Any Russian Blackmail Must Be Met With a Tough Response – in the Way Putin Deserves – Address by the President

28 November 2024 – 19:43

Dear Ukrainians!

Briefly about today.

Restoration work is still ongoing after the Russian attack. Over 90 missiles and nearly 100 strike drones were launched. The targets were energy infrastructure and ordinary civilian objects. Many were shot down, and our electronic warfare systems performed well, but unfortunately, there were also hits. Some of the strikes involved Kalibr missiles with cluster warheads – a particularly dangerous type of Russian weaponry used against civilians. These significantly complicated the work of our rescuers and repair crews. Despite all the risks, our people have been working all day, gradually restoring electricity in areas where outages occurred. I am grateful to everyone who has been at work since early morning and will continue to work around the clock to restore basic normalcy to people’s lives.

Today, Ukraine’s Minister of Energy Galushchenko delivered a report on the pace of restoration. There is also a decision by the Netherlands to provide additional launchers for the Pаtriot systems, and it is timely. Thank you! Norway has made a significant decision to increase its support for Ukraine next year. The Norwegian government and parliament have agreed on a minimum funding level of $3.2 billion for aid to Ukraine. On days like these, when we face massive Russian strikes, it is crucial to feel that our partners stand shoulder to shoulder with us.

Today, in Kazakhstan, Putin once again promoted his missiles – his readiness to kill and destroy. To the thousands of missiles that have already struck Ukraine, Putin clearly wants to add thousands more. He has no interest in ending this war. Moreover, Putin wants to prevent others from ending this war. By wagging his ‘oreshnik’ now he is aiming solely to disrupt the efforts of President Trump that are sure to follow his inauguration.Putin wants to escalate the situation now so that President Trump fails to end the war. Putin is the only culprit in this war and the only one who believes in war. That is why Putin’s escalation now is a form of pressure aimed at eventually forcing the President of the United States to accept Russia’s terms. We are aware of all the existing threats.

Today, I received a report from Chief of the Defense Intelligence Budanov regarding Russia’s intentions for missile strikes. Yesterday, I explained the situation during a conversation with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. Today, I spoke with British Prime Minister Starmer. Tomorrow’s schedule includes a conversation with German Chancellor Scholz. We must respond together to Russia’s attempt to make the situation more unbearable and to prolong this war. We are interested in peace – Ukraine and all our partners. Now is the time to strengthen our positions – the positions of Ukraine and our partners. Any Russian blackmail must be met with a tough response. In the way Putin deserves. And we must see the prospect – the prospect of ending the war with genuine peace together with America, together with Europe, together with all partners. True peace is needed – peace through strength, not this series of disasters where one dictator in Moscow has been imposing his terms on every new leader for 25 years already with his missiles.

And one more thing.

To all our people: when there are air raid alerts and missile threats, we must go to shelters. This is a firm rule – a rule that does not depend on any statements coming from Russia. Right now, there may be even more attempts by Russia to spread fear and despair in Ukraine. We all need resilience to get through this. And we need unity with all our partners. Putin is now doing what he always does – intimidating, dividing, and trying to break or destabilize each one of us individually. He can do nothing else. He loses when he is isolated. And he must lose now. In everything. And it will be safe for everyone.

Thank you to everyone who helps!

Glory to Ukraine!

More on the overnight strikes and Putin’s threats:

The sick old man answered a question about whether the so-called “decision-making centers” in Kyiv, whether military or political, could be targets for Oreshnik.
t.me/c/1315043344…

[image or embed]

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 9:58 AM

Putin on Russia’s Oreshnik missile: “The temperature of the striking elements reaches 4,000 degrees. Everything at the epicentre of the blast disintegrates into fractions and elementary particles. Essentially, it turns to dust.”

[image or embed]

— Christopher Miller (@christopherjm.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 8:48 AM

“At present, the ministry of defence and the general staff are selecting targets to hit on Ukrainian territory. These could be military facilities, defence and industrial enterprises, or decision-making centres in Kyiv,” Putin said on Thursday during a meeting in Kazakhstan. on.ft.com/499wAro

[image or embed]

— Christopher Miller (@christopherjm.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 8:47 AM

From The Financial Times:

Vladimir Putin has threatened to use Russia’s new ballistic missile to turn targets in Kyiv “to dust”, as his forces used cluster munitions against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Thursday.

The president said such a strike with the Oreshnik missile would be in response to Ukraine using western long-range missiles to hit targets within Russia.

