Today News: Zelensky

‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات Zelensky. إظهار كافة الرسائل

Ukraine's Zelensky Vows Fight 'Until the End' on 6-month War Anniversary

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Kyiv on Wednesday, hailing Ukraine's six-month long resistance to the Russian invasion as his counterpart President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed the fight would continue "until the end". Wednesday marked half a year since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as the day the nation annually celebrates its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union. During a surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital Johnson said Putin had failed to account for the "strong will of Ukrainians to resist." "You defend your right to live in peace, in freedom, and that's why Ukraine will win," he said in front of reporters during the afternoon. The Ukrainian leader had issued his own defiant morning video address, declaring: "We don't care what army you have, we only care about our land. We will fight for it until the end." Referring to Russia he vowed Ukraine "will not try to find an understanding with terrorists". "For us Ukraine is the whole of Ukraine," he said. "All 25 regions, without any concession or compromise."

Fresh aid

Meanwhile on Wednesday, the U.S. announced $3 billion in fresh military aid. The new tranche of U.S. funding will help Kyiv acquire more weaponry, ammunition and other supplies for its armed forces, locked in a grinding war of attrition with Russian troops in the east and south with neither side advancing significantly in weeks. Johnson also unveiled his own £54 million ($64 million) package of aid, including 2,000 "state-of-the-art drones" as well as anti-tank munitions. The White House announcement came as Washington warned Moscow could be planning a surge in strikes on civilian targets coinciding with Independence Day observations. Gatherings have been banned in the capital Kyiv and Zelensky has urged citizens to be on guard against "Russian terror". Nevertheless the leader and his wife marked a minute of silence for fallen Ukrainian soldiers and laid yellow and blue floral bouquets at a memorial in central Kyiv, the president's office said.

European support

Johnson's visit was accompanied by other messages of support from Ukraine's allies. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the anniversary of the start of Russia's war in Ukraine a "sad and tragic milestone". European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU has been standing with Ukraine "from the very beginning" and "will be for as long as it takes." But in an absurd message, the authoritarian leader of Belarus, which offered its territory as a staging ground for Russia's invasion, gave congratulations to Ukraine on its Independence Day. "I am convinced that today's contradictions will not be able to destroy the centuries-old foundation of sincere good neighbourly ties between the peoples of our two countries," Alexander Lukashenko said.

Muted anniversary

In the early days and weeks of Russia's invasion, Kyiv was under siege by Russian troops which reached the suburbs of the capital. Moscow's offensive quickly faltered, and its forces withdrew in late March to regroup for assaults on Ukraine's east and south. But in the capital, Ukrainians were sombre about the anniversary after a half-year of death and destruction. "Six months, the peace of life has been broken in every family," Nina, an 80-year-old pensioner, said at Independence Square in central Kyiv, on Tuesday. "How much destruction, how many dead, how can we relate to it?" she asked. The capital city's administration said it would shut public service centres on Wednesday and Thursday, and shopping malls said they would close for the anniversary for safety concerns. However, in central Kyiv crowds of people gathered in a surreal atmosphere to inspect dozens of disabled Russian tanks, trucks and armoured vehicles installed near the government quarter to showcase Ukraine's military prowess. Cotton candy vendors plied trade to pedestrians, who peered down tank barrels and posed for selfies, draped in the Ukrainian flag.

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Zelensky Condemns Russian 'Terror' After Damage to Nuclear Plant

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday accused Russia of using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "for terror" after the operator of the facility reported major damage at the site.

Energoatom, the operator of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the south of the country, said Saturday that parts of the facility had been "seriously damaged" by military strikes and one of its reactors was forced to shut down.

Friday's strikes had damaged a station containing nitrogen and oxygen and an auxiliary building, Energoatom said on the Telegram messaging service.

As hostilities raged on in the east and south of Ukraine, pro-Moscow authorities in the Russian-occupied Kherson region reported the assassination of a senior official.

