We Discussed with Partners Our Work on Air Defense – New Systems for Ukraine; We Are Preparing Reinforcement – Address by the President

20 August 2024 – 16:30

I wish you good health, fellow Ukrainians!

Today – Kropyvnytskyi. There has just been a meeting of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities. A lot of issues. They include preparations for our academic year in Ukrainian schools, the heating season, healthcare, and financial opportunities in our communities. Among the most important is our need to fully implement the program of shelters in schools. So that as many children as possible can go to school offline in the new school year. I spoke about this with the Prime Minister of Ukraine and with the Minister of Education. The issues of school buses were also raised today. And this must be solved exactly as the communities say. We need to provide real transportation for the children. And to do it quickly. I have given the relevant instructions to the Government officials. Today, here in Kropyvnytskyi, and yesterday in Dnipro, I also spoke with entrepreneurs. Keeping businesses running and preserving jobs in Ukraine is very important.

I am also grateful for the support of relocated businesses. When enterprises work, it is easier for communities, and social issues are resolved faster. And the Government should also keep this in mind when making tax proposals. We only need decisions that are helpful and truly fair. And there is another issue affecting many communities in our country, especially in the southern and central regions. This is the water supply. The day before, I held a meeting in Kryvyi Rih regarding the communities of the Dnipropetrovsk region: Nikopol, Marhanets, Pokrov and other cities. Some of the projects have already been built. And we need to move on to the implementation of projects for the Mykolaiv region, projects that will restore normal water supply for people. It is not easy – the work is ongoing and continues even under shelling. I thank everyone involved. And our main goal is to achieve a timely result.

A few more things.

Today, we discussed with partners our work on air defense – new systems for Ukraine. We are preparing reinforcement.

There was a report from Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi. The frontline. Defense in the Pokrovsk and Toretsk directions. The situation is difficult, but our guys are doing everything to eliminate the occupier. The Commander-in-Chief also reported on the updates in the Kursk direction. We are achieving our set goals. And the priority, as before, is the replenishment of the exchange fund for Ukraine.

Today, I want to praise the work of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. A law on our spiritual independence was passed. This is what we discussed with members of the Council of Churches and Religious Organizations. And in the coming days, I will also speak with representatives of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. We will continue strengthening Ukraine and our society. Today, the law was also passed to support our warriors, who carry out our defensive operations in the Russian border area. All payments, bonuses and awards will definitely be extended for them from the first day of the operation. I am awaiting the documents from Parliament.

I thank everyone who is fighting and working for our state, for our people!

Glory to Ukraine!

President Zelenskyy also addressed a meeting of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities. Here’s the video:

The reason:

Meet Vlada. She is 24. In civil life, Vlada studied law, and now she serves as a drone operator in the 67th Mechanized Brigade.
“For me, the main thing is that Ukraine is free. So I try to contribute to the victory.” pic.twitter.com/99GyzjEIXI

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 20, 2024

Viktoriia Honcharuk is a Ukrainian graduate of Minerva University in California. Today she is a combat medic at the front who saves the lives of wounded Ukrainian Defenders.

When the full-scale war began, Viktoriia’s entire family – sister, mother and father – decided to join… pic.twitter.com/VhDazb8r9X

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 20, 2024

Viktoriia Honcharuk is a Ukrainian graduate of Minerva University in California. Today she is a combat medic at the front who saves the lives of wounded Ukrainian Defenders.

When the full-scale war began, Viktoriia’s entire family – sister, mother and father – decided to join the ranks of Ukraine’s forces. Viktoriia raised funds and supplied tactical medicine items. However, she could not stay in the United States for long, so in the winter of 2022, she decided that she had to return to Ukraine and “help with her hands.”

“Over time you realize that you are a Ukrainian and at a crucial moment in the history of your country, you are not in Ukraine, and you are not helping 100% in the fight for victory. So I decided that it would be better to pause everything and go to work for victory,” she says.

📹: NV

I don’t usually post PoW videos on principle, but this is moving, perhaps encouraging: A Russian PoW, meeting in person a Ukrainian musician he admires, opens up about the abuse he has suffered from growing up in fascist Russia – it’s like the Putin propaganda spell is broken. https://t.co/4r4ELUmr2Y

— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) August 19, 2024

The Czech Republic:

Petr Pavel, President of Czechia, believes that Ukraine’s accession to NATO should not depend on whether it has full control over its entire territory, and recalls a precedent in history.