“At present, the ministry of defence and the general staff are selecting targets to hit on Ukrainian territory. These could be military facilities, defence and industrial enterprises, or decision-making centres in Kyiv,” said Putin on Thursday after a meeting in Kazakhstan.

He added that the Oreshnik missile Moscow first deployed last week in a strike on Dnipro could destroy even highly protected underground sites and that Russia had commenced its serial production.

“The temperature of the striking elements reaches 4,000 degrees,” Putin said. “Everything at the epicentre of the blast disintegrates into fractions and elementary particles. Essentially, it turns to dust.”

The threat comes just days after Ukraine closed its parliament on Friday because of a reported missile threat. Ukraine’s parliament building is located in Kyiv’s now heavily guarded government quarter, along with its cabinet offices, the presidential administration and the national bank.

Asked at the press conference to clarify whether the Oreshnik could be used against political centres as well as military sites, Putin replied: “There was this joke in Soviet times about weather forecasts: ‘The forecast is this: today, during the course of the day, everything is possible’.”

Earlier on Thursday, 11 Ukrainian regions reported damage to energy facilities, with power being cut for several hours as temperatures in Ukraine dropped below zero. Kyiv residents also experienced blackouts on Thursday.

“Again, the energy industry is under massive enemy attack,” said energy minister Herman Halushchenko, urging people to seek shelter as air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that “about 100 attack drones, more than 90 missiles of various types” had targeted the country’s energy facilities. He said Russia’s use of cluster munitions was reported in several Ukrainian regions.

“The use of these cluster elements significantly complicates the work of our rescuers and power engineers in mitigating the damage, marking yet another vile escalation in Russia’s terrorist tactics,” Zelenskyy said.

This was Russia’s 11th large-scale attack on Ukraine’s energy sector this year, authorities said. After several months with normal power supplies, Ukraine reintroduced scheduled blackouts for consumers about 10 days ago, with authorities warning that each attack further increases the likelihood of disruptions as temperatures start to drop below zero.

The western Ukrainian regions of Volyn, Rivne and Lviv were the most affected, with hundreds of thousands of people left without electricity and some without water, according to local authorities.

The attacks seem to have homed in on gas plants and substations of larger facilities, as no damage was reported at any thermal, hydroelectric or nuclear power plants. Ukraine’s Naftogaz said on Thursday that its gas-powered facilities in the Lviv region had been hit, but the damage had been minor. Ukraine’s energy grid, Ukrenergo, told the Financial Times that several of its substations had been struck.

Ukraine’s energy ministry said the emergency shutdown measures were taken early on Thursday to prevent damage to the system, but that power had been restored. No nuclear plants had been shut down, the ministry said.

Ukraine’s air defence said it downed 90 per cent of incoming missiles, and that 12 could not be intercepted. Russia had been deploying a large number of missiles and drones in recent weeks to overpower Ukraine’s air defences, and used thermal and radar traps, as well as fitting electronic jammers on missiles as a way of protecting them, it said. Russia was also helped by foggy and cloudy weather, it added.

More at the link!

Here’s an interesting discussion about what the Oreshnik can actually do, rather than what Putin claims it can do:

Putin is describing Oreshnik as a kind of kinetic energy weapon. The “dozens of self-dividing warheads” claim tracks w videos showing 6 RVs that divided into 6 (so 36 submunitions).

But from what we can see, it didn’t have anything like the destructive impact Putin claims.

ria.ru/20241128/put…

[image or embed]

— James Cameron (@jjjcameron.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 8:22 AM

If I remember correctly @armscontrolwonk.bsky.social posted some pictures on Twitter (I believe) showing that there was some degree of damage. But kinetic energy weapons are generally stupid. Fwiw – it’s a nuclear delivery system in the first place.

— Matej Rafael Risko (@matejrisko.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 9:36 AM

I revised my estimate downward. The buildings were already quite damaged. Looks pretty slight.

— Jeffrey Lewis (@armscontrolwonk.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 10:33 AM

Could be that Putin doesn’t have great info on how effective the first strike was? Quite hard to explain the logic of threatening and talking up the capabilities of a missile that didn’t inflict much damage.

— James Cameron (@jjjcameron.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 11:24 AM

I don’t know, but in my opinion there are two aspects to this – the first is signalling and the second is for the usual panem et circenses for the domestic audience and for propaganda purposes.

