ukraine “would have no political and military sense.” In his annual foreign policy speech at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, a Russian geopolitical think tank, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia “has never talked about using nuclear weapons,” The Kyiv Independent reports.
• US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Thursday that the United States has seen nothing to indicate that Russia’s ongoing annual Thunder exercise could be a cover for a real deployment.
• Moscow will not leave Chisinau’s anti-Russian statements without a reaction – threatens Maria Zakharova, who accuses the Moldovan authorities of Russophobia
• China poses a “fundamental” risk to US security for decades to come, while Russia poses an “acute threat”, the Pentagon said in its new defense strategy released on Thursday.
• A group of Ukrainian special forces managed to capture a Russian armored car with the entire crew

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Thursday’s events were broadcast live on HotNews.ro