And the head of Amnesty International's Ukraine office announced she had resigned from the organization over the group's publication of a controversial report that accused the country's military of endangering civilians.

Kyiv and Moscow have blamed each other for the attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest atomic power complex.

Zelensky, in his nightly address on Saturday, once again accused Moscow of terrorism, saying, "Russian terrorists became the first in the world to use the power plant...for terror."

The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog expressed alarm over the shelling at the plant. The strikes underline "the very real risk of a nuclear disaster," said Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"Any military firepower directed at or from the facility would amount to playing with fire, with potentially catastrophic consequences," he added.

The European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell condemned the attack "as a serious and irresponsible breach of nuclear safety rules and another example of Russia's disregard for international norms."

Another assassination

An official with the Russian occupying authorities in Kherson died in hospital after being shot on Saturday, Russian state media reported.

Vitalii Hura, "the deputy head of the Novaya Kakhovka administration in charge of the housing and utility sector, died from his wounds," Yekaterina Gubareva, the deputy head of Russia's civil-military administration in Kherson, wrote on Telegram, according to TASS.

The report said Hura had been attacked in his home and shot several times.

Another Moscow-appointed official was killed in the same region in June, reportedly by a bomb planted in his car.

There has been a spate of reported assassination attempts and attacks against pro-Kremlin officials in Ukrainian regions controlled by Russia.

Although Russia has seized a large swath of the Kherson region and part of nearby Zaporizhzhia in recent months, Ukraine's forces have reclaimed some territory.

In his address Saturday, Zelensky hit out at Amnesty International, comparing the rights group's accusations against Ukraine's military with its silence on Russia's actions.

Referring to the strikes on the Zaporizhzhia plant, he said that although they represented "one of the most dangerous crimes against Ukrainians and all Europeans...for some reason, there's still no report or even just a simple message from Amnesty International about it."

"It's a very eloquent silence, which points out, once more, a manipulative selectivity of this organization," he added.

Amnesty sparked outrage in Ukraine with the report published Thursday that accused the military of endangering civilians by establishing bases in schools and hospitals and launching counterattacks from heavily populated areas.

Amnesty report row

The head of Amnesty's Ukraine office quit the organization in protest.

"If you don't live in a country invaded by occupiers who are tearing it to pieces, you probably don't understand what it's like to condemn an army of defenders," Oksana Pokalchuk said on social media late Friday.

"And there are no words in any language that can convey this to someone who has not experienced this pain."

Pokalchuk said she had tried to warn Amnesty's senior leadership that the report was one-sided and failed to properly take into account the Ukrainian position but had been ignored.

Amnesty secretary-general Agnes Callamard expressed regret at her departure and paid tribute to her work. But the organization stands by its report.

On Friday, Ukrainian officials said three grain ships left Ukraine after the first in months sailed on Monday as part of a deal to avert widespread food shortages.

Another five cargo ships are due to leave the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk on Sunday, said a statement from the Joint Coordination Centre of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the organization coordinating the operation agreed between Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations.

Source https://www.globalcourant.com/zelensky-condemns-russian-terror-after-damage-to-nuclear-plant/?feed_id=7717&_unique_id=62ef72fea73f4

Zelensky Urges Evacuation of Ukraine's Frontline Donetsk

Ukraine's president urged civilians on Saturday to evacuate the frontline Donetsk region, the scene of fierce clashes with the Russian military, as Kyiv called on the Red Cross and UN to gain access to its soldiers being held by Moscow's forces.

The eastern Donetsk region has faced the brunt of Russia's offensive since its assault on Kyiv failed weeks into the invasion launched on Feb. 24.

President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in his daily address that thousands of people, including children, were still in the region's battleground areas, with six civilians killed and 15 wounded on Friday, according to the Donetsk governor.

"There's already a governmental decision about obligatory evacuation from Donetsk," Zelensky said, underscoring authorities' calls to leave the besieged region in recent weeks.

