A ceasefire was introduced in Syria

The Syrian authorities agreed on a ceasefire in the Idlib DMZ starting from the night of 2nd of August. According to the Syrian media — Damascus agreed on this step only if all parties comply with the terms of the ‘Sochi agreement’, which provides the withdrawal of the heavy weapons. Damascus insists that the terrorists must retreat for 20 km from the border of the DMZ. The delegation of the Syrian opposition, presented at the talks in the city of Nur Sultan, agreed on a truce. The terrorists of the ‘Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’ group, that controls most of the province, didn’t respond to Damascus’s initiative. Recently, the situation in Idlib got significantly worse. The terrorists increased the intensity of shelling of the Syrian settlements, and they increased the amount of attempts to seize additional territory. At the end of July, 8 settlements in Idlib were attacked.

Starting from today, the INF treaty is officially terminated by the initiative of Washington. This was reported by the Russian Foreign Ministry. “On 2nd of August, 2019, by the initiative of the USA, the Treaty between the USSR and the USA on the elimination of their own medium-range and short-range missiles, which was signed in Washington on 8th of December of 1987, was terminated” — RIA NEWS quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry. Earlier, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced that Russia sent proposals to the USA and the NATO to declare a moratorium on the deployment of medium and short-range missiles, similar to the one announced earlier by Vladimir Putin. He declared that Russia would refrain from deploying such systems until the appearance of the American missiles of the same type in Europe. Today, the US Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, officially confirmed Washington’s withdrawal from the INF treaty.

Beijing is extremely displeased with the statements of Donald Trump. China is ready to retaliate in case of an increase in the duties on Chinese goods — the official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, announced on Friday. “If the US raise the duties — China will retaliate. I think the US should think well before taking such steps since they will have to face the disastrous consequences of their own actions” — TASS quotes the official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry. On Thursday, Donald Trump announced that on 1st of September, the US will impose a 10% duty on the goods from China, worth of $300 billions of dollars.

South Korea will impose sanctions against Japan in response to the export restrictions on high-tech components — the South Korean Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam Ki announced. On Friday, Japan decided to remove South Korea from the list of countries with minimal trade restrictions on the purchase of high-tech products and technologies.

Donald Trump signed a decree that imposes sanctions against Russia for the use of the poison ‘Novichok’ in the British town of Salisbury — Interfax reports while citing the ‘Politico’. The details of the decree were not announced. Earlier, the US House of Representatives Committee on the Foreign Affairs urged Donald Trump to proceed to the second stage of the sanctions against Russia for the incident in Salisbury. In accordance with the decision of the US State Department, the sanctions were supposed to be introduced in two stages. The first stage was launched on 27th of August during last year. The second stage was supposed to take effect if Russia won’t submit «reliable, by the opinion to the US administration, assurances» on the refusal to use chemical and biological weapons, and if Russia won’t be ready to let the UN inspectors to visit its chemical facilities within 3 months.

The US intelligence reported about new missile launches in the DPRK — the CNN reports. According to the preliminary data — a short-range ballistic missile, the same type as during the previous launches earlier this week, was tested. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea later confirmed this information. According to the South Korean military — the missiles were fired at 2:59 and 3:23, from the settlement of Yunhun in the province of Hamgyon-Namdo towards the Sea of ​​Japan. The UN Security Council resolutions prohibit North Korea from launching any kind of ballistic missiles.

Constantine Reztsov, specially for ANNA NEWS.