“I believe that the complete regaining of control over the entire territory is not a… pic.twitter.com/laDt5N9O6d

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 20, 2024

Petr Pavel, President of Czechia, believes that Ukraine’s accession to NATO should not depend on whether it has full control over its entire territory, and recalls a precedent in history.

“I believe that the complete regaining of control over the entire territory is not a prerequisite. If there is a demarcation, even an administrative border, we can accept this administrative border as a temporary one and accept Ukraine into NATO on the territory it will control at that time,” President Pavel said.

Petr Pavel mentioned Germany, which was admitted to NATO in 1955, despite the fact that part of the country was occupied by the Soviet Union.

“Therefore, I think there is both a technical and a legal solution to allow Ukraine to join NATO without bringing NATO into conflict with Russia,” he added.

https://cmp.seznam.cz/nastaveni-souhlasu?service=bcr&cwtime=1724139433426

Chicago, Illinois:

Wait, what?

“If Trump returns to the White House, Farion said, she feared that ‘he will sell Ukraine down the pike. … The future of Ukraine is on the line in this election.'”

War shifts political views in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village, once reliably GOP https://t.co/KM8XZii3wr

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) August 20, 2024

From The Washington Post:

CHICAGO — The Ukrainian Village, a neighborhood nestled only a mile north and slight jog west of the United Center, where Democrats are convening this week, is the heart of the Ukrainian diaspora in Chicago — a compact enclave of faith, hope, resilience, anxiety, fear and a notably transformed political sensibility shaped by old memories and the harsh reality of the Russian invasion of the homeland.

Reminders of that war are everywhere here, more than 5,000 miles from the battlefield. It might be the other war, the largely forgotten war, in much of America and the world, overshadowed by the bloody events in Gaza that are drawing all the noise and protest now, but to the people of Ukrainian Village, it is never far from mind.

The war in Ukraine torments Oksana Ambroz, a fashion designer whose bitter feelings about Russia go back to stories about her father. At age 2, starved and weakened by the Holodomor, the Soviet-caused famine of 1932, he was thrown into a mass trench by Russian soldiers and left to die before his horrified mother pulled him to safety. The war haunts Slava Pillyuyko, a psychiatrist who each night calls his friends and family in the Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi, trying to help them deal with the trauma of constant shelling. If they drink, he said, they now drink more; if they had insomnia before, they now sleep even less, never knowing whether the next day will be their last.

Walk the streets of the Ukrainian Village and feel the sorrow of a distant war. “Stop Putin, Stop War” posters in storefront windows. Flower-bedecked memorial crosses in churchyards. Blue and yellow flags fluttering in the late summer breeze. Photo exhibits of wounded soldiers and uprooted families in the museum. Pockets of newly arrived refugees huddling outside a building that offers relocation assistance. And endless discussions in English and Ukrainian, about the war — what is happening from Kursk to Kyiv, what might happen next, and what the 2024 presidential tickets are doing and saying about it all.

Despair here over Republican diffidence, or outright dismissal, of Ukrainian pleas for support in fighting Russian aggression has rearranged the political landscape. “This area used to be totally Republican,” said Marta Farion, vice president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, who lives across the street from the Sts. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church and has visited Ukraine 55 times. The dominant viewpoint was conservative and staunchly anti-communist. “Ronald Reagan was revered here,” she said. “When he said ‘Tear down this wall!’ he was speaking for all of us who suffered under the Soviets.”

But even as Ukrainian Villagers remain culturally conservative and generally receptive to GOP positions on abortion and crime, they saw a vast distance between the old party of Reagan and the party that President Donald Trump has refashioned as more isolationist.

Many expressed dismay over Trump’s cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin and the way as Trump seemed to trust the autocrat’s propaganda more than the findings of U.S. intelligence services. They blamed recalcitrant Republicans in the House for delaying U.S. aid that Ukraine desperately needed.

