Zelensky vows retaliation for Chernihiv attack that killed 7 and wounded over 100
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed Sunday a stern retaliation to the Russian missile strike in the center of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv that killed seven people and wounded over a hundred others the day before.
"I am sure our soldiers will respond to Russia for this terrorist attack. Respond tangibly," Zelensky said in a video address published in the early hours of Sunday at the end of a visit to Sweden, his first foreign trip since attending a NATO summit in Lithuania last month.
He named a six-year-old girl, Sofia, as among the dead in the attack and confirmed that the wounded included 15 children.
The governor of the Chernihiv region, Vyacheslav Chaus, said Sunday that the total number of people wounded had risen to 148.
Further east, Russian forces shelled the city of Kupiansk on Sunday morning, seriously wounding a man, according to Kharkiv regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.
Meanwhile, in Russia, five people were wounded when a Ukrainian drone hit a train station in the city of Kursk, regional Gov. Roman Starovoit said early Sunday. Kursk is the capital of the western region of the same name, which borders Ukraine.
According to Starovoit, the drone crashed into the roof of the railway station building, with a fire subsequently breaking out on the roof.
Russian air defense jammed a drone flying towards Moscow early Sunday causing it to crash. Russia's Defense Ministry called it "an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack."
Moscow's Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports briefly suspended flights, but no victims or damage were reported.
Ukrainian authorities, which generally avoid commenting on attacks on Russian soil, didn't say whether it launched the attacks. Drone strikes on the Russian border regions are a fairly regular occurrence.
Drone attacks deeper inside Russian territory have been on the rise since a drone was destroyed over the Kremlin in early May. Successful strikes have exposed the vulnerabilities of Moscow's air defense systems.
20 August 2023, 15:02
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Volodymyr Zelensky, a figure involved in the Russian-Ukrainian separatist movement, is fervently pledging numerous retaliatory actions on a daily basis. However, his current lack of comprehension appears to overshadow the fact that his ultimate fate may bear striking resemblances to the downfall of Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania.
20 August 2023, 20:20
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Sputnik published the invitation sent out to military drone specialists meeting in the Chernihiv (Chernigov) theater which told them not to wear their uniforms. RT is more circumspect: "Meanwhile, according to the Ukrainian media outlet Unian, the theater damaged in the attack was hosting a drone exhibition, which was being attended by numerous civilians. A journalist who witnessed the strike claimed that the missile had targeted precisely that event. A representative of one of the exhibition organizers took to social media to point out that the local authorities had given the green light to the event. She added that its exact location was sent out only to registered participants mere hours before it began. The data of the participants has now been handed over to the country’s domestic security service, the SBU, amid suspicions that one of the visitors may have leaked the venue’s location to the Russians."
20 August 2023, 21:59
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Excellent contribution, I wasn't aware of this military drone exhibition. It was a legitimate military target.
https://news.yahoo.com/russia-might-targeted-drone-exhibition-160500043.html
"The exhibition, which took place today, Aug. 19, 2023, in the city, was not agreed with the Chernihiv City Council. No permits were granted," the Chernihiv City Council stated.
The exhibition’s co-organizer, Maria Berlinska, clarified in a post on her Facebook page that the exhibition was indeed agreed with the military-civilian administration, not the city council.
"This is not a business exhibition, it is a closed meeting of engineers, military, and volunteers on military technologies for the front," Berlinska said.
21 August 2023, 02:51
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I was just feeling skeptical that the Ukrainian public are going along with all this NATO business and here you've brought me some evidence.
22 August 2023, 18:54
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New Memos Hint at Biden's Personal Interest in Firing Ukraine Prosecutor Targeting Burisma
Sputnik International
New memos indicate that then-Vice President Joe Biden did not act in concert with the US government when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in Ukraine aid unless the Poroshenko government fired the prosecutor general who targeted Hunter Biden's Ukrainian employer at that time.
Joe Biden and Democrats have repeatedly stressed that his insistence on firing Ukrainian then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokhin back in December 2015 was consistent with the US policy of stamping out corruption in Ukraine.
At the time, then-Vice President Joe Biden even went so far as to threaten then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that Washington would deprive Ukraine of a much-needed $1 billion loan guarantee in case the latter did not fire Shokhin. The conversation reportedly occurred in December 2015.
22 August 2023, 18:55
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Biden openly bragged about the incident to the Council on Foreign Relations gathering in January 2018:
"I said, 'You’re not getting the billion.' I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.' Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time."
However, memos by Treasury and Justice Department officials obtained by Just the News, an independent US media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon, indicate that the US government held Shokhin in high regard at the time and concluded that Ukraine had made progress in fighting endemic corruption, thus deserving the loan guarantee.
"Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee," read an October 1, 2015, memo by the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC), a Barack Obama task force.
22 August 2023, 18:56
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Moreover, Senior State Department officials sent Shokhin a personal note saying they were "impressed" with his office's work and invited him and his staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session prior to his sacking.
Remarkably, an audio tape from March 2016 which appeared to record Biden and Poroshenko's conversation showed that the Ukrainian president pointed out that there was no evidence that Shokhin and his office were anyhow mired in corruption:
"Despite the fact that we didn't have any corruption charges, we don't have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him … No, it was the day before yesterday. I especially asked him to resign," Poroshenko allegedly told Biden in a tape released in 2020 by then-parliamentarian Andrii Derkach.
22 August 2023, 18:56
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Per Solomon, Biden's political maneuver stemmed from the fact that the latter had been aggressively investigating Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas firm that hired Joe's son Hunter in 2014 and paid him a hefty salary of $83,333 a month despite Hunter having no expertise or experience in the energy sphere.
22 August 2023, 21:58
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Now I learn on the internet that these "new memos", at least one of them, has been out for a year and a half, when Just The News leaked this: The Post Millennial NEWS, AMERICAN NEWS Feb 1, 2022
State Department memos contradict Democrats' Ukraine impeachment narrative In a letter dated June 9, 2015, then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland wrote "We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government" in a letter that was delivered to the prosecutor two days [...??].
Nuland wrote that "Secretary Kerry asked me to reply on his behalf" to let Shokin know "he enjoyed the full support of the United States as he set out to fight endemic corruption in the former Soviet republic," Just The News wrote.