— Matej Rafael Risko (@matejrisko.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 12:26 PM

The attacks on the power grid, the threats and saber rattling around them, are not just intended for domestic Russian consumption, to terrorize and sap the morale of the Ukrainians, they are also part of the low intensity attacks on EU and NATO member states. Specifically, the publicity generated by the use of the Oreshnik, by threats to use more to destroy significant civilian infrastructure in Ukraine to both harm the Ukrainians and to demonstrate to the West that Putin could do this to them as well, is part of the influence campaign portion of Russia’s low intensity warfare against the US, the EU and its member states, NATO and its member states.

Mark Galeotti: “There is a sense in Moscow that the West has become too comfortable with the war, that we regularly write off a certain amount of money and part of our military arsenal to keep the Ukrainians fighting, without really feeling the costs” www.spectator.co.uk/article/russ…

[image or embed]

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 4:07 AM

From The Spectator: (emphasis mine)

When a DHL cargo plane crashed while approaching Vilnius airport on Monday, killing one of the crew, it looked like technical failure, but given that Russia was believed to be behind a series of incendiary devices which ignited on DHL flights and in warehouses this summer, inevitably many feared Moscow’s hand. The suspicion is likely to be the point. In the past year, the Russians have stepped up their disruptive activities in Europe, from cyber-attacks to assassinations, with the apparent aim of generating chaos and a climate of fear as much as anything else.

In February, a Russian defector was gunned down in Spain, in what seems to have been a hit commissioned by Moscow but carried out by gangsters. In March, petty criminals hired by the GU, Russia’s military intelligence, torched Ukrainian-owned warehouses in Leyton, east London. Moscow was also blamed for a subsequent series of arson attacks across Europe on everything from Polish shopping malls to a German factory. In July, US and German authorities announced that they had foiled a Russian plot to assassinate Armin Papperger, CEO of the Rheinmetall armaments conglomerate, an outspoken supporter of Ukraine. Although the circumstances are still unclear, two telecommunications cables across the Baltic have just been severed in what could easily be sabotage.

Meanwhile, as the cabinet minister Pat McFadden warned the Nato Cyber Defence Conference in London this week, Russia has expanded its campaign of cyber-attacks. Some are essentially intelligence-gathering operations, but an increasing proportion seek to disrupt, such as the attacks on the Czech railways this year or the regular spates of fake bomb scares generating the kind of hypervigilance behind recent controlled explosions in Glasgow, Euston station and near the US embassy, and a major security alert at Gatwick airport.

How do the Russians manage to maintain such a tempo of attacks? In part, by outsourcing to a motley array of ‘patriotic hackers’ and outright cyber-criminals. This is not just confined to the online realm: as the MI5 director-general Ken McCallum warned last month, this year has seen ‘Russian state actors turning to proxies for their dirty work, including private intelligence operatives and criminals from both the UK and third countries’.

This is especially evident in the online world, with Russian ransomware gangs and other criminal hackers essentially being given a free pass so long as they are targeting the West. Yet it is also clear that criminals are being used more broadly, in everything from carrying out surveillance on behalf of Moscow’s intelligence agencies to covering walls across Europe with divisive and anti-Semitic graffiti, from planting firebombs to smuggling in sanctioned microchips.

It should not be a surprise that the Russians are turning to criminals and private investigators. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some 750 Russian diplomats were expelled across the West. Since most spies work under diplomatic cover, this delivered a serious blow to Russia’s espionage networks. Yet we could hardly imagine that this would stop the Kremlin from trying to find new ways to operate. Many proxies are hired anonymously online, so that they may not even know they are doing Vladimir Putin’s dirty work. Some have been carrying out surveillance under the belief that their clients are convinced their spouses are cheating on them or their employees are stealing.

The real question is why Moscow has stepped up its campaign this year, and what it could possibly hope to achieve. Does it honestly believe that burning down a shopping centre or daubing some graffiti will really make any kind of meaningful difference?

The answer lies in Putin’s perception of the situation. He appears genuinely to believe that an implacably ‘Russophobic’ West is committed to confining or dismembering Russia, and that Ukraine is essentially little more than a weapon aimed at the Mother-land. Kyiv’s intelligence services have been conducting a series of attacks on Russian military targets, officers and outspoken cheerleaders for the war; this month, for example, a naval officer was killed when a bomb exploded under his car in Crimea. To Putin – a man who believes Ukraine is an artificial construct created by Lenin after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution out of ‘what is historically Russian land’ – these attacks could only be happening at our behest, or at least with our approval.