“Each of those six months added hundreds more killed,” Pillyuyko lamented. And then came Trump’s new running mate, JD Vance, who once was quoted as saying, “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

If Trump returns to the White House, Farion said, she feared that “he will sell Ukraine down the pike. He says he will end the war right away, but that only means he will make a deal with Putin. We know he is going to make a deal with Putin. … The future of Ukraine is on the line in this election.”

Much more at the link,

The Kursk counteroffensive:

A Ukrainian fighter jet destroys an underground enemy control post with an AASM Hammer guided air bomb.

📹: Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force pic.twitter.com/kvehGuvb6r

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 20, 2024

Marder IFV is destroying russian firing points and positions during the assault in the Mala Loknia, Kursk Region.

📹: Air Assault Forces Command pic.twitter.com/OC2TZxLnAA

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 20, 2024

/2. Most likely it’s the video filmed by the unit of the 95th Brigade of Ukraine and 95th brigade took part in the battle. But the Marder itself most likely belongs to the other unit. Because we have no information about the 95th Brigade having Marders at its disposal.

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 20, 2024

The Armed Forces of Ukraine have captured 1,263 square kilometers of the Kursk region, 93 settlements are under Ukrainian control – AFU Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi.

According to him, the AFU has advanced 28-35 kilometers deep into Russian territory. Russia is redeploying troops… https://t.co/12hUwMpgSQ pic.twitter.com/1xPcTMZWJX

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 20, 2024

The Armed Forces of Ukraine have captured 1,263 square kilometers of the Kursk region, 93 settlements are under Ukrainian control – AFU Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi.

According to him, the AFU has advanced 28-35 kilometers deep into Russian territory. Russia is redeploying troops to the Kursk region from other directions and is conducting a maneuver defense in an attempt to prevent further advances of the Ukrainian army.

/16. FPV drones targeting Russians during installation of pontoon crossing over the Seym river https://t.co/wq0GYSpiSF

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 20, 2024

Here’s the machine translation of Sternenko’s tweet:

The same pontoon crossing of Russians across the Seim River in Kurshchyna.

Operators of the Special Operations Forces of the Requiem group unit helped cut Russian logistics with your drones, hitting a couple of pieces of engineering equipment.

So that the Russians die when they try to escape, throw on a new riverbed 👇

You can totally feel that Cossack spirit in the Ukrainian soldiers at the Kursk operation—it’s so overwhelming pic.twitter.com/O5NziTldS6

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) August 20, 2024

– Civilians remaining in the border villages said Russia constantly attacked their villages before the operation and they fully support further action in Kursk.

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) August 19, 2024

Pokrovsk:

Знову застосування хімічної зброї на Покровському напрямку, одночасно два Козака, опіки дихальних шляхів, команда @lifesavecenter продовжує рятувати наших Захисників.
Прошу долучитися до збору на пальне евакуаційної команди.

Монобанкаhttps://t.co/wCRUbbSvBJ

PayPal… pic.twitter.com/JR9MCbPfT9

— Вячеслав Запорожец (@VvZiper) August 20, 2024

Here’s the machine translation:

Again the use of chemical weapons in the Pokrovsky direction, at the same time two Cossacks, burns of the respiratory tract, the team @lifesavecenter continues to save our Defenders.
I am asking you to join the fuel collection for the evacuation team.

Monobank
https://send.monobank.ua/jar/8DhDm5QqcP

PayPal
[email protected]
link

Chasiv Yar:

“I thought that I could be captured. I wasn’t going to surrender because I definitely didn’t want to be captured alive.”

The first-hand story of how soldiers of the forward group of the 225th Separate Assault Battalion fought for 70 days and held the defense in complete… pic.twitter.com/FdI0VCL3AF

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 20, 2024

“I thought that I could be captured. I wasn’t going to surrender because I definitely didn’t want to be captured alive.”

The first-hand story of how soldiers of the forward group of the 225th Separate Assault Battalion fought for 70 days and held the defense in complete encirclement near Chasiv Yar. Even in a situation where the only thing left to do was to pray and fight, the Ukrainian Defenders did not lose hope.

Glory to Heroes!

