Tag: President Volodymyr Zelenskiy

Prigozhin, head of Wagners departs into exile in Belarus

Aleksandr Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, has announced Yevgeny Prigozin, the founder of the Wagner Group, has arrived in the nation.

The Kremlin had earlier declared Prigozhin’s exile in Belarus as a condition of the agreement that put an end to his weekend insurrection against the Russian military.

The mercenary leader is rumoured to have flown into Belarus on a plane on Tuesday morning from Rostov, Russia, and Lukashenko has confirmed his arrival in remarks to state media.

‘I see Prigozhin is already flying in on this plane,’ Lukashenko was quoted as saying by BELTA. ‘Yes, indeed, he is in Belarus today.’

He added that Prigozhin and his troops would be welcome to stay in Belarus ‘for some time’ at their own expense, and that ‘security guarantees have been given’ regarding their stay.

Lukashenko told state media that Belarus is not building any camps for the group, but will accommodate them if they want.

‘We offered them one of the abandoned military bases. Please – we have a fence, we have everything – put up your tents,’ he said.

Lukashenko was also quoted as saying there were no plans to open any Wagner recruitment centres in Belarus.

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin praised Russia’s armed forces for preventing a civil war as he sought to reassert his authority after the mutiny led by Prigozhin in protest against the Russian military’s handling of the conflict in Ukraine.

Russian authorities also dropped a criminal case against his Wagner Group mercenary force, state news agency RIA reported, apparently fulfilling another condition of the deal brokered by Lukashenko late on Saturday that defused the crisis.

Prigozhin, a former Putin ally and ex-convict whose mercenaries have fought the bloodiest battles of the Ukraine war and taken heavy casualties, had earlier said he would go to neighbouring Belarus at the invitation of Lukashenko, a close Putin ally.

Prigozhin was seen on Saturday night smiling and high-fiving bystanders as he rode out of Rostov in the back of an SUV after ordering his men to stand down. He has not yet been seen in public in Belarus.

Putin meanwhile told some 2,500 security personnel mustered for a ceremony on a square in the Kremlin complex that the people and the armed forces had stood together in opposition to the rebel mercenaries.

‘You have defended the constitutional order, the lives, security and freedom of our citizens. You have saved our Motherland from upheaval. In fact, you have stopped a civil war,’ he said.

Putin was joined by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose dismissal had been one of the mutineers’ main demands.

Putin also requested a minute of silence to honour Russian military pilots killed in the revolt. The fighters had shot down several aircraft during their run towards Moscow, although they faced no resistance on the ground.

On Monday night, Putin said in a televised address that the mutiny leaders had betrayed their motherland, although he did not mention Prigozhin by name. Wagner fighters would be permitted to establish themselves in Belarus, join the Russian military or go home, he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing on Tuesday the deal ending the mutiny was being implemented. He also said he did not know how many Wagner fighters would sign contracts with the Defence Ministry.

He dismissed the idea that Putin’s grip on power had been shaken by the mutiny, calling such thoughts ‘hysteria’.

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly address that the military had made advances on Monday in all sectors of the front line, calling it a ‘happy day’.

Kyiv hopes the chaos caused by the mutiny attempt in Russia will undermine Russian defences as Ukraine presses on with a counteroffensive to recapture occupied territory. It claimed on Monday to have captured a ninth village in the south where it has been advancing since early June.

June 28, 2023
Sister of Kim Jong-un criticizes Ukraine over nuclear weapons

Sister of Kim Jong-un claims Ukraine is seeking nuclear weapons.
According to Saturday’s report by the country’s official news agency KCNA, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of leader Kim Jong-un, charged Ukraine with advocating for nuclear weapons.

Her claim was supported by a petition that had garnered less than 1,000 signatures online in that nation.

Kim said that this kind of petition could be a political ploy by the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, but he offered no proof to support his claim.

Following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement last week that Moscow plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, a public petition was filed to the Ukrainian presidential office’s website on Thursday, calling for Ukraine to host nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory, or for it to be armed with its own nuclear weapons.

Ms Kim is one of the most powerful people in North Korea (Picture: AP)

By Saturday afternoon, the petition had gained only 611 signatures, far short of the 25,000 needed for a response from Zelenskiy. Kyiv officials have not commented on the petition so far.