A hawkish Russian thinktanker close to the presidential administration spelled it out to me: ‘You think you can get Ukrainian terrorists to do your dirty work and that we’ll politely pretend you’re not behind it? It’s time you got to know what it feels like to be at war.’ Besides, he added: ‘What else are sanctions but economic and political warfare? You try to crash our economy and then whine if you get hacked?’

It seems that at some point in the middle of last year, a decision was made by the Kremlin to allow its intelligence agencies to go ‘a bit feral’, in the words of the MI6 director Sir Richard Moore. In part, this is simply revenge against Ukraine’s allies; but it is also something more strategic, what one could call the weaponisation of inconvenience. There is a sense in Moscow that the West has become too comfortable with the war, that we regularly write off a certain amount of money and part of our military arsenal to keep the Ukrainians fighting, without really feeling the costs. One could argue against this conclusion – ‘Ukraine fatigue’ is a growing challenge, likely to be magnified if Donald Trump unloads a greater share of the war’s costs on to Europe – but it seems to be a belief held in hawkish circles around Putin.

The campaign of cyber and proxy attacks is intended not only to further Moscow’s usual goals of spreading division and demoralisation, but also to convey to Europeans a sense that their countries’ continued support for Ukraine is affecting their lives negatively.

A massive cyber-attack of the sort that McFadden described, bringing down the national power grid, is unlikely because it falls squarely within the terms of Nato’s Article 5 guarantee of mutual assistance. It also invites retaliation in kind, and it would be naive to presume that the West is not also seeking back doors into Russia’s critical national infrastructure.

But what about a criminal ransomware attack on an NHS pathology provider that forces more than 10,000 acute outpatient appointments to be postponed, as happened in June? Explosive packages on DHL flights that create delays for all deliveries? Cyber-attacks on railway signalling and ticketing systems that could impose commuting misery on hundreds of thousands of people and large business losses? None of these comes anywhere near the threshold for direct retaliation, but they certainly make an impact, especially if we become so frightened of Putin’s shadow that we ascribe every upset and accident to his machinations.

This strategy helps to explain why Americans have so far avoided the worst of the attacks. In the run-up to the presidential elections, Moscow had no desire for the limelight, and now it doesn’t want to risk forcing Trump to take a firmer line.

Europe has no such immunity. So how should it respond? This month, my report ‘Gangsters at War: Russia’s use of organised crime as an instrument of statecraft’ was published by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime, and I embarked on the usual round of briefings. After one, at Nato headquarters, I was approached by two national representatives: one from a southern European country, the other from one of the Baltic states. The former was worried: ‘What can we do against such a campaign? We can hardly fight back in kind.’ His more seasoned Baltic counterpart’s reply was blunt: ‘We know the Russians. They will keep up the pressure so long as they think it’s working. You just have to refuse to let it work, to double down, not give up.’ Keep calm and carry on, in other words.

About time an official said it. “Russia’s acts of sabotage against western targets may eventually prompt Nato to consider invoking the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defence clause, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service has warned”
www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n…

[image or embed]

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 2:55 AM

Pretty troubling BND assessment. “According to the assessment of his experts, high-ranking officials in the Russian defence ministry doubt whether Nato’s Article 5 including US protective measures for Europewould actually be invoked in case of an emergency, the intel chief said.”

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 3:34 AM

From The Guardian: (emphasis mine)

Russia’s acts of sabotage against western targets may eventually prompt Nato to consider invoking the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defence clause, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service has warned.

Speaking at an event of the German Council of Foreign Relations (DGAP) think tank in Berlin on Wednesday, BND chief Bruno Kahl said he expected Moscow to further step up its hybrid warfare.

“The extensive use of hybrid measures by Russia increases the risk that Nato will eventually consider invoking its Article 5 mutual defence clause,” he noted.

“At the same time, the increasing ramp up of the Russian military potential means a direct military confrontation with Nato becomes one possible option for the Kremlin.”

Under Article 5, if a Nato member comes under attack, the other members of the alliance are obliged to help it respond.

Nato and western intelligence services have warned that Russia is behind a growing number of hostile activities across the Euro-Atlantic area, ranging from repeated cyber attacks to Moscow-linked arson – all of which Russia denies.

Kahl said Russia’s military would likely be capable of attacking Nato by the end of the decade, adding that Moscow’s war on Ukraine meant that it had battle-proven troops under its command which raised the threat emanating from its conventional forces, while it also mastered modern drone warfare.