Donetsk Oblast:

Tracking and pinpoint strike on the Russian BM-21 Grad MLRS. Donetsk front. (48.1483186, 37.6780006)https://t.co/WQOA4YX8g4 pic.twitter.com/PIGS3gsnv5

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 20, 2024

Air strike on Russian positions on the Donetsk fronthttps://t.co/ucQokvpceK pic.twitter.com/p6WF3Kopyr

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 20, 2024

Russian soldiers are still grinding their way through Ukrainian defences, capturing villages and towns and bringing Moscow closer to its stated goal of complete control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine https://t.co/g2n68yFvGB pic.twitter.com/VNhoRY954S

— Financial Times (@FT) August 20, 2024

The Financial Times has the details:

Kyiv’s forces have in two weeks seized more land in Russia than Moscow has in Ukraine all year — transforming perceptions about their capabilities and boosting morale among Ukrainians.

But that stunning operational success has yet to deliver one crucial objective: diverting Russia’s manpower and easing pressure in the hottest battlefields in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow is steadily advancing.

Russian soldiers are still grinding their way through Ukrainian defences, capturing villages and towns and bringing Moscow closer to its stated goal of complete control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

On Monday, Russian troops appeared to have captured nearly all of the town of Niu-York, entered nearby Toretsk and were encroaching on the logistical hub of Pokrovsk.

One Ukrainian artillery brigade commander in eastern Ukraine told the Financial Times that part of the reason for the Russian advance was Kyiv moving its scarce resources north.

His troops were back to rationing shells for their canons — the first time since US aid to Ukraine was held up by Congress — because ammunition had been reallocated for the incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Ukraine has also moved upwards of 10,000 troops, including many of its elite airborne forces and mechanised brigades, from Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, where the fiercest battles are under way, according to officials involved with the operation.

At least 20 Ukrainian units are confirmed to be involved in the Kursk incursion, according to military analysts. Some of those were meant to be reserve forces to help shore up fracturing defensive lines and provide a reprieve for troops who have fought without rest for months or even years.

Even in the days before setting off for Kursk, Ukrainian defences in Donetsk region were “showing cracks”, said one senior Ukrainian official familiar with military operations.

He told the FT that Russian forces had achieved “tactical success” in Donetsk and more advances were likely unless the situation turned around.

More at the link.

Niu-York, Donetsk Oblast:

53rd brigade soldier to @ukrpravda_news: “Our forces are in Niu-York, holding the defence. We control approximately 20%. The Russians are advancing thanks to a large number of reserves. We kill them, but they keep coming. Unfortunately, we don’t have such reserves.”…

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) August 20, 2024

Ukrainska Pravda has the details:

Ukraine’s defence forces, particularly the 53rd Mechanised Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, continue to hold the defence in the northern part of the town of New-York in Donetsk Oblast. The latest report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), citing Russian military bloggers, mentioned that the village had been possibly captured.

Source: sources of Ukrainska Pravda in leadership of the 53rd Brigade and ​​Luhansk Operational Tactical Group

Quote from a source in the 53rd Brigade: “Our forces are in New-York, holding the defence. We control approximately 20% [of the town]. The Russians are advancing thanks to a large number of reserves. We kill them, but they keep coming. Unfortunately, we don’t have such reserves.”

Details: Another source of Ukrainska Pravda reported that besides the lack of infantry, there are also issues with the available personnel. On the New-York and neighbouring Toretsk fronts, there are problems with the motivation of the military and a rather high rate of those who voluntarily abandoned the military positions.

After occupying part of New-York, the Russians are already actively moving towards the next town, Nelipivka.

For reference: The Russians captured most of New-York remarkably quickly. It happened just in two months. By the end of June 2024, New-York and Toretsk were the last settlements where the line of contact remained where it had been during the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) and Joint Forces Operation (JFO) [the combat action against Russian military forces and pro-Russian separatists in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts from 2014].

Background:

• On 18 August, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), citing Russian military bloggers, reported that the Russians control most of New-York and may have even “captured the village”.
• The New York front has been problematic since the beginning of the Russian summer offensive.
• In early July, soldiers from the 206th battalion of the 241st Independent Brigade of the Territorial Defence Forces, who have been seconded to the 41st Mechanised Brigade on the Toretsk front since the end of June, complained of insufficient support from this formation.
• Later, the 53rd Mechanised Brigade was sent to reinforce the New-York front, but the situation did not improve.
• The Russians launched their offensive on Toretsk and New York in late June 2024, and it turned out to be successful for them. According to Ukrainska Pravda, the reason for this was the unsuccessful rotation of Ukraine’s defence forces in June: at that time, the 24th Brigade was removed from Toretsk and sent to Chasiv Yar, while the 41st was removed from Chasiv Yar and sent to Toretsk.