North Korea is forging closer ties with the Kremlin amid shared isolation by the West and it supported Moscow’s position after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, including its later proclaimed annexation of parts of Ukraine that most U.N. members condemned as illegal. It has denied providing arms to Moscow.

The incident is not the first time Ms Kim has shared her thoughts on the conflict in Ukraine, having previously warned the West had ‘crossed a line’ with its decision to supply tanks to Ukraine.

Speaking in NK state media, she said: ‘The US is the arch criminal which poses serious threat and challenge to the strategic security of Russia and pushes the regional situation to the present grave phase.

‘I do not doubt that any military hardware the US and the West boast of will be burnt into pieces in the face of the indomitable fighting spirit and might of the heroic Russian army and people.’

She added that North Korea will always ‘stand in the same trench’ with Russia.

North Korea is the only nation other than Russia and Syria to recognise the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine.

The United States previously accused Pyongyang of supplying weapons to the Wagner Group, Russia’s mercenary army.

April 3, 2023
Russia Ukraine war: 1year on, Ukraine mourns dead, vows victory

Ukraine honored its dead and vowed to keep fighting on Friday while Russia told the world to accept “the realities” of its war but faced new Western sanctions on the invasion’s anniversary.

At a ceremony in Kyiv’s St Sophia Square, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy bestowed medals on soldiers and the mother of one killed, fighting back tears during the national anthem.

“We have become one family … Ukrainians have sheltered Ukrainians, opened their homes and hearts to those who were forced to flee the war,” he said in a televised address.

“We withstand all threats, shelling, cluster bombs, cruise missiles, kamikaze drones, blackouts and cold … And we will do everything to gain victory this year.”

Zelenskiy reiterated calls for more Western weaponry and attended an online summit with United States President Joe Biden and other leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies who pledged to intensify their support.

“A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase the people’s love of liberty,” Biden said on Twitter.

“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never.”

Washington announced a new $U.S. 2 billion ($A3 billion) package of military aid for Ukraine and a raft of additional sanctions and tariffs hitting Russia’s mining and metals industries, as well as companies from third countries accused of supplying Moscow with restricted goods.

However, Biden reiterated in an interview with ABC News that he had no plans to send Ukraine the F-16 fighter jets Zelenskiy has been seeking for months, saying the US does not currently see a rationale for sending the advanced aircraft.

“I am ruling it out for now,” Biden said.

G7 members Canada and Britain unveiled similar measures, as did the 27-nation European Union, after some hectic last-minute negotiations.

At the same time, Ukraine’s military said Russia had doubled the number of ships on active duty in the Black Sea on Friday and predicted it could be preparing for more missile strikes.

In Russia, where publicly criticising the war is punishable by long prison terms, a human rights group said dozens of people were detained by police for actions to commemorate victims of the invasion, in some cases just for placing flowers.

Ukraine’s blue and yellow colours lit up the Eiffel Tower, Brandenburg Gate, Empire State Building, and Sydney Opera House in a wave of international solidarity.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers on both sides are believed to have died since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion, saying it was necessary to protect Russia’s security.

Ukraine sees it as a bid to subjugate an independent state.

Its outnumbered and outgunned forces repelled Russia’s attempt to seize Kyiv early in the war and later recaptured swathes of occupied territory.

But Moscow still occupies almost one-fifth of Ukraine, which it claims to have annexed.

Russia’s foreign ministry said the world should recognise “new territorial realities” in Ukraine to achieve peace.

Russian troops have destroyed Ukrainian cities, set a third of the population to flight, and left behind streets littered with corpses in towns they occupied and lost.

Moscow denies war crimes.

In recent weeks, Russian forces, replenished with hundreds of thousands of conscripts, have waged intense trench warfare, making only small gains despite fighting both sides call the bloodiest so far.

In the latest reports from the battlefield, Russia’s Wagner private army, run by a Putin ally, claimed to have captured another village on the outskirts of Bakhmut, a small eastern mining city that is the focus of Moscow’s offensive.

Costly Russian assaults have yielded little in the way of advances elsewhere.

Ukraine, for its part, is awaiting new Western weapons before starting a counter-attack.

Despite strong support for Ukraine in the West, big developing nations, above all China and India, have kept clear of imposing sanctions on Moscow.

At a meeting of finance ministers of the G20 group, which includes Russia, host India made no mention of the conflict.

