On June 3, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov addressed the meeting of the Russian Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society on account of 140th anniversary of that organization. Mr. Lavrov paid particular attention to the place of Christianity in the modern world and the pressure it has recently become subject to due to the present geopolitical developments.

💬 "It is incumbent upon us to protect the rights of Christians and especially of the Orthodox. I mean Orthodoxy in particular, because unfortunately, in recent years, at the initiative of the US, cunningly manipulating the Patriarch of Constantinople, a course has been taken to destroy Orthodoxy." "You know what subversive actions have been taken in Ukraine against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: a schismatic church-like structure has been created there. You are also aware of their attempts to destroy the Syrian Orthodox Church; the same applies to the Serbian Orthodox Church," said the Russian Foreign Minister. "This is obviously a strategic course of the USA and EU to undermine everything related to Russia, to the Slavic nations, to Orthodox Christianity," concluded Mr. Sergei Lavrov. (via RF)

In accordance with the Montreux Convention (1936), Turkey has banned NATO ships participating in the Ramstein Legacy 2022 exercise from crossing the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits.

This ban is an indication that Turkey considers this exercise not only as a test of the interoperability between NATO forces, but also as inherent to the war in Ukraine. She feels that allowing this armada to go through would put her own safety in jeopardy. The Turkish president had spoken to his Russian counterpart on May 30.

Was the United States Really Behind Turkey’s July 15 Coup Attempt? (Modern Diplomacy, April 1, 2021)
CIA's clandestine meeting in Istanbul on coup night (Yeni Şafak, 26 July 2016)

U.N. atomic agency chief Rafael Grossi said he is pressing for access to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which is Europe's largest such facility containing six reactors.

💬 “We hope to go there to be able to prevent...a problem, or we end up finding that there are a few hundred kilograms of nuclear weapon-grade material going missing. This is what keeps us awake at night at the moment,” Mr. Grossi said.

The Zaporizhzhia plant has been under the control of Russian forces since the early days of the Ukraine invasion but Ukrainian staff continue to operate the facility. Mr. Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the site contains 30,000 kilograms of plutonium and 40,000 kilograms of enriched uranium. [Rafael Grossi] has repeatedly called for Ukraine and Russia to agree to measures to ensure the safety of Ukraine's four active nuclear sites, including guaranteeing emergency support and supplies can reach the nuclear plants in case of an incident.

Ukraine Re-Nuclearization? (Global Security)
US May Have Assisted Ukraine In Its Efforts To Develop Nuclear Weapons: Report (Republic World)
Ukrainian nuclear inspectorate in spat with IAEA over Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant (Bellona)
Ukraine denies presence of stockpiles of plutonium and enriched uranium (TASS)

A Twitter friend highlights this bizarre moment from a speech Karl Lauterbach gave on 3 June to a convention for private insurers in Berlin.

💬 "We’re going to have a special situation [in the Fall]; we also expect a strong influenza wave and many RSV        infections. This has to do with the fact that immunity has declined in recent years because the containment        measures have also protected against these other infections, so an immunity deficit has built up there, and this        immunity deficit is now significant for the wave we’re coming up to. So we’re dealing with a new wave of Covid,        and we’re dealing with a wave of influenza, and we’re dealing with RSV. You might say RSV primarily affects        children – well, if you have this substantial deficit in immunity, then RSV is also dangerous for older people. We        have to deal with that too. We also have to protect those who have autoimmune problems, and these        autoimmune problems mean that the vaccination works, but it doesn’t work so well, and for that we need special        vaccination strategies, we need special protection strategies..."

eugyppius | Every time I post about this clown, I resolve that it’s the last time. Even beyond his deepening Corona mania and clear signs of mental illness, he’s just such an obvious loser – a mediocrity who spent years on the fringes of his own party as an eccentric back-bencher, known primarily for his fear of salt. He came to prominence very much like Eric Feigl-Ding, as a pseudo-epidemiologist on Twitter, where he relentlessly inflated the risk of SARS-2, denied elementary properties of the human immune system and serially misinterpreted even very simple studies.

[H]is remarks reveal the total circularity of pandemic management. The problem now is that our measures have caused a population-wide immunity deficit, for which there is no solution but a continuation of measures. We are so far into this farce, that even Lauterbach can proclaim publicly that restrictions have become their own cause, a self-perpetuating end unto themselves, and nobody even blinks or reports on his remarkable admission.

MOSCOW, June 6. /TASS/. The longer the range of weapons that Western countries will supply to Ukraine, the further Moscow will move away the line of threat from its territory, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at an online press conference on international issues on Monday.

💬 "Russian President Vladimir Putin has already commented on the situation that will emerge with the arrival of new armaments and I can only add that the longer the range of armaments that you will supply, the further away we will move from our territory the line, beyond which Neo-Nazis can threaten the Russian Federation," Lavrov cautioned.

💬 It is wrong to make the situation boil down to the formula: "had there been no special operation, there would have been no weapons supplies," which is a simplification, the Russian foreign minister stressed.

💬 "The point is that we had been warning Great Britain, the United States and other NATO members for 20 years: ‘Dear friends, you signed the commitment in 1999 that no state will strengthen its security at the expense of other states’ security and so why can’t you do that? Why did it turn out to be a lie? And instead, you say: ‘get away from us, we admit whom we want.’ And you have expanded five times closer to our borders," Russia’s top diplomat pointed out.

If US Delivers Long-Range Missiles to Ukraine, Russia Might Hit Earlier Unaffected Targets - Putin (06/05/22)
Vladimir Putin Warns the Empire of Lies (Stephen Lendman, June 6, 2022)

Donetsk under massive rocket fire – RT correspondent (RT.com)

The Washington Post revealed Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s highly controversial “Disinformation Governance Board,” launched with much fanfare just three weeks earlier, was to close, and that its director, Nina Jankowicz — former fellow at the quasi-state Wilson Center think tank, and Ukrainian foreign ministry communications adviser – had resigned.

The exclusive report, authored by Taylor Lorenz, went to enormous efforts to frame the Board’s dissolution as resulting from egregious sabotage by right-wing activists, who engaged in “coordinated online attacks” on its “well-known,” “well-regarded” chief, subjecting her to an “unrelenting barrage of harassment,” which served to “derail” the Biden administration’s benevolent efforts to tackle the “urgent and important issue” of disinformation.

In reality, public backlash against the Board, which erupted immediately following its official launch on April 27, was wide-ranging, and anything but partisan or personal. Prominent rights groups and lawmakers expressed grave concerns about its constitutionality and the obvious risk of its serving as a state censorship mechanism, with many comparisons drawn to the infamous Ministry of Truth conjured by George Orwell in “1984.”