According to the assessment of his experts, high-ranking officials in the Russian defence ministry doubt whether Nato’s Article 5 including US protective measures for Europe would actually be invoked in case of an emergency, the intel chief said.

“We don’t have any indication yet that Russia intends to go to war, but if such sentiments gain the upper hand in the government in Moscow, then the risk for a military confrontation will grow over the coming years.”

Should Russia attack one or several Nato allies, it would not do so to grab massive swathes of land, Kahl said, but rather to test red lines set by the west with the aim of defeating western unity and Nato as a defensive alliance.

“In Russia’s view, this goal would be reached if Article 5 were to remain without effect in case of a Russian attack,” he said.

“To meet this target, you don’t need to send tank armies westwards, it is enough to dispatch little green men to the Baltics to protect allegedly threatened Russian minorities or adjust borders on [the Norwegian Arctic archipelago] Svalbard.”

I want to emphasize this portion of Kahl’s remarks. They’re important because the demonstrate the key strategic category error he and far too many US, EU and EU member states, and NATO and NATO member states senior natsec people keep making:

“We don’t have any indication yet that Russia intends to go to war, but if such sentiments gain the upper hand in the government in Moscow, then the risk for a military confrontation will grow over the coming years.”

Putin announced this war at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. He began prosecuting it sometime between 2009 and 2011.He had been winning it until he fully committed to taking Ukraine through his genocidal re-invasion. Other than in Ukraine, he is still winning it. The reason he is winning it is because the people in charge in the US, the EU and its members states, and in NATO and its member states are either incapable of understanding what Putin has been communicating in his words and Russian deeds since 2007 or unwilling to do so.

Reuters reports that US officials have concluded that Putin’s nuclear threats were just hollow saber rattling. (emphasis mine

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Nov 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. decision to allow Ukraine to fire American weapons deeper into Russia has not increased the risk of a nuclear attack, which is unlikely, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly bellicose statements, five sources familiar with U.S. intelligence told Reuters.

But Russia is likely to expand a campaign of sabotage against European targets to increase pressure on the West over its support for Kyiv, said two senior officials, a lawmaker and two congressional aides briefed on the matter.

A series of intelligence assessments over the past seven months have concluded nuclear escalation was unlikely to result from a decision to loosen restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons. That view has not changed following President Joe Biden’s changed U.S. stance this month on weapons, said the sources, who were granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive intelligence.

“The assessments were consistent: The ATACMs weren’t going to change Russia’s nuclear calculus,” said one congressional aide briefed on the intelligence, referring to American missiles with a range of up to 190 miles (306 km).

Russia’s launch of a new ballistic missile last week, which analysts say was meant as a warning to Washington and its European allies, has not changed that conclusion.

One of the five U.S. officials said while Washington assessed that Russia would not seek to escalate with its nuclear forces, it would try to match what it views as U.S. escalation. The official said fielding the new missile was part of that effort.

U.S. officials said the intelligence has helped guide an often divisive debate over recent months inside Biden’s administration about whether Washington loosening restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American weapons was worth the risk of angering Putin.

Officials initially resisted such a move, citing escalation concerns and uncertainty over how Putin would respond. Some of those officials, including in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, feared lethal retaliation on U.S. military and diplomatic personnel and attacks on NATO allies.

Others were specifically worried about nuclear escalation. Biden changed his mind because of North Korea’s entry into the war before the U.S. presidential election, U.S. officials have said.

Some officials now believe the escalation concerns, including the nuclear fears, were overblown but stress that the overall situation in Ukraine remains dangerous and that nuclear escalation is not out of the question. Russia’s ability to find other covert ways of retaliating against the West remains a worry.

The West does not want Ukraine to lose, as this would weaken its geopolitical position. Yet, it has never provided sufficient aid for a decisive victory and refuses to offer security guarantees, like boots on the ground in a peace deal. Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways

— Tatarigami (@tatarigami.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 4:17 PM

Georgia:

BREAKING: President Salome Zourabichvili has walked to the special forces preparing to advance against protesters and is now talking to them. She asks them whether they had vowed to protect Georgia and Georgians or Russia, and demands they think of the future of their children!