China, which signed a “no limits” partnership with Russia just before the war and sent its top diplomat to Moscow this week, called for a ceasefire, sticking to its principle of public neutrality. (Reuters/NAN)

February 25, 2023
Ukraine will never give up its freedom on Independence Day-Defiant Zelenskiy

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Ukrainians in an emotional speech marking 31 years of independence on Wednesday that their country had been “reborn” when Russia invaded and that it would never give up its fight for freedom from Moscow’s domination.

In a recorded speech aired on the six-month anniversary of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, Zelenskiy said Ukraine no longer saw the war ending when the fighting stopped but when Kyiv finally emerged victorious.

“A new nation appeared in the world on Feb. 24 at 4 o’clock in the morning. It was not born, but reborn. A nation that did not cry, scream or take fright. One that did not flee. Did not give up. And did not forget,” he said.

The 44-year-old wartime leader delivered the speech in combat fatigues in front of central Kyiv’s towering monument to independence from the Russian-dominated Soviet Union that broke up in 1991.

Zelenskiy underscored Ukraine‘s hardening war stance that opposes any kind of compromise that would allow Moscow to lock in territorial gains, including swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine captured over the past six months.

“We will not sit down at the negotiating table out of fear, with a gun pointed at our heads. For us, the most terrible iron is not missiles, aircraft and tanks, but shackles. Not trenches, but fetters,” he said.

He vowed that Ukraine would recapture lost territory in the industrial Donbas region in the east as well as the peninsula of Crimea that Russia annexed in 2014.

“What for us is the end of the war? We used to say: peace. Now we say: victory,” he said.

Ukrainians are bracing for a prolonged war – and a brutal winter of energy shortages – after pushing back Russian forces at the start of what Moscow describes as a “special military operation” and preventing the fall of Kyiv.

Western military sources now say Russian forces are making little headway in their offensive operation in Ukraine’s eastern and southern territories, comparing the fighting to the slow, bloody, attritional fighting of World War One.

The streets of central Kyiv were unusually empty on Wednesday morning following days of dire warnings that Russia could launch fresh missile attacks on major cities. An air raid siren rang out in the capital at 0740 GMT.

Source: Reuters

August 24, 2022
President Zelenskyy sacks security chief, cites hundreds of treason cases

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sacked the head of the country’s domestic security service and state prosecutor, citing hundreds of cases of alleged treason and collaboration with Russia, as Moscow appeared set to step up military operations.

Zelenskiy said more than 60 officials from the SBU security service and prosecutor’s office were working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied territories, and 651 treason and collaboration cases had been opened against law enforcement officials.

The sackings on Sunday of Ivan Bakanov, head of the security service, and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, who led efforts to prosecute Russian war crimes, and the sheer number of treason cases reveals the huge challenge of Russian infiltration as Kyiv battles Moscow in what it says is a fight for survival.

“Such an array of crimes against the foundations of the national security of the state … pose very serious questions to the relevant leaders,” Zelenskiy said. “Each of these questions will receive a proper answer.

In his nightly speech to the nation, Zelenskyy noted the recent arrest on suspicion of treason of the SBU’s former head overseeing the region of Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 that Kyiv and the West still view as Ukrainian land.

Zelenskiy said he had fired the top security official at the start of the invasion, a decision he said had now been shown to be justified.

“Sufficient evidence has been collected to report this person on suspicion of treason. All his criminal activities are documented,” he said.

3,000 CRUISE MISSILES

After failing to capture the capital Kyiv early in the invasion, Russian forces using a campaign of devastating bombing now control large swaths of Ukraine’s south and east, where pro-Russian separatists already control territory.

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Zelenskiy said Russia had used more than 3,000 cruise missiles to date, and it was “impossible to count” the number of artillery and other strikes so far.

Dozens of relatives and local residents on Sunday attended the funeral of 4-year-old Liza Dmytrieva, one of 24 people killed in a Russian missile strike in the city of Vinnytsia last week.

Western deliveries of long-range arms are beginning to help Ukraine on the battlefield, with Kyiv citing a string of successful strikes carried out on 30 Russian logistics and ammunitions hubs, using several multiple launch rocket systems recently supplied by the West.

The strikes are causing havoc with Russian supply lines and have significantly reduced Russia’s offensive capability, according to Ukraine’s defence ministry.