Kyiv:

Ukraine’s parliament passed a bill banning religious orgs in Ukraine linked to Russia, particularly targeting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), which has ties to the Kremlin & FSB. News via MPs including Yaroslav Zheleznyak https://t.co/OYmelPCjHG pic.twitter.com/kb3oXupXz0

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) August 20, 2024

From The Financial Times:

The Ukrainian parliament has approved legislation banning religious organisations with ties to Russia, paving the way for Kyiv to end the activities of the Moscow-linked orthodox church on its soil.

The Verkhovna Rada approved the law on Tuesday in its second and final reading, with 265 lawmakers voting in its favour and 29 against, according to MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak.

Ukrainian officials have long argued that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate operates as an arm of the Russian Orthodox Church to undermine Ukraine and that it is complicit in Russia’s full-scale war.

In particular, Ukrainian officials accuse the UOC-MP of working closely with Russia’s powerful security service, the FSB.

“The Russian Orthodox Church has nothing to do with faith — it is a tool of the special services,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, wrote on Telegram.

The bill needs to be signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to become law, but he signalled in a meeting with Ukrainian religious leaders on Saturday that he would not hesitate to do so.

Zelenskyy said Russia used the church to suppress the independence of other states and to limit the freedoms of their citizens. “Therefore, it is our common duty to guarantee Ukrainian spiritual independence,” he said.

Zheleznyak said in a statement posted on Telegram that the law would come into effect 30 days after its publication in the parliament newspaper, save for one clause, according to which UOC-MP parishes and monasteries would have nine months to sever ties with Moscow.

A court would then ultimately need to decide on a national ban against the Russia-linked church.

Ukraine’s security service has raided several monasteries and offices of the UOC-MP since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Officials in Kyiv said they seized money and paraphernalia linking the church’s clergymen to Moscow’s efforts to destabilise Ukraine.

The UOC-MP has denied the charges.

In a statement published after the passage of the law, Robert Amsterdam, an international lawyer representing the UOC-MP, said Tuesday marked “a dark new chapter for human rights in Ukraine”.

“Since last October we have warned Ukraine’s allies of this egregious law, which seeks to impose collective punishment against an entire religious denomination in violation of every known international law, and today, we have seen the majority of Verkhovna Rada cave in to nationalist pressure and step into lawlessness,” said Amsterdam.

The lawyer vowed to “continue our fight to protect our client and its parishioners from these violations” and to pursue legal action against what he described as a “religious cleansing law”.

Metropolitan Onufriy, the head of the UOC-MP, declared independence from the Moscow patriarchate three months after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The church, which used to represent a majority of the Ukrainian population, split in 2018, four years after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region under the guise of a separatist uprising. A new pro-Kyiv Orthodox Church of Ukraine was formed.

The OCU and many Ukrainian politicians and officials maintain that Onufriy’s church is an instrument of the Kremlin that should be disbanded.

More at the link.

Apparently the Starlink Snowflake’s reply guys and fanboys think this means that Ukraine just outlawed Christianity.

No, my dear independent thinkers who are trying to farm some engagement on “X” to get a couple of bucks from Daddy Elmo and hopefully buy ice cream after school — Ukraine is NOT “banning Christianity.”

It’s also not banning NOT any confessions within Christianity, particularly… pic.twitter.com/ESskpErFPc

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 20, 2024

No, my dear independent thinkers who are trying to farm some engagement on “X” to get a couple of bucks from Daddy Elmo and hopefully buy ice cream after school — Ukraine is NOT “banning Christianity.”

It’s also not banning NOT any confessions within Christianity, particularly Orthodox Christianity, particularly Russian Orthodox Christianity, no matter how hard you try to falsely portray Ukraine as a Satanic Jewish-ruled Zionist LGBT Nazi abomination of a country opposing your beloved based and trad Russia that only exists in your imagination.