[image or embed]

— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 2:35 PM

Local media report that people gathered in Tbilisi for a protest near the parliament building after the prime minister’s announcement that he would not be negotiating to join the EU until 2028.
t.me/c/1305722586…

[image or embed]

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 1:19 PM

Demonstrators are building barricades from electric scooters in #Tblisi and burning trash cans to keep warm amid signs that we may be witnessing a #Maidan revolution in the Georgian capital.
● Security forces are using tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannons.

[image or embed]

— Jason Corcoran (@jasoncorcoran.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 6:12 PM

Georgian police in #Tblisi are trying to push back protestors and savagely beating up those that are being caught.
●Across the country, tens of thousands have gathered in multiple cities.

[image or embed]

— Jason Corcoran (@jasoncorcoran.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 6:06 PM

My people sing the National Anthem of Georgia while the robocops are dispersing them with water cannons.

This is my homeland.❤️

[image or embed]

— Tatia Tsuladze (@tsuladze.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 5:33 PM

There are some initial individual witness claims that the robocops speak Russian. #GeorgiaProtests

— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 6:03 PM

President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili and the victorious opposition (all four parties) are having a joint briefing. The President calls for full coordination and standing together in this decisive resistance movement. 1/2

[image or embed]

— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 12:17 PM

She states she had requested diplomatic corps to enact all decisions that they had sketched out for possible scenarios.
The President calls on everyone to keep spirits high and push through this until victory.
(This is a summary, not quotable words of the President). 2/2.

— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 12:17 PM

President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili in her speech as the illegitimate government ends Georgia’s EU bid: “Either we are together, or there’s no us.”

[image or embed]

— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 12:47 PM

Be very, very quiet. We’re hunting vatniks and tankies:

FPV Drone sneaks up from behind and destroys a Russian tank that was operating from a closed artillery position. t.me/robert_magya…

[image or embed]

— 🦋Special Kherson Cat🐈🇺🇦 (@specialkhersoncat.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 2:14 PM

Lutsk, Volyn Oblast:

Intercepted Russian cruise missile shot down over Lutsk tonight during another massive Russian missile attack on Ukrainian energy sector.

[image or embed]

— 🦋Special Kherson Cat🐈🇺🇦 (@specialkhersoncat.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 5:03 AM

Siversk, Bakhmut Raion, Donestk Oblast:

A tank of the 63rd Brigade fires directly at the occupiers, first with a machine gun and then with a cannon in the area of Siversk.
t.me/c/1605512487…

[image or embed]

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 11:23 AM

Kyiv:

Search lights sweep the clouds and guns fire as a Russian/Iranian Shahed Doodlebug flying bomb buzzes over western Kyiv tonight. Half of democratic Ukraine on air alert as fascist Russia sends in yet another nighttime wave of killer drones.

[image or embed]

— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 5:10 PM

bsky.app/profile/noel…

[image or embed]

— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 5:28 PM

Kharkiv:

Kharkiv heads into its third winter of war. The Christmas tree is back in the metro—beautiful symbol of resilience

[image or embed]

— Maria Avdeeva (@mariainkharkiv.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 10:18 AM

Early this morning, three russian missiles struck Kharkiv. Now, hours later, russian troops are attacking the city with aerial bombs. Several explosions reported in my hometown💔

— Iryna Voichuk (@irynavoichuk.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 5:38 AM

During one of today’s bombings of Kharkiv, russia struck a cemetery.
Nothing is sacred for them.

[image or embed]

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 10:06 AM

Despite sheltering for 5 hours during the Russian missile attack, the Ukraine Food Train team still finished up the Thanksgiving feast 🦃 in Kharkiv! Thousands of meals were delivered to displaced families from around the region. They have now been cooking for 267 days straight! 🙏🇺🇦

[image or embed]

— Nate Mook (@natemook.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 5:26 PM

Russian occupied Crimea:

The Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (GUR) destroyed a $5M Russian “Podlyot” radar in occupied Crimea on November 28, 2024.

The operation’s details remain undisclosed, but the enemy equipment was reportedly “burned,” according to an official statement.

[image or embed]

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 9:22 AM

Kamensky, Rostov Oblast:

Official statements have now arrived. They report that “Ukrainian forces are carrying out widespread attacks on the Rostov region. So far, 30 UAVs have been destroyed and disrupted by electronic warfare systems.”

It appears the oil refinery effectively fulfilled its role as air defense.

[image or embed]

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 6:35 PM

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

Patron has tweeted out a message to the Georgians:

Here is the machine translation from the Georgian:

Be strong, my dear Georgians. I have a lot of faith in you and your fight ❤️🇬🇪

Open thread!