Head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) IvanÂ Bakanov and Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova attend a news briefing in Kyiv, Ukraine May 11, 2021. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

Ukraine’s southern Operational Command reported that in the Kherson region, it had destroyed two Russian Pantsir missile systems, three strategic communication systems, one radar station, two ammunition depots, and 11 armoured and military vehicles on Sunday.

The Russian military are also using radio-electronic warfare to suppress satellite communication channels, the Ukrainian General Staff said in a statement early on Monday.

RUSSIA INTENSIFIES OPERATIONS

Russia has ordered military units to intensify operations to prevent Ukrainian strikes on areas held by Russia, according to Ukraine which on the weekend reported shelling along the frontline in what it said was preparation for a fresh assault.

Ukraine’s general staff said its forces had repelled Russian attacks in several towns in the Donetsk region.

“Fighting is currently ongoing near Hryhorivka near the administrative between Luhansk and Donetsk regions,” it said.

Overnight at least 10 explosions were reported in the southern city of Mykolaiv, but there was no information on casualties, while two people were killed and 10 wounded in Avdiivka and Novy Donbas, said Ukraine’s general staff, citing local officials.

Reuters could not immediately verify the reports.

The British defence ministry said on Sunday that Russia was reinforcing defences across areas it occupies in southern Ukraine after pressure from Ukrainian forces and pledges from Ukrainian leaders to drive Russia out. read more

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion on Feb. 24 calling it a “special military operation” to demilitarise its neighbour and rid it of dangerous nationalists.

Kyiv and the West say it was an imperialist land grab and attempt to reconquer a country that broke free of Moscow’s rule with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two has killed more than 5,000 people, forced more than 6 million to flee Ukraine and left 8 million internally displaced, says the United Nations.

Ukraine and the West say Russian forces are targeting civilians and been involved in war crimes, charges Moscow rejects.

Source: Reuters

July 18, 2022
Biden announces new $1 bln in weapons for Ukraine

President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a fresh infusion of $1 billion in weapons for Ukraine that includes anti-ship rocket systems, artillery rockets, howitzers and ammunition.

In a phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Biden said he told the embattled leader about the new weaponry.

“I informed President Zelenskiy that the United States is providing another $1 billion in security assistance for Ukraine, including additional artillery and coastal defense weapons, as well as ammunition for the artillery and advanced rocket systems,” Biden said in a statement after the 41-minute call.

The president also announced an additional $225 million in humanitarian assistance to help people in Ukraine, including by supplying safe drinking water, critical medical supplies and healthcare, food, shelter, and cash for families to purchase essential items.

The latest weapons packages for Ukraine include 18 howitzers, 36,000 rounds of ammunition for them, two Harpoon coastal defense systems, artillery rockets, secure radios, thousands of night vision devices and funding for training, the Pentagon said.

The aid packages, which come as U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is meeting with allies in Brussels, were split into two categories: transfer of excess defense articles from U.S. stocks and other weapons being funded by the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), a separate congressionally authorized program.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia on Wednesday accused Western countries of “fighting a proxy war with Russia,” telling reporters: “I would like to say to the Western countries supplying weaponry to Ukraine the blood of civilians is on your hands.”

Ukraine is pressing the United States and other Western nations for speedy deliveries of weapons in the face of increased pressure from Russian forces in the eastern Donbass region.

Oleksandra Ustinova, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, told reporters at an event organized by the German Marshall Fund: “We need all these weapons to be concentrated in a moment to defeat the Russians, not just keep coming every two or three weeks.”

In May, the Biden administration announced a plan to give Ukraine M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems after receiving assurances from Kyiv that it would not use them to hit targets inside Russian territory. Biden imposed the condition to try to avoid escalating the Ukraine war.

The rocket artillery in this aid package would have the same range as previous U.S. rocket shipments and is funded using Presidential Drawdown Authority, or PDA, in which the president can authorize the transfer of articles and services from U.S. stocks without congressional approval in response to an emergency, said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

For the first time, the United States is sending ground-based Harpoon launchers. In May, Reuters reported the U.S. was working on potential solutions that included pulling a launcher off of a U.S. ship to help provide Harpoon missile launch capability to Ukraine.

Harpoons made by Boeing Co (BA.N) cost about $1.5 million per missile, according to experts and industry executives.

Source: www.reuters.com

June 15, 2022