The ‘historic’ bill passed by the Ukrainian parliament today does essentially just one thing: it demands that a religious organization titled “The Ukrainian Orthodox Chuch of the Moscow Patriarchate” (yes, exactly, the Moscow Patriarchate) eliminate its very official and fundamental association with its “parent corporation,” the Russian Orthodox Church (which is, unsurprisingly, based in Russia and is an integral part of Russia’s ruling regime).

In other words, the bill wants churches in Ukraine that are officially tied to Russia to stop being officially tied to Russia.

And it also bans Russia’s Russian Orthodox Church in Ukrainian territory as a representative of a nation that perpetrates a war of aggression on Ukraine and directly opposes Ukraine’s existence as a nation.

That’s it.

In independent Ukraine, for decades, we’ve had a situation in which the country’s biggest Orthodox Christian church is fundamentally loyal and subordinated to Russia (if you don’t understand the depth of these ties, you don’t know Russia).

To this day, the Russian organization is in control of many of Ukraine’s civilization-defining historical landmarks, such as the ancient Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a world heritage site.

We have a situation where the Russian branch in Ukraine operates assets worth billions of dollars in Christian constituencies all around Ukraine in direct association with the Russian Orthodox Church.

We have a situation in which the Moscow Patriarchate is openly used in political propaganda against the very existence of the Ukrainian nation, as well as in vocal support of the Russian war on Ukraine.

Good luck trying to spin this in a way that does not describe this as a “grave threat to national security in wartime.”

Don’t get me started on why this is still a thing after 2.5 years of a full-scale war and why our beloved authorities are only doing this now.

So, the Russian-aligned churches will have 9 months to sever their official association with Russia after the bill enters force.

As of May 2024, Ukraine still had about 8,000 communities that were part of the Moscow Patriarchate.

At the same time, in 2022-2023, around 1,000 communities successfully disassociated from Moscow and, for instance, joined the Orthodox Church of Ukraine—the one that was re-established as Ukraine’s own with Constantinopol’s official blessing in 2018.

And you know what?

They continued serving their faithful as usual, without being a local Russian FSB affiliate next to a church on Ukrainian soil.

However, that’s Ukraine.

So, the bill came out as soft and toothless as it could, given the everlasting drive to iron out “difficulties” and avoid upsetting Moscow-aligned priests too much.

Communities that fail to disassociate from the Russian Orthodox Church will face… severe, years-long legal battles with Ukrainian government agencies in courts, which essentially means they will be able to go on functioning for a very long time because the government can’t just shut them down just like that.

But you know, that’s some progress in bringing the centuries of Russia’s religious monopoly and occupation of Ukraine to an end.

Enough is enough.

Christianity was officially introduced to Eastern Slavs a thousand years ago at the hills of the Dnipro River in Kyiv, and things are slowly getting back to where they belong in history.

Rostov, Russia:

Rostov oil depot IS STILL BURNING 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/6sJz2l1CZ4

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) August 20, 2024

10,000 square meters of inferno

*sorry for the typo in the deleted tweet*

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 20, 2024

Meanwhile, a large fuel depot in Russia’s Proletarsk is still in flames days after a Ukrainian drone attack, and the situation is getting worse.

This is easily the most effective Ukrainian attack on Russian oil industry ever in this war.

My feeling is that they won’t bring the grand fire down until the entire facility is totally evaporated… we’ll see.

/9. Third day of burning Proletarsk oil depot after Ukrainian drone attack. Another fuel tank has just exploded. pic.twitter.com/7ZtJS0KboV

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 20, 2024

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

Other than the Patron tweet I included above the jump, there are no other new Patron tweets or videos today. Here is some adjacent material.

This is Chara. Beloved dog rescued by @HugsUkraine. She is blind but smart and sweet. #nafofella pic.twitter.com/V1w6MZmTGz

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) August 20, 2024

Today, @jesse_c_6 and I are visiting the incredible @HugsUkraine. Their support for Ukraine, especially the Kharkiv community, is invaluable. They assist shelters, help internationally displaced children, distribute humanitarian aid, and serve as a volunteer hub in Kharkiv. Please follow and support their amazing work!

Open thread!