"Leave, we will help," Zelensky said. "At this stage of the war, terror is the main weapon of Russia."

Official Ukrainian estimates put the number of civilians still living in the unoccupied area of Donetsk at between 200,000 and 220,000.

A mandatory evacuation notice posted Saturday evening said the coming winter made it a matter of urgency, particularly for the more than 50,000 children still in the region.

"They need to be evacuated, you cannot put them in mortal danger in the winter without heating, light, without the ability to keep them warm," Kyiv's Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories said in a statement.

Zelensky, in his address, also once more pressed the international community, especially the United States, to have Russia officially declared a "state sponsor of terrorism."

He reiterated the call a day after a jail holding Ukrainian prisoners of war in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka was bombed, leaving scores dead, with Kyiv and Moscow trading blame.

On Saturday, Ukrainian human rights official Dmytro Lubinets said on national television he had asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission to go to Olenivka.

The ICRC has made a request but has not yet obtained authorization from the Russians, he said.

'Egregious provocation'

Russia's defense ministry accused Kyiv of striking the Olenivka prison with U.S.-supplied long-range missiles, in an "egregious provocation" designed to stop captured soldiers from surrendering.

It said Saturday that the dead included Ukrainian forces who had surrendered after weeks of fighting off Russia's brutal bombardment of the sprawling Azovstal steelworks in the port city of Mariupol.

The defense ministry said 50 Ukrainian prisoners were killed and 73 were taken to hospital with serious injuries.

"All political, legal and moral responsibility for this bloody massacre of Ukrainians lies with Zelensky personally, his criminal regime and Washington, which backs them," it said.

Zelensky laid the blame squarely on Russia.

"This was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war," he said.

Members of the Azov regiment were among those who surrendered at Azovstal.

Azov regiment commander Mykyta Nadtochiy said he considered the attack on the jail to have been "an act of public execution."

Gazprom cuts off Latvia

Also on Saturday, Russian energy giant Gazprom suspended gas supplies to Latvia, in the latest tightening of gas provision to European Union states, which have accused Russia of squeezing supplies in retaliation for Western sanctions imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Conexus Baltic Grid confirmed to Latvia's LETA news agency that Gazprom had informed it of the suspension of deliveries, but said other suppliers were continuing them.

"Today, Gazprom suspended its gas supplies to Latvia... due to violations of the conditions" of purchase, the company said on Telegram.

Latvia's Economy Minister Ilze Indriksone told LETA that his country "was not counting on natural gas flows from Russia."

Gazprom drastically cut gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline on Wednesday to about 20% of its capacity. It had reduced gas flows to Europe twice in June.

The Russian state-run company had earlier announced it would choke supply to 33 million cubic meters a day — half the amount it has been delivering since service resumed last week after 10 days of maintenance work.

Gazprom cited the halted operation of one of the last two working turbines for the pipeline due to the "technical condition of the engine."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has blamed EU sanctions for the limited supply.

The EU this week agreed a plan to reduce gas consumption in solidarity with Germany, where the Nord Stream pipeline runs to, warning of Russian "blackmail."

Grain fields set alight

Russian strikes continued to rain down on Ukrainian towns and cities on Saturday.

Ukrainian authorities said Russian bombardments targeting the south and east of the country had left one dead in southern Mykolaiv and one dead in eastern Bakhmut.

The death toll from a strike on a Mykolaiv bus stop on Friday climbed to seven after two men died in hospital, he added.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, three Russian S-300 missiles struck a school, mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram, adding that the main building was destroyed.

A Ukrainian spokesman said his country's forces had set fire to grain fields around Mariupol so they could not be used by the Russians.

"The Mariupol resistance forces set fire to the fields with grain so that it would not be stolen by the occupiers," Sergiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa regional military administration said.

Source https://www.globalcourant.com/zelensky-urges-evacuation-of-ukraines-frontline-donetsk/?feed_id=4558&_unique_id=62e5fbd0704e5